Age of Adepts c1-1513

by Zhen De Lao Lang, 真的老狼

  At this moment, it wasn’t just Yurga who was shocked. Even the spectating adepts and Adept Laurent were almost driven mad at the sight of what was happening.

  God! Was it in vogue to smash people with magical crystals these days? Those fighting in the arena weren’t elementium golems; they were piles of walking magical crystals. Using such an expensive mountain of magical crystals to compete with an enemy and having them be destroyed in a single instant, one by one; the immense psychological impact to the master of these golems wouldn’t be any smaller than what the enemy was dealing with!

  This…this was already the fifth or sixth one, wasn’t it?

  That was probably more than a million magical crystals added together, right?

  Anyone would have to put their hand to their heart when they imagined a million magical crystals gone with the wind, just like that.

  As expected, just a minute later, the two new Flame Fiends had been reduced to rubble, their soul brands smashed to pieces.

  The instant the two Flame Fiends were killed, a flash of fire appeared in the sea of fire and roars rang out. Another two towering figures stood up from within.

  “Damned bastard. Are you finished yet?”

  At this instant, even Yurga, who thought himself a calm and composed person, couldn’t help but swear.

  The spectating adepts had opened their eyes and mouths wide in shock. None of them could believe their eyes. Meanwhile, the apprentices had been counting their fingers and helping that young fire adept clan leader count his losses since the start of the battle.

  A million magical crystals. That was a million magical crystals!

  The apprentices shouted in their hearts and minds, roaring furiously.

  They gripped their fists tight as their bodies trembled. For the first time, they felt the limits of their logic.

  If…if those million magical crystals were theirs. That image, that scene; it must be unimaginably wondrous!

  These one million magical crystals were more than enough to buy the loyalty of a few desperate adepts, along with a large group of fearless apprentices. Yet now, with the repeated blasts of Death Gaze, these mountains of magical crystals around them were collapsing into dust and their dreams along with them.

  For a moment, countless adepts and apprentices in the arena became disappointed and disillusioned!

  Even Mary and Billis were a bit shocked at the sight of this, let alone the outsiders.

  Dammit, a duel could be dealt with this way?

  In particular, Bug Adept Billis couldn’t help but start counting his fingers and calculating how many insects he would need to kill a Flame Fiend.

  A swarm probably wasn’t enough!

  The offensive and defensive power of a swarm were still too weak. It would have trouble getting close to the Flame Fiends who had their Rings of Fire. A Flame Fiend wouldn’t even need to fight. They just needed to activate the Ring of Fire, and they would be able to roast most of the swarm.

  In comparison, only the First and Second Grade insect generals could break through the Flame Fiend’s shell to break the golem core within.

  Given his current number of insect generals and their overall power, killing a Flame Fiend was still possible. However, he would have to pay the price of losing half of his insect generals to do this. If he went all out, killing two Flame Fiends who were working in tandem with each other was still possible.

  However, he would have to prepare himself to lose all his insect generals and all of his swarm!

  Yet, two Flame Fiends appeared to be nothing to that strange clan leader of his. Just look at it. Look at it! The seventh and eight Flame Fiends were roaring and appearing once again!

  For a moment, for some reason, Billis felt a bit of sympathy for that Third Grade Adept Yurga, who had been ‘dominating’ the entire battle.

  His luck was just completely in the gutter!

  Mary also let out a sigh of relief.

  The danger was resolved, and a chance for victory had appeared for her lover. Naturally, her mood had turned around.

  “Very good, very good. You bastard Greem. You had such a trick up your sleeves, and you didn’t tell me ahead of time? You made me cry for nothing all this while. Hmph! Just you wait and see how I’ll deal with you once we get back home.”

  Meanwhile, the white-robed Adept Laurent started frowning.

  Dammit, how did those bastards from the information department do their job? How did they manage to fail to gather such vital information on the target? You bastard Yurga, has your brain been eaten by a dog? Stop tussling with those brainless elementium golems and hurry up and find the brat.

  Unfortunately, regardless of how he cried internally, the situation in the arena had already been unimaginably turned around!

  When the seventh and eighth Flame Fiends fell before Yurga, the ninth and tenth Flame Fiends appeared out of thin air.

  At this point, the spectating adepts and apprentices had overcome the psychological shock as their thoughts were back and working on the fight.

  They shouted and cheered vigorously as they watched with excitement at how the Third Grade adept destroyed the piles of magical crystals again and again, before watching new piles of magical crystals roar and arrive in the arena.

  They no longer cared about the outcome of the battle. They were simply curious how many magical crystals this legendary fire adept clan leader was prepared to use to crush this Third Grade adept. Two million, or three million?

  It was this odd thought process that caused all the adepts and apprentices to place bizarre wagers on Yurga within their own minds.

  “Nineteen of them.”

  “Eighteen.”

  “I say sixteen. Can’t you see that Adept Yurga is already panting? I bet he can take him down with sixteen elementium golems.”

  “Hmph! What do you know? Panting just means he’s furious. Any adept can show an explosion of potential in a duel of life and death. That’s why I’ll bet twenty-one!”

  Some more acquainted adepts and apprentices even started gathering together and began wagering.

  Just as they were all excitedly pretending to be ‘experts’ at analysis, the battle took an unexpected turn.

  The new Flame Fiends started self-destructing when they charged at Yurga!

  Chapter 843 - Yurga's Fury

  In truth, the self-destruction of the elementium golems was well within Greem’s plans.

  It was only because Yurga had always struck too fast and killed instantly every time that he had yet to put it to plan until now.

  Now, after instantly killing eight Flame Fiends in a row, even Yurga couldn’t help but start feeling some exhaustion. Death Gaze severely wore away at the soul origin. Yurga and his exceptional Spirit could not endure firing the beam so many times in succession.

  It was actually a commonplace occurrence in battles between high-grade adepts!

  Intermediate and low-grade adepts would often turn the world around them when they fought, battling for days and nights. Sometimes, the battle would even drag all the way out until both parties had exhausted all of their magical power. Conflicts between high-grade adepts would never end up in a scenario like this. Victory and defeat were often decided in moments.

  Those who could become Third Grade always held some unconventional and powerful trump cards in their hands. Once the battle started, there would be no mercy. They would try their best to kill the opponent in the shortest time possible, leaving no space or time for the opponent to retaliate.

  As a veteran Third Grade bloodline adept, Yurga relied on this strange bloodline and possessed the powerful innate ability to kill an enemy instantly. It was this move that gave him the shockingly powerful title of the Death Heralding Crow in the central region.

  Unfortunately, he had run into an even more bizarre Second Grade challenger today!

  Greem was the clan leader of the Crimson Clan and a powerful Second Grade fire adept. He also possessed the mysterious ability to manipulate
flames.

  With his Burning Domain and the massive sea of fire, his body had already assimilated with the flames, making it difficult for Yurga to find his real body. Meanwhile, the Flame Fiends he secretly summoned wildly charged at Yurga.

  If Yurga ignored the Flame Fiends and focused solely on finding Greem, then he would be subject to quite a beating. If two intermediate Second Grade Flame Fiends were allowed to unleash their full might, they could cause some shocking destruction. At the very least, Yurga dared not test the power of their attacks.

  However, Yurga had no better means of quickly dealing with two Flame Fiends apart from his Death Gaze. Of course, he could still kill the two golems even if he didn’t use Death Gaze, and then simply fall back on his powers as a Third Grade adept.

  If that were the case, he would leave the two Flame Fiends with some time for preparation.

  You aren’t going to use your Death Gaze any more? Alright then, I’ll just self-destruct!

  One of the Flame Fiends was responsible for occupying Yurga, while the other rushed forward recklessly and self-destructed. This way, Yurga might no longer need to exhaust his soul origin, but he would now have to endure the might of an intermediate Second Grade elementium golem’s self-destruction!

  Greem’s spirit consciousness flowed slowly through the sea of fire. He could also pick up on the might of the self-destruction through the explosion’s shockwave.

  Six hundred and twenty-nine points!

  That was already a very shocking energy level!

  At the very least, Adept Yurga’s robes were already burnt when he escaped from the mushroom cloud. His face was grim and black with smoke. From a distance, he looked like a beggar in rags.

  While he was scrambling to recover from the explosion, the other Flame Fiend charged at him.

  It wasn’t that easy to humiliate and bully a Third Grade adept either!

  Yurga straightened his body furiously and extended a scorched hand at the Flame Fiend. A hand composed of pure black mist smashed onto the golem’s thick, solid chest.

  The mist hand clashed with the magma, sizzling fiercely.

  The flames on the Flame Fiend’s half-meter thick magma chest stalled as a claw-shaped indentation appeared. The indentation was so deep that it had penetrated the Flame Fiend’s chest.

  As a hole appeared in the chest, searing hot lava spilled out from within. Flowing out along with the lava stream was a crystalline elementium core glowing with prismatic light.

  However, at this moment, the elementium core was glowing with a red light. The fire elementium energies were wild and chaotic as if they were about to go out of control.

  Yurga let out a cold snort when he saw this. His body exploded into a flock of crows that squawked and flew away.

  The next moment, a gigantic mushroom cloud erupted in the center of the arena.

  A wild elementium blaze quickly spread outward, rapidly catching up with those escaping Death Heralding Crows. The Death Heralding Crows might have excellent resistance, but even they could not endure an energy explosion of this level. Over a hundred red-eyed Death Heralding Crows had their bodies blown to shreds of black mist.

  Under ordinary circumstances, Yurga would surely have escaped out of the radius of the elementium flames to reduce the burden on his energy supply. This time, Yurga went the exact opposite way. He charged above the mushroom cloud and transformed into one gigantic Death Heralding Crow before glaring viciously at the sea of fire below with his red eyes.

  When the two new Flame Fiends appeared somewhere in the sea of fire, Yurga folded his black wings without hesitation and dove downward with a tail of black smoke behind him.

  He had just made it halfway when the two summoned Flame Fiends lifted their heads and locked onto his position. They raised both their hands, and four boiling streams of lava shot out toward him like four massive pillars of fire.

  The Death Heralding Crow that Yurga had transformed into uttered a soul-shocking shriek. The voice was sharp and loud enough to tear a person’s eardrums, and even space started to wrinkle beneath the ripple of energy.

  The thick pillars of lava were blown away where the soundwave spread.

  Yurga’s body abruptly accelerated, and he charged across the rain of fire under cover of the black mist, arriving at the location where that strange mental flux had originated.

  “Get out here!”

  As Yurga shouted, a large flock of Death Heralding Crows formed from out of the black mist. The sizzling death beams shot in every direction as if they cost nothing.

  The sea of fire around Yurga faded, revealing a scorched-black arena floor.

  A stumbling figure appeared at the edge of the fire, his Spirit clearly damaged by the death beams.

  “Brat, don’t think of escaping alive now that I’ve managed to drag you out.”

  Yurga revealed a wicked smile. His body vanished, evading two meteors that the Flame Fiends had launched at him. When he once again appeared, he was in front of the towering figure and extending a black mist hand toward the opponent’s chest.

  The hand had only reached halfway before Yurga’s face soured and he quickly had to erupt into a thousand crows again.

  But it was too late!

  An even more terrifying explosion of fire rose with the towering figure at its center. The blast engulfed most of the Death Heralding Crows into its impact.

  It was apparent that Yurga also had a transformation ability similar to Bug Adept Billis, where he would not die as long as one of his manifested creatures was still alive. Thus, it was only when the remaining two to three hundred crows escaped into the distance and reformed into Yurga’s appearance that everyone understood the tremendous damage the detonation from earlier had dealt him.

  The smoke protecting Yurga was already too thin to cover his body. Burn marks and blisters could be seen covering the entirety of his withered form. Part of his carbonized flesh started peeling off, revealing the pink and tender flesh beneath along with the beating organs.

  The previously confident Yurga now had a pale face, seemingly devoid of all color. He clutched the hole in his chest with all he had and took out a magical green potion from his belt with much difficulty before consuming it.

  Strangely enough, Yurga’s severe wounds immediately started healing once he drank the potion.

  Even the massive burns and wounds on his body started to heal at a visible rate.

  Without hesitation, Yurga took out several magical potion bottles of various colors and extreme potency and started drinking all of them. As the effects of the potions took hold, the damage to his body began to recede, and even his weakened Spirit showed noticeable recovery.

  If even a Second Grade like Greem could obtain a sacred healing potion like the Water of the Moonwell, then how could Yurga possibly be lacking such medicines as a Third Grade adept?

  However, the physical damage that the elementium fires dealt to Yurga was not as severe as the damage to his ego and pride.

  To think that he would sustain such massive damage in a battle against a Second Grade fire adept! How was Yurga supposed to feel about this? Where was he to put his face now? Moreover, the damage to his reputation had already been established. Even if Yurga were to unleash his full might and kill off Greem now, he would probably have a hard time changing the way that other Third Grade adepts looked at him.

  Even more terrifying was the fact that the towering flame humanoid that exploded earlier wasn’t Greem’s actual body. It was only a fire clone he had summoned. It was only because Greem had used some mysterious spell that caused the clone to radiate the same mental flux as himself that he had managed to trick Yurga into its proximity.

  While Yurga was caught up in his frustration and unquenchable fury, the two annoying Flame Fiends once again charged at him. The series of fireballs they were shooting off bombarded his location like a storm.

  The fury within him, with nowhere to go, finally erupted!

  Yurga once again transf
ormed into a massive Death Heralding Crow shrouded in black smoke. He drew out black lightning in the sky, quick as a phantom, and instantly pierced through the bodies of the two Flame Fiends.

  When he finally stopped in the sky, the black smoke promptly extinguished the lava and flames on his body. There, he held two glowing golem cores in his hands.

  Yurga’s attacks had been too fast and too ferocious. It was far beyond the limits of the Flame Fiends’ reaction.

  The two Flame Fiends had their hidden golem cores removed from their bodies by the opponent without even the chance to react. If it weren’t for the Ring of Fire and the lava on them dealing a substantial amount of damage to Yurga, these two Flame Fiends would have died in a very humiliating and worthless manner.

  Yurga felt the rapidly berserking fire elementium within the two cores, and a wicked smile appeared on his face. He smashed his two hands together, and cracks appeared on the delicate and perfect golem cores before they exploded into fireworks.

  Yurga crushed the cores before they could detonate!

  Chapter 844 - The Battle Concludes

  The might of a Third Grade adept was horrifying when they went all out.

  The next four Flame Fiends that Greem summoned were also destroyed by Yurga in much the same fashion, turning into sacrifices before the famed title of the Death Heralding Crow.

  However, the Flame Fiends of Terror truly lived up to their names. They managed to cause pretty substantial damage to this Third Grade adept with their retaliation before dying. This accumulation of wounds quickly affected Yurga’s ability to fight, making it difficult for him to so ‘easily’ dispatch one Flame Fiend after another.

  Greem had also been forced to drink a vial of moonwater to recover the loss of his magical powers and Spirit.

  He had only managed to last until now against Yurga with his Second Grade Spirit due to the Fire Throne set’s unique set effect of cutting fire magic Spirit exhaustion by half. Greem had to summon a Flame Fiend almost every fifteen minutes while opening a fire portal to summon fire creatures to occupy and exhaust Yurga.