Over the past year of bloody adept battles, the mostly unknown Meryl had successfully advanced to Second Grade. She had now become a powerful bloodline adept who could transform into a Second Grade fire dragon. If it weren’t for the time limit on her transformation, Meryl could probably instantly rise above the other veteran Second Grades of the clan to become the strongest individual among the Second Grade adepts.
She was also the only Second Grade in the Crimson Clan who had confidence in fighting her way back to the clan if she ran into an enemy Third Grade adept.
Meanwhile, Emelia had also advanced to Second Grade during the war.
Her current form was also tremendously different from before.
After completely fusing with the soul of Yara the spore princess, Emelia possessed the soul origin of a human adept and the magical spores. From the waist up, Emelia still retained the appearance of a human girl. Her lower body had transformed entirely into that of the magical spores, which resembled the appendages of an octopus.
The reason she was known as Mystique was because of her ability to access her magical plant state freely. It allowed her to transform into a humanoid, magical plant that could walk on two feet.
It was almost as if she had Stealth and Visual Avoidance activated as long as she was in a region covered in green vegetation. Moreover, her innate ability, Magical Spore Infestation, allowed her to control all lifeforms infected with magical spores.
The adepts fighting against often found themselves in a horrifying situation where parts of their bodies were beyond their control.
Compared to the two new rising stars of the clan, Bug Adept Billis was still as powerful and evil as ever before!
The Fabres Clan’s bounty list had Billis listed even higher than Third Grade Bloody Queen Mary. His was the highest bounty, and he was the Crimson adept that the Fabres wanted dead above all others.
Over twenty Fabres adepts had died at Billis’ hands since the start of the war. Although most of these were only First Grade adepts, it was still an unbearable wound inflicted on the Fabres Clan.
The Fabres Clan had racked their brains to kill this bug adept.
Unfortunately, with his insect clones, Billis was too difficult to kill.
Billis would hide whenever he ran into adepts of the same grade or higher. He refused to face an opponent of the same level in frontal conflict. However, he would turn into a savage and unrelenting beast when he ran into low-grade adepts out on missions.
Truly, not a single blade of grass grew where Bug Adept Billis traveled!
Adepts were killed, and all their blood essence drained for his nourishment!
Apprentices were killed and left to the insect generals for food!
Ordinary soldiers were killed and turned into flesh embryos for his insect army!
For a bug adept like himself, who could only evolve through slaughter, the war was to him what water was to a fish. It immediately incited all the excitement within his being. Other adepts might need to return to base for replenishment and rest after their battles had concluded. However, Billis would weave between various battlefields day and night, looking for every single opportunity to attack the enemy.
Billis would flee with every bit of his power when he ran into adepts who were tasked with hunting him, unhesitating even if he had to abandon tens of thousands of insects to survive. The enemy’s flesh was his hatchery, and the enemy’s life was the source of his energy. He was a slaughter machine who never knew fatigue! If he wasn’t committing carnage on the battlefield, he was hurrying towards another battlefield to continue his slaughter!
Even the Fabres Clan had a difficult time against such a savage and cunning enemy.
The Fabres Clan even sent out Third Grade adepts to participate in the hunt for him. Unfortunately, he simply shed his tail, abandoning half his insect army and all his magical mantises to escape.
However, just two weeks later, Bug Adept Billis once again returned to the battlefield by subsisting on the flesh and life of Fabres adepts. There were no signs of weakness and damage from when he last escaped from the Fabres adepts.
The Fabres Clan once again increased the bounty of Billis’ head because of this incident, causing his prize to rise above Mary’s to become the number one on the bounty list.
Apart from these core Second Grades, the vampire adepts also performed excellently.
Their ability to transform into bats improved their mobility. It allowed them to avoid pursuit, while their ability to drink blood allowed them to recover from their exhaustion with the enemy’s blood. They also possessed incomparable stealth. All of these factors combined allowed the vampire adepts to become efficient and enduring assassins on the battlefield.
They traveled through the battlefield, instantly calling upon their allies when they discovered viable targets. A great number of vampires beyond the enemy’s number of adepts would quickly gather, allowing them to launch a frontal assault.
They might usually seem cowardly and cautious, but they were more ferocious and reckless than human warriors when they charged onto the battlefield. Fearless about wounds they would sustain, daring to trade injury for injury; all of these things were what made the vampire adepts so scary.
If their elementium power weren’t so weak, and their attacks insufficiently powerful, they would probably be as lethal as a single Second Grade adept.
At the very least, the vampires managed to execute over a dozen enemy adepts during this war, more than Second Grade Zacha and Tigule.
It couldn’t be helped. After all, Zacha and Tigule only excelled at large-scale battlefields.
Chapter 1003 - Goblin Machinist Sorcerer
Apart from these core adepts, a group of elite adepts had also emerged from within the Crimson Clan.
For instance, there was Dragon Devourer Oliven.
Oliven had always been a peripheral member of the Crimson Clan. She very rarely participated in clan matters, let alone adepts wars that had nothing to do with her.
However, after successfully advancing to Third Grade with Greem’s ‘investment,’ Oliven had a favor to return. As such, she had no choice but to join this adept war.
As a dragon devourer, most of Oliven’s abilities were related to dragons.
Despite being a beginner Third Grade, she could unleash as much power as a peak Third Grade when fighting against dragons. Even if she was facing a Fourth Grade dragon, she could retreat without a scratch on herself.
It was the powerful profession ability of a dragon devourer!
However, when Oliven’s opponent was anything other than a dragon, most of her active and passive combat techniques became unusable; it severely affected her combat prowess. During these times, she was basically no more than a beginner Third Grade Magic-Breaking assassin.
Fortunately, she still had the underlying strength of a Third Grade creature. Whenever she appeared on the battlefield, enemy elementium adepts who were only capable of long-ranged spells with no means of protecting themselves in melee range didn’t dare to act too recklessly. They would be forced to restrain their firepower and fight more defensively.
Apart from Oliven, another force stood out the most during the war. That force was the two unique professions that appeared for the first time in the World of Adepts: the Goblin Magical-Mechanic and the Goblin Machinist-Sorcerer.
Compared to the difficulty of advancing to a magical-mechanic, the machinist-sorcerer was a profession that almost any adult goblin could advance to.
In all seriousness, this was a unique profession that had been specially adapted for the goblins!
All goblins could successfully master the fundamental mechanical and alchemical knowledge required for advancement. If the goblins underwent further training to understand magic energy principles and other arcane knowledge, they would then advance into a goblin machinist-sorcerer.
Compared to the advancement of an adept, a goblin machinist-sorcerer would not experience any fundamental change to thei
r Physique. Instead, they would passively gain some degree of control over mechanical magic weapons.
When a group of tiny goblins no more than 1.2 meters drove massive four-meter robots onto the battlefield and drowned the enemy with a torrent of metal bullets, goblin rockets, and alchemical bombs…
At the very least, the might of a goblin machinist-sorcerer on the battlefield was no less than a beginner First Grade adept…until they ran out of ammunition, of course.
The most significant advantage of this profession was its ease of advancement!
Through much research and systematic sorting, the goblin adepts had managed to cut away a considerable amount of content from the most difficult aspect of adept advancement– Physique improvement. They also got rid of many ‘unnecessary’ arcane subjects and studies. As such, the chance of an adolescent goblin successfully advancing to become a machinist-sorcerer rose to a peak of 67%.
The appearance of the goblin machinist-sorcerer provided the goblins with the opportunity to provide every single member of their race with a profession!
However, the goblin machinist-sorcerer was a weakened version of a proper combat profession, after all. It could not improve the natural Physique of the goblins.
Regardless of how many goblins advanced to become machinist-sorcerers, their short lifespans were still limited by their race. That was an aspect of the goblin machinist-sorcerer that remained inferior to the other orthodox professions.
The human adept profession relied on the investment of resources and the accumulation of time to slowly gather a group of high-grade adepts. Meanwhile, this simplified profession of the goblins would only ever produce First Grade fighters. There was no chance of a Second Grade ever being created.
That was because the short lifespan of the goblin was insufficient to last them until Second Grade advancement!
After all these years of selection and training, as many as thirteen goblin magical-mechanics had appeared in the Crimson Clan. In particular, Adept Locke, who was improving fastest of them all, was already at advanced First Grade. Given his current progression, it was very likely that the first Second Grade of the goblins would be born in thirty to fifty years.
Both the few goblin magical-mechanics and the numerous goblin machinist-sorcerers had already stepped upon the battlefield for this war.
Judging by their performance on the battlefield, they were weaker when it came to matters of stealth and ambush. However, their capabilities on the meat-grinding field of battle were no weaker than the orthodox adepts.
Put differently; if a goblin magical-mechanic or a goblin machinist-sorcerer was left in a forest with a human adept, then the human adept would most definitely be the one to walk out alive. However, if ten machinist-sorcerers were to step onto the battlefield simultaneously, they would devastatingly defeat ten opposing human adepts!
In particular, goblin machinist sorcerers, who started out as magical goblins, had greater Spirit and Physique. That allowed them to control and manipulate a greater number of even more ferocious magic-mechanical weapons. Compared to human adepts, who treasured their own lives tremendously, the goblins’ savagery and violence in combat allowed them to dominate the battlefield.
Answering offense with offense, and trading lives with lives. No human adept would be willing to do such a foolish thing, but these goblins didn’t mind!
As such, with the Crimson Clan’s higher-level forces being so much more inferior to their opponent, it was the appearance of these fearless goblin machinist-sorcerers that established such a firm and impenetrable front against the enemy.
Protected by the magical golem dragon, the magical machine army, the goblin chariots, and the Motherships, the Brutalblood Army formed by the goblin machinist-sorcerers became the one opponent that the Fabres Clan was least willing to face.
In all honesty, when the Fabres adepts saw the vicious goblins hide in their magical machines and step onto the battlefield with their puffing steam engines, all while laughing as they reduced the battlefield to scorched earth with their magic energy cannons, goblin rockets, and alchemical bombs, an unbearable and indescribable anger would fill their hearts!
The defenses of the magical machines they piloted were extraordinarily crude and had meager magic resistance. These machines would often blow up after one or two rounds of attacks from the enemy adepts. However, they didn’t care!
It was almost as if every single goblin machinist-sorcerer that stepped onto the battlefield knew that they didn’t have long to live. None of them ever seemed to have any intention to turn around and replenish their ammunition. They only attacked as if they were racing with time itself; racing to unleash all the ammunition they had before their war machine was blown to bits.
That was perhaps the only reason why they were so savage and brutal!
They could throw away their lives like worthless paper, but the Fabres adepts could not.
Moreover, as the line of battle slowly approached the Crimson Clan’s land of origin, the room available for both parties to ambush and sneak about shrunk dramatically. Most of the time, they had no choice but to return to frontal warfare.
After experiencing the terror of the Crimson Clan’s Brutalblood Army for the first time, the Fabres Clan had no choice but to order their own adepts to stand down. They had suffered tremendous losses, after all. Instead, they replaced the adepts with a shocking number of modified voodoo beasts and metal golems.
Thus, the two clans started engaging in a back and forth with Legas Valley at the center of the conflict, one hundred and twenty kilometers south of Pinecone City. They continuously pushed the battlefield back and forth, switching from location to location, turning one place after another into a scorched and devastated land void of all life.
From an overall perspective, when it came to the quantity and quality of low-level adepts and military force, the Crimson Clan reigned superior over the Fabres Clan in many different battlefields.
However, once the high-grade adepts of the Fabres Clan stepped onto the battlefield, Mary and Oliven were the only ones who could occupy them slightly. Although Third Grade Emerald Dragon Iritina had also responded to the summons and arrived at the clan battlefield with some of her flight, this lazy lizard refused to put in the effort while Greem was absent. She would never put herself in a position where she would be facing attacks from multiple adepts of the same grade.
Moreover, a Fourth Grade body-refining adept was still hiding behind this battlefield.
That was a powerful existence that could ‘instantly’ kill any one of them. As such, Iritina was extremely cautious and never left the golem dragon’s radius of protection.
Either way, with the dragonflight’s presence, the enemy would have to take the terror of the dragons’ attacks into consideration before they engaged in any large-scale battle. Consequently, after forcing the Crimson Clan back to their land of origin, the Fabres Clan had only launched a full-scale ground invasion a handful of times. Moreover, most of these incursions were smaller-scale ground penetration operations.
However, as time slowly passed, the Fourth Grade monster behind the Fabres Clan seemed to have gradually lost his patience. He started to pay more frequent attention to the war and intervened more often.
Cloaked in the terrifying and suffocating shadow of this Fourth Grade powerhouse, the tiny advantages that the Crimson Clan had managed to build up before this had vanished without a trace. Every day, when the clan adepts took on their missions and stepped onto the battlefield, their hearts were filled with anxiety.
The reason the Crimson Clan had yet to collapse was simply that the Fourth Grade adept still sat in the Fabres headquarters and had yet to show himself. To this day, the main forces responsible for the progression of war remained a group of Third Grade adepts.
However, once the Fourth Grade adept lost his patience and personally stepped on the battlefield, the frontline that the Crimson Clan was currently holding up would collapse in an instant. When tha
t happened, no one knew if they could even protect the Crimson Clan’s last city, even with the magical golem dragon fighting at the very front!
Pinecone Town could not be lost!
The Crimson Clan had developed the place for so many years and had finally successfully cultivated a certain degree of resource and manpower advantage. If they lost Pinecone City, they would have nowhere to evacuate the ten to twenty thousand people living in it. The narrow, small geography of Fire Throne did not have the space to do so.
However, if the Crimson Clan were to simply abandon the citizens of Pinecone City, they would lose the clan elites and backbone members that they required to reestablish themselves, even if they managed to force the Fabres Clan somehow to retreat.
The worldly territories required smart and hardworking nobles to rule over them, and the various resource sites required diligent adepts and apprentices to manage them. Those who could remain loyal and unwavering to the clan even under such a harsh situation were the foundational stones for the clan to grow and develop in the future.
Chapter 1004 - Eager
Chapter 1004 Eager
Pinecone City.
As a human city developed from a small town in the wasteland, the natives were a tremendous minority. The large numbers of new immigrants had replaced most of them.
Fire Throne was the place where adepts lived and indulged in their research, after all. It was ill-suited as a place to deal with the increasingly busy clan matters that popped up. As such, Gargamel had already moved his office to Pinecone City twenty years ago.
Since then, there were two centers of activity within the clan.
Adepts and apprentices delved into their magical research and took on clan missions at Fire Throne. Meanwhile, the daily communications and reports from worldly nobles and local resource sites were managed at Pinecone City.
Pinecone City had undergone a series of expansion and renovations. The outdated, low, and old buildings were all razed. Rows of luxurious mansions were built in their place. Moreover, due to privacy concerns, every single estate had its own defensive array and magical barrier that could prevent scrying from the outside.
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