The presence of these adepts was more than enough to turn the battle against him!
“Adept, does our agreement still stand?” Kanganas’ tone even softened, as he proactively attempted to negotiate with Greem.
Poor lich! The evil liches were terrifying individuals who had always crushed everyone around them wherever they went, enemy or ‘ally.’ When had they ever actively approached their prey for negotiations?!
“Of course, it does!” Greem chuckled, and a smile appeared on his fiery face. “Let’s work together to take down these religious hacks. The spoils will belong to whoever gets their hands on it in the end. What is it, sir? Could you be afraid of being at a disadvantage despite all the undead you have on your side?”
“Very well. It is settled!” The soulfire hidden behind Lich Kanganas’ ruby eyes subtly scanned the three adepts. He couldn’t help but start laughing sinisterly and coldly when he sensed Greem’s beginner Fourth Grade aura.
Beginner Fourth Grade. It didn’t matter how talented Greem was to have grasped some of the fire laws at beginner Fourth Grade; he would not be able to harness the power of the Fifth Grade Libram of Wisdom. An artifact with an owner could only be bound and sealed with the power of a Fifth Grade, be that a person or another artifact.
As such, Lich Kanganas accepted Greem’s offer without any hesitation!
The joining of forces between the two evil factions immediately put the scattered believers on the back foot.
This place was another world, after all, not the origin plane they had been born on.
Though the Libram of Wisdom could continuously project divine power across billions and billions of kilometers from its origin plane, it was extremely costly to do so.
The God of Wisdom might be able to sustain such expenditure of power if he was a higher god.
Unfortunately, God of Wisdom Hierro was only an inferior Fifth Grade deity.
Mietzel, the son of Hierro, might be able to hang on with the blessing of the Libram of Wisdom. Divine halo after divine halo formed around him into thick and firm divine shields that kept the enemies’ spells and magic at bay. Meanwhile, the two archbishops did not have such a powerful tool at their disposal. After several waves of ferocious attacks, they buckled.
The divine shield around Archbishop Rousseau was the first to shatter. Several terrifying attacks struck him and instantly killed him.
Lich Kanganas’ death energy first corroded the archbishop’s body, the gray mist sizzling as it ate away at the flesh until everything was gray.
The flesh wilted and rotted away, just as the bones calcified in the blink of an eye.
Archbishop Rousseau, who held the title of the Divine Guardian, was eroded into a gray, colorless skeleton in less than three seconds. All his flesh, tendons, and organs had vanished without a trace. Several other terrifying attacks then arrived, shattering Rousseau’s bones into dust and sending the powder into the air.
“Rousseau!” Anthony screamed in sorrow. There was only a thin layer of divine shield around him as well. It trembled and rippled incessantly beneath the opponents’ attacks, obviously on the verge of breaking as well.
“My lord, please run! I,” Anthony’s eyes were bright red now. It was obvious he had prepared himself for death, “I will buy time for you with all of my ability!”
Having said that, Anthony gave up all meaningless resistance. He lifted his hands before his chest, palms facing up as he devotedly began to sing a mysterious prayer in a language that Greem and the others could not understand.
When the prayer rang out, the Fourth Grades in the battle couldn’t help but be lulled into relaxation. Their consciousness faltered temporarily. Their attacks stopped as they became enamored by the low and lingering sound of the prayer, almost as if they had forgotten the battle itself.
Meanwhile, trails of blood flowed down from Anthony’s mouth and nose, even as he continued to sing. Two streaks of black blood could also be seen racing down from his eyes. Even so, he did not stop singing. Instead, he continued his prayers in a tragic, sorrowful manner.
Meanwhile, Mietzel turned and ran without looking back the moment Anthony’s prayer began. He had no intention of helping Anthony attack the enemies at all.
It couldn’t be helped. The Prayer of God’s Praise was a suicidal ability, meant to drag the enemy to the grave along with the caster.
Should Mietzel attack any of the enemies, he would awaken them from the illusion and cause Anthony’s sacrifice to have been in vain.
Mietzel had just flown a thousand meters away when a light flickered around Lich Kanganas. He had managed to escape from the illusion. He was a lich, after all, and had much higher magic resistance than the adepts. Breaking free of the illusion’s control was not difficult at all.
Kanganas looked at the three hypnotized adepts whose defenses were still fully functional and instantly made up his mind. His figure flickered as he chased after the god’s son.
Once Kanganas had left, Greem abruptly opened his eyes……
Chapter 1131 - Conflict of Interest
With the aid of the Chip, there was nearly no chance of Greem being controlled through charms or hypnosis.
As such, he had been calmly observing the lich’s each and every action from the start.
If Kanganas had decided to abandon the god’s son and instead target the adepts, Greem didn’t mind surprising him with a savage assault.
Now that Kanganas had chased after the god’s son, Greem had no more need to keep up his disguise. He hurled a Magma Fireball at Anthony before rising to the air without hesitation and chased in the direction that the god’s son had fled.
The explosive power of the Magma Fireball was clearly not enough to kill an archbishop of the Omniscient Eye. However, as Anthony coughed up blood from the flame shockwaves, Holly and Mangus awoke from their bewitched mental state.
With the two of them staying behind, there was no chance for Anthony or the templar knights to escape.
In the end, these believers were merely ordinary mortals. They had only been able to display incredible power through the support of the divine halos. Now that their divine power had reached its limits, two Fourth Grade adepts were more than enough to bury them eternally upon these foreign lands.
Greem traveled through the sky rapidly.
To avoid alarming the lich, Greem did not choose to use the flashy Fire Teleportation. Instead, he enveloped his body with golden flames and turned invisible as he flew.
The floating city would crash into the ground in less than half an hour. When that happened, everything on the floating city would be destroyed in a violent impact.
There wasn’t much time left for Greem and the others!
The god’s son, known as Mietzel, flew through the air quickly. So quickly, in fact, that sparks had appeared on the divine shield around him due to friction against the air and the scattered energy in the air. Meanwhile, Kanganas pursued tightly from behind, having turned into a cloud of death energy.
Two meteors, one white and one gray, cut across the horizon at blinding speed. Naturally, this pursuit drew the attention of the other predators.
Gaha!
Ear-piercing laughter rang out as two individuals of unusual appearance rose into the skies on a ferocious two-headed eagle. They laughed brazenly as they charged at Mietzel.
“Stay, human.”
These two individuals had humanoid forms and wore gray robes. They had a large mouth, a long nose with fleshy tendrils, and ears. Yet, strangely enough, neither of them had eyes.
Underminers. These two were underminers from an unknown plane!
Perhaps their intention on intercepting Mietzel was to take advantage of his unfortunate situation. However, they were kicking a steel plate.
Mietzel, who was already furious at being pursued by a lich, opened the Libram of Wisdom without hesitation. As the pages rustled and flipped, two blinding spears of light shot forth in the blink of an eye.
The two u
nderminers couldn’t even finish their lines. The spears of light penetrated their forcefields, their bodies, and the eagle beneath their bodies. They crashed from the sky, screaming tragically as they did so.
The Libram of Wisdom in Mietzel’s hands was simply too powerful.
Even though they were Fourth Grades as well, the two underminers were shot down in a single attack.
However, this brief delay with his actions allowed Kanganas to catch up with him. The lich cackled coldly as he formed over a hundred bone arrows around him and fired them towards Mietzel.
It might look like Mietzel had an incredibly easy time dealing with the two underminers, but he could not deal with the vicious lich at all, not with the lich’s immunity to all low and intermediate-grade magic.
Mietzel could only scream at the sight of the hundred arrows. He quickly poured his divine power into the Libram of Wisdom, forming a thin but incredibly resilient divine shield to survive this wild barrage.
Meanwhile, Lich Kanganas took advantage of Mietzel’s diverted attention to seal off his path of escape. He then chuckled coldly and approached the god’s son.
“Kanganas, don’t you back me into a corner. Once my father knows it’s you who killed me, he will bring all his forces to destroy your Skeletal Plane.” Mietzel obviously knew Lich Kanganas fairly well. He immediately started threatening the lich when he saw him seal off his path of escape.
However, his threats felt empty and hollow, no matter how he spun it!
“Kehkehkehe. As long as I trap your soul and kill all the people you brought with you, nothing will happen. How is your beloved father supposed to find you then? Don’t forget that this is Morrian Plane. There are so many ultra-grade powerhouses fighting here that the lines of Fate are already a mess. Hehehe. Even if your father had a divination divinity and a massive amount of divine power, he would not be able to divine anything from this world. Not to mention, from what I know, your father Hierro has no divination ability to speak of!”
“Don’t dream of obtaining the Libram of Wisdom!” Terror appeared even more obviously on Mietzel’s face upon hearing this. “Father has already left his divine brand on the Libram. There is no way you can keep it with you, and anyone who touches the Libram of Wisdom will be sensed by my father and pursued to their deaths!”
“What a pity then! It seems like I can only harvest your soul. Kehkehkeh, the Fourth Grade soul of a god’s son. Not a bad harvest indeed!”
The evil liches were proficient at toying with souls. Their favorite activity was inserting powerful souls into various magical items, such as the Ghost Lamps of Ruination, the Howling Thrones, or the Screaming Crystals. They would then spend hundreds and thousands of years to break down these souls.
The tragic cries and ceaseless begging of the poor souls might be torture and an annoyance to the average person. However, for the naturally evil liches, these screams of terrors were the most beautiful and moving music in the universe.
As such, death was not the end of any life that fell at the hands of a lich. Instead, it was the beginning of an even longer, even more painful journey for their soul!
As much as Mietzel was a match for Kanganas’ power, he couldn’t help but feel a genuine fear in the depths of his heart when his eyes met Kanganas’ cold, evil, and bloody-red soulfire.
Halo of Fear!
It was a natural aura around all high-grade evil creatures. It instilled fear in all lifeforms that could see them or sense their presence. An instinctual desire to run would rise within them.
Supposedly, someone of Mietzel’s level should not have been affected by a lich of the same grade. Unfortunately, it was because he was too rational and knew too much about the liches that he had been terrified by the fate of defeat he had imagined for himself.
Since ancient times, those who overthought had never been suited to be warriors!
They could not understand the pleasure of battle, nor did they believe in miracles. They believed blindly and firmly in statistics, results, and conclusions they extrapolated from their own knowledge.
Rationally deducing that he was not a match for the lich, Mietzel became so terrified that he gave up all desire to fight. His only thought now was to escape this situation of certain defeat!
He was already weaker than Kanganas, to begin with. Now that he was further gripped by fear, the scales of the battle only tipped further away from him.
Several Fourth Grade spells crashed against Lich Kanganas’ jade-white skeleton, to no avail. None of them could hurt him whatsoever. Mietzel then gave up on offense entirely, dedicating all his divine magic to increases his defenses and escape.
In doing so, Lich Kanganas was free to become more brazen and ferocious with his assault!
If it wasn’t for the Libram of Wisdom, Kanganas might have already taken Mietzel down.
Unfortunately, it was a Fifth Grade artifact after all. It helped Mietzel weather the ferocious storm of attacks from the lich, saving him from certain death again and again. Even so, Mietzel was coughing up blood from all the death magic he had been hit with. His life force was rapidly draining away.
Awkward. It was extremely awkward!
Lich Kanganas realized his awkward situation. Even if he were to exhaust all his magic power and cast all his spells, the best he could do was beat Mietzel within an inch of his life. Without a means to seal the Libram of Wisdom, his chances of killing Mietzel was infinitely close to zero.
He was a Fourth Grade, after all, and assisted by a Fifth Grade artifact. In truth, his overall power was superior to Kanganas.
However, Mietzel had clearly been too sheltered before this. He had never experienced such a bloody and cruel battlefield. His performance in combat had been greatly affected by his fear. If he could realize his circumstances in time and fight Kanganas more actively and courageously, the lich might just retreat under the threat of mutual defeat to search for easier prey.
Unfortunately, his overly rational thought process and his blind faith in his own deductions pushed Mietzel towards the seemingly safer but truthfully more dangerous approach in combat!
Mietzel had no idea that the lich was silently negotiating with someone else even as they were fighting.
“Help me take down this bastard. I only want the Libram of Wisdom. You can have everything else.”
“Hehehe, Sir Kanganas, as you know, I am only a fire adept. For what purpose would I want his body and soul? I can’t change professions and become an undead adept, can I?”
“What is it that you want then? If nothing else, I can compensate you with some more resources. All excellent loot I collected from the Arcane Empire. Aren’t you here in Morrian for that to begin with?”
“What about the other way around then? I will compensate you with resources, and you give me the Libram of Wisdom?”
“Kehkehkehe. Don’t get greedy, brat! That’s a Fifth Grade artifact. You sure you can seal it? If you mess up even slightly, there is no doubt that Hierro will recall his artifact.”
“You don’t have to worry about whether I can seal the artifact. All I ask is for you to give me a chance. I will only try one time! If I don’t succeed, I will give up on everything here. It will all be yours.”
Kanganas was moved by the proposition and couldn’t help but start thinking about what to do.
“Very well, I accept your conditions. Help me take down Mietzel!”
As soon as Kanganas finished speaking, the state of the battle instantly changed.
Chapter 1132 - Greem’s Prowess
How powerful had he become, exactly?
It was a question that Greem had always had in his mind since a long time ago.
The enemies he had faced in the past had always relied on strategies or negotiations or guerrilla tactics, leaving Greem with no opportunity to unleash the full extent of his powers. Moreover, his powers were always in a dynamic state of change and rapid improvement. He still lacked a standard for comparison of sufficient substance. Thus, h
e could not accurately weigh or assess his actual combat prowess in detail.
Today, God’s Son Mietzel had become the whetting stone by which Greem could prove himself.
Once the lich transmitted his intent to cooperate to Greem’s mind, he unleashed his most ferocious and unrelenting attack without any hesitation.
Countless dark red spots suddenly appeared on the battlefield. An endless spout of fire energy surged forth from these spots. The fire energy did not disperse. Instead, it gathered wildly around Greem, manifesting in the form of a fearsome flame giant that stood over a dozen meters tall.
In truth, every single higher-being was capable of realizing the gigantification of their bodies through the concentration of energy. However, without a powerful and constant supply of energy to sustain this form, the gigantification would only be a waste of power and a weakening of one’s defenses. It hardly ever brought about any benefit to combat.
Most higher beings would choose a body of appropriate size to host their consciousness. A suitable body was one that could maintain a dynamic energy balance while maximizing the owner’s combat ability.
Lich Kanganas’ first thought upon seeing Greem gigantify his body was scorn. He looked down on Greem as foolish and arrogant, utterly ignorant of the fact that an appropriate size was the best way to maximize one’s powers. However, when his sharp spiritual senses detected the wildly beating Heart of Principles in Greem’s chest, he had no choice but to change his mind.
A Heart of Principles of such power indeed required a massive body as a host.
Kanganas could sense the fist-sized heart beating madly, continually pumping out an overwhelming and terrifying amount of fire energy. If Greem’s manifested body were too small, this amount of fire energy would be a burden on his body.
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