At such a close distance, Mary could sense that Greem was not lying in the slightest.
His soul origin did indeed not match his identity as a Fourth Grade adept. It was too weak and tumultuous.
Could that damned snake have suffered backlash because too many of her followers died? There was no other reason why she would be within an inch of her death by the time they invaded her den.
Such a complicated question was clearly not a thing that Mary should be thinking about. Little sparks had already appeared in her pretty crimson eyes after a while. It was apparent she was already at the limits of her wits.
There was no need to think about things she couldn’t understand. Only Mary could so easily brush over stuff like that.
After giving up on thinking about the mystery, Mary quickly returned to her normal state.
A smile so sweet it could drown you appeared on her face.
“You are Fourth Grade, and I am a Fourth Grade now as well. What do you think? Let’s go outside and fight it out?”
Obviously, Greem firmly rejected such a masochistic suggestion.
A smile appeared on Mary’s face.
“Alright, I won’t tease you. Just stay here and heal up! From now on, you are my person. If anyone bullies you, just tell them my name, and I will deal with them for you.”
Having said that, Mary lifted her slender neck and let out a bold, gleeful laugh.
All sorts of expressions that betrayed her joy of superiority over Greem flashed over her face. Greem couldn’t help but roll his eyes.
“Alright, alright, no more. These are the things I brought back for you this time.” Mary had teased Greem enough to let out all the repressed feelings of dissatisfaction she had felt over the past one hundred years. She waved her hand and summoned a large pile of items from her storage ring.
“Count them closely. I still have to pay a visit to my cute, gentle little sister, Alice!” It sounded like Mary was gritting her teeth when she said ‘sister.’
It was hard to count an adept’s age accurately.
It wasn’t exactly clear who between Mary and Alice was older, and so it was hard to decide who was the elder sister. Consequently, in accordance with the habit of adepts to respect power, whoever between them was stronger was the elder sister. It didn’t matter if you refused to acknowledge it. After all, whoever was stronger had the final say.
Consequently, having been suppressed by Alice in grade for all these years, Mary had to make do with being the ‘little sister’ for a very long time. In all honesty, the nameless fire raging in the depths of her heart was hot enough to burn steel already.
Now that both she and Alice were beginner Fourth Grade, they were finally on equal footing.
However, since she was a combat adept, she was slightly more important and significant that Alice, with her lack of combat abilities. It only seemed reasonable that she become the elder sister now!
Mary finally had the chance to be the elder sister. She might just fall sick if she didn’t take the opportunity to wave that around!
After teasing Greem a bunch, Mary pecked him lightly on the lips and rushed away joyfully.
Greem felt like laughing. He only shifted his eyes to the pile of spoils once Mary’s aura had vanished from Fire Throne.
The corpse of the Feathered God.
Eleven divine crystals of the lightning attribute.
A piece of origin substance that had yet to be corrupted by foreign energies.
And that…egg.
There weren’t very many things here, but each of them made Greem’s heart flare up.
In all honesty, almost eighty percent of the best stuff that Mary and her vampires had risked their lives to obtain was here.
That meant that Mary had only extracted the blood of the Feathered God while leaving everything else with him.
Did Mary not understand the value of these spoils?
Disregarding everything else, that origin substance alone was incredibly rare. It had obviously been extracted from the planar origin of Seawoods by the Feathered God through some unknown means. The Feathered God had been using faith power as its container to prevent its contamination by foreign energies.
A pure origin substance like this was far superior to the origin substance often found in the World of Adepts. Those origin substances were often contained with mono-elementium energy or no-attribute energies. After conversion, as much as 3000 siths could be extracted out of this piece of origin substance.
The last time, Greem had to risk his life in a bloody battle between peak Third Grade adepts for only 500 siths of origin substance!
If Greem were fortunate enough to obtain two such pieces of origin substance, his path to Fifth Grade would be unobstructed. All that would be left were his daily meditations to increase his Spirit.
The moment his Spirit reached the threshold, his advancement to Fifth Grade would happen without any difficulty.
Sadly, there was only one piece of origin substance before him. He would have to find some way to obtain more in the next few hundred years.
That was the only focus for most Fourth Grade adepts!
After carefully putting away the origin substance, Greem started examining the other items as well.
The corpse of the Feathered God.
Most of her divine blood had already been extracted, causing the activity of her other remains to be incredibly lowered.
However, the corpse was still very valuable!
The Feathered God had once been a Fifth Grade native god, after all. Even though she had dropped to Fourth Grade due to giving birth, her body still possessed the traits of immortality. With proper treatment, this ‘immortality’ trait could be transferred.
The so-called ‘immortality’ was a power that only belonged to high-grade creatures.
High-Grade creatures referring to supernatural creatures beyond Fourth Grade.
Beings with an immortal body would never die of natural causes. They would never die of old age and did not require sleep, air, or food. Even sealed in an environment with no magic, they could survive for eternity in their original state.
Fourth Grade body-refining adepts trained and strengthened their bodies in all sorts of ways, precisely to turn their bodies into immortal bodies. The only ones that could achieve such a feat were body-refining adepts at peak Fourth Grade.
As such, an immortal body was invaluable to an adept!
If Greem weren’t an elementium adept, an immortal body like this would be incredibly attractive to him. As for the changes to his appearance? Those things could slowly be adjusted with magic. In fact, remaining in a non-human form might be worthwhile just for the sake of immortality.
In all seriousness, there weren’t many individuals among high-grade adepts who could retain their human forms.
Even though most Fourth Grade adepts typically looked like humans, they were terrifying beings when they revealed their true forms in combat.
Take Greem, for example.
His true form in combat was a massive, ten-meter-tall flame giant.
He could only fully utilize the golden flames in his Heart of Principles in this mode. It was only in this form that he could unleash the full might of a legendary fire adept!
His usual human form could both be said to be a disguise or an energy-saving mode.
The point being that no high-grade adept was a simple human at their core!
Chapter 1188 - Treasure
After putting away the origin substance and the Feathered God’s corpse, Greem’s gaze landed on the divine power crystals.
Divine power crystals. They sounded like they were similar to magical crystals, a concentration of elementium, or a different form of energy!
However, magical crystals were only concentrations of magic energy that could be found anywhere. Divine power crystals, on the other hand, were crystallized, concentrated divine power.
Just as water had a liquid state and ice was its solid state, divine pow
er crystals were the ‘solid’ state of incredibly concentrated faith power.
Under natural circumstances, faith power would never concentrate and crystallize in this manner.
Only gods who used their power to gather faith power could transform the state of divine energy into crystals.
That meant every divine power crystal contained a trace of a god’s power.
These things were quite valuable to adepts!
Greem was still unclear about how he could use these divine power crystals, so he simply put them away as well.
Finally, the only thing left before him was the exaggeratedly large…egg.
Greem had only just approached the egg and had yet to examine it with his Spirit when the egg trembled. A screeching mental message came from within the egg.
Supposedly, when one was communicating mentally, it would be possible to understand them despite language or species barriers. However, this mental message could not express a complete consciousness at all. It could only convey emotions of anger and hatred.
At the same time, a small bolt of lightning crashed down from above Greem’s head.
The lightning appeared golden in color. It wasn’t very powerful, with only one to two hundred points of power.
The lightning bolt did not injure Greem in the slightest, but it did cause his long hair to stand on ends. He also felt a slight tingling throughout his body.
The power of the laws.
Greem couldn’t help but be surprised.
A little life that had yet to develop complete consciousness had already mastered parts of the lightning laws. It was obvious that the Feathered God had truly committed a lot to cultivate this descendant of hers.
If that was the case, then the divine power crystals and the origin substance were also probably prepared for this little guy.
The descendant of a divine creature probably possessed divine traits from the moment of their birth!
Even though the life in the egg was no more than a shapeless embryo at the moment, it already possessed terrifying might comparable to a First Grade adept. In fact, even a First Grade adept’s Chain Lightning could not affect Greem in the slightest, while this little creature was able to paralyze him, if only for the briefest instance.
What should he do with this egg?
Hatch it?
Greem rejected the idea the moment it appeared in his mind.
The resources required to cultivate a divine creature was not something he could afford at the moment.
Greem was not willing to use the divine power crystals and origin substance on this egg. Without the nourishment and care provided by the Feathered God, it would also be challenging to hatch the egg.
Break the egg and devour its contents?
In all honesty, this idea was deeply appealing to Greem.
Ever since he changed his bloodline to that of a starbeast, Greem had desired the flesh of higher beings in the depths of his heart. Their flesh, souls, and everything else was nourishment for the starbeast bloodline.
However, for the prey to be able to affect Greem’s bloodline, that creature would have to be Fourth Grade, at least.
The effects of magical creature meat below Fourth Grade was already minimal for Greem!
The daily meals that he had could only satiate his appetite. The only food that could rapidly replenish his energy and stamina was a Fourth Grade magic energy meal.
However, Fourth Grade magical beasts were extremely rare, even in the World of Adepts.
Apart from adept clans with exceptional power and influence, who could afford to eat Fourth Grade magical beast meat on a regular basis!?
Of course, there were still a few Fourth Grade dragons in Lance.
However, all of those dragons were difficult opponents. Greem didn’t have the confidence to beat them, even if he was at his peak. Not to mention, these dragons all had legions of subordinates. They were also exceptional fighters, making them far more difficult a prey compared to solitary Fourth Grade magical beasts.
At the thought of this, Greem couldn’t help but narrow his eyes.
Perhaps it was time to spread the news throughout Zhentarim and start purchasing information on the location and abilities of Fourth Grade magical creatures in the Black Forest. He could then gather the clan’s forces and hunt them down. That would soon become a regular activity of his.
As for devouring this egg? That would certainly bring about some benefits for Greem’s bloodline.
However, it still felt like a very inefficient and wasteful way of utilizing such a brilliant treasure!
Perhaps there was a better, more efficient way of using the egg.
Greem couldn’t help but give out an order, “Chip, search for methods to use this egg.”
[Beep. Mission accepted. Searching database.]
As expected, the information pulled up by the Chip covered all sorts of domains, including hatching, devouring, blood ritual, cultivation, and many more. The most cost-efficient of these solutions was to hatch the Feathered Serpent and to cultivate it into a fearsome divine creature.
However, this process would take upwards of a thousand years. All sorts of rare resources would also have to be consumed during this process. In all honesty, Greem had absolutely no confidence he could wait around until the Feathered Serpent was grown.
Another option was to conduct a blood ritual to turn the Feathered Serpent’s bloodline into nourishment for Greem’s body. According to the Chip’s estimate, if all went well, Greem would not only be able to heal the damage to his soul origin but also improve his Physique and bloodline potential by a significant margin.
Thus, without any hesitation, Greem chose to conduct the blood ritual.
As Greem made up his mind, the Chip immediately projected a list of items in his mind.
These were the resources required for the ritual.
Greem took out a blank scroll and placed it on his forehead. The list of items was perfectly copied over. He then sliced through the air with his finger, creating a small rift in space. He then put the scroll into the rift.
While he was doing all this, Gargamel was hunched over a table in the Crimson Wing, busy writing away with his quill. Emelia and Eva were by his side, helping him deal with the multitude of clan affairs.
A flash of fire appeared above his head as a rift was torn in space. A scroll glowing with a red rune fell onto his desk.
“These are the items I require soon. Collect them as fast as possible and send them to Fire Throne. Report to me if any of them poses a difficulty.”
Gargamel had just touched the rune on the scroll when Greem’s intimidating voice boomed out in the room. He opened the scroll, and a series of words were projected into the air.
“A Fourth Grade soul altar.”
“30 grams of Serpentbane hops.”
“A set of high-grade soul-transfer equipment.”
“A soul-locking crystal.”
……
……
Row upon row of resources was listed, almost all of them a rare, top-tier adept item.
Even as experienced as he was, Gargamel had only heard of most of these items in name, without having ever seen them before. A frown appeared on his face when he saw the list. His face was full of frustration and hesitation.
“What’s difficult about this?” Emelia still seemed as relaxed as ever. “The clan leader knows the situation and wealth of our clan. We can send over what we have first and try and borrow the others from other clans.”
Gargamel finally relaxed when he heard his daughter break down the task.
“Send a copy of this list to Meryl. We will try and put together what we have. Since the clan leader has directly given out this order, he must be in a hurry. I will pay a visit to the Fourth Grade clans.”
“There’s no need, father. Don’t be in a hurry to go.” Emelia’s eyes rolled around. She couldn’t help but chuckle. “Lady Mary just advanced to Fourth Grade. Our clan will most certainly be holdin
g a banquet. Let news of this spread out first. Wait until the eve of the celebration before you make your visit. The rise of our Crimson Clan is obvious to anyone with two eyes. When that happens, you won’t have to be worried about borrowing a few little resources, will you?”
Gargamel gave it some thought and nodded, impressed by the suggestion.
News of Mary’s advancement quickly spread, and Zhentarim was shocked once again.
This time, it wasn’t just the small and intermediate adept clans that couldn’t sit still any longer. Even the dozen Fourth Grade organizations were moved. The most excited among all of them had to be the vampire clans.
It had been several thousand years since the last Fourth Grade vampire appeared in Zhentarim!
As such, vampires clans of varying size and fame all over the continent couldn’t suppress the call of their blood. They hurried to the Crimson Clan as fast as they could.
In just one month, four vampire clans had already joined Mary’s forces, increasing the number of Third Grade vampires in the Crimson Clan to as many as six!
Of course, these vampire clans all had their own territories in Zhentarim prior to this. Thus, small outposts were established for the Crimson Clan all over Zhentarim, expanding their influence to as many as five regions.
The vampires also rapidly grew to become the strongest faction in the Crimson Clan, with the most potential as well!
An ordinary adept clan was actually home to two Fourth Grade adepts now. Moreover, these two Fourth Grades had a very intimate relationship as a couple.
In all honesty, all the Fourth Grade organizations in Zhentarim felt the pressure on their shoulders when they heard this news.
Anyone who wasn’t a fool couldn’t help but realize that change was coming to Zhentarim!
Chapter 1189 - Am’s Feelings
Two Fourth Grades in one clan.
If Alice was considered part of the clan, then it meant that the Crimson Clan was now simultaneously guarded by three Fourth Grades.
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