Meanwhile, in Greem’s room, the fire adept finally, slowly, opened his eyes.
The fire coral staff in front of him was glowing bright red from the heat. It was so hot that the nearby space had been distorted, causing the room to appear strange and otherworldly.
The Orb of the Fire God on top of the staff was connected with Greem’s Heart of Principles through an immaterial chain of fire. Pure fire energy, as hot as boiling lava, flowed through the chain. Every time it circulated, the energy itself seemed to undergo a change.
Its color turned from a reddish-white to golden yellow.
This change in the flame’s color indicated the rise in its energy level.
Ever since his meeting with the Fire King in the Sea of Ashes, Greem had an approximate idea of the direction in which high-grade energy proceeded. At the moment, Greem would have to deepen his understanding of the fire and increase his Spirit to improve his powers.
Without sufficient Spirit, there was no way he could control the dangerous, berserk fire elementium at a minute level. Without sufficient Spirit, there was no way he could compress and refine the wild fire elementium.
When Greem was still in the lower Grades, he had thought of fire elementium as particles that could be freely manipulated and controlled. However, as his understanding of fire deepened and his Spirit’s sensitivity increased, he could feel the fire’s personality.
Indeed, fire had its own personality!
Much like water elementium was gentle and tame, wind elementium was free and unbound, and earth elementium was slow and firm, the fire elementium that Greem wished to master was passionate and wild. If one went along with its elementium trait, everything would be exceedingly simple. However, go against its elementium quality, and you would find it difficult to control.
Fire’s power came from its explosiveness and its destructiveness.
Naturally, such wild and berserk elementium could not be unleashed to its full potential in the hands of a calm and gentle spellcaster. Only adepts with explosive tempers and reckless behavior could fully maximize the might of fire magic.
In contrast, Greem had been restraining his instincts in battles in the past. He relied far too much on the Chip’s aid.
It undoubtedly kept him safe, but it also became an obstruction in the assimilation of his mind and body with the fire elementium.
In particular, now that he was at Fourth Grade, Greem could feel the rejection and unruliness of the fire elementium at every step along the way. His inability to tame fire elementium had slowed down his understanding of the flames.
However, Greem did not regret anything even after realizing this!
Only fire that bowed to his will was good fire. If he had to sacrifice a portion of his rationality to increase his affinity with fire, Greem would rather reject the fire.
However, this didn’t mean that Greem intended to give up on fire.
If he could not open himself to the fire elementium or leave his safety in the hands of the frenzied and ferocious flames, he could only find a different path to increase his flames’ energy levels.
If his understanding of fire were not enough to continue compressing fire energy, he would have to find another replacement. And Greem’s choice was the Orb of the Fire God!
Greem constructed an energy chain between his Heart of Principles and the Orb of the Fire God. He then transferred the fire energy he had gathered in his body into the orb and used its power to compress and refine the flames. He moved the compressed fire energy back to his Heart and used the strange principle powers contained within the fire energy to strengthen his Heart of Principles.
Given Greem’s current Spirit and the capacity of his Heart of Principles, this process of modification was extremely slow and challenging.
That was why Billis always sensed an overwhelming and surging fire energy in Greem’s room. The intensity of the energy here had obviously exceeded Greem’s current grade!
However, this only made Billis even more shocked and surprised. The defeatist notion of submitting before Greem only grew in his heart.
Chapter 1232 - Tor the Goblin
Chapter 1232 Tor the Goblin
One month later.
The floating ship slowly drove into a large skyport.
Five other floating ships had arrived at Port Bansai at the same time, each from a different region.
Once the ship landed smoothly on the grass, the adepts walked down the wooden plank and joined the rowdy stream of human traffic.
Greem and Billis also walked down the floating ship, one after another. Before they had the time to survey the skyport, a little goblin with furry ears and hair all over his body appeared in front of them.
“Lord Billis, is that you? I saw you once from afar back at the clan headquarters. You’re just like back then…terrifyingly sinister. It is this humble one’s honor to meet you here in Port Bansai…how long are you planning to stay here, my lord? Are you planning to go anywhere in particular?”
The little goblin was both overjoyed and extremely talkative in front of Billis, just like a fan that had met his idol. He was speaking so fast and so passionately that the two adepts couldn’t interrupt at all.
Greem had indeed instructed Meryl to arrange the clan member in charge of this region to receive them before he set off. However, he didn’t expect that the clan member stationed over at the Adept’s Association would be a goblin.
Moreover, it seems like he idolized Billis tremendously!
Billis had always been a loner. He seldom interacted with the lower-level members of the clan. As such, Billis was obviously somewhat flustered when faced with the passionate little goblin. The confusion and awkwardness then quickly turned into rage.
He lifted his arm slightly, and a scythe-shaped insectoid arm clad in a black carapace rested on the goblin’s neck. The goblin immediately fell silent.
“Shut up now! From now on, I ask a question, you answer with a single sentence. More than one unnecessary word and I will dig your brains out of your skull.”
The sharp limb hovered around the goblin’s head, and his body immediately froze up. He looked at Billis’ ghostly green eyes with his own beady little puppy eyes.
There were many smaller compound eyes around those two eyes of Billis, making for a frightening sight.
“What’s your name? What’s your job here?” Billis coldly asked.
“I am Tor, the person in charge of the Goblin Chamber of Commerce here.”
“And it was the clan that notified you of our arrival and sent you here to receive us?”
“Yes!” The little goblin gulped.
“Who gave the direct order?” Billis’ tone abruptly turned sharp.
“It was Great Sage Snorlax who gave me the direct order. As for who gave Sage Snorlax the command to do so, I do not know!”
“What is the order that you received, specifically?”
“Sage Snorlax said that you, Lord Billis, was coming here and we were to give you a proper reception. We do not know anything else apart from that.”
“Mm, good. Bring us back to the clan’s outpost here then! And remember, keep a low profile.”
“Yes!”
Though somewhat surprised by Billis’ viciousness, Tor was still clearly a veteran at diplomacy and trained at his job. He quickly recovered from his fright and excitedly guided the two adepts to a strange goblin racecar.
Indeed, even Greem did not expect to see a racecar here. It was a strange racecar–a heavily modified version of a goblin transport–and packed with goblin aesthetics.
A red chassis, low against the ground and without a roof. Large, round metal wheels and a shiny crystal windshield. Most conspicuously of all, a large bunch of rockets soldered to the back of the car.
Even though the car had not yet been started, its extravagant and unusual design already drew the gaze of many nearby adepts. However, when they sensed the dense aura of blood around Billis, they immediately looked away.
&
nbsp; It was a few kilometers from the skyport to the city. Most adepts had brought their own mounts or simply summoned creatures to ride over there.
For a moment, the sky was filled with giant bats, two-headed hunting eagles, windslicers, wyverns, and many other flying beasts. Meanwhile, large rhinoceros, Nightmares, and many other creatures were sprinting across the land. Greem even saw an adept riding on a Blackskin boar. Quite the personality, he thought to himself!
“My lord,” Billis felt his head swell when he saw the goblin racecar. He was cursing the goblins in his mind. They didn’t seem to know the meaning of ‘keeping a low profile’ at all.
“Let’s go. There’s no need to keep our identities a secret now that we have already arrived. Not to mention, they are already monitoring us. It’s fine to be a little showy now!” Greem looked around him, and his gaze swept past a giant tower in the distance. He could sense the sinister gazes lingering on him.
Greem smiled, and the three of them got into the red car.
Tor put on his helmet, threw on his glasses, and gleefully turned back to shout at Billis, who was cramped up in the small seats of the goblin car, “Lord Billis, you are ready, aren’t you? Then let’s set off.”
Tor stepped on the pedal without waiting for an answer. The massive rockets behind the car blasted out long streams of flames, and the three of them shot forward from the propulsive force.
Yup, they shot forward, like a bullet.
The violent propulsive force of the rockets caused the racecar to tremble violently. The entire chassis vibrated, and the scenery around them started to blur. If Greem hadn’t grabbed the steel sides of the car and dug his fingers deep into the metal, the sudden gust of wind would have been enough to blow him out of the vehicle.
Even Billis had to extend both arms and stab them into the metal to secure himself in his seat. Even so, his hood had been blown aside by the winds and fluttered behind him, revealing his hideous insectoid body.
Billis opened his mouth with the intent of hurling a few insults at the goblin, but a rush of wind immediately surged into his mouth. His stomach swelled slightly from the sudden intake of air, and his face turned red.
However, Tor didn’t seem to realize anything. He was stuck to his seat by two leather seatbelts and was still hollering as he kept his foot pressed on the pedal.
The racecar left behind a thick trail of black smoke as it dashed past the many adepts. The panicking adepts quickly threw up their defensive shields, barely saving them from being carbonized by the rocket flames.
It wasn’t until the goblin racecar had vanished from their sights that the adepts rushed out of the smoke, coughing and gasping as they did so. They then realized, to their fury, that their mounts were now coated in soot.
“Bastards.”
“Go and die.”
All sorts of curses and insults filled the air, but they obviously couldn’t reach the ears of the person responsible for all this.
…………
At the top of the giant monitoring tower.
A few adepts looked at each other helplessly.
“What’s the reaction with the Divination Wand?” The middle-aged adept in the lead asked coldly.
“Fourth Grade. He’s definitely a Fourth Grade adept!” A young adept holding a withered wooden stick hurriedly replied.
“And the monitoring crystal?”
“Red…his energy reaction is a blinding red!” Another adept, this one with a strange magical mirror in his hands, bowed and answered.
“Then it’s most likely the truth!” The adept in the lead sternly instructed, “Inform Lord Haimos immediately. The legendary fire adept has indeed arrived. Have him prepare himself!”
“Yes!”
“Yes!”
The adepts replied in unison and quickly went to work.
“That Greem is a famous person, even in the Central Lands. Who knows what he’s come to our territory for,” The leader muttered to himself.
When they used the power of the monitoring tower to scan the mysterious adept secretly, he had realized what was happening. A scalding spiritual appendage had reached toward the tower, only slithering away after light contact with the defensive array.
As the host of the tower, he had felt how terrifyingly powerful that scalding spiritual appendage had been!
An adept who could merge some of his elementium traits into his spiritual will was incredibly powerful. Even in the Adept’s Association, any adept capable of such a feat belonged to the Association’s upper echelons.
Now that such a formidable individual had entered Association territory, something was bound to happen, regardless of his intentions.
“Whatever! This is way beyond my league. I’ll leave it to those people from headquarters to worry about it!” The adept in the lead sighed and turned to leave.
…………
The goblin racecar was still gliding rapidly five meters above the ground.
As Tor continued to steer the car, the bodies of the passengers swayed from side to side, all while vibrating along with the car.
Billis might be Third Grade, but he was clearly not used to flying at such extreme speeds.
The intense tremors and the irregular vibrations were making his stomach churn.
When Tor produced a perfect drift and swerved the car, turning it one hundred and seventy degrees, Billis could finally tolerate it no longer. He opened his insectoid mouth and vomited everything he had yet to digest.
From a distance, one could see a light yellow mist spew out of the end of a red lightning bolt, slowly landing on the ground alongside the dust.
Fifteen minutes later, when the racecar came to a screeching stop in front of a towering metal castle, Billis rushed out of the car at lightning speed and started vomiting on the ground.
From just a glance, Greem could see the remains of a few human bones amidst Billis’ vomit.
Chapter 1233 - The Adept of Torture
Chapter 1233 The Adept of Torture
Greem and Billis soon settled down in this castle of steel after their long journey.
The steel castle was the Goblin Chamber of Commerce’s outpost here.
As befitted the goblin traders, the front of the castle was a row of shops, while the main body of the building served as a living area and warehouse.
A squad of twenty magical machines managed the safety of the castle.
Apart from these steel soldiers, five goblin machinist-sorcerers had also been stationed in the castle. These goblin machinist-sorcerers were the true guardians of the castle, responsible for the goblin leadership’s safety in the outpost.
The Goblin Chamber of Commerce had been working diligently over the past few decades and had finally managed to extend their influence into the Adept Association’s territory. They had a total of eleven goblin shops of various sizes and this metal castle, which served as their headquarters; it was the fruit of the goblins’ hard work.
The Crimson Clan might be a household name in the Central Lands, but far away here in the east, the Goblin Chamber of Commerce could only expand and survive as best they could like any other trading company. Fortunately, they were backed by a fairly powerful clan. The goblins themselves were passionate and experienced traders. At long last, the Chamber of Commerce was able to establish itself here and was slowly expanding.
A while ago, Tor had even requested for one or more high-grade adepts to be assigned and stationed here.
The World of Adepts was a world ruled by human adepts, after all. If the Chamber of Commerce consisted solely of goblins and were not backed by a single high-grade human adept, they would face all sorts of covert and overt discrimination in their transactions.
The goblins had suffered greatly from such incidents over the years!
That was why Tor was genuinely happy and excited to hear that the infamous Third Grade Bug Adept Billis of the clan had arrived from clan headquarters.
It wasn’t until they entered a secret room tha
t Tor found out that the mysterious adept following Billis was the clan leader himself. The sudden and tremendous amount of passion he displayed upon realizing this was too much to bear, even for Greem.
After sending Tor away with some difficulty, Greem finally had time to look at the authority framework of the Adept’s Association.
The Adept’s Association was one of the three major adept organizations of the World of Adepts. It controlled a vast land to the east of the Continent of Adepts with a total area of over seven million square kilometers. They had three hundred and seventy million citizens, thirty thousand adepts, and over a thousand conquered lesser planes.
The assessment of an adept organization’s might came down to a few key indicators– wealth, power, resources, authority, and number of adepts!
The Silver Union had always been famous for their overwhelming wealth amongst the three major adept organizations. They possessed incredible wealth and resources. The Adept’s Association, on the other hand, was supported and recognized by the majority of adepts. They had the largest number of adepts and the most complete system of adept development. They also had the most powerful adepts in the entire World of Adepts.
Thus, when it came to overall power, the Adept’s Association was undoubtedly first amongst the three adept organizations.
Meanwhile, though the Northern Witches were weaker than the other two factions, they were remarkably united against outside forces, making them vicious enemies to those who would threaten them. If they kept to their own side of the continent in the Northern Lands, they were equals to the Adept’s Association and the Silver Union.
Greem came from Zhentarim. That place was famous for being a land of freedom and a lack of central governance. The adept organizations there developed with the clan as the core and the axle. The development and welfare of their clan were paramount!
Meanwhile, the Adept’s Association was a classic meritocratic, academic gathering. The influence of adept clans had been minimized. The true forces behind progress in the Association were powerful, individual adepts, not the clans that stood behind them.
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