Age of Adepts c1-1513

by Zhen De Lao Lang, 真的老狼

  Under such circumstances, the voodoo beasts’ superior strength was dampened, and the skeleton army was able to make full use of their overwhelming numbers.

  The two massive forces clashed without end in view of everyone.

  It was almost as if all the combatants had been thrown into a blender. One side was being crushed into white bone dust, while the other was being shredded into meat paste.

  Both parties were still advancing, the frontlines slowly grinding away as they did so. The battlefield was soaked in blood, the earth covered in pieces of flesh and bone; it was all mixed up into an unholy mess.

  The voodoo beasts, ghouls, and skeletons continued to fight above the filth, die, and add even more fuel to this furnace of flesh and bone.

  Seeing as the undead army had fully engaged with the voodoo beasts, the hundred goblin chariots on the backline started to move forward slowly. Soon, the voodoo beasts were entirely within the range of their cannons.

  The magical machines and goblin machinist-sorcerers followed firmly behind, acting as this battle’s heavy infantry. Meanwhile, the fire army remained unmoving, quietly waiting for the moment the undead scattered the voodoo beasts.

  The war towers finally commenced attacking once again.

  They did not use any offensive magic with wide area-of-effects. Instead, they started to snipe the high-grade undead marching within the undead army. After all, these undead were inflicting too much damage to the voodoo beast army with their unique abilities. They had to reduce the numbers of these powerful undead. Otherwise, the voodoo beasts would die too quickly!

  The goblin chariots began unleashing their might. Bright, blinding fireballs cut across the sky, landing in the midst of the voodoo beasts with their tails of black smoke. They obliterated the more powerful abominations among them and blasting their bodies into bits of blood and flesh.

  It would be impolite not to reciprocate, after all!

  Both sides were executing and killing the more essential individuals in this battle in a targeted, organized fashion. Once these powerful beings that served as the spine of the armies were gone, the armies themselves would be significantly weaker.

  Occasionally, a war tower and the goblin chariots would also exchange fire across the thousands of meters of distance. A few scant energy fireballs would explode against the tower barriers, unable to inflict any damage at all. The war tower’s offensive spells were also shot into fireworks by energy beams from the ground, casting a pretty rain of light over the chariots.

  The goblin machinist-sorcerers raised their arms and cheered whenever they intercepted attacks from the war towers, filling the battlefield with their strange goblin dialects.

  “This damned Greem! How dare he collude with foreign liches,” Adept Kerala smacked her table angrily, fury written all over her face.

  She had visited many of her friends and was barely able to put together such a massive army. Who would’ve thought that these voodoo beasts meant to exhaust the Crimson Clan’s reserves of magical machines were instead tussling with a bunch of witless undead?

  Moreover, judging by the current situation, it was very likely that the undead army would end up being the victors in this battle.

  After all, there were three Fourth Grade liches behind the lines sustaining the Undead Skies spell. An unending army of undead was still swarming out of the skeletal planes, imposing tremendous pressure on the Dener Clan.

  For most species, losing several tens of thousands of their kind in battle would be enough to cripple them for eternity. However, for the undead, it would tarnish their name not to have at least hundreds of thousands of casualties in a war.

  When other species wanted subordinates, they would have to search for the right victims, capture them, and slowly tame them. Meanwhile, the liches simply invaded a small plane and used their unique magic to corrupt the planar origin.

  Once the planar origin went out of control, the entire world’s environment would be converted into a land of death that the liches required. After planting this seed, the liches only needed to return in a few hundred years, and they would find themselves with a plane full of undead creatures.

  While others had to train subordinates one at a time, the liches harvested subordinates plane by plane. The disparity in efficiency was more than a million times!

  That was why any lich that was known throughout the multiverse was most certainly a terrifying genocider. Each of them controlled multiple skeletal planes upon which no living things resided. All of these planes were once ordinary material planes full of life.

  Because of their incredible capital of soldiers, the liches were completely unbothered by the loss of these low-grade undead. If necessary, they could even draw upon several skeletal planes at once and fill the entirety of Stoneshard Valley from the bottom to the top with undead skeletons.

  Lich Kanganas was silently conversing with Greem, even as they observed the rain of blood on the frontlines.

  “I have helped you gather the people you need. I can deal with all of the enemy’s fodder. However, we will not engage the enemy adepts directly. That will cause the Alliance of Liches to launch an inquiry.”

  “I understand. We will finish the battle between the adepts personally. All you have to do, sir, is clear out the battlefield for us!” Greem’s steady and calm voice replied. All three liches could hear him clearly.

  “Then…it’s about time you handed over the tomb of the death god you promised us! We only need the spatial coordinates for its location. You won’t have to worry about verifying its existence. That is up to us!”

  “We are already allies, Sir Kanganas. How could I ever deceive you? Here, these are the coordinates.” A series of coordinates with hundreds of digits was transmitted to the liches. The three of them engraved them firmly in the depths of their souls.

  The death god’s tomb that they were referring to was, in fact, a god kingdom of a death god. The god had exiled its own kingdom after its defeat in a war. Without the sustenance of faith, this death god could only choose to go into eternal slumber to avoid exhausting what remained of their divine energy reserves.

  Such god kingdoms would drift on endlessly in space. To find them without spatial coordinates would be like searching for a specific grain of sand on a beach. It was impossible.

  That was why Kanganas had called for two of his lich companions without hesitation when he heard the news of such a god kingdom from Greem. He was planning to work together with the liches to take the god kingdom for themselves.

  A death god. That meant the god still possessed a divine authority of death.

  These were precious things that were incredibly beneficial, even for the liches.

  If the liches were sick of this life devoid of feeling and flesh, they could choose to assimilate the death god’s divine authority. They would have a great chance of inheriting the death god’s divinity and faith powers, obtaining a chance at ‘rebirth.’

  That was why robbing the tomb of a death god was certainly a profitable business for liches.

  As for whether this was fake news? Hehehe! There hadn’t been a single person yet who dared to deceive a lich!

  Greem would provide the coordinates, and the liches would provide the fodder. They quickly came to an agreement, which explained the current situation.

  As the million-strong undead army continued to attack, the several tens of thousands of voodoo beasts belonging to the Dener Clan were wiped out without a trace. It was then that the three liches cut off the supply of energy to the skeletal door. The black portal slowly disappeared.

  As for the hundreds of thousands of undead left on the battlefield? The liches couldn’t be bothered to recall them. They ordered them to charge at the enemy before vanishing from the spot.

  The fodder had been dealt with. What was left was the bloody conflict between the elite forces.

  The fire creature army, which had been lying in wait for a long time, roared and charged forward from the flank of t
he magical machine army. Led by the Fire Lord, they started to attack the Dener Clan’s formation viciously.

  The war towers, which had been conserving energy all this while, lit up one by one.

  Raging Lightning, Icelance Storm, Earth Spikes, Vicious Fireballs. It was almost as if a portal to the elementium worlds had been opened. Violent, explosive elementium spells of various attributes crashed down from the sky, instantly engulfing the entire battlefield in a tide of apocalyptic explosions.

  The somewhat stagnated rhythm of war once again came crashing back to a peak!

  Chapter 1294 - Scattered Flames

  It was an undeniable truth that the undead army’s sacrifice had been worth every last skeleton!

  Without the undead army devastating the voodoo beasts, the Crimson Clan’s magical machines would not have been able to simply march in and siege the war towers.

  Had the voodoo beast army intercepted them, the machines would have been exposed to the endless bombardment of thirty war towers. It wouldn’t matter that they were forged of steel and fire; the machines would never have been able to endure such fearsome firepower.

  After seven hours of grueling battle, the cannon fodder on both sides had been fully depleted. Now was the time for the real armies to step onto the battlefield.

  The Dener Clan remained on the defensive, while the Crimson Clan sent out the fire creature army and the magical machine army as their vanguard.

  The magical machine army pressed forward, step by step, in perfect unison. They concentrated their firepower and unleashed it upon the war towers and every moving thing nearby.

  As a combat machine that had undergone countless modifications and improvement by the Crimson Clan, the PG-52 was undoubtedly the magnum opus of goblin engineering and magic-energy machinery studies.

  Even the ordinary PG-52 model had the power of an intermediate First Grade. Considering their impenetrable armor made entirely out of magical alloy, their excellent magic energy conduction system and their base combat power could rival that of a peak First Grade adept.

  Moreover, after several adjustments, the PG-52 combat machines that used the newest memory alloys and Queyras alloy had reached the level of an intermediate Second Grade adept.

  The magic energy weapons they were outfitted with were also optimized for combat power.

  The Mark-II magic energy cannons equipped on their shoulders could unleash as much as 377 ampurs of power. Converted from the goblin ampur unit to the World of Adepts units, that was an energy intensity of 426 points. It was equal to the all-out attack of a Second Grade adept.

  Meanwhile, the rapid-fire guns attached to the torso of the PG-52 might only have 210 points of offensive power, but their firing rate was three times that of the Mark-II magic energy cannons.

  Apart from these, the PG-52’s were also outfitted with a set of four magic energy beam guns on each arm. These weapons could freely switch between heat rays, frost rays, and energy beams.

  Out of concern of running into enemies with elementium or energy immunity, the PG-52 was also equipped with the more rudimentary goblin rifles. When magic energy weapons were ineffective against an enemy, they could switch out their ammo for metal bullets that had arcane and magic energy crystals mixed within.

  These bullets propelled by magic energy could unleash violent metal shrapnel all over the battlefield when the arcane crystals in the shells exploded. It would absolutely slaughter any foe in their path. As it was a physical attack, even individuals with energy immunity would not be able to survive it.

  On the other hand, the PG-52 relied on a magic energy shield for its defense. The source of this shield was a device attached to its torso. These magic energy shields could only provide frontal defense but had up to 600 points of defensive power, significantly higher than what a dome-type barrier could provide.

  As long as the shields were not destroyed in a single attack, they could regenerate by consuming more magic energy. It was suited for offensive magical machines like the PG-52.

  When there were as many as tens of thousands of PG-52 machines marching together as an army towards the enemy formation, the hail of cannon fire and colorful energy beams was more than enough to flood the Dener Clan’s formations and turn them into a sea of energy.

  The various adept forces hiding between the war towers engaged with the fire creature army under such harsh enemy fire.

  Spells flew across the battlefield as supernatural powers were unleashed here and there.

  No one knew if they would live to see the next second, so they were all giving their best and unleashing their most violent and destructive spells at the enemy.

  There were no weaklings among the fire creatures that had come to reinforce the Crimson Clan. Almost every single individual was intermediate First Grade and above. They charged courageously at every breathing, moving foe, casting their flames at their victims.

  When they were bombarded by enemy fire, and their bodies were scattered into sparks, they would self-destruct their fire cores and engulf everything within a dozen meters in a sea of flames.

  As more and more fire creatures fell dead upon the battlefield, it became more and more suitable for fire creatures to fight on. The surviving, high-grade fire creatures became even more challenging to deal with!

  The beginner Fourth Grade Fire Lord Grisen leading the army was a five-meter-tall Molten Giant. White-hot magical flames shrouded its body. It waved its ten-meter-long flame whip in one hand and hurled magma fireballs continuously with the other.

  Wherever he passed, adept forces that were only at First Grade were blasted into oblivion and burned to a crisp.

  In truth, fire creatures were, without a doubt, the most difficult opponents among all elementium creatures!

  Stay too far away from them, and they could shoot fireballs and flame arrows of incredible power at you. Keep too close, and the flames around them would burn you to a crisp, with nothing you could do about it.

  Moreover, this molten giant did not have a weak body like other elementium spellcasters.

  With that five-meter-tall body of his, anyone that dared to approach and challenge it to melee combat would be meeting a giant fist or a flaming whip. Either of those options would be enough to crush a mammoth to a pulp in a single strike.

  That was why Grisen attracted the wild bombardment of several war-towers the moment he strode into the Dener Clan’s formation. However, he didn’t seem to mind at all. An Inferno Shield, so dense it almost seemed solid, appeared in his hand; it protected him from most of the magical attacks as he brazenly slaughtered the helpless Dener Forces.

  As a Fourth Grade going against First Grades, any living being that moved within a hundred meters of him would instantly be turned into ashes by his terrifying aura of flames. Most of the time, he didn’t even need to fight. All he had to do was appear where the ants were most concentrated, and the enemies would flee at full speed, burned and seared all over.

  While the war towers were occupied with the Fire Lord, the magical machines pressed forward as a storm of energy beams and bullets instantly crashed down upon the towers’ barriers. Sparks flew everywhere.

  Dong. Dong. Dong!

  Ten goblin chariots converted into siege mode, and a series of deafening blasts immediately penetrated the outermost layers of a war tower. The walls of the tower were engulfed in flames.

  These war towers had been constructed in a short time on the spot. The buildings’ bodies weren’t made of steelrock, obsidian, or any other magic resistant materials. Instead, they were just dirt that had been solidified with magic and further reinforced with runes.

  Naturally, such material could not possibly endure the test of an intense adept war!

  Once the forcefield was destroyed, the next round of attacks caused the war tower to crumble in front of everyone’s eyes, reduced to dirt and sand. Only half of the adepts within managed to escape. Two of the survivors were fortunate enough to reach one of closer war towers, while fire
creatures devoured the other three before they could escape.

  The adepts were gods of the battlefield when they hid within the war towers and controlled their myriad of magical arrays. That kind of power allowed them to grasp an enemy’s life and death within their palms.

  However, once this shell of theirs had been peeled away, adepts were still far too frail for a real battlefield. At the very least, the adepts could not compare to most otherworldly creatures in terms of Physique or Strength.

  What truly made the adepts powerful were their minds, knowledge, and the wisdom and legacy that had been passed on for tens of thousands of years!

  However, the war towers were not so easily destroyed either.

  The magical machine army only had time to raze one war tower when Grisen the Fire Lord could finally hold on no longer against the war towers’ bombardment.

  Fire creatures were not natives of the World of Adepts, after all. Moreover, the Grisen that had appeared here was only a projection of his power from the Fire Elementium Plane. The destruction of this elementium shell was no more than the conclusion of his trip to the World of Adepts.

  Of course, at the moment he was destroyed by a war tower, Grisen chose to self-destruct as well. The might of a Fourth Grade Fire Lord projection’s explosion was well beyond the imagination of most people.

  A halo of fire that stretched for an entire kilometer flashed on the battlefield. Grisen’s dissipating body turned into the most violent flame imaginable as it spread out and devoured everything within the halo’s radius that was not a fire creature.

  Even the five towers closest to the point of explosion melted like candles before the flames, let alone bodies of flesh and blood. Naturally, all the adepts in those towers were beyond dead.