Age of Adepts c1-1513

by Zhen De Lao Lang, 真的老狼

  Unfortunately, she had been badly injured at the hands of the Seventh Grade God of Slaughter, Garon. She needed to treat her wounds as soon as possible. If she were to fight these human adepts now, the results would be unpredictable.

  That was why Cinquera could only give up in the face of these infuriated human adepts and turn to leave the battlefield. A rare occurrence indeed.

  Great Adept Windstern secretly let out a breath of relief as he watched the evil dragon fly away. He then shifted his gaze to Greem, who still looked quite roughed up. He had nothing to say even after a long stare.

  Attacking the capital of the orcs alone…even Sixth Grade Great Adept Windstern didn’t dare have such thoughts, yet Greem had actually done it.

  Truly, the newborn calf did not fear the tiger!

  If the orc capital was so easily dealt with, Great Adept Windstern wouldn’t have waited all this while.

  Numerous orc powerhouses defended the capital. Moreover, this was only the most fundamental of defenses. The most frightening fact was the presence of the beast gods’ main temple. The orc gods could descend from their god kingdoms at any time.

  Adepts like themselves had pretty good odds if they were only dealing with one or two god clones. However, to fight the gods themselves at their temple was a suicide mission.

  That was why the adepts’ basic strategy when invading faith worlds had always been the same: wipe out the peripheral believers, reducing their numbers using large-scale means such as plagues and curses. Once the power of faith no longer sustained the temples, the adepts would launch a final attack and wipe out the enemy.

  After all, most of the gods that faith worlds believed in were not native gods. To cast down their power across a galaxy’s tremendous distance required the support and guidance of faith from that planar world.

  If most of the believers were already dead and the foundations of faith were destroyed, the gods would only exhaust their god kingdom’s power by descending. No god would ever do such a thing.

  Meanwhile, here in Plane Gere, the adept faction had only taken their first step toward their ultimate goal. They were still at the stage where they built forward bases and establishing themselves on enemy ground. To attack the enemy’s capital and main temple while the foundations of faith had not yet been shaken was no different than rushing toward death!

  That was why Great Adept Windstern couldn’t help but marvel at Greem’s tremendous luck as he watched the young adept bounce about spiritedly.

  “Let’s go back! No need to stir any more trouble in this world…we are here to complete our missions. There’s no need to try too hard and put our lives on the line. You had best settle down for the rest of our mission!” Windstern sighed again as he said this before returning to Dun Modr.

  The other Great Adepts also shot a few strange glances at Greem before turning and leaving.

  Greem chuckled awkwardly and could only follow the rest back to the camp in his disheveled state.

  …………

  Greem was temporarily grounded after returning to Dun Modr.

  In truth, even without Great Adept Windstern’s orders, Greem didn’t intend to step out of Dun Modr for the time being anyway.

  Who knew whether that Sixth Grade dragon had actually left Plane Gere?

  If that vengeful bastard were still lying in wait outside the camp, Greem would be throwing himself into her jaws just by running around!

  Moreover, it wasn’t like Greem hadn’t obtained the spoils he had been looking for on this adventure.

  When Greem ordered the adepts to retreat from the dragon’s tomb, he had also instructed them to bring the dracolich with them. In truth, Greem had given out that order with the slight intention of drawing the enemy away. He would have been able to escape easily if Cinquera had pursued the wyverns instead.

  To his surprise, the evil dragon had locked onto him and chased him endlessly, forcing him to take the risk to lure her over to the orcs.

  Still, the results were satisfying. At the very least, Greem had obtained a peak Fourth Grade dracolich. The spoils were more than worth the risk.

  Greem started dealing with the dracolich after he returned to Dun Modr.

  This place was a magical room deep underground.

  The room was dark, humid, cold, and sinister.

  Sickly green runes and magical lines ran all over the stone walls, ceiling, and floor. Rumbling magical energy flowed through these circuits, forming a completely sealed and isolated magic prison.

  The dracolich, which looked like a giant, bipedal lizard, had all its limbs restrained by golden fire chains and was suspended in midair.

  The golden fire chains were of an incredible temperature and crackled loudly as they licked at the dracolich’s dark bones. Moreover, the Undying Flames had seeped into its soul and was inflicting unbearable agony to it.

  As an undead dragon, the dracolich should have no physical senses, much less a sense of pain.

  Unfortunately for him, the Undying Flames had the principle characteristic of reaching the soul itself. This pain wasn’t one that spread from the outside in, burning through the physical body to the soul. Instead, it was a pain directly etched deep into the soul through the principle power.

  That was why such torture on the principle level was horrifying for the dracolich, even with its undead body and magic resistance!

  “Who would’ve thought…who would’ve thought…that you were a fervent believer of that Cinquera!” Greem strode slowly inside the room, ignoring the strained and twisted figure of the dracolich. “Tell me, how did you come to know her? I don’t believe that the dragons would so easily let Cinquera sully the dignity of the dragons!”

  Greem’s word hadn’t come out of nowhere.

  The dragons had always viewed oaths and dignity with the greatest esteem. They firmly loathed the reversal of the natural laws and the creation of undead creatures with the corpses of their kin. Be it out of consideration of the general good or their own private intentions, the dragons would never let an evil dragon freely control a dragon’s tomb.

  Either this dragon’s tomb had been abandoned by the dragons, or an important dragon had intentionally covered up this incident. With his sharp senses as an adept, Greem could smell a scheme and conspiracy behind all this!

  “Human adept, you had best let me go now. Otherwise, once Lady Cinquera finds this place, she will devour you in a single snap!” The dracolich was quite stubborn indeed. Even after enduring all that torture from the Undying Flames, it refused to reveal a single thing.

  “You’re still waiting for Cinquera to save you? Heheh,” Greem couldn’t help but start laughing coldly, “If only you knew what dire straits Cinquera was in right now. If only you knew that she lost one of her wings, you wouldn’t be so stubborn!”

  “Bullshit! That’s impossible…there couldn’t possibly be any person in this plane that could threaten the great Lady Cinquera. You’re lying!” A glint of scorn appeared in the dracolich’s ghostly green eyes. It was obvious it didn’t believe Greem’s words.

  Greem didn’t waste words with it either. He lifted his hand and summoned a magic mirror. Lights flickered across the mirror as what had happened at Wintercastle was shown once again.

  The dracolich’s face turned pale when it saw that barbaric and fearsome orc god shatter Cinquera’s wing with a single violent strike.

  It wanted to rebuke the truth and claim that this was a fabricated vision. However, Sixth Grade Cinquera’s furious and anguished mental fluctuations emanating through the magic mirror were so, so real. It made the dracolich unable to say a single word of rebuttal as a believer of the evil dragon.

  “Heheh, you are right. There’s no one in this plane that could threaten Cinquera. However, don’t you forget- there are still gods! I only pulled a small trick, yet I could lure her to the orc capital and force her into a fight with an orc god. Heh, now that Cinquera is grievously wounded, do you think she still has the ability to save you?” Gr
eem struck at the dracolich’s psychological bottom line without holding back.

  This unique magical room could isolate the faith coordinate in its soul. However, Greem would have no chance of enslaving this dracolich if he didn’t make it break down first.

  Of course, it would have been an entirely different matter if Lich Kanganas was here.

  The liches were the true masters of toying with the soul!

  The dracolich lowered its head and said no more. Its soul was incredibly resilient, and it had obviously not been affected by Greem’s words.

  Greem wasn’t bothered by this at all.

  As a Great Adept, he had plenty of time to play with his toys. He wasn’t in a hurry.

  Greem grunted and said coldly, “If that is the case, then rot here for a few more years! We can have a proper talk whenever you think things through.”

  Having said that, Greem turned and left the room.

  Golden flames flared around the chains that bound the dracolich, and screams of agony rang out from the room.

  Greem turned and walked into the room beside the interrogation room.

  The strange black stone he had obtained from the Boulder Fortress market was hovering above an array on an alchemy platform. The outermost stone shell had peeled off, revealing its true appearance underneath.

  Chapter 1471 - Road to Improvement

  The Oddscale Fruit.

  A sort of earth-elementium fruit.

  It could absorb the earth-elementium power around it to provide the energy required for its growth. Ripe Oddscale Fruits had the effect of improving one’s base Physique, given consistent consumption. However, it also had the tremendous side-effect of causing scales to grow on one’s body and hindering intelligence growth.

  This Oddscale fruit was clearly a high-quality material that had been obtained by an adept after defeating an orc powerhouse. The fact that the Oddscale fruit possessed such magical characteristics meant that it contained traces of principle power.

  At this point, the adepts had invaded over a hundred orc worlds and had discovered all sorts of similar fruits in them. However, this was the first fruit that could rise to the level of principles.

  The seed of such rare fruit would be classified as a high-grade strategic resource, even in the World of Adepts. The fact that this was Greem’s first time seeing this fruit, despite being a Great Adept, was already evidence of its rarity and value.

  An orc powerhouse might have discovered it on accident, who then proceeded to hide it and use it to improve his Physique. However, Fate was often unpredictable. The orc who found the fruit did not even manage to save his own life in battle. In the end, the fruit landed in the hands of that Third Grade adept and, ultimately, in Greem’s hands.

  Greem couldn’t help but marvel at the wonders of Fate when thinking about this!

  Even though the effects of the Oddscale fruit were excellent, its side-effect was also terrifying.

  Firstly, the growth of the fruit demanded dense earth elementium.

  If Greem were to rely solely on the earth elementium in nature, its growth would probably take an exceedingly long time. The orcs had no means of solving this problem. They could only try their best and plant the fruit in the most fertile soil they could find.

  Greem’s first thought was to plant the seed on an earth-elementium altar.

  A standard, small-scale earth-elementium altar only cost around a hundred and fifty thousand magical crystals. It could constantly draw pure earth elementium from the Earth Elementium Plane to provide for the Oddscale Fruit’s growth.

  In doing so, an Oddscale Tree would grow rapidly, and the number of fruits produced would also increase correspondingly.

  The second problem was the accumulation of earth-elementium residue upon consumption of the Oddscale fruit, which would lead to the growth of strange scales.

  That wasn’t much of a problem for Greem. He had plenty of means to modulate his body and deal with the residue after the fact.

  What really troubled him was the horrible side-effect of hindering intelligence growth.

  No wonder there were so few elementium spellcasters in the orc worlds. Their intelligence was probably dropping at a crazy rate after eating such fruits. In fact, it would be a surprise if they were capable of magic given such terrible side-effects!

  Greem would have to find some way of altering the genetic sequence of the Oddscale Fruit and remove the harmful substances. It was a process that demanded immense time and energy.

  Obviously, this was not something that could be accomplished on the battlefield!

  Greem had the Chip construct a long-term case file on this research and temporarily put the matter of the Oddscale Fruit behind him. He then started thinking about his path of improvement moving forward.

  At Fifth Grade, the means for a principle adept to progress manifested in improving their control over the principel powers. A principle adept had to further calculate and extend the principle powers they possessed, thereby gaining mastery over more powerful and profound principles. They could then merge all those principles to create their own unique principle power.

  The last step was especially important!

  Principle suppression was a crucial factor in battles between principle adepts.

  Whoever had the stronger principle power of a higher dimension would be able to create a powerful, regional effect similar to planar suppression.

  The adepts also called this ability Domain!

  A Great Adept could create an environment suited to their powers within the Domain they created with their principle powers while also suppressing the opponent’s principle abilities. It was similar to the Burning Domain that Greem had so painstakingly conceived.

  However, while the Burning Domain was a massive space of fire created by an area-of-effect fire spell, it had not yet reached the level of a principle Domain. Opponents of the same grade could easily dispel it.

  Consequently, Greem almost never used the Burning Domain in his battles against opponents of the same grade. He only used it as a means of extermination when dealing with numerous low-grade enemies.

  At this point, Greem had only mastered two low-level fire principles– Undying Flames and Fire’s Image. To forge these two into a new principel power and derive a principle Domain that suited his fighting style was undoubtedly an arduous task that would take a long time!

  Greem’s lifespan was now over ten thousand years; he didn’t have to hurry things at all. He only needed to accumulate experience and knowledge bit by bit. One day, he would eventually be able to create a unique fire principle of his own.

  Gathering resources, collecting knowledge, completing the necessary experiments and magical research…these things would become the main tune of his long life to come, a perpetual constant that would always remain there!

  If he couldn’t rush the fire principles, then the only immediate thing he could rely on to improve his combat strength would be spells or magical golems.

  Ever since he reached Fifth Grade, the Chip’s abilities had evolved dramatically along with Greem’s own powers. Data calculation, storage, and analysis abilities had all been elevated tremendously. The Chip could help Greem continue growing stronger from many aspects with its support.

  At this moment, there were four Fifth Grade fire spells simultaneously being analyzed and constructed within Greem’s mind. Once this task was completed, Greem would no longer have to fight as he currently did by using the most primitive fire energy to attack his enemies.

  That wasn’t to say fire energy in its primitive state was weak. Rather, the form of attack was too monotonous and did not possess the variety of effects that spells often did. Consequently, an enemy could effortlessly deal with such attacks.

  Moreover, primitive fire energy required Greem’s constant spiritual guidance to hit the enemy. During this period, his defenses would be weakened considerably, and he could easily be hit by backlash if he was interrupted.

  These were
the flaws of directly-manipulated magic energy. The only proper way to avoid such problems was to structure the primitive fire energy into more powerful and more flexible fire spells!

  Principle powers were the source of a principle adept’s power, while spells that were compatible with that power were weapons that could unleash the true might of an adept.

  Both factors were crucial!

  The technique of deriving higher-class magic by modifying low-grade spells was outdated. After the leap from elementium to principles, the very nature of magic had changed entirely. Greem had no choice but to explore and discover from scratch once again.

  Fiery Ignition: Fifth Grade guided fire spell. Greem could inject fire power into the enemy’s body by means of sight. He could then ignite the magical energy within the enemy’s body (Every point of magic energy would inflict 5 points of fire damage).

  Fiery Imminence: Fifth Grade fire summoning spell. Allows the summoning of a powerful fire army from another plane. The effect is ten times that of the lower-grade Flamegate.

  Fiery Refraction: Fifth Grade offensive fire spell. Summons a fireball that refracts energy between multiple enemies. The fire damage increases by 1,000 points with every refraction, with a maximum of ten refractions (Initial damage is 6,000 points).

  Fiery Barrier: Fifth Grade defensive fire spell. Constructs a barrier using fire principles which defends against all passive and active magical attacks (Base defensive power of 20,000 points).

  Once these four principle spells were completed, they would be added to Greem’s arsenal. Along with the Fifth Grade divine spell, Scorched Earth sealed within the Orb of the Fire God, as well as the Fifth Grade poison spell, Halo of Rot formed within the Tome of Corruption, Greem would possess six spells that covered a variety of purposes, including summoning, offense, and defense.