Age of Adepts

After the stone door closed, the practice room became a soundproof space, and Greem wouldn’t have to worry that someone might spy upon what he was doing from the outside.

Greem took two steps forward, positioning himself right in the center of a strange looking spell formation that was about 2 meters in diameter. He couldn’t recognize a single spell drawn on it. Clearly, they were far beyond the knowledge of any Beginner Apprentice Adept.

But today he had no time or energy to bother with all these minor details. He turned around and stood with his back straight, quietly recalling the entire casting process of the Fire Arrow spell. After he was certain of the casting process, he started speaking in a solemn voice, “Chip. Pay close attention to the entire process. Correct me immediately if you think I am making the slightest mistake!”

*Beep* “New task established, commencing real-time monitoring…”

As a blue light began blinking in Greem’s eyes, a digitized scene was projected onto his retinas.

The digitized practice room looked exactly like the practice room, but countless tiny dots of blue nodes had appeared on Greem’s retinas, slicing up the entire room into countless tiny regions. Also, the body movements Greem required to perform were divided into countless still virtual images, each staged in such a way as to indicate an order he must follow. Which was exactly what he needed to do: follow the movements of these virtual images.

Finally, Greem, who had been standing still, looking blankly off into space, began to practice.

He started to recite the magic words, and, at the same time, making drawing movements in front of his chest at an incredibly fast speed, These movements made him look weird, but at the same time, seemed to possess a certain flowing grace. As Greem progressed through the spell, his body started to blink red as a huge amount of Fire Elementium was summoned by his spell, slowly compressing and forming into the shape of an arrow in between his moving hands.

Perhaps the process had been too smooth, but right when he was reciting the 32nd magic syllable, Greem heart surged with excitement, and that made one of the nodes of the spiritual model collapse, and the rest of the spiritual model immediately followed. The raging Fire Elementium, which had been summoned and compressed repeatedly, became unaligned, and a ground-shaking explosion of Fire Elementium started erupting in front of Greem.

But, right at the moment when everything started to fall out of order, Greem, who had been prepared for the unexpected, forcefully slammed on the card placed in front of his chest. The card vibrated, and a Magic Barrier surged up from the spell formation under his feet, encasing his body and the exploding Fire Arrow.

Strangely, once the raging Fire elements were covered by the Magic Barrier, their power was reduced by half. Therefore, a potentially ground shaking explosion of elementium was suppressed and came out as a small fireworks show.

After a dull noise, which sounded like a firecracker, Greem was submerged by thick and dark smoke, and a small flame could be briefly seen through the smoke.

A moment later, Greem dashed out from the smoke while continuously coughing.

“Damn it… I thought I was going to succeed…”

His face was smudged by thick smoke, and his clothes were full of burn marks, making him look like a homeless man who had been dragged through a fire.

Although he was caught right in the center of the explosion, the power of the raging Fire Elementium was suppressed by the Magic Formation. Therefore, only his hands and forehead were licked by the flames. He didn’t really suffer from any injuries except minor burns.

His first real casting attempt had failed!

And the cause of it was actually Greem’s weak control over his own emotions. As he felt he was going to succeed, he let his excitement get the best of him, and that emotional outburst had disturbed the spellcasting process.

After letting the dark smoke clear from the room, he tidied up his appearance and applied some medicinal paste on his wounds. Only then did he step back into the spell formation.

Gritted his teeth tightly, Greem began his second spellcasting attempt.

Perhaps he was being rewarded for all his perseverance in the past few weeks, or perhaps fate had decided it was time for him to master the spell, but the second spellcasting went smoothly and swiftly. After a seemingly unendingly long 13 seconds of casting, Greem finally completed a successful casting of the Fire Arrow spell.

When the raging Fire Elementium had concentrated and formed into a complete Fire Arrow in his palm, the sweet mechanical voice of the Chip once again resounded in his brain.

*Beep* “A complete Spiritual Model has been detected. Please confirm if the host wants to solidify it? The solidification process will consume 3 Spirit and 50 Experience!”

“Confirm!” Greem was unable to hold himself back and shouted out loud.

“Please name this Spiritual Model?”

“Fire Arrow!”

“Model successfully named! Solidification task now starting… expected completion time is 14 hours, 37 minutes, and 21 seconds…”

After settling everything with the chip, Greem still needed to handle the ‘hot potato’ in his hands.

For many exploding spells, the caster only had a buffer of 2-3 seconds after casting the spell to use it. If this time was exceeded, or the caster moved their body, the casted spell would begin to collapse.

If he cast a spell and let it explode within his palm, he could barely imagine what would happen to his body.

Therefore, once Greem was finished with the Chip, he immediately pushed both hands forward, inciting the Fire Arrow to fly forward and slam right into the stone target situated on the other side of the room.

The Fire Arrow erupted as it struck the chest of the stone target. This time, without the suppression field of the Magical Formation beneath his feet, the raging Fire Elementium could finally reveal its brutal and violent nature.

A loud explosive noise was heard.

A fireball the size of a melon suddenly appeared, quickly spreading into a violent fiery shockwave. The raging explosion instantly heated up everything within a 5 meter radius of the stone target to rather intense temperatures.

After the smoke cleared, Greem could see that the chest of the stone target had been burned black, and there was even a nail-sized hole where the center of the explosion had been.

Unexpectedly, a wall on one side of the room began to wobble like the surface of water did when small ripples went through it. After a moment, a few words began to show up.

Obviously, this specially designed Spell Casting Practice Room was very effective at its job. Although, with the help of the Chip, Greem didn’t need the limited data detected by the Spell Formation, but all the other Apprentice Adepts couldn’t live without it. Only through the evaluation and calculation of the Spell Formation could they have a more direct feeling of control when dealing with the spells they were learning. That, or they would have to experience it directly on a battlefield, where they had to put their lives at stake.

In just 15 minutes of time, Greem had achieved his goal for this trip. He happily turned and opened the door to the Spell Casting Practice Room. When the stone door opened up, a beautiful figure was waiting outside the door for him.

Slender limbs; perfect curves; fair and silky smooth skin; a delicate face… But what excited Greem the most was the flaming red chiffon dress and her equally red luscious lips.

The only difference compared to the last time he had seen her was that her ruby red eyes were gone, having been replaced by a pair of turquoise blue eyes, which made Greem felt like he was staring into a sparkling ocean of blue.

It was Mary, wearing her vivacious red dress!

“Oh, so it seems you really are here!~” Her juicy red lips moved gently, letting out words in a voice that made Greem’s heart race. “Alright, since I’ve found him, you’re no longer of any use to me.”

The second sentence, which was said in a tone that sounded much colder than the first, was not spoken to Greem.

Only now had Greem noticed that this ‘neighbour’ of his, who was slim and neither tall nor short, was dragging an adult man with her right hand. It was Anm, the administrator of the Magic Spell Practice Room.

Red-dressed Mary waved her little hand, and Anm was easily thrown over ten meters. He hit the ground with a ‘thud’, and started groaning, unable to stand back up.

Greem felt his expression change.

Although Anm was not considering a chunky man, his body weight was at least that of the average adult man. However, this Mary had just thrown him a fairly long distance with a single bare hand, and she had done it without even trying that hard. Inferring from what he had seen in front of him, Greem guessed that she had, at least, 10 Strength.

Judging from the swiftness of her movements, her Agility was not low either. Together with her frightening Vampire ability of regeneration, perhaps even the three strongest Apprentice Adepts wouldn’t be able to gain an advantage over her in a fight.

Hadn’t she been taken away by the master of the tower? How was she here, safe and sound? She…

“Follow me!”

While Greem was still pondering all of this in his mind, Mary stretched out her fair, silky smooth, right hand and grabbed his collar. Then she turned around and strode away, her hand on his neck. Greem did his best to try and avoid her hand, but he was unable to do so.

Although he was only 15 years old, he was actually a little bit taller than Mary. In order to avoid being dragged on the floor, he was forced to stagger along behind her, having no idea what was going on.

……

In the Public cafeteria.

It was dinner time, so most of the Apprentice Adepts were gathered in the cafeteria, sitting in small groups, having their meals, and talking to each other.

From the places they sat and the way that they each talked, it was enough to determine the strength of these small groups and the position of each Apprentice Adept in the group.

After all, those who were lone wolves, like Greem, were actually quite few in number. Most of the Apprentice Adepts preferred to group up and form small gangs, allowing them to work together and fight off those who approached with bad intentions.

But, right when the atmosphere of the place was warming up, a sudden loud noise was heard, as the freshly repaired wooden door was smashed open by someone.

Every single Apprentice Adept stared blankly at two people who had come in, one after the other, their widely opened eyes were filled with looks of disbelief.

Mary?!

Although most of the people here had never seen how Mary looked after her ‘mutation’, through their own channels, they all knew what had happened that day. Thus, in their mind, even if Mary didn’t get sliced by master Adept for his research, she would have been locked up on one the upper floors of this Tower, forced to live life as a captive forever. In stark contrast to everyone’s expectations, she actually shown up in this place, as bold as brass!

Ellen, who sat right in the center of the cafeteria, immediately felt his expression turn sober as his eyes were filled with fright.

He had personally witnessed how brutal and frightening Mary was. Even though she had been restored to her harmless look, the horrifying memory left in his mind could never be erased.

Mary stormed in like a whirlwind, soon coming to stand right in the center of the cafeteria with her arms crossed. She coldly glanced around the room, slowly circling it, before her vision finally stopped on Ellen, the newly appointed Apprentice Leader.

“I, Mary, am back again!”