Age of Adepts

The enemy being a witch was outside of his expectations, but entirely within the bounds of reason!

Greem almost mistook the old witch for Witch Liana from the Castle in the Sky, with her crooked spine, old face, and muddy eyeballs.

After all, all the old witches seemed to look exactly this way!

So ugly it was hard to even look straight at them.

The pretty illusionist from earlier must have been a disguise of this old hag.

Who knew that it was such an ugly and evil hag that hid underneath that beautiful appearance. Greem couldn’t help but be disgusted by the thought.

They had caught the culprit. What came next was Alice.

It was evident that the danger from earlier had caused her to go berserk.

Her eyes had rolled into her head, and she was still screaming in the sky. It seemed as if her Spirit was in a state of extreme chaos.

The spatial energy within the spacestone continuously released, with her as the medium. If they forcefully stopped the channeling process, Alice would have to endure the tremendous backlash from the spacestone. There was no way she could survive such a backlash with her power.

The spatial ripples were also a headache for Greem. He couldn’t even get close this way!

The only thing he could do was close his eyes and focus. He tried to call on Alice through their soul contract. Perhaps because their mental connection had been disconnected for an extended period, the reconnection process was exceedingly slow as well. The link was choppy and unstable. It seemed the spatial ripples were also a huge obstacle to their mental communication.

”……Ma……ster……I feel…… awful……”

”You are safe now, Alice. Stop using the power within the spacestone!”

”……Master……I……really want……to……possess……such……power……”

”There’s a proper process to accumulating strength and power. A power that you can manage is the only true power! Backlash is the only thing waiting for you if you try and climb all the way to the top in a single step!”

”I……understa……nd”

Silently, the spatial ripples weakened and disappeared.

Alice’s body trembled in midair when the ripples finally vanished. Her thin frame started to descend like a withered leaf in autumn.

But a warm hand caught hers.

”Come, let us return!”

A brilliant magic array appeared in the air. Countless glowing runes surrounded the three of them. The white light grew even brighter until it was impossible to look at directly. A sharp explosion rang out, but the individuals had already disappeared from the ruins of the castle.

…………

Feidnan City, Adept’s Tower.

In a hidden room on the tenth floor.

Dong. An explosion rang out. White light flashed, and Sanazar, Greem, and Alice appeared in the middle of the room.

The blinding white light slowly faded from the magic array at their feet. The spillover spatial energies crashed against the stone walls of the room, but the defensive arrays that surfaced quickly neutralized them.

A Teleportation Array was a necessary facility for all adept’s towers, especially with the rigidity and power of runic knowledge in the World of Adepts. It wasn’t all that hard to make one. The downside was its cost. Every usage of the array would cost at least a thousand magic crystals. The further the teleportation distance, the more exponential an increase in the crystal consumption. Very few adepts used it to travel.

Moreover, the authority over the controls of the Teleportation Array in an adept’s tower remained in the hands of trusted adepts. First Grade adepts like Greem would never have a chance of coming into contact with it. If it weren’t for Alice’s unique situation that could provide the Sarubo Clan with yet another incredible adept, even Sanazar wouldn’t have been in as much of a hurry to rush back by using the Teleportation Array.

”Bring her down to treat her condition. I will arrange an advancement ceremony as soon as possible.” Sanazar raised the golden birdcage to her eye and laughed sinisterly, ”Leave these two rodents with me! I’ll be able to get something from their minds.”

The shrunken hybrid dragon and the old hag had been knocked unconscious and were lying within the birdcage. All sorts of strange and mysterious runes circled their bodies.

Greem’s fire projection bowed to Sanazar before leaving with Alice in his arms.

In his dwelling on the seventh floor.

The fire projection careful placed Alice on her bed before handing over the Decayer’s core back to Greem. The projection then carefully merged with Greem himself.

The fire projection was an alternative way of using fire spells that Greem had managed to discover recently. It was thanks to the sizeable amount of golem knowledge from the Silver Union that he had been able to do so.

Sadly, the amount of energy that the fire projection could store was insufficient. It did not possess any combat ability like a golem, and could only serve as a weak fire clone of Greem himself. Still, some aspects of it were far superior to golems.

Golems were, truthfully speaking, elementium lifeforms imbued with certain traits of golems. They might have possessed instincts, but not complete intelligence. They had to listen to their summoner’s orders and could not act on their own initiative.

The fire projection was more like Greem summoning a fire elementium and projecting part of his soul consciousness into the fire elementium. This spell allowed him to control it like he would a golem.

Sadly, once the initial fire projection formed, it would create a self-sustaining cycle that was shut off from the outside world. It would no longer be able to draw upon the energies of the outside world to replenish its powers. Thus, the fire energy generated during the summoning of the fire projection determined the length of time that it could last.

The chip’s data demonstrated that consuming one point of Spirit during the summoning of a fire projection could maintain its existence for ten hours. Of course, this calculation did not include combat exhaustion. Greem’s current Spirit was not precisely at seven points yet. If he used all of his powers, he could summon a clone that could replace him for up to three days.

Greem believed that the continuous development of the Fire Projection spell would eventually allow him to create a fire clone that was as powerful as himself. Then, he would be able to fight two against one and fully gain an advantage in any battle he was involved in!

Greem immediately started a full body check of Alice once he dissolved the fire projection. The results shocked him.

Alice’s condition was very odd. It seemed like she was merging with the spacestone sealed in her body.

However, given the difference in their powers, the current situation didn’t seem to be Alice actively merging with the spacestone; the spacestone was actively assimilating Alice into itself.

That was not a good thing!

If Alice’s Spirit was powerful enough to control the spacestone, she could have easily been the one to guide and host this merging process. She would then have been able to turn the strange spatial powers of the spacestone to her use. However, Alice was apparently at a disadvantage in the merging right now. She was the spacestone’s target of assimilation.

If this situation continued unchecked, the assimilated Alice would probably lose her independent will and turn into some kind of strange space creature.

”Chip, reflect the results of Alice’s scan!” Greem frowned as he ordered.

”Beep, instructions received.”

A soft beep rang in his mind, and a three-dimensional scan of Alice appeared in Greem’s mind. Her abdomen was where the spacestone had been sealed. Strands and threads of foreign silver energy were spilling from that location and were quickly merging into Alice’s bloodline.

”Chip, can you analyze the components and effects of this foreign energy?”

”Beep. Foreign energy composition: Active spatial material.

Effects are as analyzed:

Toughness: 217(Comparable substance: Underground Wrought Gold: 167)

Flexibility: 98(Comparable substance: Mithril: 139)

Magic Conduction Rate: 82%(Comparable substance: Mithril: 91%)

Attribute: Space (No comparable material)”

Greem silently read through the results of the analysis. He couldn’t help but be surprised by the power of the spacestone. No wonder this unique treasure could hardly be found within planes. Only trace amounts of it existed in the depths of the boundless universe.

Disregarding everything else, just its ability to absorb and manipulate spatial powers was a unique trait that belonged to it alone. It was such an unfathomable trait.

What kind of power was spatial power?

Most adepts only had a vague understanding on this point. They just knew how to utilize it, but it was hard for them to organize and come up with a proper knowledge system on space. Otherwise, there wouldn’t be so few space adepts in the World of Adepts. Only those with the affinity and talent could manipulate space.

If this spacestone had been in Greem’s hands, there was nothing much he could do other than record a bunch of tiresome statistics than he didn’t know what to do with. Only a person with spatial affinity like Alice could cause such a remarkable change to occur in the spacestone.

It was way too hard for Greem to judge whether this mutation was benign or malign with what knowledge he currently had. He thought for a bit longer and decided to wake Alice up first.

A rune glowing with a faint red light appeared in the air as Greem drew with his fingers. The rune slowly descended into Alice’s head.

A short moment later, Alice’s body started to move. Her eyes began to open.

”What happened to me?” Alice quickly got up from the bed and looked around the room in confusion.

”You accidentally absorbed the powers within the spacestone back in Wylick Castle. Now…” Greem caressed his chin as he tried to think of a way to explain the situation.

”What now? Is there a problem?” Alice closed her eyes to sense. She felt an indescribable power coursing through her body. She was getting more and more powerful with every passing moment, ”My condition right now seems to be very good!”

Greem shook his head and helplessly said, ”Don’t get too excited. You should look at your stomach first!”

Alice lifted her head doubtfully. She assessed Greem’s expression but couldn’t find anything false about it. A sick feeling rose in her heart.

Rip.

She tore her robe apart. She looked down and cried out in shock.

Her stomach had become almost transparent!