Age of Adepts

The path in front of her spread out in every direction like a spider’s web. There were turns at every corner, and many rooms could be seen on both sides of the stone wall.

If this had been an ordinary adventure, Alice wouldn’t have minded taking her time to advance towards the core of the Tower cautiously. However, today was different. A strange and mysterious mist obscured everything.

Alice didn’t even know the name of the witch she had just killed. She felt like she had absorbed some sort of unique energy substance from the witch when she died. Even Alice’s mind had seemed to be sharper and quicker than before.

Deep in her heart, Alice had a feeling that this was a slaughter contest. Whoever killed the most weaklings and absorbed the most of this unknown substance would have the advantage when everyone met in the core of the Tower.

This feeling only existed as a vague sense of intuition for most of the witches!

However, for Alice, this feeling felt like a directive from fate itself.

Alice immediately ordered the Infernal Tyrant to plow forward, unlike her usual cautious attitude. In fact, she specifically commanded the Tyrant to create as large of a commotion as possible as they knocked down the walls and facilities around them.

As expected, the uproar attracted enemies.

They rounded a corner and found themselves face to face with five apprentice witches that had been waiting in preparation.

All sorts of support spells glowed with various colors around their bodies. They held magic wands and scrolls with different effects and powers in their hands. A small army of stone golems, dirt statues, razor boars, savage wolves, ironback eagles, and other summoned creatures and golems stood before them.

With their preparations, as well as the uniquely restricted environment, they might have been able to drive away an ordinary adept.

Sadly, they had to meet Alice and the Infernal Tyrant with her.

The Infernal Tyrant continued to step forward despite the sight of numerous enemies. It extended its arms, conjuring a blinding wall of fire right in the middle of the army of summoned creatures.

The fire swiftly spread.

The eighty points of fire damage from the wall of fire were not something that the apprentice-level creatures could endure!

The tight formation of the crowd quickly broke down into disarray and chaos.

Countless beasts and monsters were burned to death in the field of fire and reduced to glowing sparks in the air. Only the stone golems barely struggled and clung on to life with their magic resistance. However, their bodies that had been baked by the intense heat crumbled into pieces before they made it out of the flames. Even the dirt statue couldn’t survive the attack from the Tyrant. It melted into a pile of mud.

The faces of the five apprentice witches blanched. They silently started retreating.

With their limited knowledge and experience, when had they ever seen a summoned flame giant of this power?!

”Run.”

No one knew who it was that shouted first, but all of the apprentices turned and ran without looking back. Two of them even cast Godspeed and Haste on themselves to get a lead on their companions.

A whistling Explosive Fireball flew into their ranks and exploded.

The violent waves of fire filled the narrow corridor. The apprentices could never outrun the flame shockwave regardless of how fast they could run on their feet.

The five apprentices’ defensive barriers broke under the strain of multiple flame shockwaves. All of them collapsed around the corridor. The two corpses at the center of the explosion had reduced to ashes. Not a single shard of bone remained. Only the apprentice witch that had barely made it to the end of the corridor managed to have something resembling a corpse. The fires had utterly charred even her body.

In human society, these apprentice witches were individuals that every local noble would fight for to be able to invite them to their banquets. Here, they were no more than targets that were easily disposed of. They didn’t even manage to defend against a single attack of the Infernal Tyrant. In fact, they hadn’t even gotten to keep their corpses in death.

The path that fate had chosen for them was a complete dead end!

However, Alice had already given up on such lamentings and pity when she was ten. Ever since she had stepped upon this path towards becoming the Witch of Fate, she had no other option but to continue forward.

Alice closed her eyes of the corpses in the pile, and once again confirmed her deductions. Killing other candidates could bring about benefits for herself. These benefits were intangible, but Alice vaguely felt that she was slowly resonating with certain laws in the depths of the galaxy.

Some incomprehensible arcane knowledge started to seep into her mind. It felt like she understood something, yet it also felt like she hadn’t comprehended anything.

Alice had no time to think about these profound changes. She called the Tyrant over and proceeded down the winding corridors.

…………

A large, vast arcane hall.

Several milky-white illumination crystals adorned the walls.

The magic power in these crystals had been wholly exhausted over the years. They didn’t even let out a faint glow.

Tall bookshelves lined the walls. While there were still some magic books on the shelves, a battle earlier had destroyed most of them.

Frost lingered in the hall. Ice crystals shattered as more and more moisture in the air froze. The ground was a mess, much like what you would expect after a terrible fight.

Snowlotus, the Dancer of Ice and Frost, stood in the middle of the hall. She endured the pain from all over her body and slowly started to treat her wounds.

Her crystalline ice armor had shattered, and several cuts had ripped open on her soft cloth robe. Her snow white skin was exposed for all to see. However, her white skin was now turning black.

Snowlotus took out a vial of blue potion and gritted her teeth as she poured it over the wound on her shoulder.

The sound of eroding flesh sizzled in the room. The black bruise beneath her skin started to wriggle like a living being. However, the power of ice surrounded the injury. It had nowhere to go. The black bruise finally split apart under the pressure of the blue potion, and something emerged from the wound.

The unknown object exploded into mist when it came into contact with the potion; a cloud that quickly dissipated in the air.

An indescribably pungent odor filled the hall!

Snowlotus finally had a chance to examine her surroundings once she had treated the worst of the wounds on her body and drank another vial of healing potion to allow her flesh to regenerate.

Three witches were frozen various in poses in thick blocks of ice. Thet bared their teeth in hatred, and their expressions were also frozen for all to see.

It was clear that these frozen witches were dead!

Fifteen minutes earlier, Snowlotus had been lured to this hall by a witch she ’accidentally’ ran into. Two other witches who had been in hiding had then ambushed her. Snowlotus fought one against three, with the element of surprise against her. Despite sustaining wounds from the initial trap, Snowlotus still managed to turn the tides and kill the three enemies.

She could feel the powers of Fate flowing into her body. Finally, she sensed that the laws of fate that had distanced themselves from her were finally offering their embrace to her once again.

It seemed that the rumor that killing other candidates would gather the favor of Fate was true. Mm. There was no time to wait. She had to act as swiftly as possible. The weak targets were going to be easily taken down by the other competitors.

Having treated her wounds and scoured the battlefield, Snowlotus pushed apart the wooden door at the side of the hall and silently returned to the intricate corridors of the Tower.

…………

In another area at the bottom of the Tower.

Berserk Witch Sofia was also fighting a fierce battle.

However, only a few people would recognize her with her current appearance.

Sofia was considered tall among witches with her original appearance. Her two-meter tall body was even slightly taller than Greem’s. When paired with her humongous muscles and thick limbs, it was often hard to believe that she was a female if it hadn’t been for the two mounds of flesh hanging from her chest.

However, right now, Sofia’s muscles were quickly increasing in size as the berserker powers surged through her body. Soon, she had turned into a four-meter-tall giantess.

The muscles of her face were stretched and distorted. The eyepatch on her left eye had also snapped, revealing her stone eye. Cracking sounds came from within her bones as the Berserk Witch rushed forward. The thick wooden staff in her hand had mysteriously increased in size along with her.

Two witches led a group of apprentice in an attempt to escape from Sofia. Sadly, the giantess was slowly gaining ground with her heavy footsteps that tremored through the floor.

Countless colorful spells rained upon Sofia’s body like a torrent, but she ignored all the apprentice-level attacks; rookies will always remain as rookies. Their spells were not even enough to break through Sofia’s skin after she went berserk.

Only the spells cast by the witches caught Sofia’s attention.

She grabbed objects that littered the corridor and detonated the spells before they reached her, or she merely swatted them out of the sky with her thick wooden staff. The Berserk Witch dodged what she could and deflected the rest. Sofia only chose to cover her face with her arms and endure a spell if she couldn’t avoid or deflect it.

As long as Sofia reached them, all defensive barriers and shields were meaningless before the might of her wooden staff. Her explosive strength paired well with the heavy wooden staff. Even an official witch wasn’t able to take on a blow from Sofia herself.

Anyone hit by the Berserk Witch had only one fate– to be crushed into meat paste.

There was no other conclusion for those poor witches!

The scrambling apprentices finally triggered some magical traps during their frantic retreat. A group of steel guards charged out of hidden spots in the walls with large shields in hand. Their metallic bodies clanged as they joined the ranks of Sofia in slaughtering the witches.

”Dammit! Don’t steal meat from my mouth.”

Sofia flew into a rage when she saw a few apprentices die at the hands of the steel guards.

”This is my feast. How dare you try and steal it from me. Die! All of you!”

Sofia charged forward violently as she swung her staff. She instantly crushed four or five of the guards into broken fragments of metal.

The group of steel guards quickly shifted targets. They gathered together uniformly and charged towards the Berserk Witch with thunderous steps.

The conflicts in the Tower were becoming more and more chaotic!