Age of Adepts

Sofia was dead!

Following after Snowlotus, the ferocious and wild Sofia had died.

Only Alice and the mysterious girl were left in the hall now.

It was when the mysterious girl slowly turned towards her that Alice was able to see her distorted and caved-in skull, as well as that bloody and ruined face. Her face looked like a stampede of elephants had brutally ravaged it. A very angry and violent herd of elephants.

Her nose had been completely shattered, and her mouth was badly swollen. Most of her teeth had also fallen out of her mouth. Her eye socket had fractured, with purple-black blood covering her left eye. Hatred and viciousness gleamed in the right eye that remained.

As the spiritual projection of the previous Witch of Fate, her actions had brought shame upon all high-grade witches. She had a thousand years more experience than the other competitors, and part of the control authority of the Tower. However, she had been beaten up by a low-grade witch with one of the crudest methods possible.

Just the thought of this drove her recently awakened consciousness mad!

She was angry and impatient. She needed someone to take it out on.

But the person responsible for her terrible state was already dead.

Would a future Witch of Fate like herself beat a corpse? This action was even worse of a humiliation!

All of her rage and fury cast upon the only survivor left. Alice.

Perhaps because she saw a little of what the mysterious girl was thinking, Alice remained standing tall and proud despite missing an eye. There were small cuts and scrapes all over her petite body. Thick blood stains also covered half of her face, but she still smiled sweetly and happily.

”I won’t give you a chance for revenge!”

Alice plunged the dagger in her right hand straight into her heart. Her tiny body froze for a second before slowly collapsing to the ground.

A pool of crimson blood soon appeared on the ground beneath Alice’s body.

Dammit! Dammit! Dammit! What is wrong with this batch of candidates?! Why is each and every one of them so infuriating and hard to deal with? Goddamit.

The mysterious girl’s rage had nowhere to go. It bubbled within her as she sensed Alice’s lifeforce gradually weaken until it completely vanished. The anger turned into a blazing fire in her heart. She was so furious that her chest could have exploded.

The girl scanned the hall and the Tower one more time. Having confirmed that no more life forces remained in the Tower, the girl forcefully suppressed her emotions and walked towards the mysterious array.

Now that everything was over, the most important thing was to complete the ceremony and become the Witch of Fate. The powers of Fate gathered here were, at the very least, enough to push her to Third Grade. Even Fourth Grade wasn’t impossible if she was fortunate enough. Perhaps in less than a thousand years, she would be able to step out of the World of Adepts and merge with her original self!

A feeling of unease prompted her to stop, just when she was about to step into the array.

Danger!

She sensed a terrifying danger that could spell doom for her!

The girl spun around and took yet another careful look at the battlefield. The fires of rage in her heart had been completely extinguished by the cold and chilling premonition from fate.

What did face and humiliation count for before her own life?

She had to quench all signs of danger and anything that could threaten her before she entered the array and absorbed the powers of Fate. This cautiousness was a character trait that a person of authority had to have!

What had gone wrong?

All the competitors inside the Tower were dead. Where could a potentially threatening enemy have hidden?

The girl mused to herself as she used her only eye left to scan the remains of the battlefield.

The floor had been shattered. One could see stones and debris everywhere. There were also plenty of odd objects. The fires of fate had burned the witches’ bodies. The only things left were their magic staffs, wands, the scraps of their scrolls, and used potion vials.

Of course, there was also a giant pile of gleaming metal parts and components in the middle of the hall. There was also a bunch of magical gemstones with some energy remaining in the collection of metal.

Apart from that, there were the three corpses of the witches that had just died and…

Corpses?

It was only now that the girl realized something.

How could there be corpses?

Once the three girls died, Fate would have burned their bodies and turned them into pure energy essence to be absorbed by the array. It wasn’t just their bodies. Even their souls couldn’t escape. Everything they had would become the nutrition and foundation of the new Witch of Fate.

Then why was it that their corpses remained?

Unless…

They weren’t dead and were still using their will to resist the powers of Fate in their bodies!

The mysterious girl’s face dropped. She raised her hands and started chanting.

”By the name of the great laws of fate, bless me with the Eye of Truth to see through lies and deception!”

The mysterious array tremored, and a surge of power of fate flew towards the girl.

The hall before her disappeared.

Every detail in her vision had lost their outlines. Instead, they appeared as spots of color with lines of magic in the air. A new sense had replaced her original sight. Everything appeared in a whole new manner before the girl.

Through her Eye of Deception, she could see that Snowlotus’ broken body had lost all aura of life. However, a strange tiny person that looked just like her had been sealed into a crystal necklace on her neck.

The tiny person sat within the crystal. Vast swathes of white mist gathered around her. It was this mist that blocked the effects of ordinary detection and sensing spells and allowed Snowlotus to remain concealed.

At this moment, the mysterious girl’s eyes passed through the white mist and the crystal wall, clashing with the eyes of the little Snowlotus. The little Snowlotus’ face went white in an instant!

Crack.

The crystal exploded, and the dense white mist engulfed Snowlotus’ body.

A short moment later, the perfectly safe Snowlotus, protected by layers of spells, walked out of the mist. A grave expression appeared on her snow-white face. She clearly resented and despaired at the opponent seeing through her tricks.

”As expected of worms! All you use are despicable and underhanded tricks!” A cold ’smile’ appeared on the girl’s face, ”The two of you bastards! Are you waiting for me to drag you out of hiding!”

The mysterious girl’s gaze fell upon Sofia’s broken body. More specifically, she looked towards the right pinky finger. The ferocious punching Sofia had launched at the barrier had caused the bone of her fingers to be exposed. A strange jade green pattern was visible on the bone of her pinky finger.

Life Concealment!

That was a unique technique exclusive to the Death Witches!

Life Concealment. A technique that allowed the user to transfer, isolate, and conceal part of their life force in a portion of their bodies. When their original self received a fatal blow, they could use the hidden life force to revive.

However, Sofia’s Life Concealment was inferior to Snowlotus’ magical tool. When Sofia allowed the life force to flow back to her broken body, she still had to put up with her damage and wounds.

Everyone’s gaze then fell upon Alice’s frail and petite body.

A sigh rang out in the room, and the dagger in Alice’s heart mysteriously started to remove itself from her chest. Alice then spat out the slice of fruit that she had been hiding in her mouth.

The Golden Apple!

Everyone nodded. They finally understood how Alice had faked her death!

The Golden Apple was an item used in a revival ceremony. Furthermore, if the user bit off a piece from the Golden Apple before their death and held it in their mouth, they would not die, regardless of any grievous wounds they received afterward. Of course, this was limited to any attacks that didn’t destroy her body.

”Good… very good.” The mysterious girl looked around the room and fumed as the three candidates who should have died at her hands slowly stood up. A feeling of anger at having been cheated rose in her, ”Since all of you want to die another time, I’ll fulfill your wish!”

A large cluster of light surged out of the array and entered her damaged body.

”Recuperate!”

With a single word, a strange spatial flux enveloped the girl’s body. All her wounds had vanished when the spatial flux finally disappeared.

A fully regenerated enemy stood before Alice and the other two witches!

The three witches frowned when they saw this. A trace of despair appeared on their faces.

Compared to the large cluster of light in the array, the girl had only drawn upon one or two-tenths of its power. Yet, this amount of energy was more than enough for her to crush the three of them.

An enemy like this, a battle like this, was there any meaning to the bloody fight they were putting up?

There was no answer, and there was no need for one!

At this moment, the first to step forward was still Sofia.

”I don’t care whether you guys still have any trump cards in reserve, but I’ll be fighting to my death!” Sofia’s body was also rapidly regenerating. However, her regenerative powers were trivial when compared to the large gashes on her body, ”We Berserk Witches never wait for our deaths!”

Sofia then dragged her broken body along and stormed towards the mysterious girl.

Alice and Snowlotus exchanged looks. A frightening determination rose in their hearts. They too followed behind Sofia and launched their final wave of attacks at the mysterious girl.

Sadly, the girl’s overwhelming power devoured every trick they had.

The girl spat out a single word, ’Impenetrable,’ and an indestructible barrier formed in front of the three of them. It didn’t matter how much they blasted it with spells or bashed it with their fists; the wall didn’t budge an inch.

Rot! Enhanced Pain! Decrepify!

Snowlotus was the first to fall victim to the girl’s prophecies.

Her face seemed to have experienced hundreds of years in an instant. The girl of ice and snow with smooth, snow-white skin had turned into an old hag with a wrinkled face and spotted skin. Moreover, there weren’t screams of agony that came out of her mouth when she rolled around the ground in pain. The only thing that came out of her mouth was a black cloud of dust.

Snowlotus’ organs had rotted!