Age of Adepts

The Stone Tower.

In the end, this tower was just a crude building made of stone. It didn’t have complete facilities like an actual adept’s tower; it certainly didn’t have a sea of lava, such as the one in Fire Throne, that Greem could use to continue tempering his Spirit.

The efficiency of meditating in a place like this was only one-fourth or even one-fifth of what it was in Fire Throne. Every day here was like endless torture for Greem.

To ensure he didn’t end up wasting his time, Greem dedicated most of his time here to the study and mastery of the otherworldly runes.

After eleven years of processing, the Chip had finally managed to analyze and decipher the one hundred and seventy-three runes brought back from the Knight’s Plane. Apart from the one hundred and twenty-two primary runes that both worlds shared, thirty-five of the runes were variations of existing runes, and sixteen of them were new and rare runes.

The shape of the runes had been confirmed and verified. What came next was a more detailed probing and analysis of each rune to figure out the hidden knowledge within them.

One could say that the variation runes and rare runes were Greem’s greatest harvest from his trip to the Knight’s Plane. That was because these runes were the essence of the higher arcane knowledge of a small plane!

The Knight’s Plane might only have been a small plane, and its arcane knowledge was limited due to the knight’s suppression, but the knights had also managed to push the power of every individual rune to their very limits.

Things would have been very different if the green dragons manipulating the kingdom from behind the scenes hadn’t been such misers. Had they done away with the bloodline limitations on the runic powers, the Sarubo Clan could only have dreamt of taking down the Knight’s Plane with anything less than fifty First Grade adepts.

However, there were no such things as ’if’ in this universe!

It was the greedy nature of the green dragons that caused the strength of the natives to be so distorted and weak. The knights hadn’t been able to gain a decisive advantage against the sinister adepts.

That was why the loss of the Knight’s Plane had been an inevitability for the green dragons!

Even if the adepts had never discovered this backyard haven of the green dragons, some other dominant race would have found it. The fate of the plane remained unchanged.

These variant runes and rare runes that Greem obtained from the Knight’s Plane still retained some of the origin forms of the planar laws there. That was because they hadn’t undergone the long process of evolution and change that the World of Adept’s runes had.

That was the part that Greem valued the most!

According to the Chip, the collected and created runes in the World of Adepts runic system numbered over a thousand. It was the combination of all these runes that forged the rich culture of magic in the World of Adepts.

However, there were tradeoffs involved in this. The ancient adepts had once drawn upon the chaotic runes they saw and learned from nature. The continuous optimization, modification, and creation involved in the runic system over the years had caused these chaotic runes from ancient times to evolve and turn into the magical runes that adepts of today could utilize.

The chaotic runes of ancient times were often the manifestation of planar laws on the bodies of powerful magical creatures. That was a time when the world consciousness had yet to be born. Consequently, these runes were not things that ordinary humans could master or understand. Only great adepts with exceptional talent and ingenuity could learn some of the chaotic runes. It was through these runes that they had gained access to supernatural and mysterious powers.

The nature of these chaotic runes caused them to be extremely close to the truth and origin power of the planar laws. That was why every single adept that mastered the ancient chaotic runes were powerful existences that could rend the skies and split the earth with a single thought!

However, a small number of powerful individuals were hard-pressed to defend the massive entirety of the human race. As a result, many smart and intelligent sages had devoted their effort towards the research and analysis of the chaotic runes.

Years of repetitive experiments and exploration had finally allowed an individual to become an adept by drawing upon the power of the new variant runes derived from the chaotic runes.

These new adepts had undoubtedly possessed a far weaker mastery of the planar laws compared to the ancient adepts. Still, this progress had substantially lowered the difficulty of advancing to adept.

Thus, generation after generation of accumulation, and the efforts of countless adepts had transformed the chaotic runes into the many new runes of the current system. This change over time significantly weakened the powers of the runes themselves and made the forces of the planar laws even more inaccessible. However, it allowed humans to cultivate a large batch of new adepts quickly.

As the planar laws slowly became more intricate and refined, fewer adepts were able to master the chaotic runes. On the other hand, the new adepts started to rise in numbers. Finally, the adepts became the dominant force in this world, and a brand new civilization was born!

All the runes that the adepts of today researched, studied, comprehended, and mastered were the new runes that had been created through the analysis of the chaotic runes. Those ancient runes that few could learn had now crumbled into the dust of history, never to be seen again.

Still, all elementium adepts knew the power of these chaotic runes. The adepts would be able to quickly and more efficiently sense and experience the power of the planar laws if they used chaotic runes. It would be hundreds, if not thousands of times more effective to use the chaotic runes instead of the new runes. Of course, this only held true if the adept’s abilities and knowledge had reached a certain threshold. Unfortunately, in the World of Adepts of the present, it was virtually impossible to get one’s hands on an ancient chaotic rune.

The large adept organizations might still preserve some chaotic runes in their knowledge treasuries, but they would never be so generous as to offer them to the public for research. Instead, they hid them deep within their organization, treating them with the utmost importance and secrecy. Only the high-grade and core adepts of their organization were allowed to research them.

Many powerful adepts had discussed these chaotic runes in their notes. The research and analysis of the chaotic runes were said to be extremely difficult and time-consuming. Even the same rune, when analyzed by two different adepts, could result in entirely different knowledge and experience for the researcher. Only the researcher themselves would be able to utilize the results they had discovered.

That meant that no one would be able to refer to the research results, let alone use them, even if someone had been generous enough to publicize them.

It was this unique situation of the chaotic runes that caused them to be undesirable to low-grade adepts.

However, if an adept were able to decipher even a portion of a chaotic rune, they would be able to merge that knowledge into their abilities and create completely different and unique spells.

Even though many adepts were creating new spells on a daily basis, spells containing the power of chaotic runes were always known for their strength and effectiveness. In fact, many adepts had even managed to form new adept paths and styles due to a single powerful spell they discovered!

Greem had been an adept for eleven years. However, he had only gathered a measly number of three hundred and twenty-seven magical runes. Every single one of them was a fundamental rune. The variant runes and rare runes found in the Knight’s Plane might not have undergone the countless evolutions and modifications of this world’s runes.

However, if Greem was able to decipher them completely, he might be able to figure out a portion of the planar law’s pattern.

The Chip organized and categorized these thirty-five variant runes and sixteen rare runes. The Chip split them into six major attributes– earth, fire, water, wind, light, and darkness. These attributes were then further divided and broken into branch attributes– acid, chaos, ice, shadow, death, lightning, evil, horror, flame, forcefield, language, radiance, soul, sound, and many more.

The Chip estimated an astounding completion time of sixty-seven years for the task of researching all of these runes. That means that Greem would have to focus on only these runes for sixty-seven years without doing anything else if he wanted to figure them out entirely. Moreover, he didn’t even know how useful they would be.

That was a heavy time investment. It would be a devastating blow to Greem if the deciphered runes could not be included and used in the improvement of his powers!

Greem only hesitated for a moment before choosing to prioritize the deciphering of the runes related to his affinity.

There were three runes related to fire. One was a variant rune, while two were rare runes.

Analyzing the variant rune required forty-one days while examining the rare runes needed seventy-eight and eighty-two days respectively. In fact, this was a considerably compressed timeframe that Greem was only capable of thanks to his fire affinity and the powerful tool that was the Chip. Any other adept would likely have needed several years or even decades to figure the runes out slowly.

Since he had nothing better to do in the tower, Greem put all of the Chip’s processing power towards the analysis of the variant fire rune.

He wanted to know if these runes he had risked his life for could actually help him!

Greem gave an order, and a strange rune made of pure fire immediately surfaced in the depths of his mind. The rune slowly started spinning. When Greem cast his mental consciousness into the rune, a peculiar and obscure feeling would rise in his soul.

Back on Earth, in his previous life, any word constructed with symbols could only carry meaning with it. However, here in this fantastical high-magic world, words had energy and power. They became much more valuable. Apart from being able to convey information through complex symbols, the runes could also reveal hidden details about the world through the distribution and changes of energy within them.

For example, there was the fire rune currently floating in Greem’s mind. Even though he had only formed squiggly lines in the shape of the otherworldly rune, he had somehow touched upon the fire laws of the world. The lines that formed the rune were now glowing with a golden radiance and caused all who looked at it to feel a strange warmth.

This feeling came from within the soul! It wasn’t an external feeling.

When Greem looked at this rune, a warm feeling would naturally rise in his heart. It wasn’t a magical effect applied to him from the outside.

This mysterious power enchanted him. His mental consciousness couldn’t help but sink into the feeling, silently experiencing and trying to understand the fluctuation of the fire aura within the rune.

While he was trying his best to feel the rune with his soul, the Chip emitted a brilliant blue light. The light shone upon the variant fire rune, conducting a detailed and comprehensive analysis while it recorded every single change happening within.

Just then, the tower’s defensive arrays sent a warning to him through a unique frequency.

An outsider had broken into the stone tower!