Age of Adepts

Greem fell into the busiest period of his life over the following days.

The Spirit that had withered from tempering required long periods of meditation to recover.

His mental space required nurturing from the continuous quakes.

The Chip might have thoroughly analyzed the variant fire elementium rune, but he still needed to continue experimenting to turn the rune into part of his strength.

The large numbers of Second Grade elementium cores also had to be assessed and have data models constructed on them.

The strange changes happening to Billis also needed to be recorded and processed.

The order of the Fire Throne’s rule was in need of further specification.

He couldn’t ignore the training of the tower apprentices either.

……

The always lonesome Greem had never thought it would be this troublesome to manage a fully functional faction. He had never expected the internal affairs to be so numerous and annoying. If it weren’t for Meryl and Gargamel, then he alone would never have been able to get Fire Throne functioning properly.

It was only now that he truly understood why so many high-grade adepts would rather stay within their clans than come out and establish a new organization of their own.

It was this difficult and torturous to establish a new organization!

The number of adepts in the adept’s tower was not sufficient. That was why even Greem had to start taking on classes for advanced spell techniques under Meryl’s strong insistence. Fortunately, he only needed to teach classes four days a month. Otherwise, Greem wouldn’t have been able to resist the urge to chase the apprentices away.

He was like a wound-up top, never having a moment’s rest. He weaved between different magical labs all day long, conducting seven or eight magical experiments simultaneously. Even during the occasional instance where he had free time, he also needed to make preparations for the magical golem crafting process that was about to begin.

The only time he might have been able to relax during a day was when he had utterly exhausted his Spirit and closed his eyes to meditate.

According to the Chip’s calculations, his mental space hadn’t settled down since he had started tempering his Spirit. It was in a perpetual riot. However, in exchange, his meditation efficiency had increased by a large margin as compared to before. It was clear evidence that the Spirit tempering process he had tailored to his needs honestly had the effect of improving his innate potential.

The Goblin Snorlax had also successfully transferred his goblin shop into Fire Throne. He was now the largest arcane merchant within the tower. The goblin machinery he sold had become fresh new products that the apprentices were willing to try out. That was because they were cheap, easy to use, and had strange new effects that were not often seen in regular spells.

If you wanted to bait a foolish ogre into an ambush from a distance, the Mechanical Chicken was a decent choice. The apprentices often didn’t have enough magic power, and an Alchemical Bomb allowed them to retain offensive strength even when they ran out of magic. When the party was escaping from a terrifying magical creature, Rocket Boots might be able to save your life. When prey hid in a dark cave and refused to come out, an Explosive Chicken might be able to change its mind.

These mechanical creations from another world always have all sorts of problems. For example, the mechanical chickens could have faulty settings and lead the ogre to its user. Maybe only two alchemical bombs out of three that were thrown would explode, or the rocket boots would throw you into the embrace of a massive tree trunk. But still, it didn’t matter how you put it; when you had an additional option, life would always have a bit more surprise and shock to it!

Greem also took the opportunity of his golems’ fame and started trying putting up golems for sale in Snorlax’s goblin shop.

The first batch of golems was almost all at the pseudo-adept level. There were golems of practically every attribute: earth, fire, water, and wind. There were only ten of them, and he set each of their prices at a stunning eleven-hundred magical crystals.

Based on Greem’s analysis beforehand, this price should be slightly too high.

After all, an ordinary apprentice adept only got paid around twenty to thirty magical crystals for every mission they completed. Even those dangerous missions often didn’t reward more than a hundred magical crystals. On the other hand, adepts would not think anything of pseudo-adept level golems. Adepts wouldn’t buy them, and apprentices couldn’t afford them. That was why Greem expected sales to be a problematic issue.

However, Greem still underestimated the passion of apprentices towards the strengthening of their abilities.

If those advanced apprentices could bring a pseudo-adept level helper along with them when they went on errands, they would be able to go unchallenged as long as they didn’t run into real adepts or the skilled individuals among the pseudo-adepts.

That was like a blessing from heaven for mediocre advanced apprentices.

An apprentice alone might not be able to afford a golem, but two to three apprentices taking out all of their money could put together the ’unimaginable’ sum of eleven-hundred magical crystals.

Thus, many apprentice parties that hunted in the Black Forest started using magic golems in their fights. The favorites of the apprentices among all the elementium golems were undoubtedly the stone golems and the stone serpents. With these monsters in their team, those tough and ferocious beasts and magical creatures could no longer disperse their formation.

Many elaborate plans and strategies could be executed to their fullest extent with such powerful meat shields!

Those magical creatures that needed to be delayed by tanks with their lives could now easily be taken on by a single stone golem. The casualty rates in the parties fell tremendously and the downtime where new recruits were hired also shortened drastically. Party members were almost always a fixed roster and their synergy improved at an exponential rate.

Moreover, carrying the heavy prey back to the tower after each victory was no longer a problem.

Given the elementium golem’s convenience and power, many apprentice parties even specially designed strategies around them. They would shape the party’s strength with the golem at its center and form a unique and different combat party.

The elementium golems of the goblin shop quickly fell into short supply as more and more parties obtained perfect victories and came home with plenty of spoils.

According to the feedback of apprentices after multiple uses, Greem discovered that the most popular golems of all were the earth golems and the water golems. One of them was beefy and could take on magical creatures in a melee. The other had spells that could slow down the enemy. Both of them were elementium golems that were favored by the apprentice parties.

In comparison, the fire, wind, poison golems and those of other attributes were not liked by the apprentices. In fact, some of them even actively disliked these golems. The reason for this was because the damage these golems dealt the prey was too severe, despite being extremely powerful.

That would significantly reduce the spoils of war for the apprentices and reduce their magical crystal income!

Consequently, after taking in the lessons learned from the first batch of golems, the second batch of golems that Greem put on sale in the goblin shop had been changed to only earth and water attributes. Of course, for the fun of it, Greem intentionally added in an adept-level earth golem to the mix– The Roaring Monster!

An adept-level golem!

And even an earth-attribute brute that the apprentice parties liked the most!

It immediately caused an insane fight for the golem between the apprentices of Fire Throne!

The price of three thousand magical crystals might intimidate most apprentice adepts, but it couldn’t stop the mad passion of the pseudo-adepts.

The opportunistic goblin Snorlax decided to hold a small auction in the goblin shop and allowed the pseudo-adepts to bid for the Roaring Monster. After a heated round of bidding, the veteran pseudo-adept Sabrina finally managed to obtain the Roaring Monster at the price of five thousand, two hundred magical crystals.

That night, Sabrina publicly challenged the other six pseudo-adepts in the tower to test the might of this Roaring Monster.

Sabrina and the Roaring Monster would take on all six of them!

It was an adept level golem. Could Sabrina successfully control it with just her pseudo-adept level of Spirit?

The six pseudo-adepts gladly agreed to the challenge with doubts and questions in their minds. A ’friendly contest’ began in the Magma Hall in front of the adept’s tower.

The results were entirely beyond everyone’s expectations. The combination of Sabrina and the Roaring Monster crushed the united efforts of the six pseudo-adepts with absolute ease. The Roaring Monster that stomped around with heavy footsteps and possessed Trembling Earth, Stone Toss, and Rock Armor had dominated the battlefield.

In truth, the Roaring Monster alone brought a Second Class Quake along with it everywhere it went thanks to its massive stone body. Ordinary apprentices couldn’t even stand on their feet when it was around, not to mention fighting it. Moreover, its enormous stone fists and Stone Toss crushed all apprentice level defensive spells.

Even the pseudo-adept who was known for his earth-attribute defenses coughed up blood continuously after being blown away by a single strike from the Roaring Monster. The other apprentices were even frailer and didn’t even dare be brushed by the Roaring Monster’s fists.

However, against such a barbaric opponent, would it work to stand further away and attack with spells?

The Roaring Monster would immediately concentrate a massive amount of earth elementium between its palms and launch long-range tossing attacks from a distance.

Anyone would lose all intent to chant and cast spells if they saw a rock larger than a carriage hurtling towards them. They would run away with all their might while screaming and shrieking.

All Sabrina had to do was have the Roaring Monster casually make one round through the six adepts. She managed to force the pseudo-adepts to throw their arms up and surrender.

It was an absolute beatdown of a battle!

The six pseudo-adept gathered together and settled after the battle.

Unless they could use some method to restrict the barbaric charges of the Roaring Monster, they would not be able to free their hands up and focus their firepower on this giant brute. The Roaring Monster’s thick stone body and continuously regenerating stone armor was not something that could be destroyed with just two to three spells.

This strength indirectly demonstrated the absolute dominance of adept-level golems over apprentice adepts.

Gargamel also started promoting internal contribution points within the Fire Throne in coordination with the golem frenzy that Greem had started. As long as the apprentices completed missions put out by the tower, they would be able to obtain corresponding contribution points apart from the ordinary magical crystal reward.

They could then use these contribution points to enter the internal book storage within the tower or purchase specialties of Fire Throne, such as custom-made golems, high-grade potions, or the private tutorship of an adept.

Greem and Gargamel once again spread the name of Fire Throne throughout the nearby lands through such means.

Thus, as time passed, Fire Throne’s elementium golems became a renowned signature of the central area of the entire continent.