Age of Adepts

Snorlax’s mood today was despondent.

After sixty-seven years of never seeing each other, his master had finally called upon him once more.

Their meeting was just as passionate as ever, but Snorlax suddenly became depressed and dejected upon returning to his goblin shop.

He took a look around his shop and looked at the apprentice worker respectfully bowing before him. He looked at the three adepts who were already waiting in the shop. Snorlax suddenly lost all his past feelings of glory and glee.

Snorlax sent his guests away after some small talk. He then returned to his secret room behind the shop, lied down upon that favorite massive deckchair of his, and silently stared at the ceiling.

Master was still master! Even after sixty odd years, master looked the same as before. It was almost as if the passage of time had not left any traces upon his body.

Yet I…

Snorlax sat up all of a sudden. He ran to a mercury mirror placed in the corner of the room and seriously assessed his own looks.

His rough green skin hung loosely upon his frame. His once bright green skin had now turned dark and dull. His ugly mug was just as disgusting as before, but one could now vaguely see the signs of aging and debilitation on him.

Green goblins were too hideous. That was why the humans around them would never look at them in such detail. Even those staying adepts who wanted to make requests of Snorlax harbored disdain and disgust in their hearts, even as they put smiles on their faces.

In their eyes, all goblins were the equivalent of words such as fools, slaves, and experimental subjects. For them, goblins didn’t deserve to be called intelligent life. If it weren’t to more quickly obtain the adept-level golems that the shop occasionally put on sale, these prideful adepts would not even be willing to get close to Snorlax, not to mention flattering him and asking him for favors.

The Goblin Snorlax of the past had very much enjoyed being of equal standing with these adepts. He always loved to narrow his eyes, prop up his leg, and listen to the other person’s forced and dry flatterings while maintaining a poker face.

For some reason, today, Snorlax had suddenly lost interest in all this!

He leaned against that mercury mirror that perfectly reflected his appearance and looked carefully all over. In the end, he had no choice but to admit that he had indeed aged.

As a lowly goblin, his lifespan was far shorter than a human’s. At the very best, it was no more than sixty to eighty years. In the cruel environment of the natural world, most goblins would be considered long-lived if they could survive to thirty years of age!

Most goblin tribes could not care for elderly goblins that had lost their ability to fight. That was why all goblins were not far away from being abandoned once they stepped into the middle ages of their thirties!

Snorlax’s excessively fulfilling life had almost made him forget that he was a goblin himself. However, after seeing his master today and witnessing that unchanging appearance of his, Snorlax was once again made aware of that fact.

He was a different kind of goblin that had been modified with magic by an adept. Judging only from the level of lifeform, he was undoubtedly within the range of a First Grade magical creature. That would cause his lifespan to double. However, the lifespan of a goblin was just far too short. Even after it had increased, his lifespan was still no more than a hundred and forty or a hundred and fifty years.

Yet he…

To be brutally honest, half of his life had gone past in a single session of seclusion undertaken by his master. He would be one of those that was bordering on the edge of abandonment if he were in a goblin tribe.

This trace of sorrow and fear that emerged from nowhere caused Snorlax to wander around his room in frustration.

This was the high and mighty World of Adepts!

This was the World of Adepts where nothing was impossible!

Could a great goblin merchant like himself not find ways and methods to extend his own life?

After frantically flipping through countless magical books and questioning the few apprentices under his service, Snorlax was pained to discover that extending lifespans was an incredibly extravagant and expensive act, even in the World of Adepts.

The more popular lifespan extension ceremonies among adepts could be divided into three different tiers: elementary, intermediate, and advanced. The elementary tier could extend lifespans by fifty years, the intermediate tier by three hundred, and the advanced tier by a thousand years. The price was fit to the wondrous effects of the ceremony. It was enough to make someone agonize and hope that they could rob an adept’s tower.

Apart from the price, the lifespan extension ceremony also required plenty of rare resources. Most of these resources were already hard to find in the World of Adepts. Just the cost of gathering these resources would be yet another astronomical sum. Even if one was somehow lucky enough to gather all the ingredients, they would have to hire a high-grade adept to host the ceremony. That, again, was a massive number that an ordinary adept didn’t even dare to imagine.

That was why, according to Snorlax’s understanding, those elementary-tier ceremonies required seven to eight hundred thousand magical crystals. An intermediate ceremony would need five million crystals. As for an advanced ceremony? They were priceless.

Snorlax had accumulated private funds while toiling and working for his master Greem. He had an approximate of a hundred and fifty or sixty thousand magical crystals.

In the past, he was easily proud and boastful about his diligence and ability to make money. Now, Snorlax suddenly lost all his motivation to try hard when comparing the prices to his wealth. He felt that everything before him was like a bubble, and a single touch would make it vanish into nothingness.

No one would quickly think of death while they were young.

Snorlax had felt as if he could no longer be separated from glory and wealth after experiencing it for himself.

He had patrolled his goblin shop, enjoy the flattering respect of the apprentices and listened to the nice pleasantries of the adepts. Those days were impossibly happy.

But now…

Snorlax had a suffocating feeling, as if he was slowly walking towards death, one step at a time.

I must become someone useful to master!

Snorlax swore to himself furiously.

That night, Snorlax once again contacted the Goblin Grand Duke Gazlowe located in his faraway plane. Then he once again transported a large batch of magical ores to the goblin plane in a trade.

Of course, he had mixed a single inconspicuous and tiny silver ore into this pile of ore. All the other magical minerals had covered its little silver glow.

The goblins couldn’t possibly sense its weak energy signature mixed in with the dense energy aura emanating from all the other stones either, especially with their pathetic magical senses.

The bait had been cast; all that was left was to wait.

…………

Greem didn’t think Snorlax’s fervent and passionate proposal strange at all.

He might be a goblin, just like Gazlowe of the other plane, and share the same race as each other. However, they had no ties of blood or family. That was why no feelings of psychological guilt would arise from betraying his kind.

Not to mention, the goblins had selfish and uncaring personalities. Greem actually felt more surprised that Snorlax had only committed to his actions after such an extended period of thought.

Regardless of what Snorlax’s actual motivations were, the batch of contaminated ’gifts’ was what concerned Greem. Greem had readily agreed to the longevity that Snorlax dreamed and fantasized about.

What hurry did they need to be in? Snorlax had at least seventy to eighty years to live. They could consider the matter after the Goblin’s Plane had fallen into his pocket. Lifespan extension ceremony? Too expensive. A simple ceremony would require rare items like dragon bones, Dragondrool Grass, and even the egg of a nine-headed serpent. Even Greem didn’t have absolute confidence in obtaining these items.

That was why it wasn’t that bad of an option to instead turn Snorlax into a spirit or a voodoo beast when he was about to die. He could extend his lifespan that way. Of course, it could also work if Greem had Mary Embrace Snorlax and turn him into a vampire goblin. However, goblin blood was pungent stuff. It might be a problem of whether Mary was willing to bite into Snorlax.

Greem casually strolled into a secret room after dealing with all the various matters at hand.

The room was empty. Only a single complicated and profound array was carved in the center of the room.

When Greem stood in the array, the tower immediately redirected a significant amount of energy and poured it into the formation. A massive array enveloped the entire room as numerous magical runes and lines silently appeared.

The room instantly became pitch-black.

…………

At the same time, inside the Tower of Fate nestled in the Northern Lands far away.

Dark and lightless mist seeped out of the astrology platform at the top of the tower. The fog devoured the entire space rapidly.

An attractive figure stood silently in the darkness, gazing at the sky full of twinkling stars.

The river of stars shone brightly as the countless suns flashed.

Alice’s slim figure appeared to be lonely, even in this breathtaking sea of stars. It was sorrowful and desolate, and her face was wet from tears.

A tall figure embraced her from behind and gently wiped away the two streaks of tears that had just started falling down her cheeks.

”What are you sad about again? If you miss Endor, you can teleport over to Fire Throne! Don’t always hide here and cry alone.” It was Greem’s voice that sounded out from the tall figure. However, this figure clearly wasn’t his actual body. Instead, it was a strange spell that projected his consciousness.

Alice squeezed backward slightly and allowed ’Greem’ to embrace her tightly. Still, she didn’t speak.

Over all these past years, she had always been Alice– the cold, calm, future-seeing Witch of Fate to outsiders, wrapped in a veil of mystery! However, only she knew the truth. Every time she stood upon this astrology platform, she could sense the rumbling and endless torrent of fate.

From an outsider’s perspective, the Witch of Fate was a mighty existence that manipulated the river of fate. Even she had once gotten lost in that mysterious and unpredictable power of fate when she first came into contact with it.

However, the longer she bathed in the river of fate, the more she felt her powerlessness and frailty. Every probing into the stream of fate wasn’t just an adventure. It was an adventure made with no preparations.

The river of fate wasn’t something that was unchanging.

In this impossibly vast World of Adepts, there were plenty of powerful individuals who could extend their reach into the river of fate. Their existences were disasters for Alice!

These people relied on their strength to recklessly stir violent torrent after torrent in the river of fate. They cut off the river of fate as they liked and redirected it in the direction they wished for it to go.

Alive could sense the angered roar and lamentations of the river of fate, even with who knew how many tens of thousands of billions of kilometers between her and the river of fate.