Age of Adepts

An agreement of mutual battle aid wasn’t the same as a contract of slavery and servitude.

The former only promised aid in ordinary battles, while the latter was a magical contract bound by the laws of the world itself.

The difference between the two was vast!

According to the pledge, Greem would have to pay Arms large sums of magical crystals and resources every time he summoned him to his aid. Moreover, as a higher dragon, Arms had the right to refuse to participate in battles that were too dangerous.

Of course, given his identity as a prisoner during the signing of the agreement, Arms very generously offered Greem a friendship price of only a hundred thousand magical crystals per summon!

That meant Greem would lose a hundred thousand magical crystals from his purse every time he summoned the Third Grade thunder dragon.

That wasn’t even expensive!

If one went out to listen around, being able to summon a thunder dragon that could defeat most Third Grade human adepts at the price of a hundred thousand magical crystals was a dirt cheap price to pay!

If Marquis Haines of the Vik Family could also summon a Third Grade thunder dragon at the price of a hundred thousand magical crystals, there was no doubt he would generously summon four or five such dragons and use their sheer barbaric force to raze Greem’s tower.

However, Haines had no such ability. As such, his family was hit with a catastrophic disaster. Only one other Second Grade vampire, Toril, had managed to return to the family, apart from Haines himself. The other eleven First Grade vampires had all fallen in Fire Cave.

It was almost a lethal blow to the Vik family!

In fact, it had even caused the Viks to fall from one of the top small-sized families to the bottom of the ranks. They had now become a sweet piece of fresh meat in the eyes of other adept clans.

Haines would have to pull back his defensive line if he wanted to protect the Vik Family. The family members stationed across the territories would have to be recalled back to Bloodcastle, and what remained of their power had to be consolidated. It was the only way to stop the enemies who had set their eyes upon the family.

However, in doing so, the five or six hundred years the Vik family had spent to obtain the land they currently had would have been for nothing.

Of course, it was also possible that the Viks had been secretly cultivating some taboo forces in the shadows. These means were very likely to be prematurely forced to the surface now.

Greem paid no heed to these matters from the safety of being underground.

He was using this rare period away from the public eye to boldly decide upon the future structure of the Crimson Clan.

The most rudimentary step was already present. The members of the Crimson Clan could be divided into core members, official members, and peripheral members.

Core members were played by those veteran adepts who had followed Greem for a long time and whose loyalty had been verified to some extent. As of now, this list only consisted of five people– Greem, Mary, Alice, Gargamel, and Meryl. Official members would include adepts that had signed individual contracts of service with the clan. For example, Billis, Zacha, Forest Spirit Eva, Deserra, Medusa Dana, Manticore Leader Charon, Brain Monster Gazlowe, and Tigule.

The peripheral members, on the other hand, were talented individuals who chose to serve the Crimson Clan in some aspects but didn’t fully belong to the clan itself. For instance, Poison Witch Endor, Goblin Snorlax, Alice’s subordinates Sofia and Snowlotus, Thunder Dragon Arms, Three-Headed Demonhound Unguja, etc.

All future adepts who came to join the Crimson Clan as it grew in influence would be classified as peripheral members. Only those with exceptional performance or those with verified loyalty could be promoted to become official members.

Naturally, since Greem went to great lengths to classify the clan members and sort out their respective roles, the resources and treatment that each received would differ accordingly.

That was something that Greem had accomplished by referring to the basic structure and commonly-used techniques employed by most adept clans. Finally, he had managed to create the rudimentary hierarchy for the Crimson Clan.

As the Crimson Clan didn’t have any clan assets to speak of yet, most adepts were busy with their training or magic research. There weren’t too many clan missions that could be assigned to them.

Moreover, the Goblin Plane they had just conquered had yet to be completely excavated. Thus, the only mission for the Crimson Clan at this point was to invest most of their adept resources into the Goblin Plane and strive to squeeze their first bucket of gold from the planar war.

Mary had just advanced to Second Grade. She badly needed to stay in Fire Throne to stabilize her Spirit. As such, Greem handed the defensive authority of the tower over to Mary and proceeded to travel to the Goblin Plane with most of the other adepts.

In all honesty, this the first time most of the adepts of the tower had heard of this lesser plane owned by the clan. That was why almost all of them were teleported to the Goblin Plane in a shocked and stunned state.

Their first impression of the Goblin Plane was terrible!

The relatively weaker Deserra was practically choking when he came out of the teleportation array. The ’powerful’ plane suppression and almost suffocating low-magic environment left him half-dead. In contrast, Dana and Charon were magical creatures and had excellent Physique. Their ability to adapt to the environment of another world was far superior to the human adepts.

Bug Adept Billis, who Greem had left here as a representative, had been stationed at the excavation site. He ’cooperated’ with brain monster Gazlowe to dig out the remains of the Capital of Steel.

The information Billis sent back showed that dozens of tons of metal products and components were being dug out of the thousand meter pit on a daily basis. So far, two of the smaller warehouses of the Capital of Steel have been excavated, and plenty of rare ores and resources had been retrieved.

These were all being transported out of the pit. At the moment, they badly needed manpower to sort and organize these resources and turn them into supplies that the clan required.

Greem thought for a moment and decided to leave this tedious work to Deserra and Dana.

Both of them hadn’t participated in the plane war; they had no contributions. Thus, they could only replace that with hard work. That was the only way that they would be qualified for a share of the Goblin Plane’s resources and benefits in the future.

Apart from the excavation site, Greem had also left Adept Meryl behind on the Goblin Plane with a task of her own.

With Snorlax and Tigule’s help over the past month, Meryl had practically scoured the entire Goblin Plane. She did a rough count of all the resources, materials, and wealth in the Goblin Plane, sorting them by their categories– plants, animals, ores, and many more.

Amongst them, over three thousand and seven hundred types of the precious ore resources had been counted, with two hundred and fifty thousand different types of flora, a hundred an ten thousand types of fauna, fifty-eight types of edible crops, over one thousand and two hundred of various fruits…

The Goblin Empire had never undertaken a massive plane resource census of this scale.

Meryl had no choice but to have the goblin governors of each massive province report the situation of the resources in their territories. Meryl then filtered through the information and presented to Greem this list of resources.

Even Greem and his Chip, with its rapid scans, took seven days to record this massive list of resources that took up an entire room.

Greem then performed a comparison of the resources of the Goblin Plane and the World of Adepts with his remaining time, picking those resources with the highest price difference.

Most of the ores and living beings in the Goblin Plane had no elementium traits due to the Plane’s nature as a low-magic world. However, the unique environment also gave birth to some novel products.

The metals refined in the Goblin Plane were often much tougher and harder than those in the World of Adepts. Moreover, they had some unique physical traits of their own. It was certain that these metals would sell for a decent price in the World of Adepts.

Moreover, the goblin alchemists were exceptionally adept at balancing the various physical traits of the different metals, forging them into unique alloys. These were resources that the World of Adepts sorely lacked, and their prices on the market were very attractive.

The cost of teleporting between the planes was still as high as before. Exporting basic resources was still an impractical business. However, there was revenue to be sought in the sale of such rare resources. In fact, there were plenty of benefits to be gained.

Thus, Greem made up his mind and gathered together all the adepts. He had them find the most precious and most valuable items out of this vast list of resources.

Once the resources were selected, he needed to send adepts to investigate the place of origin of these resources with the goblins as guides. They would then have to ascertain the reserves of these resources and the possibility of increasing the scale of planting or excavating them.

Those that were too rare or too difficult to cultivate were scratched off, leaving only those that were easily grown or planted. When it was necessary, the adepts would even use magical means to find out new ways to cultivate these resources on a larger scale.

This tremendous amount of work made every adept of the Crimson Clan extremely busy.

Still, everyone worked with vigor and all they had, attracted by the bright and brilliant future before them.

In all honesty, one would be able to obtain ten times and even a hundred times the return as long as they were willing to put in the effort!

By the time good news came from the excavation site, the resource census of the adepts had concluded. An initial list of twenty-five valuable metals, seventeen precious plants, and one hundred and three rare resources not found in the World of Adepts had been drawn up.

The goblin royalty sent out experts to various areas under Greem’s insistence. They were to discuss the large-scale cultivation and excavation of these resources with the goblin governors and merchant leaders throughout the continent.

Greem had sent clan adepts to almost every single goblin province to prevent the goblins from slacking off on their job. The adepts were to monitor the follow-up performance of the goblins.

Greem hastily rushed to the excavation site after handing all the work to his subordinates.

There had finally been news of the planar door that Greem had been expecting!