Age of Adepts

”You don’t need to call for help from the dragonborn!”

A young man’s voice rang out from outside the cave.

”We have already dealt with the remnants of your dragonborn guards during the time you were out. Even if you broke your throat shouting, no one would come to your help.”

The man’s voice was crisp, clear, and firm. Anyone could tell this was an extremely confident person based on his voice alone.

Wind Dragon Cherkes’ massive body continuously shifted about as he tried to best move into a position to deal with the enemies on both sides.

The enemy hiding within the pile of gold coins and jewels had shown herself as well. She beat her bat wings and slowly hovered into the air above the dragon’s lair. She looked like a beautiful female girl. However, Cherkes could tell based on the strange aura casually radiating out of her body that this was a vampire, and a Second Grade vampire to boot!

Heavy footsteps rang out at the entrance to the lair behind him.

One fat and one skinny, one tall and one short. Two mysterious enemies with completely different statures walked into the lair.

The one in front looked to be half-human and half-dragon. He wore blue metal armor on the upper body, while his lower dragonborn body was covered in blue scales. The dragonborn also held an electric spear flashing with blue lightning in his thick humanoid arm.

Dammit, it’s a Second Grade dragonborn!

Walking behind the dragonborn was a mysterious human cloaked in black robes.

Even though much of his body was obscured by the black robes, the hand that gripped the strange stuff still betrayed his identity.

Cherkes smelled the powerful, evil, and chaotic stench of the adepts on him!

The one who had been speaking was also this human male adept.

Wind Dragon Cherkes immediately connected all the dots of the past few days without needing much thought.

”Adepts, you have overstepped your boundaries!” Cherkes slowly turned his body toward the black-robed man and the dragonborn. These two were more of a threat, ”Here is the kingdom of dragons. According to the peace treaty signed by your Great Adepts and our Lord Dragon God, neither of us are to invade the origin plane of the other party. You are overstepping boundaries!”

The black-robed Greem chuckled.

He knew of this ’peace treaty’ that the wind dragon spoke of. The fact that the wind dragon was talking about it right now was even more proof that he was only putting up a tough front.

”Overstepping? Lord Cherkes, I suggest you take a good look at that peace treaty! We agreed to not casually invade each other’s origin plane. But can Lance be considered to be the origin plane of your dragons? According to what I know, this was a plane originally ruled by trolls. You dragons are, at the very best, outsiders, much like we are. Two outsiders fighting over contentious territory cannot be considered an infringement of that peace treaty. So…

”You had best just surrender!”

The battle immediately broke out as Greem’s voice suddenly rose.

Dragonborn Zacha, the meat shield of the group, didn’t like to waste words. He said nothing and lunged at the wind dragon with his electric spear after receiving Greem’s orders.

As a servant of the dragons, Zacha’s status was a world apart from the wind dragon, even if he was of the same Grade. However, he was a servant that had formerly belonged to Thunder Dragon Arms. He had no affiliation with this wind dragon. As such, Zacha didn’t intend to hold back when he attacked.

As Zacha charged at the wind dragon with heavy steps, Mary also let out a crisp battle cry. She folded her wings and turned into a red beam of light, lunging at the dragon from behind.

Greem, on the other hand, didn’t advance. He even took a few steps backward, secured the exit of the lair, and started loudly chanting a mysterious spell.

This battle was the first cooperation between the three Second Grade adepts of the Crimson Clan. Whether they could successfully suppress this Second Grade dragon would depend on whether they had synergy.

In the past, Greem’s favorite move in a fight was just to toss his magma fireballs. They were powerful and could also create vast fields of fire. However, now that he was cooperating with other people, he could no longer use area-of-effect spells like these as haphazardly as he used to.

After all, the fire spells that could affect the wind dragons could affect the performance of Zacha and Mary just as easily. For the first time, Greem treated himself as an orthodox spellcaster and conscientiously stood away from the battlefield and acted as the cannon that he was meant to be.

The wind dragon let out a short hiss when faced with the attacks from the front and behind. He reared his body and slashed at Dragonborn Zacha with his mighty claws. At the same time, he flicked with his body as his eight-meter-long tail lashed at Mary. Wicked winds cut through the air.

A sky blue wind blade was rapidly concentrating in his wide-open throat. Cherkes was only waiting for Zacha to be fazed by his strikes before blasting the wind blade at him to disrupt any further attacks.

In all seriousness, the large size of the dragons gave them a unique advantage in battle and made them an immense threat.

Cherkes and Zacha were both Second Grade. Their Strength shouldn’t be that much different. However, the additional Strength from his size allowed him to beat Zacha in a battle of might.

The sharp dragon claws clashed with the electric spear. The charging Zacha was slapped and thrown into the stone wall nearby like a chariot sent out of control.

A dull thud shook the heavens.

Zacha’s entire person was embedded into the stone wall. The ferocious strength in that strike had caused even the lair to tremble slightly.

The wind dragon took full use of this opportunity. He opened his mouth wide and prepared to use the Wind Blade he had been brewing to break through Zacha’s protective scales. All of a sudden, he felt an intense pain on his back. The wind blade turned into a blast of white light and hit the stone wall beside Zacha, missing the dragonborn by millimeters.

A strange tearing sound rang in the air, and a deep, one-meter long scratch mark appeared beside the human-shaped crater where Zacha was.

The wind dragon turned back furiously and caught sight of a sneakily escaping red silhouette with his olive eyes.

A sky blue vortex immediately wrapped around the wind dragon and made him as fast as the wind.

Cherkes performed a lightning-quick lunge and bit wickedly at Mary with his vicious fangs. The vampire had succeeded in her sneak attack.

Mary’s agility had greatly increased since she had advanced. She was actually teasing the wind dragon within his lair with every beat of her wings. She dodged left and right, avoiding the ferocious bite of the dragon by mere inches every single time.

One big and one small; the two fast silhouettes chased after each other within the narrow space. They dodged each other’s attack while regularly retaliating. The two outlines, one red and one white, had exceeded the limits of Greem’s vision when they reached their top speed.

Dragonborn Zacha broke free of the stone wall after some extraneous effort. He spat out a mouthful of purple blood and could move like usual once more. He roared and charged forward again with his electric spear raised high.

Just then, Greem’s channeling of his fire spell that had lasted for thirty-seven seconds finally came to an end. Greem tried his best to capture the silhouette of the wind dragon, eyes flashing as he did so, all while he carefully maintained the strongest fire spell currently held in his hands.

Meteor Swarm!

It was a powerful fire spell that he had derived from the Fire Core Explosion and the Meteor Shower upon advancing to Second Grade.

It was the unchallenged champion of all of Greem’s spell when it came to pure power.

It was a single-target spell, and its power reached a shocking three hundred and forty points after all that channeling. It was already the most powerful attack that Greem could muster!

After a deathly pursuit, the wind dragon finally caught up to Mary with his superior speed.

The wind dragon let out a powerful wind breath. Mary couldn’t escape the area-of-effect before the wind breath reached her and was instantly blasted away by the tens of thousands of vortex blades.

Greem’s face turned grim when he saw Mary scream and become pressed against the wall by the wind breath that was now cutting up her body. He stepped forward, and the blindingly scarlet Meteor Swarm finally shot out.

At this moment, it wasn’t a Magma Fireball that shot out of Greem’s hand. It was a miniature rain of meteors.

The intense heat waves roasted the air and the earth around them, distorting the air and making everything seem odd and surreal. Greem completed the last chant of the spell; the meteors he held in his hand cut across the wide space within the belly of the mountain and hit the wind dragon before anyone could react.

The next second, a sun exploded beside the wind dragon!

The explosion’s shockwaves ravaged the entire lair. The mountainous pile of gold coins and jewels were thrown into the air, as if they had been met with a ninth level hurricane, before rapidly melting in the hot flame streams.

The flame streams were also destroying the rough stone walls around the dragon’s lair, and all the metal armor and swords that were hidden within the pile of treasure melted like wax.

The wind dragon had been hit from the side by the Meteor Swarm. The wind barrier that protected his body popped like a bubble in less than a single second. The heat pierced through his scales and magical resistance, instantly boiling the blood beneath his chest and vaporizing his muscles.

A massive scar appeared there, and a short moment later, the flesh beneath the injury exploded with a resounding boom. Large scales flew everywhere as a thick fountain of blood poured to the ground.

The wind dragon reared its head and let out an agonizing roar before powerlessly collapsing to the ground.

Even a defeated dragon should not be underestimated.

Dragonborn Zacha worked together with Mary, who had now broken free of the wind breath. Both of them together had to fight the dying wind dragon for almost another forty rounds before finally suppressing him.

By the time Greem casually walked into the battlefield with both hands behind his back, Zacha and Mary were already covered in blood and wounds.

That battle had once again verified the popular rumor of the multiverse.

Apart from the Titans, the starbeasts, and the rare few species of war, the dragons were truly undefeatable among those of the same grade!

If it weren’t for Zacha’s fearless tanking of the wind dragon’s attacks, Greem and Mary alone would have a hard time restricting Cherkes. If it weren’t for Mary drawing part of the firepower, Zacha would have had a hard time surviving at the hands of the wind dragon in a direct melee.

Then, the most crucial blow had been fired by Greem.

Without Greem, Zacha and Mary would have only been able to occupy the wind dragon and would have had no means to defeat it.

In the end, all three of them had been needed to capture the wind dragon.

Losing any one of them would have made it virtually impossible to defeat the wind dragon lord here today.

Even so, Greem still had his questions.

”Strange… so strange. Why does this wind dragon seem so weak?”