Age of Adepts

The conversation with Oliven was pleasant and relaxed.

Both parties had no conflict of interest. They had both come to Lance in hopes of gaining something out of it. They were all looking to obtain as much as they could from the dragons.

The planar wars in the past were all-in situations. The conflicts revolved around the ruling position of the plane and the winner would take all. However, Lance was different. If all the dragon lords came together, they would have enough power to crush Greem’s tiny faction a hundred times over.

Force wasn’t a solution. A softer, more peaceful plan had to be put into action.

A firmly established base for logistics would first be constructed with the Stonetalon Mountains as the center of it all. They would then slowly project their power outward. First, they would deal with the Second Grade dragons. One by one, they would take care of these ’shut-in’ dragons that kept to themselves.

However, the strength of the dragons wasn’t uniform. It was still difficult to assure the capture of all the dragons, even if Greem’s faction had three Second Grades. That was why it was good to have Oliven join them. She was the bane of the dragons and could achieve a tremendous effect at crucial moments.

However, she was a far too conspicuous dragon-slaying blade. If news of her got out to the dragons, Greem would be implicated. Thus, how to best use Oliven became the greatest test of Greem’s combat intelligence.

Oliven wanted nothing of all the spoils. She only wanted a complete dragon. She wouldn’t change her mind even after Greem promised her hundreds of thousands of magical crystals. That gave him an immense headache!

It was true that they would be able to obtain a literal hill of wealth every time they conquered a dragon’s lair. However, if one were to count the numbers seriously, they would find that a dragon’s wealth wasn’t as exaggerated as the legends.

At their current power level, Greem and his party were only able to beat those young dragons that had barely come of age. These dragons were either busy sleeping at home to grow their bodies or indulging in their lives as lords.

There wasn’t much wealth to go around for these dragons. The native tribes in their territories all led primal and uncivilized lives. They offered plenty of black jerkies and foodstuffs, but very few gold coins or magic gemstones to speak of. What could they hope to get from robbing these poor fools?

If they didn’t rob these natives, then the only way to obtain wealth would be to go robbing in other small-sized planes.

Such a plan of action carried far too much risk.

If their path of retreat were cut off, then it would no longer be a matter of them being the robbers. Instead, they would turn into kind messengers delivering dragon goods to foreign planes! Third Grade Thunder Dragon Arms had taken great care to choose the immensely weak Goblin Plane, yet even he almost lost his life there. Second Grade dragons like them would only face more danger if they invaded other planes.

Of course, it was not as if they had no means of making money.

Much like the humans and their societies, the dragons also had their own social circles.

If a prominent figure of the dragons set their sights upon a wealthy and resource-laden plane, they would often summon a couple of lackeys from among their social circles. When this happened, those younger and weaker dragons that had neither the strength nor courage to go invading on their own would rise to the call and place themselves under the command of the more powerful dragons.

That was how it was. A Fourth Grade dragon would go out to deal with the plane’s powerhouses, while the Second and Third Grade dragons would go about pillaging. They would only need to hand over half of all their spoils to the Fourth Grade dragon, and the rest would be enough to keep them happy for a while.

Why was it that the dragons didn’t just conquer the plane and take all the resources if they had that kind of power? Oliven immediately rebutted this question of Greem’s the moment it left his mouth. She spoke with contempt.

The dragons only liked gold coins, jewels, and all manner of valuable treasure that shone brightly. However, they didn’t like management and construction. If they ran into something you enjoyed, they just took it for themselves. Why go through the trouble to help those foolish native ants develop and create a system for it all?

Why not just hug their wealth and sleep upon the mountainous pile of gold coins if they had that kind of time? That way, their powers could continue growing as they slept. By the time they woke up, the resources in the plane would have recovered again, just in time for them to go robbing once more.

Even Greem couldn’t help but shake his head in exasperation when he thought about things that way.

In all seriousness, this lazy and rough shepherding style of the dragons indeed suited them best. Other races would not be able to imitate them even if they wanted to.

Naturally, Greem had no intention of holding back with the wind dragon. He moved everything out of his lair.

Gazlowe also sent an organized inventory to Greem while he was talking with Oliven.

There were1,307,633 gold coins of various mint, 428 magic gemstones, 129,000 magical crystals, 350,000 magical stones, 37 magical longswords, 142 enchanted armors, 11 otherworldly staffs and wands, 115 magical beast crystal cores, 54 elementary magic scrolls (First Grade), 14 intermediate magic scrolls (Second Grade), 2 advanced magic scrolls (Third Grade), 21 magic tomes, and 1 otherworldly knowledge crystal.

Gazlowe performed a rough calculation. If these treasure were properly processed, they could, at the very least, bring about a direct profit of approximately 650,000 magical crystals to Greem and the Crimson Clan.

There were even items among the treasure that really attracted Greem.

Most of those fourteen intermediate magic scrolls were ordinary spells like Explosive Fireball, Waterfall Tornado, or Vampiric Touch. They weren’t all too useful for Greem. However, there were still some scrolls that were useful to him.

Dimensional Anchor. An intermediate magic scroll, its origin unknown. When cast on a spellcaster, it could prevent them from casting any teleportation spells for twenty-five seconds.

Of course, the spell could also interrupt any teleportation gates or portals that had already been successfully conjured.

Mirror Image. Intermediate magic scroll. Able to create three to five mirror images of the caster within thirty meters of the caster to confuse the enemy.

This magic belonged to water-attribute magic in the adept system. Adepts with fire mastery like Greem could never cast it under ordinary circumstances. Thus, it was a good idea to bring one with him at all times.

The ones that were the most useful to Greem were the two advanced magic scrolls– Plane Shift and Finger of Death.

If one were to go by the levels in which magic power was divided, these two scrolls possessed the might of Third Grade spells.

Plane Shift would teleport the owner of the scroll to a random plane world. The chance of reaching a material plane was only 13%. It was more likely that the user would be teleported to the fearsome lower realms. After all, all material planes declined otherworldly visitors. Only the lower realms took them as they came. In fact, they gladly welcomed those of the material planes to come down to their filthy world to die.

On the other hand, Finger of Death could be classified as death magic. It could directly apply a shattering effect to the target being’s soul. The intensity of the spell was approximately around three hundred and twenty points and ignored all physical defenses.

Of course, the Finger of Death could still be partially negated by magical defenses and the target’s Physique, but the three hundred and twenty points of armor-penetrating soul damage were still horrifying. With this scroll in hand, Greem could even exterminate a Second Grade like Dragonborn Zacha with a single hit.

Zacha wouldn’t even have the time to retaliate if he cast it at an appropriate time.

However, it was a bit difficult when used on a dragon.

After all, the souls of the dragons were all unnaturally tough. Their magic resistances were also exceptionally outstanding. It was still uncertain if a Third Grade Finger of Death could instantly kill a Second Grade dragon. Still, Greem wouldn’t waste the scroll in that manner even if it could succeed.

After all, a live dragon was the most valuable!

Take Second Grade Wind Dragon Cherkes for example. If he were brought back to the World of Adepts, he could sell for eight hundred thousand magical crystals at the very least. The price could even go much, much higher. However, if Cherkes were dead, he would probably only fetch about three hundred thousand crystals.

Apart from the scrolls, there were also plenty of magical beast crystal cores in the wind dragon’s treasure. There were as many as five Second Grade crystal cores. Regrettably, there were no dragon crystals mixed within.

It was actually a reasonably normal observation. No dragon would collect the remains of their own species unless they were some perverted and twisted dragon. In fact, the dragons would actively attack those other species that owned weapons or equipment created from dragon materials.

If one were to include the crystal cores that Greem had been collecting over the past few decades, the number of Second Grade crystal cores that Greem possessed now numbered in the double digits. There were a total of twenty-one cores now.

The past him might have been unable to suppress the desire to turn all these crystal cores into suitable elementium golems. However, he had continuously been busy ever since he had advanced to Second Grade. He had almost no time to research and improve upon his elementium golem creation technique.

The First Grade elementium golems of the past were of little help to him now.

Much like the battle against the wind dragon earlier, Greem hadn’t summoned any of his elementium golems. Even if he had placed them on the battlefield, they wouldn’t have been of much obvious use in a battle against Second Grade creatures. Unless he could simultaneously put out double digits worth of First Grade elite golems, he was better off using his time to chant a Second Grade spell.

The correct way of doing things at this juncture was to custom-make some suitable Second Grade golems for himself. That was a project that would consume a lot of his time and energy.

The magical tomes they found in the wind dragon’s treasure were mostly magical notes and observations of otherworldly spellcasters. Though it wasn’t possible to thoroughly understand their magic systems through those notes, they still provided Greem with plenty of knowledge and experience.

In particular, a certain Gulliver’s Travels described several strange worlds that Greem had never even heard of. The details between the lines made Greem confident that the author had been a powerful spellcaster at or above Fourth Grade. That was because details about travels in the space beyond the realms had been recorded at the end of all the other stories.

In the World of Adepts, only the Great Adepts were capable of venturing out into space alone. Fourth Grade adepts could barely achieve this as well, but they were very prone to death if they ran into star beasts or starbound species. The chances of their demise were over 70% when that happened.

Greem unexpectedly discovered a mysterious alchemy spell within the knowledge crystal after looking through all the treasure.