Age of Adepts

Stitch Ghost Golem.

The Stitch Ghost Golem looked like a cloth doll the size of a palm. The left half was in the form of a man, while the right half was the form of a woman. Its entire body was filled with stitches and the signs of thread. Its body was black, and bloodstains were everywhere. Its face was composed of a single eye drawn in blood.

Three convict ghost guards would follow the Stitch Ghost Golem the moment it was successfully created. It was the golem’s only means of attack.

The three convict ghost guards were incorporeal existences; they couldn’t be affected by physical attacks. Moreover, they would take away with them a shard of the target’s soul every time they passed through the target’s body. They could then seal that soul shard within the body of the Stitch Ghost Golem.

Once the number of soul shards reached a certain amount, the Stitch Ghost Golem could activate Soul Attachment once. It would be able to take control of the target’s body for a short period. The success rate of Soul Attachment depended on the difference of Spirit between the Stitch Ghost Golem and the target creature. The stronger the Spirit of the target, the lower the success rate. If the target’s Spirit were twice that of the Stitch Ghost Golem, then the Soul Attachment would fail!

Greem put down the knowledge crystal and gave the golem a thought. He couldn’t help but be amazed by the vastness and strangeness of the world of magic. A Stitch Ghost Golem such as this wasn’t strong, but it was exceptionally odd and unpredictable. An opponent could very easily be taken down if they had no means of dealing with it.

This knowledge crystal should have come from the hands of a profession known as a Soul Master.

Soul Masters were not a species. They were a unique profession.

They could be of any race or lifeform, and the specialty of their profession was the ability to dissect and cut up souls to use in the creation of all sorts of soul servants. These soul shards that they cut off of their own soul possessed a tight connection that no magic could cut off; they never needed to worry about their soul servants turning on themselves.

The servants created by these soul shards were ethereal. They could ignore all physical defenses and directly attack the enemy’s soul and mental consciousness. Moreover, the soul servants were one with their master, making the act of controlling them extraordinarily natural and comfortable. There would be no delay in thought and action even when controlled remotely.

However, the weaknesses of these soul servants were just as apparent as their strengths. If they were ever destroyed, it would cause damage to the soul master’s soul. Such an injury would require a long time to recover from. The soul master would even face the risk of having his soul disperse and his mental consciousness being exterminated, especially if too many of his soul servants were destroyed all at once.

The soul servants were double-edged swords. Risk and power came hand-in-hand!

Greem now possessed knowledge of the method to create the Stitch Ghost Golem and the soul attachment ceremony after reading the knowledge crystal. It was entirely possible for him to create this golem with his current ability and power. After a moment’s hesitation, Greem put the knowledge crystal away and silently started assessing the cost-benefit ratio of the Stitch Ghost Golem.

…………

The Swamp of Sorrows.

Dirty swamps and filthy puddles were everywhere.

Looking from a distance, the only thing that filled one’s vision would be the dark-colored mud and the black water pooled on the ground. Anything further away was all obscured by a thick layer of mist. It was hard to see far in this environment.

The mist was thick, and the earth was silent.

However, unimaginable dangers and death brewed within this silence.

Sly and sinister hunters could be hiding under every single pool in the Swamp of Sorrows. They silently hid under the murky and pungent waters, waiting for their prey to arrive.

These pools were often connected to each other by narrow tunnels at the bottom. It allowed them to change positions or retreat without alerting anyone. The prey would only sense danger approaching at the moment the hunters lunged at them with their bloody jaws open.

A loud splash shattered the silence in this world.

A thick and scaly dragon’s leg stepped into a puddle, sending water and mud splashing everywhere.

”Dammit.”

Dragonborn Asa loudly cursed as he pulled out his front leg with much difficulty.

His loud voice traveled far in the silent swamps, but Asa couldn’t care less.

For he was a dragonborn!

If the dragon lords were the noble rulers of Lance, then they, the servants of these dragons, would be the nobles of various statuses. The dragonborn were the uncontested strongest warriors in any land, and before any species, in Lance. They were the strictest tax collectors and the justest executors of the law.

No native dared to offend a noble dragonborn, even if they were only an ordinary dragonborn warrior or dragonborn scout. As for attacking a dragonborn? That was an unforgivable crime that would result in the extermination of the entire tribe!

Thus, dragonborn scout Asa did not need to worry, even as he trudged along the unfamiliar Swamp of Sorrows. He even went against the principles of being a scout in letting out such noise.

Strangely enough, Dragonborn Asa wasn’t attacked by the swamp creatures hiding in the surroundings, even after he made such a commotion. Instead, it caused the animals to dive underwater in a panic and escape into the distance through the winding tunnels.

A wicked smile appeared on Asa’s sharp, long face when he saw the bubbles rise from the murky pools.

He dragged his large and heavy body and started to walk through the more solid dirt road rapidly.

Here in the Swamp of Sorrows, one needed to be able to recognize which patch of dirt could be stepped upon and which contained a pool underneath. Otherwise, it was easy to get trapped in all the mud. That would have been a massive insult to Asa as well since he was a scout.

A large dragonborn army was brazenly marching just thirty-five kilometers behind him.

As the dragonborn scout they had sent out, Asa needed to clear away all possible ambushes in the path of the army. On the other hand, he also needed to chase away those pesky swamp creatures in case they interrupted the progress of the dragonborn army.

In truth, there was no creature on Lance that dared to ambush the dragonborn army. Asa still remembered the last ambush. It had been over thirty years ago.

A lizardman had attacked a dragonborn tax collector, having been driven mad by the heavy taxes. The lizardman threw mud at the dragonborn. Thus, that entire area was cleansed. Be it the lizardman tribe or the kobold tribe, everything that could stand on two legs was slaughtered by the dragonborn.

Ever since then, all the native tribes of Lance would frantically hide from the dragonborn, fearful of accidentally offending them.

Dragonborn scouts didn’t need to be concerned about those terrified native tribes when they went on expeditions. Instead, they had to be careful of the many wild magical creatures in the wilderness.

They were all powerful primal beings without the intelligence to differentiate between those that they could afford to provoke and those they couldn’t. Asa’s main job was to chase away these creatures!

Asa walked another one and a half kilometers in the humid and dim swamp before stopping.

This wasn’t right. Something wasn’t right about this place!

Quiet. Unprecedentedly quiet. Even the small sounds of pythons slithering on rotting leaves and leeches bubbling in the murky waters couldn’t be heard.

The massive swamp area had become uncommonly quiet, almost as if the living beings here had all suddenly died.

Death…

Asa felt something wrong with his body when this word appeared in his mind.

He quickly took two steps to the side, bent his body, and lowered his head. It was only now that he realized he had been hit.

An almost intangible shroud of gray mist rose from the puddle below, polluting Asa’s scales and turning them a gray color. As the fog grew denser and thicker, the rate at which the gray corroded Asa’s body increased. It quickly spread toward the upper half of his body.

What was this?

Poison? A living creature? Or the strange ability of some magical creature?

Asa’s brain was rapidly spinning. His constant training as a dragonborn scout was already driving him to flee from the gray mist. Asa let out a muffled roar upon escaping to a nearby dirt road. Blinding firelight blasted out of his scales.

The robust Physique of the dragonborn gave Asa exceptional magic resistance. Ordinary biological poison would not be able to cause lethal damage to him. He was already gathering his strength and planning his counterattack upon escaping the enemy’s trap.

Yet, an intense daze engulfed his mind while he was ferociously stimulating the blood within his body,

Asa stumbled for a few steps and almost collapsed to the ground.

His previously rock-sturdy dragon legs were trembling and shivering. They could no longer support his massive weight.

Dammit! What poison is this? Why is it so strong?

Asa once again roared furiously. He raised the heavy metal axe high above his head and intended to fire a ferocious fireball into the air to warn the dragonborn army behind him.

Sadly, while he erected his body with serious effort, a skinny and withered black silhouette suddenly appeared within his blurry vision.

”Take a nap! Take a good nap! You should just take a nap now that you’ve run into me, Poison Hag Endor.”

The next second, an intense pain coursed through every single part of his body and gathered together to shatter Asa’s consciousness as if the figure before him had successfully cursed him.

Clang!

The metal axe fell to the ground, and the dragonborn scout’s large body slowly collapsed, splashing even more dirty water into the surroundings.

Poison Witch Endor’s withered body approached the dragonborn scout after she had brought him down. She casually made a grabbing motion, and most of the poison was extracted from his body. However, she kept part of the poison lingering in the dragonborn’s skull. This way, the dragonborn would not be able to wake up easily.

”Come, take him back to the base!”

Endor’s voice wasn’t too loud, but it immediately caused a commotion in the surroundings.

Dirt went flying and water splashed in a few large pools nearby. A dozen large construction machines climbed out of the pools to gather towards the witch with heavy footsteps.

The construction machines surged forward, lifted the unconscious dragonborn, and ran into the depths of the mist, all under the command of a goblin technician sitting high above an open-top machine.

Endor lifted her old and sinister face to look in the direction that the dragonborn scout had come from.

”The subordinates of that female fire dragon came quick! It seems we will have to fight with them here in the Swamp of Sorrows.”

Poison Witch Endor pulled her hood over her head once more after mumbling to herself and silently disappeared from the scene.