Age of Adepts

An enemy assault.

Loud shouts filled the skies.

Greem’s expression instantly changed.

The first wave of attacks from the enemy wasn’t very dense. At the most, there were only a hundred or so arrows.

However, the terrifying thing about the attack was that every single arrow was an enchanted arrow.

Szzzzzz!

The ear-piercing noise of arrows cutting through the sky rang out. All one hundred enchanted arrows landed upon the flying ship.

The elves hiding in the darkness were sly as well. They actively gave up on the ten metallic magical machines and aimed their arrows at the adepts in cloth robes.

Unexpected. Truly unexpected!

They had never run into any trouble since they had entered Garan. Moreover, they had traveled in seemingly random directions and never started any direct conflicts with the elves. All these factors caused Greem to unknowingly let down his guard.

He had sincerely never expected them to receive an attack of such scale in a rural place where no elves could be seen, and especially not an attack with enchanted arrows.

Pupupu!

The sound of arrows piercing flesh rang out continuously.

Greem and the other three adepts were turned into pincushions stabbed full of arrows. The violent nature powers instantly shredded the robes that they wore, and the adepts coughed up blood. The pain was unbearable. The two witches even cried out in pain and collapsed to the ground.

Greem raised his head and roared out loud. Searing lava immediately surged out of his body, along with vaporizing streams of fire. The enchanted arrows embedded in his body were instantly roasted red before softening, melting, and flowing down his body in the form of liquid metal.

Greem had already completed the elementiumization of his body and his Spirit. Physical attacks like this were uncomfortable, but they weren’t enough to kill him.

Bug Adept Billis, on the other hand, was a monster that was very hard to kill through physical damage.

If it weren’t for the trace of strange nature power attached to the arrows of the elves, they probably wouldn’t even have been able to cause minor wounds to Billis.

Bug Adept Billis stood up straight again after enduring the impact of the natural power. He couldn’t care less about the arrows on his body. Instead, he opened his wicked compound eyes wide and locked his gaze upon the lithe forms that had revealed themselves and were advancing toward the flying ship by stepping from branch to branch.

Greem and Billis were not severely wounded, but it was a different matter for the two witches.

They were rookies that hadn’t advanced too long ago. Naturally, they had no great life-saving skills similar to what Billis had. One had died in the dense barrage of arrows earlier, while the other was severely wounded. It was truly tragic.

The surviving witch might have been turned into a porcupine, but none of the arrows had hit a vital spot. That was why she was only severely wounded instead of dead. The other witch was not as fortunate. Apart from the arrows all across her body, the most lethal shot was the one that had found its way right into the middle of her forehead.

”Dammit, dammit, dammit...”

Greem couldn’t help but roar in anger when he sensed the quickly draining life force of the witch.

Just then, the second wave of enemy arrows descended upon them!

”Kill them…kill them for me!” Greem roared furiously.

Bug Adept Billis cackled chillingly and exploded during Greem’s roar. He turned into a wave of countless black bugs and charged toward the closest enemies.

Greem also wanted to rush forward and crush a few enemies to sate his fury. However, he had no choice but to force himself to calm down. He pointed at the dying witch and cast a Fire Shield around her.

One had already died. This one couldn’t die, or the losses today would be too heavy to bear!

To be honest, the tremendous damage from the first wave of the elves’ arrows was caused mainly by the lack of preparation on the part of the adepts.

At their very core, the adepts were no more than humans who had obtained powerful abilities!

An arrow that hit a vital spot could instantly rob the life of an adept without their magical protection.

However, now that the adepts were on guard and had wrapped themselves within numerous layers of defensive spells, it wouldn’t be an easy matter for the elves to hurt them with long-ranged attacks. At the very least, these elves didn’t possess the strength to kill an actual adept with a single arrow.

The second wave of arrows finally arrived.

This time, they were fated to achieve nothing.

The three Fire Shields revolving about the severely wounded witch trembled against the arrows imbued with nature power, but they didn’t shatter. On the other hand, the bolts that shot toward Greem rapidly softened upon entering the Ring of Fire. They then crashed against his suddenly expanded body and broke into pieces.

The raging Greem instantly transformed into the Flame Fiend. He strode to the witch’s side and covered her with his body.

The transformed Billis had already clashed with the first wave of enemies now. They were engaged in a furious and brutal battle.

These enemies were elven warriors with naked torsos and skin-tight leather shorts, their bodies covered in strange magical runes– Blade Dancers.

Blade Dancer was a special profession of the elven warriors.

They could not wear metal armor– only leather or cloth armor. Thus, they were warriors who wore light armor or none at all. They held two long and sharp elven longswords in their hands. Their bodies were drawn full of the battle tattoos unique to blade dancers. Some of these tattoos could enhance their agility, while others could increase their reaction speed. Still, the majority of the symbols possessed a strange ability to confuse the enemy’s senses.

When the blade dancers charged into the ranks of enemies, their rapidly moving bodies worked together with the elven tattoos to deceive the enemy’s vision. It would cause the enemies to be incapable of figuring out the specific locations and movements of the blade dancers.

Blade dancers had almost no defensive abilities. They relied purely on their high agility and graceful movements to avoid the enemy’s assault while raining down a storm of attack within inches of hostile blades.

The lowest requirement for advancing to blade dancer was to stay within a dark room with ten swinging spiked pendulums for fifteen minutes.

As such, the most potent ability of the blade dancers was their ability to dodge and avoid attacks!

Sadly, this ability was utterly useless against Bug Adept Billis. Their unprotected bodies had absolutely no way of stopping the jaws of tens of thousands of bugs.

The swarms of bugs were like wolves in a herd of sheep. They ignored the rapidly dancing swords in the hands of the blade dancers and quickly latched upon their bodies. In less than three seconds, when the swarm of bugs flared their wings and flew over, only a green corpse chewed up beyond recognition was left on the spot.

Billis’ efficiency at murder wasn’t very high, but it still did the job. In the blink of an eye, he had felled seven of the three dozen blade dancers that had boarded the ship. The tragic blade dancers couldn’t stop the advance of the black bugs no matter how quickly they waved their blades.

”These damned adepts. Blade dancers; spread out. Leave this fellow to the druids. You guys go kill the flame human and the witch.”

An agile female elf leaped onto the bow of the ship. She took a look at the entire battlefield and called out orders. At the same time, she quickly took out her bow and notched an arrow. Two arrows snapped in the direction of the bugs.

Unlike the previous ones, these two arrows were fast as shooting stars and exploded into giant fireballs the moment they came into contact with the black beetles.

The explosion instantly scorched a large number of the black bugs. The ground rustled with the sound of bug corpses crashing to the ground, and a sharp screech rang out from the swarm of bugs. They instantly escaped a dozen meters away and reformed into Billis’ appearance.

Unlike before, his body appeared one size smaller and was no longer as round as before.

Billis hissed and roared furiously at the female elf. Fourteen strange sting scorpions then emerged from his body. These sting scorpions were only the size of a fingernail at first, but they quickly swelled to the size of a bull when they left Billis’ body. They swiftly crawled toward the female elf on the metal deck.

Before Billis could exact his revenge upon the elf, a few dozen elves in strange clothes jumped aboard the ship. They yelled and stormed toward the bug adept.

The oaken staves in the hands of these strange elves flashed with a green light as they charged. Their bodies transformed into Earth Maulers and Fire Wolves within a mist explosion. The beasts then attacked Billis in a pincer formation.

The fourteen sting scorpions immediately clashed with the large group of druids upon the large metal deck.

The blade dancers and the druids had already taken the stage. The most numerous members of the elves–the flower fairies–were naturally not going to fall behind.

They were a group of creatures only the size of two palms, with thin cicada-like wings upon their backs. They looked like miniature elves, but their petite and curvaceous bodies were not dressed in any clothes. Only some tangling vines helped cover their most private spots.

Their skin was green, as was their hair, but their eyes were an odd black color.

These flower fairies were a type of nature monster. Their method of attack was their rapid flight speed paired with their sharp and fearsome claws. Moreover, their nails undoubtedly contained poison!

The bug adept that could transform into insects didn’t seem too easy to deal with. Thus, these cautious fairies set their sights on the dying witch on the ground. Sadly, a towering Flame Fiend spewing hot flames stood right there. All flower fairies that came within fifty meters of him would combust in a series of agonizing cries.

That immediately frightened the fairies, causing them to scatter like a nest of hornets that had their home disturbed. They circled the giant Flame Fiend but never dared to charge into the thin Ring of Fire.

”That Flame Fiend is a Second Grade adept! I will deal with him! You think of a way to kill this giant bug.” Aizac shouted at the female elf captain and charged at Greem with seven or eight druids in tow.

The female elf captain looked at the giant Flame Fiend that Greem had transformed into. Her heart was exceptionally heavy.

They had killed a witch and badly wounded the other. The results of this battle appeared to be quite glorious, but the surviving adepts were each more difficult to deal with than the previous. If a few more individuals of the same level stepped out of the cabin, today’s battle would probably…

While she was reflecting on the state of the battle, the ten magical machines had already moved into formation. They started to charge at the elves.

For a moment, the barrage of metal bullets covered the air and shot toward the elves!