Age of Adepts

The humans inside the crimson barrier hadn’t been seduced and were instead laughing without a care in the world. That undoubtedly provoked the leader of the banshees.

Lights flickered as that seductive beauty transformed into a muscular and handsome young man.

”Beautiful lady, why not come out and have a heart-to-heart talk about our future?!”

Seeing that Greem hadn’t been affected, the banshee leader actually picked Alice as her new target.

Alice’s laugh instantly froze into ice when she saw this androgynous monster flaunting her charms in front of her. She waved her slender hand, and a glowing Card of Fate slid into her palm.

”You don’t need to lift a finger. Leave this interesting fellow to me. It just might be a decent slave if we bring it back and give it some training.” Uzzah cackled sinisterly and extended one of her hands. A large shroud of shadow instantly engulfed the banshee leader.

The banshee didn’t even have a chance to resist.

The massive shadow dispersed with a boom and the banshee vanished from the spot without a single trace.

The other banshees screamed and charged at the crimson barrier when they saw their leader abducted by the enemy.

Sadly, every single banshee that entered the Ring of Fire was exterminated. In the blink of an eye, the sky full of dancing wraiths and banshees had been reduced to fewer than half of their original numbers. The remaining banshees screeched and scattered into the mists when they recognized their defeat.

At that moment, the crunching sound of grinding bones echoed out from a distance. A large squad of skeleton warriors marched out of the mists in an orderly formation. Sparks of red light lit up with the empty eyes sockets of these skeletons as they let out a silent roar. They raised the crude bone shields and bone swords in their hands and rushed at the adepts.

Under the enhancement of the Chip, Greem could very clearly ’see’ skeleton armies, ghouls, and horrifying stitched abominations endlessly swarm out of the caves.

Their individual strength might not amount to much, but their impressive numbers caused even a Second Grade adept like Greem to frown intensely.

”An undead army!” Greem fell into silent contemplation.

Most death magic casters were capable of modifying and creating powerful undead creatures, but only a select few would be able to control large numbers of undead to form an undead army.

A Fourth Grade necromancer that specialized in undead modification and summoning might be capable of such a feat.

Apart from that, the only ones capable of raising an undead army would have to be high-grade liches or undead overlords.

That said, what were the chances of an undead overlord suddenly appearing in a mid-sized plane that had been under siege by the Pale Witches for over a thousand years? The chances of this couldn’t be much higher than that of an ordinary human being struck by lightning. After all, according to the power system of the adepts, the starting grade of a magical creature like a lich was Third Grade at the very minimum.

The undead overlords, on the other hand, often ruled over tens of thousands of undead creatures and lived within small-sized planes of their own. They enjoyed a life of decadence and freedom without any shackles there.

Even the weakest of undead emperors was Fifth Grade. Unless a plane was at the verge of ruin and collapse, and its planar consciousness had shattered, a common material plane couldn’t possibly accommodate the existence of an undead king at such a powerful grade.

However, the situation in front of Greem left him no time to think. He took a step forward and flipped both of his hands. Two red and blazing flames hovered over his palms. As the fire elementium in the underground world sizzled and gathered toward the core of the fire, the two fist-sized blazes grew to an incredible size within a matter of seconds. The fire elementium within the flames was immensely concentrated and wildly ferocious.

Greem let out a grunt as he threw the two destructive fireballs. They cut through the air in elegant arcs and landed in the center of the skeleton armies in the distance.

Dong! Dong!

A muffled explosion rang out. Two flaming pillars surged toward the ceiling of the caves, before turning into waves of fire and incinerating everything in the surrounding area into ash.

These skeleton warriors might have undergone simple magical treatment, but their fundamental strength was barely better than that of ordinary mortals. Their bodies of bones might allow them to resist some slashing damage, but there wasn’t much magic resistance to them. As the waves of fire rolled across the cave, the hordes of skeleton warriors melted into ashes like hot wax. Their remains blew across the skies from the heat waves.

Greem could no longer hide his power at this moment. The Ring of Fire that had initially covered a distance of ten steps around him suddenly expanded outward, enveloping everything within a hundred meters. Yet, even this couldn’t stop the skeleton warriors from lunging headfirst into Greem’s Ring of Fire.

These skeleton warriors that were only as strong as beginner apprentices could only last a maximum of three seconds within the Ring of Fire. The soul fire hidden deep within their ferocious skulls could only last a single second, while their robust bones could last for two.

It was only a slight time delay before the soul fires of the first batch of skeleton warriors were shattered almost instantly upon entering the Ring of Fire. Yet, before their hollow bodies could fall apart, their comrades would charge past them from behind. By the time the frail bodies of the first skeletons had turned into dust, the second group of skeletons had made it six or seven meters into the Ring of Fire.

It was their terrifying numbers that allowed the wall formed from white bones skeletons to rapidly approach Greem.

A group of low-grade skeletons with no soul or consciousness wanted to bury a Second Grade fire adept to his death with their sheer number?

A hint of coldness appeared on Greem’s face.

He grabbed the air several times in quick succession and threw several magma fireballs into the air. These fireballs were like guided missiles, whistling through the air and crashing into the areas where the skeleton army was most concentrated. The violent flame shockwaves and rain of magma turned this tiny cave into an unbearable hell of lava.

Despite such a tremendous setback, the skeleton army continued to charge into Greem’s Ring of Fire. Hordes of white ghouls were also starting to join the battlefield from the depths of the mist.

Unlike the First Grade ghouls created by adepts, these mass manufactured ghouls were clearly much weaker. They were like a group of humans that had been skinned and left soaking in a gutter for several days and nights. Their entire bodies reeked with a pungent stench and betrayed a pale white resembling that of drowned humans.

Their tendons and bones had been pulled and contorted beyond recognition; there was nothing human about their appearance. A slimy bodily fluid covered their bodies, and they hunched their bodies and crawled about like wild beasts. They possessed sharp claws and fangs along with unnaturally long tongues.

These ghouls all had the strength of advanced apprentices and came in shocking numbers.

At least from the scans of the Chip and Greem’s own spiritual senses, there seemed to be no end to the ghouls that were swarming out of the caves. They stepped on the bodies of the skeleton warriors and quickly advanced toward the adepts. Some of them even climbed onto the wet and slippery walls of the caves, wildly lunging into Greem’s crimson barrier from every angle.

Greem’s expression gradually turned solemn.

Damn. There seemed to be a bit too many undead here.

The strength of the undead before him still had no chance of killing a Second Grade adept. After all, their basic power was still merely that. Their attacks had absolutely no possibility of breaking a Second Grade adept’s defensive spells.

However, the situation in front of his eyes did not match his expectations!

These undead had no morale, will, or emotions to speak of. They just charged into the Ring of Fire from every direction like an unrelenting tide. They were like a swarm of ants advancing through a ball of fire by gathering into a ball. They continued pushing forward even as the outer layer burned and scorched into ashes.

However, with the addition of these agile ghouls, the assault of the undead army against the Ring of Fire became unstoppable.

The white ghouls had covered the entirety of the black stone walls and were jumping down without any care for their own wellbeing.

Even as their exposed bodies were scorched black from the fires, their withered bodies continued lunging at Greem.

Beng! Beng! Beng!

Several dull thuds rang out in succession.

The Fire Shields and Lava Shields that popped out of Greem’s body stopped the burnt corpses of the ghouls. However, the consecutive impacts had also stopped Greem in his tracks.

Greem looked at the lunging white shapes around him, and his frown deepened.

These fellows didn’t seem so easy to deal with!

Greem had no choice left. He raised his hand and released the five-meter tall Flame Fiend of Terror. The golem shielded him and waved its flame whip to drive away the ghouls that lunged at its master. Even if the occasional ghoul managed to land on the Flame Fiend, the flames that surged out of the golem’s body would reduce the ghoul to ashes when it bit the golem.

With the Flame Fiend forging the way forward, the swarming undead no longer posed a threat to the three adepts. The army could only try wildly and in vain to assault the towering flame humanoid.

The Flame Fiend of Terror was utterly fearless despite being swarmed by enemies. It moved forward with its thick magma legs and charged into the area where the undead were most numerous. It then raised both of its arms, and a large-area Meteor Shower upended the undead army, obliterating their ranks and formations.

The white ghouls swarmed forward and climbed all over the Flame Fiend’s giant body.

The Flame Fiend let out a ferocious roar as fearsome streams of fire that reached two to three thousand degrees blasted out of its strong magma body. Even the resistant bodies of the corpses couldn’t deal with such intense magical damage. They were like wolves that had fallen into a volcano, instantly vaporizing and leaving behind not a single speck of ash.

Still, even this terrible outcome couldn’t stop the ghouls from hurling themselves at the enemy.

Visible cracks and damage had already appeared on the massive magma body of the Flame Fiend.

Meanwhile, the enemies didn’t seem to be running out any time soon.