Age of Adepts

World of Adepts, Fire Throne.

The battle in front of the tower was nearing its conclusion.

After seven days and nights of constant fighting, the two hundred magical machines that Fire Throne had dispatched had all been lost in Magma Hall. The Alliance paid the price of twenty-six adepts and twenty-four thousand soldiers for this result.

Of course, the losses of the former was what made the hearts of the Alliance leaders ache.

After all, regardless of how many soldiers they lost, they could raise the banner of recruitment in their territory and replenish the ranks. If there weren’t enough young men, they could have their citizens increase their birth rate. At any rate, civilians were like chives; harvest one batch, and they would slowly regrow after a while. The adepts had never been worried about not having enough mortal soldiers.

However, the loss of these twenty-six adepts truly hurt the hearts of the Alliance higher-ups.

If these twenty-six deaths had all been inflicted upon a single clan, it would have been enough to cause that clan to disband.

As such, one could easily imagine how intense and bloody the battle in the Magma Hall had been over the past week!

In particular, one of those twenty-six adepts was a Second Grade adept from Layton Academy. It had infuriated Layton Academy Principal Second Grade Adept Giles so much that he nearly went berserk.

Layton Academy only had a total of three Second Grade adepts. One of them stayed guard in their headquarters, while Principal Giles joined the Anti-Crimson Clan Alliance with the other.

The situation on the battlefield had been looking good during the first few rounds of attacks; everything was basically within the control of the Alliance. Unfortunately, the exhaustion of the elite soldiers and the weakness of their servants caused the ordinary humans to start showing signs of breakdown.

To avoid the mortal army from collapsing at the frontlines, the Alliance adepts had no choice but to appear at the forefront as well. They had to use their powerful offensive magic to do away with the annoying magical machines.

Meanwhile, the Crimson adepts took advantage of them approaching the tower to strike and gain a situational numerical advantage. As such, those unfortunate Alliance adepts had died at the hands of the Crimson Clan, one by one.

It was the same for that murdered Second Grade adept.

When he had gone near the tower and started wreaking havoc upon the magical machines, the seven Crimson Clan Second Grades that had been waiting in the tower struck in unison. Those assigned to seal off the exit path sealed it off, the interceptors intercepted the enemy, and the close-range fighters engaged in melee combat. After a few bouts of brutal combat, the Second Grade adept from Layton Academy died at the hands of Mary before his companions could arrive.

Third Grade Vampire Haines Vik had also intended to ambush Mary during this fight but was forced back by the terrifying lightning cast by the tower. The attack of the tower caused Haines to retreat from the battlefield for two whole days.

Still, despite the numerous miracles that the Crimson Clan had achieved in battle, they could not save the tower from the fate of being conquered.

With the exhaustion of the tower’s energy, the brilliant radiance that shrouded the tower had vanished. The tower could no longer support an omnidirectional forcefield defense. It had to temporarily suspend its defensive system and redirect what remained of its energy to the offensive arrays in hopes of intimidating the greedily waiting Alliance.

The reason the Crimson Clan had been able to achieve the miracle of twenty-six adept kills, at the cost of no casualties to themselves, was due to the tower’s constant magical blessing and the threat of its powerful magical arrays. Why was it that the high-grade adepts never set foot within a hundred meters of the tower, despite already being on the battlefield? It was that they did not want to become sacrificial offerings beneath the might of the tower’s offensive system!

The Crimson Clan’s energy reserves were still too low. Otherwise, the Alliance adepts would never have dared to attack a tower supported with sufficient energy, even if they had twice their number. Unless all the Alliance adepts could unite together with the courage to die for their cause, no one would be foolish enough to test the tower’s strength with their own life.

After all, when hosted by a Second Grade adept, the tower’s offensive arrays could even threaten the life of a Third Grade adept.

However, with the decrease in the tower’s energy, the threat to high-grade adepts was starting to lessen as well. The activity of the Alliance high-grades was increasing exponentially.

After all these days of continuous assault, cracks had begun to appear on the surface of the tower that had once intimidated tens of thousands of magical creatures.

Moreover, as the main battlefield, the Magma Hall had become a nightmarish furnace of blood and flesh. Upon stepping into the hall, anyone would feel their head ache from the pungent stench of blood. The most terrifying thing of all was all the piles of corpses littered across the place.

Piles of mauled bodies could be seen from the entrance of the hall to the center of the battlefield, where they piled even higher and wider. Broken and bloodied corpses twisted in all sorts of unspeakable shapes and forms. It was horrendous.

As the battle had gone on for far too long, the corpses of the first Alliance dead could not be moved away from the battlefield. The servants had no choice but to cart them away and pile them in a corner of the Magma Hall instead. As the battle increased in intensity, there was no longer even time for clearing away the dead bodies. The soldiers of the Alliance could only step over the piling forest of blood and flesh, fighting against the magical machines around the tower as their feet sunk in the blood and mud.

Twenty thousand Alliance corpses lined the Magma Hall. As the survivors stepped on and fought upon their bodies, the bodies became even more deformed, rendering it impossible to discern their original appearances. Only rotting black blood escaped from the corpse piles, leaving dry, black rivers on the scorching floor of Magma Hall.

The foul blood was evaporated by the heat, turning into a bloody mist that lingered in the air as if it was hell itself. The stronger humans risked infection in such a putrid environment if they stayed for more than fifteen minutes. Meanwhile, the weaker ones might even die instantly.

The surviving soldiers continued to fight and battle in this harsh environment, using battering rams and the weapons in their hands to desperately attack the tower gates and the crimson tower itself. Wave after wave of warriors fell, only to be replaced by a new stream of warriors.

Their strength became weaker as time went on, and their courage had all but worn away. However, under the threats of the adepts and the nobles, they still had to muster the bravery to yell and assault that looming and immovable tower.

Every time a certain number of them gathered around it, the tower would tremble as thousands of normally hidden magical lines would light up. Magical energy would be channeled and collected at the top of the tower, forming into a massive spell of enormous power to blast the enemy to pieces.

The mortal men could not defend themselves against such powerful magic without any magical protections themselves.

Plenty of flesh was burned to ashes, machines torn to pieces, and souls vanished from this place, howling as they disappeared. Some individuals with strong grudges did not immediately vanish upon death. Instead, they roamed the battlefield as wraiths just as they did in life.

Some retained their appearance in life, though now shimmering with light and a bit more translucent. They either stood on the ground unresponding, knelt and cried, or wandered and shambled about aimlessly.

Every time a living being passed by them, they would stare with their lightless eyes and extend their translucent hands, howling for help. And when their wishes went unfulfilled, they would fly into a rage, transforming into ugly and ferocious wraiths that lunged at the Alliance soldiers.

One might not think much of them due to them being intangible beings, but they could still do a certain amount of spiritual damage to the living.

Due to the gathering of souls on the battlefield, the Alliance soldiers’ invasion was severely interrupted.

Supposedly, the strength of a mortal’s soul should not have allowed them to turn into spirit beings in such a short time frame. However, far too much magical energy was radiating in this battlefield, and far too many lives had been lost. All these factors created this land of wraiths and ghosts.

The Alliance adept had no choice but to send apprentices to exterminate these collections of resentment that refused to leave after their deaths.

Meanwhile, the adepts continued to observe this bloody and cruel war from behind the lines.

The deaths of the soldiers were no more than a mundane number to them. Though they would have to pay out large sums of compensation after this, it was still a thousand times better than having them attack the tower themselves. Some Alliance adepts who needed significant numbers of souls for magical experiments even snuck onto the battlefield and used special equipment to collect the souls of the soldiers.

The Alliance leaders chose to look past such actions.

After all, they had done such things before, just on a smaller scale and not as conspicuously. At any rate, these souls would disperse and return to the river of souls even if they didn’t collect them.

Rather than that, why not have them contribute a little to their masters in life before thoroughly vanishing?!

“How much energy does the tower still have left?” Third Grade Adept Yurga coldly asked.

A First Grade adept beside him quickly took out a piece of strange equipment and pointed it at the tower. Soon, he obtained an accurate number.

“They have 1,275 pulnars left, sir!”

A pulnar was a unit of measurement that adepts designated for magical energy. One pulnar was equivalent to the magical power of a First Grade fireball. While 1,275 pulnars might sound like a lot, it was extremely little for a tower.

“Very good. Very good,” Yurga laughed coldly and said, “We’ve waited for so long and this moment has finally arrived. I now call for all adepts to enter the battle. We shall attempt to exhaust the enemy’s last dregs of magical energy in two hours and enter the tower itself.

“The first adept to enter the tower will be entitled to the first choice of spoils. The clan that this adept belongs to will also gain an additional three percent of the share of spoils.”

“I hereby declare that this battle for the adept’s tower has officially begun.”