Age of Adepts

After some thinking, Greem drafted up the following list of combat personnel.

Third Grade: Thunder Dragon Arms.

Second Grade: Greem, Alice, Mary, Tigule, and Split-Off Brain Gru.

First Grade: Wind Adept Deserra, Medusa Dana, Berserk Witch Sofia, and four newly recruited adepts.

Magical machine army: one hundred Shield Defenders, three hundred Archers, thirty magic energy chariots, two hundred eyeball fighters, ten goblin engineers, fifty goblin technicians…

It was the entirety of the military force that the Crimson Clan could currently mobilize!

Still, this force was distinctly stronger when compared to the one that had entered Faen.

Death Witch Leader Khesuna might have put out a declaration of war, but the actual fight was delayed until six months from now. It couldn’t be helped. Crossing worlds to invade a stronghold planar world without sufficient power and preparation was practically putting oneself on the chopping block.

As such, the Death Witches had to be very careful in their choice of target even though they had already sworn to exact bloody vengeance upon the beast gods. They would also have to make feints and prevent the enemy from finding out which world was their real target.

A massive planar door was being hastily constructed in Werning.

The Death Witches became increasingly active with each passing day, using all sorts of means to search for and locate planar world coordinates possessed by the beast god pantheon.

Supposedly, such planar world coordinates were classified secrets. No outsiders should know of these coordinates apart from the higher-ups of the beast god pantheon. However, the World of Adepts had been at odds with the World of Gods for tens of thousands of worlds. Both sides had gained a comprehensive understanding of each other through their constant battles and exchanges.

As such, the Death Witches only spent some magical crystals to easily obtained seventeen planar coordinates belonging to the beast gods from the Silver Union and the Adept’s Association.

These planar coordinates were not half-developed primitive planes. Instead, they were planes of faith and belief filled with powerful locals and beast god believers. The Death Witches had publicly announced that they were giving up on all profits from this planar incursion. Their only purpose was to douse the arrogant fires of the beast gods and take revenge for their dead sisters.

Therefore, this planar invasion was not a war of subjugation, but one of utter destruction!

The Death Witches weren’t trying to destroy a tribe or an empire, but an entire plane.

They wanted to slaughter an entire plane’s worth of beast god believers to return the deed of humiliation that the beast gods had done to the Death Witches.

The Death Witches even sent out large numbers of witches to sneak into these planar worlds and create a false sense of complete mobilization and all-out war to trick the enemy. However, most of these witches were only pawns to confuse the enemy. Only a select few of them were carrying powerful locating devices on them.

Once the Death Witches had determined their target, they could connect the planar door with the enemy’s world based on the signal transmitted from the locating device. That would open a portal that led directly to a plane of beast god believers.

When that happened, the army gathered by the witch branches would only need to charge in and slaughter everything in sight!

Of course, utterly destroying a plane was a colossal task. The witches would have to find a way to destroy the plane world’s origin.

Greem might not possess the means to do so, but the Death Witches did!

The goal of the Death Witches in invading the plane was to destroy their plane origin. Meanwhile, the responsibility of Greem and the others was to slaughter as many beast god believers as they could and extinguish the enemy’s faith nodes. That would disrupt their plans for reinforcement and provide the Death Witches with more time to perform their rituals and sacrifices.

Thus, the Death Witches began six-month-long psychological warfare and feints against the beast god pantheon surrounding this planar invasion. The number of high-grade individuals who had died during this endeavor had reached double digits for both sides.

One hundred and thirty-one days after Khesuna declared war, the planar door was complete!

It was an exceedingly tall stone door.

The entire frame of the stone door was made of an unknown dark black stone, and countless magical runes had been etched onto its structure. When powerful magical energy was injected into the base of the stone door, all of its runes lit up.

A brilliant layer of light slowly unfolded from the center of the stone door.

Strange light ribbons of various colors drifted out of the door, twisting and dancing in the skies above. They were connected and severed here and there, floating and shimmering in the air, much like the pretty lights that you would see in an area with strong magnetic fields.

Signs of severe gravitational disruption also started appearing near the stone door.

Many pebbles, dirt, and even carriages were no longer bound by gravity and started floating into the air. Meanwhile, gravity abysses that couldn’t be identified with the naked eye had also appeared in other areas. The horrifying gravity instantly crushed any lifeform that set foot in these gravity abysses. Their bodies and organs would be compressed into delicate mincemeat.

Moreover, areas of gravity disruption like these tended to be random and ever-shifting. There was no pattern to be spoken of.

All apprentice adepts had already retreated from the teleportation plaza. Not a single one of them dared to get close to the planar door. Even high-grade adepts like Greem didn’t dare to walk in areas of obvious gravity, space, time, and magnetic field distortions like these. Otherwise, they would risk the chance of being injured.

Greem stood proudly at the southwest corner of the plaza. He narrowed his eyes, and blue light shone from within as he silently scanned the extent of distortion near the planar door.

The drifting light ribbons might look intangible and harmless, but the Chip’s data on them was glowing with a blinding red light.

One thousand one hundred and seventeen points!

These drifting light ribbons that looked like beautiful pieces of silk actually contained terrifying spatial rifts. They could instantly cut a person to pieces if they were ever to make contact. Even if you had magical defenses protecting you, the light ribbons had enough shocking cutting power to sever a person in half through all the shields. It would leave your upper body in a planar space, and your lower body in another, different planar space.

Without a way to defend against spatial severing, even a Second Grade adept was destined to die if they ran into these light ribbons.

In contrast, those areas of gravity disruption appeared to be so much more harmless!

The closer it was to the planar door, the more severe the distortions.

Traversing the planar door under such terrifying conditions was not possible for ordinary apprentice adepts.

“The Death Witches have already set off!” Alice, who was standing beside Greem, reminded him softly.

Greem’s eyes turned when he heard this, and he quickly found the group of Death Witches.

Two Third Grade Death Witches had arrived in front of the planar door. Greem didn’t know what method they used, but the subtly trembling light door started to stabilize and calm down.

The abnormalities near the planar door were immediately cut in half.

Large numbers of intermediate and high-grade undead gathered together under the orders of the Death Witches and shambled through the light door during this rare period of calmness.

Greem instantly recognized ironhide zombies, blackblood zombies, poison zombies, undead mages, skeletons, undead warriors, and dark knights amongst their ranks. Moreover, he could see terrifying liches riding on towering skeletal dragons in the middle of this undead army. They were dressed in magical robes and held short bone staffs in their hands.

Greem could occasionally see terrifying Third and Fourth Grade existences within their group. High-grade undead like these could quickly become Undead Lords in a skeletal plane. Yet here, they were only servants and casters subordinate to the Death Witches, albeit with slightly higher standing than the ordinary undead.

The undead were filthy and numerous. Their vile and twisted forms were an ugly sight to behold. However, their numbers were shocking. They were continually being teleported over, yet there was still no end to their numbers even after an hour.

Greem could vaguely hear shouting coming from the other side of the light door with his hearing.

It seems that the people on the other side were well-prepared!

If that were the case, then the vanguard forces would have to endure the most ferocious brunt of the enemy’s attacks.

No wonder the Death Witches had the undead walk at the very front. They were being used as cannon fodder to wear down the enemies on the other side!

Aooooo!

A shocking roar reverberated throughout the land. Death Witch Leader Khesuna appeared on the Fourth Grade Corpse Dragon Artest.

The appearance of the corpse dragon instantly introduced chaos to the orderly ranks of the undead army.

All the undead fearfully moved to each side, making way for this massive corpse dragon covered in rotting grey flesh and iron-green scales.

Artest strode toward the door with heavy footsteps, letting out a deafening roar at the high-grade undead around him as he did so. All the undead that he stared at shivered uncontrollably and stepped backward as if they couldn’t endure the dragon’s ferocious aura.

The corpse dragon disappeared behind the door with Khesuna on his back. A few high-grade Death Witches quickly followed after and entered the other plane.

It was only now that the undead once more became quiet and resumed their march into the portal.

The march of the undead took five hours in total.

It was the Dark Witches’ turn now.

The Dark Witches had also sent over a thousand fighters, including pure shadow creatures like shadow hounds, shadow warriors, and shadow assassins. Furthermore, quite a few of them were half-shadow creatures with twisted forms. Greem saw the characteristics of planar creatures on these half-shadow beings, along with the unique, sinister aura and ferocity of shadow creatures.

The shadow creatures were of various grades as well. There were Third and Fourth Grade existences, as well as weaklings that were barely First Grade.

Still, compared to Greem’s magical machine army, they were already extremely powerful!