Age of Adepts

“You are a new adept that just advanced two years ago?” Greem assessed Uka and asked softly.

Uka barely managed to open his tearing eyes. He felt his eyeballs hurt, and he knew they had received actual damage. When he heard the question, he had to open his eyes forcefully and bow while replying. “My lord, it hasn’t yet been two years since I advanced. I am responsible for guarding the teleportation array here!”

Mary started chuckling when she saw Uka’s fearful look.

“Look at yourself. All this time in hiding and even the adepts in the clan don’t recognize you anymore.”

Greem scratched his nose and let out a bitter laugh. He then took out a small vial of potion and tossed it to Uka.

“There are a few drops of life stock solution in there. Remember to drop them in your eyes, or they will end up blind from being burnt!”

Uka instantly gripped the vial tightly when he heard that there was life stock solution in it. He put on a smile and said, “My lord, you are…”

Greem didn’t reply. Instead, he stood there and glanced at the distant horizon.

A black dot rapidly increased in size at the edge of the white horizon. A ferocious storm followed the silhouette.

“I knew it was you, Greem. You made me wait for a long time.”

A magnificent dragon thirty meters in length and covered in fine blue scales beat his wings and dove down from the skies above. He then rapidly transformed into a broad-shouldered man in blue scale armor.

He started shouting at Greem as he charged over. He seemed exceptionally furious.

However, when he detected the strange elementium vibration and the layer of distorted and transparent magical flames around Greem, he fell silent.

“You…you’ve become Third Grade?”

Third Grade Thunder Dragon Arms stared at Greem with a look of disbelief. His green eyes were filled with shock and surprise.

Though he knew that Greem would advance to Third Grade eventually, this was much, much faster than his expectations.

If Greem were just a Second Grade adept, then the Third Grade Arms would still possess the upper hand in their contract, even though it was meant to be a companionship contract of equal standing. Now that Greem had also become Third Grade, the contract’s constraints on Arms were much stricter than before.

It indirectly meant that Arms’ status had gone down!

That was what Arms was truly concerned about.

The adepts and apprentices here all shivered in fright when facing a Third Grade dragon’s aura of might at such close distance. However, what surprised them more was the name that the Third Grade thunder dragon had called out.

Greem.

Wasn’t…wasn’t this the name of that legendary leader of the Crimson Clan that had gone into seclusion for many years?

Could it be?

As expected, the tall adept that had accompanied Lady Mary raised his head and looked calmly at Arms. He then smiled as he said, “Long time no see, Arms!”

Arms looked at Greem in shock, incapable of responding for quite a while. Finally, he sighed and spoke, “You adepts are beings who cannot be measured with common logic. You aren’t even two hundred years old now, are you? And you’ve already advanced to Third Grade. Cough. I still remembered back when I was two hundred years old. I was just a tiny First Grade dragon, always following behind the…”

Arms voice turned softer and softer when he started recounting his memories. An expression of loss and nostalgia appeared on his face.

Just then, Meryl, who was stationed at White Tower, led seven clan adepts out of the tower and toward the teleportation array. The ten magical machines responsible for the order of the tower stepped onto both sides of the road, standing in the way of the crowd of adepts and apprentices.

“Congratulations, teacher, congratulations.”

Meryl was the first to bow, and the seven clan adepts that followed also did so.

Greem slowly retracted the energy aura he was radiating, just in case he blinded another group of clan adepts.

His present self could emit enough fire energy to harm any lifeform that dared to stare at him, even without activating the Burning Domain. As a Third Grade adept, the First Grade adepts were now as frail as ants in his eyes. If he didn’t keep his energy aura to himself, even the light and heat that he unintentionally radiated would be enough to blind them or turn them to ashes.

Greem now understood why those high-grade adepts chose to isolate themselves and rarely ever got together with the low-grade adepts. The main reason was the massive volume of the energy aura within their bodies. Compared to the low-grade adepts, they were like gargantuan beasts before ants.

High-grade adepts would have always to contain their aura when with low-grade adepts. They didn’t even dare to take a slightly heavier breath. One mistake and they could bring about irrecoverable damage to these frail ants.

This feeling of always holding back and being extremely careful was undoubtedly an unpleasant one!

Of course, the occurrence of this situation also had to do with the fact that Greem had just advanced.

The fire energy within his body was as dense as lava now; it was continually radiating heat of over a thousand degrees. When such heat combined with the fires around him, they formed a strange and distorted life forcefield. If ordinary lifeforms stared at him, it would be no different than looking straight at a burning sun.

Even those First Grade adepts and their frail eyeballs could not endure the backlash of such fire energy if they were unprepared. If that Uka didn’t find a way to treat his hurting eyeballs, he might actually risk losing his sight.

Little Goblin Locke was mixed in with the crowd. He looked upon that legendary and powerful clan leader through the forest of legs and watched as he slowly passed through the crowd and strolled toward the tower surrounded by all the adepts.

Just then, he had secretly activated the energy monitor on his goggles. However, when he pointed them at the clan leader, the monitor immediately started smoking. It had malfunctioned.

That caused Little Locke, now a pseudo-adept, to be utterly speechless.

Were Third Grade adepts already so powerful?

An important figure that others could only look up to. How perfect the world would be if that could be him…

Little Locke started drooling as he fantasized wildly in midday.

The Shadow’s Light group had now wholly dispersed. Pseudo-Adept Ponta was undoubtedly an unfortunate individual. He had undergone backlash during his advancement process, and his power had regressed to that of an advanced apprentice. Moreover, after inspection by several adepts, his Spirit was confirmed as being irrecoverable. He no longer possessed the chance to reach for adept level!

Thus, four years ago, Ponta left the Crimson Clan and returned to his home.

It was said that he married a wife there and had a kid. He now led a peaceful, albeit ordinary, life of a mortal.

Meanwhile, Plant Apprentice Eco, who had been Ponta’s lover, had barely managed to promote to advanced apprentice level and was now studying potions underneath Adept Saru. Given her current progress, she would have immense difficulty reaching pseudo-adept level before her Spirit solidified.

Talent like this would not gain her many resources in any adept clan!

Body-Refining Apprentice Dakso was still an advanced apprentice. He was now a member of the Machine Supremacy, a combat group that Locke had formed. Meanwhile, the other member–Transformation Apprentice Blanco–had unexpectedly died in the Black Forest.

It was said that he had been torn to pieces by a two-headed ogre chieftain!

Though Locke had used alchemical bombs to blast the ogre’s cave and take revenge for Blanco, he could not change his death.

In the past eight years, over sixty apprentices of the Crimson Clan had died for various reasons in the Black Forest to the east. However, their sacrifice wasn’t in vain. The Crimson Clan had also managed to exterminate over several hundreds of magical creature tribes.

It was due to the continued expansion and killing of these apprentices that the one hundred and fifty kilometers east of the tower was now a safe zone. Even ordinary people with no supernatural powers could go in there for routine jobs like logging and gathering, as long as their luck wasn’t too terrible.

To increase the basic defensive level of the civilians, the Crimson Clan started to promote a sort of alchemical rifle among the populace. The gun required no magical energy or individual talent. Any adolescent would only need some short practice to understand how to use the rifle.

These alchemical rifles and their metal bullets had as much as fifteen points of physical damage within a radius of ten to seventy meters. That was already very close to the offensive power of a beginner apprentice’s spell!

However, training a beginner apprentice first required a certain degree of elementium affinity. It also needed one to two years to break through the threshold of meditation. Meanwhile, alchemical rifles had no such limitations. As long as the civilians of White Tower practiced hard, they could be allotted the guns and easily possess a certain level of ability to defend themselves.

This way, the civilians would no longer need to worry about wild beasts when going in and out of the Black Forest. With sufficient cooperation, they could even hunt down some low-grade magical creatures that slipped through the net.

To fully equip the civilians, these alchemical rifles were provided to everyone at no cost. Moreover, the civilians could claim a certain amount of free ammunition as long as they were registered with White Tower.

It was one one of the policies by which the Crimson Clan was swaying the locals to their side!

If it weren’t for their possession of the Goblin Plane, the Crimson Clan would not have the wealth and power to have the luxury of arming the lower classes.

With Adept Meryl’s diligent governance, seven small villages and a town had appeared around White Tower. The purpose of their existence was to provide the residents of the tower with daily resources. Of course, they also had within them certain entertainments, such as underground brothels.

According to the data, the number of civilians registered with the White Tower of Icewind had reached three thousand. This number was already more than enough to fulfill the daily needs of White Tower!