Age of Adepts

An adept advancing to Third Grade wasn’t too significant of an event, even in the World of Adepts.

After all, the World of Adepts was a large-sized higher plane. Third Grade adepts might not be as numerous as the stars in the sky, but there were still plenty of them.

However, a Third Grade adept as glorious and powerful as Greem was a rare sight. He stood out as a shining star in the crowd.

When news of the young clan leader of the Crimson Clan advancing to Third Grade spread throughout the land, Greem instantly became a blinding, rising star of the center region.

It wasn’t just the Zhentarim area. Even a small half of the Northern Lands was passionately talking about this legendary fire adept.

In just two hundred years, he had passed through three thresholds and become a famous and renowned fire adept. An adept like this had the most potential to advance to Fourth Grade. There was no doubt that this particular aspect of Greem’s advancement was what caught the eyes of the adepts.

The various major forces immediately changed their attitudes toward this quickly rising Third Grade adept. They offered their olive branches and tried their very best to invite Greem to join their factions. Those adept clans and major organizations might have Fourth Grade adepts protecting them from behind the scenes, but they were existences only meant to be used as ‘nuclear weapons’ to intimidate the enemy rather than fight at the frontlines. Most daily clan activities still revolved around Third Grade adepts.

The Crimson Clan that Greem had established might be developing at a decent pace, but it was still too frail in the eyes of the significant adept forces.

The various representatives of the large adept clans visited Fire Throne over a matter of days. Every one of them promised all sorts of benefits.

If Greem was willing to join their clan, they could provide him with all the knowledge and resources he needed to raise his ability and work toward Fourth Grade. This way, Greem didn’t need to expend effort toward managing the clan and could focus entirely on improving his skills.

Such conditions were already sufficiently generous for most adepts!

However, such conditions obviously could not tempt Greem. He rejected all of the offers.

Compared to some people obsessed with individual power, Greem placed more priority over the feeling of achievement at carving a place for himself out of nothing. In particular, with the Chip’s assistance, the magical knowledge and technical experience that required an extensive amount of time to accumulate was no longer a problem for him. He could take out much more time to invest in clan matters or research problems that interested him.

As opposed to living under someone else’s roof and reacting to every whim and will of theirs, he would much rather work for himself and find his own wealth!

What Greem never expected was for news of his Third Grade advancement to spark a considerable commotion in the Northern Lands, apart from just the one he had started in Zhentarim.

The witches, with their severe obsession with matriarchy, also broke out into intense arguments amongst themselves over a male adept like Greem.

Many tower owners and witch leaders voiced their opinions. Either this male adept was to be expelled from the Northern Lands, or he was to marry a yet unmarried tower owner and become a member of the witches’ subordinate forces. Among all these witch leaders, the one that was shouting the loudest was naturally Coldwinter Witch Leader Morgana.

Morgana was the weakest amongst the witch leaders, with only the power of Third Grade. Yet, at the same time, she was the youngest of them all, at only six hundred years old.

A six hundred-year-old hag might be some sort of monster in the eyes of a mortal, but she was as young and tender as an eighteen-year-old maiden when compared to the other witch leaders, who were easily over a thousand years old.

Alice might be even younger than her, but she was only Second Grade and had no means of subduing a powerful male adept of the Third Grade. If Alice and Greem were allowed to become a couple, their power dynamic clearly couldn’t reach the essential requirements in the minds of the Northern Witches, where a man was lower than the woman.

Thus, Greem would have to choose a partner from among the pile of ancient Third and Fourth Grade monsters if he wanted to remain in the faction of the Northern Witches.

The influential witch leaders had even convened a Witch Council for the express purpose of discussing Greem’s partner in marriage.

During this Witch Council, the typically gentle and quiet Alice turned into a spooked little wild cat. For the first time, her temper was fiery, and her words were abrasive. She shouted and issued threats of war at every single witch that dared to set eyes on Greem.

The first person she had to deal with was that Coldwinter Witch Leader Morgana.

With no choice left to them, the Witch Council could only permit this theatrical and comical clan war.

The war would only be between the Fate and Coldwinter Witches, while the outcome of the battle would decide whose hands the Third Grade male adept would end up in and whose partner he would become.

Though this matter concerned Greem, he had absolutely no say or choice in the issue. He could only passively accept the decision of the witches. Moreover, as the reward of the war, Greem himself was not allowed to intervene in the battle between the two witch factions.

Greem was stunned when he heard this news!

He had never expected his advancement to Third Grade to lead to such a ridiculous event. He had never thought that there would be a day where he himself would become a wanted good with a price, waiting on a shelf to be chosen by a witch who fancied him.

Not only had such a ridiculous thing happened, but the Witch Council had also notified all witch towers of this war through the use of written notices. One could only imagine how many tower owners would be sitting back and eating their popcorn, waiting to see a joke at the expense of the Fate Witches in the upcoming war.

It couldn’t be helped. The Coldwinter Witches might have experienced countless instances of complete destruction, and the new Coldwinter faction had only been established five hundred years ago. However, compared to the Fate Witches who had only been re-established two hundred years ago, they were immensely powerful already.

Moreover, the Fate Witches had to be the most inept at fighting amongst all the witch factions!

Their unique profession abilities were all limited to divination and astrology. They had absolutely no unique skills related to combat. Without the protection and support of the other witch factions, the Fate Witches could not possibly survive in as harsh an environment as the Northern Lands.

However, should they possess a powerful army in their hands, the Fate Witches predictive ‘Fate Sense’ and cheat-like ‘Divination’ would be able to put together the power of the entire military and allow them to unleash force far beyond the sum of their parts!

That was the true meaning to the existence of the Fate Witches!

However, the Fate Witches had only been re-established for less than two hundred years. Even the witch leader, Alice, had only just reached beginner Second Grade. She had very few witches under her lead; so few, in fact, that they could be counted with both hands.

Trying to use such a force to fight against the Coldwinter witches, who had seven to eight times their military power, appeared to be a fool’s errand no matter how you looked at it. It was no different from putting your face in front of the enemy’s palm and asking to be slapped. However, this thing had now involved her lover. It didn’t matter how difficult or arduous the task would be; Alice had no choice but to push forward without any hesitation.

When the news spread out, a huge commotion erupted within the Crimson Clan as well.

The first to blow up was the temperamental and irritable Mary.

Alice alone was more than enough competition for Greem. Now that another Morgana had jumped out of the woodworks, Mary instantly blew up like a barrel of gunpowder!

During a joint meeting between the Crimson Clan and the Fate Witches, the infuriated Mary slammed the tabletop and furiously declared war against Morgana, the woman whose face she had not even seen. She swore to defend her lover’s chastity even at the cost of her own life.

Meanwhile, the vampires were also enraged, and all requested to go into battle for their mistress.

Amongst them, Emelia was the one that made the most noise and moved around the most. She waved her little fists and shouted non-stop within the Rouge Corps as if she wanted to drag the enemy to the grave along with her.

The second one to stand up and speak was White Tower Majordomo Meryl.

She was a student of Greem’s, as well as the most respected and beloved core adept of the leaders of the Crimson Clan. She might only be at intermediate First Grade, and couldn’t even rank in the top ten powerhouses of the clan, but she was a central character in the authority of the Crimson Clan.

The other Second Grade adepts might excel at combat and slaughter, but they were inept at managing clan matters and dealing with more trivial tasks such as the allocation of resources.

Judging from the Goblin Plane and White Tower alone, one could see how all clan matters that Meryl managed were dealt with in an orderly and suitable fashion. The allocation of resources had always been fair as well, and all things progressed positively under her guidance.

Given this to be the case, Meryl was also an irreplaceable core character of the Crimson Clan!

Her words carried a lot of weight to them.

She expressed immense fury at this somewhat humiliating decision from the Witch Council. However, because this had always been how the Northern Witches acted, the Crimson Clan had no choice but to deal with the matter using the thought processes and methods of the witches.

If that was the case, it seemed like a joint combat cooperation with the Fate Witches was unavoidable!

The key to the problem was what methods of cooperation was available to the two parties? How was the gathering of information on the Coldwinter Witches going? What did they need to be aware of when fighting against the Coldwinter Witches?

As they listened to Meryl list out all of these crucial questions one by one, the Fate Witches in attendance looked at each other. In the end, they had no choice but to hand over all the information they had on their hands.

The Coldwinter Witches were known as the most combat-proficient faction of the Northern Witches.

The ice and snow magic that they specialized in was very compatible with the harsh environment of the Northern Lands. Consequently, their abilities were significantly enhanced by nature when fighting outside.

However, the Coldwinter faction had experienced many crises over the years, and their witch legacy had also been cut off for long periods of time. This latest Coldwinter branch had only just regained their inheritance five hundred years ago. Though they were much more developed than the Fate Witches under Alice’s rule, they were still inferior compared to those factions that had lasted for several thousands of years.

At this point, the Coldwinter Witches only had a single Third Grade witch, who was their faction leader; Morgana, the woman who had started this conflict to begin with. The Coldwinter Witches had sixty-seven witches in total, eleven Second Grades, and fifty-six First Grades. Apart from them, the Coldwinter Witches also had twenty-eight subordinate adepts, most of them outsider First Grade male adepts.

The headquarters of the Coldwinter Witches was in Icesnow Valley, located in the southeastern corner of the Northern Lands. It was only a straight-line distance of three hundred and fifty kilometers away from White Tower.

Apart from these, the Coldwinter Witches also possessed thirty-one clan territories, eighty-nine human cities of various sizes, twenty-six resource sites of different classes, and four million direct subjects.