Age of Adepts

The fifth floor of Fire Throne.

Inside the laboratory.

Greem put down his surgical knife in pity and started to clean up the operation platform.

The experiment on the Sourcestealer had been very successful. The creature had perfectly inherited some innate abilities of the unicorn. Still, transferring the natural abilities within the Sourcestealer to a third party became a new problem.

Bloodline had always been a matter of purity, and any impurities would directly affect the possibility of future advancements. Greem only had elementium affinity and was considered a pure human in terms of his bloodline.

He had not given up on his human form even after three advancements.

In the end, the so-called Body of Flames and Flame Fiend’s Body were just transformation skills belonging to his elementium affinity. If he thoroughly converted into an elementium body, he would most definitely gain a boost to his fire damage. However, he would then suffer during his subsequent advancements as a consequence.

Anyone who was a spellcaster knew that elementium lifeforms lived for curiously long times, but had an especially difficult time advancing.

If Greem had chosen to become a fire creature when he was Second Grade, he would never have advanced to Third Grade so quickly.

It was trade-off!

Greem’s bloodline was like a piece of blank paper with plenty of space to grow and express himself.

However, he had to pick his bloodline carefully. He had to ensure his new bloodline would assimilate perfectly with his current fire affinity, instead of conflicting and disrupting it.

However, before this could be a possibility, Greem would first have to accumulate some necessary experience in bloodline isolation and transplantation. However, these things were the hardest to get your hands on. After all, research and secrets related to bloodlines had always been the most classified information in any adept clan or organization.

Greem might have stayed in the Sarubo Clan for some time, but he’d had no chance of coming into contact with such secrets with his power and status then. Meanwhile, it was no more than a fantasy to attempt to obtain such research from the outside world.

No clan or force would ever publish such research results. Moreover, bloodline-adept clans always severely put down adepts who conducted private research into bloodline isolation and transplantation. If such secrets were ever to be released, it would place all bloodline adepts in a perilous position.

A bloodline was a strange and intangible power.

It existed within the flesh and soul of all creatures and was incomparably powerful yet mysterious and profound.

Bloodline research in the past had always focused on the blood of the target creature. Adepts believed that regularly removing impurities and increasing the concentration of high-energy substances within the blood would allow them to find the source of power behind bloodline creatures.

The Chip also fundamentally agreed with this direction of research after some analysis and organization.

Other adepts might not be assisted by a Chip, but their minds weren’t much inferior to it. After tens of thousands of years of continuous research, the adepts’ understanding of bloodlines had reached an extremely refined level. How could they possibly overlook something that even the Chip could discover?

Thus, the source of all bloodline power would be uncovered by blood research!

Meanwhile, Greem had the perfect conditions for such research.

He had successfully extracted all the blood from the creature’s body and was trying his best to figure out what made it different.

With the magnification array on the operation platform and the Chip’s detailed scan, Greem started to magnify a slide of the creature’s blood much like scientists on Earth in his previous life.

One had to admit, Greem saw too many mysterious substances in the blood slide that were utterly different from his previous world.

The creature’s blood had been dehydrated in a very refined manner, getting rid of most of the water content. The only things that remained were small amounts of protein, some living tissue, cell remnants, dead bacteria, and small parasites. Those things might not typically be visible, but they made up over 96% of blood content, and there were hundreds of different substances.

Getting rid of these elements required a different process for every single one of them.

Any problems that arose during this process would cause the blood purification process to be in vain.

In all honesty, the ancient adepts had no tools like magnification glasses, heaters, coolers, evaporators, filters, and separators. The fact that they had managed to complete similar bloodline research with magical arrays alone was enough to massively impress Greem!

Right now, Greem had absolutely no idea how adepts in the past had managed to accomplish such a feat. He could only walk down this path once again based on his own understanding and the help of the Chip.

High-energy substance? What was this substance that could bring about tremendous magical power? What relationship did it have with the soul? How was it passed down through the generations?

Greem couldn’t help but scratch his head.

These were apparently problems that he needed to research and deal with, one by one!

Greem emerged from the biology lab and went for a shower to get rid of the smell of blood. He then casually started to enjoy the most sumptuous feast of the day.

With his current abilities, he would not die even if he were to go without food for an entire month. However, eating and meditation were still essential ways by which he increased his powers.

In particular, fire dragon ribs had become an irreplaceable meal for Greem ever since he obtained control over a dragon plane. Compared to meditation and gathering elementium particles to increase the upper limit of his Spirit, consuming fire dragon ribs was a superior method to improve his power.

While his body took in pure fire elementium energy, the high-energy substance in the fire dragon meat could also continually nourish his body. Potent magical power demanded a powerful body to contain such power!

Why were dragons all so huge? To sustain their powerful bloodline requirements!

Take, for example, the Sourcestealer. It might have robbed the unicorn of its bloodline talent through its strange ability, but it did not have the unicorn’s robust Physique and holy-power-infused muscle tissue. That was why it could not unleash a large-scale a Purification Halo as unicorns could.

It was like placing a powerful generator in a run-down chariot. Not only would the host be unable to make full use of the power, but the power itself would cause the host’s body to disintegrate. Their genetic sequence would also fall apart.

Of course, if the strange creature was given a few years or a few decades to adapt to its new power, it could gain a body similar to the unicorns. After all, only a vessel like this was suited for the bloodline talent to unleash its full potential.

Even with the increase to his grade, how could Greem possibly hope to unleash more magical might if he was unwilling to change the form of his human body!? After all, his two-meter-tall body could only contain a finite amount of magic power!

That was why Greem had to gradually improve his Physique through devouring high-quality food and allow his flesh to be able to contain more magical energy. That was something that all adepts undertook behind the scenes.

In the end, humans were a short-lived species. Their bodies were frail as well, and they possessed no exceptional racial talents. Their only strength was possibly their average abilities in all aspects, leaving them with no excessively lethal weaknesses.

Any adept that wanted to become stronger had to use any means necessary to change and transform their body. From then on, they would have stepped onto a one-way road with no way to turn back.

That was a problem all adepts had to face!

Greem set aside five kilograms of fire dragon ribs for himself every day.

Of course, this wasn’t a problem of Greem being unable to consume more than that. Instead, it was the perfect number the Chip had obtained after some precise calculations.

With his current Physique, five kilograms of fire dragon ribs required precisely a single day to digest and absorb.

This amount was just enough not to waste any food or time.

After enjoying the only meal of the day, Greem spent the rest of his time in the alchemical lab.

After conquering the Goblin Plane, Greem had naturally taken over plenty of magical machine technology from the hands of the goblins. The Chip’s analysis revealed that it was entirely possible to combine this otherworldly technology with his own golem creation techniques.

Greem had theorized the combination of elementium golems with magical machines a long time ago.

However, turning this idea into reality required solving a lot of complicated issues.

Firstly, high-magic alloys.

Secondly, energy effects.

Thirdly, a magical spirit.

Should any of these three issues not be resolved, the combination of elementium golems and magical machines would remain nothing more than a pipe dream.

High-magic alloys were the first problem that Greem needed to overcome when creating these new elementium magical machines.

Of the thousands of metals that the Chip held in its data library, only seventy of them possessed some magical conductivity, and less than five of them possessed full conductivity.

The elementium golems that Greem had currently created consisted of over sixty percent of all existing attributes. Without a suitable magical metal to conduct the magical energy, the machines would not be able to unleash their power.

Over the past few days, Greem had been continuously selecting suitable magical metals and trying his best to create a high-magic alloy that could meet his requirements.

Greem’s requirement for the high-magic alloy was full magical conductivity and the ability to deploy large amounts of magic power.

Meanwhile, things like physical defense and magical resistance could be solved by other means.

Energy effect. It was a basic requirement for the elementium magical machines to unleash powerful combat might.

Adept’s had consciousness cores to memorize and cast spell models. How were these elementium magical machines supposed to fight then?

Would they work as moving cannons like the Archers? Would they shoot energy beams and possess magic energy rifles?

Doing so would undoubtedly wipe away the powerful advantage of elementium golems in being able to cast spells naturally. If they were to fight in such a manner, Greem might as well just enhance the Archers instead!

Meanwhile, a magical spirit was the only way to provide elementium magical machines with artificial intelligence.

However, to do this, Greem would first have to master some soul spells.

At the very least, he would require soul spells at the level of master necromancers.

Greem intended to have the Chip control these magical machines, but with his current level of souls studies, he was far from being able to have a copy of the Chip function as the core of a magical spirit.

Fortunately, after advancing to Third Grade, Greem had plenty of time to make up for his deficiencies in the past.