Age of Adepts

Dian City.

It was a public city directly managed by the Witch Council. It was also an important entry point into the Northern Lands.

For the Goblin Chamber of Commerce who intended to expand their business into the Northern Lands, this city was undoubtedly a crucial point of focus for them.

Furor had returned to this city along with a group of goblin merchants.

The Northern Lands might be relatively safe, but the goblins of the Crimson Clan were still considered a subordinate force of the Fate Witches. As such, they ran into challenges from the Coldwinter Witches during this period of war.

As such, it was best for the goblins to travel with the goblin merchants who were escorted by magical machines.

Furor successfully entered Dian City with the magical emblem of the Crimson Clan.

Furor bid farewell to Ol’ Tok, the captain of the merchant group, at a junction in the street. He then made his way through three streets and finally arrived at the shop that the Goblin Chamber of Commerce had set up here.

The main business of this shop was the trade of slaves, transportation of goods, mining, and logging. They also privately dealt in firearms and poached goods.

However, magic energy rifles, magic energy cannons, magical machines, and other supernatural weapons were contraband under the Northern Witches’ decree. To avoid infuriating the rulers of this land, the goblins kept a low profile and sold ordinary weapons like goblin rifles and alchemical bombs.

At the moment, the great goblin leader Snorlax was making contact with the witches in Dian City. He was trying to obtain the rights to sell supernatural items. However, the negotiations weren’t going very smoothly. It seemed like the witches intended to make a decision only after the war between the two witch factions had concluded.

That undoubtedly infuriated and frustrated Snorlax immensely!

However, what made him even more frustrated was the bad news that Special Envoy Furor had brought back to him.

Locke, the goblin who had just advanced to become a magical mechanic, had chosen to join White Tower and become a contracted adept there. It was a tremendous blow for Snorlax!

Snorlax promptly started pacing around his room restlessly when he heard Furor’s report, loudly cursing at that goblin ‘traitor’ who didn’t know better.

To think that he, as a goblin, refused to help his brethren and instead ran toward the human’s adept’s tower; what a failure of a goblin!

Still, regardless of how he cursed and yelled, it did not change the cruel reality.

The Goblin General Chamber of Commerce, as it currently was, could not attract any adept with power!

The Chamber of Commerce had set up communication sites in over thirty cities on the Continent of Adepts, shops in over a hundred cities, and had one hundred and twenty-seven goblin merchant groups of various sizes.

A rough calculation would reveal that Snorlax had over ten thousand armed units on hand, along with six hundred magical machines.

Yet, the number of adepts and apprentices that he possessed numbered no more than thirty individuals. Ninety percent of these were adept apprentices. Only two of them were actual adepts, and both of these adepts were beginner First Grade wandering adepts.

The Goblin General Chamber of Commerce was indeed a subordinate force of the Crimson Clan and could request official adept protection from headquarters in times of crisis. Still, this was not their own power in the end. Moreover, help from headquarters might not always save them in emergencies. Most of the time, goblin engineers sent to investigate and look for mines in the depths of the Black Forest had to rely on the protection of the clumsy and slow magical machines.

It inflicted massive casualties on the talents of the Chamber of Commerce.

However, despite how harsh the environment seemed to be and how dangerous the situation was, Snorlax never gave up on his resolution to expand his influence and network.

He traveled all across the land, making contact with the local authorities and tempting them with bribes, all in an attempt to obtain a monopoly over a product or the rights to trade special goods.

Naturally, what Snorlax had to offer were those exotic slaves of war.

Though most of the Faen elves had fallen into the hands of the clan adepts, Greem managed to use his channels to obtain some inferior products. With them as his invitation to the door, Snorlax successfully completed his negotiations in five Northern Witch cities.

However, Snorlax ran into an iron wall in Dian City, where trade arrangements were most important.

That damned Third Grade castellan of the Death Witches hadn’t agreed to his request, even after accepting three Second Grade dragonborn, two Faen male elves, and a hundred strong ogre slaves.

In the end, Snorlax used other means to gain more insight into the issue. He found out that this Third Grade Death Witch was friendly with the Coldwinter Witches. No wonder she was dragging out the negotiations and refused to give the Chamber of Commerce a permit to trade!

If it weren’t for the Fate Witches standing behind the Chamber of Commerce, this witch would probably have sent troops to round them up.

Snorlax was already unbearably furious when Furor brought back the bad news. No wonder Snorlax started cursing out loud! His anger couldn’t be contained any longer.

The Goblin Chamber of Commerce wasn’t a single entity on its own. Instead, it was only the combination of four to five goblin forces. There was the Blackwater Tycoons who specialized in the slave trade, the Risk Investment Company that specialized in mining and logging, as well as the Musen Merchant Group that enjoyed trading firearms…

The reason Snorlax could unite these goblin tycoons beneath him was due to his great personal relationships with the various adepts of the Crimson Clan. However, if he were to make any significant mistakes in an important business decision, the tycoons and business leaders beneath him wouldn’t wait to replace him.

That was what made Snorlax most concerned and frustrated!

The reason he was in such a hurry to obtain a powerful adept force of his own was to keep these ambitious and eager wolves in line. Unfortunately, he had failed on the very first step he tried to take!

…………

Fire Throne.

Alchemy lab.

The sizzling sound of solder rang out as sparks flew across the air. A magical machine exoskeleton made for assistance in combat was starting to take shape.

It looked like massive metal armor gleaming with a cold blue light due to the magical alloy it was made of. A long row of ventilation ports could be seen in the back of the armor, letting out white steam.

Giant interconnected gears could be seen on every joint of the machine.

These gears would spin wildly every time the armor took a step. The forcefield generators placed all over the machine could also form forcefield of their own. When paired together, they could erect a dome-shaped defensive forcefield that covered the entire construct.

The weapons on the armor included both the rapid-fire energy rifles and the area-of-effect magic energy cannons. A mysterious three-dimensional array filled the chest cavity of the armor, and a crystalline elementium golem core was embedded in the node of the array.

A magical machine like this had always relied on magic energy batteries for mobility in the past.

Without a small magic energy generator, such magical machines had to retreat from combat every half hour to swap out their batteries. That was not a problem in small-scale skirmishes, but it became a severe limiting factor in intense wars.

Greem was now trying to combine elementium golems with magical machines. It would allow elementium golems to possess a full metal shell to protect their frail cores while allowing magical machines to possess a perpetually beating heart of elementium.

This theoretical idea was entirely feasible after a few preliminary experiments.

However, the high-grade elementium magical machines that Greem personally made only used materials and resources of the highest-grade. Consequently, the cost of each unit was speechlessly high. If Greem wanted to mass-produce these machines, he would have to further optimize and perfect the three techniques of high-magic alloy, energy effect, and magical spirit.

Greem personally manipulated a Scalding Ray beam to solder together the last core component of the elementium magical machine. He slammed shut the metal door beneath its chest and took a few steps backward. After confirming with the Chip that there were no problems, he gave the order to activate the elementium magical machine.

[Beep. Order to activate elementium magical machine has been given.

[System self-inspecting.

[Defensive forcefields all normal.

[Elementium furnace has begun operation. All operations green. Output efficiency normal.

[Magic energy circulation system supplying energy to all other parts. Feedback results excellent.

[Mobility armor assistance system online. Signal is good. Beginning function tests.]

As the complex and refined magic energy systems started their operation, the two-meter-tall elementium magical machine slowly started moving and stood up from the ground.

It was almost as if a massive fireball had been stuffed into its thick chest; red flames and searing waves of heat surged outward. Extremely pure fire energy flowed out of the golem core, slowly lighting up the entirety of the machine’s body.

The magical alloy that gleamed with a cold blue light started to turn red and boiling hot from the surging fire energy, much like a flame giant that had been fished out of a volcanic sea.

Ka, ka!

The elementium magical machine strode forward with heavy steps under the control of the Chip. It raised the two magic energy rifles on its arms and started firing as it advanced.

The red beams crossed a hundred meters of distance and shot into the stone walls of the tower, leaving ten-centimeter deep craters in the stone. It was important to note that even the inner walls of the tower were protected with magic energy. Ordinary attacks had to first break through the magical defenses to damage the walls.

The elementium magical machine’s energy rifles would be enough to pierce the armor of human soldiers if it could leave a ten-centimeter crater in the wall of the alchemy lab.

The Chip performed some calculations and revealed that these high-energy rifles had as much as two hundred and sixty points of power with the power supplied by the golem core. It was already as powerful as the all-out attack of a Second Grade adept!

After finishing his tests with the rifle, Greem ordered the magical machine to test the magic energy cannon on its back. The machine squatted down, and the barrel slid to its shoulders and locked in place. Three seconds later, a blinding red fireball shot out of the cannon, thoroughly scorching the wall of the lab.

Four hundred and twenty-points!

Greem finally broke out into a smile when he saw the energy intensity that the Chip was displaying.

As expected of the first elementium magical machine he had spent three hundred and fifty thousand magical crystals to create. Its basic attack power was first-rate even amongst Second Grade adepts. In fact, it could even threaten Third Grade adepts under certain circumstances!