Age of Adepts

The battle immediately broke out!

The mist thirty meters in front of her parted as a crimson silhouette shot toward Witch Ryl like a flash of lightning.

The instant-cast Frost Shield stopped the opponent’s bloody hand just in time.

While the opponent’s form was coated in a layer of frost and her movements were temporarily slowed down, Witch Ryl waved the instant-cast magic wand in her hand. A storm of sharp ice blades and a vortex of cold wind blew the opponent into the air.

Small cuts instantly appeared all over the enemy’s slender body, but the chill froze these wounds before the blood could spill out. Not much blood could be seen despite the numerous injuries.

Something wasn’t right; Mary couldn’t be this weak, could she?

Witch Ryl quickly understood that something was off and frowned. She instantly focused and tried to send news of this to her companions, who were rushing to her aid. Yet, at this moment, the crimson silhouette forcefully broke free of the snow that imprisoned her and once again lunged at Ryl.

Dammit! That was the enemy’s plan!

Though she understood what was happening, Ryl had no spare energy to warn her companions when dealing with an opponent of the same grade. The two beautiful forms, one red and one white, clashed together, turning the swamp into an absolute mess.

The witches near Ryl’s side sent alerts to their companions after receiving her warning. They then quickly approached her position. Witch Cerro was also a peak Second Grade. She took the lead and charged to the forefront.

In doing so, they indirectly left the two witches who were at the edge of the search formation in the very rear.

Laila was one such unfortunate witch!

She was at the rightmost of the fan-shaped search formation. By the time the alert reached her, the two companions to her left were already making their way toward the battlefield. When she finally received the alert and stopped to change directions, there was already a kilometer between herself and her partners.

A single kilometer was usually nothing to adepts. At full speed, Laila would only need thirty to forty seconds to catch up to her companions.

However, in the eyes of someone with wicked intentions, this one kilometer was the distance between life and death!

Just as Laila turned to hurry to the battlefield, five crimson silhouettes descended on the swamp she was at.

Two of them had emerged from the mud, one had come from the ghost tree nearby, and two had just dove down from the clouds above.

In the blink of an eye, they had surrounded the isolated Laila.

The ones who had no aversion to filth and were willing to hide in the mud were Soros and Windsor, the two blood nights. They blew away the dirt on their bodies upon showing themselves and launched two immensely powerful crimson sword blasts at the Coldwinter Witch from thirty meters away.

Meanwhile, the three blood elves lunged toward Laila and sealed off the space she had to retreat or dodge.

Dammit!

Laila didn’t even have time to curse these vampires for their insidiousness. She quickly threw up a Frost Shield and started casting chilling winds to freeze the blood elves on the spot.

These blood elves were the same grade as her and, thus, had shockingly high magic resistance. Laila’s ice magic could barely keep them frozen for half a second. However, this half a second was enough for her to weave between her enemy’s strikes and avoid the barrage of attacks coming at her.

However, she was dealing with five Second Grade vampires!

Individually, none of them was her opponent. However, when all five of them lunged at her with no regard for their own life, it was a whole different story.

That put Laila in an extremely compromised situation.

Dammit, it had already been ten seconds! Were her companions all deaf and blind? Couldn’t they see the battle that had erupted here?

Witch Laila fought on with all she had while constantly looking in the direction where her companions were.

Her companions weren’t idiots either. They immediately understood the enemy’s plan when they sensed the eruption of energy from behind them. However, when they turned and prepared to reinforce their ally, Mary beat her crimson wings and showed up in front of them like a flash of crimson lightning. She stopped both of the Coldwinter Witches all by herself.

The two Coldwinter Witches were powerful, but they were dreaming if they believed they could take down this viciously fast Bloody Queen in just one or two minutes.

They battled for seventy seconds before Mary shrieked and fled the battlefield before the other witches arrived. She had to endure the attacks of the two other witches as she vanished into the depths of the swamp.

The two Coldwinter Witches were stunned for a second before realizing that both battlefields to their left and right had fallen utterly silent. It seemed all the battles had concluded.

Just as they were hesitating and deciding which direction to go in, Deputy Leader Cerro arrived with the other three witches. They held a bloodied blood elf in their hands, frozen in a block of ice.

That was lucky. They had finally caught one of the enemies.

Just as this thought appeared in their minds, the witches immediately thought of Laila, who they had left behind. Their faces turned pale once again.

One for one?

Were they trading a blood elf for one of their witches?

This trade seemed to be balanced on the surface, but the Coldwinter Witches couldn’t help but frown now that it had happened.

These blood elves were all monsters forcibly created with sinister magic. They could not be considered formal Second Grades and were not truly powerful. Meanwhile, a Coldwinter Witch of theirs was cultivated slowly over the years, costing vast amounts of resources.

The two weren’t even on the same level; they couldn’t even be compared.

The Coldwinter Witches were definitely the ones to lose out from a trade like this.

“Kill her?” A witch with a cold and severe expression asked with a sharp tone.

Cerro shook her head silently.

“We can’t!” One of the other witches explained dejectedly, “Kill her, and they have an excuse to kill our sisters. Don’t forget, two of our companions have already fallen into their hands.”

Deputy Leader Cerro narrowed her eyes and looked at this strange place. She spoke coldly, “I have been to this Silent Swamp. There was none of this sinister and wicked fog. It seems this was a battlefield they had set up ahead of time. We are the careless ones. We stepped into their arena far too simply.”

“Then…are we still searching for them?”

“Search!” Deputy Leader Cerro ordered, “I have already informed the leader. She is now moving toward us from the outside. If those vampires still want to go for round two. Hmph! I will make sure they all stay!”

The Coldwinter Witches nodded and once again split off, slowly combing the area for vampires.

However, this time, they shortened the distance between each of them to a mere two hundred meters.

What the Coldwinter Witches didn’t know was the fact that ten eyeball machines were slowly gliding in the skies above the fog of Silent Swamp.

A Disruption Array had already been set up in the depths of the swamp. It disrupted everyone’s Spirit and caused them to become inaccurate. However, the Crimson adepts had prepared ahead of time and had set up special surveillance crystals all over the swamp. They then used a peer-to-peer system to send the information they gained to the eyeball machines above the swamp, where a real-time map of all movements was distributed to the vampires in combat.

Through this method, a blood elf could be used as bait to lure the witches into breaking their formation. Mary could then personally intercept and cut off all possible reinforcements from the isolated witch. That was how they had managed to capture a Coldwinter Witch at the cost of a blood elf.

Thus, Mary’s prisoners had gone from one to two.

However, just as Mary and the other vampires were gathering together to discuss a new assault, the eyeball machines transmitted disturbing news.

A tremendous snowstorm was rushing toward them from the back of the swamp. Everything that the storm swept across was frozen in ice. Even the surveillance crystals they had set up ahead of time had lost their connection.

It was clear that Morgana had lost her patience and was bulldozing her way into the battle!

“You guys bring the prisoners back first. I want to have a bout with this Morgana!”

Mary was not willing to lick a bloody knife and lose everything she had won in a fight against a nearly berserk Third Grade witch. Thus, with her orders, the vampires scooped out the battered Zivelina from the swamp, transformed into massive blood bats, wrapped around the destructive snowstorm, and secretly snuck back to Dragonblight with both wounded witches in tow.

They were basically in Fate Witch territory once they entered Dragonblight; all the magical creatures there were under the control of the Tower of Fate. If the Coldwinter Witches dared to trespass, the road to the tower would not be a peaceful one!

However, Mary did not leave. Instead, she carefully and slowly started to organize the items and equipment on her. She made use of these actions to calm herself down and relax.

There was no excitement about having to battle a Third Grade witch soon, nor was there any anxiety. Mary’s heart was calm and collected, much like that still, silent vampire heart of hers.

Vampires had no heartbeat!

It was precisely their lack of ability to create blood that the vampires were forced to drain others of their blood to make up for it.

Their hearts might no longer move and had lost their original functions, but they were still the most important organ for vampires. That was because most of their soul consciousness was stored in their heart. That was the actual medium and host of their soul.

Greem could fight against a Third Grade adept as a Second Grade. Why couldn’t she?

Mary slowly accelerated as this unyielding pride burned within her, flying straight toward the snowstorm.