Age of Adepts

Adept Locke was incredibly busy!

As a newly advanced adept, Little Locke relied on his expert magical machine manipulation techniques to quickly ascend as a celebrity combat adept in White Tower.

Locke had been assigned to the left side of the fort for this battle. He led a group of two hundred goblins in defense of a fifty-meter stretch of the wall. The two other adepts that had been assigned to the same area were Blood Elf Archer Sandor and Human Adept Adreica.

Judging by this assignment alone, it was apparent that every zone of defense was made up of a team of adepts from all the major factions.

While he was engaged in battle, Little Locke’s mind kept thinking back to the things that the goblin hero, Tigule, had secretly told him. Tigule not only told him about the real purpose behind this stampede defense, but he also told him to perform to the best of his abilities and increase the reputation of the goblin faction.

It was his awareness of the situation that made Goblin Adept Locke behave so courageously and selflessly in battle. He was also curious whether Blood Elf Archer Sandor had also received the news of this ahead of time. Why else would a long-ranged magic archer like herself behave so aggressively on the battlefield?

Little Locke did not choose to hide in the fort but instead came to its exterior. A strange, two-meter tall magical machine golem was running beside him, exceedingly active and surprisingly lethal in battle.

This magical machine did not make use of the same dome-shaped metal body like the other magical machines. Instead, it was constructed with a relatively primitive and crude wind-up clockwork system. Not many parts of its body were covered with metal pieces, leaving much of the internal construction exposed to everyone’s eyes.

It shambled about the battlefield with its wild, penguin-like movements, occasionally transforming into all sorts of slaughter weapons.

If the enemy were too far away, it would creak and transform into a smoking goblin tank, bombarding the opponent from a distance with its powerful magic energy cannons. If the enemy charged into mid-range, it would creak as it turned into an Archer, disrupting the enemy’s movements with fast and rapid gunfire.

If the enemy continued rushing ahead, it would turn into a two-meter tall wind-up goblin, engaging in melee with hooks and chainsaws. It would even fire out goblin rockets to destroy the enemy at close range.

It was the protection of this magical machine that allowed Little Locke to remain uncontested on the battlefield.

An even more powerful flying disc floated above his head, keeping a tight guard over the airspace around him. Any ferocious bird of prey that came within a hundred meters of Locke would have to endure its fierce attacks.

It had two primary means of attack. It relied on the two red gemstones to fire beams from a distance, and sharp blades extending out of its sides when it came to a melee. When the disc spun around the flocks of birds at seventy revolutions per second, no flesh or bone could stop the terrifying slicing power of the spinning disc.

Meanwhile, Locke held two blue Frost Ray guns in his hand, shooting down any creature that made it past his defenses. His shooting skills were terrible, but with the help of the Locke III Combat Goggles, he was a perfect sharpshooter.

Any beast that got hit by the Frost Rays would be instantly sealed in a crystal half a centimeter thick. Before they could break free of the constraints of the ice crystal, the magical machine golem and the flying disc’s attacks would descend, tearing them to pieces.

All the goblins defending within the tower were loyal fans of Adept Locke. They would cheer loudly every time Locke tore apart one of the ferocious magical creatures. The dense barrage of Scalding Rays from the walls shot down most of the beasts charging at Adept Locke.

Compared to Little Locke, Magic Archer Sandor’s battle appeared to be elegant and clean, much like the work of a master artist.

Sandor fought on the battlefield alone.

She used a crimson longbow with an exaggerated and strange design as her weapon.

As she casually wove through the battlefield, the many beasts and magical creatures chased after her, but their fangs and claws could only tear through the afterimages she left behind. While she dodged between the beasts and monsters, she would either pull lightly at her bow and fire a crimson arrow through the opponent’s skull or wave the bow and use the blade of the bow’s body to slice the enemy’s throat.

Neither the enemy’s fangs nor the blood they spilled could splash onto her slender and tall body.

Sandor roamed the battlefield, seemingly slow but actually fast and rapid in her extermination of the powerful magical creatures mixed amongst the beasts.

If too many beasts gathered around her, she would jump off of the back of a beast, gather her energy in mid-air, and create a crystalline crimson magic arrow between her fingers. The arrow would then shoot into the horde.

A massive blood spell would then abruptly erupt amongst the beasts!

Be it Crimson Impact, Blood Poison, or even Enraging Mists, every single spell would bring maximum damage and chaos to the stampede.

With her on the battlefield, the powerful magical creatures could not even get close to the wooden walls of the fort; they all died humiliating deaths in the stampede.

Compared to Little Locke’s ferociousness and savagery and Sandor’s agility and fast movements, the First Grade human adept performed much more poorly.

He was an adept from the Magic Forest Hut who had surrendered to the clan!

He was also a potion master– an essential and irreplaceable part of the clan’s development!

With Little Locke and Sandor fighting at the frontlines, Potion Master Adreica could relax and safely unleash his might from below the walls.

Adreica knew the situation well enough. He threw out a few vials of potion at Locke and Sandor, the erupting mists enhancing them with beneficial support spells. He mainly provided Sandor with enhancements to her agility, with a bit of bonus to her stamina regeneration. Meanwhile, Locke had his Spirit raised, along with his Spirit regeneration.

This way, the two adepts would have a demonstrably increased sustainability on the battlefield!

After enhancing his two companions, Adreica threw out a dozen magical potions. These potions erupted and summoned three-meter tall elementium earth golems, wind spirits surrounded by raging cyclones, ice warriors formed of hard blue ice, as well as slimes that smelled like rotten mud.

These summoned elementals charged into the horde fearlessly under Adreica’s orders, battling with their unique elemental abilities. Meanwhile, Adreica used a magical golem core to summon an advanced First Grade stone golem to protect him.

This way, his safety was guaranteed!

Similar scenes were ongoing around the wooden fort that the adepts had constructed. It filled the battlefield with a strange atmosphere alongside all the bloodiness and cruelty.

Of course, war was always strange and unpredictable.

Not all adepts could handle the invasion so easily and effortlessly.

In certain regions, both adepts and apprentices were ambushed by magical creatures in a moment of carelessness, losing their lives in the horde and becoming the defeated of the battlefield. However, in general, the rhythm and pace of the battlefield were still dictated by the Crimson adepts. The stampede was a surging wave, only capable of repeatedly beating against that seemingly weak yet impenetrable line of defense, breaking themselves into pieces upon the sturdy wall.

The performance of the horde dissatisfied the magical creature lords behind the scenes.

A deafening roar rang out as an intermediate Second Grade flaming tiger charged out of the woods with two dozen of its family members. They pushed aside the beasts in their way and made for the fort.

The flaming tigers were a sort of fire-element magical creature. Their fur was bright red, and they looked a flowing ball of fire when they sprinted across the land. First Grade flaming tigers had mastery over a power known as Flameball. They could concentrate raging fire elementium in a fist-sized fireball. The projectile had a range of thirty meters and dealt between sixty and ninety points of damage.

The Second Grade flaming tiger leading the charge also possessed a strange ability reminiscent of Burning Path, turning everything into fire where it crossed.

If they were allowed to assault the fort, the clan adepts on the outside would not be able to stop them. It was an attack from a Second Grade magical creature, after all.

Locke and Sandor clearly didn’t have good luck, as the Second Grade flaming tiger had chosen to break through their area of defense.

A cold glint of light gleamed in Sandor’s crimson eyes. She quickly approached the flaming tiger pack, her red boots stepping upon the backs of the wild beasts. Once the tigers were within range, she stomped her feet hard, avoiding the lunging strikes of two jaguars and rising to mid-air.

A pair of crimson bat wings appeared silently, rapidly carrying her backward through the sky. She focused and quickly gathered a spell-charged arrow between the bowstring and bow.

Sandor assessed the situation and fired an arrow enchanted with Enraging Mists into the midst of the beasts. She was hoping to disrupt their offense with magic that created chaos.

Unfortunately, when the arrow shot toward the flaming tigers, an eagle’s cry rang from the flock above them.

A Second Grade wing eagle lunged from the sky, its two powerful claws reaching forward and grabbing at Sandor’s head.

Wind eagles excelled at manipulating wind elementium, making them the fastest amongst magical creatures of the same grade.

Sandor had been distracted and only noticed the flaming tiger. As such, she was caught unprepared by this sly and cunning Second Grade wind eagle.

Sandor was almost about to be injured by the Second Grade wind eagle when a one-meter-wide and half-meter-thick floating disc charged over toward them.

The wildly spinning blades clashed with the eagle claws wrapped in a vortex of air. Both the disc and the bird fell backward simultaneously as blood spilled into the air.

The right claw of the wind eagle had been sliced open and was now bleeding.

The flying disc had been blown away by the impact as well. A massive dent appeared on the disc, and cracks were visible everywhere.

The flying disc wobbled in the air and stumbled back toward Little Locke.