Age of Adepts

With the death of the Gold Knight, the resistance of Hakans came to an end.

Without a Third Grade to keep the adept in check, the other First and Second Grade Silver Knights were useless regardless of how numerous they were. Simple numbers were no longer a solution at the level of Third Grades.

The crippled holy knights seemed to have realized their defeat as well. They forcefully reorganized their forces and retreated to the Holy Light Chapel, hoping to rely on the high ground to defend against the adept’s terrifying attacks. The idea was a decent one, but the reality was always crueler than the most brutal horror story.

After exterminating the Gold Knight, Arms charged into the sky with a loud cheer. He took a brief look at the city below and immediately headed for the most extravagant mansion. There wasn’t much time left. He still had to raid the public treasuries and estates of the rich and noble. It was an extraordinarily professional and demanding job.

As such, he didn’t intend to waste even a single bit of his time!

The magnificent Holy Light Chapel before him was clearly a mystical religious building. Raiding a place like that would require dealing with too many stubborn defenders. Not only was this a waste of time, but the fruits of such an effort would also probably only be some ancient texts or the relics and armor of some past great character.

These things might bear significant meaning and history for the members of the church, but they were far too pointless for the dragons, who loved shiny and glittering treasures. He would probably be made a laughing stock if he returned to Lance with such ‘treasures.’

Arms rushed toward the city lord’s mansion in the distance without a second look at the chapel.

Meanwhile, Cindral also didn’t intend to return empty-handed. It was one of the rare times he was ‘touring’ in another plane. He immediately leaped away and headed for the commercial area of Hakans after seeing the direction the dragon had left.

There must be some rare treasures there that couldn’t be found anywhere else as well!

In the blink of an eye, only Greem and the battered elementium magical machine remained on the battlefield. Of course, there were also all the corpses of the holy knights as well.

The elementium magical machine roared and chased after the retreating holy knights under Greem’s orders, heading toward the Holy Light Chapel. Greem, on the other hand, walked casually to the remains of the Third Grade Gold Knight.

The incredible attacks had ravaged his body. Greem’s finishing Meteor Burst had even ruined his body beyond recognition. The holy armor he wore had been distorted severely, and the exposed skin had been charred black and utterly carbonized.

Greem bent down and carefully examined this broken corpse; blue light flickered in his black eyes as he scanned its insides. The Ring of Fire had already been released, cutting off all possibility of the Gold Knight’s soul fleeing from the spot.

The Chip had analyzed the strange holy light that they had failed to collect last time. Its formation was due to pure and condensed sacred light pairing with a strong and resilient soul. Both factors were utterly crucial in the creation of holy light!

In all seriousness, the Holy Light that the knights believed in was actually the steadfast knight’s chivalry that they held in their hearts!

The knights of Henvic Plane had simply found a visible and understandable form for their intangible faith- a pure light. They used light to represent the purity of their hearts, and light to describe their bright future.

It was a sort of primitive faith that still existed in a primordial and chaotic form!

Light was a basic energy that existed everywhere in a planar world. It had no consciousness nor intelligence and was as ordinary of an element as it could be. However, when all these knights ascribed and placed so-called ‘justice,’ wisdom, faith, and hope in their hearts upon the light, then it was no longer what it originally had been.

Faith itself was a potent force in the planar worlds. Thus, the medium of the holy knight’s faith–the light–became sacred, holy, and powerful.

Perhaps the adepts might laugh and look down upon the holy knights for their foolishness and ignorance in having a non-sentient, non-intelligent light as the source of their faith. However, even the adepts could not deny that the holy knights had indeed obtained power through their ‘Holy Light’ and created a legacy out of it.

From this perspective, the holy knights were actually living a purer and more genuine life than the god spiritualists of the World of Gods!

After all, they had no faith-hungry gods riding above their heads, nor strict and rigid religious teachings to restrict their every move.

The holy knights relied on their devoted faith and the daily practice of their beliefs to have their faith seep into the laws of light. One could say that the light in Henvic Plane was massively different from the laws of light in the World of Adepts.

With the aid of the power of the Holy Light, the knights had managed to imprint their belief and faith upon the planar laws. Regardless of where you were born on the plane or what race you were, you would be able to feel the existence of the Holy Light through the power of the planar laws, so long as you agreed with the faith and principles of the holy knights with your very being and soul.

Greem had no found similar ‘faith remnants’ like the Holy Light, despite having invaded two worlds with plane-wide faiths and killing many of their believers. He believed that the main reason for this was due to the existence of the gods!

The souls of these believers had been branded with the mark of the gods. The moment they died, their souls were returned to the river of souls under the guidance of the planar laws or invited into the god kingdoms through a channel of faith. Both options would not leave such a product of faith and soul behind in the material plane.

Meanwhile, those who possessed such powerful and resilient souls in the god kingdoms could still lean against the power of faith with their soul consciousness even in death. These individuals often became heroic or holy spirits.

Either way, these souls were strange individuals that would not simply vanish, but could attach themselves to remnant energies and continue existing in the material world!

Of course, the gods couldn’t be more eager to guide such existences into their kingdoms and help materialize them with their divine power, such that they could continue working in the service of the gods in the god kingdoms. However, the Holy Knight worshipped by the holy knights of Henvic had no self-consciousness. It would not actively guide the heroic and holy spirits of the dead knights back to the source of faith.

That was why the strange scene of a remnant ‘Holy Light’ would occur!

It undoubtedly provided Greem with the possibility of intercepting the ‘Holy Light.’

However, today was clearly different from the situation last time. When Greem carefully cremated the body of the Gold Knight, the Holy Light, more intense than the one from the Silver Knight last time, started to clash with the Ring of Fire repeatedly. It was almost as if there was some powerful force summoning it and making it impatient to return.

Greem lifted his head and looked in the direction the Holy Light was attempting to flee. There, in front of him, lay the path to the majestic Holy Light Chapel.

The Holy Light Chapel?

Greem started brooding in silence.

According to the memory fragments he had extracted from the minds of the planar natives, these Holy Light Chapels served as living quarters and training grounds for the holy knights, while also being the cemeteries for knights that died in battle. Perhaps it also served the same functions as the various temples of the World of Gods.

Greem might not know how to tinker with the soul, but as a knowledgable adept, he still knew seven or eight methods of capturing and storing a soul.

He took out a strange crystal ball the size of a fist and drew a dozen magical runes above it. These runes were peculiar, as well. They glowed as bright as day and radiated immense magical power when they were first drawn. However, as they burned into the surface of the crystal ball, they turned dark and faded, void of any magical aura.

Once the soul-gathering crystal had been completed, Greem lightly waved it at the Holy Light. The light trembled and was reluctantly absorbed into the space within the crystal ball by a strange power.

He got it! He finally got what he wanted!

Greem straightened his back and looked at the scarred battlefield after collecting the Third Grade Gold Knight’s remnant Holy Light.

The bodies of over a hundred holy knights were still scattered all around him.

Greem smiled. He chained the soul-gathering crystal to his waist before striding forward. As he walked forward, a silent and transparent flame spread outward, instantly reducing the one hundred corpses into flying ash.

Bright and faint Holy Lights appeared from within the gray dust and ashes before floating toward Greem’s waist like a flock of swallows, silently gathering into the crystal.

There were a total of one hundred and twenty-nine corpses, but only seventy-two Holy Lights were collected. The other knights either had their souls utterly destroyed or did not have a sufficiently pure faith. In conclusion, not all holy knights were able to form Holy Lights upon death!

While Greem slowly harvested his spoils, the Holy Light Chapel in the distance was already flowing with a river of blood and corpses.

The surviving holy knights retreated to the chapel, using its large gates as a barrier as they defended against the elementium magical machines’ attacks with sturdy shields. These small fries of no more than First and Second Grade couldn’t possibly be the match of the elementium magical machine. However, when their powers were combined into a strange Holy Light resonance, they managed to form a defense that the machine could not so quickly destroy.

Thus, the two parties were stuck in a bloody back and forth in front of the gates to the chapel.

The elementium magical machine might have constantly been slaughtering low-grade holy knights, but the ants standing in its way were still an entire army and could not be fully exterminated.

Too slow, I can’t wait any longer.

Greem cleaned up the battlefield and immediately walked toward the Holy Light Chapel. As he traveled to the Chapel, he casually gathered Vicious Fireballs in his hands and launched them into the crowd.

Without a Third Grade to hold him back, these weaklings were no more than toothless ants before his six-meter stature. As the fireballs exploded, dozens of holy knights started to fall in clouds of smoke and pools of blood.

If it weren’t out of concern for his powerful spells affecting the harvest of Holy Lights, Greem would not even treat these knights seriously.

Too weak!

Weakness itself was a sin in the planar worlds. It had to be cleansed with blood and fire.

It was a tradition that the adepts of the World of Adepts had always upheld!

A principle completely unrelated to justice.