Age of Adepts

A flight of three Second Grade and four First Grade green dragons were exterminated silently, just like that!

In a small plane, a flight of dragons like this would have been enough to rob the entire plane before taking over a kingdom as their personal hunting grounds. Yet, a force of nature like this had been extinguished without a hiccup by a pack of gargoyles during a civil war between two clans.

Of course, as apex predators, the seven dragons were not so easily wiped out.

The gargoyles paid the price of ninety-eight ‘fresh’ lives, all of them torn, bitten, or tackled to death by the desperate green dragons, turned into massive pieces of stone scattered across the ground.

The remaining hundred or so gargoyles once again rose to the skies after piling on the dragonflight to death with their sheer numbers alone. They started to move in the direction of the main battlefield. If these stone monsters with incredible magical and physical resistance were allowed to break onto the battlefield, the already weakened army of the Crimson Clan would probably fall apart in an instant.

Thus, under the commands of the higher-ups, the two Motherships rushed towards the gargoyles, escorted by over a hundred goblin skyships and thousands of eyeball machines.

The first to come into contact with the enemy was naturally the shocking number of eyeball fighter machines.

Even the previously ever-successful eyeball machines couldn’t do anything when faced with these animated stone gargoyles. The gargoyles simply had no weak spots or organs throughout their bodies.

The thousands of eyeballs were like buzzing flies, quickly weaving between the gargoyles while firing Scalding Rays all over the statues.

Unfortunately, the gargoyles had no flesh and no weakness. The Scalding Rays could not scrape off a single piece of rock from their bodies and only left imperceptible tiny dots instead.

Many of the eyeball machines were turned into little fireballs from a single swipe of a gargoyle’s sturdy claws and stone wings due to being too close. Their scattered components rained down from the skies.

Any thoughts of going head-to-head with the fierce gargoyles were unwise. The Mothership and goblin skyships took full advantage of the gargoyles’ slow speed to hover outside their range while bombarding them with their magic energy cannons.

Magic energy fireballs the size of human heads erupted amid the gargoyles, disorienting them and causing them to fall toward the ground. Stone dust also started flaking off their bodies from the impact of the attacks.

However, the magical resistances of these gargoyles were truly shockingly high!

They managed to stabilize themselves after falling for only ten meters. They then flapped their stone wings and once again flew up into the sky.

Moreover, perhaps realizing that the enemy’s weapon couldn’t hurt them, the gargoyles stopped flying in a tight formation. Instead, they split up into a dozen different groups and spread out like a giant net, lunging at the two Motherships from several different angles.

If they were able to board the Motherships, a brutal melee would probably break out again!

The Motherships slowly retreated while mobilizing the magical machines on board. A large group of Shield Defenders charged onto the deck and got into formation, standing by in wait for a possible enemy boarding.

Adept Locke, who was aboard one of the skyships, was also fighting with all he had. Under his instructions, his personal magical machine, now at Version III, transformed into a sniper. An extremely long magic energy cannon extended from within its body and aimed explicitly for the base of the gargoyles’ wings.

Unfortunately, all three shots it fired accomplished nothing other than blasting some dust off of the statues.

The gargoyles weren’t idiots either. Seeing that the enemy was attacking their only weakness, they quickly switched their direction of flight, using either their bodies or claws to block any incoming fireballs.

The speed of the gargoyles shouldn’t have allowed them to catch up to the skyships, but when they were so spread out, the room for the skyships to moved gradually decreased.

The gargoyles had visibly boarded three or four goblin skyships at the edge of the battlefield. They quickly exploded into giant fireballs after an intense and grueling battle.

Naturally, no adept, goblin, or apprentice aboard those skyships could survive such an explosion. Yet, the gargoyles emerged from the flames. Their entire bodies were now black from the smoke and fire. They continued to join the ranks of their comrades in exterminating the Crimson Clan’s aerial forces.

Neither the goblin rifles and their metal bullets, nor the magic energy cannons and their fireballs could inflict sufficient damage upon the gargoyles. The entire air force could only retreat as they fought, chased across the whole sky by the hundred gargoyles. It was a chaotic scene, indeed.

Magic Archer Sandor shot out an arrow from her skyship, blasting a gargoyle and forcing it to tumble through the air several times before it stopped. It temporarily spared her ship from being boarded by the animated creature. However, seven or eight other gargoyles still slowly approached her vessel.

If any of them were to break into the ship, she would have no choice but to have the vessel self-destruct while she fled.

“Little Locke, aren’t you always boasting about being the smartest? Hurry up and think of something. Otherwise, we are all going to die here!” Sandor continued to fire explosive arrows, knocking back the gargoyles and preventing them from boarding. She screamed at Adept Locke, who was on a nearby ship, as she fought.

“What idea could I possibly have? Our weapons and attacks can’t even hurt the gargoyles. Am I supposed to try biting them with my teeth?” Adept Locke was sweating beads now. He continued to give commands to his magical machine while thinking as quickly as he could.

“Hurry up…hurry up and think of something with your smart little brain, or I’m gonna ditch this fleet faster than you all! If we can’t kill them, can’t we just stall?”

“Stall, stall…yes, stall them!” Reminded by Sandor’s panicked words, Locke’s green eyes suddenly gleamed with light, “Mocha, stop using the sniping cannon. Use the alloy webs instead.”

Upon receiving its master’s orders, the transforming magical machine known as Mocha creaked and turned into an odd launcher. It aimed at one of the gargoyles and fired a fist-sized metal ball at the monstrosity.

The metal ball was still sailing through midair when it broke apart, turning into a three-meter-wide alloy web that thoroughly wrapped up the gargoyle.

The gargoyles’ bodies were immovable even with the fiercest of fireballs. How could they be afraid of an alloy web that was no thicker than a single finger? However, contrary to everyone’s expectations, once the gargoyle’s wings and body had been entangled in the web, its body started spinning uncontrollably and crashing to the ground, even after it managed to struggle out and tear up most of the web.

Dong! A muffled boom rang out.

A massive pillar of dust rose from the ground. The gargoyle’s body created a one-meter deep crater when it smashed into the ground. It had to struggle for a long time just to get up from the hole. Though most of the alloy web in front of its body had been shredded to pieces, its wings were still entangled in the mess of steel threads. It had an incredibly difficult time reaching back to tear off the alloy threads with its clumsy and stubby limbs.

The gargoyle remained grounded even after fumbling about for a long, long time.

“Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god! You’re the best, Little Locke! This idea of yours is brilliant,” Sandor couldn’t help but start cheering out loud, “I would give you a big, warm kiss if you were beside me now.”

“……” Locke’s face blushed all of a sudden, and he quickly hid his embarrassment with the heat of battle.

Little Locke started reporting his plan to the Crimson leaders in the Mothership as he continued to fight.

In just fifteen minutes, the small factory in the Motherships had managed to rush production on a surprising number of alloy webs.

All of the goblin skyships stopped their pointless attacks. Instead, they started tossing out alloy webs, alloy chain hammers, and alloy threads. In the blink of an eye, all one-hundred of the gargoyles were wrapped up and tightly bound in metal chains and webs of all sizes.

They began to crash down from the skies, smashing massive craters into the ground as they landed.

Naturally, the Fabres Clan witnessed this ridiculous scene unfold. The Third Grade adepts abord the floating wooden ship couldn’t help but frown in unison.

Creating these powerful, magically and physically resistant gargoyles had spent much of the clan’s resources. They had hoped to turn them into heavy aerial infantry that could rule the skies. If the enemy could restrain them with such a cost-effective method, then the clan’s efforts would completely go to waste.

In particular, the young Third Grade witch with the golden headband, who was directing the gargoyles in battle, was not looking good. Her face flashed green and white, furious at the clumsy performance of her subordinates.

The other adepts could stand by and laugh, but as the commander of the gargoyles, she had to do her best to save her useless underlings.

An instruction was sent out through her invisible mental waves, and an elite party of adepts on the backlines charged onto the battlefield. They headed straight for the grounded gargoyles that were clumsily climbing around on the ground. It seemed like they intended to free the gargoyles from the webs.

Naturally, the Crimson forces in the sky could not allow them to do as they wished!

A large group of eyeball machines swarmed forward, drowning the adepts with a violent rain of Scalding Rays. Even more magical machines launched out of the Mothership and the goblin skyships. These machines lunged wildly at the rescue team the moment they landed, absolutely refusing to let them get close to where the gargoyles had crashed.

Thus, a new battlefield appeared on the flank, which quickly intensified and boiled over!

At the same time, some surprising changes had also appeared on the main battlefield.

The Frost Giant Army and the Modified Beast Army were starting to falter in the face of the Crimson Clan’s offense. They were slowly beginning to retreat.