Age of Adepts

Fire Throne. Fifth level.

Inside an incredibly protected secret room.

Greem stood before an alchemy platform, silently examining the starbeast corpse lying in front of him.

The corpse was sealed in a kind of semi-translucent amber. It was a strange species completely unlike any planar creature. Its appearance was difficult to describe. At the very least, Greem had never seen anything similar in any of the planes.

In conclusion, the starbeast was like a mess of rotten meat that had grown haphazardly. It had no extended appendages or joints, nor any fixed skeletal structure. It didn’t even have defined flesh organs of any kind. Its entire body was covered in a black, hard layer of a substance that gleamed with specks of crystal light.

In all seriousness, this should be a young starbeast!

Even a youngling starbeast had the might of a Second Grade. It was more than enough proof of the dangers and terrors of the realms beyond.

‘Starbeast’ was a generic name encompassing many species. Any creature that could freely travel and survive in the endless sea of stars could be called a starbeast.

The difference between starbeasts could be significant, as well. They could be as different as heaven and earth, and incomparable in the slightest.

Some starbeasts were as small as mastiffs, while others were the size of hills. Some were even as large as a continent. Their power was often directly related to their size. However, the most frightening aspect of their existence was the chaos energy they carried within themselves.

It was important to note that the elementium energy within a planar world was orderly, gentle, and tame.

The planar laws were the main contributing factor to this.

Outside of a plane was a terrifying and boundless sea of stars. An infinite amount of violent magical energy surged and rippled through the galaxies. Such magical energy was chaotic, violent, and disorderly– dangerous to most planar creatures.

The planar worlds isolated themselves from outside space through the plane barrier, also commonly known as the world membrane. It was how the life and substances within the planes were protected. Through the world membrane, a planar world could disassemble the chaos energy seeping into the world using the power of principles. It would break down the energy into the basic elementium that planar creatures could absorb: earth, fire, water, wind, and the like. These elementium particles would then form the fundamental elementium environment of the planar worlds.

As such, creatures living in planar worlds were actually all protected by the planar laws. The magical energy they absorbed was also an energy that had been tamed and filtered. Even though directly using chaos energy would greatly amplify the power of spells, chaos energy itself was no less than a lethal poison to most planar creatures.

If chaos energy entered one’s body, it would destroy the elementium balance within and cause the collapse of the entire energy circulation system. The frail body of the human adepts could not endure such a system collapse.

That was why low-grade adepts faced certain death in leaving the plane and traveling the galaxies!

It wasn’t until they advanced to the higher grades and possessed powerful bodies or abilities to deal with chaos energy that they had the right to traverse the sea of stars in search of the mysterious worlds hiding behind the endless spacestorms.

Space was violent and dangerous. Yet, it still had its fair share of native creatures.

They were naturally adapted to the existence of the energy tides and could directly absorb chaos energy for their use. Thus, they were called starbeasts.

Starbeasts had a favorite pastime– traveling through the endless space in search of planar worlds they could invade. Once they found a target, they would tear open the plane’s barrier and break-in for a feast.

The chaos energy from space that they brought in with their breach would cause horrifying and irreparable damage to the world.

Countless planar worlds throughout history had withered from the damage caused by rampaging starbeasts. When the planar laws were damaged, and the plane consciousness severely wounded, a planar world would lose its ability to repair its barrier.

The constant energy storms that continued to pour into the plane would destroy all of the weak lifeforms and substances, killing over ninety percent of intelligent life in the world. Only truly powerful individuals or species had a chance of escaping a broken world like this.

They would become space nomads or search for a new world to call home. From this perspective, almost all starbeasts were the mortal enemies of planar creatures!

A violent battle to the death was inevitable if they were to meet.

This corpse of a young starbeast was very likely a spoil of war that those hunter adepts had obtained in the realms beyond. Truthfully, every starbeast body was a massive treasury of resources.

Their skin and hair could be used to forge the best magic-resistant equipment, while their flesh was the favorite source of nutrition for body-refining adepts. The most precious attribute of the starbeasts was their natural Physique of Chaos, which was a mighty bloodline of its own.

Far too many ancient adepts had craved the Chaos Physique of the starbeasts. The adepts either ate the flesh raw, injected the blood into their bodies, or attempted to extract their bloodline powers. Adepts had tried every method possible in their pursuit of turning their bodies into that unique Physique that did not fear the chaos energy of space.

Unfortunately, far too few succeeded in the end!

Even though some Great Adepts had succeeded in converting their bodies into the Chaos Physique, the side-effects had been tremendous.

The starbeasts were powerful and savage compared to planar creatures. However, they mostly survived by instinct alone. They had incomparable physical power and incredibly powerful innate abilities but lacked in intelligence and wisdom.

Those who forcefully converted their bodies into the Chaos Physique also experienced a regression in their intelligence. They turned into cruel and evil creatures, just like starbeasts. The secret labs they created in the realms beyond space were abandoned and became ruins where later generations would explore, adventure, and search.

Ordinary means of bloodline extraction was practically useless on starbeasts.

As such, even for the three major adept organizations, research on starbeast bloodlines was the highest and most classified of information. It was not something that would easily be leaked to the outside world.

According to some questionable rumors, the Adept’s Association was already ahead of everyone else when it came to starbeast-bloodline research. It seemed like they had already successfully created a series of chaos adepts. However, they wouldn’t quickly reveal such a trump card to the outside world; no sign of these chaos adepts had been seen, apart from some rumors spread around the continent.

Greem might have the Sourcestealer, but he had no idea whether it would work on a starbeast. He also couldn’t use his only starbeast corpse for a Sourcestealing experiment. Thus, for the next few days, he shut himself in this secret laboratory, finding all sorts of ways to extract the muscle and tissue of the starbeast for initial experiments while using the results of those experiments to adjust and cultivate new Sourcestealers.

Such experiments often spanned a long time and consumed a tremendous amount of resources!

If Greem were alone, he would have to run all over the World of Adepts in search of the materials and resources he required for his experiments. However, with the quickly rising platform that was the Crimson Clan, he only needed to give an order for thousands of adepts, apprentices, and goblins to go out in search of what he required.

Thus, he could concentrate his time and effort on his experiments and studies without worrying about more trivial tasks.

The Crimson Clan also had plenty of things to do at the moment and was in a period of rapid development and growth.

Greem didn’t need to even show himself. As long as the Crimson adepts knew that the legendary fire adept that they most respected and admired remained in their tower, they would find inexhaustible energy within themselves and be able to work with all their spirit.

Greem was like the backbone of the Crimson Clan. As long as he remained in the clan, he would be an irreplaceable guarantee and assurance to the clan members, even if he did nothing at all!

After all, it was widely rumored throughout Zhentarim that Greem, the legendary fire adept, had been listed by the various leaders of the other clans as the Third Grade that was most likely to advance to Fourth Grade. Under the effects of such a psychological expectation, any adept or organization that dared to go against the Crimson Clan would be perceived as mad. They would be foolish individuals who had no concept of a cost-benefit analysis.

The Fabres adepts that retreated to their clan territories also dejectedly acknowledged their defeat.

The Fabres Clan had to offer incredible compensation as a ransom for their captured clan adepts and elite forces before they could mend the rift and hostility between them.

Twenty-one million magical crystals.

An enormous number of magical materials and adept resources.

All Crimson nobles that defected to the Fabres Clan.

The reconstruction of a dozen Crimson cities and over a hundred castles and villas.

More than a hundred thousand otherworldly slaves.

A massive number of low-grade magical equipment, scrolls, potions, wands, and other alchemical items.

……

With this compensation, the Crimson Clan could completely rebuild the Ailovis Region and turn it into a worldly clan territory belonging to themselves. The noble territories and human kingdoms of the past had been ravaged thoroughly. It was the best opportunity to merge them and create a massive, united human kingdom.

The Crimson Dynasty!

This human kingdom, completely subordinate to the Crimson Clan, would be called the Crimson Dynasty. The king placed upon the throne would be known as Baderhorn Crimson, Adept Gargamel’s last living relative that he had scraped out from his hometown.

Due to their excellent performance in the last clan war, the human nobles that remained staunch in their support of the Crimson Clan were all promoted. Count Thomas was now Duke Thomas and owned a vast territory stretching several thousands of square kilometers.

No Crimson adept stood alone. All of them had clans and families of various sizes behind their backs that needed support. Now that there was a vast kingdom for them to reside in, they excitedly brought their relatives and kin over, creating new noble families with their own legacy territories within the Crimson Dynasty.