Age of Adepts

The two parties in conflict were the adepts, who were mostly human, and the galaxy wanderers.

These wanderers were humanoids that were over three meters tall. They had violet skin with fancy, incomprehensible magical patterns on their bodies. Strange blades of light extended from their arms, each of them over a meter long.

These strange light swords were used to both strike and parry.

They were unusually terrifying when used to strike an enemy. Ordinary magical shields could not endure more than a few strikes from the glowing blades. Only higher-grade defensive magic could last for a slightly longer duration. These swords of light could even quickly turn into shields of light when the galaxy wanderers needed to defend themselves. The shields were broad and covered most of their body.

At least half of the adept’s spells would be deflected by the shields, with another portion of the spells dissipating into the air. There were very few spells that could threaten the wanderers.

There were as many as eleven galaxy wanderers in this group. Their grades varied, with half of them being Second Grade and the other half being Third Grade. Meanwhile, the adepts only had five people. Two of them were Third Grade, while the other three were Second Grade. They were at a disadvantage in both numbers and might.

Fortunately, the combination of professions in the adept party was efficient, and their spells were quite appropriate for the situation.

In particular, the Third Grade plant adept had summoned a large stretch of magical vines, thereby establishing a sort of defensive perimeter against the galaxy wanderers. It helped them fend off their attacks.

The galaxy wanderers were much more powerful than the adepts, but if they were to charge too far forward into the forest of vines, they would easily be restrained. When that happened, the adepts only had to concentrate their fire, and even the Third Grade galaxy wanderers would not escape unscathed.

Thus, due to their overly cautious assault, the adepts managed to hold out until Greem arrived.

This place was human-adept territory, after all. If they had managed to kill these adepts cleanly, they could have escaped without leaving any clues. The human adepts would have had incredible trouble finding them in the vast void of space after that.

However, with Greem’s arrival, the tables instantly turned.

A gray-robed adept with a golden bow on his back shouted loudly, “Push on, everybody. Don’t let a single one of them leave!”

He put away his defensive wand and picked up his wooden bow instead. Several arrows immediately shot at the fleeing wanderers.

Strangely enough, even though his bow and arrows appeared to be very ordinary and were seemingly not enchanted with any magical patterns, they found their marks with perfect accuracy. The wooden arrows would mysteriously pass through the wanderer’s light shields and hit their bodies as if the shields didn’t exist at all.

Moreover, every wanderer hit by the arrows, whether Second or Third Grade, would be dazed for one to three seconds. That delay immediately caused them to lose their best opportunity to escape.

The other adepts also hastily switched their magical weapons and started using area-of-effect restraining spells to slow down as many enemies as they could.

Greem stood silently in the air, his gaze quickly sweeping across all these adepts. He silently praised their courage and experience while gathering fireballs and firing them at the fleeing wanderers.

These galaxy wanderers had appeared incredibly organized to the adepts. They had an unstoppable offense and a formidable defense. However, all of this did not matter before Greem, who had mastered four distinct laws of fire. They ignited upon contact, frail as paper people.

The fireballs that Greem fired might not seem all that unusual, but it was an unprecedented terror for the galaxy wanderers. Even the Third Grade wanderers could not do much against the attacks. The fireballs rapidly switched states upon contact, turning the victim into a blazing human torch.

It was almost as if…as if the energy in the enemy’s body had been directly ignited by Greem, causing them to combust from within.

The wildly growing magical vines caught a Second Grade wanderer who very much resembled a blue ape. He was trying his best to cut off the vines when a massive fireball crashed onto him and instantly ignited his entire body.

The wanderer only managed to let out two screams of agony before turning to dust in the blazing fire, his soul and body cast to the void.

Upon seeing their people sniped down one after another by the Fourth Grade adept, one of the Third Grade galaxy wanderers let out a feral roar. He stepped into the air, putting up a shield with his left arm and brandishing his sword with his right hand. The wanderer sliced through several Explosive Fireballs as he charged straight at Greem.

Greem did not move.

His right hand continued to draw fire runes in the air, gathering Vicious Fireballs in the air and firing them at the fleeing wanderers. His black eyes silently stared at the Third Grade wanderer hiding behind his translucent shield of light.

The wanderer had just smashed through another fireball, scattering it into harmless sparks. Before the sparks could disperse into the void, a strange power guided them together once more, enveloping the wanderer from every direction.

The Third Grade wanderer was stunned for a brief instant but immediately started moving to avoid the sparks. However, he simply could not escape the crimson aura that had gathered around him. When the fire elementium had accumulated to a certain threshold, a muffled explosion rang out as the wanderer burst into flame, just like the rest of his kind.

Supposedly, the wanderers’ magic resistance should have allowed them to freely traverse even the tamer magical tides without any damage. However, this wanderer’s skin was instantly carbonized in a single burst of flames. It was a horrendous sight to behold.

It was almost as if his prided magic resistance had abruptly vanished when the fires ignited around him. His tough, shark-like skin could not protect him in the slightest.

Third Grade wanderers had quite the resilient life force, indeed. Even after the law fires had ignited all the magical energy both inside and outside his body, he still raised his light sword and lunged at Greem.

A severe light gleamed in Greem’s black eyes.

He finally stopped firing Vicious Fireballs with his right hand. Instead, he turned towards the Third Grade wanderer and made a grabbing motion with his hands.

Wild fire elementium quickly gathered, and a massive hand of flame appeared in the air, seizing the galaxy wanderer. The wanderer’s entire body crackled as the hand tightened its grip. Five seconds later, finally unable to endure the blazing law fires from within and without, the wanderer let out a long breath of flames as his body started to wither and char.

The battlefield finally returned to peace a few moments later.

Only three of the eleven galaxy wanderers had managed to escape. The others had either been captured or reduced to ash, never to leave this place again.

The gray-robed adept with the bow hastily flew over and bowed to Greem.

“You must be Lord Greem! I had already received Lord Martin’s message prior to this. We cannot be more grateful for your lordship’s timely assistance.”

The other four adepts also flew over after quickly combing over the battlefield. There were three male adepts and one female. All of them looked at Greem with looks of envy as they bowed and offered their greetings.

“You’ve got the things, haven’t you? If you’ve harvested them, I will bring you back with me now,” Greem casually asked.

“I’m afraid you will have to wait here for a little longer.” The man in the gray robes let out an awkward, bitter laugh. “We were surrounded by the galaxy wanderers shortly after we found the Ysera’s Seed. The harvesting isn’t complete yet.”

“Then hurry up and get on it. I will protect you for a little while longer.”

“Yes!”

With a Fourth Grade adept at their backs, the adepts finally had the confidence to harvest the seeds boldly.

The plant adept flew back to the floating stone and dove into a dark cave to continue harvesting the Ysera’s Seed that had somehow ended up in this place. The other adepts were either on guard duty or skinning the corpses of the dead wanderers.

Greem watched as they worked. Eventually, he couldn’t help but move a relatively undamaged corpse towards himself out of curiosity. He had the Chip perform a thorough scan of the wanderer’s body.

Admittedly, though these galaxy wanderers appeared humanoid, their internal construction revealed an evolutionary path completely different from humans. They had no respiratory organs nor waste organs. That unusual ‘stomach’ of theirs seemed to be able to digest anything.

From animals and plants to dirt and sand and even hard metal ores, they could grind it to dust and absorb all nutrition present in the substance. They would then regurgitate the waste that could not be digested.

Their bones were not dense and tough like planar creatures. Rather, the bones resembled beehives, where the internal structure was filled with plenty of air bubbles and cavities. Every tiny air bubble and cavity was a small magic-storage organ. Chaotic magic energy could be stored and released in these air bubbles and holes.

A strange organ also grew near their wrists. This organ was able to convert the magic energy in their bodies into a peculiar form of light elementium. The state and structure of the light elementium were molded entirely with the galaxy wanderers’ Spirit.

After conducting a deep scan with the Chip, these galaxy wanderers no longer held any secrets for Greem. The Chip estimated that the most valuable part of these galaxy wanderers had to be this parasitic organ growing on their wrists, along with their skin.

If the parasitic organs were removed and taken back for research, Greem might be able to figure out the principle behind the production of that odd light elementium. Meanwhile, their skin had decent magic resistance. There was value in using their flesh to craft armor.

Magic resistant armor was useless for Greem. Instead, it was this parasitic organ that drew his interest. He casually severed one of the wanderer’s arm and put it into his storage device. He then returned the rest of the body to the adepts.

This place was over three hours of flight distance away from Camp Exodar. It was still in the core region of the storm’s eye and was at least five thousand kilometers away from the outer storm region.

Supposedly, this adept party should have gone to the edge of the storm if they wanted to have valuable findings.

However, given their abilities, it would be far too difficult to protect themselves if they were too close to the storm region. They could only scavenge near Camp Exodar in this manner, hoping to find strange items that had somehow made their way into the core region.

Ordinary resources like Ysera’s Seed could not make them rich overnight, but if they got incredibly lucky, they might find things like starsand, star cores, origin substances, or spacestones. Such findings would be enough for these Second and Third Grade adepts to return to the World of Adepts and live a luxurious life for hundreds of years.

It was a far simpler and quicker way to accumulate wealth, as opposed to working clan missions or being stationed inside some lesser plane!