Age of Adepts

With Greem ensuring their safety, the adepts were able to be much more efficient.

Just forty-five minutes later, the plant adept managed to harvest all of the Ysera’s Seeds inside the cave.

The leader of the party immediately relayed the news to Greem.

Greem nodded silently and said, “Have them gather up, then. We are returning immediately!”

“Yes, sir!”

The other adepts anxiously gathered around Greem after receiving the instructions from their leader.

Before they could understand Greem’s intentions in having them group up, sparks of fire elementium gathered around them like countless fireflies. The fire elementium quickly assembled into a massive fire array. Flames blazed within the magical array, but none of the adepts felt the slightest bit of heat even when the fires licked them.

While everyone was confused and stunned, their surroundings flickered. It felt like they had fallen into a bottomless abyss. No one could tell which direction they were falling in.

Fortunately, this inexplicable dizziness didn’t last long.

Two or three seconds later, the fire array silently dispersed. The adepts immediately clasped their heads and started retching from the discomfort. The two Third Grade adepts were the fastest at recovering. They quickly suppressed their squirming stomach and disoriented minds. It was then that they discovered, to their shock, that the Fourth Grade fire adept had instantly teleported them all the way to Teleportation Array Five.

From a distance, they could see the floating rocks in the region, all of different shapes and sizes. Meanwhile, not far in front of them, the distinctive light of a teleportation array shone from a massive rock, illuminating most of the area nearby. The Silver Union golem master who guarded the array looked up in surprise at these sudden guests.

The surprise on his face finally turned into a smile when he saw the young and intimidating fire adept standing in the middle of the group.

“So you went to rescue these kids from Martin’s clan. I was wondering why you were in such a hurry! You must be the newly advanced legendary fire adept, Greem from Zhentarim, aren’t you? Just as the rumors say, you are truly young and bold indeed.

“I will be stationed here for the next six months. I can’t leave at all. If you still have time after six months, why don’t you come to the Silver Union’s tower for a chat? I’ve heard that the magical machines you create are very refined and shockingly powerful. Perhaps we can trade our insights in this craft, eh?”

“I’m sorry, you are?” Greem asked with some hesitation.

“Haha! I’ve quite forgotten to introduce myself. My name is Douglas, a golem master. In that respect, you could say I am quite similar to yourself!”

At the level of Fourth Grade, there were very few remaining of the adepts who relied on luck and the pure accumulation and support of their clan to achieve their status. Every single Fourth Grade adept was a fearsome individual in their own right, with all sorts of unusual techniques and terrifying powers.

As such, there was no reason for Greem to reject this ‘friendship’ that was actively being extended towards him by a Fourth Grade golem master.

They exchanged a few more polite words before Greem led the other adepts into the teleportation array.

Soon, they were back at the adept’s tower.

The other adepts quickly bid farewell to Greem once they entered the tower. They hurried away to give their report to Lord Martin. Greem immediately returned to his room as well.

Naturally, the resources that Martin had promised would be delivered to his hands without any mistake after this.

There was no adept who would risk damaging their reputation for such small change.

Greem immediately went to the alchemy lab upon reaching his room. He took out the magical box in which he had stored the galaxy wanderer’s arm.

All sorts of magical arrays had been carved on top of the box, sealing and isolating the flow of most magical power. It ensured that the power contained within the magical materials would not be lost due to the flow of time. However, to ensure the condition of the arm, Greem felt like it was better to decipher the secret behind the parasitic organ as soon as possible.

Greem carefully placed the arm on a smooth, black marble platform.

He then adjusted the intensity of the illuminating stones before using the Chip to conduct a deep scan to figure out the secrets of this unusual organ.

Blue light flickered deep in Greem’s black eyes as lights of the entire spectrum shone at surprising frequency. The galaxy wanderer’s arms slowly turned translucent under these lights, revealing the flesh, tendons, and bones beneath.

Greem pressed the arm with his fingers. The skin was rough and tough, as if there was a special protective layer on the surface. A small orange flame sizzled and appeared at the tip of his finger. The skin that was burned by the fire remained the same violet color without any sign of burning or withering.

Greem let out a soft exclamation of surprise. The fire elementium gathered in the small flame became even more intense.

The orange flame quickly turned crimson, and the energy intensity rose from 70 points to 200 points.

Unfortunately, the skin still appeared utterly unchanged.

Greem didn’t give up. Even more fire elementium continued to gather at his fingertip.

The small flame slowly concentrated, becoming smaller than before. However, the intensity of the energy within had quickly risen from 200 points to 300 points. The color of the fire was also starting to turn white.

It was only now that the galaxy wanderer’s skin started to change somewhat. A small black burn-mark appeared where the fire was burning.

Greem couldn’t help but nod his head and let out a soft sight at this point.

No wonder the adepts had so much trouble when they were fighting against these wanderers.

The wanderers might seem so ill-equipped that they were practically naked, but their bodies alone were already comparable to an excellent Second Grade enchanted armor.

With magic resistance of this level, the elementium magic of those Second Grade adepts would barely inflict any damage. Only the powerful physical attacks of body-refining adepts and bloodline adepts could pose a certain degree of threat to these wanderers.

Of course, the magic-resistant skin of these galaxy wanderers was probably terribly inferior compared to all the other galaxy creatures out there. How were they supposed to wander through the galaxy and all its magical tides if they didn’t have at least such magic resistance!

After completing his examination of the skin, Greem used a silver scalpel enchanted with Sharpness, Armor Piercing, and Harden to slice open the skin. He started to examine the flesh and tendons within.

As expected, even though these ‘galaxies’ resembled apes from the material planes, the fundamental substance of their bodies was radically different from your ordinary creature.

Their flesh was hard and rough, with large individual particles that were visible to the naked eye. If it wasn’t because he was dissecting the wanderer’s arm right now, Greem might have thought that these were pieces of black charcoal and junk.

The operation scalpel let out an ear-grinding screeching sound when it tried to cut through these pieces of ‘flesh.’ It was almost as if it was trying to cut apart rock. No, that wasn’t right. With how sharp this scalpel was, even slicing metal and rock wouldn’t be this difficult.

It fully demonstrated that the fundamental substance that made up the bodies of these galaxy wanderers likely originated somewhere deep in space.

The wanderers would devour anything they found. Even metal ores remaining from a disintegrating plane could be a delicious meal for them. They would absorb most of the essence of these ores, converting them into this nightmarish, flesh-like substance.

Given the nature of their flesh, the galaxy wanderer’s probably also had shockingly high resistance to physical attacks!

As expected, there were no weaklings among the races that survived in the depths of space.

With how potent the galaxy wanderers were, an adept of the same grade probably had less than a forty percent chance of beating them in a battle.

After examining the skin, the tendons, and the bones, Greem sliced apart the layers of flesh with much difficulty, finally revealing the parasitic organ that sat at the wrist of the arm.

Having lost the protection of the flesh and the magic-resistant skin, the internal construction of the parasitic organ was fully displayed before Greem’s mind.

It should be some sort of strange organ that the galaxy wanderers had evolved after adapting to the outer space environment. It was a strange mass of fibrous tissue, layers of flesh wrapped around a light-blue crystal fixing it in place.

The fearsome light blades that the galaxy wanderers were capable of unleashing came from these cerulean crystals.

The light-blue crystal wasn’t an energy organ. Instead, it was an unusual construction of flesh that seemed to magnify Spirit.

Greem carefully severed the dozens of tendons attached to the surface of the crystal before extracting it from the arm with the scalpel.

“Chip, what is this?”

Lights of a thousand different colors shone out of Greem’s eyes and landed on the blue crystals. They scanned for several minutes before finally fading away.

[Beep. Discovering unknown focusing crystal. Crystal toughness: 310 points. Magnification magnitude: 1.72x. State of focused energy: Unknown. Attribute of focused energy: No attributes. Attached elemental effects: None.]

A focusing crystal? Magnification magnitude?

Could these crystals have the ability to magnify the intensity of spells?

With questions in his mind, Greem gripped the blue crystal in his hand and started to pour fire energy into it.

Once the gathered fire elementium exceeded a certain threshold, a soft crackle rang out, and a small flame was lit.

Greem looked at the small fire flickering on the surface of the blue crystal, his mind full of questions and doubts.

The data projected by the Chip was unambiguous. The fire energy in the flame was the exact same as the energy he had projected into the crystal. There was no magnification effect at all.

Could the Chip’s scans have been incorrect?

A thought appeared in his Greem’s mind as he pondered the mystery. He couldn’t help but slowly pour in a bit of his Spirit into the crystal at the same time as he poured in fire energy.

A loud explosion rang out. The small flame suddenly swelled into a magical fireball the size of a human head, almost as if gasoline had been poured onto a bonfire. The fireball hovered before Greem, slowly spinning around as it burned.