Age of Adepts

Greem silently opened his eyes.

The blazing hot heart in his body was still beating firmly and rhythmically, sending surges of pure golden fire all over his body. This golden fire was entirely different from the fire energy of the past. Apart from a vicious and violent destructive energy, the fire also contained a subtle trace of unusual power.

Greem’s mental consciousness was like a baby chick that had just emerged from its shell. It extended out of his body and stretched out of the house in every direction, sustained by his powerful Spirit.

The entire town was now a world of darkness!

It was not just a description; it was the cold, objective reality.

No one knew when, but dense shadow energy had spread to every corner of the small town, and it was still spreading and growing in power.

At this moment, Maple Forest Town had already been dragged into an interspatial layer of the Shadow World. It was now an unusual pseudo-shadow domain.

In this domain, all shadow creatures and dark magic would be at their strongest, unaffected by suppression or interference from the Morrian Plane.

It was impossible to achieve such a monumental effect with the power of a single intermediate Fourth Grade Dark Witch unless, of course, she was supported by the origin tower of the Dark Witches.

Powerful and permeating shadow energy flowed freely through the town. It was like clusters of shadows of various intensities, almost filling up the entirety of the village apart from the positions of the four adepts.

Every Fourth Grade adept was a powerful and fearsome entity!

The shadow energy had intentionally avoided the locations of the adepts while the pseudo-shadow domain was forming, prioritizing taking over the other spaces.

The shadow energy didn’t dare to enter Greem’s room out of fear of alerting him prematurely.

Meanwhile, a wall of astral power protected Adept Holly’s room, making it exceedingly difficult for any shadow energy to seep in unnoticed.

Only Cherisha, who was seated in the dining hall on the first floor, was exposed to the shadow energy. However, a layer of soft but incomparably resilient mental shielding radiated around her body, firmly keeping the shadow energy away from herself.

As for Dark Witch Shani’s room? In all honesty, the source of the dark power in the town probably came from here. The shadow vortices on the outskirts of town were, in the end, no more than a natural phenomenon caused by the gathering of all this shadow energy.

Clusters, clouds, and layers of shadow energy roamed the lightless skies of the town like wild sharks hiding beneath the water. They circled Greem’s room wildly but dared not take a single step inside.

When Adept Holly and the two-headed adept both indicated their non-involvement in this internal conflict by their own means, a formless battle immediately began!

Greem became excessively excited and restless at the thought of the upcoming deathmatch against an adept of the same grade. However, not only did these emotions not affect his rationality, they allowed him to remain in a sort of ‘furious composure.’

The strange power flowing through his golden flames merged with his Spirit, causing even his mental consciousness to burn passionately.

Supported by the fire energy, countless spiritual appendages rushed out of the room and lashed at the shadow energy around them.

Two formless and shapeless powers clashed in the air, tearing into one another.

An indescribable sizzling resounded in the air when the incredibly corrosive shadow powers came into contact with the spiritual appendage’s strange burning abilities. Two forces of entirely different natures clashed, destroyed, devoured, and neutralized each other with wild insanity.

Even space itself was being ravaged by the two powers. It sizzled and boiled like water close to its boiling point!

The shadow energy relied on the hundreds of shadow vortices spread across town for its power. After the past few hours of preparation, the amount of shadow energy was at an absolute advantage compared to the opponent. There was no need for any human interference. Upon sensing the existence of a different energy, all the shadow power in the domain started to rush towards Greem’s location wildly.

Greem was relying entirely on himself in his confrontation against an entire pseudo-shadow domain.

His massive Spirit dissipated into the air, turning into thousands of spiritual appendages that quickly and effectively crushed any shadow power that dared to reach within the range of his spiritual senses. When the spiritual threads–burned red by the powers of the fire laws–clashed with the shadow energy, shockwaves spread through the air. These two energies relied on different attributes and characteristics to crush and neutralize their enemy.

In general, the fire law powers that Greem had mastered were obviously much, much more potent than these autonomous shadow energy attacks that were not under Dark Witch Shani’s direct control. Almost every strand and thread of fire energy could only be extinguished by ten times the amount of shadow energy.

If it weren’t for the existence of the pseudo-shadow domain, Dark Witch Shani would have already lost in this first encounter of Spirit!

Dark Witch Shani’s room was pitch black.

It was like the ink of a thousand squids had flooded the entire place. It was so dark that there was no light at all. No spiritual energy could hope to enter this place and probe for information.

Meanwhile, Dark Witch Shani was like a black widow spider lying in the center of her web. She had a perfect grasp of everything happening within the pseudo-shadow domain through the feedback from strands of shadow energy.

In all honesty, she had never treated this so-called legendary fire adept as a legitimate threat before this attack began.

The legendary fire adept. What a laughable nickname!

Was Greem such a foolish person? Did he have no idea why his enemies were so willing to spread this title of his? What for, if not to invite death upon him?

All adepts were prideful people, with extraordinarily twisted and distorted egos!

The title of the legendary fire adept would not win their respect at all. Instead, it would naturally provoke hostility and poke at their sensitive egos.

As a conservative member of the Northern Witches, Shani hated nothing more than prideful and arrogant male adepts!

In particular, when Shani heard that this male adept had taken advantage of the rise of the Fate branch to capture the heart of the young and naive Witch of Fate, her hatred and hostility for Greem were amplified even further.

That was why Shani had gladly accepted this mission when that powerful will had descended upon her.

She hadn’t come to Morrian Plane to sabotage the Arcane Empire. She came to dispose of that legendary fire adept properly.

Shani had not participated in that battle from a few days ago, but she had not left either.

She was looking for an opportunity. An opportunity to kill Greem in a single strike!

Unfortunately, the forces sent by the Arcane Empire were still too weak. They could not truly threaten Fourth Grade adepts. As such, Shani had no choice but to remain in hiding, working alongside the party itself.

What she never expected was for the legendary adept to bring the party to this remote region after he had picked up on her bare killing intent instead of fleeing immediately. It seemed like he intended to resolve their ‘little disagreement’ here.

Naturally, Shani couldn’t be happier. She wouldn’t pass up on this opportunity either. She had immediately used the Orb of Shadows to project a portion of the Dark Witch’s origin tower to this village, with herself as the coordinate.

Shani was currently like a bridge. She projected the power of the origin tower onto the town endlessly and used that power to summon wave after wave of elite shadow armies.

This power did not belong to Shani. Rather, it was a subordinate force that the Dark Witches had been cultivating and raising in the Shadow World. The fact that Shani could freely mobilize this army undoubtedly reflected the Dark Witches’ attitude on the matter of killing Greem.

As she drew upon the shadow energy to surround the legendary fire adept, Shani communicated with the origin tower, hoping to drag this pseudo-shadow domain even further into the Shadow World.

However, the state of the battle caused her to frown in confusion the moment it began.

The legendary fire adept’s power was too unusual. How…how was it that even the spiritual appendages he extended outwards carried with them a trace of fire energy? How exactly had he achieved this feat?

Had he not just advanced to Fourth Grade, according to the information She sent? Why did he have such mastery over the fire laws?

It was important to note that even with Shani’s incredible talent, she had only barely grasped the shadow laws despite six hundred years passing by since her advancement to Fourth Grade. There was still a long way to go before she could master the use of this power.

However, it had only been a dozen years since Greem had advanced to Fourth Grade.

This strange discovery caused the hatred in Shani’s heart to grow even more significant.

If the shadow energy could not penetrate his domain, then something more substantial should be able to do the job!

Under Shani’s command, the shadow army that had been lying in wait in the town finally moved!

It was like dark black ink had been poured into black water. Packs of shadow panthers leaped out of hidden corners, stepping through the air and jumping across the buildings as they quickly surrounded the room where Greem resided.

The more intelligent high-grade shadow creatures quickly gathered in the meantime, forming squads of shadow warriors and marching in an orderly fashion towards the burning sun in their shadow world.

Indeed, in the eyes of all the shadow creatures, it was like an overwhelming, oppressive, and proud sun was hidden within that shabby house.

Golden threads of light penetrated the floorboards and the ink-black shadow domain, shining upon the swarming packs of shadow panthers. It didn’t even take three seconds for a Second Grade shadow panther to disintegrate under the golden sunlight, reduced to unconscious shadow energy once again.

Rather than the shadow panthers desperately attacking their target, it was more like the shadow panthers casting themselves into the flame like suicidal moths.

If the legendary fire adept were only a small candle flame, it would be devoured by the darkness eventually, with the endless hordes of shadow creatures. However, if that legendary fire adept was not a candle, but a wildfire blazing across an empty plain, then what awaited the shadow creatures was not victory, but……

Dark Witch Shani’s heart suddenly sank!