Age of Adepts

If Greem and Shani’s battle was still a battle in the shadows before, then with the appearance of the shadow army, the fight quickly escalated into an actual war.

Naturally, war had its own unique characteristics and traits!

A proud, massive red sun rose from the wooden house, endless light and heat shining from within burning and roasting all of the space nearby. Unfortunately, the entire town had been converted into a pseudo-shadow domain. Even such great heat and light were constrained within a hundred meters of the sun, unable to travel any further.

This ten-meter-wide fireball could only illuminate a hundred-meter space around it. It was still a lightless world of darkness a hundred meters away.

Shani, who was hiding in the core of the darkness, lifted her head. With her extraordinary vision, she saw through the blinding heat and peeked at what was happening within the fireball.

The legendary fire adept stood in the air, holding a crimson fire-coral staff in his hand. A magical crown of strange design had appeared on his head, and red light flickered on his waist, arms, neck, and feet, creating a crimson barrier around himself.

He wore all sorts of unusual and unique rings on his fingers, each radiating a drastically different and unfamiliar energy aura.

The legendary fire adept himself was radiating fearsome heat and light from head to toe. An imposing sort of golden fire wrapped around his body.

The interference of such a tremendous aura prevented Shani from seeing Greem’s face clearly, despite her prowess and spiritual senses. The spiritual appendage she had silently extended into the domain of heat and light sizzled and burned to ashes almost instantly.

Dammit! How was she supposed to lock onto her target without being able to extend her Spirit?

Dark Witch Shani let out a roar of anger. She immediately commanded the shadow army to launch a reckless charge at the fireball.

A single order was given, and a thousand ghostly eyes flickered in the shadows.

Hundreds and thousands of shadow panthers leaped out of their hiding spots, jumping and striding through the air as they lunged at their target.

Greem took a quick look at the battlefield, and a soft smile appeared on his handsome, blazing face.

Low and rapid chanting could be heard. A dozen appendages of fire fifty-meters-long and a meter in width suddenly reached out from the ball of light. They began to lash about in the air like the tentacles of an octopus.

All the shadow panthers that entered the hundred-meter diameter were knocked away by the tentacles before they could even enter the Burning Domain.

The violent fire energy contained within the fire appendages spread through the bodies of the shadow panthers upon impact, causing the feline monsters to ignite into pretty fireworks as they sailed through the air.

A Second Grade shadow panther could be considered a calamity in a small human kingdom. Yet, they were no more than cannon fodder that relied on their numbers in a Fourth Grade battlefield like this one.

Typically, the shadow panthers would be able to rely on Shadow Teleportation to travel to their enemies’ shadows. That gave them the absolute advantage in both offense and avoiding attacks. Today, they had run into their most terrifying predator!

Where were they supposed to find a shadow in which they could hide and reside when all was illuminated by this giant ball of light?

These shadow panthers that charged forth from every direction were forced to reveal themselves, no matter how powerful each one of them was. This temporary pause in their Shadow Teleportation spelled their doom.

Those one dozen fire tentacles were not for show. They possessed incomprehensible power and near unbelievable intelligence. Any shadow panther that appeared within their range of attack would be whipped into sparks and fire before they could get any closer.

Despite the sheer number of shadow panthers penetrating from every angle, the tentacles intercepted every single one of them. They couldn’t even touch the edge of the ball of light. This obviously caused Shani to become increasingly frustrated and impatient behind the scenes.

This place wasn’t the World of Adepts, after all. It was the Morrian Plane where the arcanists reigned supreme.

Shani required the power of the Orb of Shadows and the aid of the Dark Witches’ origin tower to be able to drag this town into the boundary between the Shadow World and the material plane. Naturally, the cost of doing so was an extreme exertion on the shadow power reserves of the origin tower.

If Shani didn’t want to weaken the strength of the entire Dark Witch branch, quickly ending the battle was her wisest course of action!

However, it was only at this moment that she truly experienced how troublesome an opponent Greem was.

Even the entire army of shadow panthers could not get close to him. This…this was simply far too unexpected!

With hatred and fury rising in her heart, Shani gave her orders. An army formed from Third Grade shadow warriors marched toward the ball of light. Two strange spirit shadows started to fire shadow arrows at the ball of light from behind the army.

Although the fire tentacles intercepted most of these shadow arrows, a few of them still made their way through the defense and landed on the ball of light. These shadow arrows erupted upon contact. They then started to corrupt everything around them into shadow energy, and the darkness spread like ink.

Fire and darkness were two opposing yet complementary powers to begin with!

As such, the appearance of the shadow energy triggered continuous shockwaves and damage within the fireball.

With this shadow energy as a stepping stone, the obstructed shadow panthers could immediately use their innate Shadow Teleportation ability to penetrate the defensive line of fire tentacles. They could directly appear at the edge of the fireball now.

However, as Second Grade creatures who could not even withstand a single strike from the fire tentacles, they could not possibly resist the effects of the Burning Domain. The shadow panthers that did leap into the fireball exploded into black mists before they understood what happened.

If it were only a few shadow panthers, these black mists would have rapidly dissolved and vanished in the endless heat and light. However, it was an infinite horde of shadow panthers that exploded within the ball. The layer upon layer of black mists continued to appear even as they dissipated in the light.

As a result, a visibly large dark spot appeared on the red and white fireball.

Moreover, as more and more shadow panthers added their bodies to the count, the dark spot began to show signs of growing larger!

This phenomenon caused Greem to frown.

He was currently protected by three layers of fire.

The innermost layer was a burning fireball composed mostly of the golden fire. That was Greem’s melee defense.

The second layer was the ball of light formed by the radiation of the first fireball and the Burning Domain itself.

Last of all were the fire tentacles created by his spells. They were all controlled by the Chip and would not provide the enemy with any openings.

However, Greem was fighting alone against an entire pseudo-shadow domain, after all.

Faced with the full force of the enemy, his seemingly invincible defense was still penetrated.

Greem showed no signs of panic against the enemy’s comprehensive attack from every angle.

In all seriousness, it was only the prequel leading up to the actual battle!

Even if they could pry open his defenses, the best the shadow army could do was cause him to exert more effort than necessary. They could not even injure his actual person. Thus, the Fourth Grade Dark Witch would have to strike if she wanted to kill him.

After all, the enemy of a Fourth Grade adept could only be another Fourth Grade!

This chaotic attack and endless horde of shadow creatures were only cannon fodder meant to develop a slight advantage for the Fourth Grade Dark Witch.

They could never hope to be the protagonists of a battle between Fourth Grades!

Despite how many shadow panthers hurled themselves at his fireball, over sixty percent of Greem’s attention was still fixed on the two annoying Fourth Grade spirit shadows. Another thirty percent was hung up on Dark Witch Shani, who had yet to make her appearance. Only the remaining ten percent was used to deal with the shadow creatures.

She wanted to suppress him with numbers?

Greem chuckled inside his golden fireball. He lifted his fire coral staff, and a giant, majestic Flamegate formed behind him.

In any other situation, Greem would only need to exert a tiny amount of fire energy to summon a Flamegate like this. After all, countless fire elementium particles in the air could be gathered for his use, thereby reducing the strain on his energy reserves.

However, in a pseudo-shadow domain like this, all other elementium powers aside from shadow energy had been banished. As such, a spell like the Flamegate would have to be sustained almost entirely by Greem’s own fire energy.

If it weren’t for the unusual Heart of Principles in his body, he would never be able to afford such exhaustion!

However, with the Heart of Principles endlessly supplying him with powerful golden fire energy, Greem could easily summon a massive Flamegate.

The doors of the Flamegate hurled open. Countless fire creatures swarmed out from within. They roared and charged at the shadow creatures outside the fireball.

Compared to the well-trained shadow army elites of the Dark Witches, these fire creatures were far weaker and inexperienced. There were very few high-grade fire creatures, and in fact, most of them were First Grade.

Trying to fight back against the elite shadow army with such numbers and inferior quality was no more than a pipe dream.

However, Greem had never placed much hope on these cannon fodders. He only needed them to delay those annoying panthers for a brief moment. This way, he could spare some effort and focus on dealing with the two Fourth Grade spirit shadows instead.

After all, these two spirit shadows were the only ones who could threaten the defensive perimeter!