Age of Adepts

Compared to Adept Holly’s extravagance, Cherisha was far more straightforward and humbler in her approach.

She did not have a mighty golem to stand guard, nor free servants to serve her. No. Cherisha worked by herself and spent an entire hour just to tidy up the small house where she would be staying.

After she was done with the cleaning up, Cherisha stood at the center of the room. She took out a green ball the size of a rock and threw it at the ground. It transformed into a green liquid and seeped into the ground.

An incredibly thin and nearly imperceptible green barrier enveloped the house, isolating it from the world outside. All sorts of strange hallucinatory runes flickered on the barrier, continually spreading mental illusions to misguide any prying eyes.

From above in the sky, the five wind spirits could not see anything in Adept Holly’s house. It was merely a stretch of white. Meanwhile, Adept Cherisha’s house was fully exposed and unconcealed. The wind spirits could see her every action through the wooden cracks.

However, it was precisely how clearly the wind spirits saw that Greem couldn’t help but suspect it was all an illusion. After all, Cherisha was very proficient with mental powers!

The sky slowly darkened, and the tapestry of beautiful, flickering stars appeared.

However, an unusual red color hung in the night sky, causing the moon’s light to shine a disturbing shade of crimson.

A crimson moon. That was a bad omen in any plane. It was the instinctual expression of a planar consciousness’ emotions!

It often meant that a terrifying incident might happen somewhere in this world on this peaceful and quiet night, a bloody event that could trigger the reaction of the planar consciousness. It wasn’t hard to imagine how terrifying it was.

Greem looked at the crimson moon for a while before shutting his wooden windows lightly and returning to his table.

He was not good at divination.

If Alice were by his side, she would definitely be able to describe what was happening in the distance based on such an obvious planar omen. Unfortunately, Greem sensed nothing apart from a frustrating aura of slaughter in his heart.

Perhaps another wave of invasion had occurred somewhere in Morrian Plane. It was the only explanation for a massacre of sufficient scale to anger the plane itself. Who was invading the Arcane Empire? The Scourge Lords, or the World of Gods? Or perhaps the Abyssal Demons?

Too many possibilities, too many conjectures. It made Greem particularly frustrated.

The threat of the Great Witch Maysa, the unpredictable trajectory of Fate, the dangerous environment around him, and the uncontrollable developments of the war. All of it weighed upon Greem’s shoulders, causing him to feel tremendous pressure. It made him upset.

Any other adept might have changed under such incredible pressure. They would probably either have become twisted perverts or hedonists that only sought physical pleasure!

However, Greem only made himself even calmer and more composed in the face of such pressure. He started improving at a pace incomprehensible by the average person, using every means and resources at his command to strengthen himself.

After all, power meant everything in the World of Adepts!

He would only be truly safe if he had absolute power. He would only have time to slow down and enjoy life if he had unquestionable strength!

Thus, even after all he had done, Greem’s pursuit was still the same– to live.

In the past, while he was still an adept apprentice, the enemy desired only his body and his soul. With every improvement and growth he experienced, his past enemies had scattered. However, new enemies continued to appear.

Now he had achieved shocking achievements unimaginable by any other, but he had also created some incredibly difficult opponents for himself. Everything that his enemies sought, he could not afford to pay. Should he ever fall into the enemies’ trap without a way to break free, he would not end up much better than when he was an apprentice.

It was the tragedy of being an adept!

Most of the time, it wasn’t the adepts that chose the life they wanted. It was life that forced them, pushed them to choose. Should their feet slow down for even a little, they just might face a terrifying scene that they did not wish to see.

Just as Fate gifted them with power, Fate had also forced them onto a twisted path where death awaited those who did not progress. The hand of Fate toyed with them and lashed at them. A slight moment of hesitation would be the moment where one’s legendary life came to an end!

Greem not only had to adapt and endure a life like this, but he also had to find a way to surpass it. It was only when he was too powerful for Fate’s hand to toy with that he could truly take control of his own life.

…………

The night was dark and silent.

A bloody, crimson moon hung in the sky.

The moonlight cast towards the ground was filled with an unbearable stench of blood.

Sytance Illhoof stood proudly upon a towering cliff, looking down at the world in front of him with the arrogance of an emperor.

He took in the bloody smell of the air indulgently, relishing in the dense aura of slaughter. He could see through the planar laws, catching a glimpse of the tortured souls of prey, or even hear their last tragic cry before death.

Life was a resource as well, and the soul of every planar creature was a history not so easily wiped away!

However, all of these souls had now become Sytance Illhoof’s personal possession.

As the great Lord of Eternal Night, bringing such great wealth back to the World of Disasters would be enough for him to win the favor of the world consciousness. It would be enough for his grade to improve by just that little bit once again.

The tens of thousands of mutated beasts scattered across the Kentos Continent had invaded cities and ruined villages along their path of advance. They had harvested an uncountable amount of life energy and number of souls for Sytance Illhoof. Unfortunately, there were far too few high-quality souls within this bounty.

As such, under the orders of Sytance Illhoof, the mutated beasts scattered across the land had begun to gather. They had one target in sight: Reisin Garden, the great arcanist city floating high in the center of the continent.

Reisin Graden was a target that Sytance Illhoof had decided upon a while ago. He had even fought a few brutal battles with other minor Scourge Lords over this. After tasting the savage and unrelenting attacks of the Lord of Eternal Night, those weaklings had no choice but to swallow their pride and go a different way. Their targets were the other two floating cities.

The beautiful and delicate floating city of Reisin Garden became Sytance Illhoof’s ideal target for invasion and slaughter!

The army of mutated beasts was still butchering and raiding wildly in the night.

The life and soul aura that drifted towards Sytance through the planar laws continued to merge with his body. It was a relaxing and pleasant sensation, until his enjoyment was interrupted by some wicked intruders.

Sytance Illhoof straightened his body and sniffed the night wind pressing into his face. He picked up on a smell that did not belong to the disaster creatures.

A trace of order and cautiousness mixed into the chaos and evil. A hint of cunning blended into composure and experience.

Dammit! It was the smell of adepts!

To think some adepts had broken into his hunting grounds and even slaughtered some of his subordinates!

An evil and cruel aura rose from Sytance Illhoof’s large and hideous body.

He kicked with all four of his hooves, leaped down the cliff, and started sprinting wildly towards the west.

The cold night winds howled past him.

Sytance ran beneath the moonlight with the stance of a horse, traveling at a speed that eclipsed even the flying creatures in the sky.

Fields of wheat, forests, and rivers rushed past beneath his feet.

He passed by many human villages and towns along the way. These human settlements were always filled with cries of terror, the light of fires, and, of course, the shapes of murderous beasts tearing apart the humans.

Sytance ignored all of this. Every bound and leap he made caused him to travel a hundred meters. One human settlement after another was left behind as he stubbornly bounded towards the west.

The mutated beasts that slaughtered in these villages hastened their massacre upon sensing Illhoof’s aura. They rushed out of the towns and followed after their leader, wildly advancing towards some unknown location in the distance.

A small pack of mutated beasts quickly formed in this manner under the night sky!

Illhoof leaped onto a small hill and finally stopped. He glanced at the pitch-black human village in the distance with a sinister and cruel light in his eyes.

He could faintly sense three soul auras of various strengths in the village. He could also smell elementium lifeforms around the area.

If the enemy were too weak, Illhoof wouldn’t have bothered to travel so far just to warn his enemies.

He could sense it. The aura of the adepts hidden in this village had reached a level where even he had to be cautious. As such, before his final hunt, Illhoof needed to cull all possible factors of instability around him.

These fragile adepts were undoubtedly some of the most annoying insects. They weren’t just annoying; they were downright detestable!

Their auras might have reached the limit of power that could be contained by the plane, but Illhoof did not regard them as actual opponents out of the usual contempt his kind harbored for adepts.

After all, an adept was a profession often taken up by intelligent species with inferior talents and potential.

They either had frail bodies or weak Spirits. There was always a massive, scornful weakness to their person. A race like this, a foundation like this- even if they managed to strengthen their soul to Fourth Grade, they were still prey in the eyes of the great Sytance Illhoof.

Sytance Illhoof already had easier prey at hand. He had lost all interest in hunting and slaughtering these barbed prey.

However, Illhoof didn’t want his moment of ‘compassion’ to cause the adepts to get any ideas. He didn’t want them to interrupt the banquet of blood and flesh that was to come. A warning and a show of force were required!

If these interlopers were too weak, Illhoof didn’t mind having a few adepts as appetizers before the feast. After all, those who could become Fourth Grade adepts had quite delicious souls!