Age of Adepts

By the time peace returned to the place, some mysterious footsteps rang out.

Though there was no man or shadow to be seen, a clear set of footprints appeared in the bloodstains on the floor.

The footsteps continued to appear, only stopping in front of the place where Adept Holly had disappeared.

A short moment later, the golden flames that shrouded his body dispersed, and Greem’s youthful body appeared.

He was wearing a red adept’s robe with a dark black cloak draped over it. The hood was drawn over his head to obscure his face, and only a few stray strands of his black hair were showing.

Greem examined the place with his blazing eyes and quickly confirmed the energy auras of everyone involved here.

Holly, a werewolf, a foxgirl, and…Dark Witch Shani!

Just as expected, Shani had not died. Instead, she had chosen to revive in this foreign plane. As an intermediate Fourth Grade Dark Witch, her appearance undoubtedly put Greem on alert.

It seemed like this trip to the floating city wouldn’t go as smoothly as he expected!

His old enemy had appeared once more, along with two unknown believers of the Beast God. Add to the equation the minor Scourge Lord Illhoof, and over five otherworldly powerhouses were roaming this floating city at the moment, all searching for their own prey and their own hunting grounds.

Adept Holly might be powerful, but he had obviously been blinded by greed.

In such a situation, putting in the work to search for resources was far less profitable than robbing prey who already had their hands full of loot!

It was precisely because he failed to understand this that he had been kicked off the list of competitors the moment the fighting started. Judging from the aura at the scene, Adept Holly had probably fallen into Shani’s hands.

As for Shani’s purpose in doing so? Greem had a decent idea.

Having been defeated once, Shani had lost all her magical equipment. Her newly created body could not reach the standards of a Fourth Grade in a short period either. It all meant that her combat prowess was drastically reduced.

Consequently, Shani did not dare confront Greem at the moment.

If she did run into Greem, it wasn’t a matter of her chasing after Greem, but whether Greem would be willing to let her go.

For the sake of killing Greem and completing her mission, Shani had to take some risks to recruit people to her side.

Cherisha was too useless. Recruiting her would bring no benefit to Shani at all. That was why Shani had her sights set on the poor Adept Holly instead.

Though there was an Oath Contract between Greem and Holly, it wasn’t hard to imagine what choice Holly would make when his life was in the hands of another person.

It seemed like Shani and Holly would be his enemies the next time they met!

Greem lowered his head and thought in silence. All of a sudden, he lifted his head and looked into the distance. A cluster of golden flames quickly spread across his entire body, causing him to vanish into thin air once more.

A strange, fiery explosion sounded out.

A large and muscular figure abruptly appeared in the sky. He looked down at the burning fires all across the floating city and let out some deafening laughter.

It was a fearsome abyssal demon.

He wore thick, spiked copper armor on his body. The armor itself was covered all over in massive slash marks that ruined the patterns on the armor itself. The scores on it were of varying depth and from different times. Some appeared recent, while others could have been left on the armor hundreds of years ago.

While the demon laughed brazenly in the sky, his muscles started to swell and grow in size, filling the ancient copper armor and causing it to appeared larger than it should be. His violet skin was covered in all sorts of twisted magical runes, and his muscles were so firm they seemed almost like refined ingots of iron.

The demon’s appearance was savage and terrifying. His mouth jutted forward, resembling that of an ape or a dragonborn. A pair of tattered, crimson leather wings beat slightly behind his back. These wings were covered in sharp hooks.

Every time he opened his fanged mouth, a breath of semi-translucent sulfuric flames would burst forth, filling the air with the pungent smell of sulfur.

A Fourth Grade Great Demon.

Greem hid in the shadows with the invisibility from his flames and quietly observed this uninvited guest.

It was apparent that the mutated beasts’ war invasion of the floating city had drawn out all the otherworldly invaders hiding nearby. It caused the battle to become even more unpredictable. It was hard to tell where things were heading with all these variables.

That wasn’t the end of it either!

While the Abyssal Great Demon beat his tattered demon wings and flew to some battlefield in the distance, a flash of light cut through the sky. Greem’s attention was drawn away once more.

It was a strange, pale-white fire. Inside the flames was a skeleton formed of jade-white bones.

An indescribable chill crept up Greem’s heart when he saw those bones that were as white as jade, those magical gemstones that were set in the jaw as teeth, and those unusual flames burning behind those ruby eyes.

A lich. A Fourth Grade lich!

A monster like this would be enough to rule over a complete small-sized plane of the undead!

This lich hid within the chilling death flames as he cut across the sky above Greem’s head. When it passed by, its cold, merciless, and evil soul flux swept past Greem’s hiding spot and stopped for that one fleeting instant.

Perhaps sensing Greem’s soul aura, which was no weaker than his own, the lich chose not to engage in a fight. Instead, he simply cackled coldly and flew away.

That was the difference between casters and warriors!

Arrogant beings like demons, disaster creatures, and starbeasts would often charge forth and fight the moment they sensed an enemy’s existence. They knew their power. As for whether they could win? That was a different matter entirely.

Meanwhile, casters like liches and adepts were more rational and cunning in their approach.

They would often choose to avoid fighting when they ran into enemies of the same grade. They were more inclined to attack opponents who were slightly weaker than themselves.

It was only when the enemy betrayed a glaring weakness that they would risk their own lives to attack. Moreover, they were a group of people who would escape without any hesitation if they sensed any threat to their lives.

That was why the lich had behaved in that manner earlier. He had sensed the strange flux of the principle fires around Greem. After some evaluation, he confirmed that he could not defeat Greem quickly. As such, he flew away without any hesitation.

Through this, Greem could deduce that the lich had also mastered certain principle powers.

That was why the lich had managed to see through Greem’s invisibility from the principle fires, while the Great Demon, as powerful as he was, had not managed even to detect Greem’s presence.

Greem couldn’t help but frown when he saw the terrifying beings that were appearing one after another.

This pond was getting murkier by the minute.

The number of predators that had joined the fray was only increasing.

Under such circumstances, the difficulty of obtaining what he wanted had increased exponentially!

When it was just Illhoof and the three of them, Greem had confidence in holding the advantage above everyone else. He could obtain whatever he wanted. However, given the situation, even getting any sort of loot would come at a great cost to himself!

In particular, the Dark Witch was a hidden time bomb.

If she were insistent on bothering him, it would be near impossible to obtain any decent spoils from the floating city!

However, after some thought, Greem’s frustration was quickly replaced with pride.

Disaster creatures, Beast God believers, demons, liches. Which one of these was not a powerful individual who had established their reputation within their planes hundreds of years ago? Which of them had not achieved what they had after hundreds upon hundreds of years of cultivation? It had only been two hundred years since his own birth, yet he was not that much weaker than all of them.

Greem even had plenty of confidence in defeating a few of these opponents.

It was sufficient proof that Greem’s potential far surpassed any of them!

Faced with all these terrifying competitors, Greem did not need to feel dejected. Instead, he should be proud of his achievements.

As he silently consoled himself, Greem remained invisible and headed towards the inner circle.

One had to admit that the floating city was unusually large.

The arcanists had indeed moved a massive city into the skies.

Even Greem couldn’t help but be impressed by this nearly miraculous feat.

In all honesty, if Greem had not been born in the World of Adepts back then, but had instead been born in the Arcane Empire, he would probably be a Great Arcanist by now!

After all, the Arcane Empire’s standard for advancement was each individual’s level of arcane knowledge. It was different from the adept’s Grade system, which set a firm threshold and standard for each grade. Consequently, the arcanists of the Arcane empire very rarely trained their bodies. Even their Spirits were far weaker than adepts of the same grade.

If these arcanists were separated from their arcane towers and their arcane facilities, they would be as helpless as rabbits in front of the adepts!

Greem hid his figure and roamed the empty streets.

Some mutated beasts sprinted past him and smashed through many of the stores along the way. Whenever they found an arcanist defending an arcane facility, they would screech, calling more allies to their location to encircle the arcanist.

It caused flames to appear all over the floating city, along with the sounds of fighting and the noise of crumbling buildings.

It was at this moment that Greem finally saw the Great Demon again.

The Great Demon was currently fighting against two arcane towers.

He could faintly sense the life auras of two Fourth Ring arcanists in these towers.