Age of Adepts

Fire Throne. The fifth floor of the tower.

Inside a secret laboratory.

Greem stood before an intricate alchemy platform, silently examining the Shadow Diamond placed in front of him.

The Shadow Diamond no longer looked dark and black as it used to. Instead, it was bright and brilliant like an ordinary crystal.

However, the light reflecting from the diamond was not only unable to illuminate the room, but it even caused the brightly lit room to appear darker than usual. It was almost as if a veil had been placed over the light source.

Delicate patterns and lines had been carved on top of the Shadow Diamond. Tiny, intricate designs now covered the entirety of the gem, without any empty spaces at all.

It was Greem’s handiwork after one month of tireless effort!

At the moment, this unusual, ‘half-finished’ product was embedded in the body of a three-meter-tall elementium magical machine. Meanwhile, the Orb of Shadows–the origin treasure of the Dark Witches–was floating in the sky. A flood of shadow substance surged forth from the diamond and entered the body of the machine.

As the shadow substance continued to corrupt the machine, its body began to turn black and dark. The formerly solid metal body of the machine became translucent as the metal itself became elementiumized by the shadow energy.

The Third Grade elementium magical machine could hardly help Greem at his current level. As such, out of a desire to recycle outdated equipment, Greem used the Fourth Grade shadow diamond to modify the machine’s original elementium core.

Apart from an improvement of the core, Greem used the Orb of Shadows to modify the elementium magical machine’s body into an unusual darkshadow metal.

If he successfully completed all these modifications, the elementium magical machine would successfully become the Shadowsteel unit, a powerful metal golem that could freely move in and out of the shadows.

All of Greem’s magical machines in the past had possessed impenetrable metal bodies and horrifying weight. The ground rumbled where they went, almost as if they were weighed down by a powerful gravity barrier.

Meanwhile, the Shadowsteel magical machine’s darkshadow metal would be powered by the energy of the Shadow Diamond. As long as there were shadows within fifty meters of the Shadowsteel machine, it would be able to hover through the air like a weightless ghost.

More importantly, despite its massive size and weight, it could easily hide into a shadow the size of a palm without anyone realizing it.

Out of all of Greem’s past works, the Shadowsteel unit was the machine that excelled the most at assassination.

In addition to these modifications, Greem also made the necessary adjustments to the elementium magical machine’s equipment. Its robotic arms and legs were replaced with sharp metal claws. If he added a few anti-detection talismans and a magical cloak, then the magical machine’s movements would become even more stealthy.

After confirming the progress of elementiumization on the Shadowsteel unit, Greem nodded in satisfaction.

Without the Orb of Shadows, Greem would have required a hundred years to complete the shadow elementiumization of the machine. Now, he only needed half a month, and the shadow elementiumization process was 63% complete.

It would only take another two weeks for this intermediate Fourth Grade Shadowsteel machine to be able to step onto the battlefield and fight on the frontlines!

Over the past few days, Greem had spent over ten million magical crystals’ worth of resources to construct the clan outpost in space. Finally, he had managed to move Gazlowe and his entire Capital of Steel to the outskirts of Exodar Camp.

The resources consumed in this process were large enough to bankrupt most adept clans!

Even the Crimson Clan, with its two well-developed resource planes and considerable bank of resources, had almost been completely exhausted by this.

Of course, if Greem were willing to auction away the nearly complete Shadowsteel unit, the clan’s losses would be immediately recovered.

A ghostly assassin that could freely travel between shadows and unleash shadow powers, all while protected by thick metal armor; a machine like that could easily take on a Fourth Grade dragon alone.

Greem had even added the newly researched memory alloy of the goblins to the Shadowsteel unit during its modification. He also added a small magic energy amplifier.

The Chip’s technical assessment of the Shadowsteel unit appeared like this in Greem’s mind:

Target Name: Shadowsteel Magical Machine

Target Grade: Intermediate Fourth Grade

Target Bodily Attributes: Strength 38 | Physique 44 | Agility 46 | Spirit 33

Target Ability Description: Possesses all low and intermediate-grade shadow abilities, as well as most high-grade shadow abilities. Is able to travel through shadow substance freely. Target’s weight is reduced to zero while there is a shadow substance within 50 meters. Possesses personal shadow space. Able to summon three shadow creatures at any time to aid in combat.

Maximum Jump Distance: 700 meters

Target Magic Resistance: Basic Elementium Resistance (Excellent), Shadow Elementium Resistance (Exceptional).

Target Traits: Construct. Darkvision. Magic Immunity (Low, Intermediate). Lowlight Vision. Damage Reduction.

Special Abilities: Shadow Assimilation (Passive), Light Absorption (Passive), Shadow Healing (Passive), Multi-Strike, Shadow Elementium Blastwave.

The Chip’s complete assessment put the Shadowsteel unit at intermediate Fourth Grade once it was fully modified. In the right conditions, it would even be able to possess the might of an advanced Fourth Grade!

After all, the Shadowsteel unit was now different from what it was before. It was no longer a warrior charging at the frontlines, but a mysterious assassin hiding in the shadows.

It wasn’t hard to imagine how Greem’s Fourth Grade opponents would fall prey to the Shadowsteel unit. Whenever they fought with Greem, an intermediate Fourth Grade steel assassin would emerge from their shadow to stab them in their back.

After completing his work on the Shadowsteel unit, Greem left the laboratory and went to another room.

The decoration here was exceedingly simple.

There was a stone table, a stone chair, and a thick tome lying silently on the table.

However, the defenses here were unusually potent.

Mysterious runes of complicated and elegant patterns could be seen on all four walls, the ceiling, and the floor. Together, they formed a small space with its own system of operation, utterly separate from the rest of the tower.

This way, anything that happened inside the room could not be detected through divination or scrying spells!

It was a magical room that Alice had personally designed for Greem. It was the ‘prison’ used to trap the Libram of Wisdom.

It couldn’t be helped. The Orb of Shadows might be a Fifth Grade artifact, but it did not belong to any one person.

A simple Fate spell could obscure it from the senses of all the Dark Witches.

However, the Libram of Wisdom was different. It was an artifact with an actual owner!

With the endless supply of power from God of Wisdom Hierro, the artifact could escape at any time. Greem had to find a way to cut off the connection between the Libram and its owner and keep it in his hands at all times.

Greem’s only option had been to ask Alice to construct this small spatial domain cut off from the rest of the world. That was how he had managed to cause the Libram of Wisdom to remain dormant all this while.

A loud eruption rang out in the room. Greem’s towering figure appeared in a corner with a flash of fire.

This room was isolated from the outside. There were no paths in or out. The only way in was to teleport using fixed spatial coordinates. However, only Greem knew the coordinates of this room. Even Alice and Mary were kept in the dark.

That stifled any chance of leaked information!

After entering the room, Greem coughed violently for a while. Finally, he carefully sat down before the stone table and opened the Libram of Wisdom lightly.

“Gods are omnipotent!”

This simple line was the only thing written on the very first page!

Gods are omnipotent. Hmph! If the gods were so powerful, why was there still evil and corruption in this world? Hmph! Liars and tricksters.

Greem remarked in disdain in his mind. He tried to flip to the second page.

However, regardless of how he rubbed the corner of the page, it was as if all the pages were stuck together. He could not move them at all.

“Dammit! What is happening? Is the artifact I tried so hard to get my hands on an incomplete artifact? Chip, run an analysis.” After several failed attempts, Greem could only shut the door and let the Chip out.

[Beep. Detecting unusual aggregate of faith energy. Analysis suggests that unlocking said faith energy requires the host to either achieve resonance or proceed based on the settings of the faith energy.]

“Achieve resonance? What does that mean?”

[To become a faithful believer of the God of Wisdom. As long as the host’s mental wave matches the faith energy resonance of the God of Wisdom, the host will be able to read the Libram of Wisdom without any obstruction!]

“Dammit, you are telling me to convert? We adepts don’t believe in any gods except for ourselves!”

[Self-worship is an alternative faith of sorts! If the host does not intend to convert belief, the host can refer to the book Gulliver’s Self Hypnosis.”

An awkward smile appeared on Greem’s face.

Gulliver was an adept who called himself ‘The Arcane Trickster.’ He had a fondness for researching the divine magic of the gods.

He had dicovered that the believers of the gods did not require too much supernatural knowledge to be able to unleash devastating high-grade divine magic under the blessing of the gods. That made it far easier for god believers to grow in power compared to the adepts, with far less risk.

For the sake of obtaining such easy power, Gulliver took an unusual path and developed a method of self-hypnosis. It allowed the user to temporarily disguise themselves as a believer of a god, thereby tricking the god and obtaining the right to use certain divine spells.

If you could only trick a single god, there would only be so many spells you could obtain on a daily basis.

However, Gulliver was a genius in his own right. Through his powerful abilities, he was able to cheat as many as a dozen gods simultaneously.

His magical abilities, in addition to all these free divine spells, allowed him to make a name for himself as an up and coming genius. The Gulliver’s Self Hypnosis that he wrote became an interesting book that most high-grade adepts had to read!