Age of Adepts

“She has arrived!”

Mary sensed Gloria’s presence through the Nightmare Domain the moment she teleported over.

The luminance of Gloria’s energy in Mary’s spiritual senses was so blinding that it felt like a sun rising over the horizon. She couldn’t ignore it even if she wanted to.

Mary was no longer that ignorant adept of the past. She had met all sorts of Fourth Grade adepts and had even experienced the power of ultra-powerhouses. However, she had never seen an individual as powerful as the adept that had appeared in front of her now.

If it weren’t for the Nightmare Castle’s enhancement of Mary’s power, staring straight at the intruder’s energy emission would have been enough to injure her.

This pressure and this power were unprecedented among all the enemies that Mary had faced in the past!

Greem took a deep breath and smiled bitterly, “That’s Gloria, ranked second of the ultra-powerhouses in the Adept’s Association!” With the Chip’s aid, he was able to identify the intruder even before Mary managed to.

“It doesn’t matter who she is! Anyone that dares to walk into my castle will be taken down!” Mary said with a vicious expression, the nails of her slender fingers growing wildly and turning into sharp claws. They glowed with a crimson light and possessed three magical effects: Rend, Corrode, and Bleed.

“Don’t show yourself yet!” Greem shook his head and stopped her, “Whether we will be able to defeat our enemy weighs entirely on the home field power of the Nightmare Castle. I will go and face her first. You remain in the castle and suppress her as much as possible with the castle’s forcefields.”

“I’m better than you at fighting,” Mary’s red eyes seemed to flicker with fire as she shouted.

“But we need the home field advantage!” Greem remained calm, “If you were to face her first and wound up badly injured, the home field advantage of Nightmare Castle will be neutralized. Our odds of winning will be even lower then!”

Mary gritted her teeth and asked resentfully, “Why is it that I always have to stay behind in a fight? I don’t need your concern. I want to fight as well.”

“Your turn will come! Let me wear her down. The final decisive battle will be left to you!” After so many years of being together, Greem obviously knew how to console this violent girl who was so close to going berserk.

“Hmph!” Mary finally stopped raising complaints.

Just as Greem turned and prepared to step out, she suddenly pulled at his sleeves.

“If–and I mean if–there is actual danger, we can give up!” Mary looked straight into Greem’s eyes and said in a serious tone, “Nothing else matters! The Central Lands, the clan, the resources- we can give up all of it! As long as we are still alive, we can start from zero again, no matter where we are.”

Greem smiled gently and patted Mary’s hand. He then turned and walked out of the Nightmare Castle.

In front of the dark shadow of the castle, Greem stood upon the scarred and scorched plain. He held the Tome of Corruption in his left hand and the fire coral staff in his right. He held his breath and waited silently for his opponent to arrive.

Soon, the mists parted, and a slender female silhouette shrouded in purple light emerged.

The purple glow was so bright that even Greem could not see the opponent’s real appearance through the radiance. However, the Chip was able to arrange a simple reconstruction of her appearance through infra-red sight, elementium tracking, energy spectrum detection, and several other methods of detection.

Though she wasn’t exactly a beauty, she was still quite pretty.

At the very least, Greem did not see any signs of magical modification to her appearance!

“You are Greem?” The purple figure stopped walking and couldn’t help but let out a sigh, “I thought you were going to keep hiding in your rat’s hole until I dragged you out by your tail!”

Having said that, she brazenly let her gaze sweep up and down Greem’s body before commenting, “Not bad! Not bad at all! At the very least, you are the most excellent of all the male adepts I’ve ever seen!”

The words were compliments, but the arrogant and scornful tone in her voice was exceptionally annoying.

Greem chuckled coldly and sent a message to Mary in her mind.

“Start the suppression!”

The next second, the chuckling purple figure froze in place. Gloria’s burning gaze cast toward the dark castle sitting a few hundred meters behind Greem.

She could clearly sense a terrifying domain power radiating from the castle. That domain had engulfed all the surrounding space, locking it down before applying a powerful forcefield fluctuation on her.

The energy fluctuation she emitted was instantly weakened by over thirty percent.

Domain radius: 1.5 kilometers.

Energy level: Fourth Grade.

Domain effect: Power suppression.

Source of domain: Nightmare Castle.

Rage burned in Gloria’s heart. Power surged through her body. She wanted to break into the castle and drag out the little rat that was hiding within first.

However, Greem struck before she could put her plan into action.

Greem’s body expanded rapidly, transforming into a towering molten giant in less than a second. A light of four different colors glowed in the molten giant’s core, representing the four fire laws that Greem had mastered. The Tome of Corruption also projected a prismatic light that lingered around the molten giant, forming the first layer of defense.

The fire coral staff in Greem’s right hand was also projected in a larger, energy form. It turned into a fire staff a dozen meters long and unleashed a three-meter-thick torrent of flames that sliced toward the opponent.

“Hmph! You think this is enough to beat me?”

Gloria unleashed an invisible forcefield and instantly kept the surging flames at bay. The scattered sparks caused waves of fire to rise wherever they landed.

Where the fires burned, all life was extinguished and all substance reduced to ash!

However, this land had just experienced a calamity. All substance and life that could be burned had already been burnt during the last great battle. When these flames surged past, they no longer reproduced the same scene of carnage as they had in the past. The ground turned even more scorched, and the air grew warmer, but that was it.

Boom!

The flames erupted.

Gloria faced the blistering heat of the flames and charged up against them toward the molten giant. Her tiny right hand was balled in a fist, which she swung toward the giant.

Weng!

A strange muffled sound could be heard, like that of a jet dashing close to the ground. Her small fist punched through the flames and crashed against the molten giant’s law defenses, accompanied by fearsome wind pressure.

[Warning! Warning! Offensive power of enemy attack exceeds current defenses. Complete defense is impossible. Suggesting that Host take evasive maneuvers immediately.] The Chip’s alarms blared in Greem’s mind.

Unfortunately, the time between the Chip’s warnings and Gloria’s attacks landing was utterly insufficient for Greem to use Fire Teleportation.

Despite Greem’s all-out magical defenses, Gloria’s attack managed to forcefully penetrate, shattering all the Lava Shields in-between before landing on the last layer of his barriers.

Another loud explosion.

Greem had been punched in front of his stomach, but it was the back that erupted from the impact.

A massive gaping wound appeared on the molten giant’s broad back. Tons of molten lava and fire energies were blasted away in a cone, causing a rain of lava to descend upon the earth.

A single strike from Gloria had penetrated Greem’s molten fire body!

The molten giant teetered forward as his giant feet scraped against the ground. He slid backward for a few hundred meters before coming to a halt.

The massive wound on his back had badly injured Greem. If it weren’t for the elementiumized body having no so-called vital spots, this one punch would have been enough to cripple Greem.

The molten giant slowly stood up, having lost most of the ‘flesh’ on its back. The exposed Heart of Principles was beating wildly. It pumped out a tremendous amount of surging fire energy with every beat.

Fire energy flowed through his body, despite the loss of most of his organs. Some of the energy was wasted, while the rest turned into fire elementium and began to mend his damaged body and organs.

The outline of the organs and blood vessels started to stretch out throughout Greem’s body at a visible speed. Pure fire energy filled the void opened in his body, temporarily sealing the wound on his back.

Just seven seconds later, the molten giant was able to stand up once again, albeit wavering in the process.

Gloria had not gone entirely unharmed from that assault earlier either!

The Tome of Corruption’s law retaliation and the backlash from the molten giant’s flames were enough to blow away the energy forcefield around Gloria’s right fist. The surface of her exposed fist had carbonized in an instant. Even the flesh inside was steaming from the heat, and her finger bones were scorched black.

Gloria grunted and drew on her power. Purple flames flowed along her arm and enveloped her fist. After cutting out the fire laws, the fires burning on her fist were instantly extinguished. Her damaged flesh and tendons were rapidly healing through the powerful energy surges.

In just seven seconds, Gloria had managed to heal the damage to her right fist. She once again charged toward Greem.

Greem could only halt his own recovery and let out a series of explosive fireballs to slow the enemy’s movements. He then teleported away the moment he unleashed his attack.

Greem appeared a thousand meters away in another region.

Just as he found his footing, a five-meter large ball of dirt came crashing through the air. The sound it made as it cut through the air caused even Greem’s heart to tremble.