Age of Adepts

The skies were a dark crimson.

The earth was filled with muddy streams of black and red, the air filled with the screams and howls of voodoo beasts and mutated beasts alike.

The numerous war towers activated forcefields and magical barriers, glowing brightly with the light of magic. It was almost as if the entire land was a forest of Christmas trees. The forcefields were to stop the mutated beasts from approaching, while the magical barriers defended against long-range spell attacks.

Every time the mutated beast horde approached, an opening at the bottom of the war towers opened so an alarming number of voodoo beasts could swarm out.

The mutated beasts were terrifying creatures whose bodies and minds had been wholly corrupted and twisted by the disaster aura. They had wings like eagles, heads like serpents, and bodies as tough as lions. Their limbs were powerful, and their claws were curved and sharp enough to tear apart a thick sheet of steel.

Ordinary human warriors could not be their opponents!

Meanwhile, the voodoo beasts were vicious creatures created from the experiments of adepts involving bloodline mixture. They all stood over five meters tall, their bodies possessing the traits of many different types of beasts.

The voodoo beasts were superior to the mutated beasts in both size and strength. They also possessed scales that protected them from enemy blows. Consequently, the battle was incredibly fierce. A single voodoo beast would rampage through the tide of mutated beasts, charging forward fearlessly like a giant tank.

Meanwhile, the mutated beasts had the obvious numerical advantage!

Due to their ability to both fly and sprint on the ground, they were all over the battlefield. Every time a voodoo beast appeared, it would instantly be surrounded and summarily torn apart by dozens or even hundreds of mutated beasts. Some of the more fearless mutated beasts would even cling onto the voodoo beasts, holding on by their fangs and claws as they tried to tear into the voodoo beasts’ flesh.

The ferocious and vicious voodoo beasts were often covered in several mutated beasts after just wading a hundred meters through the horde of enemies. They fought back with all their might but would collapse due to their injuries after killing approximately a dozen mutated beasts. The mutated beasts would then devour the corpses.

Some of the mutated beasts even started howling and clawing at each other as they fought over the flesh of the voodoo beasts.

Whenever that happened, the closest war tower would gather tremendous magical energy into a fearsome spell and hurl it where the mutated beasts were most concentrated.

Wild Lightning! Meteor Shower! Earthspears! Corrosive Swamp! Blizzard! ……

All sorts of elementium spells of various shapes and colors swept across the battlefield. Wherever the light of elementium was seen, blasted flesh and limbs were all over the ground. No mutated beast was able to endure a magical attack from the war towers.

The Association adepts hid within the war tower, relying on its solid defenses and the numerous voodoo beasts to protect them. It was only then that they could calmly attack every mutated beast that entered their range of attack.

However, even ants could bring an elephant down with sufficient numbers!

If the mutated beasts became too numerous, even the war towers could not remain absolutely secure. That was especially the case with the disaster creatures that remained in hiding amongst the mutated beasts.

From a distance, Greem could see the remnants and ruins of several war towers close to the entrance of Inkdeep Valley. Only the base of the towers remained. These ruins lay in desolation, like burned-out candles. There were countless holes on the walls, and the insides of the towers were a mess. Greem could even faintly make out the bloodstains and skeletons left sprawled on the ground.

He could estimate the Adept Association’s approximate losses just from the number of war towers that had been razed.

Either way, it was a horrible, unacceptable, and massive number!

Given their power, the Adept’s Association would never have been forced into such a corner if their only enemies were the mutated beasts.

A thousand powerful creatures occupied the center of the battlefield, their bodies shrouded by a strange light. These creatures occasionally formed squads to assault the already sieged war towers.

Most of these creatures were Third and Fourth Grade disaster creatures. Though they did not have the fearsome Scourge Aura of the Scourge Lords, they could still draw on the disaster powers to enhance their offensive and defensive might.

Consequently, any war tower they set their sights on would often become a sacrifice of the battle. It didn’t matter that the forcefields were incredibly sturdy, their magical attacks devastatingly powerful, or that they were protected by legions of voodoo beasts. There was no stopping the assault of the disaster creatures.

Sickly-green corrosive poison splattered the forcefields of the war towers. In less than thirty seconds, the forcefields would turn as thin as a sheet of paper. The packs of disaster creatures would then close in on the towers and tackle the walls with their bodies. They would use their sharp claws to dig out an entrance into the building.

Once a hole appeared, the disaster creatures would make their way in.

A short moment later, the war tower would be filled with the agonized cries of the adepts before their deaths. A series of magical explosions would often be heard as well.

However, against the resilient and magic-resistant enemies with fearsome disaster abilities, the frail human adepts were no match.

War tower after war tower was taken down. The adepts within that did not escape were all killed. The losses incurred were so tremendous it was hard to keep count!

The enemy’s shocking numbers made every Central adept who witnessed it turn dizzy. Their faces were pale.

Individuals at Greem’s level hardly concerned themselves with low-grade magical creatures, mutated beasts, and disaster creatures anymore. Instead, Greem simply narrowed his eyes and assessed the few particularly strong and eye-catching minor Scourge Lords.

Fundamentally, they did not yet deserve the title of Scourge Lord. These individuals were only subordinates or assistants of actual Scourge Lords.

There were no fixed physical characteristics to their bodies. The only thing that separated them from ordinary planar creatures was their undeniable chaos aura.

This aura was so incompatible with the planar laws that every disaster creature was shrouded in a dense purple-black mist. This mist wasn’t actually mist, but rather distortions caused by the clash of two conflicting principle auras.

The closer it was to Inkdeep Valley, the more obvious the disaster aura and the more damaged the World of Adepts’ planar laws. As the World of Adepts’ laws continued to be pushed back, the planar suppression applied to these disaster creatures gradually weakened.

The magic surge would last for a hundred years.

If these disaster creatures were allowed to adapt to the planar laws here, they could charge out of Inkdeep Valley. When that happened, untold slaughter and calamity would befall the natives of the World of Adepts!

Given this, it was only a matter of time until the other major organizations reinforced the Adept’s Association.

After all, everyone was still on the same side. If the disaster creatures were allowed to plant their roots here, it would spell tremendous trouble for everyone.

Fortunately, the only ones that had set their sights on the World of Adepts this time were a bunch of inferior Scourge Lords rather than the World of Disasters’ overlords. Otherwise, the Adept’s Association would already be calling for help from space, begging the Great Adepts to send clones or subordinates to help defend.

The mastermind behind this attack was a Sixth Grade Scourge Lord known as Dilmas. Dilmas was a hundred-meter-tall three-headed hound. Each of his heads could control a unique elementium attribute, making him a truly fearsome opponent.

The Minor Scourge Lord Illhoof that Greem ran into in the Arcane Empire was, in fact, a Fourth Grade mutated clone of Dilmas.

This time, Dilmas was actually trying to profit from the fact that the World of Adepts was beset by a magic surge. Naturally, such an action deserved vicious retaliation.

At the very least, the disaster creatures could not be allowed to corrode and modify Inkdeep Valley, such that they would turn it into a beachhead for invasion by the World of Disasters. Should an actual Scourge Lord break into the World of Adepts, banishing them would require a price far, far heavier than what was needed to drive out this invasion.

It was important to note that the fall of most planar worlds wasn’t caused by natural calamities. It was caused by the invasion of evil civilizations like the disaster creatures or the Abyss. The adepts typically invaded only in hopes of stealing resources and population. They rarely inflicted catastrophic damage upon the victim planeworld.

Only an evil species like the disaster creatures, the abyssal creatures, or the starbeasts would destroy a planar world’s origin and foundations for no good reason. Alternatively, they would corrupt the world’s planar origin and turn all its natives into obedient slaves.

That was why the appearance of disaster creatures or starbeasts in a planar world often spelled doom for that world!

However, it was exceedingly difficult for a Sixth Grade creature like Dilmas to break into the World of Adepts. The tremendous chaos energy and aura in his body would trigger the most severe backlash possible from the World of Adepts’ laws.

Until he actually invaded, he would send his numerous subordinates and endless mutated beasts to slowly corrupt and distort the planar laws near the spatial rift. It was the most commonly used tactic of the Scourge Lords!

If an invaded world did not have sufficient power to repel the mutated beasts’ invasion and their subordinates, they would be doomed. Once a hole of sufficient size eroded into the plane’s barrier, the Scourge Lord themselves would descend.

To fight against a Sixth Grade as a Fourth Grade was impossible, even with the advantage of being on one’s homeworld. They would crumble beneath that kind of overwhelming power and become lambs to the slaughter.

If that did happen, even an ultra-powerhouse like Khesuna would no longer be safe. Meanwhile, powerful adepts like Greem, who had grasped principle powers but had yet to advance to Fifth Grade, were delicacies in Dilmas’ eyes.

Thus, helping the Adept’s Association was helping themselves.

In these times, the calm, rational minds of the adepts would allow them to make the wisest decision!