Age of Adepts

Heart of the Many-Armed Giant, top Fifth Grade material. Contains a powerful life force and earth principle power. Could be used for life-extension ceremonies or to create a Fifth Grade earth-attribute magical item.

Eye of the Many-Armed Giant, top Fifth Grade material. Crystallization of an earth principle. Able to convert magic energy into petrification power. Contains Fifth Grade earth principle.

Headless Corpse of the Many-Armed Giant. Contains concentrated bloodline power and earth elementium. Can extract and refine blood into advanced bloodline synthesis potions. Can be modified into a high-grade undead. Can be crafted into a high-grade corpse golem. Can be used as a top-class sacrifice material.

Killing a Fifth Grade minor Scourge Lord was enough to instantly turn any Fourth Grade adept into a tycoon drowning in their wealth. It was a genuine Fifth Grade creature! Even just a bit of its blood or piece of flesh would be the most excellent Fifth Grade material.

Fifth Grade materials were incredibly rare in the World of Adepts. There was an overwhelming demand for them and practically no supply. Even when the occasional Fifth Grade material appeared on the market, it easily sold for upwards of ten thousand magical crystals per gram of material. Zagu’s body was five meters tall and seven tons heavy. It was an incredibly high-grade material that was more valuable than a literal mountain of magical crystals.

If Greem were willing to sell the corpse, he would be able to purchase two or three entire regions in the Central Lands. After all, all these materials were likely enough to push a Fourth Grade adept onto the throne of Fifth Grade.

The regions in the Central Lands might be wealthy and contain plenty of resources, but they could not help a high-grade adept too much.

If Greem dared offer to sell, all three major organizations were likely to break out into a heated bid for the materials!

Things like resources, territory, and population could be accumulated and gathered over time. However, an opportunity to become a Fifth Grade Great Adept was hard to come by. Anyone with half a brain could see which was more valuable.

The Adept’s Association had also managed to hunt down the Fifth Grade ten-headed ghoul. However, the quality of the materials was clearly inferior to the ones found on the many-armed giant. Even so, the materials were probably still enough for the Adept’s Association to give rise to a Fifth Grade Great Adept.

The only question was who the Adept’s Association would choose, Ainley or Gloria. The two of them were both ultra-grade powerhouses with decent combat strength. With the aid of Fifth Grade materials, neither of them would have a problem advancing to Fifth Grade.

Apart from this, the Northern Witches also managed to defeat the peak Fourth Grade dust elemental. With the spoils they obtained from the dust elemental, it was likely they would be able to cultivate another peak Fourth Grade witch.

It was great news for the Northern Lands, who only had two ultra-powerhouses at the moment!

As for the serpentdrake the Central adepts had taken out together? If it hadn’t been divided between all of them, the resources would have been likely enough to allow one of them to rise to advanced or peak Fourth Grade. Given how they split it up between them, it could only allow each of them to improve slightly. It did not have the ridiculous effect of pushing someone to greater heights.

Everyone had made profits of their own, which diluted the ‘tragedy’ of having lost two of their Fourth Grade companions. The Silver Union was the only one who had nothing to show for their efforts. Vice Senate-Head Melone’s face was as dark as the night sky now.

It couldn’t be helped. After all, the Silver Union’s combat style relied too heavily on magical statues and golem constructs. They preferred defending and counter-attacking, using their statues and golems to exhaust their enemy. It caused them to be incredibly uncomfortable with such high-paced battles and ultimately lost them their best opportunity to obtain spoils.

The Adept’s Association had also lost more than five hundred adepts of various grades in that battle earlier, apart from Fourth Grade Fire Adept Schreiber. On such a planar battlefield, Fourth Grade adepts were the only ones that the various organizations cared about.

They might be frustrated and upset if they lost too many Third Grade adepts, but those losses would not weigh as heavily as the death of a single Fourth Grade. As for adepts below Third Grade? As long as they had not been completely wiped out, the high-grade adepts could easily see past them.

Every major organization knew how it was.

The worth of a single Fifth Grade Great Adept was far above that of ten Fourth Grade adepts, while one Fourth Grade adept was worth over ten Third Grade adepts, and so on. High-grade adepts were always fewer in number. They resided at the top of the adept civilization’s pyramid.

Of course, Fifth Grade Great Adepts had barely made their way to the middle reaches of the adept civilization. They were still a long, long way from the top. Still, for the low-grade adepts struggling with all their might inside the plane, Fifth Grades were already ‘deities’ far beyond their reach!

…………

World of Adepts, outside the planar barrier.

This world was a perfect world, large and full of color.

The intense energy tides washed against the World of Adepts’ planar barrier, splashing bright sparks across space. The World of Adepts remained unmoved in the wave of energy, like a giant ship at sea. The planar barrier refused to budge no matter how viciously the spacestorms blew.

It seemed as if the planar world wasn’t moving. However, if you were to zoom out and look at it from far out in space, you would notice that the World of Adepts was traveling and drifting through the storm according to some profound principle at a speed of dozens of kilometers per second.

Through the semi-translucent planar barrier of the World of Adepts, you could faintly see the gigantic Continent of Adepts within, along with its numerous mountains.

At this moment, a three-headed hound of unusual appearance squatted near the planar barrier. The beast was over a hundred meters tall and had a body full of shiny black hair. Three heads reached out from his neck.

The left head was as pure as ice, the right as blazing as an inferno, and the middle as dark as ink. Three principle auras–red, white, and black–shrouded the hound, making him seem all the more majestic and ferocious.

Three-Headed Hound Dilmas was of an evil faction, but his power was concentrated and refined to the level of a Sixth Grade. Evil as he was, there was a hint of majesty and holiness in that evil!

Dilmas might be incredibly powerful, but his hundred-meter-tall figure was as tiny as a flea on an elephant compared to the giant planar barrier of the World of Adepts. The two of them were on entirely different scales. Naturally, it was hard to compare them.

At this moment, Dilmas was leaning against a small crack in the planar barrier, his three heads taking turns to blow pure disaster aura into the break.

After the month-long effort of corroding this crack, it had grown visibly in size. However, it was still far from large enough to allow his tremendous power to enter. At best, Dilmas could project one-fifth of his power.

Given Dilmas’ might, even just one-fifth of his power would be an advanced Fifth Grade creature, strong enough to wipe out the Continent of Adepts alone.

He might have just done so if this had been a few days earlier.

However, the consecutive deaths of his several high-grade subordinates made him hesitate.

Dilmas had a strong suspicion that some damned Great Adept had returned to the World of Adepts and was waiting there to shiv him in the back. Otherwise, how else could he explain the deaths of his subordinates at the hands of a bunch of ant-like human adepts!?

In particular, the shocking explosion earlier had the unique scent of the elementium clone of a Great Adept.

It made Dilmas even more certain of his conjecture.

He sat by the rift on the planar barrier, breathing disaster aura down on it to corrode the planar laws. He then scratched and tore wildly in an attempt to widen the rift, all while sending attacks through the rift at any adept that dared come close.

It was his persistence and madness that kept the human adepts from sealing the spatial rift no matter how they tried.

While Dilmas was in the midst of panicking and hesitating about his next move, he suddenly stopped. Apart from one head, which continued to stare at the rift, the other two heads turned around and stared coldly at an approaching figure.

The stranger walked out of the spacestorms as if the raging energy tides did not even exist. They approached the three-headed hound with steady steps.

Dilmas felt his heart tighten when he saw the stranger’s ten-meter-tall silhouette of fire. He could see how the flames shrouded the figure tamely and sense the overwhelming fire power in his body. He squeezed out a name from between his teeth coldly.

“Fire God Sinai, what are you doing here?”

It wasn’t Fire God Sinai himself who came. It was merely a Sixth Grade fire clone of his. If it had been Seventh Grade Fire God Sinai himself, Dilmas would have fled the instant he noticed his presence.

The towering flame humanoid came within ten thousand meters of Dilmas. He stopped and stared, the golden flames in his eyes a striking sight.

“Leave, Dilmas! Leave now, and I can pretend I didn’t see you. Otherwise……”

Sinai spat out a threat the moment he spoke. Obviously, this made Dilmas incredibly annoyed.

“Sinai, this is the World of Adepts, not a subject world of yours. Since when did you get to issue orders around here? What is it? A Seventh Grade Fire God like yourself has sold out to the adepts?” A vicious expression flashed over Dilmas’ main head, the black one. He then crouched over, and a threatening growl began to rumble in his throat.

“I am here to retrieve what is mine!” Sinai’s clone replied sternly. “Some damned adept stole my treasure. Today, I must punish them. You, leave! I need this rift!”

Dilmas was fazed for a second when he heard this. He then nodded in silence as he said, “No wonder I smelled the aura of your divine fire spell inside the world. So your divine artifact was stolen by the adepts…hehehe. Sinai, since we are both here to find trouble with the adepts, why don’t—”

Before Dilmas could finish his sentence, Sinai’s clone stomped his feet, and a blazing sea of fire spread out around him. He shouted furiously, “Silence! Gods like ourselves will never collude with disaster creatures like you. Leave, or there will be a fight between us!”

“Leave……”