Age of Adepts

Three months later.

Greem meditated silently inside a well-protected magical room.

At his level, ordinary meditation techniques were already only a little better than nothing when it came to improving his Spirit. However, it was a habit that had been developed over the past hundreds of years. Greem was still more used to meditating over sleeping. He would only lie down and fall asleep when he was overly exhausted.

However, he rarely ever got that exhausted, even once in a hundred years.

Just as his soul drifted and his consciousness began melding with the principles, a sweet female voice rang out in the room.

“Lord Greem, it is your shift now!”

It was a message from the spirit of the fortress.

Greem frowned slightly and slowly opened his eyes.

Hm? Is it time?

Greem didn’t dare delay. He stood up and opened a portal. The next second, he appeared at the entrance to Hall Cloud.

As the central command center of the entire war, there were twelve crystal halls in Boulder Fortress where Great Adepts could rest while they awaited battle. The hall that Greem came to was codenamed Cloud, which was why some people also called it Hall Cloud.

Five other adepts appeared at the same time Greem did.

After all this time of getting to know each other, everyone had gained a certain understanding of their companions. They greeted each other and stepped into Hall Cloud at the same time.

The adepts who had been on shift nodded when they saw their replacements arrive. They vanished from the spot with explosions of different colors.

The six adepts who had just arrived, including Greem, bowed and paid respects to the person seated at the front of the hall- Adept Gerritsen. They then found seats of their own and sat down. The six of them were the only ones in this crystal hall that was large enough to fit a thousand people. Every one of them sat far away from each other, silently doing whatever interested them.

Some of them took out thick tomes and started reading. Others closed their eyes and began light meditation. Some others gathered mist around them and started tinkering with who-knows-what away from everyone’s eyes.

Only Greem remained seated in his crystal chair, observing the circular hall beyond the wall with great interest.

This place was undoubtedly the heart of the battle against the beastmen gods. The thousands of subordinate armies out there were working with elite adept forces to launch an unending assault against the beastmen worlds.

The adepts embedded in that crystal cluster maintained close contact with the adept forces trillions of kilometers away through some peculiar method, rapidly relaying information on the battles and skirmishes.

Bloody and intense battles raged simultaneously across a dozen planar worlds.

However, these wars were all trillions of kilometers away. The high-grade adepts present could only describe the savagery and intensity of these distant battles with crude numbers.

“Assault on Plane Nike on Cloudclear Front has been obstructed. Losses of Two-Headed Dragon Army at 41%. High-grade reinforcements urgently required.”

“Plane Behta of Skyriver Front has managed to corner the native army in their kingdom. It is said that they are currently praying for the vassal Beast God Urkan to descend. Request that headquarters send an appropriate force in response.”

“The situation on Plane Moguta of the Bluesea Front is dire. Clone of vassal god, Eudara, has appeared on the battlefield. Target is Sixth Grade and has currently inflicted severe losses to ally forces. Ghostspirit Army has been exterminated. Commander Neemo has died in the line of duty. Wooddrake Army has suffered a 71% loss. Commander Wall is badly injured and has been blasted into a nearby galaxy. Reinforcements should keep an eye out and search for him.”

The adepts wouldn’t sit idly by now that the enemy had deployed a Sixth Grade clone onto the battlefield. The interception mission was quickly sent over to Hall Flower.

A short moment later, the light of teleportation flashed from Hall Flower as the Sixth Grade Great Adept in charge of that hall vanished to the battlefield along with two Fifth Grade adepts. At the same time, several adepts hurried to Hall Flower under instructions from the fortress spirit, replacing the empty spots their companions had left behind.

War was being waged in a dozen planes at once. Some armies were stuck outside the planar barrier, still working hard on breaking through. Others had already managed to infiltrate and were currently engaged in a bloody battle against the local natives around the portals and spatial rifts. There were also those that had finished their conquest and were currently cleaning up the remnant Beast God forces.

There were wars on a dozen fronts at once. The numerous trivial and menial tasks that had to be accomplished were uncountable. Every plane had to be dealt with differently. Adept forces of different levels and specialties had to be deployed based on the strength and abilities of the natives. It involved a complex chain of logistics, provisioning, transferring, recuperation, shift-changing, and rotation.

They had to consider the dynamic changes to the battlefield and the follow-up response required whenever the situation changed. There were also unexpected factors of note. All these things added together into a steep and terrible cliff of statistics for any command center to deal with.

However, after tens of thousands of years of trials and tribulations, the adepts had developed their own unique command and order system. Every adept–low, intermediate, or high-grade, adept or Great Adept–was assigned to their appropriate stations by this command system.

Through the constant deployment of their subordinate and vassal forces, the adepts were able to preserve their most elite individuals. These elites could then be mobilized at the most appropriate time in the most suitable location, allowing them to obtain the greatest results on the battlefield with the least effort.

However, such wars could not persist for very long. After all, once the subordinate armies had been exhausted, such large-scale invasions would require the adepts to send in their own precious combat forces.

That was why the major civilizations participating in a large-scale planar war would have to take some time off to rest after the conclusion of each engagement. They had to wait for their subordinate forces to recover somewhat. Once a major civilization managed to refill its ranks, it would be time for the civilization to greedily search the universe for more prey.

Greem couldn’t help but be inspired and feel countless emotions at the sight of all this.

That was because he remembered following the Northern Witches in an assault against a plane belonging to the Beast God once before. It was something that had happened almost three hundred years ago. Given the passage of time, that must have been the precursor to this massive invasion against the Beast God worlds.

The Greem of that time had not understood the significance behind his actions at all. He had simply followed the Northern Witches blindly, hoping to obtain some resources in the planar war. Now he was seated in the command center of the adept faction, silently watching all this unfold from the perspective of a neutral observer.

At this moment, there might be countless young adepts holding the same thoughts he had, bathing in blood on the frontlines of the planar war. They might be successful and return home with large numbers of resources, or they might fail and return to the dust in a cold, unfamiliar earth far from home.

Whether they succeeded or failed, their participation pushed the adepts’ war machine forward, crushing the bodies of countless beastmen under its tracks as the adept faction slowly but surely climbed its way to the peak of the universe.

The war against the beastmen had been raging on for over seventy years now. It had happened almost at the same time as the eruption of the magic tides.

It was obvious that Witch Barbara, who had organized this attack, was also trying to take advantage of the magic tides to tear off a fatter, juicer piece of flesh from the beastmen pantheon. By exterminating the believers, she could weaken the strength of Beast God Arugel.

As for when these two true bosses would clash and how they would clash? That was not information that someone of Greem’s level would ever come into contact with.

Perhaps, at this moment, the true masterminds of this war were watching and assessing the actions of Greem and all their other pawns through an even loftier and higher lens!

Greem felt an indescribable and unusual feeling in his heart at the thought of this.

At this moment, however, the shout of an adept could be heard from the circular hall.

“An ultra-grade force has erupted in the beastmen capital of Plane Behta of Skyriver Front. They summoned the clone of Kanbr through a blood sacrifice. Estimates suggest the clone to be Fifth Grade. Requesting reinforcements from headquarters!”

The fortress spirit’s voice rang out in Hall Cloud almost instantly.

“Adept Gerritsen of Hall Cloud, please assign reinforcements to Plane Behta immediately.”

The Fifth Grade clone of Vassal God Kanbr obviously didn’t require Sixth Grade Gerritsen to mobilize. Thus, Gerritsen opened his eyes and glanced at his six subordinates in the hall. His gaze quickly landed on a male adept known as Piotr.

“Piotr, you go! If possible, try not to fight. You just need to intimidate the enemy and make sure they don’t slaughter our forces,” Gerritsen calmly gave the order, and the Fifth Grade order stood up and bowed.

The next second, an array lit up in a corner of Hall Cloud. Significant spatial fluctuations radiated from the array.

It was important to note that the command center was trillions of kilometers away from the nearest battlefield. Landing there through a personal portal was impossible. Only these incredibly stable ultra-long-range portals could allow for traveling such incredible distances.

Great Adept Piotr hastily stepped into the array. A few seconds later, white-light flashed as he vanished without a trace.

A short moment later, another adept that belonged to Hall Cloud hurried over and found a seat to sit down in, replacing Adept Piotr’s position.

The machine of war would not stop once it was started. It would only come to a pause once one side had been completely defeated.

For the next month of Greem’s shift, numerous battles broke out on the frontlines, and more and more Great Adepts were sent out by the day. As many as four missions had landed in Hall Cloud during this shift so far. The other Great Adepts had all been sent out, leaving only Greem and another Great Adept idle.

Was this special care being extended toward him?

Greem couldn’t help but be curious, but he didn’t ask.

The one-month period quickly came to an end, and the next six people were called in. Greem and the others who had been holding the shift were then allowed to rest.

Every shift change meant that they had five to six months of rest.

They were allowed to move freely during three of these free months.

They could choose to rest in Boulder Fortress during this time, or they could teleport to a warring plane on their own dime to collect the local resources and knowledge.

However, they would have to rest and wait in Boulder Fortress for the next two months. If the fighting got too intense, they would have to replace the Great Adepts in their shift at Hall Cloud.

The point being that Hall Cloud must always have six Fifth Grade Great Adepts at the ready at all times.

If this was the same across all twelve crystal halls, that meant Boulder Fortress possessed the tremendous ability to deploy seventy-two Great Adepts all at once.

Of course, if they were to disregard the consequences, they even had the potential to deploy a hundred and twenty Great Adepts simultaneously!