Age of Adepts

Though Greem might be perplexed, the Chip would never be!

The Chip was dynamically monitoring every single piece of data within Greem’s body; it could detect or even predict the upcoming transformation through the movement of its graphs for all of the functions in his body. If he continued to receive the endless supply of mutated energy that had no filtration and sorting, perhaps he could form a random and unknown conscious core.

But once the mutated energy supporting this transformation faded away, he would suffer a devastating fall. It wouldn’t even matter if the conscious core shattered, because at that point in time, even his soul would not be able to escape from the dreadful backlash that came from failing in advancement.

It was time for the counter attack! He couldn’t afford to wait until the moment his conscious core formed or he would lose the chance of using his Fire element innate talent as the core to form his own conscious core!

All of a sudden, Greem put up a violent struggle. But all four of his limbs were strapped by a special rope, and there was even a half-ball shape iron cap covering the top of his head. Any slight movement would immediately trigger a strong reaction from the torture chair. Some bizarre runes emerged on top of the black rope, scorching his skin and making them produce a hissing noise.

The rope tightened, making it looked like it was sinking into his flesh.

There were even seven or eight sharp, flaming red spines poking through from the inner side of the iron cap and forcefully impaled into his skull, releasing a peculiar wave that would distract the normal thinking of a human. Severe pain and distraction to his thinking, either one of those was more than enough to interrupt Greem’s upcoming actions!

Greem had 13 points of Physique; a high Physique like this was enough to help him endure most of the pain coming from his body. But even so, he found it tough to withstand the unique instruments of torture Adept Anderson had specifically prepared for him and the other two.

It was worth mentioning that in order to hold them captive, Anderson had really put in a lot of effort.

The rope was made from the skin of a Black Serpent from the East Coast. It was capable of withstanding any Pseudo-Adept level offensive magic spells. In addition to that, among three of them, none was an apprentice with great strength, so it was impossible for them to escape the fetters of the torture chair with only their body strength.

Together with the distraction coming from the Brain Wash Cap of Gnoll, even if all three of them really became Adepts, they were in a situation where they didn’t have the chance to absorb elemental energy from the outside world and recover their body. They would be just three delicious dishes who had the identity of official Adepts, but not the overall strength of an Adept.

This place was a small inter-space controlled by Anderson, and he was the highest authority. Without his permission, the trio could never absorb even the tiniest bit of elemental energy. Three Adept level sacrificial offerings who had stepped into the realm of Adepts, yet only had the overall strength of Pseudo-Adept. This was the grand feast Adept Anderson had prepared for himself!

Through the torture chair, the mutated energies coming from the altar still continued penetrating Greem’s body, pushing him closer and closer to the most frightful abyss. However, even when he was confronted with a crisis of life and death, Greem was still as calm and sober as usual. In fact, his thoughts were far clearer than normal and he could see things far more thoroughly.

“Alice, why are you taking so long? If you delay further, it is true that I can’t escape from death, perhaps you’ll have to die together with me too!”

“It is almost… done…. give me another… ten… minutes… these… damn defenses… of the tower… are really tough… to kill…” Alice’s conscious wave that came from the depth of his soul was breaking up. Obviously, she was in the middle of an intense slaughter.

“Remember, you only have ten minutes. Now, teleport the thing I need over here first!”

“Damn it… this is insane… why are you… asking things… at this… moment? Rascal… I… awwww…”

Alice cursed hurriedly, and judging from her last shrill cry, it was obvious that she had unleashed her most deadly strike: Spatial Shatter. Having temporarily wiped clean the enemy around her, she was finally able to seize the opportunity and teleport over the thing Greem needed.

Greem felt a slight vibration on his palms. While still strapped on the torture chair, he flipped both palms and saw two micro magical arrays, emitting wave after wave of spatial ripples. When these spatial ripples reached a very dense degree, a tiny spatial tunnel was torn open.

Two faint noises were heard as two objects traveled through the magical arrays, similar to a short-distance teleportation array, and fell into his palms.

Over the past month, Alice had repeatedly tried all sorts of methods to teleport an object over to Greem’s palm, but they were all blocked off by his elementium shield, protection barrier, or some other similar defensive mechanisms. As she was being pushed to a corner, Alice eventually thought outside of the box and came out with the idea of designing a strange thing: a micro space positioning array.

The Chip started to work on her idea. With that, a mysterious array, now found on both of Greem’s palms, was produced!

Relying on the positioning function of the array, it had become simpler for Alice to teleport objects over to Greem. Most of the time, it was as easy as performing a short-distance teleportation herself.

The item that fell into Greem’s left palm was the summoning core of his Fire Lord golem, while the item fell into his right palm was his favorite weapon: the Fire Lord’s Scepter.

He had foreseen that all of the equipment and items found on his body would be taken away by Anderson, therefore, long before anything else, he had left both of his ultimate weapons, which could help him turn the situation around, with Alice. When the time was right, he would ask her to teleport them over.

Now, with his magical weapon and his strongest golem in his hands, it was time to fight Adept Anderson!

With a gentle swing of the Fire Lord’s Scepter in his right hand, a large gate of flame immediately emerged behind Greem. It was enshrouded with leaping and steaming flame, creating an extremely high temperature. Through the smoky and hazy opening of the gate, one could vaguely see the realm of Fire Elementium, a world of terror purely made up of flames.

Endless Fire Elementium burst out from the flaming gate; in an instant, they transformed the surrounding space into a sea of flame. Meanwhile, amidst this raging and soaring sea of flame, Greem tossed the summoning core of his strongest golem onto the ground.

In next seconds, a formidable, tall and burly Fire Lord was born amidst the raging sea of flame!

After making its debut, the first thing Fire Lord did was wield its huge, flaming lava rock hand and crush the torture chair which Greem was trapped in.

While stretching his slightly numbed arms, amidst the flame that spread all over his body, all of the frightening wounds on Greem’s body started to close, healed, and eventually, disappeared without a trace. After owning the Flame Body, any place with fire would be his home and he could even conveniently self-heal.

Adept Anderson was hovering on top of the bloody altar, staring at that little Pseudo-Adept who stood with his back straight. The emotion of fury and resentment in his mind had reached their maximum degree. Because of that powerful gate of flame, the function of the bloody altar had suffered a great distraction. The other two sacrificial offerings on the altar had also started to move and struggle, showing signs of awakening soon.

Damn it… damn it… damn it…!

Curses rolled from Anderson’s tongue. Without hesitation, he launched an attack at Greem.

Hundreds and thousands of wild and ferocious Wind Blades immediately rushed towards Greem.

Without Greem’s needing to confront the attack personally, the Fire Lord, who occupied nearly half of the space on top of the altar, took two steps forward and unleashed a Firestorm to throw it over to the incoming attack.

The Wind Blade and Firestorm collided in midair, instantly smearing the surrounding space with a red hue. Countless raging flame and razor sharp wind blades were crashing and slicing each other in the air. Very soon, the difference in their power was revealed in front of everyone.

The energies contained within the Firestorm were overly divided, and their power was far weaker than of those Wind Blades on the opposite side.

As a result, sliced by countless Wind Blades that came whistling in before the Firestorm could bring all of its power into play, all the Fire Elementium was churned and shattered into pieces. And after annihilating the Firestorm, the remaining Wind Blades finally caught up to the body of the flaming giant.

The flaming giant was standing aloft; its leaping flame armor of lava had combined the violence of Fire element and the sturdiness of Earth element. Thus, although the surface of the armor was all scratched up, the source of Fire element in its body remained intact.

Relying on the protection of this flaming giant, Greem roared out with a loud voice, and he finally summoned the Fire Deity smoothly. Unlike what he usually did, where he always sent the Fire Deity into the battlefield as cannon fodder, Greem actually departed from his normal behavior. He forcefully poked his hand into the chest of the Fire Deity and pulled out a unique fire stone with some indistinct runes.

He threw his head back and roared again. Then Greem opened his mouth, placed the flaming fire stone inside, and swallowed it.

It was as if he had just swallowed a mini sun; from his mouth to his throat, and also from his stomach, a dazzling bright light and an intense heat emanated from within his body. It almost transformed him into a transparent and flaming humanoid. After such a strong congregation of Fire Elementium entered his body, driven by Fire element energy of the same origin, numerous magic runes engraved on the surface of his body started to light up, one after another.

Greem kept roaring furiously and loudly. Intense heat and dazzling light were emanating from all over his body. An Elementium Flame coming from the source of his soul had finally kindled his body and soul.

In the past, Greem had been bathed countless of times in the element of fire, yet those were fires produced from the collision between Fire element energy and his Flame Body. But right at this very moment, Greem was kindled by the flame that diffused from the depths of his soul.

After a long history of learning fire, playing with fire, and researching fire, for the very first time, Greem had touched the inner principles of Fire Elementium and established a slight connection with the Fire element principle residing within the Will of the Plane. And this was the true source that could allow Greem to keep walking further in the path of an Adept.

“Not enough… this is far from enough! I need more…”

While letting out a thunderous roar, Greem finally activated the mystical ability the magic rune suit brought to him: the transformation of the Flame Fiend.

A flaming humanoid far stronger and purer than the flaming giant made his debut in the scene. The two-meter tall body kept expanding and becoming bigger and bigger after being injected with a vast amount of Fire element energy; soon it reached the height of three meters. Meanwhile, a thick fire pillar shot out from the gate of flame behind him, injecting an endless amount of Fire element energy into his body.

Due to this flaming humanoid drawing and absorbing the Fire element energy in an overly violent, quick manner, the gate of flame nearly couldn’t supply his demand. The flame on the tall gate pillars and the gate itself gradually faded away, exposed an ancient-looking stone frame fully engraved with runes.

Supported by such vast Fire element energy, Greem once again let out a terrifying roar that shook the entire space. Driven by his powerful will, all of the Fire element energies he absorbed rushed crazily into his Spiritual Domain. In that place, they were repeatedly compressed and tempered, again and again.

Such degree of fire congregation was no longer something that could be controlled by his mere Flame Body. For every time his Spiritual Domain shook and contracted, the powerful fire energy compressed and tempered by the true form of his spiritual consciousness would bring him devastating fire damage.

When the strength of the fire damage reached a certain degree, the Flame Body of that lower grade could no longer provide him any resistance toward the damage!

Every time his true form of spiritual consciousness compressed the fire energy, it was no different than an ordinary human hugging a fire pan that could bring him severe injury. However, there wasn’t any sizzling sound of skin and flesh being burned, the only thing was a severe pain that penetrated the depths of his soul.

Amidst the severe pain that kept striking him, Greem’s senses had become blunted. Yet, most of the impurities and useless waste found in the true form of his spiritual consciousness were burned off by the dreadful flame. Backed up by the attitude of not fearing pain, and being repeatedly compressed by his spiritual consciousness, the powerful fire energy had finally starting to take its shape. Using that tiny thread of Fire element principal as the core, they crystallized and formed into the conscious core that was required to advance into the realm of an Adept.

In the middle of a battlefield, Greem had finally advanced and become a Fire element Adept!