Age of Adepts

This was an eerie and fearsome magical swamp.

Though it was daytime, the thick clouds and fog meant that very little light was able to get through, and thus the world looked quite dreary. The whole world seemed to have a gloomy, earthy yellow tone.

After living in such an environment for a long time, even the character of a person would change and become darker.

Both men waited until the stone door behind them completely closed up, then Tony pulled up his hood and said,

“I’m going that way.”

He didn’t wait for Greem’s reply, but simply turned around and took a path that led off to the left, which led him onto a narrow and winding trail which was paved with tiny white stones.

Greem waited until Tony’s bulky body disappeared into the misty fog, then he pulled up his hood, turned the other way, and took the trail on the right.

While walking, he whispered, “Show me the detected data for Tony.”

In next second, a report about the Apprentice Adept Tony, done by the Biological Assistance Chip, was projected into his mind.

……

Greem’s mouth twitched in surprise. With such a Physique, why didn’t this guy change paths and become a Warrior? His strength and physique were twice that of Greem’s. That meant that if he got in a fight with Tony, perhaps it would only take a single punch to knock Greem out.

But as an apprentice Adept, Tony had 6 Physique, 2 more than Greem. No matter how hard Greem worked, this innate advantage would be hard to overcome.

Knowing this, Tony was probably planning to follow the path of a Body Refining Adept. By using specific methods to strengthen his body, then using magic spells to assist his close combat ability… perhaps this was the only path he could choose!

Only by staying quite close to the target for a period of time could the Chip analyze and acquire such accurate information. It did this by monitoring the target’s movement and behavior. No doubt this would allow Greem to take up a more proactive position when working with other people. It also allowed him to avoid taking unnecessary risks.

And this was, undoubtedly, the most important thing to Greem!

But perhaps such a method was useless against a real Adept, as their bodies were would sometimes radiate a strong elemental energy. This was something Adepts did passively after their body gathered a huge amount of energy. This was also how they avoided others sensing their strength.

It was unknown how much valuable information the Biological Assistance Chip would be able to ascertain when the target was under the powerful interference of energy radiation. Not only that, but Greem was worried that Adepts might be able to detect his Biological Assistance Chip, hence he had to be extra cautious when using it inside the tower.

The stony trail in front of him kept winding as it led into the depths of the misty fog. There were weird plants of all sizes, which could be barely seen on both sides of the path. There were short and thick, cone-shaped trees, small leafy plants that curled around in a spiral, vine-like rattans that brushed against the top of his head as he walked under them, and amazingly colored, mystical flowers that had petals the size of large washbowls… there was also a muddy, stinky pond…

Though all of this made it seem like this was just a normal swamp, Greem knew very well that he could never take even half a step out from the stony trail.

For all those animals and plants, which were able to survive in this magical swamp, were frightening demons who would eat every little bit of the humans they encountered, not even leaving their bones behind.

Those plain looking short trees were actually quite frightening. If a person got close enough to them, their curled up branch would instantly expand, grabbing and holding the person within its tight clutches. At that moment, the bloodsucking rattans, which were hanging on these trees, would coil up around that person, poking countless sharp thorns into their body, slowly sucking the blood out of their body, drop by drop.

After the person’s blood was completely dried up, the remaining skin, flesh, and bones would become the best fertilizer for these killer trees.

If someone could ever safely dig out the blood red soil underneath those killer trees, they would certainly discover a huge pile of skeletons, some of which belonged to humans, some of which were animals. Without doing this, there was no evidence of any of the prey these plants had devoured!

There were two reasons why this tower in the swamp groomed these demonic plants. First, it was to prevent the intrusion from other humans. Second, it was so they could harvest some unique magic materials from the plants.

The root of the Killer Tree and the blood sack that grew within the body of the Bloodsucking Rattans were both good tonics. They were a beneficial supplement for Adepts who didn’t have a good physique. On a regular basis, apprentice Adepts had to take the risk of being attacked by demon plants to harvest materials. Therefore, this was a dangerous task, which had a very high death toll.

It was probably because they had sensed the smell of blood and flesh from Greem’s body, but the deathly still swamp suddenly seemed to come to life. Consciously, or unconsciously, all those demonic plants started wriggling their bodies, branches, and roots slowly moving toward the stony trail.

Greem pretended he didn’t see the movements of these demon plants. He wasn’t actually worried about them right now.

No matter how crazy or brutal they were, they didn’t dare to move onto the simple and plain stony trail under his feet, as if there were something on this road that they feared.

“Query the database, record, and archive all the magic plants in the surrounding area!”

“Initial data insufficient… root database was incomplete and unable to match the species… activating elemental vision, reconstructing database…”

Following with a bunch of warning tones from the chip, the image projecting on his retina started swaying, then it straightened out as a vast amount of data began pouring down like a waterfall in front of his eyes. At the same time, every single object in his sight was highlighted with different colored lights.

Elemental vision? Was this a special ability that he got after the chip merged with his current body?

The plants were highlighted with a green colored light, indicated these plant demons contained a lot of Elementium that was, unsurprisingly, often found in natural plants. Other colors, like red, yellow, blue, and purple, indicated the areas where their respective energy was gathered. Besides these, the ever changing humidity, temperature, wind speed, thickness of poison particles, distribution of element particles and their circulation… all the data which the chip could detect was projected onto his eyes in a colorful dynamic graph.

Greem frowned.

This colorful and over complicated retinal projection had seriously affected his normal vision. This was too much information.

“Remove useless colors… remove diffused highlights… only focus retina vision on the most common energy ranges…”

After Greem gave out his commands, one after another, finally the glaring, colorful orb dimmed down bit by bit, and all the items in his vision had once again resumed their normal colors.

The thick and pale misty fog had now turned into countless lumps, threads, and sheets of slow moving water elemental particles. They were constrained by a mysterious force, and couldn’t spread out, but were forced to cover this magic swamp month after month, year after year.

Greem stopped moving and stood straight. Hiding under the shadow of his hood was a pair of brightly flashing eyes, staring out at the demon plants beside the trail without blinking. With the help of his brand new vision, the true color of these plants hiding under the disguise of the swamp had finally been revealed.

Underneath the wrinkling and withered tree skin, was an army of eerie looking ghost faces that were tightly squeezed together. All of them were the souls trapped by the Killer Trees. Also, Greem could ‘see’ a green colored energy illumination on the needle like prickles on the edges of the Killer Tree’s branches. This energy should indicate the presence of the paralytic poison that the Killer Tree used to sedate its prey.

As for the Bloodsucking Rattans, which hung from the Killer Tree, they looked completely demonic, as they were entirely blood red under his elemental vision. It was pure blood that flowing underneath its twisted, creeping green skin, and, right at the spot where it connected with Killer Tree, within a hollow tree cavity, numerous blood sacks, the size of a human fist, were pumping at a regular tempo, making them looked like human hearts.

Caw~ caw~

Together with few piercing caws, a group of Scavenger Crows flew in and stopped on a tree branch, moving their blood red eyes and staring at Greem.

Honestly speaking, being stared at by a group of ominous demons like this made Greem feel incredibly uncomfortable.

Faced with this group of dangerous swamp demons, Greem didn’t dare be the slightest bit careless. Although Scavenger Crows were not considered to be strong demon beasts, their blood red eyes had the ability ‘Doom’, and there had been some frightful incidents in which Apprentice Adepts had their eyes blinded by these crows.

Seeing that these Scavenger Crows were itching to attack, Greem raised his right arm and softly intoned a spell that he had memorized. After five seconds of spellcasting, a large red magic fireball appeared in Greem’s hand, twisting violently.

Greem’s entire right hand was completely covered by this magic fireball, but he was still safe and sound.

This was his Burning Hand spell!

After spending six years in the Magic Tower, this was the only spell Greem was able to use.

With Greem’s current ability, he could barely stretch the flame out 5 steps. That was his limit. Therefore, it could, currently, be considered a close range spell.

The violently burning magic flame brightened the surrounding fog. The powerful ripples generated by the fire element had finally made these demons realize that this human in front of them was not something they could easily capture.

As for those demons who were slowly gathering around Greem, it seemed like they were struck with a great terror, and all of them quickly fled away from the sides of the trail in a great panic. Also, that group of Scavenger Crows were letting out loud caws as they flew into the sky, briefly wheeling about in the air above and disappearing into the depths of the fog.

Greem breathed out a long sigh of relief. With this, the pressure on him had been reduced.

None of these demons had the guts to step onto the stony trail, but that didn’t stop them from using their own methods in order to try to lure or intimidate Apprentice Adepts into leaving the stony trail. If Greem was scared by the terrifying scene of being surrounded by demons, and, in his panic, accidently left the boundaries of this stony trail… even with the help of Magic Talisman, he would probably die a terrible death.

The soul, blood, and flesh of an Apprentice Adept. No doubt they were much more delicious than ordinary humans or wild beasts. Besides, this didn’t violate the agreement between the demons and the Magic Tower. Therefore, every inspection trip outside of the tower was a thorough check of willpower. Once these demons found a weakness in one’s mind, the future of that person would not be good.

“Record everything you can about these demons!” Greem said calmly.

“Beep… record completed! Host, please name the creatures in the order they are presented.”

Images of creatures appeared in front of his eyes.

“Killer Trees… Bloodsucking Rattans… Scavenger Crows…”

“Naming completed! New information has been recorded in the database.”