Age of Adepts

Shadow's Light. Apprentice squad.

Leader: Pseudo-Adept Ponta. Male, thirty-seven years old. Dark elementium affinity.

Four members: Body-Refining Apprentice Dakso (Advanced), Plant Apprentice Eco (Female, Intermediate), Transfiguration Apprentice Blanco (Intermediate) and Goblin Magical Mechanic Little Locke (Beginner).

Originally, Little Locke wasn't qualified to be a member of Shadow's Light with his current power. However, due to the insistent recommendation of Eco, the magical mechanic path's non-reliance on raw power, and special skills that it possessed, Ponta allowed Little Locke to become a member of the group.

This five-person group was reasonably well-formed. They had Body-Refining Apprentice Dakso as the tank, Plant Apprentice Eco as the healer, and a magical mechanic who specialized in reconnaissance and disruption. This way, the party would be able to deal with enemies reliably, even if they were powerful magical creatures. The core of the party, Pseudo-Adept Ponta, would be allowed to output damage with all he had.

On the other hand, the transfiguration class was a unique advancement trajectory that had suddenly appeared over the past six months in White Tower. Much of the knowledge system of the transfiguration path came from a mysterious world known as Faen. It was said that there was a wondrous profession known as a druid in that world. These druids could use their nature's affinity to converse with plants and animals.

Moreover, the most powerful ability of those druids was the ability to transform into ferocious magical beasts freely. They were unchallenged on the battlefield with the instant-cast racial abilities and powerful bodies that they gained through these transformations.

The adepts of the Crimson Clan had modified this knowledge system slightly upon obtaining it, creating a new subject branch within the clan– the Transfiguration Class.

Apprentice adepts who had mastered transfiguration would be able to freely change between three forms: hellbears, shadow cheetahs, and windhawks. That allowed them to possess more varied and unusual combat methods.

Of course, these tree transformations were only the basic subjects that every transfiguration apprentice had to master. If they wanted to possess more powerful transformation abilities, they would have to trade large numbers of points and magical crystals for the necessary knowledge in the clan's library. Consequently, over the past few days, the more profitable clan missions that took place in the Black Forest had become extremely popular. They were almost always taken by parties formed by pseudo-adepts the moment they were put up.

Meanwhile, the lone-wolves among the apprentices could only pick the smaller missions that no one fancied or stay within the tower and slowly do their daily missions.

The improvement of apprentice adepts was almost solely achieved through the accumulation of points and magical crystals.

If you were one step behind your peers, you would always remain behind. You could only rely on tasks like cleaning up labs, assisting adepts with selecting magical materials, or acting as management staff for magical facilities to make any profit. Trying to improve drastically with such menial tasks was no more than fantasy.

As such, all Crimson apprentices with some degree of ability and talent had started moving recently. They had almost cleared out the entirety of the Black Forest around White Tower. The magical creatures living here were not going to be expelled without a fight. They started to ambush the Crimson apprentices on a much more frequent basis.

Several parties had already been ambushed, and casualties had started to surface among the apprentices.

The clan had specially sent Bug Adept Lord Billis into the Black Forest for this matter. Lord Billis had killed eleven lord-level First Grade magical creatures in a single hunt. Thus, the arrogant magical creatures immediately fell silent once more. They started to show signs of migrating deeper into the Black Forest.

However, this also caused the danger levels of the Black Forest to fall by several degrees, making it the best place for all apprentice adepts to explore and train themselves.

"Blanco, do you want to die?" Ponta scolded unhappily, "Lord Billis might have exterminated the lord-level magical creatures here, but there are still many adept-level magical creatures left. Do you think that our group can survive an encounter against such enemies?"

"Boss, our luck isn't that bad, is it?" Blanco was a slick youth with a quick mouth on him. He wore leather armor, and two blue stripes ran down beneath the burning iron fist clan-emblem on his chest. That meant he had mastered two transformation forms, leaving only the windhawk form.

"Who knows if it's bad. Still, if we actually run into an enemy, I'll be the first to stuff you into the magical creature's mouth." Ponta threatened wickedly, but anyone could hear the bantering tone behind his words.

"Why don't…we find a place to rest first!" Female apprentice Eco gently suggested, "We have been walking in the Black Forest for half a day. It's about time we find a place to rest and gather ourselves."

Eco and Ponta's relationship had been warming up quickly over the past couple of months. Naturally, Ponta wouldn't ignore the words of the person he liked.

"Little Locke, hurry up and find a safe and clean place nearby."

"Understood!"

The little goblin that had been silently walking in the center of the group immediately took out his eyeball combat machine upon receiving his instructions. He tossed it into the air.

A metal ball the size of a human head levitated in mid-air, just like that.

Creak!

As the dull mechanical gears started to grind, the mysterious patterns on the surface of the machine lit up. A mechanical shutter opened, revealing a single dark-red mechanical eyeball.

The mechanical eyeball could freely turn and look about, just like a human eye. Moreover, when the ruby shard in the center of the eye started charging energy, it could unleash a powerful scalding ray. That counted as a decent offense as well.

The little goblin then took out a metal hat of odd design and put it on his head. The top of the cap was fitted with a thought-wave amplifier, allowing him to control the eyeball machine remotely, even if it was several kilometers away. The front of the metal hat was also fitted with a futuristic-looking eyepiece on one side. It allowed everything that the eyeball combat machine 'saw' to be projected to the eyepiece, giving the little goblin a complete grasp of the combat situation around the device.

Once he had prepared everything, Little Locke gave the order and the machine dove into the nearby woods. It swiftly and agilely wrapped past the dense leaves and thick branches, dodging past the winding vines, and rapidly vanished into the depths of the Black Forest.

Little Locke held his breath and used all his concentration to control the machine as it quickly traveled through the Black Forest as it rapidly scanned the forest beneath itself.

Soon, Little Locke let out a breath.

"Found it…that direction, one and a half kilometers away. There's a somewhat hidden mountain ridge there. There's a water source nearby, and it is quite suited for a camp."

Ponta nodded in satisfaction.

This little goblin might not be much in combat, but his pouches were stuffed full of odd magical machinery. Each of them had their own unique ability. In conclusion, he was a decent adventuring companion!

"Let's go, go, go. We can rest there for an hour before continuing. We must arrive at the clan's Campsite Three before it turns dark." The members of the party couldn't help but let out a soft hurrah at Ponta's orders.

Their steps immediately became faster and livelier, much like their current mood.

The so-called clan campsites were just campsites that had been modified out of the dens of the lord-level magical creatures that Lord Billis had exterminated. All apprentice parties adventuring in the Black Forest could head to the nearest clan campsite to seek temporary shelter if they couldn't find a safer and more suitable rest area.

There were defensive arrays and clean rest sites that the adepts had set up there. It was much better than camping out in the wild and nibbling away at their stale bread rations. Still, the most satisfying part about the campsites was their safety.

They could light campfires as they liked in the campsites, which allowed them to cook delicious food. Moreover, they also had clean and tidy beds to sleep. What else could they possibly ask for in the Black Forest!

…………

The depths of the Black Forest.

The black-robed Billis stood alone in the cold winds on top of a short cliff, allowing the corners of his robe to billow in the winds.

When the members of Shadow's Light slowly approached Campsite Three, Billis turned about. His four ghostly green eyes fixated upon a particular spot in the vast forest.

At this moment, his eye bugs were spread across the Black Forest in a fifty-kilometer radius.

The apprentice adepts that had entered the Black Forest appeared to be on their own, but everything they were doing was under the strict supervision of Bug Adept Billis.

The clan had not sent Billis here just to exterminate those foolish magical creature lords, but to 'protect' this new blood of the clan in secret.

Billis would not participate in the usual training and exploration of the apprentice parties. Even when parties ran into danger, Billis would not need to act, as long as the risk was still within an acceptable range.

After all, the only way that the apprentices could gain the nutrition they needed for growth was by treading the line between life and death!

Still, if the parties were to encounter powerful magical creatures that they had no hope of defeating, Billis would secretly act and turn the danger into safety through discreet methods.

Of course, the clan would never let such a thing be known to the apprentices.

Bug Adept Billis' mission wasn't just a burdensome one, but one that demanded plenty of attention and finesse as well. If it weren't for his ubiquitous eye bugs and his terrifying number of insects, an ordinary adept would have plenty of trouble undertaking a protection mission like this one! He was basically an undercover babysitter!

Of course, apart from protecting the apprentices, Billis' responsibilities included the expulsion of those ferocious magical creatures.

Right now, the incidental discovery of an eye bug allowed Billis to find the tracks of a humanoid magical scorpion. This magical creature that possessed many insectoid traits was the kind that most interested Billis. Billis could always extract plenty of evolution genes beneficial to his improvement from them.

Billis' green compound eyes flashed as a series of chittering sounds rang out from the dark forest below him. As the leaves of the massive ancient trees rustled, several semi-translucent magical mantises quickly vanished into the forest.