Age of Adepts

Shadow Demon returned to Fire Throne eleven days after separating from Greem.

Even though it managed to return with the Orb of Shadows, it had received horrifying damage.

It was fortunate that Greem had used plenty of memory alloy when he forged Shadow Demon's body. Shadow Demon was able to repair the damage to its body just by drawing upon the endless amount of shadow energy available to it.

Meanwhile, the vampires in Seawoods Plane returned to the clan headquarters six days after Shadow Demon.

The entire Crimson Clan burst out in commotion the moment they returned!

After all, many of them had returned after advancing to a higher grade.

Mary had undoubtedly advanced to Fourth Grade, allowing the Crimson Clan to truly become a powerhouse in Zhentarim. If Alice was also counted as a member of the clan, then the Crimson Clan already had the power required to declare themselves independent of the Zhentarim Association.

News of this had yet to spread, but once it spread all over Zhentarim, a new series of political changes would most certainly happen!

Of course, apart from Mary successfully reaching Fourth Grade, two other blood elves had also advanced to Third Grade. They were Blood Elf Mage Isa and Blood Elf Shapeshifter Spalla.

Meanwhile, the other vampires also improved to varying degrees, though none of them managed to advance to Third Grade!

As Seawoods Plane was the personal property of the vampires, Mary was in charge of all the decisions. She enslaved the native trolls and put them to work, turning their former capital into a massive castle meant as an outpost for the vampires.

A massive blood pool had also been created in the divine domain of the Feathered God.

As long as the vampires worked hard, they could turn the castle into a holy land of vampires. The blood pool could also become the source of power for other high-grade vampires in the future.

However, these were all future plans that had yet to be put in motion. Mary and her vampires would have to toil hard to make this vision come true.

The more immediate benefits were the large number of spoils that Mary had brought back with her. Some of these items were excellent resources that even Greem was impressed by.

Mary left her subordinates alone immediately upon returning. She marched straight to Greem's Fire Throne.

Mary arrived at a laboratory. She grabbed Greem by the collar and pulled him before her eyes for a close inspection.

"Have you…gone out…on an excursion of any sort recently?"

Greem frowned, somewhat confused by what was happening.

"What are you talking about? An excursion?"

"I'm asking you whether you went to Seawoods Plane." Mary flared her incisors and threatened Greem 'viciously.'

"Seawoods Plane? Why would I go there?" Greem had a 'confused' look on his face. "As you know, the injury to my soul hasn't healed yet. Why would I be running around now?"

At such a close distance, Mary could sense that Greem was not lying in the slightest.

His soul origin did indeed not match his identity as a Fourth Grade adept. It was too weak and tumultuous.

Could that damned snake have suffered backlash because too many of her followers died? There was no other reason why she would be within an inch of her death by the time they invaded her den.

Such a complicated question was clearly not a thing that Mary should be thinking about. Little sparks had already appeared in her pretty crimson eyes after a while. It was apparent she was already at the limits of her wits.

There was no need to think about things she couldn't understand. Only Mary could so easily brush over stuff like that.

After giving up on thinking about the mystery, Mary quickly returned to her normal state.

A smile so sweet it could drown you appeared on her face.

"You are Fourth Grade, and I am a Fourth Grade now as well. What do you think? Let's go outside and fight it out?"

Obviously, Greem firmly rejected such a masochistic suggestion.

A smile appeared on Mary's face.

"Alright, I won't tease you. Just stay here and heal up! From now on, you are my person. If anyone bullies you, just tell them my name, and I will deal with them for you."

Having said that, Mary lifted her slender neck and let out a bold, gleeful laugh.

All sorts of expressions that betrayed her joy of superiority over Greem flashed over her face. Greem couldn't help but roll his eyes.

"Alright, alright, no more. These are the things I brought back for you this time." Mary had teased Greem enough to let out all the repressed feelings of dissatisfaction she had felt over the past one hundred years. She waved her hand and summoned a large pile of items from her storage ring.

"Count them closely. I still have to pay a visit to my cute, gentle little sister, Alice!" It sounded like Mary was gritting her teeth when she said 'sister.'

It was hard to count an adept's age accurately.

It wasn't exactly clear who between Mary and Alice was older, and so it was hard to decide who was the elder sister. Consequently, in accordance with the habit of adepts to respect power, whoever between them was stronger was the elder sister. It didn't matter if you refused to acknowledge it. After all, whoever was stronger had the final say.

Consequently, having been suppressed by Alice in grade for all these years, Mary had to make do with being the 'little sister' for a very long time. In all honesty, the nameless fire raging in the depths of her heart was hot enough to burn steel already.

Now that both she and Alice were beginner Fourth Grade, they were finally on equal footing.

However, since she was a combat adept, she was slightly more important and significant that Alice, with her lack of combat abilities. It only seemed reasonable that she become the elder sister now!

Mary finally had the chance to be the elder sister. She might just fall sick if she didn't take the opportunity to wave that around!

After teasing Greem a bunch, Mary pecked him lightly on the lips and rushed away joyfully.

Greem felt like laughing. He only shifted his eyes to the pile of spoils once Mary's aura had vanished from Fire Throne.

The corpse of the Feathered God.

Eleven divine crystals of the lightning attribute.

A piece of origin substance that had yet to be corrupted by foreign energies.

And that…egg.

There weren't very many things here, but each of them made Greem's heart flare up.

In all honesty, almost eighty percent of the best stuff that Mary and her vampires had risked their lives to obtain was here.

That meant that Mary had only extracted the blood of the Feathered God while leaving everything else with him.

Did Mary not understand the value of these spoils?

Disregarding everything else, that origin substance alone was incredibly rare. It had obviously been extracted from the planar origin of Seawoods by the Feathered God through some unknown means. The Feathered God had been using faith power as its container to prevent its contamination by foreign energies.

A pure origin substance like this was far superior to the origin substance often found in the World of Adepts. Those origin substances were often contained with mono-elementium energy or no-attribute energies. After conversion, as much as 3000 siths could be extracted out of this piece of origin substance.

The last time, Greem had to risk his life in a bloody battle between peak Third Grade adepts for only 500 siths of origin substance!

If Greem were fortunate enough to obtain two such pieces of origin substance, his path to Fifth Grade would be unobstructed. All that would be left were his daily meditations to increase his Spirit.

The moment his Spirit reached the threshold, his advancement to Fifth Grade would happen without any difficulty.

Sadly, there was only one piece of origin substance before him. He would have to find some way to obtain more in the next few hundred years.

That was the only focus for most Fourth Grade adepts!

After carefully putting away the origin substance, Greem started examining the other items as well.

The corpse of the Feathered God.

Most of her divine blood had already been extracted, causing the activity of her other remains to be incredibly lowered.

However, the corpse was still very valuable!

The Feathered God had once been a Fifth Grade native god, after all. Even though she had dropped to Fourth Grade due to giving birth, her body still possessed the traits of immortality. With proper treatment, this 'immortality' trait could be transferred.

The so-called 'immortality' was a power that only belonged to high-grade creatures.

High-Grade creatures referring to supernatural creatures beyond Fourth Grade.

Beings with an immortal body would never die of natural causes. They would never die of old age and did not require sleep, air, or food. Even sealed in an environment with no magic, they could survive for eternity in their original state.

Fourth Grade body-refining adepts trained and strengthened their bodies in all sorts of ways, precisely to turn their bodies into immortal bodies. The only ones that could achieve such a feat were body-refining adepts at peak Fourth Grade.

As such, an immortal body was invaluable to an adept!

If Greem weren't an elementium adept, an immortal body like this would be incredibly attractive to him. As for the changes to his appearance? Those things could slowly be adjusted with magic. In fact, remaining in a non-human form might be worthwhile just for the sake of immortality.

In all seriousness, there weren't many individuals among high-grade adepts who could retain their human forms.

Even though most Fourth Grade adepts typically looked like humans, they were terrifying beings when they revealed their true forms in combat.

Take Greem, for example.

His true form in combat was a massive, ten-meter-tall flame giant.

He could only fully utilize the golden flames in his Heart of Principles in this mode. It was only in this form that he could unleash the full might of a legendary fire adept!

His usual human form could both be said to be a disguise or an energy-saving mode.

The point being that no high-grade adept was a simple human at their core!