Age of Adepts

It was an undeniable truth that the undead army's sacrifice had been worth every last skeleton!

Without the undead army devastating the voodoo beasts, the Crimson Clan's magical machines would not have been able to simply march in and siege the war towers.

Had the voodoo beast army intercepted them, the machines would have been exposed to the endless bombardment of thirty war towers. It wouldn't matter that they were forged of steel and fire; the machines would never have been able to endure such fearsome firepower.

After seven hours of grueling battle, the cannon fodder on both sides had been fully depleted. Now was the time for the real armies to step onto the battlefield.

The Dener Clan remained on the defensive, while the Crimson Clan sent out the fire creature army and the magical machine army as their vanguard.

The magical machine army pressed forward, step by step, in perfect unison. They concentrated their firepower and unleashed it upon the war towers and every moving thing nearby.

As a combat machine that had undergone countless modifications and improvement by the Crimson Clan, the PG-52 was undoubtedly the magnum opus of goblin engineering and magic-energy machinery studies.

Even the ordinary PG-52 model had the power of an intermediate First Grade. Considering their impenetrable armor made entirely out of magical alloy, their excellent magic energy conduction system and their base combat power could rival that of a peak First Grade adept.

Moreover, after several adjustments, the PG-52 combat machines that used the newest memory alloys and Queyras alloy had reached the level of an intermediate Second Grade adept.

The magic energy weapons they were outfitted with were also optimized for combat power.

The Mark-II magic energy cannons equipped on their shoulders could unleash as much as 377 ampurs of power. Converted from the goblin ampur unit to the World of Adepts units, that was an energy intensity of 426 points. It was equal to the all-out attack of a Second Grade adept.

Meanwhile, the rapid-fire guns attached to the torso of the PG-52 might only have 210 points of offensive power, but their firing rate was three times that of the Mark-II magic energy cannons.

Apart from these, the PG-52's were also outfitted with a set of four magic energy beam guns on each arm. These weapons could freely switch between heat rays, frost rays, and energy beams.

Out of concern of running into enemies with elementium or energy immunity, the PG-52 was also equipped with the more rudimentary goblin rifles. When magic energy weapons were ineffective against an enemy, they could switch out their ammo for metal bullets that had arcane and magic energy crystals mixed within.

These bullets propelled by magic energy could unleash violent metal shrapnel all over the battlefield when the arcane crystals in the shells exploded. It would absolutely slaughter any foe in their path. As it was a physical attack, even individuals with energy immunity would not be able to survive it.

On the other hand, the PG-52 relied on a magic energy shield for its defense. The source of this shield was a device attached to its torso. These magic energy shields could only provide frontal defense but had up to 600 points of defensive power, significantly higher than what a dome-type barrier could provide.

As long as the shields were not destroyed in a single attack, they could regenerate by consuming more magic energy. It was suited for offensive magical machines like the PG-52.

When there were as many as tens of thousands of PG-52 machines marching together as an army towards the enemy formation, the hail of cannon fire and colorful energy beams was more than enough to flood the Dener Clan's formations and turn them into a sea of energy.

The various adept forces hiding between the war towers engaged with the fire creature army under such harsh enemy fire.

Spells flew across the battlefield as supernatural powers were unleashed here and there.

No one knew if they would live to see the next second, so they were all giving their best and unleashing their most violent and destructive spells at the enemy.

There were no weaklings among the fire creatures that had come to reinforce the Crimson Clan. Almost every single individual was intermediate First Grade and above. They charged courageously at every breathing, moving foe, casting their flames at their victims.

When they were bombarded by enemy fire, and their bodies were scattered into sparks, they would self-destruct their fire cores and engulf everything within a dozen meters in a sea of flames.

As more and more fire creatures fell dead upon the battlefield, it became more and more suitable for fire creatures to fight on. The surviving, high-grade fire creatures became even more challenging to deal with!

The beginner Fourth Grade Fire Lord Grisen leading the army was a five-meter-tall Molten Giant. White-hot magical flames shrouded its body. It waved its ten-meter-long flame whip in one hand and hurled magma fireballs continuously with the other.

Wherever he passed, adept forces that were only at First Grade were blasted into oblivion and burned to a crisp.

In truth, fire creatures were, without a doubt, the most difficult opponents among all elementium creatures!

Stay too far away from them, and they could shoot fireballs and flame arrows of incredible power at you. Keep too close, and the flames around them would burn you to a crisp, with nothing you could do about it.

Moreover, this molten giant did not have a weak body like other elementium spellcasters.

With that five-meter-tall body of his, anyone that dared to approach and challenge it to melee combat would be meeting a giant fist or a flaming whip. Either of those options would be enough to crush a mammoth to a pulp in a single strike.

That was why Grisen attracted the wild bombardment of several war-towers the moment he strode into the Dener Clan's formation. However, he didn't seem to mind at all. An Inferno Shield, so dense it almost seemed solid, appeared in his hand; it protected him from most of the magical attacks as he brazenly slaughtered the helpless Dener Forces.

As a Fourth Grade going against First Grades, any living being that moved within a hundred meters of him would instantly be turned into ashes by his terrifying aura of flames. Most of the time, he didn't even need to fight. All he had to do was appear where the ants were most concentrated, and the enemies would flee at full speed, burned and seared all over.

While the war towers were occupied with the Fire Lord, the magical machines pressed forward as a storm of energy beams and bullets instantly crashed down upon the towers' barriers. Sparks flew everywhere.

Dong. Dong. Dong!

Ten goblin chariots converted into siege mode, and a series of deafening blasts immediately penetrated the outermost layers of a war tower. The walls of the tower were engulfed in flames.

These war towers had been constructed in a short time on the spot. The buildings' bodies weren't made of steelrock, obsidian, or any other magic resistant materials. Instead, they were just dirt that had been solidified with magic and further reinforced with runes.

Naturally, such material could not possibly endure the test of an intense adept war!

Once the forcefield was destroyed, the next round of attacks caused the war tower to crumble in front of everyone's eyes, reduced to dirt and sand. Only half of the adepts within managed to escape. Two of the survivors were fortunate enough to reach one of closer war towers, while fire creatures devoured the other three before they could escape.

The adepts were gods of the battlefield when they hid within the war towers and controlled their myriad of magical arrays. That kind of power allowed them to grasp an enemy's life and death within their palms.

However, once this shell of theirs had been peeled away, adepts were still far too frail for a real battlefield. At the very least, the adepts could not compare to most otherworldly creatures in terms of Physique or Strength.

What truly made the adepts powerful were their minds, knowledge, and the wisdom and legacy that had been passed on for tens of thousands of years!

However, the war towers were not so easily destroyed either.

The magical machine army only had time to raze one war tower when Grisen the Fire Lord could finally hold on no longer against the war towers' bombardment.

Fire creatures were not natives of the World of Adepts, after all. Moreover, the Grisen that had appeared here was only a projection of his power from the Fire Elementium Plane. The destruction of this elementium shell was no more than the conclusion of his trip to the World of Adepts.

Of course, at the moment he was destroyed by a war tower, Grisen chose to self-destruct as well. The might of a Fourth Grade Fire Lord projection's explosion was well beyond the imagination of most people.

A halo of fire that stretched for an entire kilometer flashed on the battlefield. Grisen's dissipating body turned into the most violent flame imaginable as it spread out and devoured everything within the halo's radius that was not a fire creature.

Even the five towers closest to the point of explosion melted like candles before the flames, let alone bodies of flesh and blood. Naturally, all the adepts in those towers were beyond dead.

The self-destruction of a Fourth Grade Fire Lord's projection had vanquished nearly a thousand members of the adept forces along with five war towers, and had even left a vast sea of fire in the middle of the battlefield. Such terrifying power. All the adepts present couldn't help but shake their heads and sigh.

The adepts who hid in their towers, believing themselves to be safe, couldn't help but become anxious now!

These results also caused the Fourth Grade adepts in Stoneshard Valley's fortress to frown.

The adept forces that had died in the explosion had come from many of the clans present here. Anyone would be upset to see hundreds of years of effort turned to ashes in a single instant in this fashion. They were only upset, but Adept Kerala was practically bleeding tears now.

The adept forces might be external reinforcements, but the adepts in those six war towers belonged to the Dener Clans. Six war towers meant sixty official adepts.

It didn't matter if the Dener Clan had strong foundations and legions of adepts. Even they couldn't bear such devastating losses!

Moreover, this was only the prologue to the battle. The battle would only start once the magical machine army charged forward and engaged in a melee. When that happened, the Dener Clan's adept losses would be an unimaginable sum.

Kerala's face turned dark and green. She gripped the handles of her stone seat so tightly that dust started to fall off the stone.