Age of Adepts

As they looked out and saw the massive crowd of demons and wandering souls overwhelming the mercenaries around them, the three Apprentice Adepts were, finally, forced to remove their cloaks and join the battle, revealing their faces to the world.

The leader of the three was a muscular young man. He had a head of disheveled gold hair that hung down to his shoulders. Just under his hair, a mysterious circlet adorned his forehead. It was clearly not an ordinary item. He was wearing a delicately made leather jacket and carrying a broadsword on his back. Judging from the size of the sword, it would weigh too much for the average man to even swing it.

The other man was dressed like nobility. The delicate and luxurious clothes on his body were quite impressive, but what was even more impressive was his head. He had dark green skin, a long narrow mouth, and a thin tongue that kept flicking in and out… He, unexpectedly, had the head of a snake.

Meanwhile, a little girl stood in between these two men. She had a face like an angel and was wearing a long light yellow dress. She was of average height and was holding a gold colored birdcage in her hands. Strangely enough, not only she did not show any sign of fear towards the bloody scene in front, but she was actually glancing around with a cute smile on her face, which made her simply look like a curious young girl.

Greem's eyes suddenly went wide.

Via his Elementium Vision, he saw very bright glowing Elementium, and Spiritual ripples that looked like tidal waves, coming from all three Apprentice Adepts.

By the Chip's evaluation, these three were either Pseudo-Adepts or elites among the Advanced Apprentice Adepts. No matter who they were, they were not something Greem, a beginner Apprentice Adept, could ever think of handling.

Why had such strong people come here like this? This place was the private property of Master Anderson, and a resources site of the Sarubo Family. With the exception of the annual resource shipment, this place was not open to outsiders.

All of this made Greem really curious about the motives of these foreign Apprentice Adepts.

But, after witnessing their immense abilities, Greem's curiosity instantly died, leaving him completely alert, and feeling a little fear.

The human mercenaries were capable of dealing with demon beasts, but once they were faced with Demon Babies, Wandering Souls, and other similar demons, they were like sheep being led to the slaughter. When the simple defensive shield was broken, the swarm of demons began to massacre the mercenaries.

Demon Babies were jumping and leaping all over the place, crying out terrifying curses to reduce their prey's fighting abilities. Using the bushes as cover, these monsters launched sneak attacks and knocked the mercenaries to the ground. Thus, it was a scene filled with mercenaries in the throes of death. Also, those dreadful Wandering Souls were circling around in mid-air, seeking chances to pull a mercenary into the skies. When that happened, the other demons would storm in and rip the helpless prey to pieces.

Right in the middle of this chaotic scene, a Wandering Soul, who had an ugly and twisted face, dove down from the air, targeting those three casual and strange looking Apprentice Adepts.

Before the lead man and the little girl could do anything, the snake-headed struck.

Striking with great force, a pale green looking poison, shaped into an arrow, instantly penetrated the Wandering Soul's body, immediately exploding. The intense corrosive poison melted the 'Resentment Core' hidden inside of its body, turning it into a pile of ashes with a horrifying and painful sounding scream.

Greem noticed that the poison 'arrow' wasn't created with normal spellcasting, but was launched from the mouth of that Snakehead Apprentice.

And that attack was just the beginning. The Apprentice didn't stop what he had started, and opened his mouth widely, continuously spitting out poison 'arrows'. With each strike, he accurately eliminated one of the horrifying Wandering Souls, which were rated as possessing the power of an intermediate Apprentice.

Bloodline Adept!

He was definitely one of those Bloodline Adepts that the basic Adept book had mentioned!

Within the vast and complicated development hierarchy of the Adept World, there were four branches that stood out: Bloodline Adepts, Body Refining Adepts, Principle Adepts and Profound Adepts. It could be said that most of the other Adept branches were matched up to these four major branches.

Bloodline Adepts were a bunch of lunatics who craved having the purest bloodlines. They used the power of said bloodlines to improve their own strength. Usually, they would choose some incredibly strong creatures from another world as the source for their bloodline, then they would improve the purity of their own blood, generally using a method which could be traced back to some ancestor. After doing all of this, they would gain incredible abilities that aligned with that of ancient powerful creatures. In general, their ultimate goal was to relive the glorious life of these ancient creatures.

As for Body Refining Adepts, they were another group of lunatics who went all out in the pursuit of strengthening their own bodies. In their eyes, all resources were just a medium, a consumable supply that could be used to make their muscles stronger. In order to stimulate their muscles, they might soak themselves in a container full of poisonous chemicals, or implant a deadly, highly radioactive meteorite into their body. They might go out and endure the most extreme and deadly environments… and they would do all of these to make their bodies strong so that nothing could hurt them.

In all honestly, Principle Adepts were the most common type of Adept in the Adept World. No matter it was the Elementium Adept, who chased after the peak powers of their Elements, the Curse Adept, who used strange abilities to kill people unseen, or even the Black Adept, who just enjoyed using violent killing abilities, usually utilizing the force of souls and emotion; all of them belonged to the branch of Principle Adepts. Although it seemed that there was a tremendous difference in what they did, when they arrived at the advanced stage, they would try their best to master specific Principles or Rules of the Universe.

They were the people who grew by mastering Elemental Laws Principles.

As for Profound Adept, they were the purest type of Adepts. They were not willing to 'contaminate' their own bloodline just to obtain powerful ability, and they refused to coupled with Principles of Planes and became the 'Slaves of Principles'. They gathered knowledge, immersed themselves in the world of knowledge, and used the knowledge they learned as their weapon. Thus, they became a weird group among Adepts, who only cared about gathering and expanding their knowledge, but totally ignored their own development.

With these four major branches as the backbone, an infinite variety of strange Adepts were born into this world. They conquered different worlds, looting resources and knowledge, and enslaving thousands of Planes. They were the dominating force of the entire Adept World when fighting, or conquering, other worlds.

This was the information regarding the Adept Hierarchy which Greem had obtained after the Chip spent time gathering and organizing the mass of raw data he had input into it. As he only knew a handful of people, the data he gathered was not complete, and there was, probably, a huge discrepancy in it. Although he only had this small amount simple information, it drew the outline of the massive and ferocious Adept World he was now a part of.

If he hadn't known of these branches, he wouldn't have been able to correctly guess the details of that Snakehead Apprentice a second ago.

But, right as Greem was guessing which species of snake the Snakehead Apprentice had inherited a bloodline from, something even more surprising happened.

The cute little girl joined the fight!

A Demon Baby, who was quickly moving across the ground, had placed its eyes on these three people, setting them as its target and dashing in their direction. At the same time, it kept letting out irritating cries from its mouth, which was twisted and full of sharp yellowed teeth, launching its Curse attacks at the three of them.

No doubt, its behavior had provoked the little girl.

However, not only did her immature face not show any signs of anger. Instead, it bloomed with a sweet smile. She raised up the birdcage in her hands, which looked like a toy, pointed it toward the Demon Baby, and shook it a few times. Though not a single sound was heard, lights and shadows flickered, and the Demon Baby, who had previously been dashing toward them, disappeared from where it was.

At the same time, Greem, who had sharp vision, noticed that a miniature Demon Baby had appeared inside of the birdcage the little girl carried. It was only the size of a human hand, and looked exactly the same as the Demon Baby who had just disappeared.

Obviously, this Demon Baby had no idea what had caused its sudden transformation. After being stunned for a second, it became extremely fierce and let out a jarring cry toward the little girl outside of the cage, repeatedly slamming the cage with it's body. But, no matter how hard it tried, there was no way it could escape from that simple looking birdcage.

Space Magic?!

Greem placed a hand tightly over his mouth to prevent himself from screaming out loud.

Out of the many Principle Magics, although every Principle would bring an astonishing power at the ultimate level, if someone really wanted to define their ranking, the Principles of Time and Space Magic were among the very top. But, according to Greem's knowledge, these two top-level magic branches were among the weakest of all the branches in the Adept World. This was simply because these two magic branches could only depend on one's innate talent.

Even the most powerful Adept, who could destroy a world with the wave of his hand, could never make time stop for one second. However, some people were born with this ability, and, although they might not learn any knowledge related to Magic, they could still achieve something that even the best Adepts couldn't.

And yet, just because these magics were so bizarre and unpredictable and could only be used by someone who had the talent, those Adepts who didn't possess such talent, no matter how much of a genius they were, it would be impossible for them to come out with great results through experimentation. Therefore, without a huge and solid foundation, it was really tough for those who focused on the Time and Space Magic Branches to produce top-tier Adepts.

Greem was having issues deciding whether this was the little girl's innate ability, or some bizarre Magical item that allowed her to catch any enemy, regardless of distance.

Although Greem thought he had a deep understanding of this bizarre world of advanced magic, right at this very moment, he had to admit one thing: the real world of Adepts was much more crazy and bizarre than his wildest dreams and nightmares. These three outsiders were either Pseudo-Adepts or elites among advanced Apprentice Adepts. If Greem was forced to fight them while only having access to his two low-ranked spells, he would probably die.

For this reason, he didn't dare continue watching anymore. He turned around, followed the trail, and quietly returned to the Adept Tower.

When he arrived at the main door of the Tower, the newly appointed Apprentice Leader, Ellen, was here along with the three strongest: Hawkeye, Evil Bugs, and Madwoman.

Greem threw a puzzled glance at Ellen, but soon realized why they were here.

The warning he sent via the magic talisman could only be received by a special magical item, which was currently held in Ellen's hand. When Ellen heard there were three powerful Apprentice Adepts in the Magical Swamp, he knew that, with his abilities, there was no way he could chase off or capture these outsiders. Therefore, before Greem had returned, Ellen had asked the three strongest for help.

It, obviously, cost him something in order to obtain help from the three strongest… but only he knew what that cost was.

Recalling to what he witnessed just now, Greem didn't have too much confidence in the 'Strongest Three'. No matter how he compared them, those three outsiders were stronger than them. Perhaps Ellen was wishfully thinking he could capture all of them?