Age of Adepts

Greem was completely ignorant to the events that occurred after he went back to the tower.

As to be expected, anytime something good happened to him, it was almost always accompanied by misery.

Before today, he thought he would have time to slowly and quietly developed himself, but, after the day's event, he realized that things would not be so easy for him.

His previous peaceful life had made him think that his life as an Apprentice could carry on forever at a gradual pace. But, after today's heart-pounding encounter, he had realized the huge gap between a Beginner Apprentice and an Advanced Apprentice.

As he had witnessed the extraordinary potential of Advanced Apprentices, and how they utilized magic spells that worked perfectly with their talents, Greem realized how slow and backward his progress was.

Following his original development path, perhaps it would take him three to four years of daily meditation, and ceaselessly pursuing the accumulation of magical knowledge, before he could become an Intermediate Apprentice. To become an Advanced Apprentice would take Greem at least another ten years of work. As for becoming a Pseudo-Adept? With Greem's current potential and innate talent, he didn't have much hope for reaching that level.

As an Apprentice Adept, every tiny increase of his Spirit was unimaginably valuable to him, and it only resulted from hard work. His innate talent was no better than the others, thus, if he wanted to grow faster than the rest of the Apprentices, the only way was to seize more resources and to get sufficient magical knowledge.

Aside from these, there was no other workaround.

And, in order to improve the power of his magic spells, his first priority was to increase the quality of his body. All magic spells, no matter whether they were support spells or long-ranged attacks, were supported by the body of the caster. Magical spells could only unleash their full strength when used by a caster who had increased the quality of his body.

After safely returning to the Tower from the jaws of death, Greem immediately locked himself up in his room and starting to ponder on his future path.

Thinking on the four major branches of Adepts, Greem carefully weighed the advantages and disadvantages of each, associating them with his own ability and quietly evaluating his future.

Body Refining Adept.

To become a Body Refining Adept, the first requirement was a dauntless will, which was as firm as steel. In order to stimulate and strengthen the body, these Body Refining Adepts had to be willing to do anything.

As an example of a training method for a Body Refining Adepts, they would soak themselves in a container full of toxin all days. Venoms from scorpions, snakes, spiders, Septmortem Flower, Nightmare Grass, Zombie Powder… In short, no matter where the toxin came from, they would use anything they could get their hands on. From mild to strong, from weak to powerful, using all sorts of deadly toxin they kept stimulating every single cell in their body over and over again, forcing the body to release its potential, and strengthening it bit by bit.

Of course, when they were doing this, surviving was definitely the most important thing. They would have to figure out the maximum amount of toxin they could endure, so they wouldn't die from the toxin.

As they progressed through their body refining process, as they stepped over the beginner threshold, they would gain resistance to some toxins, and perhaps no ordinary toxin in the mortal world could harm them. If they wanted to go further, the only way was to restlessly search for rarer, more powerful magic toxins.

Therefore, as a Body Refining Adept, perhaps the first half of their life would be used up figuring out the maximum amount of toxins their body could take and hunting for those rare magic toxins that worked best for their bodies.

Of course, there were also some Body Refining Adepts that used objects with frightening radioactive characteristics to stimulate and refined their body, and there were some who would specifically search for harsh natural environments, using the terrifying forces of nature to push themselves forward.

All in all, there were a variety of methods to train in this branch. But no matter which method one used, a Body Refining Adept would have to endure constant pain and hardship. Only then they would have a frightening body that no ordinary man could ever compare with.

If Greem wanted to become a Body Refining Adept, first he would need to find a complete method of body refining. After that, he would have to search for all the poisonous items he would need to use in the long period of hardening himself. Also, during the process of body refining, he would become extremely weak, thus he would need better, more nutritious meals to nourish his weakened body.

Also, he would also need to find some suitable fighting techniques, so he could unleash the power of his improved Physique and Strength.

After analyzed these basic situations, Greem felt extremely dubious about becoming a Body Refining Adept. Putting aside the extreme difficulty of body refining techniques, acquiring the precious nutritious foods required to match up with the body refining process would be tough.

Bloodline Adept.

Obviously, this was the easiest choice to gain a strong short-term fighting ability.

When talking about Bloodline Adepts, biological modification was quite a common topic, as it was the most popular method among Apprentice Adepts. With just a 'small' magical ceremony, they could transplant a highly efficient organ from a powerful demon, possibly giving them special abilities in the process.

Most of the Apprentice Adepts would never say no to such a simple method of strengthening themselves, wherever conditions permitted, and they would always carry out certain degrees of modification to themselves. However, this was easier said than done! This came with the risk of having your bloodline contaminated, losing vitality, or transplanted a crappy organ that didn't provide good abilities.

For Apprentice Adepts like Greem, who lived in the Magical Swamp, isolated from the outside world, what kind of powerful demons could they find? With their ability and status, it was just impossible for them to acquire organs those real frightening demons. Therefore, if these Apprentices could find a usable piece of a demon that matched up to the rank of an Advanced Apprentice, that would be incredibly valuable.

It was said that Hawkeye Clutha, one of the three strongest Apprentice in the Tower, had transplanted the eyeball of a 'Red-eyed Rex Mari', which gave him the ability to control Scavenger Crows.

Greem felt this decision was short-sighted.

Maybe this demon organ allowed him to attain a higher level in one swift step, becoming one of the Advanced Apprentices, the elite among all the Apprentice Adepts in the Tower. But, at the stage where he was now, the potential brought by biological modification had come to an end. If he was lucky, he might be able to become a Pseudo-Adept in five years and start his preparation for breaking through the rank of official Adept. But if he was out of luck, perhaps he would never be able to become an official Adept.

After all, for anyone who had their bloodline contaminated, the difficulty of becoming an official Adept would become exponentially harder!

So, compared to a Bloodline Adept, biological modification was a wasteful path that led to nowhere, a deceiving power, which would ruin one's future.

However, in comparison with biological modification, the path of a Bloodline Adept was much, much tougher.

In order to become a Bloodline Adept, one would have to find a creature with ancestral bloodline, using a large amount of their blood, and a process called blood purification, to obtain the inherited power that hidden in their blood.

If he chose this path, there were many challenges he would have to solve.

First, many of the known powerful bloodlines were controlled by different Adept families.

These Adept families were descendants of some original Bloodline Adept, who had become mighty in the past. As the descendant of someone who possessed a strong bloodline, naturally, they had inherited the superior bloodline of their ancestor. In order to ensure the continuity of their family bloodline, they refused to marry to anyone outside of their own family, maintaining an enclosed circle to protect the purity of their family bloodline.

Asides from these known powerful bloodlines, if any other Apprentice Adept wished to tackle the branch of Bloodline Adepts, they could only try their luck on the bloodlines of other, untried, demons.

If they happened to get a Third Grade bloodline, perhaps their descendants wouldn't even become Second Grade Bloodline Adepts, and those Second Grade Bloodline Adepts would be lucky if their descendants became First Grade Bloodline Adepts.

So, for those juniors from strong bloodline families, if they didn't possess powerful abilities, once they left their home, they would be preyed upon by others. Some rogue Apprentice Adepts would happily capture them, attempting to squeeze out the essence of their bloodline, in turned giving them some powerful abilities.

But, to accomplish this, a huge amount of blood from the bloodline apprentice was required, and the success rate was pretty low. Another thing to consider was that it was a huge taboo for those bloodline families.

With the incredible and strong resources of these bloodline families, would they just sit back and let their bloodline be obtained by others? Thus, even if they had to pay a huge price, they would hunt down the culprit and kill them. So, in the history of the World of Adepts, there had been many incidents of massive turmoil brought about by the stealing of a bloodline of a powerful bloodline family.

In fact, perhaps the Snake Headed Apprentice from earlier today was also a descendant of a bloodline family, or else he wouldn't have shown such distinct characteristics of a demon. Perhaps Greem could have obtained his blood… but he didn't.

Of course, he didn't regret this.

This descendant of a Bloodline Adept was only an Advanced Apprentice, so he wouldn't have too strong of the bloodline inherited in his blood. In order to guarantee Greem becoming a Pseudo-Adept, perhaps he would need at least a dozen of these descendants. Only then could he extract enough blood to purify his bloodline.

This would be as difficult for Greem as fighting a Mega Dragon!

Besides that, according to what Greem had learned from books, currently, among all Bloodline families that were still active in the center of the Adept Continent, the highest level among them was only at the Seventh Grade. The Ninth Grade was the current pinnacle of the Bloodline Adept structure.

As a Bloodline Adept, one was not required to do too much cultivation or accumulation of knowledge. All they needed to do was to keep purifying their own bloodlines, and, eventually, they would be able to obtain the abilities of their ancestor's bloodline.

For example, let's say that an Adept was the inheritor of a Fifth Grade bloodline, just by being a Bloodline Adept, he would be able to rank up with the speed that was tens to hundreds of times faster than that of the other branches. This allowed him to press forward with an indomitable spirit for the first half of his life, and live a life of glory. Besides that, Adept who possessed unique bloodline might have some special abilities too, letting them have the advantage when fighting with a same grade Adept.

However, the pinnacle of the source bloodline was also the end of their Adept path.

When Adept with a Fifth Grade Bloodline finally became a Fifth Grade Adept, he would be forced to face the fact that the road ahead of him was completely cut off. He would never be able to proceed further after reaching Fifth Grade.

This was the saddest thing about these Bloodline Adepts!

Once they chose to walk this path, and picked a wrong bloodline, the chances of them reaching the top of this World of Adepts was forever lost.