Age of Adepts

pαndα,noνɐ1,сoМ

Beautiful, beautifully done! Vampires truly deserved to be known as the nobles of the dark night! They could even kill in such a graceful and elegant manner, making it full of artistic flair. Magnificent!

Greem couldn't help but mutter some praise under his breath. He then refocused his mind and threw out the Flaming Spear in his hand. This time, his target was an apprentice who had five skulls hovering around his body!

The Flaming Spear that suddenly exploded destroyed two skulls of the target. It also managed to trigger the apprentice's anger. He kept waving his pitch-black staff at Greem, throwing curse spells one after the other at Greem. These spells were all invisible to the naked eye.

After receiving the order from Greem, the Hunter took his position and blocked off all the curse spells. With the Hunter taking care of this, Greem focused his mind and kept launching attacks at the apprentice who appeared to be a necromancer.

All kind of curse spells were launched. There was Scavenger Bugs, Voodoo Skulls, Bone Spears, and even Unnerving Gazes. The magic spells this necromancer apprentice demonstrated had really widened Greem's horizons. If not because of the fact that he had activated his Elementium Vision, he knew he wouldn't be able to match this apprentice. He wouldn't be able to even if he was given nine lives.

Meanwhile, the only threat he brought to his enemy was his Flaming Spear and the Hunter's Dirt Spear. The lack of long-range magic spells had made Greem realize something. Maybe he should find some time to develop a Golem which specialized in long-range attacks.

Even though Greem's overall strength was insufficient to break through the necromancer apprentice's defense, the team members behind Greem could do that. After establishing an advantageous position in this battle, the reckless bombardment of magic spells had brought about tremendous pressure to those Fallen Apprentices.

A few of these Fallen Apprentices started to slowly fall back, as they found it hard to withstand the massive suppressive force.

This was also the basic pattern of the battle between both parties in the past.

They started the battle by lining up in their formation. Both sides would launch long-range magic spell attacks, just like normal human soldiers did. They kept doing this until one side couldn't withstand the attack and showed signs of defeat. Next would be a small scale of pursuit and annihilation. Small battles would normally occur between two to three Apprentice Adepts anywhere in the surroundings.

Finally, following the powerful sweep by two Pseudo-Adepts from Kevin's team, the team of Fallen Apprentices fell apart!

Losing all their confidence in victory, the wounded Fallen Apprentices turned around and scurried into the surrounding underground tunnels. It wasn't tough to tell they were all fleeing in a disorderly manner. Each of them just went their own way, with no one trying to cover their peers or trying to support each other.

Also, all six Fallen Apprentices had actually fled in separate directions. They showed no signs of fleeing as a group.

The distance between this place and Elysium City was long. Perhaps they found their peers with ulterior motives much more frightening than the enemy chasing behind them!

Kevin whistled, splitting eight members of his team into smaller teams. They started to fiercely pursue those fleeing Fallen Apprentices.

Kevin and a Pseudo-Adept had set the enemy's Pseudo-Adept as their target. The other Pseudo-Adept in their team remained solo, while the rest of the team members had split into a few smaller groups. They all started to chase the enemies' butt into the darkness.

Greem didn't team up with anybody. He wore a ferocious smile as he drove the Demon Alligator into the tunnel. He began to chase down the same opponent he was fighting with just now.

…………

In the darkness of the tunnel, there was a perfect silence.

Aaron once again activated the Hasten Ring on his right pinkie, desperately trying to make his fleeing speed faster.

The rough terrain in the darkness was never an obstacle for him. It seemed his skinny body never ran out of stamina, supporting him in rushing through cave after cave.

The underground passage was forever winding and twisting. It came in a very complicated formation. In every single smaller cave or cavern, there were always countless narrow tunnels that could barely allow a person to squeeze through.

Utilizing his knowledge of the surrounding terrain, Aaron had fled three miles in just ten minutes. He had travelled through dozens of tunnels and caverns.

When the glow of the Hasten Spell was dismissed from his body, Aaron finally stopped. He leaned against a large solid cavern wall, panting for breath. His skinny chest was seen pumping rapidly, as he breathed like broken bellows.

Although he was surrounded by silence, Aaron still had his hand tightly clenched around his pitch-black staff.

So long as any noise or movement happened around him, he would be able to launch the bone spear that was stored in the white crystal on top of the staff within half a second.

After catching his breath for a few minutes, Aaron finally managed to regulate his breathing. He listened for any sound that might be audible from the passage he had just come from, but he heard nothing abnormal.

Could he be really so lucky as to not have an enemy following him?

Aaron smiled coldly in self-mockery.

After becoming a necromancer apprentice, his luck had never been good. It was as if the Will of the Adept World hated him, turning him into a sad child abandoned by destiny.

Although he didn't sense any unusual activity, Aaron was still overwhelmed by anxiety. He felt like a ferocious monster was hiding somewhere in the dark, eyeing him greedily. It was only waiting for the perfect moment to devour him in one brutal bite.

No way! He had to get out of here as quick as possible!

Right when Aaron had made up his mind to leave, he realized the wet soil underneath his feet had turned into a slow moving acid pool. Both his legs had sunk into it without his knowledge.

Damn it, it was an Acid Pool spell!

Aaron forcefully patted his neck, making the bone necklace on his neck flicker. He unleashed two skulls who hovered around his body. These skulls provided him with both offensive and defensive effects. When he was fleeing just now, in order to avoid attracting any attention, he had shut this personal defense mechanism down. This was why he was now caught in the trap by that enemy who hid in the dark.

After he went through the tough battle previously, his defensive skulls were now at the lowest level of performance!

As it was corroded by the strong negative energy, hissing noises was heard coming from the acid pool underneath his feet. This helped Aaron to quickly free himself from it.

Two muffled booms were heard coming from the darkness not far away. A shadow that looked like a small hill started to march forward. The strong aura of Earth Elementium could be vividly identified from afar.

Damn it! It was that bastard who rode on a clay alligator!

What a brave kid. He was only an Intermediate Apprentice, yet he dared to chase after an Advanced Fallen Apprentice!

A hideous smile emerged on Aaron's face. He opened his brownish, dirty mouth and sprayed out a huge clump of black bugs. They turned into a large black cloud in an instant and swarmed towards the location of that large shadow. After that, he quickly recited some magic spell chants with his hoarse and jarring voice. He revealed fist size skulls in his hand from time to time and promptly them at the enemy.

These were the Voodoo Skulls that he had made himself. They would explode violently when coming into contact with something. They would not only inflict massive physical damage to the enemy, they also carried a magical poison. This frightening magical poison was a type of mixed poison that could even melt down hard rocks.

Yet, while he was waiting for the enemy's miserable shriek, something happened. A flaming spear, that suddenly lit up the dull cavern, appeared on the opposite side of the cavern. A handsome young man, surrounded by raging flame, smiled at him. He carried the deadly flaming spear in his hand.

"No… please don't kill me, we can talk…"

Aaron's face was covered with panic. He watched how the Flaming Spear shot towards him and nailed one of his defensive skulls into the wall. It exploded violently and flooded him with dazzling flame and scorching heat.

Three seconds later, Aaron staggered out from the sea of flames. He looked extremely miserable right now! The thin skin and flesh of his were burned by the flame and charred. Half of his remaining magical items were destroyed, and the white crystal socketed on top of his staff had shattered, releasing all the souls trapped by the Soul Spell.

"Hmph. Kid, do you really think you can kill me like this? We're not finished today. Wait until the next time we meet again, I'll…" While cursing furiously, Aaron used his charred hand to slowly start digging into the ground. His pinkie started to emanate with a white glow.

It was the glow of an Escaping Spell!

This magic spell, which he had hidden inside of his pinkie, might have been his last life-saving trick.

In two more seconds, he would be able to escape from this place. A ray of hope suddenly burst out from Aaron's bleary eyes. But right at this moment, he suddenly felt the rock wall beside him move.

When he turned around in astonishment, he was horrified to discover a pair of huge eyes gazing coldly at him. It had a huge triangle shape snake-like head, a wide, ferocious mouth, crisscrossing fangs, and a tongue that kept darting out. All of these were entirely made up of rock! Cold hard rock!

When he finally realized this, the giant snake had opened its mouth and devoured him in one gulp.

After a long time, peace finally returned to this cavern.

Greem quietly stood at a corner of the cavern. He didn't ride on the Demon Alligator. Just now, he had used the Demon Alligator Hunter to lure most of the enemy's attack. While this was happening, he took the opportunity to break through the enemy's defense with a sneak attack. However, the one who finished the enemy was his Giant Rock Snake, who made its first debut.

A light vibration came from the dark. The Demon Alligator Hunter came to him with its body charred black. Half of the Hunter's body was melted down by the enemy's attack. On the other side, the giant Rock Snake crawled on the rock wall and crawled towards him. It opened its mouth and spat out a broken body.

Haha! He had pocketed the head of an Advanced Fallen Apprentice!

But the corpse of a necromancer was also very frightening. Therefore, Greem didn't do it himself. He waited until the Hunter fixed itself, before letting it search the enemy's body for any possible loot. After that, he let Demon Alligator swallow the dead body into its stomach, before swaggering back to the previous battlefield.

Some of his teammates had returned. Only a few of them had actually come back with fruitful results. Most of them just returned empty-handed.

What to do? The environment of the Underground World was perfect for fleeing. All they needed to do was cause a collapse in a random place. This was enough to cause the pursuer to fail. Also, all Fallen Apprentices were experts in staying alive. Thus, although it was easy to defeat them, it was far tougher to kill them.

The Pseudo-Adept and Kevin had failed to capture the enemy's Pseudo-Adept. However, the other Pseudo-Adept had managed to bring back an enemy's head. All the remaining Advanced Apprentices harvested nothing. Therefore, when Greem's Demon Alligator spat out an enemy's corpse, everybody couldn't help but look at him with different eyes.

This was different from the battle in their training camp. Although Greem utilized an opportunity where everybody was unfamiliar with his abilities to 'luckily' win two battles, this didn't mean that he was really strong. But the appearance of this Fallen Advanced Apprentice's corpse had caused the way these guys looked at him to completely change.

This… this meant that he possessed enough strength to kill an Advanced Apprentice! This was a trait that everybody valued the most!