Age of Adepts

After smoothly returning from the Underground World, Greem busied himself once again.

However, different from his usual, currently he was busily working towards a goal and was well-directed.

After he returned, the first thing he did was pay a visit to the Lothar Merchant. By the time he left them, he had five Advanced Apprentice level Wind element cores in his waist pouch. Nevertheless, a big purchase like this would mean a sharp decrease in Greem’s stash of crystal cores.

In the blink of an eye, he had spent more than half of the over 3000 magic crystals he had won from the bet previously. Currently, Greem’s magic crystal savings had dropped below 800. Considering that he and Mary had become ravenous beasts who had to have the daily magical energy meal set, he had to save the remaining magic crystals to support their daily consumption. Therefore, earning a lot of magic crystals in a short period of time had presently become a pressing matter.

After he returned from the Underground World, the trio who had temporarily formed a treasure hunting alliance gathered together and had a meeting. When Greem briefed the team about the situation he had seen in the ruined Adept Tower, both Mary and Snorlax were stupefied.

An Adept level demon!

This… was this something their small team could ever handle?

Although Mary had a high opinion of herself, in the end, she was just an Advanced Apprentice Vampire. If she were to fight that frightening Fairy, she would be instantly killed by it. As for Greem, so far he was still just an Intermediate Apprentice, even though, under the double tonics of the magical energy meal set and the Ming Concentrating potion, his Spirit was rising quickly every day. If they really were to fight an Adept level demon, not only could he not provide any help, it was possible that even the shock wave of the battle would cause him deadly injury!

As for the mighty Goblin merchant Snorlax, though its unconventional ability of invisibility and ability to stay concealed was pretty amazing, they could not fight. Therefore, besides what little bit of help the memories that reside in its brain could provide, there was nothing it could do to help.

Noticing the frightened expression on both his teammates’ faces, Greem let out an understanding smile. He then soberly analyzed the advantages and disadvantages between themselves and the enemy. Following his lead, both his teammates gradually overcame their fear towards the Adept level monster, and started to seriously and carefully plan out how to defeat the frightening Fairy.

First of all, the three of them were sure of one thing. If they allowed that Fairy to keep its overall strength at Adept level, planning this treasure hunting mission was no different than planning their own death. Therefore, they had to find ways to weaken the overall strength of that frightening Fairy.

There were two possible ways to do so. First was using curse magic spells, and secondly, targeting the true form of the Fairy.

Greem could find a way to purchase some curse magic wands or one-time use magic spell scrolls. But they didn’t know if the inferior products produced by Apprentice Adepts could penetrate the magic resistance of the Fairy. So, they couldn’t place too much hope on this.

While they were discussing the issue, Greem secretly hinted that he could get in touch with Adept Angus, and maybe he could obtain some Adept level magic spell scrolls from him. But in order to trade with an official Adept, Greem had to produce something that could attract his interest.

Therefore, Greem had to figure out this new problem!

As for the true form of the Fairy, Greem’s predicted (actually it was the Chip’s prediction) that there was a high chance it was hiding close to the broken Elementium Pool. At this point, Snorlax finally came into play. Its familiarity with the Adept Tower let it quickly draw out the inner structure of the place, and it was able to precisely point out the location of the Elementium Pool.

According to its description, the Elementium Pool was located in the second underground floor beneath the ruins of Adept Tower. In order to get there, they had to go through numerous magical secret doors and arrays. Though it was highly possible that most of these mechanisms had stopped working, if there were still a couple of them still functioning, it would cause immense problems for Mary’s infiltration. So, upon Greem’s request, Snorlax had to follow Mary when she snuck into the ruins of Adept Tower.

In regards to this, Greem showed an unprecedented firm attitude. Left with no room to argue, Snorlax fearfully agreed.

In order to achieve the above two things, Greem needed to have the overall strength to fight or pin down the Fairy. Being able to do so would heavily rely on the near completed Lightning Giant. Only when the Lightning Giant had the expected strength would Mary and Snorlax have more confidence in this treasure hunting mission!

With that in mind, in the following days, Greem, Mary, and Snorlax became really busy. Greem lived night and day in the Alchemy Laboratory, crafting his new Golem, while Mary would go out early and came back at dusk, covered in scars and wounds. Even with the extraordinary regeneration of Vampires, she still had so many scars. This showed how incredibly dangerous her training was, that it had gone beyond what even her body could endure.

Snorlax, who dreamed of becoming the greatest Goblin merchant, was rarely seen in the public hall on the first floor of Adept Tower. Instead, it was wearing old and torn thief equipment, and spent all of its time in the Magic Spell Practice Room, practicing its stealth. As for its original glittering magical equipment, it had no choice but to lock it away in a wooden chest while crying.

During this period, Greem and Mary managed to find some time to participate in an Underground World ambush mission organized by the training camp. However, after the miserable defeat last time, the Fallen Apprentices had strengthened the defending forces in all of their resource sites. This caused the team, led by Kevin, to get entangled in a bitter battle.

In this tough war, when two of the Pseudo-Adepts from Kevin’s team became locked in combat with the Fallen Pseudo-Adepts, Greem was forced to send out Rock Snakes in order to defend against the bombardment coming from an extra Fallen Pseudo-Adept.

In the situation where the number of their Pseudo-Adepts was outnumbered by the opponent, and the overall strength of their Advanced Apprentices wasn’t too strong compared to the enemy, for the sake of avoiding an ambush by the enemy’s reinforcements, Kevin had no choice but to abandon the mission.

Even with such an ending, all of the team members had a calm attitude. In their usual battles with the Underground World enemy, a result like this was perfectly normal. With regards to Greem’s performance in the battle, no one seemed to have any opinion. With the overall strength of an Intermediate Apprentice, he was able to withstand bombardment from a Fallen Pseudo-Adept for more than fifteen minutes. A result like this could simply shut anyone’s mouth.

It was because his firm standing that Kevin’s team hadn’t been defeated from a shortage of Pseudo-Adepts. Otherwise, once their team had been scattered by the attack, among all of the Advanced Apprentices, who dared say he could escape from the enemy’s pursuit? As a matter of fact, it wasn’t rare for many ambitious and genius apprentices to get themselves killed in the dark and quiet underground tunnel.

Every year, there were always more than a couple of Advanced Apprentices who died quietly in some random dark corner of the Underground Cave. Even an incident as big as the death of Pseudo-Adept wasn’t rare news. In fact, the root cause of the destruction of the previous Elysium City by the surface Adepts was because a surface team consisting of six people bumped into a Fallen Adept while they were patrolling in the Underground World.

No one knew what exactly happened, because all of the two Pseudo-Adepts and four Advanced Apprentices were killed silently in the Underground World. With reinforcements sent by the Zhentarim Association, the raging surface Adepts stormed into the Underground World and forcefully destroyed the stronghold of the enemy – Elysium City.

But too bad, the Second Grade Adept of the enemy, Adept Pridka, had self-detonated the Adept Tower, taken some of Fallen Adepts, and escaped from Elysium City, which allowed them to escape from the catastrophe. Consequently, within just a few years, a new Elysium City had been built up once again.

The more understanding they had about this history, the more alert the elite apprentices were for a major scale conflict. Once either side pushed too far, it was highly possible that it would attract a strong reaction from the other side.

In the unique environment of the Underground Cave, no matter how talented or how strong an Apprentice Adept, once they provoked their opponent’s Adept, the inevitable result would be death. Therefore, after bringing back three Fallen Pseudo-Adepts’ heads in their previous mission, Kevin’s team had anticipated danger in every sound. Thus, their latest mission’s defeat had instead let both Pseudo-Adepts in the team breathe out a long sigh of relief.

As a passing traveler in the Underground Cave, Greem wouldn’t spend too much of his time in this place, so he didn’t really understand the petty thoughts behind their action. The only reason he didn’t fight with everything he had was simply that his Spirit and Physique were in a weak state.

A few days ago, Greem had consumed another bottle of the Mind Concentrating potion, which only brought an increment of 0.51 to his Spirit. In relation to that, his Physique had dropped below 3. As a result, the Chip had revised his body’s status from healthy to weak.

Under the circumstances, Greem had to temporarily stop consuming the Mind Concentrating potion and focus on tuning his body. With the vigorous vitality of a fifteen year old youth and the strengthening effect from the Spirit to his muscles, the normal level of his Physique should be between 4 – 5.

But this was a common failing for all apprentices who took the path of Elementium, as they usually only focused on cultivation and training their Spirit, either they were meditating or studying magical knowledge, spending long hours copying magical books, and exposing themselves to dangerous magical materials which could harm their body in the long-term. These unhealthy habits led all the Elementium apprentices to have the same unhealthy appearance. They always looked skinny and sick.

If they were able to advance and become official Adepts, they would have plenty of time and countless methods of finding some miraculous items that could remedy the weakness of their body. But for now, they could only clench their jaw tightly and endure with a strong mind. They kept damaging their body in exchange for every little bit of increase in their Spirit.

The failure of the mission didn’t affect Greem. Upon his return from the Underground World, he immediately rushed back into the Alchemy Laboratory. He spent most of his time in there, meticulously and carefully crafting his number one Golem – the Lightning Giant.

Finally, after torturously working for dozens of days, Greem waved his hand and killed the magical flame on on the Alchemy Station, brought the primary core that he used as the bearer of the Golem’s conscious in front of his face, narrowed his eyes, and gave it a thorough look over.

Right at this very moment, he finally breathed out a long sigh of relief, because…

The Lightning Giant was born!