Age of Adepts

Aaaaaah!

A deafening shriek filled the entire battlefield!

All of a sudden, a gale blew over the top of the castle. Soon, it turned into a powerful tornado that rose towards the sky. A girl with a small figure raised her hands and lifted her head towards the sky as she stood within the eye of the storm. Alice balled her fists and let out a sharp, ear-piercing shriek of anger.

As the sound waves spread outward, ripples started to appear in the air and slowly began to make their way outwards as well.

These ripples might not have caught the eye in any manner at all. However, it didn’t matter what they touched; the moment they made physical contact, everything was ripped and reduced to shreds, leaving only dust behind. Dust that couldn’t even be seen with the naked eye.

Everything around the castle–the crumbled ruins, the broken furniture, the laboratory equipment protected with magic arrays–started to hover in the sky when the rippled touched them, almost as if gravity didn’t work on them. They slowly disintegrated and turned into a massive cloud of grey dust.

The powerful shockwaves trembled when they had traveled five meters away from the young girl. The ripples outlined the silhouette of a tall female figure.

It was the illusionist!

She didn’t seem to have expected a pseudo-adept to be able to launch such a powerful spatial attack. She stumbled backward while ceaselessly drawing upon her magical energies to strengthen her body.

She could feel what was happening to her body very clearly.

These spatial ripples didn’t seem like much, but they had a fearsome lethality that outmatched most spells. Energy barriers were able to deflect and neutralize elementium spells, but they were helpless against spatial magic.

The spatial ripples appeared to be a single complete entity, but they were composed of hundreds to thousands of different layers of space. When the ripples hit the illusionist’s body, all of her skin, flesh, organ, bones, and tendons simultaneously separated into entirely different layers of space.

Any minor change in her location at this moment would cause distortion and dislocation between the different layers. Thus, under the dominating natural tendency of space to mend itself, your flesh, organs, and every fragile part of your body would be exposed to the thousands of forces applied in thousands of different directions.

Moreover, you couldn’t defend against this spatial energy with just an energy barrier!

The illusionist had already been running away from Alice the moment she realized something was wrong. At the same time, she continuously strengthened the resistance and toughness of her body using what magic spells she knew.

If she had been a body refining adept and had trained her organs to be as resilient as steel, she might have been able to use her physical body to endure this attack.

Unfortunately, she was not!

The illusionist quickly retreated as she coughed intensely.

Purple and black blood, as well as shattered organ fragments, came out from between her red lips.

120 points!

How could a young girl with the power of a pseudo-adept launch such a powerful spatial ripple?

This…this was beyond her expectations!

120 points.

110 points.

100 points.

……

80 points.

60 points.

……

The strength of the spatial ripples quickly fell off the further they drifted from Alice. The illusionist finally stopped moving. She was seventy meters away from Alice now.

The spatial ripples here could only deal 20 points of damage. This damage was low enough for the illusionist to bear.

The illusionist stopped retreating when she reached here. She endured the waves of ripples and silently prepared a spell. She had wanted to torture and humiliate Alice before she killed her, but judging from what had just occurred, it was probably safer to get rid of this brat.

The girl couldn’t possibly sustain such a large-scale spell for an extended period of time with her power alone. She would instantly exterminate her with a violent wind vortex the moment Alice stopped!

”Let’s see how long you can keep going!” The illusionist mused in anger. A wicked smile appeared on her face.

The four Decayers also tried desperately to escape Alice’s Spatial Storm.

Sadly, the terrifying and universal tearing of space within the Spatial Storm was far too effective against these creatures with weak defenses. The four Decayers were shredded once more before they could even retreat to a safer area.

A short moment later, eight even smaller mini Decayers that had undergone their third splitting appeared before the combatants. They frantically ran towards away the moment their bodies had gathered together.

Only six mini Decayers managed to escape from the Spatial Storm’s area of effect. Two had been destroyed and died within the invisible spatial ripples.

The hybrid dragon also reconsidered its previous thought of lunging at Alice. It stopped at the edge of the storm. It sensed the destructive nature of these ripples. It hesitated and patrolled around the outside of the phenomenon.

”You have a good eye for picking subordinates. If I’m not mistaken, she’s on the verge of advancement. Tsk tsk. A little witch with spatial talent. If you properly cultivate her, she would probably end up being a great aid to you.” Sanazar started praising Greem in the shadows.

After all, Alice had been able to let out a fearsome attack of 120 points, even though she was only a pseudo-adept. While there was the factor of her stimulating and exhausting her life force and potential in it, there was no denying that Alice had tremendous talent!

Greem smiled bitterly.

Only he understood what was happening. There was no way Alice would be able to summon such a horrifying Spatial Storm on her own. She must have drawn upon the powers of the spacestone sealed within herself!

She channeled the spatial energy contained within the spacestone and released it in such a wild and reckless manner. This undoubtedly placed a heavy burden on Alice’s weak body.

Greem couldn’t help but start worrying!

One minute had passed.

The ferocious storm raged on, as powerful as it had been earlier.

The illusionist barely kept up her smile.

Three minutes passed.

The Spatial Storm still persisted, and there were no signs of it weakening.

The illusionist’s smile gave way to a severe expression.

Five minutes.

The Spatial Storm was still going strong.

The corners of the illusionist’s mouth started twitching heavily. An expression of utter shock betrayed her eyes.

”How is this possible?”

”How is this possible?”

Amazingly, two people had just said the same thing in two different parts of the castle ruins.

”No. We can wait no longer. ” Sanazar was a Third Grade adept and had a better eye for things when compared to Greem, ”Get ready to save Alice. I’ll go and capture that illusionist. Be careful. Your little maid actually might advance soon. You can’t let her waste her powers like this.”

Sanazar’s body started to swell and expand once she said that.

In a couple of seconds, she had transformed into a fearsome Flying Venom Dragon twelve meters long. Her strong hind legs kicked against the ground. Her body, covered with green viscous liquid, took to the skies with the help of her giant wings.

Her massive and eye-catching body circled in the sky and quickly landed on the castle ruins where the fight was taking place. The dragons’ aura of might fell upon the land, causing the hybrid dragon to be scared out of its wits. It immediately crouched on the ground and shivered in fear.

The brand of the dragons had been carved into the genetic bloodlines of the hybrid dragons. When they faced a true dragon, the bloodline chains of absolute hierarchy would do their work, and these faux-dragons would behave even worse than some of the weakest creatures alive.

The illusionist hadn’t expected an ’ordinary’ little pseudo-adept to have the capacity and ability to have a Third Grade adept as her bodyguard. She immediately turned tail when she caught sight of Sanazar’s trademark green body.

Countless silhouette and mirror images of herself appeared in the castle ruins. Each one of them used a unique method of their own to escape into the distance.

Some called upon wind elementium to cover their bodies and fly into the distance, while others threw out magical tools and summoned a wind bat to take them away from the place, while some others applied wings of wind to themselves to soar as high as they could. There were even some images that quickly obscured their forms using Invisibility spells and ran into the ruins of the castle.

Sanazar only paused for a moment when faced with the countless swarm of illusionists. A massive glob of green ’spit’ was launched from her throat and instantly exterminated eight of the mirror images that weren’t able to escape.

It was apparent that the Flying Venom Dragon was mighty but could not see through these illusions on her own.

”Over there, Lady Sanazar!” Greem hadn’t come along with his physical body. His form was a fire projection and had no offensive abilities whatsoever.

However, this didn’t stop him from using his elementium sight to gain perfect control over the situation of the battle.

Pupupu.

Six acid arrows shot out consecutively, all of them aimed at the same corner of the ruins.

The concentrated acid instantly dyed the stone and rubble a green color. A thievish grey mouse peered out from within the cracks.

Its black eyes turned around humanly, and it quickly started running without another word.

”I have already locked on to your scent, and you still try to run? Stay!” Sanazar knew that this was the real form of the female illusionist when she saw this.

The Flying Venom Dragon roared and dove towards the ground.

Its massive body collided with the unstable remains of the castle, rupturing an enormous hole in the side of the ruined architecture. A terrible howl rang out from within the dust. All the smoke started to disperse.

The battle didn’t last more than three seconds!

Soon, only pained cries of agony came from inside the cloud of dust.

The Flying Venom Dragon’s massive body parted through the smoke and appeared before Greem. An old hag, her leg almost entirely bitten through, hung from Sanazar’s devilish mouth. She was barely breathing.

A witch?

Greem couldn’t help but narrow his eyes.