Age of Adepts

”Magic-Generator Furnace?” Greem contemplated in silence, ”Are you sure this is the name he mentioned?”

”I am, master! I am one hundred percent certain!” Snorlax still had that fawning expression on his face, but a sly and scheming light glowed in his beady eyes, ”I even gave him the book for free to win his trust. I didn’t ask for anything in return, but a chance to take a look at this unusual item he described!”

”And?”

”He lifted the light screen and brought me on tour around his magical lab. We saw the spider tank.”

”And the magic generator furnace?”

”Of course I saw the furnace as well!”

”Mm, you’ve done well!” Greem nodded in satisfaction, ”You must have recorded it, didn’t you?”

”Of course, as long as it’s your orders, this goblin Snorlax will do everything in his ability to accomplish it.” Snorlax quickly took out an image-recording crystal the size of a button, ”I recorded everything inside!”

Greem once again smiled in approval.

Snorlax’s obedience and smarts surprised even Greem.

He had expected Snorlax to be opposed to betraying his race. Who knew that he would accept all this without any hesitation? In fact, Snorlax had even taken the initiative on his own. He was actively helping Greem uncover the secrets of the goblin duke.

Naturally, Greem couldn’t be stingy with such a loyal subordinate.

Greem instantly rewarded him with a considerable number of magical crystals. He even gave Snorlax a storage belt. Not even Alice owned one. Snorlax no longer needed to wear seven or eight belts on his body with this new gear.

Greem instantly projected his Spirit into the image-recording crystal once Snorlax left.

His expression changed in less than seven minutes. He slowly placed the crystal on the table with a feeling of utter shock.

Goddammit! This wasn’t some magic generator furnace! It was a space furnace!

No. More accurately, this was a kind of prototype for a space furnace!

Greem suppressed his excitement and replayed the image from the crystal in his mind. He paused it upon seeing the towering ’magic-generator furnace’ in the goblin-hall.

It was quite an intimidating giant steel monstrosity.

An initial estimate, judging from the recording, put it at three hundred meters tall and one hundred meters in diameter. It was practically a giant metal can. It looked like a giant capsule when it stood in the hall like that. However, some unique alloy composed the outside of the container, and it gleamed with a desolate blue light. Also, its insides didn’t contain a material substance, but unstable, roiling, and ravaging space energy!

Goblins might be ignorant, but the adepts hailed as the slaves of knowledge couldn’t be as ignorant as they were.

Even with a light screen between the device, even with five hundred meters of distance between the screen and the furnace, the recording still perfectly preserved the complex spatial flux and forcefield lingering around the entire hall.

This flux meant that the goblins were mistaken. What burned inside the furnace wasn’t the elementium energy they thought it to be, but chaos energy from space.

Space energy was chaos energy, not elementium energy.

The two were distinct existences. Their names were similar, but they were two remarkably different things.

According to ancient knowledge, the multiverse they lived in was encompassed by an endless sea of space energy. The higher realms, material planes, elementium planes, the lower realms… the infinite, swirling sea of spatial energy permeated everything within.

Chaos energy possessed incomparable instability and ferociousness. Moreover, it seemed to have an evil ability to twist and distort souls and personalities. There were way too few races and beings that could directly harness this energy. However, every individual or race that mastered control over chaos energy were powerful beings that stood atop the universe!

Almost all material planes naturally developed planar barriers to block out the spatial energies and prevent the beings residing within from being corrupted and polluted by the chaos energies in space. These plane barriers were like fetal membranes that cultivated and nurtured millions of living creatures. They would calm and tame the space energies that made it through the defenses and turn them into gentle elementium energy. They would then disassemble and reduce the elementium power into different elementium particles with their respective traits based on the planar laws.

Adepts, magical creatures, elves, spiritualists…the supernatural power they possessed came from this ubiquitous elementium energy. This power was tame, gentle, and could be controlled and manipulated through the use of the spiritual consciousness! It was the source of an adept’s strength, and one of the only powers that adepts could directly harness and absorb.

Chaos energy, on the other hand, was feared by all adepts. They treated it like poison. Any involvement with it meant death!

Alice had suffered at the hands of chaos energy before when she assimilated the chaos energy of the spacestone in her ignorance. If the accidental advancement hadn’t stopped this process of assimilation, Alice would have transformed into a spatial being.

However, it wasn’t as if there was no chance of harnessing chaos energy.

The adept’s tower was able to absorb chaos energy and break it down into elementium energy, which the tower stored in an elementium pool. It was then used to power the tower’s functions.

However, this was a process conducted through the adept’s tower.

A single tower could easily reach several hundreds of meters in height. The space within the tower could fit hundreds and thousands of adepts. Only a magical building of this scale, crafted from numerous rare resources, could come into contact with chaos energy without suffering any damage to itself.

That was why Greem was shocked to find a bunch of otherworldly goblins that could harness chaos energy with crude machines despite having no elementium talent.

This…how could this not surprise him?! How could he not be shaken by the wonders of the world?!

Greem looked at the coiling wires and steaming constructs, as well as the goblin engineers with their ’space helmets’ on their heads. He felt the world turning upside down.

The most ignorant were the most fearless after all!

Were they not afraid of the space furnace exploding and completely razing the Goblin Empire? How could the violent and destructive chaos energy be tamed by a bunch of goblins that couldn’t even cast an elementium fireball? It wasn’t scientific!

Countless curses and swear words thundered through Greem’s mind.

That said, this turn of events had also caused Greem to develop a far more significant interest in this goblin plane.

If he were able to create an army in the future, this Goblin Empire would be his first choice for an invasion. As long as he was able to get his hands on their technology and thoroughly examine this ’magic-generator furnace,’ he would easily be able to create a magical mechanical empire for himself! The strange and varied powers available to the adepts made this a straightforward task.

Greem couldn’t help but get excited at the prospect of possessing such power.

…………

The Knight’s Plane.

The cries and calls of bugs continued within the primal green forest. The sea of trees waved as the winds blew across the place.

A small group was traversing through the woods with much difficulty.

The one standing at the very front was a muscular man in chainmail. A double-edged war axe in his hand swung about like it was weightless. He carved a broad path before them with every slash of his axe.

However, even though a makeshift path had been created, there were still many bushes, vines, and brambles by the sides. It made their movements exceptionally difficult and tiring.

There were only five people in the group. The other members were equally as muscular as the first man. Their gray cloaks were bulky, and it seemed as if they were all carrying some large weapons with them.

”Locard, how much longer until we reach our destination? I hate this humid and warm environment,” Slap. A guy in the middle of the formation grumbled as he slapped the mosquito that had landed on his face. There were far too many of the pesky insects.

As expected of mosquitos in a primal forest, every single one of them was the size of a finger. Their wrinkled abdomens could even swell to the size of a fist when they were full of human blood.

Blood splashed all over this guy’s face when the mosquito’s abdomen broke.

”Dammit, dammit, dammit.” The terrible environment had caused his mood to sour, ”I hate this mosquito, I hate this forest, I hate everything. I don’t want to run anymore. I would rather turn back and fight with those bloodsucking devils. I would rather die in glorious battle than rot in this goddamned forest.”

”Silence!” The man at the end of the group was the leader. He scolded angrily, ”No one is stopping you if you want to die, but don’t drag the rest of us with you. Do not forget your pride as a radiant knight, Sim!”

”Pride, honor……” The man named Sim was clearly at his limits, ”You keep yelling pride, day in, day out. What pride and honor is there now that we’ve been reduced to dogs chased by those accursed adepts? Their evil arts have also exterminated the royal bloodline. What can we do from here on out?”

Sim’s careless words plunged the members of the group into silence.

The disastrous defeat at Greenland Forest. The dragon raids on the capital. The dragons’ raiding of the entire continent…none of this could compare to the impact of the royal bloodline’s termination!

With the forceful domination of the adepts, these previously glorious witcher knights had become dogs without a home, chased by packs of wolves and jaguars, torn to pieces.

However, those people that wanted to attack them and exchange the heads of the knights for rewards from the adepts were no real threat. The pursuing adepts were the true nightmares they needed to avoid!

The Bloody Queen was no longer elegant. She had turned into the Bloody Sorceress, an existent that these radiant knights and spellbreaker knights feared from the very core of their being.

Evil Bugs was no longer as weak as before. This demon of bugs had also become an unstoppable terror with every piece of flesh he consumed. Many of their companions had died before their eyes in that very manner, torn to pieces by swarms of insects.

”Silence. I think I hear something.” The man with the axe in the vanguard hushed them.

Everyone quickly shut up and listened carefully to every movement in the forest.

There indeed seemed to be a vague sound ringing in the calming sound of trees waving in the wind.

It was the sound of beating wings.

”It’s the Bloody Sorceress! Quick, run…”

The leader’s expression changed all of a sudden. He started shouting.

A black cloud of bats surged forth from the woods amid their shouts. They pressed down upon the knights like an ominous cloud.

The Bloody Sorceress was here!