Age of Adepts

Fire Throne.

Greem disappeared alongside the first floor’s fire altar as energy surged through the tower.

At the same time, a radiant Ring of Fire sprung up near the base of the tower where the sea of lava was. The viscous magma was repelled and pushed aside as Greem reappeared with the fire altar.

Greem opened his eyes, and a blinding red light instantly filled his entire sight. Front, back, left, right, up, down; everywhere he looked was filled with boiling magma. This thick, semi-liquid substance seemed to be circulating like some unknown force was pushing it. It rumbled as it slowly but stubbornly flowed around Greem.

This spot was twenty meters deep in the sea of lava. The horrifying heat had vaporized every bit of moisture in this place. The solid rocks had also been scorched into half-molten magma and dragged into this massive whirlpool of lava.

Even Greem needed to erect his Ring of Fire to avoid being directly consumed by the magma. Greem’s senses told him that this place was 900 to 1,200 degrees Celcius. Every ten meters deeper into this place would see a temperature increase of two to three hundred degrees.

Even the immunity of Greem’s flame body had a limit. Currently, he could only barely survive the heat seventy or eighty meters down. Any further, and the red-hot lava would burn even Greem.

Of course, if Greem activated his first phase Flame Fiend Transformation, he could probably reach around a hundred and fifty meters. If he performed his second phase transformation, he could attempt to probe the bottom of this sea of lava. However, the second phase transformation only lasted for fifteen minutes. Trying to explore the chaotic and dangerous depths of the lava sea in such a short time didn’t seem like a good idea.

Thus, Greem suppressed his desire to go exploring and focused on figuring out the optimal way to temper his Spirit.

Spirit Elementiumization!

The term sounded straightforward, but it was challenging to achieve this result.

In comparison, body elementiumization appeared to be extremely easy to accomplish.

Body elementiumization only required the individual to be in an area rich with elementium. Then, they would draw upon an appropriate amount of elementium to continuously purify their body. The only problem with this particular process was the mastery of an ’appropriate’ amount.

One controlled the elementium such that they were just beyond the limits of the body’s tolerance and used it to break down the body continuously. At the same time, the flesh should still be able to recover and make slight adjustments to adapt to the stimulation from the elementium as it did so. The internal structure of the body, as well as the organs, would then slowly move towards a state where they could coexist with the elementium. Meanwhile, the adept had to make sure that the elementium’s destructiveness wasn’t too far beyond their limits, to ensure that inflicted no permanent, lasting damage to their spirit origin.

Thus, body elementiumization was the balancing of the body’s regeneration rate with the destructiveness of the elementium. The purpose was to slowly and gradually improve the body’s tolerance to fire elementium.

In doing so, the body was able to contain a more significant amount of fire elementium, and therefore tolerate a higher amount of fire energy. The spells that were cast would naturally become much more powerful!

The principle was the same for spirit elementiumization, but the techniques and methods were different.

It wasn’t going to be that easy for the elementiumization of Spirit!

Greem crossed his legs and sat on the fire altar. He slowly gathered his Spirit and turned it into a thread. He then relied on the fire altar’s subtle elementium connection with the surrounding sea of lava to slowly move the thread outside the Ring of Fire.

Aaaaaah.

Grem let out an intense howl of agony. His entire brain felt like it had been stabbed with a red-hot needle. It was so painful that his fingers had dug into his palms.

His spirit was like the appendage extended by his soul consciousness. Extending it into the lava of thousands of degrees while unprotected by elementium spells was like casting a blazing spell right within Greem’s soul.

Greem grabbed his aching brain with both hands. The portion of his spirit that extended outside the Ring of Fire had vaporized in a flash of fire.

Greem sat down for several minutes to collect himself and adjust his mental consciousness. Then, he once again split out a mental appendage and willed it out towards the sea of lava.

The same intense pain, the same intolerable agony. Greem felt like he had just put his hand into a boiling pot of oil. He could even hear the strange sound of flesh being burned to char by the hot oil.

No! This wouldn’t work!

The terrifying heat of the lava was not something that his Spirit could currently tolerate. Without the protection of any elementium spells, his Spirit would instantly be burned to pieces the moment it left the Ring of Fire. There was no chance it could endure the heat.

If his spirit couldn’t even tolerate this heat, how was he supposed to temper it?

It is flame outside of the Ring of Fire, but my affinity is for flame as well. Why is there such a vast disparity in the way my spirit reacts to them?

Greem thought as he recalled the instant he had advanced to adept. He remembered that trace of the law’s aura that had pierced through his soul.

The fundamental technique of spirit elementiumization was the key to advancing to higher grades. That was why your ordinary books didn’t contain related knowledge. The Sarubo had information related to this in their private collections. However, if Greem wanted to gain access to this information, he would have to sign some ’unnecessary’ contracts with the elders.

This scenario was what Greem was trying his best to avoid!

Fortunately, Greem had managed to find some helpful information in the Tower of Fate. That was how he came up with the idea of using the fire altar as an auxiliary tool to temper his Spirit.

Greem was moving in the right direction, but the specific path differed from person to person, depending on their physique and affinities. He still had to put in plenty of effort if he wanted to find the way that suited him!

Greem tilted his head and thought for a while. He no longer tried to attempt anything with the same recklessness as before. Instead, he concentrated and started meditating.

As his mental consciousness slowly descended into that intangible and fantastical state of meditation, everything around him vanished. Only the basic elementium that formed the underground world remained.

The one thing that illuminated Greem’s consciousness space was the consciousness core he had formed when he had advanced to adept.

It floated like a miniature sun there, as the rich fire elementium in the surroundings continually flew towards it like birds returning to their nests. This phenomenon coated it with a layer of brilliant red light. From a distance, it looked both beautiful and magnificent.

When Greem’s mental consciousness appeared in this space, his consciousness core immediately became connected with him. In a split second, Greem felt like he had suddenly appeared in the inside of his consciousness core. He was looking over this boundless space from the perspective of the consciousness core. He experienced the place from the angle of the core and with the senses that it used to feel.

The surrounding fire elementium was so rich that it didn’t even require Greem to guide it. The red spots of light ceaselessly surged into his mental consciousness like a downpour. Every speck of red light provided Greem’s Spirit with a trace of comfort and warmth as they made contact with his mental consciousness.

Greem ’opened’ his eyes and used his consciousness appendages to feel his surroundings slowly.

Not far away, an overwhelming torrent of fire elementium slowly but surely flowed past him. The red and hot sensation felt the same as the sea of lava in reality.

Greem hesitated for a moment before extending his mental appendage out of his consciousness core. He gradually reached towards that torrent of fire elementium.

Weng.

At the instant his mental appendage made contact with the fire elementium, Greem felt his mental consciousness go completely numb. A hot swell of flame split off from the torrent of elementium and flowed up the thread. It rushed towards his consciousness core with ferocious momentum as if it would crush anything in its way.

Strangely enough, while Greem was shocked and feared that he was in great trouble, his consciousness core suddenly vibrated. A weird golden rune formed within the core.

Golden light shone upon Greem’s mental consciousness the moment the rune was born. He quickly, yet vaguely, felt as if something different and new had been added to his mind. The untouchable stream of flames turned into a warm summer’s breeze, allowing his entire ’body’ to bask relaxingly in that golden radiance. Greem was so comfortable that he didn’t want to move even a bit.

At the same time, Greem’s mental consciousness could sense gray and black spots of light continuously spilling out from his Spirit. These spots of light slowly dispersed in this strange psychic space.

Greem, in his usual state, might have been scared out of his wits at this point. He might have hurriedly broken out of this weird state. However, Greem was able to rely on the information he had gathered in the past. He was able to realize that this was the tempering process of his Spirit that he had been so painstakingly searching for.

Those spots of light that were being expunged from his Spirit was the parts of his Spirit that weren’t entirely compatible with fire elementium.

While this meant that his total Spirit was slowly decreasing, the remaining Spirit was now undoubtedly more suited to supporting and absorbing fire elementium.

His spirit consciousness sank into this strange state, silently enduring the pain of blazing jets of pain enveloping his Spirit, and the discomfort of having it tempered. The golden rune emitted golden light every time Greem was at his limits. The radiance would merge into his mental consciousness and help him sooth the damage from the violent flames.

This golden radiance possessed knowledge fragments that had a trace of the fire laws. It allowed his mind to suddenly gain missing knowledge that it previously hadn’t understood.

It was like a massive puzzle of knowledge suddenly had one or two inconspicuous spots illuminated and solved. This process of tempering his Spirit had allowed Greem to understand and comprehend the existence of the fire laws finally.

After four whole hours of meditation, Greem reluctantly retreated from his state of meditation. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to continue. Rather, his mental consciousness was at its limit.

Greem received multiple notifications from the chip when he finally came out of the meditation space.

It seemed these notifications had temporarily been blocked while he was in the meditation space. They were only flooding in now.

”Detecting unique mental consciousness space.”

”Detecting unknown change happening to host’s mental consciousness. Request instructions from host? Stop this process?”

”Detecting unknown change happening to host’s mental consciousness. Request instructions from host? Stop this process?”

……

”Host’s mental consciousness changing. Mental space shrunk by 11%. Mental strength increased by 4%. Elementium concentration within body increased by 1%.”

”Host has completed one instance of Spirit tempering.”