Age of Adepts

Last night’s incident had allowed Greem to understand his flaws.

As a fire adept, he possessed incomparable dominance and lethality on the battlefield as long as he could fearlessly unleash his fury. However, the magics he knew were often clumsy and less tuned to small-scale duels with other adepts. He had a difficult time dealing with those extremely strange and mysterious spells.

Of course, if he transformed into the Flame Fiend, the increase in his base resistance would help him negate most curses and manipulative spiritual spells. Still, trying to deal with such spells head-on through pure mental will wasn’t without its limits. If he slipped up even once, he would end up in a terrible situation. It would be so awful that even Greem himself felt chills running down his spine just by imagining the conclusion!

In the past, he would only activate the Ioun Stones during combat to hide the full extent of his abilities. However, Greem no longer dared remain overconfident after last night’s lesson. He immediately took out the three Ioun Stones and allowed them to spin around his head like three twinkling little stars continuously.

The red Ioun Stone might not have helped him defend against spiritual magic, but it did provide him with an additional two points of Spirit. This would increase his resistance just a touch.

In comparison, the purple Ioun Stone was instrumental in this regard. It could provide Greem with a soul barrier of one hundred and twenty points. There was no chance of Greem being manipulated and controlled as long as the enemy’s attack didn’t exceed this limit.

Not to mention he was a fire adept with explosive powers. If Greem couldn’t severely wound the opponent before they broke through his soul barrier, then he would have deserved the loss.

Greem waited until daybreak and confirmed the absence of enemies before entering the tower to check on the core array. As expected, he found a very well-hidden auxiliary formation within. It remained in a hidden state when the core array was functioning. That was why it hadn’t triggered any of the array alarms. Greem, the owner of the tower, was the very person that had activated this hidden array.

The phrase ’Death be with me’ had been the activation passcode for this array. The phrase had also simultaneously planted a soul coordinate within Greem without him even knowing. Thus, Greem’s actions mostly caused the uninvited trouble from last night.

Greem was begrudgingly impressed by the ability of the enemy adept once he understood all this. They were indeed the best when it came to toying with a person’s mind. If it weren’t for the chip’s ability to detect unusual forcefield fluctuations, Greem would probably still be trapped within the palms of his opponent.

The abnormality at the stone tower had alerted the castellan of Gilneas City as well. By the time Viscount Alvar reached the tower with a city guard army of almost two hundred men, everything had already returned to normal.

They then scrubbed the hidden array and had the tower itself cleaned and tidied. Newer and better furniture replaced all the old ones within. More importantly, the Viscount reassigned over two dozen servants, kitchen maids, housemaids, and guards to the tower, once again filling it with the liveliness of humans.

Whether intentional or not, every one of the maids the Viscount Alvar sent over was young, pretty, and gentle. There was even a pair of young twin sisters barely fourteen years of age. Many of these young maids came from the noble families around Gilneas City. They were often branch members of the noble families, enjoying the status of a noble lady within their family.

Here, however, they were willing to reduce themselves to being a lowly maid, all so they could spend just one additional minute beside Sir Adept.

Viscount Alvar had even personally promised that whoever managed to find their way into the bedsheets of Sir Adept would be rewarded handsomely. The noble family they belonged to would be exempt from taxes for ten years. Furthermore, if anyone managed to conceive a child, their family would instantly be elevated to one of the five large families within Gilneas City. That maid would also be gifted a villa of her own to enjoy luxury and pleasure for the rest of her life.

Initially, these ladies all believed they were dealing with an elderly adept old enough to be their grandfathers. One with a wrinkled face and hunched body. After all, the stories shared over tea and cakes often claimed that the stronger the adept, the less human they became.

Adepts that spent their years as hermits in their towers were often arrogant, cruel, and perverted evildoers. Their lengthy lifespan and the tedious way they passed their time caused them to have a completely different perspective towards enjoyment and pleasure. Ordinary intercourse and decadence were no longer enough to fulfill their twisted minds. Frightening torture and torment probably awaited those that tried to offer themselves up to an adept like this.

Private rumors even claimed that some evil adepts would transform into monsters and beasts during sexual intercourse and kill their partners in the process.

That was why all the maids were fearful of their fate when they were first sent to the tower. They were afraid that they would also end up with such a horrible outcome. After all, they were of an inferior status compared to the adepts. They had never honestly come into contact with one.

However, when the one dozen young girls wearing their neat maid uniforms saw the great Sir Adept for the first time, they were utterly shocked by what they saw.

Greem wasn’t a body-refining adept, yet he possessed a two-meter-tall muscular body, a handsome look on his face, well-defined muscles that even a loose black robe couldn’t hide, and long, intriguing crimson hair falling down his back.

Not a single drop of excess fat could be found on the tall and fit body of this teenage adept. Greem’s handsome appearance, along with that slight wickedness mixed with the wisdom of an adept, caused all the girls to be attracted to him at first sight.

Of course, there were also the beautiful stones circling above his head, the magic tome radiating with elementium light, and the mysterious staff leaning against his seat; all of these added more mystery and profundity to his character. It instantly turned the girls into lost moths, desperately wanting to cast themselves into that blazing flame.

Greem chose to ignore the small little tricks that Viscount Alvar was pulling under his eyes.

After all, his title as the Flame Demon was fairly well-known throughout the Sarubo Clan. Not to mention he was a combat adept known for his prowess. It was natural that the viscount would pull out all the stops to fall into his good graces.

Someone like Viscount Alvar probably wasn’t even qualified to know much about the situation and internal affairs of the Sarubo Clan. Thus, the viscount only saw Greem’s power and his apparent rise like a blazing star in the clan. He didn’t honestly know the brewing conflict and tensions between Greem and the elders.

If he knew that Greem’s assignment here was a form of punishment and warning by the clan, he would probably regret his unnecessary actions.

That was why Greem graciously accepted all of Alvar’s goodwill while secretly being amused by the situation. After all, he was going to be staying here for a quite a long time. It wasn’t necessarily a bad thing to have a couple of maids tend to his daily activities during this time. On the other hand, he wasn’t all that attracted by the prospect of carnal pleasure.

Ever since he became an adept, Greem had improved his Spirit and his will at its origin. All kinds of inferior and worldly desires no longer controlled how he behaved. He would only consider them as a sort of entertainment in an otherwise dull and dry lifestyle.

These young girls walked to his side, and all the information about their physical and mental states projected in front of him.

With the help of the chip’s scanning abilities, and his own spiritual senses, he could obtain all the information he needed.

The heart rate of the girls, their blood flow, the thickness of their hair, their menstrual cycles, their sleep quality, their three sizes, even when they got their first period; Greem could get an approximate answer to all of these.

In Greem’s eyes, these girls might be young and pretty, but their life forces were dull and weak. Their Spirit activity was also relatively low. That meant that they had mostly led vapid lives within their families, with no proper education or meaningful experiences. They were only delicate playthings with a pretty appearance and no soul to match it!

Trying to seduce Greem with women like this was like trying to lure a wealthy man with a beautiful doll; there was no chance of success. For an adept, only those with a potent life force could draw their attention as potential mates.

And these vases and dolls? No more than a decent option to while away the monotony of daily work. Of course, no adept would mind letting their bloodline spread on if they were fortunate enough to beget an offspring in this manner. All they needed to do was pay the price of a little time and some insignificant resources that they had never needed in the first place.

…………

Night once again fell upon the tower after an entire day’s affair.

Greem drove all the maids into the lower level of the stone tower after dinner.

Only he was left in the two upper levels of the tower.

Greem sat at a wooden table by a window on the second level, diligently reading through the information he had gotten from Alvar. These books did not contain powerful magical knowledge. They were the basic intelligence reports regarding the Aki Clan.

Greem glossed over their resources, assets, villas, and staffing situations and focused on the information about their adepts.

The Aki Clan was also a mid-sized adept clan. Their headquarters was located in the city of Rohr, a thousand kilometers away from this place. Unlike the Sarubo Clan, the Aki Clan had yet to produce a Great Adept that had embarked on a journey beyond this realm. Their current clan leader, Maecena Aki, was the founder of the clan.

A great Fourth Grade adept!

That also meant that at the moment, the Sarubo Clan was surpassed regarding high-grade powerhouses. The Sarubo did not have a Fourth Grade adept of their own to deal with Maecena Aki himself.

Even though Great Adept Sarubo was already a Sixth Grade adept, he couldn’t help with the clan’s conflicts if he couldn’t return to the World of Adepts. If it wasn’t out of concern about being pursued by Great Adept Sarubo when he left the realm upon reaching Fifth Grade, Maecena Aki could entirely exterminate all the Sarubo adepts by himself.

Consequently, the Sarubo Clan could not take the risk of engaging in a full-out war with the enemy!