Age of Adepts

A black shadow rapidly dashed across the night-cloaked Ad Plains, sticking close to the ground as it did so.

The black silhouette was slender and tall, brimming with a seductive charm under the illumination of the round moon in the sky. Alarmingly enough, the seductive figure didn’t belong to a human. She had a pair of large and wide gray wings on her back, silent as a phantom as she glided above the ground.

There were no pursuers or oddities behind her, but the owner of this black silhouette seemed to be fleeing in a panic. Much like an anxious bird, she dashed across fields and villages and rivers, never daring to stop for a break.

Even someone of her power would eventually be exhausted after a continuous flight at full speed for several hours.

Whenever she reached this peak of exhaustion, she would dive down into someplace within the forest. There would immediately be commotion from large-sized forest beasts from that area.

However, these growls and howls disappeared as fast as they appeared!

A short moment later, when the black silhouette unfurled her wings and took to the skies once more, two shriveled corpses had been left behind in the forest. The blood within the bodies of these large beasts had been completely drained within a matter of minutes.

At the instant the black form took to the sky, the moon illuminated the face of its owner– a pretty, concerned, and anxious face.

Mary. She was the Vampire Adept Mary whom Greem had sent to monitor Leicester!

Perhaps the odd atmosphere of the night had scared away all nearby beasts, or maybe Mary had been remarkably silent and clean in her hunt. Regardless, the forest quickly turned silent once she had vanished into the darkness in the distance.

Until another strange black shadow descended upon the spot!

There were absolutely no signs of living beings in the forest. Only those with the most delicate of senses could vaguely sense the light in the forest dimming slightly.

A cluster of thin black mist spread throughout the forest as the bright moonlight shone down upon the trees. The fog quickly enveloped the two beast corpses that had been hidden in the bushes.

Two crimson eyes suddenly shone in the black mist, as if its owner had discovered something of interest. This unknown individual immediately turned and stared in the direction that Mary had fled.

A sinister male voice rang out from the mist.

”She actually possesses the smell of my bloodline within her… strange. Could it be an experimental subject that I didn’t properly dispose of? No. I must try bloodline summoning once.”

An intense red light burst forth from within the red mist. A strange and intangible flux started to ripple into the distance under the guidance of some odd bloodline connection.

Mary had already fled twenty-five kilometers away at this point.

An indescribable mental summons entered her mind, even as she beat her wings and continued gliding across the canopy.

Like a speeding train suddenly braking, Mary’s elegant flying posture came to an abrupt pause. Her whole body folded together as she crashed down into the forest, snapping countless branches and vines as she fell.

This sudden twist of events had been so abrupt that the fall itself almost threw her into a daze.

However, before she could even regain consciousness, a strong bodily instinct forcefully manipulated her body and made her leap onto her feet. That same instinct then drove her flying back in the direction she had come from.

Before even making it five meters, Mary swiftly came to her wits after. She instantly regained control over her own body and stopped walking.

Two different consciousness were still intensely fighting over control of her body.

Mary wanted to get away from that terrifying demon as fast as she could. However, her instinctual consciousness was driving her to return to the side of her bloodline origin. The two minds clashed on multiple layers of the body, unwilling to give up on even the slightest control of the most minor body parts.

Mary couldn’t even stand still. One foot stepped forward while the other stepped backward. One hand turned right while the other turned left. Even the muscles on her face were twitching intensely.

Her entire body had been completely messed up by the two struggling consciousness!

The vampire blood flowing in her body still retained the bloodline mark of Leicester the Vampire, making her unable to resist any orders from him. However, she was not a bloodkin that Leicester had created through the Embrace. As such, her soul wasn’t under his control.

When her soul started clashing with her bloodline instincts, neither side could fully control her body and became mired in a stalemate.

An expression of surprise finally surfaced on the face of Second Grade Vampire Leicester when the bloodkin had yet to arrive despite a long time after his bloodline summoning.

What a strange bloodline descendant! To be able to reject the summons of their bloodline origin. This…this was almost unbelievable!

Leicester undoubtedly became even more interested in such a strange bloodline descendant.

He stopped his bloodline summoning ritual and retracted the black mist. The cloud gathered and formed into a large pair of bat wings that could almost blot out the stretch of forest he was in. The vampire vanished with a slight beat of his wings. He quickly flew in the direction where the odd bloodline flux was coming from.

The enemy was closing in.

That strange instinctual consciousness in Mary’s body had just died down. Yet, she didn’t even get to rest for a moment when she sensed her bloodline origin getting closer.

Mary hadn’t felt afraid, even when she was fighting with her body’s instinctual consciousness earlier. However, her face paled the moment she sensed her bloodline origin. She took to the skies without any hesitation and escaped on her wings at her highest speed.

Mary had even used the spells Energy Explosion and Accelerated Flight to get away from this fearsome enemy.

The opponent was able to use a single thought from dozens of kilometers away to make her body obediently walk back to surrender. Mary would probably have a difficult time stirring up even a rebellious thought if he managed to get to her.

That was why Mary gave her very all. She used everything she had on her– magical items, scrolls, wands, potions, anything that could increase the speed of her flight, all for the sake of putting that much more distance between her and that demon.

With her resilient mental consciousness, Leicester should be incapable of sensing her exact location once there were more than fifty kilometers between them!

Mary dashed across the skies with this single thought in mind. A game of tag upon the Ad Plains started between her and that terrifying Second Grade Vampire Leicester.

…………

Zhentarim area, Feidnan City.

Sanazar, Fügen, and Keoghan were gathered in a secret room at the higher levels of the tower for a meeting.

As the core adepts of the Sarubo Clan, they had such a regular meeting on an annual basis. Things had been much busier this year, and correspondingly, more meetings had been held.

During the regular meeting, Adept Keoghan gave a standard report on all matters that had happened within the clan, the distribution of the clan’s resources, the assignment and adjustment of internal staff, the record of apprentice advancements, and so on. Once he had completed this, Keoghan took out yet another, tinier piece of paper from inside his sleeve and started to give a summary on everything that had happened in Fire Throne recently.

Greem had been hiding in the adept’s tower, completely hidden from the public. It had been six months since anyone saw him.

The tower had recruited another two staying adepts.

A few core adepts of the tower had also simultaneously vanished for a period a month ago.

Goblin Snorlax had gone missing, though Majordomo Gargamel was still present in the tower.

Half a month later, Meryl and Mary had returned to the tower. However, Bug Adept Billis, Poison Witch Endor, and Mechanical Adept Sabrina were still unaccounted for.

Seven days ago, Mary set forth for the southwest of Zhentarim. Her goal remained unclear.

Large amounts of resource imports and exports had been recorded recently. It seemed Greem’s faction was up to something big.

……

……

One by one, sentence by sentence, almost everything in the report was about the recent movements of Fire Throne’s principal characters, as well as the details of essential matters. One would gain a perfect understanding of Fire Throne from all this information!

Adept Fügen patiently waited for Keoghan to finished his report. Finally, he couldn’t help but bow and ask, ”Lady Sanazar, should we… ”

”Is there any question about this?” The sharp voice of Third Grade Adept Sanazar rang out from the purple mist, ”That brat has some real skills. To think he would dare to attempt a planar invasion just a few days after his advancement. Kehkehkeh, how bold!”

Even though he already had his suspicions, Fügen clearly wasn’t as sure as Sanazar was. He asked doubtfully, ”Milady, is he able to do that with his current power? That… we are talking about invading a plane, after all!”

”Hmph! Fügen, you are too conservative!” Sanazar couldn’t stop herself from mocking, ”If I were you, I wouldn’t be wondering if he would dare to invade a plane. Instead, I would be wondering where he obtained the planar coordinates for an invasion. Greem’s financial situation is clearly insufficient for him to buy any planar coordinates, even that of a small-sized plane from the Silver Union.”

”Could it have been provided by that girl in the north?” Adept Keoghan threw in his opinion.

Sanazar thought for a moment when she heard this. She agreed with this idea.

A fire adept that had only advanced to Second Grade for no more than a hundred days having enough money to buy world coordinates from the three major forces? This line of thought was just too ridiculous! The highest probability was that he had obtained external aid.

And with Greem’s social circle, the only one that could provide him with such aid could only be that Alice from Dragonblight.

If that was the case, then had the adepts missing from Fire Throne died in the other plane? Or were they stationed there?

Sanazar and Fügen’s consensus was that it was likely to be the former.

After all, the strength of Greem’s faction was too weak. Even at their peak, they could only call upon six to seven adepts. Moreover, most of these adepts were newly advanced adepts. There was no way they could conquer a plane with a force that small unless the opponent were a microplane with extremely limited resources.

Even if they could take on the plane, five or six adepts in a small plane were like a handful of pepper cast into a creek. They would be swept away before they could make any substantial difference. Ruling a plane was even further out of the question!

A lack of adepts made it difficult to form any effective ruling structure. Without that ruling structure, it was difficult to properly excavate the resources and wealth hidden within that other plane. Moreover, low-magic planes had extremely thin magic concentration. It was unsuitable for adept practices and cultivation. That would undoubtedly be an incredibly torturous exercise for the adepts stationed in the plane!

It was certain that Greem would be unwilling to station himself in a low-magic plane that was lacking in both resources and magic. He would never accept his power improving at a crawling pace while being forced to deal with worldly management matters!

It seemed Greem had already swallowed his first loss!

The three core adepts of the Sarubo Clan couldn’t help but sinisterly laugh when they thought of such a disaster befalling Greem.