Age of Adepts

The battle erupted just as expected!

Naturally, the first ones to fire were the long-ranged units of both parties.

Both sides of the conflict proceeded like it was one of the ancient noble battles, pouring their firepower at the enemy from a distance of a hundred and fifty meters. The adepts undoubtedly held over ninety percent of the upper hand in this regard.

The violent metal bullets and the elven arrows flashing with magical lights flew past each other in the center of the battlefield, scratching and slicing. Still, most of the projectiles found their way to the enemy frontlines.

On the side of the elves, the seven towering treant warriors shambled forward. They waved their hands woven together with tens of thousands of vines, brambles, and branches and stood shoulder to shoulder in front of the frail elves.

The dense storm of metal bullets crashed against their withered and skinny wooden bodies, sending splinters flying everywhere and sap splashing here and there. Even so, the treant warriors simply grunted in pain while keeping their body upright to block even more of the metal bullets.

The elven archers hiding behind the treant warriors returned fire with all they had, even as they dodged the bullets that slipped by. The arrows of fury screeched through the air and sped toward the continuously advancing magical machine army.

The druids at the back of the formation raised their oaken staffs high and loudly sang praises to the great spirits of nature. As they waved their hands, green halos of Rejuvenation, Heal, and Nature’s Recovery covered the bodies of the treant warriors.

This place was, after all, the paradise of nature creatures– the Great Fantasy Forest!

Under the influence of the druids, surges of green nature power visible to the naked eye seeped out of the surrounding woods and greenery. These surges of natural energy then gathered around the bodies of the treant warriors, healing and consoling their badly wounded bodies.

A Druid Master of the Talon in an eagle helm raised his staff and used his mighty spellcasting power to apply a layer of Bramblethorn Armor upon the seven treant warriors. It was a defensive nature spell; not only could it increase the treant’s defenses, but it could also reflect some melee damage.

Meanwhile, the other Druid Master of the Claw in a wolf helm cast a layer of Barkskin on the treants. That caused the nature power that had gathered around the treants to turn into tough bark that covered their bodies and helped block some of the damage for them.

It was through such help and support that this seemingly insignificant troop of elves were able to endure the furious barrage of forty Archers. No signs of the expected crumbling had surfaced.

In fact, it was the adepts who were suffering obvious losses!

Ten defensive magical machines with swords in one hand and shields in the other stood at the very front of the battle. They raised their alloy shields and blocked the magical arrows flying toward them. Indeed, they weren’t dealing with ordinary arrows, but enchanted bolts that had been imbued with magical energy.

These arrows were either enchanted with sharpening or piercing effects. However, the majority of them were still explosive arrows that burst upon impact.

These hundred or so elven archers put on full display their powers: Double Shot, Triple Shot, Penta Shot, Raging Storm. They put all those fancy archery techniques to use. When paired together with those powerful enchanted arrows, it placed unprecedented pressure on the magical machine army.

To cut costs and increase the speed of their production, only the core and critical parts of these low-grade magical machines were built with high-strength alloy materials. The rest of the body was only made with ordinary magical metal that had been refined. These defenses were more than enough against most physical and magical defenses that they usually encountered.

However, when faced with such a dense storm of enchanted arrows fired with such power, they were no longer as impenetrable as before!

In particular, the arrows shot out from the hands of the high-grade elven archers and the elven deadshot were especially deadly. Not only were they exceedingly powerful, every one of their shots was accurate and came flying in at sharp angles. Even though the Archers had already tried their best to cover the weak spots on their bodies, the enchanted arrows still managed to accurately pierce through the mess of metal limbs and embed themselves within the joints of the magical machines, despite having traveled hundreds of meters.

Boom!

A thick metal arm flew into the sky with the explosion of an arrow.

All the witches couldn’t help but frown at the sight of that miraculous archery. They, somewhat unknowingly, put even more of a distance between themselves and that elven deadshot.

That Second Grade elven deadshot was practically a god on this battlefield now!

She commanded over a hundred elven archers to bombard the magical machine army with explosive arrows continuously. The shells of some magical machines would eventually crack under the shockwave of magical energy from the waves of exploding magical fires.

That would be the moment for her to strike!

She stood high up in the tree hall, two hundred meters away, and used parabolic shots to have her arrows nail the magical machines where a crack had appeared. Through such a method, she had forcefully dealt with six magical machines in a short period of two to three minutes.

Such combat results undoubtedly turned the eyes of everyone present!

As Greem’s heart silently ached over these losses, the Fate Witches that were clustered behind the magical machines stood forth.

With the predictive commands of Alice that almost seemed to be guided by a god, the Fate Witches used instant-cast magic wands to either intercept the arrows or shield the magical machines. They became able to block the attacks of that elven deadshot constantly.

After all, the magical machines were built entirely from metal on the outside; they weren’t made of paper. As long as the Fate Witches could find a way to prematurely set off the enchanted arrows or intercept them to make them miss the magical machines’ cracks, then they wouldn’t be able to deal such severe damage.

In doing so, the Fate Witches successfully stopped the elven deadshot from further expanding her combat results.

Now that these witches had chosen to follow after Alice and advance to become Fate Witches, their own casting ability naturally devolved to some degree. Though this gave them potent prediction and anticipation abilities, it also meant that the Fate Witches’ combat abilities were the weakest among all the witch branches.

That was why Greem led Dragonborn Zacha down from the skies upon seeing their magical machines being incapable of wrecking the treant frontlines. As he descended from above, he quickly started preparing a large scale fire spell.

One had to say that even though the battlefield was complete chaos, with powerhouses of every race gathered, a fire adept was still unquestionably the most dominant individual on the field!

It had only been less than three minutes of spell preparation, yet a massive Meteor Shower had rapidly formed above the heads of the elves.

The fiery red clouds quickly gathered in the skies above, rolling and quaking without stop. Several large lava bubbles faded in and out of sight within the clouds. As the fire elementium gathered, the flames within the clouds started to become increasingly restless and frantic.

The entire world turned dark red under the illumination of the odd and sinister crimson light. The heat waves singed and scalded the people below.

”Dammit. This is the enemy adept’s large-scale offensive spell. We can’t let the flame clusters within fall on us. Quick; all druids attack with me.”

All the First Grade druids raised their staffs under the command of that eagle-helmed druid master. They threw the nature spells in their hands that they had carefully prepared at the turbulent cloud of fire.

The Meteor Shower that had already brewed to its peak was disrupted by the spells of the druids at the very last moment.

Bang!

A loud boom that seemed to split the heavens and earth rang out. The violent cloud of flames was finally incapable of maintaining its form and utterly exploded!

The next second, a terrifyingly massive and immense flame shockwave ravaged in every direction.

This flame shockwave was so vast that it almost engulfed both the elves and adepts within it.

The two adolescent unicorns at the side of the elves stood upon their hind legs, and the spiral horns on their heads let out a blinding white light. They had worked together and erected a Natural Ward in this moment of crisis, protecting the frail ordinary elves among their ranks.

The violent fire elementium that had gone out of control also had the entirety of the druids’ powers mixed within. Thus, the surging energy and the ferocity of the elementium also laid incredible pressure on the two adolescent unicorns.

Pure white hair started to rapidly wither and fall off the unicorns’ bodies at a visible rate. Large burn marks began to appear on their alabaster skin. However, while the wounds generated quickly, they were healed just as fast.

As waves of purification halos washed across their bodies, these wounds started to vanish at a rate visible to the naked eye.

However, at the edge of the Natural Ward, five elven archers were caught in the fire. Sparks of flame ignited upon their bodies, clothes, and hair, quickly spreading across the rest of their bodies. It didn’t matter how they beat the flames or cried; the magical flames couldn’t be extinguished.

They rapidly burned to ashes within a matter of seconds.

Fortunately, with the combined efforts of the treant warriors and the two unicorns, the majority of the elves were finally able to survive the explosion of fire.

The same burst of fire didn’t cause nearly as much trouble on the side of the adepts as it did for the elves.

The magical machines on the frontline didn’t require any special protection from the adepts. As such, the adepts only needed to erect a layer of elementium protection for themselves so they could all last through this riot of burning. The only reason the elves were having such a hard time was that they had far too many ordinary elves in their ranks that couldn’t protect themselves.

The exhaustion of power from erecting a hundred-meter-wide Natural Ward was utterly different from a two-meter Natural Ward. Otherwise, it didn’t matter how weak the two adolescent unicorns were; they wouldn’t have been so troubled by an ’ordinary’ Second Grade spell.

The eyes of all the adepts gleamed at this sight.

The weak, ordinary elves seemed to be a soft spot of the enemy. Targeting their attacks at these elves would impose substantial pressure on the enemy forces.

The very next instant, almost all the witches started chanting large-scale spells at the same time. Moreover, they positioned the center of their attacks right upon the group of weak elven archers and ordinary bowmen.

The faces of the leaders among the elves instantly flushed white!

These damned adepts…