Age of Adepts

[Beep. Advancement data has been organized. Display now?]

Greem, who had been deep in meditation, was woken up by the newest notification from the Chip.

He slowly opened his eyes.

“Display it!”

His mind flickered as a flood of data flashed by.

The speed of data transmission could not be captured by the naked eye. Fortunately, elementium adepts excelled at Spirit. Their Spirit, after strengthening, could not only change and morph freely but also had an excellent ability to help with thinking and increased brain processes.

It was the main reason that high-grade adepts had an eidetic memory and could master complex three-dimensional arrays with their minds alone.

Greem had done similar calculations before. After becoming an adept, every point increase in his Spirit was akin to connecting to another intelligence center. The higher the Spirit, the more intelligence centers that were working in tandem. Thus, the brain of an adept would get smarter and smarter, able to process those mountains of mysterious information.

One could frankly claim that the mind of every adept was already like a terrifying and intelligent computer. However, they lacked the necessary operating system, and one could only drive the brain to work with one’s own childish and crude logical instincts.

In this process, the Chip undoubtedly helped Greem a lot!

It was only with the Chip’s organization of data and resources that he could maximize the true potential of each point of Spirit.

“Chip, display my current bodily attributes!”

[Order received; data has been transmitted.]

Some light crackling rang out as a very familiar data board appeared before Greem’s mind.

[Greem.

Peak Second Grade.

Profession: Elementium Adept (Fire Specialization)

Bodily Attributes: Strength 14+1 (20) | Physique 17 (21) | Agility 11+1 (9) | Spirit 29 (30)

Note: Attributes in parentheses refer to post-transformation statistics. Profession Skills: Body of Flames, Flame Fiend Transformation…]

After all these years of accumulation and training, Greem’s Spirit had finally reached the peak of Second Grade: twenty-nine points. It couldn’t be helped. These days, the Chip had been unable to capture any signs of his Spirit improving regardless of how he meditated and trained.

It was important to note that the cooperation of the Chip and his Spirit had now allowed for capturing the smallest difference and increase in it, all the way down to five decimal points. Unfortunately, despite half a month passing by, neither meditation nor consuming potions to increase his Spirit allowed it to increase by even a little.

Even the two points of Spirit that the Fire Throne set provided him had lost their effectiveness!

Judging from this, Greem’s Spirit would forever be locked at twenty-nine points unless he found a way to advance to the next grade.

Maximum Spirit was only a fundamental condition for advancing to Third Grade. What was left was whether his magic studies had reached the required standards. On this point, Greem had absolutely no issue, especially with the help of the Chip.

“Chip, how has the analysis of the subject knowledge required for advancement gone?”

[Beep. All adept knowledge analyzed. Prepared to transmit at any time.]

“Transmit now!”

His mind flickered again as a series of magical studies with fire magic at its core started to surge into Greem’s brain in an orderly fashion. Much of this knowledge was stuff that Greem had never learned before, but with the in-depth analysis and proper organization of the Chip, all of the impurities and mistakes had been removed. It now flowed through Greem’s mind as a pure stream of data.

Though most of the knowledge was foreign, it was quickly stored in the depths of Greem’s consciousness when it flowed into his mind. It became like information that Greem had studied for dozens of years and was a part of his soul instincts.

Any adept knowledge needed countless magical experiments to prove and confirm, from beginner to expert in the subject. It required a long time for thought and accumulation. However, with the Chip, Greem skipped over much of this time-consuming work.

Every piece of knowledge transmitted into Greem’s mind was ever so familiar to him. It had already become part of his system of knowledge.

After thoroughly analyzing and mastering the High-Grade Methods of Spirit Utilization, Greem instantly understood the ridiculous mistakes he had made in the past with Spirit. He also gained an elementary understanding of how high-grade adepts rapidly use Spirit in battle.

He contrasted what he had learned with the memory of his fight with Yurga and quickly found things that resonated.

When high-grade adepts fought, they rarely expended the effort to fire spells with stable elementium models. Instead, they used large amounts of primal elementium particles to bombard the enemy. Thus, they skipped the process of elementium molding, allowing their spells and attacks to become faster and more vicious.

As for the slight bit of loss in the elementium’s might? That could entirely be made up for with faster casting. Compared to the traditional method of handsigns and chanting, battling like this gave them more flexibility and allowed them to do as they pleased.

However, manipulating unmolded elementium particles was always more complicated than handling formed spells. That was why this style of combat had been possible for high-grade adepts only. Even if the low-grade adepts wanted to do this, they would fail because of their insufficient Spirits.

Meanwhile, Elementium Conversion was a mandatory lesson for all elementium adepts!

It was only when an elementium adept had mastered elementium conversion that they could adapt to wherever they were and complete their spell systems. For example, Greem frequently used Lava Shields and Magma Fireball. These were spells that combined fire and earth magic. If Greem had no understanding of earth magic, he would not be capable of handling compound magic of this nature.

Moreover, elementium conversion was also critical knowledge for stepping out into the void of the outer realm. If Greem could not master elementium conversion, he would have trouble surviving in the strict and harsh environment of outer space.

Disregarding everything else, just the matter of not having drinking water would kill a high-grade adept!

Greem still retained a human body of blood and flesh after all. Though the need for food and water had been reduced to the minimum of a human body’s needs, it couldn’t be completely removed. Under ordinary circumstances, Greem wouldn’t be affected by fasting, even for three to five days. However, if this period were dragged out to ten days, Greem would start showing severe signs of weakness in battle.

If he didn’t have the minimum food and water intake required to sustain his flesh in a month, then he risked the actual possibility of dying of thirst and hunger!

However, as long as Greem advanced to Third Grade, this limit could be extended to over six months.

That meant Greem would only need to eat every six months to meet his biological needs.

The reason elementium conversion was so important was because of the Create Water spell that the adepts had invented.

In circumstances where they couldn’t get away from another world or ancient ruin, and where drinking water couldn’t be found, adepts could use Create Water to create elementium water for their consumption. However, elementium conversion was undoubtedly a prerequisite for learning Create Water.

Of course, the Coldflame rune that Greem had previously mastered also belonged to the subject of elementium conversion. However, Greem had only managed to use the Coldflame in the past by relying on some incomplete runes. It was like something he knew how to use but of whose principle he didn’t understand.

Now that he had mastered elementium conversion, Greem had a chance to decipher the Coldflame rune completely!

Still, both of these subjects were not as useful to Greem as the Energy System Auto-Construction Model. It was the true core knowledge that Greem needed to advance to Third Grade.

In the past, Greem had always relied on his body’s instinct when forging his body of flames. He let his flesh and fire energy remain in a very delicate energy balance. This process was done by destroying the body’s original structure and allowing fire elementium particles taken from outside to seep into his bones, tendons, flesh, and organs. He was using small, delicate fire energy fields to protect his most vulnerable human parts.

In all seriousness, Greem’s body of flames might be very powerful, but his human body was still as frail as china. A slight bit more force could cause him to shatter into pieces!

With the knowledge of the Energy System Auto-Construction Model, Greem’s body could now adjust and optimize itself based on the conditions and situation. He could now turn the multiple independent and tiny energy fields into a complete and self-consistent system of energy circulation.

This way, his human body would no longer be his weakness and flaw, but a strong foundation to his fighting power!

……

……

This advancement knowledge flowed through Greem’s mind, each part of it moving him and causing new thoughts to pop up. When combined, these subjects pointed the way to a higher grade!

However, Greem would always have walked down certain ‘wrong paths’ during his studies, growth, and development in the past. He needed to correct these mistakes before he actually advanced.

Moreover, this process was one that took a considerable amount of time!

Furthermore, the orc totem tattoos he got from Strongwoods Plane had also yielded some results. They would be of great help to his transformation tattoos.

Before he advanced, he had to confirm the newest version of his Flame Fiend Transformation tattoos.

Once he finished that, Greem could rely on the immense modification process of the advancement stage to his body and Spirit to assimilate the new tattoos, allowing him to possess a powerful combat ability the moment he stepped into Third Grade.

Moreover, the Soul Repose ability he had obtained from the orcs had also shown some decent research conclusions. It would be excellent if he could use the advancement to incorporate this ability into part of his own.

Greem was also carrying far too many magical contracts bound to his soul. Trying to step across the threshold of Third Grade was extremely difficult with so many burdens on him. Thus, after some thought, Greem gave up on the soul contracts of the Stitch Ghost Golem, Zacha, and Snorlax. He only kept the soul brands of Alice and the Spirit of Pestilence.

After this period of getting along with them, Greem was confident that he had the loyalty of Zacha and Snorlax, even without the soul contracts. Meanwhile, the Spirit of Pestilence was enough as a soul pet. The Stitch Ghost Golem would only drag down their improvement in their future.

However, now that he had nurtured the Stitch Ghost Golem into a Second Grade ghost spirit, it would be a waste to just throw it away like that. Greem intended to take advantage of the soul modification process of the advancement to peel away the Stitch Ghost Golem and forge some sort of strange magical equipment.

This way, he would be able to make full use of the Stitch Ghost Golem while also lightening the burden on his soul!