Age of Adepts

“Where is this?” Greem finally couldn’t help but ask this question.

“Sir, this is the entrance to the Winds of Freedom’s Spirit Illusion Realm. You can find any resource, information, or magical knowledge you need here.” The beautiful girl explained with a smile on her face.

“Then tell me about the basic situation of this Spirit Illusion Realm!” Greem ordered without any reservations.

He could clearly see that, despite being extremely life-like, this beautiful girl didn’t actually exist and was no more than a light-projection simulated with the use of magic. As for whether there was actually a young girl controlling this ‘body’ behind the scenes or an old adept full of wrinkles on his face, Greem had no idea whatsoever.

That was why he paid no heed to the girl’s flattering and instead turned his attention toward this fascinating Illusion Realm.

“Don’t worry, sir. All your personal information and behavior within the Spirit Illusion Realm will be securely protected. Apart from a few authorities of the organizations, no one can see any of your information.”

“You are currently at the entrance of this Spirit Illusion Realm. There are seven stone doors before you, each one leading to a different area. Door One leads to the Trading Hall. You can purchase and sell all sorts of resources and magical items there. Moreover, the resources traded in the hall will not be limited to just those from the World of Adepts.”

As the girl started her introduction, three strange stone doors suddenly appeared on the stone wall in front. They were marked with the numbers one, two, and three in the symbology of the adepts.

“Door Two leads to the Knowledge Hall. There, you will find most magical knowledge and subjects available in the World of Adepts.”

“Door Three leads to the Mission Hall. You can find suitable companions there to accompany you on explorations of mysterious and foreign worlds.”

“As you have only just joined the Winds of Freedom, you only possess the lowest level of security access. You may only visit these three areas. The other areas will only be available once you have accumulated sufficient contribution points.”

With his knowledge from Earth in his past life, Greem quickly grasped the functions and purpose of this Spirit Illusion Realm without much trouble. In fact, Greem’s illusion body started to shift under the control of his Spirit consciousness. Soon, he had managed to replicate his real appearance in the Illusion Realm.

However, for the sake of hiding his identity, he created a mask of fire and hid his face.

It was best to go to Hall One first. It might be possible to indirectly understand the strength of the Winds of Freedom through the wealth of resources there!

Greem’s spirit consciousness body crashed into Door One and instantly passed through.

There was a long, winding stone corridor behind the door, with countless stone doors along the corridor. Adepts continuously emerged from the stone doors and walked down the hall toward someplace.

Greem took a look around him and turned back to touch the stone wall. It was hard and solid, while the surface was rough and cold; it felt just like a stone wall in reality. It could be seen how terrifying the ability of the adept who created this Spirit Illusion Realm was!

“Chip, can you analyze everything here?”

[Beep. Host’s instructions cannot be completed. A complete system of planar laws protects this place. Any hostile probes will trigger the corresponding law powers.]

The power of laws!

Greem brooded for a moment and finally gave up on the idea of looking into the secrets of this place. He followed the corridor and walked into the distance.

After several hundreds of meters, he arrived at the exit.

A massive underground stone hall appeared in front of his eyes when he stepped out of the corridor. Thick stone pillars were everywhere, and several adepts could be seen close to every single pillar. These adepts had their hands against the columns and were seemingly communicating with someone or something.

The entire hall was utterly silent, and all the adepts were busy with their own business. The place was void of the usual liveliness and bustling noise of a market.

Greem hesitated for a moment before walking to a stone pillar. He pressed his hand against it, and a series of fast-moving pieces of information were projected into his mind.

Looking For: Dragon-related Healing Essence. Price will be negotiated in person.

Selling: Black Prince’s Eye. Possesses the ability to absorb spirit bodies. 2,000 magical crystals.

Selling: Undying Intelligence Potion Tablet (Fragment). 17,000 magical crystals.

Selling: Azure Blue Magical Thread.Excellent quality. 9,000 magical crystals.

Looking For: Undying Soul, Third Grade. Price will be negotiated in person.

Trading: 100 grams of Dragonscale Flower in exchange for 300 kilograms of Bloodstone.

Selling: 50 grams of Origin Ore. 1.5 million magical crystals.

……

……

Row after row and line after line of trade requests rolled through Greem’s mind. He had not even heard of the names of most of these items, let alone their functions and value.

Compared to the goblin shops that Snorlax had set up across the continent, the items and resources here were what truly suited high-grade adepts.

Greem performed a simple search and even found Essences of Fire in the list of items.

Looking For: 5 Essences of Fire. Can exchange with magical crystals or Chaos Gems.

What were chaos gems?

Greem was still confused, but the Chip had already found the related data on them.

Chaos gems were a sort of magical gem only found in outer space. They possessed a trace of chaos energy. When used on certain items, they had a percentage chance of changing the magical traits and attributes of those items. Of course, they were more likely to destroy the object instead.

They were a bizarre artifact with a very strange use!

Greem still had some Essences of Fire on hand, but he only had three of them; it wasn’t enough to fulfill the requirements of the purchase request. Moreover, those chaos gems didn’t seem to hold any purpose for Greem.

Thus, Greem quickly gave up on the trade after browsing through it.

Greem thought for a moment. Over the past few years, the Goblin Plane and Lance had been steadily providing the Crimson Clan with large amounts of resources. These two planes had already become the foundations with which the Crimson Clan rose to power. Thus, what they most lacked currently was not magical crystals, but a sort of special alloy known as Queyras Alloy.

The metal known as Queyras was currently the only magical alloy suited for constructing space furnaces and magic generator furnaces. Other magical alloys might be better than Queyras alloy in terms of physical durability or elementium resistance, but they couldn’t handle the wild corrosion of space energy.

After constructing a small magic generator furnace for Split-Off Brain Gru awhile ago, Greem only had enough Queyras alloy left on hand for a single space furnace.

That was why Greem had recently been pushing Snorlax to search and gather for all information related to Queyras alloy in the World of Adepts. Unfortunately, he found nothing at all!

Greem had always been somewhat resentful of Snorlax because of this, believing that he had not been careful and thorough enough in his work. Now, it seemed as if it wasn’t the fault of the little goblin. Instead, such Queyras alloy was a high-grade resource to begin with. It was not something that someone of Snorlax’s level could come into contact with.

Now that he had the opportunity, Greem silently started to search for all product information related to Queyras.

As expected, three trade requests instantly appeared before his eyes.

Looking For: 1000 kilograms of Queyras Alloy. Price will be negotiated in person.

Trading: 300 tons of Queyras metal ores in exchange for one Frost Origin Substance.

Trading: 3000 kilograms of Queyras Alloy for 1 Lich Phylactery.

Greem looked at the three lines of information before him, and the muscles in his face started to twitch.

The first one was the same as him– a request to purchase Queyras alloy. He could ignore that one.

The other two clearly held a Queyras ore vein in their hands, but the items they wanted to trade it for made Greem’s scalp buzz at the very sight of them.

Frost Origin Substance. Anything that had the word ‘origin’ attached to it would cost a hundred times more than any product on the market.

Origin Substances were physical manifestations of certain law powers.

Laws were undoubtedly the most potent force within planar worlds. However, this power was intangible and invisible. There was no point at which to research or study it. One could only slowly understand the laws through their personal mastery of magic.

However, in specific environments and locations, the powers of the laws could combine with certain substances in a planar world, giving birth to precious origin substances.

The second request asked for Frost Origin Substance. That had to be a mysterious substance manifested from the concentration of ice laws. Adepts who were in a rush to understand ice laws would undoubtedly improve tremendously if they were to obtain a Frost Origin Substance.

However, such Frost Origin Substances were, without a doubt, Fourth Grade items. A Third Grade adept like Greem would not have a slim chance to even come into contact with them.

Meanwhile, the lich phylactery mentioned in the third request was also a Fourth Grade artifact.

Possessing a lich phylactery was like gaining control over an obedient Fourth Grade lich. That alone was more than enough to demonstrated the worth of Queyras alloy!

Greem sighed and gave up on his plans to purchase Queyras alloy here.

It seemed he would have to look for related mine information in other planar worlds if he wanted to obtain a large amount of Queyras metal. If he possessed a Queyras mine in his hands, he would be able to instantly put the massive metal resources of the Goblin Plane to use.

It wouldn’t be until he possessed a large amount of Queyras alloy and could forge magic generator furnaces of sufficient size and number that he could bring the metallic creations on the blueprints to life. These were things like the Sky Patrol Ship, the Goblin Golem Dragon, the Dimensional Ripper, and the Thunder God Titan.

Before this, Greem could only dream of the power of these metallic creations.

After gaining a simple understanding of the Trading Hall’s functions, Greem patted his body and cut off the connection between his mental consciousness and this Spirit body.

The next second, he opened his eyes, and his consciousness had returned to the secret room in Fire Throne.

Greem closed his eyes for a moment and found nothing wrong with his condition.

The self-examination of the Chip yielded the same result.

It seemed like the Spirit Illusion Realm was a significant location for high-grade adepts to gather and interact. Meanwhile, the fact that the Winds of Freedom could put together so many high-grade adepts was evidence of its accumulated power and background.

Truly, who knew how many Fourth Grade monsters stood silently behind the Winds of Freedom?

Greem thought to himself.

Chapter Notes: Editor Ryu: If you’re enjoying Age of Adepts, now is a great time to stop by our Patreon and consider supporting this fine series! Patreon is mine and Eris’ sole form of income for working on this series, and everyone who supports us through Patreon helps ensure the continued translation and release of AoA. The AoA Patreon has contribution tiers that give you access to advance chapters of the series (fully translated and edited) up to 15 chapters ahead of the GT releases. Thanks for your readership, and we hope to have your patronage as well.

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-Ryu