Age of Adepts

Greem hadn’t seen her for a few months, yet Emelia had become even more beautiful again.

In contrast to Mary’s hot spiciness and Alice’s mysteriousness, Emelia had a phantasmal and ethereal lightness to her.

From her appearance, Emelia looked just like a young girl of fourteen or fifteen. She had a head of long, soft green hair and a seductively wicked and unruly smile could always be seen on her delicate face. She wore a long green robe woven of vines and plants that dragged against the ground as she walked, and she had a pretty crown of flowers on her head. Her dress had no sleeves, fully showing her long and slender fingers, the nails painted with the green juices of touch-me-nots, pretty and flirtatious.

With the maturity of age, Emelia was no longer as naughty as she had been when she was a kid. She was quiet and polite, greeting Greem respectfully the moment she entered the door, before silently standing at Gargamel’s side without another word.

This action seemed to be incongruent with her past personality!

When the pretty Emelia stood side by side with the old and balding Gargamel, it was hard to believe they were father and daughter. The contrast in appearance was too stark.

Greem narrowed his eyes. The Chip had been quietly scanning and probing for Emelia’s bodily attributes ever since she entered the room. With the different of two grade levels, the nature barrier surrounding Emelia could not stop the Chip’s scan waves. The information Greem was getting back caused him to frown.

[Beep. Target creature currently being scanned.

[Name: Emelia

Species: Unknown

Lifeform Grade: Peak First Grade

Profession: Nature Adept

Bodily Attributes: Strength 6 | Physique 9 | Agility 7 | Spirit 19

[……]

A series of scanned data gathered together, forming the model of a young and pretty nature adept in Greem’s mind. However, when the model scans reached Emelia’s legs, they immediately became a series of scattered and unorganized numbers, as if there was some strange thing there that could obstruct the Chip’s scans.

Greem smiled gently.

“Emelia, I heard your father say that recently you ran into some trouble?”

Emelia stood forward and glanced at Gargamel unamusedly before saying, “It is no big problem. It is just a slight issue that has come up during my body assimilation. I can resolve it myself!”

Greem’s smile turned even gentler.

“Could you let me see?”

Emelia let out a bitter and helpless smile. She knew she couldn’t refuse the request of this clan leader. She lightly lifted up her green robe. Unexpectedly, what appeared before Greem wasn’t a pair of pretty legs, but a mess of tentacle-like roots entangled together.

The roots weren’t very thick, but many fine whiskers coiled and intertwined with each other in a complex manner.

They were bound together, twisted into one another, all while thrumming and beating as if they were the appendages of a horrifying hundred-limbed squid. What astonished Greem more was the fact that the skin of these roots appeared to be semi-translucent. He could very clearly see the green-white juices flowing within.

Moreover, as the roots squirmed and extended, spots of nature’s light orbited around the roots. If one were to ignore their appearances, then they were as pretty and moving as a fantasy garden.

This plant mutation started from the calf down. The upper thigh was still the plump white leg of a human girl, but from the knee onward, the leg turned into a hundred strange plant roots entangled together. However, these roots were clearly under Emelia’s control as well. They did not affect her daily life or mobility.

“Were there such symptoms as well while Eva was growing?” Greem turned and asked Gargamel.

Gargamel shook his head and sighed, frowns on his wrinkled face. It was clear that he was anxious about the condition of Emelia’s body.

After all, this change toward plant-like features had started quite a while ago.

However, initially, only Emelia’s feet had been affected. While Gargamel and Eva were anxiously flipping through books searching for the cause, the plantification process had extended to her knees.

Now, some thick green veins had also started appearing on Emelia’s white legs.

It was evident that this was symptomatic of the change that was about to occur. If they didn’t find a way to halt this plantification process, it was obvious that Emelia would turn completely inhuman in one year’s time.

Though the World of Adepts did not reject non-human adepts, these non-human adepts would never be able to truly assimilate into the ranks of mainstream adepts, who were mostly human. That would cause them to have a much more difficult time obtaining knowledge and resources in the future compared to human adepts.

Since even Eva felt like Emelia’s condition was strange, it fully meant that the little girl’s growth had gone beyond the control and comprehension of the two of them. Otherwise, with how much they doted on Emelia, they would not have needed to come to Greem for help.

However, compared to Gargamel’s worry and panic, Emelia herself appeared to be reasonably calm.

Thus, Greem had no choice but to expel Gargamel from the room before having an honest talk with Emelia.

Once Gargamel had left with some hesitation, Greem stared at Emelia coldly as a mysterious but sinister smile appeared on his face.

“Gargamel is my subordinate and Eva has worked for the Crimson Clan for so many years. As the clan leader, I have an obligation to protect their interests. Are you Emelia, or are you something else entirely? Tell me, honestly. Otherwise…”

As he said this, a light red Burning Domain engulfed ‘Emelia,’ a shroud of fire circling two meters around her. The flames surged and licked at her as if they were about to devour her at any moment.

With Emelia’s powers as a First Grade, the Burning Domain only needed to close in to turn her into ash within three seconds.

“I am Emelia…” This green-haired, purple-eyed girl stared directly into Greem’s eyes and said in a sincere voice.

“Then let down your soul defenses and let me personally confirm it!”

“…and Yara’s soul fused together!”

“……”

“Please believe me. I am the daughter of Gargamel and Eva! Only…only I have fused with a foreign soul.”

“Fused…” Greem repeated, his eyes narrowing even further.

“Yes, fused; not devoured!” Emelia emphasized once more.

“Open up your soul. I have to check it myself!”

Emelia knew that this was something that had to be done. As such, she had no choice but to release her defense and allow Greem’s slightly searing spiritual appendages to extend into her mental sea.

It was just like a red-hot iron rod had been stuck into her mind and twisted about. Emelia’s body convulsed and her eyes rolled back into her head, tortured to the brink of death. However, she had no choice but to endure this agony and allow Greem to slowly search for what he wanted.

The pain of this process was not something that an ordinary person could endure!

That was why most spells that searched for and extracted knowledge would leave behind severe and irreversible mental damage in the victim. Even if the spell were to succeed, the victim would be driven to insanity or death!

Fortunately, Emelia was an adept. Her Spirit had undergone dozens of years of training and was a hundred times stronger than an ordinary person’s. In addition, Greem was as careful and gentle as he could be. These were the only factors stopping her from turning into an idiot.

When Greem’s Spirit slowly retreated from Emelia’s mental consciousness, she was drenched in sweat and twitching on the floor.

“No…now…you be…believe me, don’t you!” Even though it was only a simple sentence, Emelia stuttered and paused, her voice weak and powerless.

Her body had curled into a ball now as she lay on the floor, the hundreds of strange roots twisting about each other.

Greem brooded in silence.

The girl was not wrong. There used to be two independent souls existing in this body. However, the two souls had now fused perfectly, incapable of distinguishing between one or the other.

Once again, it was a fusion, not a devouring!

According to what she had said, one of the souls should be the mixed-blood descendant of Gargamel and Eva known as Emelia, while the other was a foreign soul known as Yara. If Yara’s soul had devoured Emelia, Greem would have killed her without any hesitation or mercy.

However, now that their souls had fused, Emelia was Yara and Yara was Emelia. There was no longer any distinction between the two. It was a difficult problem to deal with!

While Greem was investigating the girl’s soul, it was havoc outside his room. It seemed someone was wildly attacking the door to his chamber, loudly banging at his door protected by defensive arrays.

Greem hesitated for a moment and finally released the defensive restrictions on the door.

A loud bang rang out as the doors swung wide open. Eva charged in from the outside, disheveled and covered in blood.

That was probably the damage inflicted on her from the autonomous retaliation of the defensive restrictions.

If it wasn’t for Greem discovering her actions ahead of time and cutting off the retaliatory attacks, her wounds might have been even more severe.

The room of a Third Grade adept was not so easily broken into!

Forest Spirit Eva saw the twitching Emelia the moment she entered the room. She lunged forward and took her daughter into her arms while screaming furiously at Greem.

“What have you done to her? If anything happens to my daughter, I will put my life on the line against you.”

Gargamel rushed into the room covered in bruises, pulling at Eva’s arm with all he had.

“Don’t be impulsive. I’m the one…that asked for our lord’s help in today’s matter.”

A stifled slap rang out as a green vine smacked Gargamel away, leaving him rolling across the ground and moaning as he struggled to get up.

“If…if anything happens to our daughter, I…you, both of us don’t need to live any longer.”

Greem sat casually on his chair, silently watching as this family comedy unfolded.

In the end, the one that stopped Eva was Emelia.

Once Gargamel and his family left the room in a mess, Greem couldn’t help but narrow his eyes and mutter to himself, “Spore princess? Interesting…”