Age of Adepts

As Mary’s ruby eyes turned from confusion to clarity, a laid-back and deep male voice suddenly rang out by her ear.

“The advancement succeeded? Come out and let me take a look!”

It was Greem.

Mary’s lips moved upward when she heard this familiar voice, revealing a strange, unpredictable smile.

The next second, blood energy surged out of her body, quickly forming fine leather armor on her torso, along with a fancy fauld and a pair of red boots. Simple material modification like this was an easy trick after advancing to Third Grade. Apart from magical items and some special metallic substances, Mary could manifest any ordinary item through her blood energy.

Such a high-grade elementium conversion technique was the unique ability of high-grade adepts. Compared to alchemical material modification, items created through alchemy had a more stable basic structure and were identical to the original material. Meanwhile, the basic items created through energy possessed the shape but lacked the same stability of the structure.

Armor like this would disintegrate and turn back to blood energy within an hour if it left Mary’s body.

Inside Greem’s room.

Mary strode out with her back straightened, her face full of pride and unconcealable giddiness.

Greem shut the thick magic tome in his hands and narrowed his eyes to assess Mary. Finally, he let out a sigh of relief, “Third Grade. You are finally Third Grade!”

It had been seven years, and Greem’s appearance had not changed at all. He still looked as handsome and vigorous, as dashing and charming. However, with the passage of time, a trace of composure and elegance had faintly appeared on his young and lively face. There was also a sort of dominance and majesty unique to those who had held power for extended periods.

Mary appeared to be somewhat dissatisfied with Greem’s reaction. She raised an eyebrow as a hint of anger appeared on her delicate and seductive face.

“What is it? Were you worried I couldn’t make it past this threshold?” Mary grit her teeth, as if she were about to eat someone.

“A little bit!” Greem smiled casually and replied honestly, “In all honesty, information related to the advancement of vampires is far too rare. Even I cannot guarantee that all the preparations I made would have worked or been useful. That’s why…”

“That’s why…you are doubtful of my current power, isn’t it?” Mary gradually raised her voice, a trace of danger glowing in her eyes.

“It’s not that I doubt your power; I’m just worried that the insufficient preparations might affect your future potential of development.” Greem wasn’t an idiot either. He immediately changed his tune when he saw Mary on the brink of breaking into a frenzy, like a female jaguar ready to pounce at any time.

Sadly, he still underestimated how competitive and prideful Mary was!

Mary let out a shriek and lunged forward. She grabbed Greem by the collar and dragged him outward.

“You doubt my power? Let’s go and duke it out in the practice room now.”

Greem laughed. He suddenly reached an arm around Mary’s waist and whispered into her ear, “No need to go to the practice room if you want to fight. Come along with me!”

Flames burst out around them, and the two of them vanished from the spot.

When they once again appeared, they were on a towering cliff somewhere in the Black Forest.

The cliff was utterly flat, covered in green mosses and vines.

If one were to look around, they would see a sea of trees waving in the wind, green until the edge of vision. It was the vast Black Forest that covered the entire land. Some unidentifiable yellow and green birds quickly flew across the canopy, extending their necks and letting out sharp, drawn-out cries.

A trace of calm peace was contained within this breathtakingly pretty view!

Mary might not have possessed as large a Spirit as Greem to capture every movement around her perfectly, but her Third Grade senses still allowed her to tell if there were any powerful magical creatures in the vicinity.

“Where is this?” Mary lifted her head and gazed into the distance, looking at the bright red sun that was sinking into the horizon at the edge of the sea of trees.

“Fire Throne is one hundred and fifteen kilometers east of here.” Greem smiled and said, “I call this place, Greencliff!”

“The geography of this place is far too excellent. There is no way there are no magical creatures here!”

“There used to be a wind eagle’s nest here, but I caught all the birds and brought them back to the tower.”

“Any creature that could build a nest here is probably no small fry! Second Grade or Third Grade?”

“Third Grade.”

Mary turned back and gave him a seductive smile.

“It seems you’ve improved fast over these past few years! To think you can even take down a Third Grade magical creature so easily now.”

Greem shook his head with a bitter smile, “Why do I not feel happy at all when I hear your compliments? You don’t actually intend to fight, do you?”

“Of course, we are fighting! We must fight!” Mary ground her teeth lightly, “I said this a long time ago. If you can beat me, I’ll listen to you. Otherwise…”

Greem opened his mouth to argue, but an extremely dangerous feeling engulfed his body.

It wasn’t lethal, but he would not enjoy it if he didn’t dodge now!

Without any hesitation, Greem’s body abruptly erupted, vanishing from the spot in a burst of flames.

A crimson and slender hand slashed through the fire, leaving a trail of crimson marks.

Fire flashed in the air two hundred meters away as Greem reformed his body with fire elementium. However, his expression froze the moment he appeared. He lifted his left sleeve and found three deep cuts on his forearm.

Blood flowed from the wounds, dripping across his entire arm.

What a fast attack.

Greem frowned. He had never expected to be wounded by Mary with how fast he had dodged out of the way.

Flames flickered on his arm as pure fire energy surged into the wounds from his powerful Flame Fiend’s heart. A series of crackling sounds could be heard as the flames washed away the blood energy clinging to his injury. The cuts slowly started to heal.

Mary hovered above the cliff, licking the blood on her claws as she showed Greem a seductive smile.

“How about that now? You won’t underestimate me any longer, will you? If you don’t be careful, you will have to suffer a lot more from now on.”

Greem let out a chuckle and finally regarded this ‘duel’ seriously!

Flames surged as the Burning Crown, Fire Emblem, Fearless, Ash, Fire Dragon’s Breath, and that armor of lava–powerful magical equipment of unique designs and tremendous energy–strated to appear on his body.

However, Mary’s outline flickered before Greem could complete his preparations, vanishing into the air like a crimson shadow.

Her silhouette had not actually vanished. Her speed was so fast that the dynamic vision of most adepts was insufficient to capture her movement. Even though adepts had spiritual senses, the disruption of Mary’s strange phantom clones would cause an opponent to pick up on a dozen life signs around them, all of them belonging to Mary.

Moreover, their spiritual senses were not enough for them to distinguish the real Mary from the dozen clones!

However, Greem was no ordinary adept!

Red dots had replaced Mary’s one dozen phantoms in his mind with the help of the Chip’s all-encompassing dynamic senses. Moreover, even though the intensity of these red dots were similar, there were slight differences between each of them.

Other adepts might have difficulty recognizing this difference in an instant, and Greem couldn’t do so as well, but the Chip could!

In his mind, the Chip had constructed a sense-space with the combination of his Burning Domain. It then connected the red dots, assembling a strange and unpredictable pattern of movement. The final target in the chain of dots was…

Greem let out a roar and turned around abruptly. He pushed forward with both his hands and an Inferno Shield instantly formed and pushed outward.

Boom! A muffled explosion rang out.

A white and slender female hand pierced through the Inferno Shield and grabbed at Greem’s right waist.

Without this shield that happened to stand in Mary’s path of attack, Greem would only have realized she had gotten closer after he was injured. However, with the jet engines on his armor, Greem was able to dodge Mary’s crimson slash by a hair.

Moreover, the Inferno Shield he had pushed forward crashed into Mary’s body, giving her a small punishment for attacking him.

One had to admit that Mary’s speed had experienced a breakthrough after advancing to Third Grade.

Despite missing, she still had time to pull her right hand back, slashing the shield to pieces and vanishing from the spot before the flames could erupt.

The ‘trap’ that Greem had so painstakingly designed for her had not managed to hurt her at all!

“Chip, what’s going on? Why was there a mistake?” Greem silently communicated with the Chip as he quickly moved across the canopy.

[Beep. Error in basic attribute collection. The earlier attack was designed based on Mary’s attributes in the past. It is different from target creature’s current attributes.]

“Immediately gather target creature’s basic attributes and fix all mistakes! ”

[Beep. Gathering target’s basic attribute sample. Estimated time required: twenty-seven seconds.]

Twenty-seven seconds? It wasn’t exactly a long time, but it wasn’t short either. It would be a painful twenty-seven seconds against an ultra-fast adept.

Greem let out a roar. The Burning Domain shot out of his body and engulfed the surrounding area. Lava Shields and Inferno Shields appeared, orbiting his body rapidly.

A slashing sound could be heard as a crimson form charged into the Burning Domain, piercing through five Inferno Shields before quickly disappearing from the Burning Domain and vanishing into the slowly dimming sky.

Her speed was way too fast. Greem might have captured her path of movement, but the two Vicious Fireballs he fired had been easily dodged. The Fire Dragon’s breath that Greem spat out chased after Mary, extending all the way out of the Burning Domain.

Apart from shattering a bunch of afterimages, the breath couldn’t even reach her sleeves.

However, Mary wasn’t completely unharmed either.

Greem’s Burning Domain had now reached two hundred points of fire damage. Mary would not be able to avoid the damage as long as she was in the red barrier. Domain-type fire damage like this could not be avoided with high speed.