Age of Adepts

The World of Adepts. Zhentarim, Ailovis.

The adept war between the Fabres Clan and the Crimson Clan was still going on.

As one side was a large clan and the other was only a medium clan that had just reached its current scale recently, the balance of power was extremely imbalanced. It resulted in the war breaking out within the territory of the Crimson Clan from the very start.

The rapidly developing Crimson Clan had owned over eighty percent of the lands in the Ailovis Region at the start of the war. However, as the war progressed, the Crimson Clan gradually lost all their outer territories and resource sites. The clan’s military force had retreated to the center to defend the roots of the clan, consisting of Fire Throne and Pinecone City.

It could be said that the Crimson Clan had utterly lost!

According to the usual rules of adept wars, the Fabres Clan could stop the war now. They could send out representatives to the Crimson Clan to discuss the matter of reparations and territory division. Though the Fabres Clan couldn’t possibly obtain all of the Crimson Clan territories and resource sites, they should have no problem taking sixty percent of all their assets as reparations.

Yet, strangely enough, even though the Crimson Clan had been forced back to their small land of origin, the Fabres Clan appeared to have no intention of stopping its advance. The adepts, apprentices, and worldly soldiers of both parties were fighting a difficult battle near Pinecone City. Blood flowed through the lands and the streets. Three cities belonging directly to the Crimson Clan had already been destroyed, each one of them hosting a population of thirty to fifty thousand people.

Meanwhile, the Zhentarim Association, which had always been very active in their enforcement of regulations, were oddly silent in the face of these actions, despite the fact that they were severely violating the standard code of conduct for adept wars. It seemed like they were tacitly allowing the Fabres Clan to do this.

The only reason this situation had occurred was due to the Fourth Grade adept standing behind the Fabres Clan.

No one would dare to criticize the actions of a Fourth Grade adept.

After all, on this strange land that was the Continent of Adepts, Fourth Grade represented absolute strength!

No adept or organization was willing to stand in opposition to another Fourth Grade adept. Unless there were grudges that could not be resolved, fights between Fourth Grade adepts rarely happened. That was because all other adepts were far too weak when compared to Fourth Grade adepts.

If two Fourth Grade adepts were to clash, they would have a tough time killing each other. However, destroying that which their opponent treasured and the clan that they had established could not be any easier.

It was this concern that kept the Fourth Grade adepts in check.

No one was willing to offend a well-established Fourth Grade body-refining adept for a newly risen clan with no background and no support. As such, the many clans and organizations merely watched as the war raged on in Ailovis. No one intervened or interfered.

In fact, many small and medium-sized clans tried their best to win the favor of the Fabres Clan. They were willing to support them with resources and even volunteered to fight on the frontlines. Thus, faced with the overwhelming swarm of enemies, the Crimson adepts had no choice but to retreat yet again, finally stabilizing the battle line one hundred and twenty kilometers south of Pinecone City.

The reason the front halted there wasn’t because of the might of the Crimson adepts, but because of the Fourth Grade magical golem dragon.

With the Fourth Grade magical golem dragon as the core military force, paired with a hundred goblin chariots, three Motherships, and thousands of magical machines, the Crimson Clan was consuming a shocking number of magical crystals daily to maintain such a massive army of magical machines.

If it weren’t for the magic generator furnaces that solved the energy supply problem for the larger machines, the cost of the magical crystals alone would be enough to bankrupt the Crimson Clan!

Even so, the goblin chariots and magical machines still required a tremendous supply of magical energy. With the clan’s land of origin right behind them, they could be active within a range of a hundred and twenty kilometers with every charge.

If they exceeded this radius, the enemy could cut off the energy supply line.

That would cause the last military force of the Crimson Clan to face the possibility of utter collapse and defeat. Of course, the overwhelming forces of the Fabres Clan weren’t happy to be stopped by the ‘tiny’ Crimson Clan. They frequently sent adepts to breach the battle line and get near Pinecone City. They spread poison, destroyed amenities and war machines, and slaughtered the citizens of the Crimson Clan. They committed all sorts of destructive acts, inflicting significant personnel and resource damage to the Crimson Clan.

The Crimson Clan wasn’t willing to sit by and wait until their eventual death either. With Pinecone City as a secure and stable backline, they could give their all in the fight against the Fabres Clan.

If the enemy adepts dared sneak into their territory to ambush, slaughter, and destroy, then the Crimson Clan was more than willing to lie in wait, slowly exhausting and wearing down the number of Fabres adepts. In particular, Bug Adept Billis, Mystique Emelia, Dragon Adept Meryl, and Mary’s vampires stood out with their performances.

Over the past year of bloody adept battles, the mostly unknown Meryl had successfully advanced to Second Grade. She had now become a powerful bloodline adept who could transform into a Second Grade fire dragon. If it weren’t for the time limit on her transformation, Meryl could probably instantly rise above the other veteran Second Grades of the clan to become the strongest individual among the Second Grade adepts.

She was also the only Second Grade in the Crimson Clan who had confidence in fighting her way back to the clan if she ran into an enemy Third Grade adept.

Meanwhile, Emelia had also advanced to Second Grade during the war.

Her current form was also tremendously different from before.

After completely fusing with the soul of Yara the spore princess, Emelia possessed the soul origin of a human adept and the magical spores. From the waist up, Emelia still retained the appearance of a human girl. Her lower body had transformed entirely into that of the magical spores, which resembled the appendages of an octopus.

The reason she was known as Mystique was because of her ability to access her magical plant state freely. It allowed her to transform into a humanoid, magical plant that could walk on two feet.

It was almost as if she had Stealth and Visual Avoidance activated as long as she was in a region covered in green vegetation. Moreover, her innate ability, Magical Spore Infestation, allowed her to control all lifeforms infected with magical spores.

The adepts fighting against often found themselves in a horrifying situation where parts of their bodies were beyond their control.

Compared to the two new rising stars of the clan, Bug Adept Billis was still as powerful and evil as ever before!

The Fabres Clan’s bounty list had Billis listed even higher than Third Grade Bloody Queen Mary. His was the highest bounty, and he was the Crimson adept that the Fabres wanted dead above all others.

Over twenty Fabres adepts had died at Billis’ hands since the start of the war. Although most of these were only First Grade adepts, it was still an unbearable wound inflicted on the Fabres Clan.

The Fabres Clan had racked their brains to kill this bug adept.

Unfortunately, with his insect clones, Billis was too difficult to kill.

Billis would hide whenever he ran into adepts of the same grade or higher. He refused to face an opponent of the same level in frontal conflict. However, he would turn into a savage and unrelenting beast when he ran into low-grade adepts out on missions.

Truly, not a single blade of grass grew where Bug Adept Billis traveled!

Adepts were killed, and all their blood essence drained for his nourishment!

Apprentices were killed and left to the insect generals for food!

Ordinary soldiers were killed and turned into flesh embryos for his insect army!

For a bug adept like himself, who could only evolve through slaughter, the war was to him what water was to a fish. It immediately incited all the excitement within his being. Other adepts might need to return to base for replenishment and rest after their battles had concluded. However, Billis would weave between various battlefields day and night, looking for every single opportunity to attack the enemy.

Billis would flee with every bit of his power when he ran into adepts who were tasked with hunting him, unhesitating even if he had to abandon tens of thousands of insects to survive. The enemy’s flesh was his hatchery, and the enemy’s life was the source of his energy. He was a slaughter machine who never knew fatigue! If he wasn’t committing carnage on the battlefield, he was hurrying towards another battlefield to continue his slaughter!

Even the Fabres Clan had a difficult time against such a savage and cunning enemy.

The Fabres Clan even sent out Third Grade adepts to participate in the hunt for him. Unfortunately, he simply shed his tail, abandoning half his insect army and all his magical mantises to escape.

However, just two weeks later, Bug Adept Billis once again returned to the battlefield by subsisting on the flesh and life of Fabres adepts. There were no signs of weakness and damage from when he last escaped from the Fabres adepts.

The Fabres Clan once again increased the bounty of Billis’ head because of this incident, causing his prize to rise above Mary’s to become the number one on the bounty list.

Apart from these core Second Grades, the vampire adepts also performed excellently.

Their ability to transform into bats improved their mobility. It allowed them to avoid pursuit, while their ability to drink blood allowed them to recover from their exhaustion with the enemy’s blood. They also possessed incomparable stealth. All of these factors combined allowed the vampire adepts to become efficient and enduring assassins on the battlefield.

They traveled through the battlefield, instantly calling upon their allies when they discovered viable targets. A great number of vampires beyond the enemy’s number of adepts would quickly gather, allowing them to launch a frontal assault.

They might usually seem cowardly and cautious, but they were more ferocious and reckless than human warriors when they charged onto the battlefield. Fearless about wounds they would sustain, daring to trade injury for injury; all of these things were what made the vampire adepts so scary.

If their elementium power weren’t so weak, and their attacks insufficiently powerful, they would probably be as lethal as a single Second Grade adept.

At the very least, the vampires managed to execute over a dozen enemy adepts during this war, more than Second Grade Zacha and Tigule.

It couldn’t be helped. After all, Zacha and Tigule only excelled at large-scale battlefields.