Age of Adepts

“Die! ”

Scarface Gallow let out an earthshaking roar and sprinted forward with rumbling steps. Black light gathered on his magical sword but remained inert, seemingly waiting to execute Greem in a single strike.

Greem’s blazing body quickly flickered and moved about swiftly, trying its best to break free of Gallow’s Spiritual focus. He could sense a cold chill swimming around on the surface of his body. That should be the spiritual power that his opponent was projecting onto him with his dull eyes.

If Greem’s body were to stall for even a single instant, Gallow would be able to lock onto his specific position, and a terrifying strike would follow after!

Given Gallow’s thirty-nine points of Strength and that strange energy that he had been charging up, Greem had no confidence in escaping unscathed from this attack. He quickly dodged and wove about, not giving his opponent a single opportunity to lock onto his person. Fire energy gathered in his eyes as he moved, turning into two crimson beams that shot towards Gallow.

Scarface Gallow gritted his teeth and endured these two beams so as not to be thrown off of Greem’s trail.

When the Scalding Rays swept onto Gallow’s body, they sliced apart his leather armor and revealed the dark-purple skin beneath. Two trails of smoking burns were left on Gallow’s flesh, where the beams had swept past.

Unfortunately, this was the limit of damage that the Scalding Rays could inflict on Gallow’s body with their six hundred points of power. Breaking through the magic resistance of his defensive forcefield and injuring his organs was impossible without an attack of at least a thousand points.

Unless Greem could bring the magical golem dragon along with him and blast Gallow with one of its cannons, the best he could do was scratch and annoy Gallow slightly.

While Gallow chased after Greem, the elementium magical machine was striding towards the battlefield. The cannon it held on its shoulder was still firing without stop. Unfortunately, the cannon shots could barely wound the opponent. It was still a little difficult for them to truly injure Gallow.

The pointless pursuit finally wore out the last of Gallow’s patience.

The magical sword that had been lying in poise could not remain in this charging state forever. After chasing vainly for an entire kilometer, Gallow let out a ferocious roar. The magical sword in his hand arced forward into the air faster than the eye could see, unleashing an invisible sword aura.

The so-called sword aura was simply air that had been extremely compressed by berserk strength. Some strange energy of unknown attribute had also been mixed into the air, turning it into the peculiar attack that terrified even Greem– the force threads.

Greem let out a cry at the sight of the sword aura. His entire body erupted, scattering into a cluster of fire that spread out in every direction.

The sword aura whistled and passed straight through the flames, annihilating part of the fire energy as it passed by.

When Greem once again reformed three hundred meters away, a large portion was clearly missing from his two-meter-tall body. After failing to recover the missing piece after drawing on his fire energy twice, Greem had no choice but to silently accept the reality before him.

[Beep. Body is 5.17% incomplete. Energy loss at 9.36%. Power deterioration 3%. Warning! Should Host’s power deterioration reach 28%, the chance of victory against the opponent will be 0%.]

The data from the Chip was far more accurate than what Greem could conjure. However, what the data revealed only made his head hurt.

“Explosive Flame Fireball!”

Without hesitation, Greem fired a series of fire spells at Gallow while there was still some distance between them. The fire spells crossed the hundreds of meters between them and drowned Gallow’s stalling body in vicious and ferocious flames.

When Gallow roared and stormed out of the explosive flames, scorch marks could already be seen all over his body. The leather armor he wore had also been turned into unrecognizable carbonized ash, barely clinging to his skin.

“Blackflame…Execution!”

Gallow once again let out a berserk howl.

As he screamed, the magical sword in his hand slashed down at Greem from a distance.

Greem was four hundred meters away, but he felt his Body of Flames tense and his spiritual world flicker for a fleeting instant. Even though Gallow was still hundreds of meters away, he suddenly and inexplicably felt as if Gallow’s sword would most certainly strike him.

Without his experience from the Faen Plane, Greem would have been hit by the attack in his moment of dizziness. However, having seen a pseudo-artifact longbow with the same unusual attribute in Faen, Greem instantly understood the strange trait that Gallow’s magical sword possessed.

Dammit! It’s that damned Surestrike!

With this prior experience, Greem instantly came up with a solution.

Greem summoned a First Grade fire spirit using a golem core in the blink of an eye and instantly switched positions with it.

When Gallow’s magical sword slashed down, a black slash mark abruptly appeared on the First Grade fire spirit’s body instead of Greem’s. The violent force erupted, thoroughly destroying the fire spirit’s body and even its golem core.

Greem was horrified, despite having survived by the skin of his teeth. He no longer dared to allow Scarface Gallow to unleash his attacks freely.

Greem also roared in a fury. Taking advantage of Gallow’s momentary pause after such a ferocious strike, he locked on firmly to his opponent’s body with both eyes. He used all his power to unleash the strange spell with a trace of the fire principle powers– Origin Fire.

Gallow, whose body was still caught in the downward movement of the slash, did not even have time to straighten his body. Elementium energy reverberated around him as a formless cluster of invisible flames extended out of empty space, quickly engulfing his entire being.

It was a strange fire that came from the very source of the fire principles. It possessed the peculiar characteristic of being able to ignore all magic resistance.

Even though it didn’t burn very intensely, or possess any fancy magical effects, it still inflicted maddening damage upon Gallow.

At this moment, he was no longer a peak Third Grade adept with formidable magic resistance, but an utterly ordinary mortal. Faced with the Origin Fire that had spread to nearly every inch of space from the inside to the outside of his body, Scarface Gallow finally felt Death’s approaching footsteps.

He had managed to blow away and disperse the Origin Fire attack from last time before the fires could fully form.

Even so, he had still suffered fairly grievous burns.

However, this time, the energy backlash from Blackflame Execution had kept him from dispersing the Origin Fire at the very first instance possible. As such, the mere two seconds of burning that came after inflicted the most severe wounds he had endured since the start of this battle.

The injury from this fire alone had exceeded all of the damage he had suffered over the past dozen days!

When Gallow once again stumbled out of the flames, his entire person had already turned black. Every inch of his body, from the inside to the outside, had been burned into charcoal. His skin and muscles cracked unstoppably as steam rose into the air from within his body.

Gallow stumbled for a few more steps before collapsing helplessly to his knees. He could no longer stand under his own strength.

“No more…no more fighting. I…I surrender!”

Gallow, who now looked more like charcoal than a person, shouted as he took out the teleportation crystal from his storage ring and tossed it to the ground.

Greem stood silently a few hundred meters away.

The roiling flames gradually faded from his body, revealing his muscular human form.

His eyes were shut tight, two streaks of black blood slowly running down his cheeks.

It was obvious that those two short seconds of Origin Fire had also been a tremendous burden on himself. The two eyes which he had used to unleash the attack had also suffered a backlash.

Though Gallow’s injury was severe, his high Physique allowed him to recover quickly. Seeing that Greem seemed to be out of any ability to continue fighting, Gallow gritted his teeth and started to get up with his scorched and withered body.

However, just as he began to move, a loud explosion rang out right beside him. A deep crater was blasted into the ground nearby by a magic energy beam. It was one meter deep and four to five meters in diameter.

The elementium magical machine appeared at the edge of the battlefield with heavy steps.

Gallow let out a silent sigh and gave up all thoughts of continuing the fight.

If he were in his peak condition, this advanced Third Grade elementium magical machine would be nothing in his eyes. However, now that he and the legendary fire adept were both critically injured, a single advanced Third Grade elementium magical machine was enough to seal the deal.

Ripples suddenly appeared in an empty space as an elderly-looking adept appeared on the spot.

Both competing adepts were now blind, but they still quickly managed to identify the newcomer using their spiritual senses.

Chairman of the Zhentarim Association, Adept Freed!

“Very good. As expected of peak Third Grade elites selected from the Central Region. Your power matches your status. Well then, the victor of this tournament is settled. It is Greem. The two of you may return with me now!”

Three beams of white light shot out of Freed’s hand, heading for Greem, Gallow, and the elementium magical machine. Greem and Gallow scanned with their Spirits. After confirming the nature of the white light, they simply let it hit them.

The bodies of the three individuals started to fade when the white light entered their bodies until they finally vanished without a trace.

After sending away the three individuals, Adept Freed turned and looked southeast. A trace of anger appeared in his calm eyes.

He extended his hand and made a grabbing motion. Hundreds and thousands of strands of white light quickly gathered before him, where they formed into a strange, one-meter-tall boy with light green skin. The boy was clearly unprepared for this sudden turn of events. He was so scared that he immediately let out a breath of poison at Freed’s face.

“Hmph! Brat, behave! Believe it or not, if you do as you please again, and I will squeeze you into bits!” Adept Freed simply extended a hand and pulled Remi back to him after the Spirit of Pestilence tried to escape under cover of the poison mist. He lifted Remi up to his eyes and threatened viciously.

Setting the location of the battle at Gordon Highlands was his idea, but even he had never expected that this decision would cause such a terrifying disaster to befall an entire dukedom of Bluesea Plane.

This plane was the property of the Association, after all. Any loss incurred here would be enough to cause Freed’s heart to ache.

However, this was a ‘fair’ duel arranged by the Associaton after all. The ability to create a plague army was considered part of an adept’s ability as well. Thus, even after Bluesea Plane had been so terribly wrecked, Freed did not intend to pursue the matter. He simply let out his anger with a little warning.

He was the powerful chairman of the Zhentarim Association. He wouldn’t hold a grudge against a mere Third Grade contracted spirit. Thus, with Remi in hand, Adept Freed returned to Kerslin Castle as well.