Age of Adepts

When Karin finally woke up, she was in a strange sealed space.

It wasn’t a very large space. It was only about ten thousand square meters in size.

However, she could see all sorts of terrain and unusual geography with a single glance.

There was the rainforest in the southeast, the desert in the southwest, the flat pains in the northeast, the hills in the northwest, and the one towering mountain in the center.

It was a small land, but it had all sorts of terrain and geography.

Judging by the arrangement, this place was a small arena.

At this moment, she was lying on top of a small platform on the mountain. A young, handsome, and tall adept hovered silently in the air before here.

The muscular body, the long hair tied up with a gold band, those black eyes, that gentle yet wicked smile, and that strikingly red adept’s robe.

There was no need for an introduction. Karin immediately knew who this was.

The man standing in front of her was none other than her target for this mission, the terrifying legendary fire adept, Greem!

An unusual metal golem floated silently behind him.

The golem had a metal body that resembled a skeleton, with slender limbs and scary metal blades attached to the ends of each arm. Its entire body was shrouded in black mist, obscuring its true form beneath.

The metal golem seemed to be able to absorb light, as the place it was hovering in appeared much dimmer than its surroundings. Moreover, whenever Karin’s gaze landed on the golem, it would somehow become blurry and unclear, making it even more difficult to see its real appearance.

A Fourth Grade fire adept, and a Fourth Grade Shadowsteel magical machine.

Karin had initially held out hope of escaping when she saw that she had not been killed immediately.

However, upon seeing this combination of powerhouses, all her will to battle was extinguished in an instant. She could no longer muster any thought of resistance or escape!

“You are a Dark Witch?” The young fire adept stood in the air and spoke. His voice was not loud, but strangely enough, it shook the air itself.

It rumbled across the skies, almost as if it was a blast of thunder!

It was more than enough to demonstrate the young fire adept’s horrifying control over this space.

Karin had already wiped away all signs of her being a Dark Witch from herself and her equipment. No one could prove that she was a Dark Witch from her appearance. The only circumstantial evidence was the trademark shadow energy within her.

Oh? He didn’t restrict her magic powers? Was it because he was inexperienced, or was it because he couldn’t be bothered?

Karin raised her body and looked at the legendary fire adept above her. She shouted loudly, “Just kill me if you want to. No need for the chatter! I won’t answer any of your questions.”

Greem chuckled coldly.

His booming laughter rolled across the land like thunder again, causing the earth to tremble.

“Those crazy women from the north are truly so unreliable! You Dark Witches have just promised not to try any more schemes or plots, yet they immediately sent you over. What is it? Circe wanted to test my resolve? See if I dare to kill you? Or do they think a Third Grade witch is more than enough to travel in an out of my tower freely?”

Karin’s face was cold and expressionless, almost as if she had not heard Greem’s questions at all.

“Your moves are not bad, however. It would be a waste to just kill you like that. How about this? If you play with my Shadow Demon for half a year, I will let you go. How about it?”

Karin lifted her head when she heard Greem’s words. Her eyes landed on the strange magical machine behind him as she laughed coldly, “This is a Shadowsteel statue you just forged recently, isn’t it? What about it? Does it also have some sort of strange learning ability? You want me to help you train its techniques? Hmph! Dream on.”

“Dream on? Well, let’s see about that, shall we? Shadow Demon, kill her!”

As Greem gave the order, black mist erupted around Shadow Demon, and its massive metallic body vanished from the spot.

The next second, it appeared in Karin’s shadow like a phantom, its two pairs of metal claws silently stabbing towards four parts of her body.

Having seen the Shadow Demon’s overwhelming power, Karin knew that she couldn’t defend against these attacks with force. She quickly turned around. Two lightless daggers appeared in her hands, slicing at the claws from the side. She then used the rebound force from the clashing blades to escape.

Two figures of wildly differing size, power, and agility began to flicker between the shadows, leaping from one shadow to the next. The sound of clashing metal never stopped, yet there was not a single spark from the blades.

Karin’s strength was nothing against the Shadow Demon’s berserk power, and her agility was clearly inferior as well. She could not retaliate at all during the fight. She could only rely on her superior movements and strange shadow magic to slow down Shadow Demon, dodge around it, or use the force from their exchanges to escape. She was only barely surviving.

After seven minutes of fighting, Karin seemed to have understood something. She stopped abruptly, tossing away her daggers and closing her eyes. She did not avoid the metal claws of the Shadow Demon, as if wishing to die.

“Stop!”

Greem shouted, and the Shadow Demon’s claws came to a stop right before Karin’s slender, pretty neck. However, the speed and force of the claws had whipped up a gale, and the violent winds cut a four-inch-long wound into Karin’s smooth skin.

Purple blood instantly soaked Karin’s skin-tight leather armor.

“Kill me…you bastard, why don’t you kill me, huh?” Even though her neck was injured, Karin continued to curse furiously as if she had not noticed at all.

“Hmph! You Dark Witches are all fearless fools!” Greem casually floated above Karin. “That said, there’s no room for your arrogance here. Why don’t you lift your head and look around you!”

Upon hearing Greem’s words, Karin started to look around, and her face instantly turned dark.

She didn’t know when, but the sky of the world around her had turned pitch black. A dark and lightless sun hung high in the air, spreading darkness everywhere.

“The Orb of Shadows,” Karin whispered this terrifying name under her breath.

The reason the Dark Witches were so brave and courageous wasn’t that they felt no fear of death. Rather, it was because of their reliance on their soul energy pools and their unusual shadow magic.

When they died in battle, it would trigger the shadow magic cast on their souls, guiding them to the soul energy pool they had prepared ahead of time.

The first condition of becoming a Dark Witch was to complete the energy conversion of one’s soul and body. In doing so, a dead Dark Witch would be able to reforge a body in the soul energy pools as long as their soul escaped.

As the souls of the Dark Witches were filled with shadow energy, they could use the Shadow World as a jumping board to traverse through the planar worlds and return. Most spells could not capture their souls.

However, the best counter to shadow energy was shadow energy itself!

When Karin discovered that the entire world had been sealed by the power within the Orb of Shadows, she fell into despair.

“You…you wouldn’t dare to kill me! I…am the squad leader of Shadow in Zhentarim. The clan will launch a bloody war if you kill me!” Karin screamed with all she had.

As she screamed in anger, Shadow Demon moved its claws and pierced her stomach like a balloon. Four sharp claws pierced through her body and appeared behind her waist.

Karin’s voice came to a stop.

She lowered her head and looked at the claws with horrified disbelief.

If she was killed in this place, her soul would have immense trouble breaking through the barrier placed by the Orb of Shadows to return to her soul energy pool. Could he have expended so many resources just to kill her utterly?

A wet and muffled sound rang out as the Shadow Demon pulled its claws out of her body.

Blood spouted out of the four large gashes, causing Karin to crumple to the ground. Her small hands clearly couldn’t stop her wounds from bleeding out. Blood was still seeping out from between her fingers, where she was clutching her stomach, slowly gathering into a pool beneath her.

A cold aura surged through Karin’s body. She could feel death approaching.

However, right before she died, a black beam of light shot down from the skies onto her body. Her severely wounded body started to heal beneath this light rapidly.

Shadow energy gathered around Karin’s injuries, causing them to heal quickly.

Even more shadow energy surged into Karin’s body, turning into blood in an energy form. This unusual energy blood started to flow through her body. Karin’s lifeforce began to increase at a visible rate.

In just three minutes, the heavily wounded Third Grade Dark Witch was fully recovered and revitalized.

“This is my home. You have no say on what is to happen!” Greem remained in the air, an expression of apathy on his face. “If you are still feeling disobedient……”

Greem snapped his fingers, and Shadow Demon’s claws pierced through Karin’s body again, this time twisting around and ravaging the organs thoroughly.

The injury this time was far more severe.

Karin howled in agony. Bits of her intestines and stomach spewed forth from the cavity in her body along with her blood, causing a terrifying crimson fountain to appear.

Greem smiled coldly as he sensed Karin’s quickly fading lifeforce.

When she was on the verge of death, he waved his hand again, and a beam of light shone down from the black sun onto Karin’s broken body.

The overwhelming shadow energy surged, and Karin once again climbed up from the ground after a brief moment.

Her tan skin beneath her torn armor was smooth and flawless, with no scars and no signs of an injury.