Age of Adepts

As the two Fourth Grades prepared for battle, the other participants in combat started to move away silently.

It was simple. They were all scared of being caught by the shockwaves of the Fourth Grades’ attacks!

Once there were no other distractions within five hundred meters, Gorefist lifted his hammer, roared, and charged forward.

Dong! Dong! Dong!

The earth trembled, and the world shook.

Fearsome shockwaves emanated from where he stepped, and a deep footprint remained in the ground where he trampled. All the puddles around the point of impact were blown into the air and split into tiny particles of water by the vibration of the strange shockwave.

The chieftain of the Ango’rosh ogres thundered towards Greem like a berserk bull.

The flame giant that Greem had transformed into was a dozen meters tall, while Gorefist was only seven meters tall.

Even though Gorefist was smaller in size, he didn’t seem intimidated at all, judging by how fearlessly and recklessly charged forward.

Greem quickly cast his spells, and several Flame Vines began to creep towards the ogre. However, the Flame Vines were shredded to sparks by the force shockwaves in the air before they could wrap around the opponent’s thick limbs.

The wind howled as the hammer crashed forth, instantly smashing the fire projection that Greem had left in his original spot.

Meanwhile, Greem’s actual body appeared a hundred meters away. A chain of Blazing Fireballs cut across the sky and landed on Gorefist.

Beng! Beng! Beng.!

Consecutive explosions rang out, causing Gorefist to grunt over and over again.

However, the winds howled once more as a warhammer burst forth from the flames, stirring a gale in the process. The hammer smashed viciously towards Greem.

Greem did not dare hesitate in the slightest. He teleported a hundred meters away with Fire Teleportation and dodged the flying hammer.

It couldn’t be helped. The difference in Strength was too massive. Greem had absolutely no confidence in defending against the hammer with his magical defenses. With Gorefist’s 42 points of Strength, Greem’s body would turn into meat paste upon contact.

Even if the hammer couldn’t break Greem’s magical shields, the shockwave from the impact would be more than he could bear.

If Greem was further stunned by the impact of such a heavy weapon…

That was the agony of elementium adepts when fighting against warrior professions. They could not allow the enemy to touch them in the slightest.

Fortunately, as an elementium adept, Greem’s mobility was far superior to Gorefist.

As the two Fourth Grades continued to attack each other, the previously rowdy crowd of fighters became scurrying rats, covering their heads and fleeing away from the battlefield with all their might.

The battlefield of Fourth Grades was exceedingly terrifying. There was no room for the weak.

Greem regularly scattered to the winds, erupted into tiny sparks and drifted into the air, or appeared here and there around Gorefist using Fire Teleportation. He was changing positions every three to five seconds, simply to prevent getting hit by the enemy.

Yet, regardless of how dangerous the situation became, Greem never strayed more than a hundred meters away from the ogre chieftain.

He had no choice! It was what he needed to do.

Area-of-effect spells might be unavoidable, but their magical power was too scattered. They could not inflict any significant damage to this enemy. Only concentrated single-target spells could penetrate the opponent’s forcefield defenses and inflict sufficient damage.

However, very few such spells could be cast instantly. Their trajectory was also too predictable.

If they were a hundred meters apart, Gorefist would be able to read the trajectory of all the fire spells. He would then have plenty of time to think and react, be it to dodge or shatter the spell with a thrown hammer.

However, Greem also suffered incredible pressure by skirting within a hundred meters of Gorefist. The ogre’s terrifying Strength was overwhelming!

Those howling hammers might not have hit Greem even once, but just the shockwaves in the air caused by their passage made his Inferno Shields shatter.

The battle was like a bear trying to catch a cat. The bear seemed clumsy, but the fight could be decided in an instant if anything happened.

Greem was utterly untouched since the start of the battle. Meanwhile, the ogre chieftain had been bombarded with fire spells and covered in burn wounds. Still, injuries like these were only light wounds for the tough-skinned ogre.

Gorefist only had to protect his head and heart with his hammer. The enemy could freely attack the rest of his fleshy body. He persistently struck at the dodging Greem. Even though he missed every single time, his hammers still put incredible pressure on the adept.

Gorefist stared with his strange, triangular, beady eyes through his hammers at Greem, with a shifty gleam that did not match his stature. He was intentionally putting on an act of clumsiness and ignorance. If the adept truly believed that this was all he had to offer, then the battle techniques he would unleash in the heat of battle would catch the enemy by surprise and teach them an unforgettable lesson!

None among Fourth Grades, caster or warrior, was an idiot.

If you ever believed your opponent to be a fool, you would not be far from a death trap!

However, while Gorefist was hiding his real power, Greem was also holding back.

Among the few fire laws he had mastered, he had made sure to conceal the two most important ones– Fire Penetration and Invisible Flames. He had only been using Increased Fire Effectiveness and Increased Spellcasting Range.

While the ogre chieftain was scheming his demise, Greem was also plotting the ogre’s death.

Since the opponent was blatantly laying down bait, he would happily devour it.

Greem was also trying his best to inflict as many minor injuries as possible while the ogre held back. It was a free advantage offered by the opponent. It would not be so easy to freely bombard the enemy when he finally went all out later.

Gorefist continued to endure the fire spells in agony while secretly compressing the space available to Greem. His small, beady eyes continued to turn around their sockets as he tried his best to calculate his chances of success with the ambush.

Meanwhile, Greem was actively moving around with Fire Teleportation, using the Chip’s scans to gather the opponent’s information and data. Greem might not have Alice’s exceptional sense for danger, but analyzing the enemy’s movements and predicting the flow of the battle through dynamic analysis was the Chip’s area of expertise.

With the two Fourth Grades intentionally guiding the battle where they wanted it to go, the first fuse was quickly lit!

Gorefist swung the hammer in a wide arc, forcing Greem to use Fire Teleportation once again. When Greem’s body vanished in a pillar of fire, Gorefist turned around to face his back. Both hammers flew forward and crashed towards an empty spot on the ground. He roared and strode forward, giving Greem a hug of death with his strong arms just as the adept appeared out of thin air.

Wooosh!

The fierce winds howled ferociously.

Greem’s path to the right and left had been thoroughly cut off by the hammers. He had also just finished his Fire Teleportation, and there was a three-second cooldown until the next time he could cast it.

Gorefist thundered forward like a wayward train, catching this perfect moment and using his arms to further seal off any path of escape that Greem had.

Gorefist’s broad mouth opened as wide as it could go as he charged. He let out the loudest and most vicious roar he had made since the start of the battle. The shapeless soundwave burst forth from his mouth, compressing the air and causing it the visibly form into a wave that crashed against Greem’s body.

All the fire defenses around Greem popped and shattered. His mind was also dazed for a brief moment. It felt like his soul consciousness was numb and no longer responsive to his thoughts and intentions.

Berserk Howl!

It was a secret combat technique of Gorefist that allowed him to cripple the enemy’s Spirit momentarily with a battlecry. The duration of its effect was determined by the resilience of the opponent’s Spirit.

Gorefist couldn’t help but grin widely when he saw the flame giant stripped of all his defenses and his body swaying about. There was only a mere distance of thirty meters between them now. Moreover, no one could stop him from reaching the flame giant and crushing him into pieces.

Before his smile could spread to the rest of his ugly, tattooed face, Gorefist’s legs tripped on something. His chubby body lost balance as he crashed to the ground head first, sliding towards Greem covered in mud and water.

A small, but strangely hard, wall of fire about half a meter tall had appeared on the ground between him and the adept without his knowledge. Gorefist’s substantial body crushed the second and third wall of fire after he was tripped by the first one. His large head then smashed a fourth and a fifth wall.

When he finally slid up to the flame giant, Greem had broken free of his daze. After crashing into so many walls of fire with his head, Gorefist was stunned, despite his Physique.

The next instant, a pillar of golden flames engulfed the ogre chieftain’s body, roasting him thoroughly, inside and out.

The fearsome fire penetration effect inflicted devastating damage to Gorefist.

Gorefist, who had believed his flesh body to be more than enough to endure the flames, realized that the fire was inflicting terrifying damage to him. It was almost as if every strand of fire could ignore his forcefield and his body, directly burning his consciousness and soul origin.

The ogre chieftain was instantly roasted, badly. He quickly got up on his feet and fled the golden flames, desperately patting away at his body at the still-burning flames.

“Hammer!” Gorefist shouted out loud, opening both palms wide to retrieve his hammers.

However, despite holding the pose for five or six seconds, he still felt nothing in his hands.

He lifted his hand and looked at the distance with wide-open eyes of shock. The flame giant was stepping on one of the hammers, slowly putting it away into his storage equipment. The other hammer was also long gone.

A cold breeze blew past, and Gorefist once again felt tremendous searing pain all over his body.

Bastard.