Age of Adepts

God bloody dammit!

If it weren’t for the thousands of years of desolation and cold wearing away all of Kanganas’ emotions and feelings, he would be furiously cursing at these teammates of his.

Dammit! He was a caster!

If everyone was hiding, was he supposed to be the one to face that unreasonable dragon!?

Kanganas hadn’t finished insulting his teammates in his mind when his soulfire trembled abruptly.

Dammit! That skeletal dragon’s here.

His surroundings were still shrouded in mist and covered in ice crystals.

Even as ‘slender’ as he was, Kanganas would have trouble traveling through all the ice clusters.

The forest of ice clusters was still as silent as before. The mist drifted quietly. Kanganas could not sense any change around him.

However, even though he could not see the skeletal dragon’s body or hear its footsteps, he could feel the dragon’s unusual aura of cold thicken. It was so cold that even his soulfire shrank and shivered.

Kanganas raised the short white bone staff in his hand without any hesitation. A cloud of death energy engulfed everything within a hundred meters, causing all substances within the radius to sizzle loudly.

In particular, the ice crystals started to rot and turn black before crumbling into dust. Even the ice mist had lightened up, faintly revealing what was around him.

A hulking creature glowing with blue light suddenly appeared from the mist, roaring and charging at Kanganas.

Kanganas waved his staff over and over. Several massive figures appeared, standing in the way of the skeletal dragon’s charge.

The first was a beginner Fourth Grade bone dragon, accompanied by two beginner Fourth Grade Scourge Knights and an intermediate Fourth Grade greater lich.

They could all feel the skeletal dragon’s overwhelming aura of might, along with its devastating ferocity. If Kanganas had not forcefully commanded the bone dragon to intercept the skeletal dragon, it would never have done such a foolish thing.

Unfortunately, as the soul-bound servant of a lich, sacrificing its own body to defeat the enemy was the only option that the bone dragon had.

A deafening sound rang out as the two skeletal dragons of imbalanced sizes collided with each other.

A force shockwave rippled outwards. All creatures significantly smaller than the dragons were uncontrollably lifted off their feet and blown away from the battlefield.

The next second, shattered bits of dragon bone and dust-like shards of ice howled as they flew outwards. An odd crackling sound could be heard as the ice pillars nearby were hit and pierced by the shrapnel from the impact.

Both Kanganas and his subordinate greater lich were also blown away. Only the bone dragon and the two Scourge Knights were able to remain on the battlefield.

Massive shards of blue ice and ice dust settled to the ground and covered everyone beneath it.

The violent force from the collision had shredded the surrounding space to pieces. Any Spirit that extended into the battlefield was torn apart, preventing anyone from seeing the clash’s result.

A bone dragon and two Scourge Knights against the skeletal ice dragon Nax. Even though both parties were Fourth Grade, the massive difference in power could not be made up for with mere numbers.

A short moment later, the battlefield abruptly fell silent.

A massive dragon skull was hurled out of the mist, sliding a hundred meters across the cracked ice floor before coming to a pause. The eye sockets of the bone dragon were empty. Its soulfire had extinguished. It was thoroughly dead.

Meanwhile, the two Scourge Knights were still lost in the mist of ice and had not appeared yet. Considering the gulf in power, it wasn’t hard to imagine their fates!

Kanganas, who had drifted a thousand meters away, started shouting impatiently, “Sand King, I know you’ve recovered. Help me stop this creature immediately, at this very instant, or our deal is off.”

It was only natural that Kanganas was so flustered. The Fourth Grade bone dragon might not be the strongest subordinate, but it was certainly one of his best and most elite servants.

Now, it had sacrificed itself on the battlefield to absolutely no effect, along with two Scourge Knights. Even though he had lived for a thousand years, Kanganas felt the pain of this loss to his very core!

These Fourth Grade undead servants were not common creatures that could be summoned en masse from the Skeletal Plane. In fact, many elite Fourth Grade servants were personally created by liches with their exceptional necromancy and alchemical abilities. This process often consumed extremely expensive materials and gems.

Losing even a single one of these servants would make Kanganas upset for days. The fact that he had lost three of them at once felt like a dagger in his heart.

However, no number of servants, no matter how expensive, could compare to his own life!

When it came to a moment of life and death, Kanganas would have no hesitation in abandoning them.

Perhaps sensing the lich’s ‘fury,’ Sand King emerged from the ground and once again stood in front of Kanganas.

Kanganas was finally relieved now that a companion shielded him. He landed on the ground and started chanting rapidly with the aid of the Fourth Grade greater lich. They were preparing a powerful death spell.

Energy rippled in the ice mist, and the roars of a dragon could be heard. It seemed like Nax was engaged in battle with the Medusa Sshina.

It was a terrible and brutal fight!

The next second, fire flashed inside the mist. Flames blazed as Greem quickly teleported forward and threw a vicious Fire Core Explosion into Nax’s chest cavity.

A hell of ice and fire.

Ice magic was a branch of water magic, to begin with. That branch of magic had always had an adversarial relationship with fire magic. That was why even Nax could feel that soul-penetrating agony when the flames roasted its bones.

Nax let out another cry that tore the clouds apart. The next second, clouds of blue mist chased after a humanoid flame, carving out an empty path in the palace full of ice clusters.

As the fires burned and the ice resisted, a massive void array appeared on the ground where the mist was the densest. Endless void energy gathered in the air, covering Nax’s mighty body with a layer of light.

The next second, the void energy erupted!

A portion of the ice energy in Nax’s body was disrupted and reduced to chaos energy, causing it to lose control over part of its body instantly.

“Bastards…you damned bastards……I will……” The skeletal ice dragon cried out furiously but was quickly interrupted by another series of violent attacks.

The entire palace turned into a slaughterhouse as attacks rained down on Nax. Large amounts of ice energy spilled out of Nax’s body, contaminating the nearby space and causing it to be incredibly chaotic.

While his teammates occupied the skeletal dragon, Kanganas and his Fourth Grade lich subordinate managed to cast their spell. A Rain of Gloom began to fall from the sky onto the palace itself.

The already downcast skies turned utterly dark.

Black clouds rose from the ground and soon covered the entire sky.

The light was so dim that it was almost impossible to discern anything. Pungent rainwater descended from the skies. The stench was nausea-inducing, but what was even more terrifying were the red splashes that appeared on the ground where the raindrops landed.

It was not any ordinary rain. It was a rain of rotting blood.

As the evil rain of blood continued to baptize the palace, the mist of ice was worn away, revealing the battlefield in its entirety. The ice clusters were also quickly melting in the rain, giving everyone more space to move and dodge.

It had only been five minutes, but Sshina was already badly injured from the fighting. She had no choice but to grit her teeth and bow out of the battle.

Her once pretty body was now covered in bruises as well as blue marks left behind by the invading ice energy. Much of her flesh had succumbed to the ice energy and had shattered to shards of ice, leaving wide gaps in her body.

It was fortunate that this place was as cold as it was. Most of Sshina’s injuries were frozen, preventing a lethal loss of blood. Otherwise, given the number of holes that had appeared in her body, the loss of blood alone would have weakened Sshina tremendously.

Her hair of snakes had mostly been frozen dead. The frozen snakes had shattered and turned into ice shards. Her long serpentine tail had also been severed in half. Even though what remained of her tail was clad in scales, it had still been inflicted with all sorts of cuts and gashes by the blades of ice and snow.

Sshina slithered along the ground with her crippled tail. Every inch of movement made Sshina grit her teeth in pain.

Meanwhile, Sand King, who was enduring all the pressure from Nax alone, was also in a terrible state.

His thick carapace was cracked everywhere. Every time he clashed with the skeletal dragon, black insectoid blood spilled onto the ground through these cracks, staining the ice floor beneath them.

One of Sand King’s pincers had also been bitten off, while his proud stinger had been snapped in half; the broken part barely hung onto his body by some pieces of tissue and scale.

In contrast, Greem and Tulas, who were spellcasters, were in a much better situation.

They were constantly moving around on the edge of the battlefield.

When they found the opportunity, they would teleport forward and unleash a devastating round of attacks. When the dragon seemed to turn its attention towards them, they would run away without hesitation. As for the honor and dignity of a Fourth Grade powerhouse…that stuff was best left to the ‘warriors’!

A Rain of Gloom from above, a rotting ground below, and several Fourth Grade attacks surrounding it. The battle might be in a violent stalemate, but the overall situation was obviously in the invaders’ favor.

The combination of five powerful evil individuals. Even as mighty as Skeletal Ice Dragon Nax was, it was difficult to endure such terrible pressure from every side.

The battle was slowly starting to tilt in the invader’s favor!