Age of Adepts

Greem quickly weaved around the battlefield.

Compared to his opponent, the Gold Titan, his advantage came from his devastating fire magic and superior mobility.

In terms of long-range firepower alone, Greem had the upper hand. However, considering both factors of Physique and Strength, Mornashen was overwhelmingly superior to Greem.

It was simple. Greem had 27 points of Strength while Mornashen had 49 points.

In the face of such incredible Strength, Greem was as frail as a paper person!

On the other hand, Greem had as much as 34 points of Physique. Such a high Physique already made him an oddity amongst most elementium adepts. However, when compared to Mornashen’s 47 points of Physique, he was completely dwarfed.

Strength decided their melee combat prowess. While combat technique and fighting experience did make a difference, it wouldn’t matter at all before absolute, overwhelming Strength!

Physique determined their physical resistance and regenerative powers. It was also the foundation of most body-refining and bloodline adepts. In this regard, most elementium adepts did not do enough. They hardly ever strengthened their Physique, believing that it would be sufficient as long as their bodies were strong enough for their minds.

Spirit determined the potency and range of their spiritual senses while also making their minds work faster, their thoughts process quicker, and their memories expand. The level of their Spirit also directly affected the strength, range, duration, and penetrative power of their magic.

Even though Mornashen had also reached the peak of 49 points in Spirit, it was obvious that he had not spent enough time researching and studying magic. It resulted in him only being able to cast a few lightning spells, apart from the special racial abilities of a Gold Titan.

If one were to analyze everything seriously, it seemed like the only thing that Greem was genuinely superior to Mornashen in was Agility!

He had 19 points of Agility compared to Mornashen’s 13 points.

Mornashen’s gigantic size was indeed several times that of Greem’s blazing body after transforming into the Gold Titan. Greem could only employ guerrilla tactics, moving quickly through the sea of fire with his perks as a fire adept. Like a hunting dog teasing a rampaging bull, he led Mornashen around the battlefield, all while keeping distance between them.

It wasn’t that Greem didn’t want to leave Mornashen in the dust, but that it wasn’t very effective to do so!

If the distance between them were more than a thousand meters, it would be very easy for Mornashen to determine his fire spells’ trajectory. Should Mornashen be able to intercept the fire spells before they hit him, his 47 points of Physique would allow him to go unharmed. The flames from the spells’ explosions might still be incredibly powerful, but they were really no more than a warm breeze to the Gold Titan.

The minor fire damage inflicted by such explosions couldn’t even compare to Mornashen’s rapid regeneration powers.

Of course, Greem’s Invisible Flames law had helped a lot at the start of the battle, allowing him to toy with Mornashen over and over. While the Gold Titan wildly chased after his target, there would always be a barrage of fire spells mysteriously exploding against his back.

Even though Mornashen quickly healed these wounds by drawing upon his bloodline powers, getting injured too rapidly and too frequently would also strain him.

Moreover, it was not like regeneration came at no cost!

Regeneration required the constant exhaustion of his stamina and bloodline powers.

Should the bloodline powers in his body be exhausted, he would no longer be able to maintain his Gold Titan transformation. Once he lost the Physique, Strength, and Spirit enhancement provided by the Gold Titan, he would have absolutely no chance of beating Greem with his two artifacts.

Every adept present today could see that, let alone himself!

To reduce the drain on his bloodline powers, Mornashen stopped healing the minor wounds that did not affect his combat prowess. Instead, he focused more of his attention on the enemy’s attacks.

His 49 points of Strength made him an utterly unstoppable juggernaut. Even ordinary pieces of rock and dirt could instantly become lethal tools when driven by his barbaric strength. Every time he swung his giant fists, a massive tornado appeared.

His punch would affect everything a kilometer in front of him.

Moreover, every time he struck with a physical attack, a corresponding bolt of lightning would also blast down from the skies. That constantly made the enemy endure twofold damage from the physical attack and the lightning strike. It was devastatingly powerful.

That was why Mornashen would dig his feet into the ground and kick every time he attacked, flinging large clouds of dirt and sand into the air. He would then simply punch and, thus, create a small sandstorm.

While all the sand obscured the enemy’s vision, and their defenses trembled from the rapidly flying pebbles, Mornashen’s real punch and tornado would arrive.

When faced with this tactic from Mornashen, Greem had no other option but to move out of the way.

Even an ordinary stone became a small blazing meteor with a smoking tail when flung with 49 points of violent Strength. Most stones were not hard enough and burned out halfway due to friction against the air.

However, the surviving rocks caused Greem’s Fourth Grade Inferno Shields to tremble. Some could even punch straight through. The pieces of rock that pierced through the shields were able to inflict decent physical damage to Greem’s body.

Unlike the elementium adepts who sought law powers their whole lives, bloodline adepts did not place so much emphasis on law powers. They pursued the purification of their bloodline in an attempt to revert to their ancestral origins. They hoped to reach the pinnacles of the ancient magical creatures through their research on bloodline magic.

However, pure bloodlines also carried with them corresponding law powers of their own!

After transforming into Gold Titans, the members of the Gaia Clan would naturally grasp the laws of strength and the laws of lightning. Moreover, they did not have to research or study these law powers as the elementium adepts did.

As long as their bloodline power reached the required level, their understanding and mastery over the laws would naturally flow into their soul origin through their bloodline inheritance. It would almost be as if they had studied those law powers themselves for countless years.

That was why high-grade bloodline adepts used law powers in a more instinctual fashion and lacked the flexibility and transformations of the elementium adepts!

Take Greem, for example. He had only come into contact with the laws some two hundred years ago, but his application and creativity with the use of law powers completely outshone Mornashen, who was a veteran adept who had advanced over nine hundred years ago.

The Gold Titans’ powerful strength and lightning laws appeared to be distinct in Mornashen’s hands, showing no signs of assimilation or combination. Although there were instances of combined physical and magical damage during the battle, that was more a natural manifestation of the Gold Titans’ natural prowess rather than Mornashen’s own application.

In contrast, Greem might only be a rookie that had only recently started studying the law powers, but he had already created many uses for the laws, such as his law fires and law shield. They gave him an advantage in the fight against Mornashen.

At their levels, ordinary physical attacks and elementium damage could no longer leave lasting damage on their bodies. Only attacks possessing law powers could penetrate their forcefields and bodies to inflict lasting wounds.

To some extent, Greem’s law defenses and Mornashen’s tough body already had the unusual effects of a body-refining adept’s immortal body. The only difference was how they achieved such a defense!

After over ten hours of fearsome fighting, both Greem and Mornashen had sustained terrible wounds. Their stamina and Spirit were starting to deteriorate, and they could no longer continue fighting at peak condition.

Generally speaking, it seemed like Mornashen had suffered much more grievous wounds. His combat prowess had declined to a dangerous tipping point.

If he crossed this threshold, then the bloodline powers in his veins would no longer be able to sustain his colossal size. Should he revert to his original form, this battle between ‘ultra-powerhouses’ would conclude with his defeat!

Just as he was about to be defeated, an unexpected and sudden power broke into the battlefield and sped toward Greem.

[Beep. Detecting the appearance of foreign curse energy. Able to threaten Host. Suggesting that Host conduct evasive maneuver immediately.]

Greem erupted into flames the moment he received the Chip’s warning, vanishing without a trace.

The sudden blast of fire pushed Mornashen backward, causing him to stumble for a hundred meters before he regained his balance.

A dozen clusters of golden flames escaped in different directions. In the end, all the flames slowly dissipated, with only the flame in the northeast gradually growing larger until it turned into Greem’s mighty body.

Greem frowned when he reformed. He looked down at his right chest. A dark spot wriggled there, squirming and twisting. The strange, dark patterns were arranged in the form of a rune, and an even more mysterious energy aura was growing within those patterns.

This is the power of a curse!?

Why is it so strange and so difficult to deal with?

Greem was able to avoid the curse attack in time earlier. However, he had been grazed by the aftershocks of the curse energy when he escaped, leaving this strange curse mark on his body.

This curse mark contained a profound and unusual energy aura. Even when Greem burned it with all his fire laws, he could only keep the curse constrained to the size of a palm on his chest. He could not remove it entirely.

Moreover, after absorbing some of the fire energy, the curse mark underwent a transformation and turned into a wormcurse.

The black wormcurse writhed as even more terrifying worms appeared, biting viciously at Greem’s body.

Greem’s expression froze for a moment, and he frowned deeply!

His gaze cut through the vast battlefield and landed on an enemy that had just revealed himself.

So, it was him.