Age of Adepts

The entirety of Nightmare Castle started trembling lightly.

It was as if a terrifying monster had woken from its ten-thousand-year slumber. The entire castle was filled with a bloody, cruel, and vicious aura.

The nightmare creatures that had been swarming from every corner of the castle stopped assaulting Greem. Instead, they gathered in the corner of the hall and merged to form an amorphous gray monstrosity. As more and more nightmare creatures merged with it, the monstrosity continued to grow in size. It slowly filled up every inch of space in the hall as its bulky body began to swell toward Greem.

[Beep. Detecting Fourth Grade energy aura. Initial estimates suggest this creature to be a beginner Fourth Grade!]

The Chip’s notification caused Greem’s heart to tremble slightly. It was only the start of the second phase, yet a Fourth Grade nightmare creature had already appeared. How much more powerful would the nightmare creatures become in the phases to come?!

Greem didn’t dare let this monster continue growing freely. He tapped his staff against the ground, and a surge of golden fire wrapped toward the amorphous being with blistering heat.

The golden flames crashed against the gray monster.

The sound of sizzling flesh instantly rang out in the hall, and a pungent odor filled the room.

Eeeeeeeek!

The gray monster seemed to have a sense of pain. It started twisting and struggling violently.

As its body was so large that it filled up the entirety of the hall, its movements immediately caused the castle itself to quake.

The monster shook its body wildly, flinging out balls of slime-like substance. These balls of liquid quickly swelled upon hitting the ground, turning into poison slimes.

These slimes dragged their slimy bodies across the floor, spitting out gray mucus at Greem as they approached.

Fortunately, Greem was protected by the Burning Domain and his Inferno Shields. He didn’t have to bother with these numerous weaker beings. However, their presence was definitely a hindrance in Greem’s fight against the gray monster.

The Tome of Corruption in Greem’s hand started flipping according to his will. With every turn of the page, an ugly and vicious plague creature leaped out from the Tome. These fearless wights rushed at the slimes the moment they appeared.

Once they reached within a certain distance, the wights’ swollen abdomens would erupt. A terrifying wave of poison would blast out in every direction, accompanied by bone shrapnel from the wights’ own bodies.

The gray slimes instantly turned dark purple, and their movements became unusually slow.

In truth, the terrifying part about nightmare creatures were the emotions of despair that their attacks contained. These emotions would often evoke severely negative reactions from their victims. Unfortunately, plague creatures were not living beings and, naturally, had no such negative emotions to draw up.

However, the enemies that the plague creatures were facing also relied primarily on poison and virus. Consequently, their attacks were very ineffective against these nightmare creatures.

Since their respective abilities were useless against each other, the only option left was a bloody melee!

The wights lunged forward ferociously. They were either riddled with holes by the acid spray, devoured by the slimes and digested into black liquid in their bodies, or self-destructed to cover the enemies in a layer of green plague spores.

The plague creatures and the nightmare creatures were caught in a difficult fight in the center of the hall. Their battle indirectly hindered Greem’s movements.

Compared to all the action and chaos on Greem’s side, Mary was having a much more peaceful time.

Perhaps it was due to Mary’s unique identity as a vampire, but the Nightmare Castle showed no signs of hostility toward her. In fact, it even showed hints of a soul resonance with her.

Mary had relayed a message back to Greem, explaining that she had found clues to Kerslin’s soul core and that she was going deeper into the Nightmare Domain to explore.

Since that was the case, Greem gave up on his plan to regroup with her. Instead, he started to focus entirely on his fight against the nightmare creatures here. As for Kerslin? It was obvious that it was still in deep slumber to digest the tremendous power it had obtained from the blood ritual.

The only thing Greem could do in his current position was to draw all the enemy’s attention toward himself and give Mary a chance to sneak into the deeper levels of the Nightmare Domain.

At the thought of this, Greem transformed without any hesitation.

Furious, violent flames burst out of every pore in his body, turning his surroundings into a blazing sea of fire. His body was surrounded by scalding flames and started to rapidly grow in size.

A molten giant.

Ever since he advanced to Fourth Grade, the molten giant form was the only form that could host the entirety of the overwhelming fire energy and mysterious fire laws within him!

His human form was enough for most ordinary occasions. However, if Greem wanted to fight at full-strength, his flesh body would not be able to endure the might of the fire laws. The fire laws would probably have melted Greem’s own body down before he could even injure the enemy.

Of course, this also had to do with the fact that Greem had not gained complete control over his fire laws. If he had managed to turn the fire laws into a part of him, such an incident would never occur. After all, how could fire possibly ever hurt fire itself!?

The molten giant that Greem transformed into was twelve meters tall, far larger than the size of this tiny hall.

By the time his transformation was complete, his head had bumped against the ceiling. The terrifying flames that raged around him licked furiously at the ceiling and the floor, crackling loudly as they burned. However, the stone did not melt into lava as it typically did.

After transforming into a molten giant, Greem no longer needed chants for most of his fire spells. Instead, he could easily cast them with a wave of his hand as if they were his innate abilities.

Greem strode forward, and the flames around him spread outward. The entire hall was instantly engulfed within the Burning Domain. At the same time, a mysterious and heavy pressure pushed in from all around. It clashed with Greem’s mental consciousness and attempted to force Greem’s power back into his body.

“Hmph.”

Greem grunted. He protected his body and mind with the Tome of Corruption before injecting most of his Spirit into the Orb of the Fire God. Wave upon wave of violent and ferocious magical flames began to lash at every corner of the hall like a living tornado.

The gray monster across from Greem suddenly had to endure the devastation of the flames!

So what if it was a Fourth Grade nightmare creature!?

Battered by two artifacts, the gray monster’s body was soon scorched black. It even started to shrink in size. No matter how many nightmare creatures swarmed and assimilated with it, its body continued to shrink and wither rapidly.

Just as Greem was about to exterminate the monstrosity, a new notification from the Chip rang in his mind.

[Time is up! Third phase of the Nightmare Domain beginning now.]

The notification had just ended when the scene before Greem’s eyes started to shift strangely.

The beginner Fourth Grade monstrosity erupted suddenly!

Its massive body blew up into tiny blobs of liquid spread across every corner of the hall. The castle itself absorbed the liquid.

The next second, the Nightmare Castle came alive.

Gray, fleshy substance started to seep out of the floor, the walls, and the ceiling, quickly merging together. The entire hall, apart from where Greem’s Burning Domain stood, soon became covered in this strange flesh-like substance.

The flesh bulged and throbbed, its surface covered in slimy liquid and many, many wrinkles. Looking from a distance, it was almost as if you were in the stomach of a living creature.

Naturally, that would make Greem food in the intestinal tract!

In corners and secret rooms all over the castle where Greem’s gaze could not reach, fleshy cocoons were throbbing at a uniform rate. The embryos of some strange creatures were in these cocoons, bobbing up and down in a sickly green liquid.

However, when Greem’s violent flames ravaged the castle, the creatures in these cocoons became restless.

Those who had matured or were nearing maturity tore open their cocoons impatiently. They emerged from the vile liquid, shaking their ugly bodies as they reared their heads and smelled the air. They screeched and ran to where they had smelled fire.

Greem, who was standing in the hall and clearing out the disgusting fleshy substance, felt something. He could sense the aura of the room grow even more disturbing.

It wasn’t just a violent and cruel aura now. No, a sort of strange emotion that made his mind falter was rising in his heart. Just as fire laws could burn without the need for fuel, this strange emotion was able to penetrate the hearts of humans and plant the seeds of despair right within.

The nutrients that allowed these seeds to grow were all the various negative emotions that one carried within!

As long as you still possessed emotions, the Nightmare Domain would be able to provoke your negative emotions using the power of laws, causing your mind and heart to move toward darkness slowly.

The only thing that could counter a law was another law!

The light of law power glowed from the Tome of Corruption, and the Nightmare Domain’s negative emotions were kept at bay. However, Greem’s dark eyes had somehow glazed over with a layer of crimson. The gleam of Spirit within him had weakened as well.

Greem was no longer fighting against an ordinary nightmare creature at this point. No, he was fighting against this slowly awakening Nightmare Castle. The nightmare creatures that continued to attack him through the flesh walls had also risen to the level of intermediate Third Grade.

That was already a daunting challenge from Greem, who had yet to recover from his severe wounds from the last battle!