Age of Adepts

“Seren, retreat to Dun Modr with your subordinates immediately. Do not turn back no matter what happens on my side. Remember, request for reinforcements from Lord Windstern the moment you get back. Ask him to reinforce me if necessary.”

Greem’s tremendous Spirit surged into the runic array. He was solemnly imprinting this conversation in the Fourth Grade leader’s mind as he continued to resist the power of the mysterious entity.

“Go! I can only buy you six minutes at the most…and make sure to hurry!”

As Grem shouted, the adepts that had been scattered throughout the dragon’s tomb, digging for bones, started to gather together anxiously. They quickly rushed out of the dragon’s tomb under Seren’s lead and summoned the wyverns that had been resting in the clearing. They then took into the air and quickly flew in the direction they had come from.

They did not understand what was happening, but it was a given to always obey a Great Adept’s orders. Without hesitation, all the wyverns fled into the distance with all their strength.

They had only made it fifteen kilometers away when a sky rending explosion abruptly rang out from behind them.

The towering cliff looming in the depths of the forest suddenly collapsed. The vast stretch of green trees started rumbling violently, as if a giant earth dragon had awakened. Massive pillars of dust rose into the air as the earth devoured the forest.

It was like a scene from the apocalypse!

But it wasn’t over yet.

The violent force shockwave pushed the dirt, dust, and wooden splinters outward in every direction. The massive wave of debris instantly caught up with the adepts like a tsunami and devoured them without a trace.

All the adepts activated defensive forcefields and shielded themselves and their wyverns. The snapping and thudding of impacting objects could be heard as they tumbled forward, completely disoriented.

The shockwave only slowly dissipated after fifty kilometers. It was then that the adepts and their wyverns emerged from the dust cloud in an awkward scramble.

“What exactly could be so terrifying? Sir, what do you think we should do now?” The deputy of the squad slowly approached Captain Seren on his wyvern and asked doubtfully.

They had come out here on this adventure with Great Adept Greem. If something were to happen to the Great Adept, they would be severely punished if they retreated back to camp. That was why he had no choice but to be concerned.

“No need to say anything more. We will hurry back to Dun Modr immediately! That was an order from Lord Greem himself. Moreover, given the might of that shockwave, the opponent he is fighting must be an ultra-grade entity as well. Whether we stick around will be of no consequence. We cannot help Lord Greem in the slightest. Cough.”

As an elite Fourth Grade adept, Seren was an important individual of great repute, authority, and power within his own planar world. However, any random enemy that appeared on the unpredictable planar battlefield could possess overwhelming power and render him completely insignificant.

Honestly, it was an incredibly unpleasant feeling!

No matter how upset he felt, saving his own life was the foremost priority. He could only complete the task Lord Greem entrusted to him if he was still alive.

Seren shouted out his instructions as the wyverns started dashing toward Dun Modr without even a second’s rest.

While they were desperately flying away, Greem was also fleeing with all his might.

…………

The forest beneath his feet quickly faded away.

However, the fearsome silhouette behind him was still pursuing stubbornly.

Greem was already fleeing with all his abilities, but he still couldn’t shake the annoying evil dragon.

He was flying through the air as a formless cluster of fire, leaving behind a long trail of flames as he cut across the sky. Every time the evil dragon was about to catch up, Greem immediately activated Fire Teleportation and pulled ahead by an entire kilometer. He would then instantly dive into a fire portal he had just summoned.

Even as powerful as Greem was, these fire portals could only allow him to escape a hundred or so kilometers away. Unfortunately, the evil dragon Cinquera that was determined to kill him could catch up on these hundred kilometers in less than ten minutes.

Greem had no choice but to exert himself to his limits and use Fire Teleportation, Fire Portal, and Fire Flight to their fullest potential to escape the evil dragon’s pursuit.

One had to admit that the thought process of evil dragons was truly different from ordinary creatures!

You could even say that the thought process of all evil creatures was starkly different when compared to ordinary beings.

As a Sixth Grade evil dragon, Cinquera would have to endure horrifying planar suppression and backlash from recklessly rushing into the planar world. If this were an ambush or trap that an enemy had set down for her, she would already be grievously injured, if not dead.

Yet, Cinquera didn’t seem to be concerned about this at all. She had traveled through countless planar worlds and traversed trillions of kilometers through the magical array’s guidance and arrived immediately within the dragon’s tomb of Plane Gere.

Such recklessness and foolhardiness had caught Greem by surprise.

He had thought that the evil dragon would have chosen to scout out the situation with a projection of some sort. He never expected that what would come out of the array would be the fearsome and powerful dragon herself.

The Sixth Grade evil dragon instantly blew the magical array part when she squeezed into this plane. In doing so, the dragon’s tomb had been shattered into countless spatial fragments and sent flying across the land.

The overwhelming dragon’s power clashed with the plane’s power. The result was the terrifying shockwave that Seren and the others had witnessed.

Even as powerful as Cinquera was, she could not unleash the full extent of her Sixth Grade power upon first arriving here. However, she was still able to crush Greem and Remi’s resistance with her overwhelming might.

Under Greem’s instruction, Remi had rushed forward in an attempt at a cheap shot on the enemy while the plane’s power still bound her. However, he had been turned into a pancake by a single slap from the dragon.

If Remi weren’t a Fifth Grade artifact spirit of the Tome of Corruption, he would already be dead now!

Greem had turned and fled from Sacred Dragon Valley without a second word upon realizing the dire situation he was in. He started to flee toward the distance with all he had.

Fleeing back to Dun Modr was absolutely out of the question.

Given how ferocious this evil dragon was, she definitely would not hesitate to chase him into Dun Modr and reduce the city into ruins. The city was defended by Sixth Grade Windstern and a few other Fifth Grade Great Adepts. But even with all their powers combined, they were unlikely to be able to match this evil dragon.

If Dun Modr was destroyed, their mission would fail!

In that one instant, Greem immediately decided on the direction he would flee.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

A series of loud explosions could be heard as a blazing trail of fire cut across the skies of Plane Gere toward the biggest city of the orc empire– Wintercastle.

Wintercastle was not only the largest orc city of the orc empire, but also the location of Arugel’s main temple!

It was the capital of all orcs and the holy city in the hearts of all believers of the Beast God!

Any orc in Plane Gere that desired to advance to a higher grade had to first accept a mission from the Beast God in the main temple. They would have to win the blessing of Arugel through their bravery and zealousness, thereby completing their advancement by bathing in the god’s divine radiance.

To some extent, Arugel had replaced the planar consciousness and become the only option for Plane Gere’s orcs to grow stronger. It resulted in the orcs gaining dominance over Plane Gere. No other intelligent species could fight for control against them.

Wintercastle was located in the heart of the vast Chillwind Plains. It was also the heart of Plane Gere itself. As such, this vast yet cold land was home to far too many orc tribes than it was capable of providing for.

The Chillwind Plains were over five thousand kilometers wide. Almost every inch of land here was tundra. The temperature here was almost always forty degrees below zero. The cold winds never stopped, and there was no way to farm or rear livestock on this land.

However, it was the harsh natural environment here that gave birth to the infamously ferocious orcs of Plane Gere.

They fought with the environment here, fought with the mighty magical beasts here. They had survived through the generations only with the Beast God’s blessing until they had become the most powerful species in the planar world.

There were also many flaws in a system based around faith. The most significant problem was the fact that the entire society revolved around the powerful and glorified those with superior physical strength. It also indirectly sealed off all other paths of gaining power.

There were very few elementium spellcasters throughout Plane Gere, as the Beast God’s power was not compatible with elementium powers. Individual elites might rise to become orc shamans, but they would not be able to develop independent elementium spellcasting systems outside of the Beast God’s divine power.

There were no scholars, sages, diviners, or other intelligence-based professions within the orc society.

Even if there were individuals suited for such professions, they would often fall and become the dregs of society as their physical strength was comparatively lacking. How were they supposed to embark on research in profound and esoteric knowledge when they couldn’t even fill their bellies?!

As such, it was the presence of faith toward the Beast God that severely limited the development of civilization and intelligence. That might strengthen the purity of the Beast God’s faith, but it would bind the orcs of Plane Gere firmly to the Beast God himself.

Of course, this was only the opinion of the outsider adepts. The orcs of Plane Gere themselves took pride in their crude, primitive-but-stubborn faith.

Perhaps this was the result of a clash between two different civilizations!