Age of Adepts

Within the depths of the flaming ocean.

A cluster of leaping flame suddenly twisted and transformed, revealing Greem’s face, which had a rather shocked and startled expression.

For golems, who were a kind of elemental summon, seals or expelling magic was their biggest enemy. Of course, it was impossible for either type of magic spell to cause any damage to the golem itself, but they were capable of temporarily banishing the golem from the battlefield.

With Alice’s achievements in Spatial Magic, even if the Lightning Giant struggled with all its strength, it would still have to stay in that isolated spatial for more than fifteen minutes. During this period of time, Greem would lose any aid from this formidable fighter, and would be forced to step out and face the aggressive Alice personally.

A gentle ripple spread out in the space.

Alice appeared in front of the massive flaming ocean that covered nearly one hundred meters in circumference. Her face was beamed with a sweet and cute smile.

“Big brother, where are you? Are you playing hide and seek with Alice? Then you better hide properly! Alice is coming for you…” The voice was sweet and enchanting, but the shivering gleam shooting out from the depths of her eyes would make anyone who saw it tremble.

Greem’s face quickly reappeared from the other cluster of flame. Looking at Alice, he let out a cold smile and said, “It seems you have learned something new. I certainly didn’t expect you to have learned a Seal Magic Spell. I’m hiding inside the flame. Catch me if you can!”

Right after he finished saying that, the face faded away and transformed back into a soaring flame that sent forth deadly heat. Meanwhile, using his home advantage, he teleported himself to hide on the other side of the flame field. Within seconds, two large spatial blades in an x-pattern streaked through the place where he had showed his face previously.

The flame shattered, bursting into a devastating heat wave.

If he hadn’t run quick enough, he would have been wounded by the frightening Spatial Cut Alice unleashed.

This was the defensive tactic Greem had designed for himself.

After he had succeeded in turning his body into a Flame Body, both his elemental resistance and his physical resistance had improved hugely. However, he still couldn’t change the weakness of his ‘short-legs’. Within all his body attributes, currently his Agility was his biggest weakness and his slow speed had become his deadliest impediment.

In order to close up this breach, Greem had utilized the Inferno Force Field and Flame Body to create a massive flame field. After that, relying on the copious amount of Fire Elementiums gathered by the flame field, Greem had finally been able to move at high speeds without any issue. From time to time, he could also use the Elemental Nodes found in the Inferno Force Field to fulfill his dream of short-distance Fire Teleportation.

This also meant that if enemies couldn’t destroy his flame field, they would have to hold back their anger and chase behind him as he disappeared and reappeared randomly, suffering all the while from the endless fire attacks he unleashed.

Faced with Greem’s provocation, Alice’s smile became even sweeter. Casually, she created a zigzagging spatial crack and tossed it into the flame field. She twisted her body and dodged a huge dreadful hand made up from fire, and then, with a flash, she appeared at another place of the battlefield.

Alice wasn’t rushed, so she just teleported herself to a new spot after each attack. Every time, she created a half-meter long spatial crack and tossed it towards a random place within the flame field. As time went on, gradually, aside from being filled with steaming heat waves, the flame field was now packed with countless seemingly insignificant, yet slow moving, spatial cracks.

These spatial cracks kept devouring flames that drew too close to them. At the same time, any object that clashed into them split apart without making any noise. Their sharpness was comparable to top grade magical equipment. The few times that Greem clashed with them while moving inside the ocean of fire, if not for the fact that he was protected by Inferno Shield, just his Flame Body wouldn’t have been enough to withstand the cuts from the deadly spatial cracks.

Whenever Greem touched a random spatial crack, in the next second, the spot where he had stood would be covered with a swarm of spatial cracks. That damn Alice actually could shrink so many spatial cracks and toss them out like marbles.

When faced with this kind of broad attacks, Greem had no choice but to rely on short-distance Fire Teleportation to dodge them.

However, with the increasing number of spatial cracks that were wandering around in the flame field, the number of nodes that he could use for a safe teleportation had become very small. Greem was like a lone wolf being cornered by several hunters; his heart had started to fill up with frustration and anger.

Earlier, he had tossed out the Demon Alligator Hunter to distract Alice’s attention. But too bad, upon revealing itself, the Earth element golem, who had gone through some good times with him, was immediately riddled with countless spatial cracks unleashed by Alice and nearly became scrap.

Following the improvement of Greem’s overall strength, the enemies he faced had also become stronger. The Demon Alligator Hunter, who merely had the overall strength of an Advanced Apprentice, could now only play the role of cannon fodder and could no longer be the main character of the battlefield.

After being invaded by countless of Alice’s spatial cracks, the flame field unleashed by Greem was shrinking; many regions within it had their Fire Elementium sucked dry. As a result, Greem was forced to reveal himself!

At this critical moment, Greem swung the Fire Lord’s Scepter in his hand, summoning a tall Fire Deity from within the sea of flame, and used it to block off the shower of spatial magic spells cast by Alice.

For the first time since the battle had begun, Alice set foot into the boundaries of the flame field.

Though Alice was unbridled and arrogant, she was not silly! Before the flame field was destroyed, she would never step into a field that wasn’t controlled by her.

But as the flame was shrinking, the area occupied by the sea of flame had shrunk to less than half of its original size and it was filled with many empty regions where flames had vanished. Hence, faced with an enemy who had lost his ability to fight back and with the idea of humiliating the guy face to face, Alice finally stepped into the outer area of the flame field.

Under her feet the soil was charred and black, all of the grass had turned into ashes floating in the air as a result of being covered by the deadly high-temperature flame. The air was filled with high-temperature traps and spatial flames, and no breathable air existed inside of the flame field. If Alice had been a mere mortal, she would have long been toasted into a dried corpse by the high temperature and then burned into a charcoal by the deadly flame.

Yet she was like a cute little girl taking a happy stroll in the royal garden, holding the end of her skirt gently, walking on tiptoe half a meter above the ground. It was as if there was a completely transparent path underneath her feet, sparing her from touching the thick layer of ashes on the ground.

Just like that, Alice moved step by step like a fairy in a merry mood and drew closer to Greem, who had retreated to the center of the flame field.

Greem was finally hurt!

While he had been moving in the flame field, he had accidentally slammed into a wandering spatial crack. When the Inferno Shield, which had suffered from terrible damage, clashed with the spatial crack, it instantly exploded into sparks and flares and shot in all directions. It was too late to dodge and the spatial crack brushed over his left arm.

Without a sound, the flesh on his arm vanished. Even his arm bone had a cut of shining gold. It was a jagged cut, as if it had been bitten by a ferocious beast.

Bright red blood burst out from the wound, quickly flowing down from Greem’s arm.

However, there were swaying flares attached to the top of the blood, which made it look like a tiny fire serpent slithering on his body. After his body had transformed into a Flame Body, even his blood had changed and become different from others.

Hiding some three miles away and watching the battle, Mary couldn’t bear it and lightly licked her juicy lips. She felt a pain in her heart as she watched that large concentration of flaming blood go to waste. As for the dangerous situation Greem was facing now, she paid no attention at all.

After being together for so long, she had a very good understanding of the ‘crafty’ little man. He would fight desperately to profit at other people’s expense and would rather die than suffer any losses. This was the true motto of his life. Since he currently looked like a masochist, then he must have a powerful approach that could defeat the enemy.

Similar to Alice, who liked to stand facing the enemy and enjoy the despairing look in their eyes, Greem also loved to create misconceptions for his enemies and make them feel like they were standing at the pinnacle of their life. And yet what happened next would be the fearsome process of him using his strongest approach and bringing his enemies down from the pinnacle, sending them into a bottomless abyss!

First step, second step…

Third step… fourth step…

As Alice approached slowly, both of them finally stood face to face at a very close distance.

Fifty meters! For the two formidable Pseudo-Adepts, it was a super close distance where they could touch each other just by stretching out their hand and they could hear each other’s breathing!

“So, are you giving up your struggle? Without those elemental golems, with just your pathetic strength, how could you compare to me, the great Alice? Keep on struggling! Let out your miserable cries! I want to rip your disgusting face into pieces… hahaha…”

As she laughed frantically, Alice pulled the silver chain in her hand. Behind her, the Fire Deity, who was tightly tied by hundreds of thousands of rune chains, immediately collapsed with a loud boom. Its entire body exploded into falling flares that blanketed the sky.

This gave a touch of ruthlessness and savageness to her aggressive manner.

Yet Greem, who had all of his retreats blocked by silver rune chains poking out from the spatial cuts, was still wearing a bright smile on his face as he looked at the little loli, who was enjoying the pleasure of finally getting her full revenge. He suddenly pointed behind Alice with his finger.

“Look behind you… look behind you… hurry up and look over your shoulder!”

Alice tilted her head up and let out a pleased, piercing laugh into the sky. “What? Don’t you have any other approach? How could you use such a boring approach and try to sneak…”

Before she could finish her words, a fierce wind suddenly approached from behind her, blotting out the sky and covering up the earth. With tremendous momentum, it blanketed the area she was standing in within a split second.

The temperature of the air climbed up with terrifying speed; within the time it took to blink an eye, it approached nearly 4000ºC. Out of nowhere, countless pure white flames emerged in the space and burned through every single inch of the area. It even caused the spatial structure that Alice could freely control to become unstable.

Alice turned back, shocked.

A great menacing Flaming Giant was stooping like a cloud, stretching out a gigantic flaming hand, trying to grab her!

“Ahhhhhh!” An ear-splitting screech echoed from the battlefield as Alice slammed through the spatial cut in front of her, hiding in the boundless void she was familiar with.

The gigantic flaming hand roared over the place where she had stood. Five deep trenches were immediately carved out on the ground, and they slowly filled with charred black soil.