Age of Adepts

There was movement beneath the ground!

He was the only one to sense the elemental flux; perhaps because he was the only one present with any spellcasting talent.

This world's arcanology was incomplete and broken. Regardless, he was still able to successfully awaken his elemental talent and become a spellcaster. This demonstrated the monstrous compatibility between his soul's talent and one of this plane's laws. If he had been born in the World of Adepts, he would certainly have become a powerful warlock that could master spells effortlessly.

Warlocks were an extremely unique existence, even amongst spellcasters. Most warlocks gained the ability to cast spells due to suddenly awakening the power of their ancestral bloodline, while other warlocks awoke due to their soul's unique talent.

Draconic Warlocks and Blood Mages often arose because of their bloodlines, while Necromancers, Alchemists, and Destiny Mages stemmed from inborn talent. The two classifications were distinct and separate, with no chance of a warlock being born with both bloodline and talent!

In any complete material plane, as long as Elementium was present, there would always be genius talents that could awaken their spellcasting abilities under the influence of the planar laws. Unfortunately, the Witcher Knights had already secured an indomitable position in this plane. As such, the existence of smaller spellcasting groups had been suppressed.

This was much like the World of Adepts. There, adepts were unmatched and ran rampant, squashing the potential of all physical classes. Jobs that once required warriors, rogues, or priests were now dominated by adepts.

Using the flexible and mysterious nature of spells, along with the division of spell masteries, the adepts managed to create specialized branches to mimic and replace once unique jobs. Body-Refining Adepts could be seen as a replacement for the warrior job, while agile adepts like Mary were no weaker than the strongest assassins. Even priests were replaced by countless alchemical tools, potions, or variant spells.

Upon closer inspection, one would find that the adepts had slowly made up for their own deficiencies over the tens of millions of years of their development. In doing so, they had become a persistent nightmare of untold small and mid-sized planes.

Even though the teenager had been bound and could not move, his talent and innate ability still allowed him to see more than the others in the camp. He held his breath and focused on his senses, silently waiting for the arrival of a change!

…………

Thirteen witcher-knights and eleven mercenaries.

Amongst them, there was only one witcher-knight with the ability of a pseudo-adept. He seemed to be the captain of the squad. There were three knights with the ability of advanced apprentices, while the rest were all rookies at the beginner level.

They were also equipped with standard knight's armor, longswords, and longbows. This meant that they had an outstanding mix of close and mid-range attacks, as well as their powerful defense. Observing close range through a wind critter, Greem realized something peculiar about the knights.

More accurately, he found something mysterious on the knights' equipments!

There were obscure patterns made of complicated lines on their shields, longswords, and bows. Furthermore, some crystalline jewels had been embedded in them. A normal person would have thought of them as decorations, but Greem could feel traces of magic on them.

Beginner-level runic carvings? !

Using the mysterious patterns to form simple runes, coupled with the magic stones and elemental crystals as energy sources, these knights had found an alternative way of tapping into the powers of Elementium.

Greem watched the camp silently from a hidden spot and couldn't help but think it was amusing.

A bunch of imposter elementium users had replaced the actual spellcasters. This made Greem, who had come from another plane, silently wonder at the oddity and twistedness of the developments here. As expected, if you visited enough realms, you could witness all sorts of odd and unusual situations.

The World of Adepts was definitely a high-magic plane where human adepts were at the top. But this might not be the case in other planes. From what Greem knew, the goblin Grand Duke that Snorlax had been in secret contact with lived in a small plane where it was goblins who held the superior position.

Humans' role had been reversed there, and they were the slaves of the "short and stupid" goblin race. However, that kind of treatment was still considered decent. In certain notable planes, humans and humanoids were the livestock of larger magical creatures. Their situation was truly lamentable. A fate so terrible, most could not bear to dwell on the idea.

After silently contemplating, Greem went back to watching the knights. Those mercenaries, on the other hand, were not worth his attention.

A bunch of fools that dared to pretend to be swordsmen because they had leather armor and worthless swords, who dared to call themselves godly marksmen just because they had a hunter's bow on their backs, and who dared to call themselves powerful warriors simply because they had a rotten wooden shield....these kinds of people had neither ability nor talent. All they had was a little strength.

Thus, Greem ignored them after a quick look at their gear.

Greem observed them for half an hour. Once he had sufficient information, and the golems had reached their positions, Greem gave the order to attack while he remained hidden in the woods.

The one in charge of this attack was naturally the chip. It was exceptional at managing and organizing resources. The main force of this attack was the poor Lightning Giant, who had been relegated to be a backup for so long. Using the Fire Lord might have yielded the best results for an all-out attack, but Greem wanted to capture some prisoners. Since the Fire Lord only had indiscriminate and overbearing spells, Greem was worried that these small fries wouldn't be able to survive.

Therefore, the Lightning Giant who had been sidelined was now back as the main force on the battlefield!

[ Author: The Lightning Giant's entrance will always be so cool. It even brings with it its own sound effects.]

Sudden flashes of lightning instantly illuminated the night sky, and as the giant appeared in the sky, there was an ominous rumbling of thunder.

Some mercenaries that were still indulging in the feast had yet to clear their heads. They stopped eating and looked about confusingly while muttering. "So weird! The weather was clearly good. Why's there lightning?"

Some of the more alert fighters lifted their heads. Their expressions suddenly fell when they saw the terrifying humanoid wreathed in lightning floating in the sky.

The difference between the well-trained witcher-knights and the motley crew of mercenaries was evident when faced with this imminent danger. Immediately the witcher-knights tossed aside their silverware and wine glasses, then sprinted to where they had put their equipment. The mercenaries, on the other hand, stared wide-eyed at the mysterious giant. It was only until they saw the knights' actions that they started scrambling for their weapons.

The inside of the camp was in chaos!

But why would the Lightning Giant give them the time to equip themselves?

The giant raised its large, hazy hand as a terrifying thunderstorm quickly formed above the camp. The bright moon and brilliant stars of a once beautiful evening had become covered by a world of piercing lightning and roiling black clouds. One after another, forked lightning struck down from the clouds across the length of the entire camp.

The effect was still limited by this low-magic plane, where magic was weaker. Otherwise, the magnitude of the thunderstorm could still increase several times. Even so, a weakened thunderstorm already brought about catastrophe to the people panicking below.

Every blast of forked lightning would change direction when nearing the ground, blasting towards the metal swords and armors of the knights and mercenaries. The intense high-voltage currents crackled through their bodies. Every blast of lightning would affect three or four people before dissipating.

With every lightning bolt that fell, a few pained silhouettes would stagger and fall within the camp.

The lightning giant had already reduced the lethality of its lightning as much as possible, under Greem's request, and concentrated on stunning and crowd control.

Although the thunderstorm wasn't considered powerful, having 20 points of damage at best, it still managed to cripple most of the mercenaries in the blink of an eye.

However, as expected, the witcher-knights were a special job that often crossed paths with "heretic spellcasters". Even faced with an overwhelming flood of magical attacks, they did not lose their cool or scatter. Instead, they squatted, raised their small shields, and activated the unique "rune arrays" within. Using the small energy shields, they blocked most of the falling lightning blasts.

Protected by the cover from their companions, some of the witcher-knights even pulled out their metallic longbows to start firing waves of elementally charged magic arrows.

Enchanted longbows? No! It was only a simple and crude embedded crystal. Compared to the developed and perfected enchanted weapons of the World of Adepts, the energy efficiency of these crystals were disgustingly low.

This was such a crude magic bow that even a beginner apprentice from the World of Adepts wouldn’t choose to craft such an item.

Even though these bows were a crude means of utilizing magic, they were already the best magical tools on this plane. The reason the witcher-knights were able to dominate and oppose nobility all over the country was precisely thanks to this "trash equipment" that Greem couldn't care less about!

While everyone in the camp had been distracted by the Lightning Giant, the clay golems that had been lying in wait, underground, finally surfaced under the instructions of the chip.

The knights that had been concentrating on the Lightning Giant felt the ground give out under their feet. The very next moment, they had sunk into a mud pit that appeared out of nowhere. The shocked knights furiously struggled to get free.

Sadly for them, something more surprising happened!

The mud pit that had trapped their lower bodies instantly turned back to ordinary dirt. In the blink of an eye, six of the thirteen witcher-knights were magically trapped by the earth. As the knights scrambled to save their companions, clusters of dirt in the camp began to swell, gathering into multiple clay golems.

Under the knights' frightened gaze, the clay golems charged towards the knights on legs that were as thick as pillars. At the same time, the figures' fan-like clay hands and heavy fists swung down in a cascade of blows towards the knights.

The knight captain let out a battlecry as he drew his longsword. With his energy shield in one hand, and a magic longsword with elemental flames in the other, he parried the strikes of the clay golems. Under his directions, the remaining knights also put on their mail, grabbed their weapons, and rushed forward.

The witcher-knights formed a loose circle, protecting their trapped companions behind them while starting to engage the clay golems.

Without elementium attached, mundane weapons could not possibly damage the clay golem's sturdy body. But with the magical weapons, along with the ability to use a type of special knight battle technique, the knights were miraculously able to force a stalemate against the clay golems.