Age of Adepts

Chapter 258 Flame Fiend's Heart

A spacestone!

Before any display of its power, the gray and dirty stone looked just like any ordinary pebble from the roadside. However, when its power finally activated it lasted for only a short moment. In the blink of an eye it began disappearing in front of the two.

Alice wasn't idling about as she screamed either. She reached forward with her small hand and pierced through space, forcefully yanking the spacestone out.

Greem watched the whole thing unfold before him speechlessly. The corners of his mouth twitched uncontrollably.

The odd spacestone!

And what was even weirder– Alice's space affinity!

Greem had seen it all with his own eyes. Alice had reached into the spatial rift barehanded. She wasn't concerned about being sliced by the space fragments at all! Of course, the chip's high-speed motion capture had discovered a thin membrane of space wrapped about Alice's white and delicate hand. The membrane was as thin as a cricket's wing.

This membrane of space arose due to her affinity and had to be the main reason she was able to casually make contact with space fragments without getting hurt!

Alice grabbed the spacestone tightly and pressed it against her forehead to feel the profound space flux within it. The smile on her small face grew wider and wider.

All of a sudden, Alice leaned over and kissed Greem on the face. She then took a step backwards, held her skirt in her hands and performed a perfect maid's curtsey.

"Thanks for this, Master! I really like this gift."

Alice then ran out of the room, quick like the wind.

It was clear that she could no longer wait to use the spacestone in some special experiment of hers.

Greem actually understood Alice's excitement very well.

She was currently stuck at the pseudo-adept level. The only thing she needed to do to advance to an adept was to master a strand of planar law that related to her affinity. Then she would have to use this strand of planar law as the nucleus in order to form her consciousness core.

Spacestones, on the other hand, were undoubtedly some sort of physical manifestation of the spatial laws of the multiverse. Invariably, every single of one of them would contain extremely unique spatial law powers. And this was particularly suited for Alice's affinity! As long as she was able to draw this strand of spatial law power into her space of consciousness, the key step of advancing to an adept, the formation of the consciousness core, would be a breeze.

Once Alice advanced to an official adept, she would instantly become a powerful adept with her unique space affinity.

Even Greem felt his stomach turn once he thought of her skills being enhanced. Spatial Cut, Spatial Traversal, and the indomitable Spatial Shatter. Greem could only get slapped around in a one-on-one fight against an Adept-Level Alice, if he didn't have the help of his golems and Flame Fiend Transformation.

Thus, to maintain his dominance as the master, enhancing his own strength was necessary!

Greem sealed the door once more and got up to walk to a hidden room within his dwelling.

He had sealed all of his spoils of war from the knights' plane here. These were the stepping stones of his future dominance.

Greem walked to a wooden table and pulled away the black cloth covering it. A disgusting aura of corruption instantly pressed against his face.

This was a Flame Fiend's heart, the size of a skull. It's crimson flesh, thick tendons, pulsing life energies, and chaotic aura unique to the underworld all mixed with each other, turning into the special and strange aura of blood and slaughter specific to abyssal creatures.

The Flame Fiend's heart had been detached from its body for a long time. However it still retained extremely powerful life force thanks to the stimulation of magical energies. A crimson aura shrouded the heart as it beat, causing everyone that looked upon it to feel nausea.

Greem extended a single finger and gathered just a trace of magical energy at the tip. He touched the Flame Fiend's heart. Almost instantly, a cluster of dark green abyssal flame ignited at the area Greem had touched.

This flame clearly had the wicked, corrosive, and devouring traits of the World of Abyss. It quickly spread from the Flame Fiend's heart to Greem's finger.

Even with his elementiumized body of flames, Greem could feel slight pain from his fingertips. It seemed that this abyssal flame had the ability to burn through his body of flames and directly damage his mental world.

Greem frowned. Strong elementium fire quickly gathered at his fingertips and extinguished the abyssal flame using superior numbers.

As expected, this was a source of powerful strength!

Greem bent his body and held his breath. Blue light flashed deep in his black eyes.

"Beep. Detecting live sample of a unique being. Basic data has already been recorded. Please name the sample… "

"Flame Fiend's Heart."

"Beep. Live sample Flame Fiend's Heart has been recorded."

"Show me the sample data for this Flame Fiend's Heart!" Greem ordered, and instantly a three-dimensional projection of the Flame Fiend's Heart surfaced in his mind, slowly rotating around. Meanwhile, a flood of information was displayed beside the projection, completely filling up Greem's mental space.

Greem shut his eyes to focus. He filtered out all of the excessively trivial data, leaving only the basic biological information that was convenient to his understanding.

……

Muscle activity 46%. Can be improved…

Energy storage capacity 1155 points. Can be improved…

Energy output threshold 135 points. Can be improved…

Life energies conversion efficiency 41%. Can be improved…

Abyssal aura retention rate 18%. Can be reduced…

……

Greem opened his eyes and straightened his body. He looked intently at the heart, unable to suppress his excitement and intense desire.

With the slow increase of Spirit, this Flame Fiend's Heart might be his last hope at maintaining his absolutely dominant strength!

Ever since the first day he received this heart, Greem had been thinking about how to utilize the powerful strength within it. According to the massive number of calculations and filtering done by the chip, the only time Greem could use the Flame Fiend's Heart was during his Flame Fiend Transformation.

It was only during the Transformation, when his Physique and Spirit were amplified several times, that Greem could completely master and use the power of the Heart. Otherwise this energy heart taken from a Second Grade Abyssal Flame Fiend would turn out to be an unstable incinerator, instantly reducing Greem’s human form to ashes.

Having run through hundreds and thousands of methods of utilizing the energy heart, the chip presented Greem with a single feasible solution.

The Flame Fiend's Heart would be sealed within his body on normal occasions, and Greem would use his powers and aura to slowly modify the heart. Then, when it came to a battle, Greem would unseal the Heart after completing his Flame Fiend Transformation, allowing the Heart to become the energy-supplying core of the Flame Fiend's body.

Just like that, Greem would be able to reinforce his battle strength!

However there were a couple of problems to be solved before this could be done.

First, Greem had to do away with the thick abyssal aura that was shrouding the heart. Or at least, he would have to suppress the abyssal aura to an acceptable thickness. Otherwise, if he used the heart for extended periods of time and assimilated with the heart, the chances of him being contaminated and turned into an abyssal creature would also increase.

Even though abyssal creatures were well-known for their prowess, and Greem was not averse to possessing any sort of power, the chaos and violence in their nature was not something Greem wanted in his blood. From Greem's understanding, abyssal creatures were basically brainless magical creatures with +10 Physique, Strength, and Spirit, but also with -100 Intelligence.

Was power without control still power?

Thus, before he was able to eliminate this factor from the Heart, Greem had to be very careful with his use of it. He would not become overly reliant on the Heart.

Secondly, according to the chip’s scans, there were still many areas in the Flame Fiend's Heart that could be improved. If Greem wanted to maximize the benefit he got out of this, he would have to use up a massive amount of resources.

The data the chip provided was plentiful, but the most important info was what he had filtered out.

The muscle activity of the heart determined the working efficiency of the heart. A mere 46% meant it could only operate at half of its peak strength.

The energy storage capacity and energy output threshold, on the other hand, determined the current power level of the Flame Fiend's Heart. As the magic organ of the Abyssal Flame Fiend, the energy heart could store a certain amount of flame energy within itself. This meant that it could store 1155 points of flame energy while in a non-combat mode.

And all of this was energy Greem could draw upon during a fight!

However, regardless of the amount of storage capacity, the output threshold still limited the strength of the flame energies that Greem could use.

135 points meant that every single one of Greem's fire attacks could not exceed 135 points.

Of course, this was still far beyond Greem's current powers.

It was important to note that most of the spells of an actual First Grade adept were around 60-80 points. It was only because Greem had chose fire mastery, and in doing so gave up the spells of all other elements, that he was able to push the might of his fire spells all the way up to 115 points.

This energy level was already Greem's limit.

However, even at half capacity, the Flame Fiend's Heart still had a shocking energy output threshold of 135 points. It was clear how powerful Second Grade Flame Fiend's were!

Moreover, an energy storage of 1155 points would be enough for Greem to fire eight attacks at 135 points with more than enough to spare. This……this was why the heart was so significant to the enhancement of his powers!

On the other hand, the life energies conversion rate of 41% also meant that Greem would be able to convert his own life energy into flame energy, even if he was in combat. This kind of ceaseless supply of power would turn Greem into a terrifying instrument of war.

As long as he lived he would have an endless supply of power to tap into!

Sadly, there was still much to be done before he could use this powerful heart. All of this would take time.

Greem nodded in satisfaction and put the black cloth back over the heart.

Even though the black cloth looked very ordinary, the moment it was draped over the heart the thick abyssal aura that filled the room instantly disappeared.

This evidently meant that this ordinary-looking black cloth was also a magical tool! A magic tool that was used specifically for covering all kinds of energy auras!

Apart from the Flame Fiend's Heart, other things were also stored within this hidden room. Namely: two spacestones, four adept-level elementium cores, the mysterious Golden Apple, the Orb of Deception, the Black Qiraji Resonating Crystal, the Emblem of Fire, and Shandera's Sheepstick.

However, most of these treasures were still far out of reach for Greem's current abilities. If he wanted to see through all of the arcane knowledge contained within these items, he would likely have to wait until he was several Grades higher!