Age of Adepts

Inside the sinister and damp underground stone room.

Placed in the middle of the stone room was a stone autopsy table with a young and beautiful female elf lying on top of it.

The clothes and equipment on her body had been removed and thrown to the side.

She was almost naked at this moment, her perfect body not covered by any piece of fabric at all. A strange rune had been drawn on her forehead with paint as scarlet as blood itself. It was the effect and influence of this rune that rendered the female elf incapable of controlling her body despite having full consciousness.

It was as if her body was out of sync with her mental consciousness. She could feel every part of her body, even the chill of the cold air breezing past her naked skin. Strangely enough, she couldn't control any part of her body.

She couldn't even close her eyes, let alone move her pinky finger!

The female elf's eyes were wide open, her pretty and clear eyes betraying unconcealed fear and unease.

Fear of this environment, fear of the atmosphere, and fear of the two emotionless black silhouettes assessing her body.

All this frightened the elf so much that she wanted to scream.

However, when the female elf was about to shout in horror, she realized that her mouth couldn't open at all, almost as if it had been glued shut with powerful tree sap. Even her throat didn't seem to be at her command, making it impossible for her even to grunt.

"This is excellent material. Aren't we just doing some simple dissection? Is there a need to waste a First Grade elf?" Endor, who stood at Greem's side, hunched her body and grumbled softly through her mouth.

A vibrant green, palm-sized doll was grabbing onto her lapel and playing around there. A black doll with a strange form also floated by her shoulder.

From a distance, the black doll looked like a tiny human that had been cobbled together with black cloth. The surface of its body was filled with crooked sewing lines and dark, unrecognizable runes. There were no facial features on its tiny head– only a single terrifying eye drawn with blood.

The black doll had no hands or limbs and just floated eerily above Endor's shoulder. Three green lights also orbited around its petite body.

If one could get close enough to look, they would be horrified to find out that those green lights were three frightening miniature ghosts. These ghosts did not have bodies and were terrifying beings made of pure negative energy. They endlessly screamed and screeched in agony while trying to escape the Stitch Ghost Golem's body.

However, it was all in vain.

They could only hate, howl, and madly curse every living thing and being in the world.

One could feel the overwhelmingly sinister aura from them if they were even slightly close to the golem.

After this period of cultivation, the Spirit of Pestilence and the Stitch Ghost Golem that Greem had personally created had both barely managed to reach beginner First Grade. Moreover, they had both gained some especially terrifying abilities. Sadly, they still couldn't help Greem at all with their current strength; they still needed to be further cultivated.

Perhaps they would need to reach advanced First Grade before they could even be of any help in a fight between Second Grade powerhouses!

No one knew why, but these two helpers that Greem cultivated liked Endor very much. They would stick by the old witch's side every time Greem let them out, almost as if she was their true master.

Greem couldn't do anything about this!

After all, Poison Hag Endor also had a unique shadow Physique. Her origin power was remarkably similar to the two little fellows. Greem, on the other hand, was purely a body of fire and belonged to the ranks of positive energy. It was no wonder that the two little fellows weren't attached to him.

After all these years of living as an adept, Greem had utterly gotten used to the rhythm of an adept's life.

He draped a bland gray robe around himself and stood emotionlessly before the stone platform. Fearsome blue light subtly glowed in his eyes. Even though there was a naked and attractive beauty in front of his eyes, there were no signs of excitement or stimulation in his expression. In fact, he seemed to be more interested at flipping the female elf's fingers and arms about.

"The muscles aren't sufficiently developed. There's probably quite a bit of loss in terms of robustness and strength."

"That said, the tone of the muscle is extremely smooth. They must be well compensated in flexibility and body coordination."

"The bones are far too slender. The calcium content is only 76% of human bones. The weight is also 33% less than a human's. Impact resistance is estimated to be 21% weaker, while flexibility is increased by 48% and body coordination by 52%."

Greem was like the most professional appraiser, extending the female elf's white and slender fingers and brushing past her joints, waist, and abdomen. He even lifted the female elf's hand and took a close look at the position and thickness of the calluses on her hands.

"This is a fairly excellent elven archer. The extent of calluses forming is similar on the right and left hand, which means she is equally agile with both hands. However, given the difference of the calluses, she still prefers to hold the bow in the right hand and wield a blade in the left."

Greem slowly investigated the elf's body and spoke his insights.

Poison Hag Endor was whispering to the two little fellows by herself, not paying attention to what he was saying. Only the female elf's blue eyes were continuously expanding and contracting. It was clear that she was utterly terrified, but her body still rested comfortably upon the platform, incapable of any biological reaction.

"You are probably very curious why we have obscured your control over your body, yet not robbed you of your consciousness." Greem carefully examined every inch of the female elf's body before meeting her gaze in satisfaction.

A questioning expression came from the female elf's eyes, but she still couldn't move whatsoever.

"It's for a very simple reason!" Greem calmly spoke, "Because in a moment, when we start dissecting you, we need to know the connections and the way in which your mental consciousness communicates with the magical organs in your body. During this process, I do not wish for your emotions to interrupt the surgery. Nor do I want you to be completely unconscious and thereby make it difficult to examine how the magical organs function under the control of the consciousness.

"So, let's start the surgery."

Having said that, Greem lifted his hand, and a sparkling silver knife immediately stabbed deep into the female elf's chest.

As Greem lightly pulled downward, a blood-curdling ripping sound rang out as the female elf's chest was opened like a book.

What came next was an exceedingly cruel and bloody dissection.

To clearly figure out the internal construction of the elves' bodies and what part their mental consciousness played in it, Greem had used a restraining rune to restrict the female elf's mental consciousness within her own mind. This way, the biological reactions of her body could still act upon her mental consciousness, but she couldn't control her body as usual.

The tremendous pain from her body assaulted the female elf's mental consciousness. She was in extreme agony, but her face remained emotionless.

Greem reached into the elf's chest and lightly began reaching around the inside, occasionally taking out a bloody living organ from within. He very carefully placed all the organs inside glass containers of various colors and sizes.

The insides of these containers were filled with light-yellow nutrient solutions that had been specially concocted to maintain the short-term liveliness of these removed organs.

Heart, liver, spleen, lung, kidney, stomach, intestine…

Greem's hands cut with amazing agility.

Every time he severed a blood vessel, he would flick his fingers and a tiny and spontaneous flame would burn and seal the wound. This way, the female elf wouldn't die of excessive blood loss. Moreover, under the effect of some strange magic, the female elf remained alive despite having almost all of her internal organs taken out.

Instead, it was the wave after wave of torturous agony that assaulted her consciousness that exceeded the cruelty of anything else!

Greem shook his head regrettably after examining all of the female elf's internal organs.

It seemed this was an ordinary elven archer that had absolutely no talent for magic. He had found no visible signs of magic assimilation in her body.

Greem hesitated for a moment.

It seemed he could only dissect the druids if he wanted to research the forest elves' relationship with nature magic!

Still, if the elf before his eyes was going to die eventually, why not fully use up every bit of utility she had to offer?

Greem immediately and unhesitatingly took up some small knives, hammers, picks, and other surgery tools. He then carefully split open the female elf's skull.

After so much torture at his hands, the life of the female elf naturally slipped unstoppably toward the abyss of death, even with the stimulation of magic and the sustenance of life potions.

Greem waved his hand and activated multiple monitoring arrays that had been temporarily set up in the room. He then started a comprehensive and detailed examination of every inch of the female elf's brain.

Greem wiped away the restraining rune on the female elf's head and softly and temptingly whispered by her ear, "Pray to your god with all your strength in the final moment before the last of your life drains away, won't you?"

The female elf's mind had already fallen into chaos and was starting to collapse. At that moment, it seemed as if a trace of energy had returned to her. Her mouth began to tremble as she whispered a full-hearted and sincere prayer to her god.

A sort of unfamiliar energy–imperceptible to the ordinary person–emanated from the elf's consciousness. This energy started to construct a hidden and profound channel of faith with some location in the distance through unique mental nodes in her brain.

The moment the channel of faith opened, Greem's heart trembled. He sensed an indescribably strong mental will extending rapidly toward this place.

The monitoring array around the female elf's brain immediately turned from yellow to dark red as it let out a blaring alarm.

Apart from the monitoring array, Greem also narrowed his eyes and used the Chip's scanning function and x-ray vision to their fullest.

The two worked together, and Greem quickly managed to lock onto the channel of faith's location.

Pa!

A tiny fireball exploded at the location he had locked onto, completely exterminating the last weak scrap of mental consciousness that the female elf still had. With the scattering of the elf's mental consciousness, the channel of faith also abruptly vanished.

Somewhere in the void, Greem seemed to have heard an earth-shattering roar of fury and anger.