Age of Adepts

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The welcoming banquet was held on the third level of the tower, just as scheduled.

Almost everyone who could participate in this banquet was one of the first members of the Crimson Clan.

Though neither Clan Head Greem nor Lady Mary was here, the atmosphere in the banquet was just as passionate and lively.

Most of the clan adepts had just returned from another plane. Their purses were full, their pouches were bursting, and their skills had improved by quite a bit. Disregarding everyone else, even the inconspicuous Bug Adept Billis had managed to advance from intermediate First Grade to peak First Grade.

If everything went well, then in another dozen years he might be the second clan adept after Lady Mary to advance to Second Grade.

Second Grade.

If one were frank, this grade was already the stopping point of most adepts' fantasies.

As for Third and Fourth Grade? Without exceptional talent and stunningly lucky encounters, most adepts would never be able to reach such a height even if they were to dedicate their lives towards work and improvement.

The Adept's Handbook provided a very comprehensive summary of the adept's advancement system.

First, anyone who wanted to become an adept needed to have adept talent. They would be able to become an apprentice adept.

The so-called adept talent was actually referring to elementium affinity!

According to statistics from the Adept's Association, in the World of Adepts, the chance of a baby born amongst mortals having elementium affinity was only 1.31%. That meant that only a maximum of thirteen out of a thousand humans could be apprentice adepts with elementium affinity.

Of these thirteen apprentice adepts, half of them would remain as common men due to their inability to master meditation. The remaining half would have to take things one step at a time and slowly advance from beginner apprentice to intermediate apprentice, and from advanced apprentice to pseudo-adept before finally qualifying to attempt advancement to an adept.

According to the data, the success rate of an apprentice adept advancing to an adept was no more than 15%.

However, given any individual apprentice, this success rate could still be increased by various means and resources. That was why some adepts liked to joke that the birth of an apprentice relied on luck, while the creation of an adept relied on accumulation!

It didn't matter how terrible an apprentice's talent might be. As long as the clan was willing to invest the resources in cultivating them, their chances of advancing would be far higher than those without any backing.

That said, the World of Adepts was still a fair world!

Even the fortunate descendants of adepts born with a silver spoon could not raise their success rate to a full 100%, regardless of how many resources had been committed to the effort. In fact, even an 80% success rate was hard to achieve. As such, while having a giant mountain to rely upon could increase the success rate significantly, there was still a 20% chance of failure.

Meanwhile, apprentices who had nothing to rely upon would have the minimum chance of 15% to succeed as long as they became pseudo-adepts.

That was why no one would dare to look down upon any pseudo-adept. Who knew whether the dazzling halo of a protagonist would fall upon a particularly fortunate person, allowing them to instantly rise to become one of the true masters of this world– an adept!

Meanwhile, Second Grade adepts were not something that could be achieved through experience and knowledge alone. More often than not, it demanded special techniques or unusual talents. Otherwise, the group that formed 70% of the adepts would not be First Grades, but Second Grades instead.

Compared to orthodox adepts like Meryl, Bug Adept Billis' advancement speed was terrifying.

He hadn't spent more than seventy years to advance to peak First Grade since he first advanced to an adept. The most direct reason that led to this was him dedicating his entire life to endless slaughter.

Whether it was the Goblin Plane, Lance, or even the latest Faen Plane, he had been fully involved in battles and had been a vital force. It was such constant and bloody trials that allowed Billis to obtain such an extraordinary advancement speed.

Meryl, Deserra, Gargamel, and the others might envy him, but they could only shake their heads and sigh. After all, they couldn't possibly emulate his life of living on the knife's edge. If they tried to commit to such a life forcefully, they might lose their lives before they could even improve their powers.

There was only a total of approximately a dozen adepts in the banquet hall on the third floor.

Meryl, who had hastily returned from the Goblin Plane, dragged Deserra to a side and softly questioned him about their experiences in Faen. Occasionally, Meryl's eyes swept across the entrance of the banquet hall. She was clearly waiting for the arrival of her teacher, Greem.

As the host of this banquet, Gargamel was busy walking around the hall and greeting the various adepts. Meanwhile, a pretty and voluptuous forest spirit stood at his side, brushing away every single female apprentice that tried to approach Gargamel with a cold and indifferent expression.

A pretty young girl in a jade green dress trailed between the two of them, tightly holding onto the forest spirit's hand. She was looking around the place with curious eyes.

Moreover, she also had the power of a First Grade!

Apart from these few human adepts, the rest of the adepts were of other races.

Dana the Medusa was fairly close with Charon, the leader of the manticores. The two of them were huddled in a corner, sipping at their wine glasses like the human adepts did as they talked in low voices.

The only ones that could provide the banquet with its atmosphere were the vampires that Mary had brought back with her.

Soros and Windsor, the only two surviving blood knights, were dressed in bright and blinding crimson armor. Paired with folded bat wings behind their backs, they looked very dashing and handsome indeed. In stark contrast to them were the six blood elves ranging from First to Second Grade.

There were males and females among them, but even the male elves had pretty faces, making it hard for anyone to determine their sex based on their looks.

These blood elves were not of the quiet kind, seeing as they took the initiative and led the hall in a dance. Their delicate faces and elegant dance moves successfully attracted the attention of all the male adepts.

The atmosphere of the banquet instantly ignited!

Apart from proper adepts, there were also seven to eight adepts who were qualified to attend the banquet.

They could not enjoy the privileges of the adepts and were not the main characters of this banquet. However, as the reserve forces cultivated by the clan, they could still participate in such clan banquets and were getting a taste of the atmosphere and methods of interactions between adepts.

Of course, if they could win the fancy of an adept during the banquet, any resource needs they might have in the future would be solved.

That was why these pseudo-adepts had all taken the time to dress up. The men were handsome, and the women were beautiful. They walked around and struck up conversations with everyone, making for a truly eye-catching sight at the banquet!

Meanwhile, Goblin Merchant Snorlax was also an active participant of the banquet.

He relied on his history as Greem's earliest follower to casually drift from circle to circle and group to group. He made conversation with everyone using the unique passion of a goblin merchant, cracking jokes and entertaining, almost as if he was the protagonist of the banquet.

The ones providing service during the banquet were a group of female apprentices that had been specially selected, along with a few exceptionally obedient otherworldly slaves– forest elves.

One had to say that any group would have different individuals in them: some who were stubborn, while others knew how to adapt.

These forest elves hadn't been in Fire Throne for more than a day, but they had already dejectedly resigned themselves to their new identities. They put on their slave collars and seriously attended their roles as elven waitresses.

It was a wise move from them.

Almost every single forest elf that Greem had brought back were fighters, and some of them were at the level of Second Grades. They might have been superior individuals and nobles back home, but here they were no more than delicate dolls that the adepts could toy with in the palms of their hands.

They might be able to live longer if they were obedient. And if the elves insisted on being stubborn, the dissection table would be their final resting place!

Of course, if they were to run into some evil adepts with unusual hobbies, turning them into sex slaves or specimens to add to a collection wasn't out of the ordinary.

Finally, midway through the banquet, Greem walked in with the dressed-up Adept Mary, while he was dressed in a black adept's robe.

Dragonborn Zacha and Goblin Tigule followed behind them.

The arrival of the four Second Grades in the clan immediately pushed the atmosphere of the banquet to its climax!

All the clan adepts stopped their chatting and dancing to give applause and welcome these elites. The young pseudo-adepts clapped the hardest of them all, and their faces flushed red with excitement from being able to witness this legendary character of their clan.

It was said that this Crimson Clan leader of theirs was a fantastic individual that had risen to Second Grade by his own power.

He had started from a swamp tower, made his name in the Underground World, and excelled at manipulating elementium golems. He had once beaten pseudo-adepts as an advanced apprentice and threw the World of Volcano into chaos as a pseudo-adept.

However, the one event that could best mark the legend of this man was the unknown battle that had occurred in the shadows!

Three adepts that had just advanced turned the tables against the evil adept that had tried to kill them in a blood sacrifice. They murdered the adept even as their lives were held in the adept's hands.

It had become his most famous battle!

From then on Greem could not be stopped, and he quickly rose from a nameless adept to an immensely powerful elite.

Flame Demon. Flame Fiend.

Such titles were given to him again and again, and each time signaled the defeat of yet another powerful enemy.

He had walked all this way and successfully planted his very own adept's tower on the map here in this part of the Black Forest.

As for his adventures into other planes, summoning a mighty dragon, slaughtering a vampire family, and returning victorious from another plane yet again? All of these feats were the distinctive footprints that marked the rise of a powerhouse.

Why were the adepts, pseudo-adepts, and apprentices present in the banquet here?

They were here precisely for the sake of joining the side of this powerful adept; to share and bask in the profits of war that others could not enjoy.

If the Crimson Clan were to rise under the leadership of such a legendary clan head, then all of them who had joined early would rise along with him, obtaining more resources and benefits!

And that was the only reason why everyone had gathered here!