Age of Adepts

There was no greater shock on the battlefield than the death of a Fifth Grade creature.

In the World of Gods, a Fifth Grade being would be a transcendent god.

Killing a Fifth Grade was akin to slaying a god!

Even if you were to look at things that way, Fiveface was no more than a demon. However, no matter what you thought and what you called him, Fiveface was still a bonafide Fifth Grade existence. He was equal in power to the weakest gods.

He was an existence that had transcended the limits of planar worlds and broken free of the limitations of planar laws. If nothing unfortunate happened to them, Fifth Grade beings would live for at least ten thousand years.

Their bodies were immortal, and their souls were incomparably powerful. Under ordinary circumstances, planar creatures would be injured just from looking at a Fifth-Grade. It was unthinkable for them to be wounded, much less killed.

However, such an existence had died in the World of Adepts, at the hands of a Fourth Grade adept. That...the shock of it was enough to stun the adepts speechless.

Unknowingly, a hint of awe, fear, respect, and envy appeared in the eyes of the adepts as they looked upon Greem’s giant body. They weren’t aware of these emotions that had come over them. It was probably the limit of power that a Fourth Grade adept could ever hope to achieve!

Far away under the Association’s adept tower, Domhnall let out another resentful sigh.

For some reason, he’d been sighing a lot more in the past year than in the past five hundred years combined.

“Fiveface is dead! Relay news of this to Lord Ulnak at Camp Exodar and Lord Riva of the Endless Gardens. I’m sure they will be interested in this news!” Domhnall adjusted his feelings and immediately made contact with someone in the tower through discreet means.

This message soon found its way to the Tower of Observation. It was then quickly relayed to the few Great Adepts who maintained close contact with the Adept’s Association via the teleportation arrays.

The youthful-looking Adept Ainley gently drifted down beside Gloria, whose face was pale as a sheet. He said in a solemn voice, “I don’t intend to provoke a fellow like that! The deal we agreed on earlier is moot. You...don’t have any opinions on that, do you?”

Gloria’s body trembled when she heard this, but she did not open her mouth to retort.

Adept Ainley glanced at her in pity before putting on a smile and flying over toward the legendary fire adept standing proudly in the distance.

It was about time to introduce himself and make some connections!

An overwhelming victory. This battle was absolutely an unprecedented and overwhelming victory in the World of Adepts’ history!

To think that a Fifth Grade minor Scourge Lord had been slain inside a planar world. That, too, was a significant and unprecedented event in the history of the universe.

The many participants of the war-particularly the seven Fourth Grades of the Central Lands-were all overjoyed and excited. They gathered around the corpse of the many-headed reptile and went to work.

This Fifth Grade monster had just recently been killed. Both its body and soul were in fresh, peak condition. Under Greem’s instructions and with his approval, the numerous Fourth Grade adepts of the Central Lands became the most expert of butchers. They happily commenced dismembering and preserving what remained of the creature’s magical organs.

Fiveface had suffered a painful death. The Fifth-Grade divine spell had incinerated most of his body, and the parts that remained were badly damaged by fire energy. However, he was still a Fifth Grade creature. Even a scale from his body, a piece of meat, or a tendon would be an invaluable high-grade resource for the adepts here.

Meat. Fresh meat cut off from the body of a Fifth Grade monstrosity...and they were the ones who performed the butchering.

There was no doubt that this glory would make them proud even when they remembered this moment a hundred years in the future!

Scaling, skinning, carving the meat, cleaning the bones, pulling out the tendons, gathering the blood, collecting the marrow, and preserving the brain.

It was a series of bloody and filthy tasks, but the Fourth Grade adepts of the Central Lands refused to hand the job over to anyone else. They gathered around the corpse and happily went to work. The adepts of the other organizations could only watch jealously from afar. None of them approached the scene of butchering.

Declan, the only Fourth Grade body-refining adept in the Central Lands, rolled up his sleeves as he started butchering. Declan looked just like a butcher as he carved up the spoils with a giant Fourth Grade knife he had found somewhere, wiping the sweat away from his red face as he did so.

He wasn’t sweating because of the labor, but because of his sheer excitement!

He was holding the scales of a Fifth Grade creature in his hands as he stepped upon the flesh of a Fifth Grade creature and swung his knife to sever the tendons of a Fifth Grade creature, splashing the blood of a Fifth Grade creature all over his face. The work was tough and dirty, but Declan couldn’t be more excited. He was so eager he looked as if he would be fine doing all the work alone.

Kerala, Alfred, Matthew, and Nicolas gathered around, taking special sealing boxes out of their storage rings. They carefully dug out the magical organs from the gory mess, cast the proper preservation spells, and put them away.

Meanwhile, Greem, the man who made it all happen, stood silently close to Inkdeep Valley. He slowly retracted all the fire energy he was emitting and restored his human form.

It was a terrible sight. Greem’s body was covered in wounds.

There were injuries and missing flesh all over. In particular, the wounds Fiveface had gone berserk on were missing so much meat it was an absolutely ghastly sight to behold.

Even the relatively unharmed portions of his body were covered in green and purple spots. These spots were created by elementium poison that Fiveface had left in Greem’s body after biting him. Until Greem dealt with the poison, he would not be able to heal these wounds through his regenerative power.

It had been a victory, but it came at a cost!

Greem was not a body-refining adept that specialized in melee combat, after all. He had undoubtedly been at a disadvantage when fighting against Fiveface up close. That caused him to suffer severe physical injuries bordering on what you would call ‘grievous.’

Fortunately, he won in the end.

It gave him more than enough time to treat his wounds slowly!

After leaving the matter of harvesting the corpse’s resources to his subordinates, Greem shut his eyes and began the self-healing process. He intentionally left the harvesting job to the Fourth Grades of the Central Lands to make them feel involved and improve their sense of belonging.

Judging from everyone’s positive and eager attitude, they were far more accepting of Greem’s rule now than before. The feeling of pride for the Central Lands had taken root in their hearts and was slowly growing.

Just as Greem closed his eyes to deal with his wounds, he sensed something. He opened his eyes and stared calmly at the unfamiliar figure approaching.

This person was not even two meters tall, smaller than even Greem’s finger. However, the tremendous power contained within him was enough to make Greem wary, even if he were in his peak condition.

It was a reasonably good-looking young man. However, his hooked nose, thin lips, and dark eyebags ruined his impression, making him look like an overindulgent youth.

Greem no longer judged people by their appearances but by the shine of the energy within them.

Ordinary adepts could not prevent Greem from seeing everything about their existence through the principle level, even if defensive forcefields constantly shrouded them. However, this young adept was simply a black hole to his senses. Greem could not even discover the elementium attribute of his energy.

It wasn’t the first time Greem had run into such a situation!

Gloria had also been able to do such a thing by relying on her Fifth Grade equipment’s protection.

The unknown man stopped five hundred meters away from Greem and did not try walking any closer.

They might both be human adepts, but there was no trust or friendship between them. If the adept continued forward, he would break Greem’s ‘safety distance’ and provoke an instinctual reaction from Greem.

Five hundred meters...that was the perfect distance. Even if one of them showed hostility, the other one would have ample time to react. That was why no powerful adept would ever allow another powerful individual to get too close.

If an idiot were to be foolish enough to infringe on this safety distance......

A fight would be inevitable!

Of course, Ainley and Gloria were a different case. They might not get along with each other, but they were both from the Adept’s Association and had at least enough trust to stay within a reasonable distance of each other.

“You are Ainley? I have heard of you,” Greem assessed the man and said, “I believe you are the first-ranked ultra-powerhouse of the Adept’s Association!”

“I am the first-ranked ultra-powerhouse!” Adept Ainley said proudly, but then switched to a cheeky smile. “That said, us ultra-powerhouses can’t really be proud of ourselves in front of you. A Fifth Grade creature...who would’ve expected that even a Fifth Grade creature would die in your hands. That’s unbearably terrifying!”

“You came here to say this?” Greem had an odd smile on his face.

“Of course not. I’m here to discuss certain matters with you, sir. I see you are quite badly injured too. Why not let our Association’s healers help you? This should help you recover your combat power quicker as well,” Ainley said seriously when the topic of conversation veered back to proper matters.

“Also, these are your spoils. Keep them well!”

Having said that, Ainley lifted his hand and threw out four strange crystals of various colors. They drifted slowly toward Greem.

Greem looked at the crystals as the Chip’s notification rang out.

[Detecting four high energy elementium crystals. Peak Fourth Grade. Attributes: Wind, Frost, Earth, and Fire. According to the scans, these should be the power crystals found from the destroyed heads of the many-headed reptile, Fiveface.]

Who would’ve thought that Ainley was generous enough to give up these peak Fourth Grade power crystals instead of putting them away for himself?

The cold indifference on Greem’s face thawed slightly.

Just as he was prepared to talk with this socially-aware Adept Ainley, the Central Lands adepts below broke out into rowdy cries.

Declan’s bloody figure emerged from the corpse of Fiveface. He lifted up a jade-green crystal in his hands.

“Fifth Grade...Fifth Grade.”

Declan was so excited his voice had turned sharp and high-pitched. However, everyone could only think about what he had just said.