Age of Adepts

This was plane feedback!

Greem shouted out silently in his heart.

Even though he had yet to fully comprehend the mechanisms and principles of these planar feedbacks, it didn’t stop him from reveling in the joy of having his powers increase exponentially.

Countless planar law chains were incessantly merging with certain contents within his mind. All of this was happening at a planar law level that Greem couldn’t access with his naked eye or his Spirit. If Greem had advanced to a Fourth Grade adept, he might have realized that all of the contents of his mind that were merging with the laws were runic knowledge that he had brought back from the knights’ plane, as well as the resentment of powerful individuals that he had slain.

The planar laws trembled slightly. The ends of the planar chains had completely sunk into Greem’s soul. They were slowly merging with the complete set of runic knowledge Greem had just obtained. Even though most of the runic knowledge was similar to the World of Adepts’ widely used system, the part about merging energies was completely new content.

Most of Greem’s plane feedback had come from this particular knowledge!

The fact that Greem’s base attributes could explode up to two or three times their original value was mostly thanks to this completely new knowledge of merging runic energies.

The other adepts might have been able to obtain varying amounts of knowledge concerning the merging of runic energies, but who could compare with Greem? He had robbed the knights’ kingdom treasury of knowledge– the drafting room of Runeforge Camp! The knowledge fragments that the adepts brought back with them from another plane had helped the World of Adepts in completing part of its planar laws. As a result, the planar consciousness had naturally rewarded them with positive feedback!

Of course, Greem got the most out of this process. Even the gains of the other three adepts added together would not compare to half of Greem’s.

The resentment of powerful knights that clung onto Greem’s body had also provided him feedback from the plane. This sort of resentment couldn’t be obtained by just any random acts of killing. One had to slaughter, with his own hands, a powerful individual that had been acknowledged by the plane to gain such resentment.

Having slain mountains of witcher-knights, scores of spellbreaker knights, and even a radiant knight, the amount of resentment that had gathered about Greem was tremendous. All of these resentments had been exchanged for an immense plane feedback.

If one were to look at it from this point of view, the World of Adepts actually encouraged killing beings of other worlds. The cruel, evil, and invasive nature of the adepts had infected the entire planar consciousness as well. This caused the World of Adepts to become a chaotic, evil, and savage planar consciousness towards other worlds!

That said, the adepts possessed a trace of elegance amidst their brutality, as compared to demons of the lower realms. They were calm and measured madmen. It differed from the utter chaos and insanity of the abyssal demons!

However, these planar secrets that occured at the level of the planar laws was not something that Greem could access as he was now. Thus the only thing he could do, apart from passively receiving the plane feedback, was to record every change to his body using the chip. This could be useful for his future research.

............

The abnormality of the returning Sarubo Clan adepts didn’t draw any attention from the outside world.

Of the seven adepts that set off from Feidnan City’s adepts’ tower, only four had returned. Mary and Acteon had chosen to stay in the knights’ plane. Another adept had unfortunately died on the planar battlefield.

Even though the war this time had successfully given the Sarubo Clan complete control over a lesser plane, the headquarters had to endure the consequences of the sudden decrease in their number of adepts.

The reason the Sixth-Grade Great Adept Sarubo had given such extravagant rewards to Greem was to keep him in the clan for a hundred years. This was done in order to ensure that the clan could successfully last through this period of weakness. The Sarubo Adept Clan had to wait for the resources from the knights’ plane to be sent back before it could regain or even exceed its previous strength.

Before they were able to do so, they had to keep a grip on powerful new adepts like Greem in order to avoid their weakness from attracting their enemy’s attention!

The Zhentarim Association’s Forest Territory. This was a place where countless adept clans stood and survived. The complex geography, along with the complex relationships of the clans, caused this to be an area of intense conflict where battles broke out every so often and tensions never ended. Large-scale adept conflicts had been forbidden in this area. However, small-scale territory wars and the skirmishes between individual adept clans were not included in this rule.

Big fish eat small fish, and small fish ate shrimps!

If any adept clan showed weakness in its affairs, all of the territory and resource sites it owned would instantly be attacked and conquered by the surrounding adept clans. Every so often, news of wars and battles between clans and clan leaders would spread throughout the entire Zhentarim Association.

Moreover, news of the massive decrease in active adepts in the Sarubo Clan headquarters could not be hidden from the public. This meant that, in the short term, the thirteen worldly territories and nine resources sites belonging to the Sarubo Clan would most likely attract the greed of their enemies.

Some small skirmishes were unavoidable!

Now that Greem had performed so outstandingly in the plane war, and had signed a new adept contract with Lord Sarubo, he could be considered a trustworthy core adept of the clan. Thus, some of the core secrets of the Sarubo Clan were gradually being exposed to him.

The Sarubo Clan. A mid-tier adept clan within the Zhentarim Association. They had seventy-three official First Grade adepts, four Second Grade adepts, and two Third Grade adepts. The number of adepts in even higher grades were not something that Greem could access with his current status.

It was with such a meager force that the Sarubo Clan had to defend their headquarters, while managing three lesser planes and a pseudo-plane that served as a transit hub between these four locations. If the adept forces were split between all of these worlds, there would be a slight shortage in manpower in all of the locations. The number of active forces were not enough.

In recent times the clan had gathered most of its adepts on the newly acquired knights’ plane, causing a power vacuum in the other areas. Thus, the most urgent task was to gather the limited manpower they currently had to drive away the greedy enemies looking at them.

As a result Adept Keoghan, who was being raised as one of the clan’s core adepts, had to deal with the worrying clan wars the moment he returned from the planar battlefield.

The Sarubo Clan’s territories had already received severe provocation from their enemies for the past two or three months. A viscount’s territory, about fifty square kilometer wide, had been invaded by the lord of a neighboring territory. The defensive strongholds on their outer rim had been lost one after another. The viscount could only turtle within his castle at the center of his territory with his remaining troops, barely fending off the attacks of the enemy.

The territory was in danger of being taken over!

At the same time, several resource sites belonging to the Sarubo Clan had also sent back alerts of a similar nature.

A severe conflict had broken out between the apprentice adepts stationed there and the apprentice adepts of a neighboring clan. They were desperately asking for adept reinforcements from the clan headquarters!

The trading firms and arcane shops that the Sarubo Clan had stationed in the territories of other clans had also reported incidents of robbery and raiding. The managers of those establishments were all frantically requesting help from the headquarters!

Wave after wave of messages asked for help, and multiple magic notifications were streaming back to Feidnan City’s adepts’ tower like rain in a downpour. As there were too few adepts stationed in the headquarters previously, they could merely suppress the problem. Apart from sending out some pseudo-adepts and elite apprentices to stabilize and delay the damage, they had no means of solving the actual problem.

This was why the first thing Keoghan had to deal with was such a chaotic and annoying situation.

Of course, this didn’t necessarily mean that a certain adept clan was intending to wage a full-on war against the Sarubo Clan. The reason this situation had broken out was most likely because the other adept clans had gotten wind of the Sarubo Clan’s abnormality. Thus they wanted to apply pressure on the clan through several means in order to test the waters.

If the Sarubo Clan’s weakness proved to be true, then they wouldn’t be able to send out enough adepts to deal with the provocations of the neighboring clans. The loss of a few world territories, and even a couple of resource sites, would be a natural result! As long as the Sarubo Clan was able to drive away the enemy with overwhelming force, all of these harassments and problems happening at the borders of their territory would instantly vanish.

In the end, the battle between adept clans was still determined by the strength of their adept forces.

It was fantasy to dream of occupying large numbers of resources without enough adepts to defend them!

Drive them back! Smash all the claws that the enemies extended into our territories!

Similar battlecries and calls for action had become the unanimous opinion of all Sarubo Clan adepts.

The clan adepts were all highly confident in themselves, having just survived a brutal plane war. They shouted out their opinions during the clan meeting organized by Keoghan. Everyone agreed to beat back the ambitions of their enemies with even more brutal attacks than the ones launched at them.

Thus, what happened next was a frenzy of mission assignments!

The silhouettes and shadows of enemy clan adepts had already been reported at several battlefields. If they didn’t hurry over, they wouldn’t be able to keep the clan’s profits intact!

After a quick discussion, Adept Kiel was headed towards Kerala. There was a First Class resource site there that absolutely could not be allowed to fall into the enemy’s hands.

A First Class resource site. This was one of the ways the adepts classified resource sites. The value of the resources cultivated within the sites could be divided into three classes. Third Class was the lowest. Usually, these sites were in charge of cultivating some low-level magic creatures or more common resources. The magic swamp Greem had come from belonged to the Third Class!

Second Class resource sites often cultivated unique adept-level resources. On the other hand, First Class resource sites often contained resources of strategic value to the clan’s development. This was why the safety and security of these sites had to be guaranteed.

Adept Ferrier would be heading to Emerald Hills. An important batch of goods had been stolen from there. They desperately needed an adept to go over and defend the location.

Adept Loris would continue to stay in Feidnan City.

Thus, the task of going to Locker Castle in Kartia Hills and saving the losing viscount fell on Greem and Keoghan’s heads. It was rumored that several enemy clan adepts had already appeared there. A slight mishandling of the situation and the whole thing could escalate into a small adept skirmish!