Age of Adepts

If not for the fact that the forces she had at hand were insufficient to eradicate the enemy faction, Vanessa had a mind to thrust a sword into that crook’s heart personally. He was simply too wicked. He would drag the entire plane into such a terrifying and destructive storm just to fulfill his own desires.

A person like this should be sliced into tens of thousands of pieces.

Vanessa cursed as she pushed aside the wooden door. She arrived at a small balcony outside her room.

This place was a metallic castle in the style of the goblins.

The layout of the building was no different from a human castle, but the construction materials were utterly different. Human castles mostly used wood, earth, and stone in their construction. Goblin castles, on the other hand, used large numbers of metal components, occasionally supported by wood. Even wooden walls would have to be reinforced with a layer of hardened metal plates to increase their sturdiness.

That was why the Royal Castle of the Anderme Royalty looked like an iron castle forged from pure metal from a distance. It reflected a light unique to alloy metals.

As the goblins were diminutive in size, their buildings also tended to be short, small, and study. The goblin architects also fully utilized that creative, divergent thinking of theirs to create structures in all kinds of strange shapes.

Look no further than the roofs of goblin buildings. There were thousands of different designs.

There were round mushroom roofs, pointed rocket roofs, and slim thunder-rod-style roofs. There were even odd roofs in the shape of a goblin’s face.

That was why it was impossible to find two completely identical structures inside the castle.

As the goblins promoted frugality and thriftiness, the space left for pedestrians to walk between the buildings was extremely narrow. All sorts of wires, levers, and winches sprawled over and between the buildings. Metal doors, drawbridges, and carts running on tracks could be seen all over the place.

Most of the buildings were also still using steam power. As such, black smoke continuously emerged from tall metal chimneys above them. On the streets, goblins arrogantly traveled on hawkstriders, golem beasts, and automated robots.

Far in the distance, several goblin merchant groups had arrived at the edge of the castle. The green goblin managing the group was waving his whip and commanding the slaves to move the merchandise down from the large bodies of the Kodo Beasts.

Goblin helicopters hummed with the unique sound of mechanical constructs as they cut through the skies above the ancient castle. A large goblin flying ship slowly approached the airport located at the edge of the castle. Goblins continuously walked up and down the deck of the ship.

Princess Vanessa took a slow sweeping look at all the happy goblin citizens under her rule. A sense of endless pride filled her heart, along with an indescribable fear and unease.

She loved her citizens. She loved this country. She loved the unique civilization of the goblins, but the sudden introduction of magic energy changed all of this.

Magic energy meant a cleaner and more efficient source of power. It was also a sustainable source of energy that would never run out. That was why, when it was first introduced, no goblin had been able to reject this new energy source that represented a greater future.

However, for some reason, the more they came into contact with magic energy, the more easily the weak hearts of the goblins were corrupted.

The various tycoons and leaders of the financial groups led by Gazlowe had all become reckless and greedy. They fantasized about getting their hands on terrifying power that didn’t belong to goblins.

Vanessa had a vague idea as to why Gazlowe had contacted the World of Adepts and drawn the evil adepts to the Goblin Plane. After all, once a ninety-six-year-old overage goblin had obtained supreme power, the one thing he would want the most would be to make himself live longer.

That was something that the goblin civilization would never be able to solve!

It was why that jerk had drawn the evil adept into their home; for the sake of his own selfish and wicked ends. All of this was no more than the futile struggles of a dying old goblin.

The Thunder God Titan blueprint that Tigule sent back had enchanted and enamored the royal engineers. The power of the Fourth Grade in that machine had perfectly assimilated goblin mechanical engineering and alchemical technology. It would be the most powerful magical machine that would witness the rise of the Goblin Empire.

If a thing like that were successfully created, all the engineers and alchemists involved in the process would forever be carved into the annals of history. They would become sages to be worshipped by countless generations of goblins to come.

No goblin could resist such temptation!

Vanessa had received news that those elderly goblin engineers hadn’t slept in the three days and nights since the blueprint had arrived at the Royal Engineering Academy. They had gathered all the engineers and invited a bunch of old fellows from the Alchemy Association to help them. All the goblins were now passionately discussing every detail and core technology involved in the Thunder God.

To complete their experiments, they had appealed for seventeen major engineering projects, twenty-one core material experiments, a hundred and seventy-five technique verification tests, and five technical feasibility projects on space furnace miniaturization, all at once.

Based on their current actions, it would be impossible to sustain all of the projects that they were planning on doing, even if they emptied out the royal treasury. Moreover, if all the wealth and resources of the royal family were thrown into this intangible Thunder God project, then the plan for the royal family to create their own magic energy army would have to be delayed.

What was the goblin royal family supposed to use to fight against Gazlowe’s mercenaries without a new magic energy army? What was the goblin royal family supposed to do against the invasion of the evil adepts without a new magic energy army?

If the ones that defeated the adepts weren’t the goblin royal army, but Gazlowe’s mercenaries instead, then the goblin royalty would lose their sacred role as defenders of the land in the eyes of their citizens. When that happened, what else could the goblin royal family do but watch as Gazlowe slowly gained the favor of the population?

The more she thought about the situation, the more the dark clouds in Vanessa’s mind swelled. There were many times when she felt like the burdens on her shoulders far outweighed the combined total of all goblins of her age.

If it weren’t for the royal bloodline that prevented her from stepping back and compromising, she would probably be just like any other eleven-year-old goblin princess– working on the engineering projects they loved, piloting their alchemical creations, and not ever worrying about problems and troubles that were yet to come!

Sadly, she was Vanessa. She was the eldest princess of the Goblin Empire. She was the most influential goblin of the Anderme Royal Family. Under such circumstances, she had no choice but to cast away her skirts and don her armor, fighting to the best of her ability for the survival of the royal family!

As Vanessa gripped the metal railing and looked down upon the citizens of her castle, a frantic goblin maid ran into her room.

"This isn’t good. This is bad. Princess, your Highness, the Minister of State just submitted a report. Large-scale plagues have broken out all over the Empire."

The scepter in the hands of the petite and pretty Princess Vanessa fell to the ground.

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

A plague had broken out!

It was almost as if the death god of plague had just taken a stroll through the lands of the Empire. A horrifying epidemic of shocking scale broke out throughout the Empire, from south to north and from east to west.

All infected goblins had the same symptoms. Their bodies festered as blood spots of various sizes appeared on their green skin. Even the strongest of goblins would instantly collapse once the plague had infected them. They would then start scratching their bodies until they ravaged their skin. Pus would seep through their wounds, and they would cough up blood!

It wasn’t as if large-scale plagues had never happened in the history of the Goblin Plane. However, those plagues always had an apparent source. The goblins only needed to quarantine that source, and the scale of the outbreak would be significantly limited.

However, this plague was clearly unlike any before. Not only was the scale unprecedentedly broad, one specific symptom of the disease was so odd that it struck fear into the hearts of the goblins.

That was the fact that the mortality rate of the plague was so miraculously low!

It was almost as if a demon god was playing a wicked prank on the goblins. Even though the number of infected goblins increased at an exponential rate, not many of those goblins died.

Among the infected goblins, only those who were exceptionally frail died from the plague virus. The other goblins suffered and agonized, but they remained at the edge of life and death. The last remnants of their life force weren’t stolen away by the virus.

That indirectly proved the source of the plague to be the evil adepts!

When the goblin doctors sent out by the royal family finally discovered the source of the plague to be the polluted water sources of the goblins, it was already too late. The large-scale disease was quickly spreading from goblin to goblin. It spread from cities to towns to villages, before spreading from the towns and villages to even smaller settlements across the Empire.

The weakening of the goblins caused rioting all over the place. The slaves that had been oppressed by the goblins for so long immediately initiated a wave of revolution all over the country. As the main combatants–the goblin mechanics–had all been infected with the plague, the various goblin cities and towns lacked the protection of magical machines. Many of these places fell to the slaves of other races.

Those goblin cities that had yet to fall had no choice but to start massacring the slaves inside their walls to protect themselves. That naturally led to intense resistance from the slaves.

For a moment, goblin garrisons, militia, and local armed forces engaged in massive wars with the other races. Casualties piled up on both sides.

The fearsome plague that swept through the Goblin Plane forced the Goblin Empire into a precarious position!