Age of Adepts

Morgana had lost the reputation of the Coldwinter Witches and one-third of the clan’s resource sites, while Alice lost all the Fate power she had so painstakingly accumulated over the years.

It was important to note that this was the capital that Alice had only managed to accumulate after participating in three planar wars!

Still, the Fate Witches had obtained a massive opportunity due to this war. Their overall strength was now skyrocketing.

At the moment, there were as many as seven Fate Witches in the Tower of Fate. Though it was not yet at the level before their invasion into Faen, the average quality of the witches was higher.

Moreover, with the gradual increase of their territory, the Fate Witches were receiving more and more apprentice seeds from all over the land. The seven Fate Witches ran all over their territory, day and night, selecting talented individuals from amongst these apprentice seeds and taking them back to the Tower of Fate.

Those with inferior talent were then placed in nearby resource sites for study and further training.

For the first time in the hundred years since their revival, the number of witch apprentices gathered in the Tower of Fate exceeded a hundred individuals. That was a spectacular event that has never before happened in the history of the Fate Witches!

A hundred witch apprentices would only be too few apprentices in any other witch branch, never too many. However, it was different for the Fate Witches.

As everyone knew, Fate Witches were not known for their combat power. They had almost no professional skills related to combat at the lower grades. Only those like Alice, who had endured until they were Second Grade, would have chances to shine on the battlefield after mastering skills related to blessing and cursing an opponent’s fate.

Before this happened, most Fate Witches could only rely on instant-cast magic wands and scrolls to protect themselves. It indirectly increased the difficulty of their survival on the battlefield. That was why it was said that Fate Witches mainly needed the protection of a third party before they were fully developed.

These lethal ‘weaknesses’ caused the witch apprentices of the Fate branch to be far less numerous than the other branches. Meanwhile, the only ones who could form a codependent relationship with the Fate branch were probably the False Witches, who had strict talent prerequisites and a tremendous difficulty advancing.

It was said that the essential requirement that False Witches set when selecting apprentices was being female, having no immediate relative, and awakening a talent for illusion before the age of eight.

These prerequisites alone shut out most candidates, let alone the problematic advancements to come. That was why the False Witches mostly ran a single-student system. That was to say that every False Witch would only take a single student throughout their entire lives.

That also caused the legacy of the False Witches to easily be cut off due to unexpected incidents!

In all honesty, if the Northern Witch branches were to be ranked by how weak they were and how few members they had, the False Witches would most definitely sit at the top.

Quickly followed by the Fate Witches, of course.

If Alice had not met Greem, the shallow roots of her clan would not have allowed her to survive that painful First Grade journey. Now, with the in-depth cooperation of the Fate Witches and the Crimson Clan, the Fate Witches were well protected by magical machines and elementium golems. They were no longer as frail and weak as they were before.

The development of the Fate branch finally started to accelerate under such circumstances!

After staying with Alice at the Tower of Fate for two days, Greem hurried to White Tower after receiving multiple urgent messages from Adept Meryl.

White Tower had turned into a lively place these days.

After five years of colonization, the Crimson Clan’s influence had reached a hundred and fifty kilometers deep into the Black Forest. This action undoubtedly touched upon the nerves of many powerful magical creatures. As such, a well-expected stampede had erupted!

This magical tide of monsters that sprung from the depths of the Black Forest was both an opportunity as well as a trial for the Crimson Clan. If they resisted this stampede, they would gain control of all the rich land and forest around them. If they failed, everything would return to zero. The efforts and resources the clan had invested over the past five years would go to waste, utterly in vain.

In the face of such immense pressure, Meryl immediately started summoning powerful adepts within the clan to the frontlines to stave off the enemy. Apparently, Zacha and Tigule had already arrived and were fighting with the magical creature lords of Black Forest.

Meanwhile, the champion of the clan, Bloody Queen Mary, was very close to advancing to Third Grade. As such, she was hiding within Fire Throne, waiting for the time to come. However, her powerful servants were all present on the battlefield, propping up a sturdy defense for the clan.

The other powerful adept, Bug Adept Billis, was off exploring some ancient ruins in the Central Region. He was temporarily out of contact.

Consequently, Meryl was still worried about the frontlines. She could not sleep well and had no choice but to repeatedly urge Greem, the clan leader, to hurry to White Tower. Greem could only reluctantly leave the Tower of Fate and teleport to White Tower.

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

Doverand Basin.

It was a vast basin with fire red cockscomb growing all over the place. The geography was high in the west and low in the east. Overall, the basin was shaped like an oval.

It was the widest place in the vast Black Forest and, naturally, became the most intense battlefield between the Crimson Clan and the stampede of magical creatures.

A sturdy fort had been built with Doverand Basin at the center. A large group of Crimson adepts and apprentices led civilians in the defense here, sticking a tough nail into the wing of the beast stampede. Though quite a few beasts and magical creatures had scurried to White Tower, the magical creature lords with the most power and influence were pacing outside the fort.

Even the magical creature lords didn’t dare to step into the area covered by the White Tower before these human adepts on the outside had all been exterminated.

The battle continued.

On the highest spot of Doverand Basin, on the west side, the Crimson adepts were organizing civilians and goblins to build an extremely strong wooden fort.

The forest and bushes around them had been cleared. Thick and sturdy logs had been sharpened and beaten into the dirt, forming a strong wall around them. Two meters off the ground upon the walls, a series of shooting ports had been carved into the wood. Magic energy rifles gleaming with the shine of metal extended from these ports.

The one thousand White Tower civilians and goblins inside the fort all had a magic energy rifle of their own. They even had a short pistol at their waists.

The rifle fired weak versions of Scalding Rays, powered by magic energy batteries. They had a range of a hundred and twenty meters and an offensive power of eleven points. Ordinary beasts had no such thing as magic resistance. The Scalding Rays would leave a clean hole on their bodies with no chance for them to defend. Such attacks would wound magical creatures if they were anything below First Grade.

The pistols at their waists were primitive goblin guns. They relied on metal bullets fired through alchemical gunpowder to hurt the enemy. It had a range of ten to forty meters and an offensive power of eight points. Each goblin gun might be weak, but when fired in a barrage, they could even wound a FIrst Grade magical creature.

One could reasonably claim that the ordinary civilians and goblins of the Crimson Clan would not have been able to fight against the magical creatures and beasts had it not been for the clan’s promotion of magic energy rifles and goblin guns. However, with these simple weapons, any fellow that could press a trigger was a magical creature hunter. They could hide behind the sturdy walls and easily slaughter the swarm of beasts coming at them.

When the horde of wild beasts and birds of prey swarmed out from the east of Black Forest and charged toward the forest across the uneven basin, red dots of light lit up upon the walls. Sizzling beams cut across the sky, landing where the beasts were most concentrated.

It didn’t matter whether they were thick and fat razor boars, fleet-footed berserk apes, or lithe and agile jaguars– none of them had an easy time crossing the midpoints of the basin.

The Scalding Rays were like the eyes of the reaper, bringing death with them wherever they went. One beast after another howled and collapsed to the ground where the red lights crossed, with bloody holes shot into their bodies.

When the more robust magical creatures took to the frontlines to shield the others with their magic-resistant bodies, the Crimson adepts behind the walls would drown them with ferocious magic.

Testing the might of human adepts with crude skin and flesh was an unfair test to begin with!

However, this unfair scene occurred again and again on this chaotic battlefield.

Most beasts fell during their charge. Even the occasional fortunate creature that made it to the wall would be met with a row of magical machines forged of pure metal.

Magical machines and elementium golems were powerful guards that almost every official adept within the Crimson Clan possessed. These machines were steel shields, while the elementium golems were explosive weapons. They had both become irreplaceable assistants of the Crimson adepts.

It was impossible to charge up to a Crimson adept’s side before first beating their machine and their golem!

While blood was spilled in the basin, the seven Second Grades of the Crimson Clan were calmly standing in front of the tent at the center of the fort, assessing the battle from afar.

Dragonborn Zacha, Goblin Tigule, Blood Knights Soros and Windsor, Blood Elf Isa (Mage), Lilia (Magic Archer), Spalla (Shapeshifter).

As the core fighting force of the Crimson Clan, these seven Second Grades represented Greem, the goblin faction, and the vampire faction respectively. They were already the strongest force of the Crimson Clan, excluding the few top-tier adepts of the clan.

They knew very well that these wild beasts did not qualify to assault the White Tower if they could not even break through a fort such as this. The surface reason the Crimson Clan had chosen this place to fend off the stampede was to reduce the pressure around White Tower, but in truth, it was an internal selection and elimination of the clan.

Over the past few days, many new adepts had risen to power in the Crimson Clan. The higher-ups were intending to use this stampede as a means of sifting out the elites. As such, these Second Grades were only here as the last line of defense. The ones who were truly embroiled in the deathmatch were the First Grade adepts and apprentices.

They were the true protagonists of this battle!