Age of Adepts

Mary carefully walked through a stretch of shadowy woods.

Everything around her was black and gray. She could only see dark shadows of various shades around her. Furthermore, Mary could vaguely sense tiny life auras within many of the shadows.

Mary needed to carefully avoid these shadows because every one of them was a twisted and evil shadow creature. They were spread across the entire valley, strictly guarding all the paths that led towards the black adept’s tower.

These shadow creatures weren’t all that powerful, and they were all weak lifeforms that Mary was confident of exterminating in a single blow. However, in order to avoid raising any alarms, she had to hide all signs of her life as she carefully and cautiously made her way through the hordes of shadow scouts.

As an offshoot vampire, Mary could easily control the temperature of her blood, thereby avoiding infrared and life searches. Moreover, her agility bonus when hidden made her impossible to detect by these shadow creatures that only averaged the strength of an intermediate apprentice.

The reason Mary was so careful wasn’t to evade them; she was trying to avoid the shadow mastiffs that were occasionally moving through Neo Valley. Much like the hunting dogs of the material world, they had an exceptionally developed sense of smell and could detect the elementium flow of any non-shadow substance.

Fortunately, Mary was wearing the Orb of Deception that Alice had gifted her.

This place was also known as the Black Mystery, and it was the location of the Dark Witches’ origin tower.

If she hadn’t made a promise to Alice, Mary would never have come here looking for death, even if she had gone insane. It was important to note that there was always at least a Second Grade or even Third Grade Dark witch stationed in the tower. The Fourth Grade Dark Witch Leader Circe also spent most of the year within this tower.

Even Mary, with her reckless and fearless personality, couldn’t help but feel her heart tremble at the thought of so many high-grade adepts.

Conspiring to sneak into the origin place of the Dark Witches. That was a crime whose sentence no one could shoulder. That was why Mary had to conceal her identity if she didn’t want to be pursued by the Dark Witches all over the world.

A sense of warning suddenly grew in her heart while Mary walked through the gray tree-shaped shadows. Her body flew up as if it had no weight and silently landed on a large gray tree. She then pressed herself against the trunk and merged with its shadows.

Even though her actions were swift, and no aura had leaked out, she still unavoidably generated a small flow of wind elementium.

The next second, five shadow mastiffs emerged from the shadows on the ground. They lifted their noses and sniffed all over the place. There was a trace of wind elementium in the air separate from the thick smell of shadows.

Even though this place was buried in the valley of shadows, and the excessively dense shadow substance had expelled most other magical elementium of the material world, trace amounts of wind elementium could still get in through gaps in the darkness. The presence of wind elementium wasn’t all that out of the ordinary.

That was why the shadow mastiffs quickly relaxed after searching and coming up with nothing.

With another slight wave of shadow ripples, the five shadow mastiffs instantly appeared in another shadow a hundred meters away. They continued their patrol.

A few moments later, after confirming that there was absolutely no movement around her, Mary slowly emerged from the darkness of the massive tree.

In all seriousness, this place was no longer the World of Adepts.

Those Dark Witches had relied on the power of their adept’s tower and caused the planar conjunction of the World of Adepts and the legendary Shadow Plane over this small area. The area of overlap was this forest of shadows in Neo Valley.

In doing so, the Dark Witches could continuously organize parties to explore the Shadow Plane, whose land was broad and boundless enough to compare with the World of Adepts. It wasn’t hard to imagine the benefits they had managed to obtain through this method.

However, as the core axis that anchored both of these large planes, the origin tower of the Dark Witches was also continuously caught in the clash between the two different plane origins. Consequently, periodic shadow explosions and even attacks by Shadow Plane natives would cause quite a lot of adverse effects to the stability of Shadow Valley.

Trying to break into a well-guarded Dark Witch origin tower with the power of a single First Grade vampire adept was crazy talk. However, with Alice by one’s side, you find a crack to travel through in even the most well-built of walls.

Mary took step after step, using almost three days to walk a distance of two kilometers. However, she was still nearly one and a half kilometers away from that looming dark tower.

She no longer pushed forward upon reaching this location. Instead, she found a slightly quieter space in the forest and very slowly squeezed her body into the dirt, which was somewhere between tangible and intangible.

She would have to stay here like a stubborn nail from now until the explosion of the Shadow Tide one month later. Without the spatial disturbance caused by the Shadow Tide, Mary had no chance of breaking into the Dark Witches’ origin tower. It was only when the Shadow Tide caused quakes in this area of conjunction that she would have an opportunity to attempt a break-in.

Of course, Mary knew absolutely nothing about what the so-called Shadow Tide was, or when it would start.

However, just because she didn’t know, didn’t mean that the Alice who had control over the Tower of Fate didn’t know.

Alice, who was constantly scrying on the Dark Tower, had long devised the rescue plan. The only thing she lacked was a powerful adept with assassin talents like Mary.

Plotting against the ignorant, and pitting the prepared against the unprepared; Alice was determined to save her only relative– Poison Witch Endor.

She no longer cared about the consequences that would come!

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

Stonemaul Camp.

It was a large ogre camp located in the depths of the Black Forest.

Maulhill, where the ogres resided, had been burned to a crisp by Greem the last time. It was now no more than an empty and barren stone hill. Thus, the ogres decided to build a massive camp on the mountain. They used thick, sharpened wooden logs to create a wall around Maulhill.

The powerful elite ogre soldiers, squad leaders, and the terrifying two-headed ogre magi naturally lived in the belly of the mountain. Meanwhile, the majority of the ordinary ogres set up simple tents on the waist of the mountain and lived there.

Due to the lack of planning and organization, each ogre walked wherever they wanted. The camps and tents they set up were all over the place as well, with the tents being made of all sorts of materials. The entire area was chaotic and messy beyond compare.

When the sun finally rose, the ogre squad leaders would emerge from the belly of the mountain. They would walk towards the tall camp gates at the foot of the mountain while using their black and thick legs to kick awake the snoring ogres.

"Wake up, wake up. All of you, wake up. Lazy bums. You don’t do nothing but eat a lot. Uglyhead, Blackface; all of you wake up. It’s time to go hunting.”

As the squad leader scolded the ogres, the ogres grumbled and rose up from the ground and out of their tents. Their hill-like bodies swayed as they followed the squad leader down the hill.

For a moment, towering figures could be seen all over Stonemaul Camp. Shouting and grumbling could be heard everywhere. It was so lively that it was almost like a market.

This ogre camp had a total of eighty-seven ogres of various ages. There were forty-three adolescent male ogres, twenty-two adolescent female ogres, fourteen ogre soldiers-in-waiting that had yet to come of age, and eight ogre children.

One shouldn’t look down on the ogres just because the adolescent males only took up half of their numbers. For a species as savage and barbaric as the ogres, not a single one of their members were useless individuals. Almost all of them were strong and mighty warriors. Even those female ogres and juvenile ogres, when they wielded wooden sticks as thick as a human’s leg, could easily crush the skull of an elite human warrior.

If an ogre in an ogre camp became elderly and had yet to die, the tribe would exile them and turn them into wandering ogres. The ogre camps never cared for useless individuals who had lost their combat ability!

Billis stood on a cliff two and a half kilometers away from Maulhill. He looked on as the mass of ogres rushed out of the camp gates and dispersed into the nearby Black Forest.

Unlike the beeman squads, the ogres formed groups of three. The weapons they used were often thick wooden bats and stone sticks that they crafted themselves. Their hunting radius also spanned a vast area of nearly fifty kilometers. Those adolescent ogres could smoothly run thirty-five to forty kilometers in a single morning if they were to sprint at full speed.

This speed fully demonstrated their extraordinary Strength and Physique!

In all honesty, ogres were humanoid lifeforms.

Their appearance was just like a human who had been enlarged several times. Their bodies were exceptionally muscular, and their Strength was incredible. They were a sort of magical creature that was large, ugly, and greedy. They might be strong, but their minds were simple. Even the adolescent ogres only possessed the intelligence of a five-year-old human child.

Only the mutated ogre mages had the possibility of breaking through the limits of their intelligence and becoming a terrifying magical creature that was cruel, bloody, and who believed in violence.

Based on the system of the adepts, ordinary ogre soldiers possessed seven points of Strength and nine points of Physique. The two-headed ogre Zac, on the other hand, held eleven points of Strength, thirteen points of Physique, and as much as four points of Spirit.

Four points of Spirit might only be considered to be the level of an ordinary adept amongst adepts, but they were already regarded as enviable geniuses in a tribe of ogres.

Billis lowered his head in contemplation.

Compared to the ogres, the Sting Scorpion larvae that he hatched possessed four points of Strength, five points of Physique, and two points of Spirit.

The sting scorpions might even possess a sizeable advantage against the Aba Beemen with such attributes. However, if they were to clash with the ogres, they would probably be unable to deal with the violent attacks of the adolescent ogres.

It seemed the only way was to orchestrate a strategic victory!

Billis made up his mind. He whistled softly and immediately turned into a swarm of black bugs that charged down the cliff.