Age of Adepts

It was a powerful magical item, and it was almost like it was specifically made for Greem.

Greem held the Fire Lord’s Scepter in his hand and kept inspecting it over and over. He could hardly tear himself away from it.

The scepter consisted of three parts: The tail, body, and head. It had a one-meter long body, which was entirely made from a bright fiery red material. Although it was glowing red, it felt warm upon touch, and felt comfortable when held in the hand.

A magical gemstone with no attribute was socketed on the tail of the scepter. Obviously, it was a design used to allow the scepter to be placed on a Fire Altar. Three inter-coiling Fire Dragons were engraved on the head of the scepter. A Heart of the Fire Lord was placed in the middle, where the three dragon heads met.

It was a unique magical gemstone that came from the Fire Element Plane and possessed a thread of Source Energy of Fire Element. With this magical gemstone, the bearer of the scepter would be given with the ability of fire resistance. Of course, the fire mentioned here should be the ordinary fire found in the natural environment, not the Elemental Fire created by magic spells.

By just holding the Fire Lord’s Scepter in his hand, Greem was given the ability to take a bath in the magma pool of a volcano.

After fiddling with it over and over for a long time, Greem finally placed it into his storage waist belt with reluctance. From now on, he finally owned a suitable magical item for himself. It was not surprising that the Fairy only kept this extraordinary item but did not use it, as the element spectrum was totally different from its own!

Greem glanced through the pile of gemstones again, and this time, he pulled out two strange objects: a test tube containing a mysterious purple potion, and a magical book that had a gruesome ghost head drawn on its cover.

Greem picked up the mysterious test tube with his fingers, uncorked it ,and gave it a brief smell. A pungent smell, like a mixture of fish and pepper, immediately brought a frown on his face. The test tube was fully filled with a purple colored magical potion. With a gentle shake, the potion immediately began emanating a purple glow.

Bloodline Strengthening Potion?

Greem’s eyes brightened. He couldn’t bear it and brought a tiny dot of the purple potion up to his mouth with a fingertip. After a brief moment, the Chip gave out a confirmed answer.

Bloodline Strengthening Potion!

Maybe for Greem, who aimed to take the path of an Elementium Adept, this item didn’t serve too much of a purpose. But for Mary, or other apprentices who took the path of the Bloodline, it was a priceless treasure. Its biggest value was that it could provide a preliminary purification of the bloodline of an apprentice, allowing the apprentice to take a step closer to the source of their bloodline.

Therefore, after confirming the ingredients of the potion, without saying another word, Greem immediately poured it into Mary’s mouth. After all, Mary was using sleep to digest the surging energy of blood that came from the Fairy. In another word, it was also an evolution of the innate talent of her vampire bloodline. Therefore, if she could receive some external help at this moment, it would no doubt help make the breakthrough easier!

Devouring the blood of stronger existences was an effective method to improve the grade of a vampire, while the Bloodline Strengthening Potion could further stimulate the evolution of a vampire. With these two factors complementing each other, it was a huge boost to Mary. Hence, after pouring all of the potion into Mary’s mouth, Greem rubbed his palms excitedly, his mind filled with anticipation.

He just couldn’t wait to see what Mary would looked like, after having both her overall strength and bloodline improved!

After dealing with the Bloodline Strengthening Potion, Greem calmed himself down and started to give the gruesome magical book a thorough examination.

When Greem rested his gaze on the horrendous ghost head drawn on the cover of the book, a pale white mist suddenly diffused from the book itself, and the ghost head became alive within the mist.

It was a ghastly and bloodcurdling ghost face that hid within the shadows, so no one could see the expression on it, as sight was impaired by the mist. Just as Greem knit his brows in a tight frown, a strange, indistinct, and near inaudible voice suddenly rung up in his mind.

“In accordance with the ancient will, following strictly with the principle of equivalent exchange! Little guy who is walking on the path of an Adept, do you want to obtain the mighty and mysterious knowledge from the ancient era? Then open me up quickly!”

Greem was slightly shocked.

He had heard of this kind of magical book, that had its own consciousness. Most of them were produced by Adepts of the ancient era. Inside of these books, it was highly possible one would find some unique magic spell or mysterious knowledge that no one knew. Of course, it could also be a prank left behind by an ancient Adept. There were even funny, true stories of official Adepts being fooled by such pranks!

In order to open up such magical books protected by a demon spirit, not only would one have to follow the will left behind by the previous owner of the book, he also needed to fulfill some random in-bad-taste requests given out by the demon spirit itself. Therefore, it was a ‘fair trade’ that really depend on the luck of the person.

“Your honorable demon spirit, if I really want to read the contents of this book, what kind of price do I have to pay?” Greem wasn’t fooled by the flowery words and cunning statements of the guardian demon spirit, but instead, he soberly asked the most critical question.

From the relevant knowledge Greem had studied before, it was mentioned that when some Apprentice Adepts with insufficient overall strength found a demon spirit book, they couldn’t wait and opened it up straightaway, only to realize the price they had to pay after reading the book was not something they could afford, but it was all too late! Not only did the unlucky fellows not learn any ancient magic spells, they even paid the price with their own precious lives!

Therefore, in the fundamental code of practice for Apprentice Adepts, when they bumped into some living creatures from the outerworld or demon spirits, they had to be really careful in any choices they made. Once they fell into these creatures’ word traps or were bound with a mandatory contract, getting themselves killed was, in fact, the lightest consequence. The most frightful was having their soul became these creatures’ war trophy.

In the aspect of toying with someone else’s soul, these demon spirits could even be compared with a powerful existence, such as an official Necromancer.

Perhaps realizing its small trick was discovered by Greem, the gruesome ghost face turned listless. “As expected, you’re a hateful boring guy. Aren’t you excited by knowing that you can learn ancient magic spells and mysterious knowledge? Why are you fussing with these boring questions!”

“Your honorable ancient demon spirit, please answer my question!”

“Alright, alright! If you wish to read this book, you need to give me 15 points of your Physique...” The demon spirit’s voice was getting lower and lower. The last few words sounded so vague it was as if it was the snoring of a kitten. Greem nearly didn’t hear what it said.

Greem broke out in a cold sweat, nearly couldn’t hold himself back from throwing the demon spirit book from his hand.

Damn it, 15 points of Physique!

No wonder this book wasn’t opened up by the Fairy. Presumably even it grudged the loss of a precious 15 points of Physique. For Greem, he only had three points in Physique. If he had accidentally opened this book, the mandatory contract between him and the demon spirit book would be taken effect immediately. And since he couldn’t fulfill the requirement of the contract, let alone anything else, the only consequence would be an inevitable death, by having his soul extracted from his body!

Just as Greem raised the book high up and want to forcefully throw it to a corner of the cave, a stream of data transmitted from the Chip stopped his movement.

Within the on-site data, which had been restored and magnified a few times by the chip, the last few vague words spoke by the demon spirit book were clearly presented in front of him.

“... or replaced with something of equivalent value!”

It was spoken in an ancient language of ‘Amarr,’ and had been spoken with a weird tone by the demon spirit. Perhaps, most of the targets it ever spoke with had been deceived by this petty trick.

Though the ancient Adepts had forced demon spirits to guard the inheritance of their knowledge, and had laid down the strictest rules for them, as long as any late-comers could achieve the requirement of reading the book, the demon spirit had to follow the will of the Adept and hand over the knowledge without hiding anything. But no matter how strict the rules, the crafty and cunning demon spirit could always find a workaround. This demon spirit had found a loophole in the contract, not only it increased the requirement of reading to a jaw-dropping condition, it had also hidden the most critical rule of the contract.

Yes, even if that ancient Adept could come back alive, he couldn’t accuse the demon spirit for violating the contract. It had acted according to the contract between it and the ancient Adept! As for whether can you understand the ancient language of Amarr, it had nothing to do with the demon spirit! It is you who are lacking knowledge, and never serious in handling the situation.

Greem wiped off the cold sweat on his forehead, and with a serious tone, he told the ghost face, “Your honorable demon spirit, please tell me what are the substitute requirements. I want to give it serious consideration!”

The ghost face on the cover of the magical book suddenly became extremely angry, ferociously letting out a raging roar at Greem. However, as Greem had gained insight into this seemingly ferocious appearance, he just narrowed his eyes and enjoyed the demon spirit’s performance.

Realizing that the threatening was ineffective, and its previous petty trick had been exposed, it knew by dragging anything further, it might trigger the frightful ancient contract. Left with no alternative, the ghost face of the demon spirit dully told Greem the real requirements of reading the book.

“With 15 points of Physique, you can have a total control of this magical book. With 8 points of Physique, you can read all of the contents of this book. With 5 points of Physique, you can read any content that is below the grade of Adept, 3 points of Physique allow you to learn a specific magic spell, 1 point of Physique gives you a random magic spell.”

“Substitute objects, I was asking about substitute objects! What kind of objects can be used as the substitution?” It was Greem’s turn to interrogate the demon spirit.

“Magical gemstones, magical materials, any mysterious knowledge which is not inside of this book... anything and everything. As long as they are related to magic spell, they could all become the substitute objects, but the required amount would be a lot!”

“How about this?” Greem tried his luck by placing an Emerald on top of the magical book.

It was a large Emerald with a size similar to a human heart. It would cost at least 230 magic crystals in the Adept market.

“0.3 Physique.”

The answer given by the demon spirit shocked Greem.

If calculated based on this, then if he wanted to gain total control of this book, 15 points of Physique would be equivalent to twelve thousand magic crystals! Maybe for an official Adept, this price was nothing, but for Apprentice Adepts who were constantly in need of resources, it was simply an astronomical figure.

The corner of Greem’s eyes twitched. He tilted his head and looked at the pile of gemstones, which he had thought were plenty moments ago. But now, he felt that even if he had more of them, it was still not enough for him to spend.

Placing the demon spirit book on the ground, Greem started to place magical gemstones on top of it. Every time after he placed one gemstone, the demon spirit would tell him a small figure.

Shadow Stone, Tiger’s Eye stone, Malachite, Green Agate, Lesser Moonstone, Emerald, Topaz, Aquamarine, Ruby, Opal, Sapphire, Azure Moonstone, Flame Spessarite, Golden Dranite, Dawn Stone, Living Ruby, Noble Topaz...

Following the piling up of the magical gemstones, the figures eventually reached 11. The remaining gemstones were all top grade. For example, Blood of the Old God, Blood Gem, Deep Peridot, Dawn Stone, Talasite, Night’s Eye, Lion’s Eye Stone, Crimson Spinal Stone. All of them were gems which Greem felt reluctant to give away.