Age of Adepts

Unfortunately, what had ravaged Greem’s body wasn’t elementium damage, but all those twisted and distorted foreign laws.

Their presence caused Greem’s wounds to become so severe and difficult to deal with that Alice had no idea where to start.

Most of the foreign laws had already been shattered into countless tiny law shards. They lingered in Greem’s bones, veins, organs, blood, and flesh like bloodsucking leeches. They had assimilated with Greem’s body and energy, continually causing the mutation of his laws.

Their presence was what prevented Greem’s wounds from mending. Even his bodily functions were thoroughly disrupted, resulting in his current condition.

No magic or potion would be effective against these wounds. Greem’s biological system could only function properly once these foreign laws and energies were slowly worn away. Only then could he start healing again.

.........

Greem was placed limply upon a rough stone platform.

He was utterly unconscious now and lay there naked, oblivious to what was happening to him.

Alice had changed into a dark robe, placing a rattling tray of metal equipment onto the edge of the stone platform. The smart and active Helen waved her wands as a dozen bright arrays were laid down around the stone platform, clearly illuminating Greem’s naked body without blinding Alice.

Lucia, who was Alice’s disciple, wandered around listlessly in the room as well. It was the room of a high-grade adept, after all. Anything placed in this room would be a rare resource that tens of thousands of people would die to get their hands on.

Though Lucia had no use for most of these things, she was more than satisfied to take a look at them and lay her hands on them.

However, even though she tried her best to walk around calmly, her gaze always drifted uncontrollably to that naked body on the stone platform.

It was the muscular body of a man, filled with life!

The muscles exposed beneath the light were clearly-defined and firm. Their outlines were smooth and spoke clearly of the tremendous strength contained within. His face wasn’t precisely breathtakingly beautiful, but its features were certainly handsome and gave off the unique charm of masculinity.

Greem’s once healthy and strong body was now covered in all sorts of wounds, strands of black and gray smoke rising from each of those injuries. Whenever tendrils of flesh reached out from the injuries in an attempt to mend the muscles, the smoke would swarm forward and erupt in a series of explosions.

Thus, the wounds remained open and black blood continued to stream like a river down his body.

He was one of the people responsible for the fall of the Arcane Empire!?

Lucia thought to herself silently.

After studying all those magical tomes under Alice’s tutelage, Alice had gained a different understanding and perspective on everything that had happened in the Arcane Empire. She had only been one of many ignorant arcane apprentices. She had no proper or objective understanding of the complexities or vastness of the universe.

However, now that she’d had the opportunity to stand upon the shoulders of the highly-developed adept civilization, Lucia finally understood the significance of civilization and how difficult it was for one to exist.

Not every larva would successfully grow to become a butterfly. In fact, many fell prey to the claws of ferocious predators soon after they were born and before they could achieve metamorphosis.

The man who lay on this platform in a deplorable condition was the terrifying flame giant in her memory. The colossal giant that had stood dozens of meters tall. The giant that wiped out the arcane academy, that burned her most respected teacher, Sir Brown, and that personally ended her life.

The silhouette of this man slowly overlapped with the fire giant in Lucia’s mind. She was at a loss all of a sudden.

He...he...to think, he was Teacher Alice’s lover!

It was he who brought her soul back to the World of Adepts.

That was what gave her the opportunity at a second life in this alien world.

The fall of her homeworld...the personal grudge of her teacher’s death...even her own death had been at the hands of this man.

For a moment, Lucia herself wasn’t sure what attitude and feelings she should hold toward this man.

While Lucia was frustrated, confused, and unsure of what she should do, what she wanted to do, and what she could do, Alice called for her with a frown on her face.

“Lucia, stop standing around doing nothing. Come here and help me.”

Er......help?

Lucia seemed to have lost her usual free-spiritedness. She walked over to the stone platform stiffly, almost like a puppet on strings. Her gaze wandered around the room. She was unsure of where she should look.

Mary appeared almost like a bloody butcher now. She hacked away at the body of the man on the platform.

Greem had 34 points of Physique. That made his body as tough as a magical alloy.

Finally, Lucia overcame her shyness as a girl and her odd sense of hatred for the man. She regained the curiosity that a Second Grade arcanist like herself should possess. Indeed, Lucia’s arcane abilities had improved rapidly during her tutelage under Alice. She was improving at an unbelievable rate.

She was now a Second Grade arcanist and a First Grade adept!

It was a bizarre case of multi-classing and, in fact, the only example of multi-classing in the World of Adepts.

More accurately, it was an unprecedented event, but there could certainly be more such individuals in the future.

Lucia’s existence had opened up a new system of power in the World of Adepts. A new power system would soon appear among the original classes in the World of Adepts– the arcane adept!

And Lucia was the pioneer of this new class of spellcaster.

Of course, this was not a glory that Lucia had been dreaming about or seeking.

Lucia shook her head and cast aside all the unnecessary emotions in her mind. She regained the curious and exploratory mindset of an arcanist and began to turn her attention to this perfect male body before her.

It was truly perfect. In all honesty, even if Lucia were to imagine and draw an ideal body by herself, she would not have been able to create such a flawless form.

Lucia gently touched the man’s arm. The muscles were firm but had an elasticity to them. The skin was smooth and even seemed to gleam with a crystalline energy radiance.

On careful inspection, this man’s body might even be more perfect than most women that could be called beauties.

However, the soft sensation of his skin was only an illusion!

Even when Lucia applied more strength, the muscles would not sink any further aside from the slight dip she had initially made with her finger.

Lucia’s expression changed as she started to apply more force.

Unfortunately, the muscles remained unmoving, as if they couldn’t sense the change in Lucia’s strength at all.

Lucia’s expression changed again. She took a very sharp silver scalpel from the operating table and gently pressed the blade against the man’s arm. Similarly, the skin dipped slightly, and then the muscles moved no further.

Lucia decided to slice at the man’s arm with all she had. The sharp blade clashed with the soft skin, and a muffled grinding sound–like that of aged leather being cut–could be heard. Sparks even flew here and there.

Even though Lucia had used all her strength, she still could not cut through the man’s skin. In fact, it was the silver scalpel that seemed to have dulled due to her excessive force.

Was the Physique of high-grade adepts so terrifying?

A look of horror finally appeared on Lucia’s face!

High-grade adepts were truly monsters.

“Stop playing around over there. Come here and give me a hand,” Alice, who had been busy with work at the front of the platform, called out.

Lucia muttered an acknowledgment and walked over.

Greem’s 34 points of Physique had made every inch of his skull and every piece of his flesh incredibly tough. Ordinary weapons could never hurt him now.

Only special scalpels that had been enchanted with a Spell of Sharpening and a Spell of Armor Piercing could slice his skin to reveal the bright red tissues beneath that brimmed with fire energy.

What Alice was doing now was opening up each and every one of Greem’s injuries to find the law shards hiding within. She then neutralized the law shards through a unique method.

Of course, this was an excessively bloody and savage process. An ordinary person couldn’t even sit through the entire operation. Moreover, due to Greem’s incredibly resilient body, the process of fixing him up looked less like an operation and more like the butchering of a beast.

It wasn’t just scalpels and tweezers that were being used. Alice even used axes and saws on the operation, tools that ordinary people used to fell trees.

The sound of a hacking axe could be heard over and over in the large room, along with the chilling sound of a grinding saw. It would make anyone close their ears in horror.

Due to the repeated battles that Greem had engaged in, most of his injuries reached deep into his wounds and bones. As such, the treatment was complicated.

For instance, Alice even had to cut open Greem’s chest and hack away all the ribs in the way with an axe to reveal his beating heart.

What a strange human heart this was!

Underneath Greem’s ribs was a mass of dark red tissue. Inside the chest cavity, a strange heart the size of a human head beat, connected to the surrounding organs with countless blood vessels.

The surface of the heart was covered in numerous strange magical patterns. These patterns were twisted, shattered, and even squirmed, making for a truly unusual sight.

This thing was no longer an ordinary heart. No, this was a magical heart. In fact, it was a Heart of Principles that brimmed with law power!

The reason Greem had such overwhelming fire power apart from the two Fifth Grade artifacts was due to the incomparable strength of this Heart of Principles.