Age of Adepts

The path of a wizard is never easy!

To take shortcuts one must pay a heavy price, and that price is often unbearable.

And now Meryl is suffering inhumanly for her past laziness and indulgence.

Powerful strength must be supported by a strong body, and the reason why each dragon was huge was precisely to be able to carry the gift of a powerful bloodline.

It was just that the dragon was relying on long sleeps year after year to digest and absorb this bloodline power, but Meryl wanted to fuse that bloodline rune in such a short period of time, it was inevitable that she would suffer some pain. Unless she could seal herself somewhere like a dragon and spend a long time meditating through the cruel process of transformation.

For an entire month, Meryl was on the border of heaven and hell at all times, one foot for life and one foot for death, and she was suffering and struggling right between life and death.

The bloodline runes from the first slight leak of fire dragon breath could cook the flesh inside her and burn the blood to a boil. At a later stage, the pre-absorbed accumulated flame essence was slowly released from within her limbs and began to passively transform and modulate the life circulatory system within her body.

First was the heart, the central organ of life, which gradually expanded and became stronger under the transformation of the fire dragon's breath. A human heart was obviously hardly able to withstand the impact of the huge fire dragon breath, so two small auxiliary hearts actually grew imperceptibly on the side and back of Meryl's heart.

Under their joint absorption and filtration, the fire dragon's breath no longer destroyed her body like it did in the past, but became the source of the powerful bloodline's slow pulsation.

The vital organs and blood vessels in Meryl's body also became tougher and denser than ever before, with exceptional fire resistance properties. Even many of the flesh and blood tissues had undergone some incomprehensible mutations, becoming more suitable for the operation and storage of flame energy.

During this period, Meryl's body appearance also showed some signs of dragonization.

Whenever she consciously raised the flame energy, a layer of fine dark red scales would appear on the surface of her body, clanking loudly. And when Meryl gathered the flame energy into her palm, her entire slender white hand would turn into a hard dragon claw covered in dark red dragon scales that could easily pierce through an alloy shield with a defensive strength of less than 100 degrees, as well as easily crush stones into fine stone powder.

This meant that the dragonized Meryl's strength and physique had been greatly increased.

Therefore, after Meryl had thoroughly adapted to the bloodline runes and was already able to initially apply flame energy, Grim gave her a thorough dialysis check.

Meryl, Level 1 Advanced, Occupational Status: bloodline witch (Fire Dragon Transformation), Body Base Data: strength 16 physique 17 agility 9 spirit 17....

It had to be said that the changes in her strength brought about by the bloodline transformation were simply earth-shattering.

Strength had increased from 4 to 16 points, physique from 8 to 17 points, agility from 5 to 9 points, spirit from 14 to 17 points... the increase in basic body data was breathtaking!

If the previous Meryl was still just an ordinary 1st rank witch who couldn't even hang on to the name of an old witch, then the current her strength had already rushed to catch up with those elite witches. In terms of physical fitness, she was no weaker than the elite sorcerers, the only difference was probably in her fighting skills and sorcery casting.

However, this was only the extent she had reached after initially completing her fusion with the bloodline runes. In the future, as her fusion with the bloodline runes became more and more advanced, her basic strength would also increase by leaps and bounds.

At that time, she would only need to put in a tiny bit of effort and she would be able to easily crush those elite sorcerers of the same class.

Unfortunately, Meryl's compatibility with the fire dragon bloodline was still a bit poor, and she could only complete partial body dragonization transformations at the 1st rank. Or a dragon scale protection, or a fire dragon spitting, or a bloodline pressure... all were some good protection and combat skills.

As for a full Dragon Transformation, I'm afraid that she would have to wait until she advanced to rank 2 before she could do so.

With the solid foundation laid by a 3rd stage female fire dragon as a base, Meryl's path to advance to 2nd stage was actually already paved. All she needed to do now was to fuse and absorb, and slowly wait for her strength to cross the 2nd level threshold.

In this regard, Meryl's advancement to the 2nd stage was even easier than everyone else's!

From this, it could also be seen that with a strong sorcerer as a backing, one's path to advancement would indeed become much easier and smoother. This was one of the major reasons why most of the low and middle-ranked witches were willing to be driven by a high-ranked wizard.

It only took five months for Meryl to successfully complete the transformation of the Fire Dragon bloodline and smoothly merge the bloodline runes. All sorts of hidden benefits would be fed back to her in the following decade or so, pushing her back into the second echelon of the Crimson Family.

And this, too, was the rich reward that the legendary teacher who was the head of the Crimson Clan had given her for all those years of hard work in the service of the clan!

Of course, taking this opportunity, Grim had managed to collect the bloodline transformation data he wanted.

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

Wizarding World, White Tower.

The light from the teleportation slowly began to dissipate, and Meryl opened her eyes with a smile on her face.

The concealment benefits that the bloodline transformation brought to herself were so much better, even the dizziness caused by teleportation was much shorter than before.

This time, Meryl had intentionally chosen the public teleportation array located in the teleportation plaza outside the White Tower Gate.

So when she leisurely stepped out of the teleportation array, the family sorcerers guarding the edge of the array hurriedly bowed in dismay. Those sorcerers and apprentices who came and went at the edge of the teleportation plaza also stopped in dismay, made way for her, and then greeted her with a polite salute.

It had been half a year since we had heard anything about the Meryl Witch.

What the White Tower had heard externally was that Witch Meryl was conducting a large sorcery experiment, so she was not receiving any outsiders for the time being. And her authority had been replaced by the Witch of Fate's side of the Witch of Sherf.

The witches and apprentices living in the White Tower felt this subtle change the most strongly and acutely. However, the higher-ups of the Crimson Family had remained silent about it, so no witch dared to question Meryl's stay or departure.

The apprentice sorcerers might not feel much about today's sudden meeting with this Meryl sorcerer, but the Crimson Family sorcerers were all in awe, finding it difficult to believe their own eyes and spiritual perceptions.

Each witch's elemental breath and spiritual fluctuations were unique, with distinctive vibrational frequencies and amplitudes.

But this Meryl Witch in front of them, she was still the same person, but her elemental breath and spirit fluctuations had changed drastically. And it had only been half a year since, and Meryl Witch's figure had also changed dramatically, becoming even taller and more robust.

The previous Meryl was only about 1.7 meters, but the current Meryl, was already almost 2 meters!

The once light blue pupils of her eyes had now turned dark red, and the edges of her pupils seemed to shine with flames.

Whenever it collided with her vision, the Crimson Witch would feel her eyeballs stinging with a slight burning sensation. As for those sorcerer apprentices, they didn't dare to look directly at this formerly gentle and beautiful sorceress, or else their eyes would be in tears, and it would be difficult to open their eyes.

What everyone felt even more deeply was that a seemingly non-existent spiritual pressure faintly enveloped Meryl's side, making every guy near her heart bang bang bang.

The apprentice sorcerers hadn't seen it and didn't know what these were, but the crimson sorcerers were probing very clearly.

Dragonwell!

This is a weakened version of Dragonwyck!

When did Meryl already have the mental pressure to simulate the dragon's power? It's...unbelievable!

Amidst a small tide of her own currents, Meryl walked easily into the White Tower and then slowly flew to the upper floors of the Witch Tower on a floating metal saucer.

The news of her return spread quickly throughout the tower, including, of course, the Witch of Xuefu, who was sitting in the seventh floor of the Witchcraft Hall, and Count Wenliel, who was standing at her side, bowing.

Waving her hand to disperse the water mirror in front of her, a cold smile appeared on Snow Witch's icy and beautiful face.

"Your old master is demonstrating this to me! It seems that the bloodline transformation she carried out at her own teacher's place was successful..."

The Earl of Winelier, who was standing by, still had a flattering and pleasing smile on his face, but his words were grainy.

"There will always be only one master for me, and that is Lord Mary!"

The Snow Witch was slightly startled, knowing that she was a bit out of line.

Lord Mary, that was a first class big brother in the Crimson Family, in addition to her own terrifying 3rd stage strength, she had a large number of 2nd stage vampires under her command. Although Xuefu belonged to the Fate Witch line and wasn't under the control of the Crimson Family, she still had to keep her words and attitude respectful to such a powerful person.

This was a witch code that all low ranked witches had to follow, otherwise the other party would have ample excuse to teach and discipline themselves.

Although she was not afraid to take an interest in the authority of the White Tower, nor was she interested in getting involved in the internal affairs of the Crimson Family, it was always difficult for Xuefu to be calm about the changes happening to the Meryl Witch.

The Crimson Family and the Witch of Destiny were working closely together, and the growth in power of either side could tilt what had been a barely-held balance.

The simultaneous advancement of Grim and Mary on the other side to Level 3 had already brought a considerable shock to the Witches of Destiny. If the Crimson Family's bottom level witches emerged a few more strong hands, the balance between the two sides would be even more difficult to maintain.

Therefore, when the Ice Witch Xue Fu looked at the successfully returned Meryl, not only did she not have a half-hearted taste of happiness for her, but instead, a strong sense of frustration and crisis radiated from the depths of her heart.

Compared to the Crimson Witches, the Fate Witches' progress was too slow, too slow....