Age of Adepts

Still on that uncrowded forest path.

The strong mane in Benija's purple pupils began to slowly dissipate, and an invisible mind wave slowly radiated around her.

"What, what did you find?" The giant snake sorcerer Natagoo who was walking ahead stopped and asked in a low voice.

Benija's mental power was the strongest among the team, so she deservedly became the squad's sharpest soldier and leader. They had been able to track all the way from Harkans City to here thanks to Benija's strange mind perception ability.

"Just choked out a wind elemental creature, it doesn't look like a wild one, it's probably a target put to the outer eye." Benija replied quickly, while her mind waves were still silently scanning and perceiving the movement around her.

The entire path, whether it was the birds and squirrels hiding underneath the solid ancient wood, or the snakes and rats and mole crickets lurking a few meters beneath the soil, could not escape the perception of Benija's mind ripples.

In the entire area, all the places she passed by, any creature that had life signs would be fed back into her spiritual consciousness in the form of special light points. For those light points that were super small in size, Benicia chose to ignore them. But for those medium to large sized creatures, Benicia's psychic ripples would make them intentionally or unintentionally ignore this strange team.

In the purple pupil of Benicia's eyes, the visual field before her was a colorful, illusory and flowing world of magnificent beauty. Besides being able to see the material scene in front of her, she was also able to detect the distribution and flow of magical elements within her line of sight with her elemental vision.

The fire witch had walked through here two days ago, which could be judged by the concentration of pale red fire elemental particles that remained in the forest. The elemental witches were all large elemental reactors after all, and even if they tried their best to restrain their energy radiation, they would still change the elemental particle concentration in the area they were passing through to varying degrees.

Thus, from Benicia's perspective, there was a wavering red ribbon of light right in front of her eyes, continuing from Harkans City to a distance out of sight. The region that the fire witch had traversed was simply as striking to her as a campfire in the night, and she couldn't ignore it if she wanted to.

Even with the residual fire elemental particles ingested from the air, Benicia was able to get a vague sense of that fire witch's basic strength, physical state, and crude emotional reactions.

It seemed that the fire witch had reaped a rich harvest in the indigenous city, and even his residual fire elemental particles carried a vague sense of joy and agitation. And from these scents, Benija also truly felt that this was a gifted young sorcerer, with a body filled with fiery and violent power.

His age was very small, very small... even small to Benicia's surprise.

But the elemental scent that remained of him carried a jealously rich, youthful fire, just like the clean, sweet scent of a newborn baby's origin!

"So what do you mean...the enemy has spotted us?" Natagu's dark green snake pupils stared coldly at Benicia, making her feel as if her body was wrapped around a sticky, cold snake letter, and that feeling sucked!

"Yes, when I was strangling that wind elemental, I had a vague sense of a strange spiritual energy watching us. It's just that this spiritual energy seems to belong to an inanimate object, making me a bit puzzled..." replied Benija, biting her lower lip lightly, in distress.

"Hmph, it's probably some sort of sorcery tactic of that fire witch!" Natagoo said coldly, "Didn't the message from that lord say that he seemed to be very good at puppet making, always surrounded by powerful elemental puppets of the same level as him. It seems that we're very close to his hideout! Let's go...pick up the pace, don't let him get away again!"

The rickety old witch Gwenevere lifted her head, lifted her nose and sniffed the air a few times, then shook her head in disappointment. It seemed that the fire witch hadn't released the poisonous spirit, otherwise she should have been able to smell the unique elemental scent of the poisonous spirit.

After a brief discussion, the three of them stopped talking and continued to amble on their way.

...........

In the midst of a vast expanse of huge forest.

Grim stood frozen atop a high cliff jutting out of the forest sea, looking back and silently gazing into the distance.

There, a huge mushroom cloud of flame was slowly rising, accompanied by a vast ring of dust around it.

"How about it, Chip, what did you find out?" Grim inquired silently in his mind.

"Drops, the trap area is enveloped by a strange energy, unable to find out their specific attribute data..."

The results returned by the chip were undoubtedly very disappointing to Grim, who couldn't help but ask, "Without specific attribute data, what about the vague energy levels? They're 3rd or 4th order, there should be some outline, right?"

"3rd order... judging by the strength of the energy feedback from the trap area, no 4th order energy response has been detected... three target creatures are tentatively judged to be 3rd order... this judgement is 76% correct, further data is required for correction..."

"Finally, I've heard some good news!" Grim licked his lips lightly and couldn't help but narrow his eyes, "As long as there aren't any 4 steps, I'm not afraid of any more 3 steps coming. Awesome everyone playing hide and seek here! I don't believe that they would dare to risk the 4-step natives coming to my door and kowtowing to me..."

With that said, Grim was surrounded by fire, and a flame jump appeared hundreds of meters away in the sky above. The flames that clustered around him condensed behind him into a pair of Flame Wings, holding his body up in the air. Before he flew out a hundred or two hundred meters, the Flame Jump skill cooled down again and Grim's flame-filled body flickered out once more.

Relying on the alternating use of Flame Jump and Flame Wings, Grim rushed towards the southwestern region of the Zambis Empire as fast as he could.

And by making such a grand gesture, he had also completely exposed himself to all the world.

The people living in this ancient country had the privilege of experiencing the terrifying power of a powerful sorcerer from a different realm!

Zambis Empire, Northwest Region.

The sky was as if it suddenly burned, and the rolling and vibrating fire clouds rendered the vault of the sky red.

There was also a rumbling sound of rolling flames roaring among them.

Grim flew at a rate of one flicker every five seconds in the sky hundreds of meters high, the red flowing wings of flame dragging an unbroken path of flame clouds behind him. And every time the flames jumped, they would leave a slowly spreading ring of flames in place.

In order to travel as fast as possible, Grim had no qualms about whether or not his actions would disturb the indigenous inhabitants beneath him, desperately squeezing the Inferno Heart in his chest, causing it to pulsate and roar wildly, sending a stream of extremely pure flame energy to every part of his body.

These flame energies surging through his body had a temperature as high as three to four thousand degrees, and the energy levels were even higher. But even so, the full power output of the Infernal Heart was still somewhat difficult to support Grim's violent actions.

Therefore, after spanning a distant distance of over 700 kilometers in one breath, only then did Grim find a huge lake and plunged into it.

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

Lake Cascara.

This is one of the largest, clearest, and most fishery-rich prosperous areas in the middle of the Zambis Empire.

The abundant Bain River and the Fenris River, which flowed for half of the empire, converged here, creating a vast area of hundreds of miles of lake and marsh.

As it was located within the Empire, it had not experienced war and beacons for hundreds of years. Even the witch invasion that happened in the southern part of the empire had never extended the fire of war to this area.

Dependent on the mountains, dependent on the sea!

Most of the people living here are fishermen, and although they work a little harder in the morning and return home late at night, they are still much more leisurely and peaceful than those who are in the midst of war and strife on the border.

Even though this place didn't have the prosperity and bustle of the big cities, it also had its own unique peace and tranquility.

However, today, first, a large cloud of fire suddenly ignited at the far end of the sky, and then came the sound of an incessant huge roar.

Immediately after that, a huge flaming meteor cut through the sky and fell straight down from the vault of the sky, crashing into the deepest part of Lake Cascara with a bang.

The terrifying shockwave of flames and the water column that rose from the sky crossed paths, instantly causing the small half of the lake to start rolling and boiling. In the gurgling hot water of the lake, countless silver pike were half-cooked and floating on the surface of the lake, while the strange meteor had sunk to the bottom of the lake.

Countless people living in Cascara Lake had witnessed this horrific scene of natural disaster, but how could their primitive and rustic minds understand the horrific content hidden behind the scene before them.

Half an hour later, in a place with lush grass and water, Grim stepped out of the lake covered in steamy, tumbling waves of heat. Before he had even taken two steps on shore, the witch robe he was wearing was already completely dry from the fire element baking.

Grim turned his head to see the way he had come, a bad smile on his young and handsome face.

He was walking so wildly and arrogantly himself, and there was no telling what those three Hunters would choose to do.

Will they learn to fight their way up, or will they continue to struggle on the ground on two legs with a full face? Either way, I'm afraid it wasn't a choice they were willing to make.

Having traveled so far in one breath, even with Grim's strength, he couldn't help but feel a sense of power cowardice.

He quickly gathered up the overflowing flame energy, dressed himself as an ordinary traveler, and turned his head to head east of Lake Cascara.

According to the information gathered by the chip, there should be a medium sized human city there, which would be perfect for him to cover his tracks and find out what was going on on the witch's side.