Age of Adepts

As the squad slowly entered the poisonous swamp, everyone's mood grew more and more tense.

Underfoot was soft and slippery water plants and duckweed, slippery and somewhat difficult to stand on, but it was still much easier than everyone had originally expected.

A thirty-meter long rope made of tough rattan strung everyone up, and the front end was tied around the old medicine man's waist. And a silver knight with a long rope in one hand and a long sword in the other, followed closely behind the old medicine farmer, ready to lend a helping hand when appropriate.

After all, there were a large number of scavengers and poisonous creatures living here, as well as many unnamed demons and ghosts that were particularly difficult to deal with.

More than twenty Paladin squads entered the swamp one after another, with each squad less than ten meters away from each other, so that they could respond to each other. This also reduced the possibility of being attacked by witches.

The seven golden knights near Black Mountain City had converged at the same time, escorting Lena and the newly captured little witch to walk in the middle of the team. With their ranks far outnumbering their opponents in terms of numbers and strength, they weren't worried that the witches would attack in a big way, but rather that the other side would disappear on the wind and refuse to engage in battle.

To be honest, trekking through the mountains and jungles in full steel armor to hunt down those unusually nimble and cunning witches was never going to be an easy or relaxing task.

Catherine followed the group as they trudged through the swamp with one sword in one hand and a torch in the other.

Looking around, one could only barely make out the five-meter radius illuminated by the torch, and five meters away was a foggy, white expanse. The mists drifted around them, making everything around them seem like a thick veil, making it difficult to look closely.

The mist was rich in water vapor, and strung together with the flames lit on the torch, erupting with strange crackling explosions. And there was no sign of a 'road' underfoot at all, just a slippery footprint trampled by a teammate in front of him.

And the later didn't need to identify the road, just stepped on the footprints of the former to move forward.

What would be the consequences of stepping wrongly in such a place, a young Black Iron Knight told the crowd of the dangers here with his own personal experience.

Maybe he was just looking around, or maybe he was just mentally distracted, but the Black Iron Knight stepped on the grass road and immediately fell into the muddy puddle.

And it was like lighting a striking torch, which instantly caused the entire swamp to begin boiling!

Visible to the naked eye, the mud in the stinking pond stirred and rippled, as if there were some strange creatures burrowing and stirring underneath. And as that Black Iron Knight struggled in the mud without stopping, the agitation in the stinking mud pool became more and more obvious, a clear line of water from far and near, rapidly approaching the fallen man.

"The two closest to the fallen knight grabbed the rope around his waist and pulled him out of the deeper and deeper stinking mud with a fierce force. Up.

The 'prey' suddenly disappeared, and one by one, the strange monsters hiding in the mud were furiously furious and came out of it.

For a time, large groups of old ghosts and mud monsters emerged from the stinking mud pools around the squad.

The Old Grunts were, from the outside, a humanoid monster similar to a drowned living corpse, with shaggy and dirty hair, dark and sunken hand claws, and broken but sharp and sharp fangs. Their claw attacks are laced with a terrible toxin, making them even more dangerous than ghouls in the swamp.

As for the Sludge Monster, it was a low-grade demon made purely of foul-smelling sludge and strange substances, possessing several items such as 'Sludge Missile', 'Acid Splash', and 'Split and Proliferate', etc. Special Combat Abilities. The attacks may not be powerful, but they are nasty enough to kill.

Faced with the incoming swamp creatures in large numbers, the Paladin Squad was undaunted.

As a 'holy light bullet' rained out, every named swamp creature would be purified of its soul in this almost divine pure holy light, and then the old devil woman would turn into a rotting corpse, while the sludge monster would turn into a puddle of mud and die from it.

As if sensing the difficulty of the intruders, the old geezer and the sludge monsters chirped and floated in the swamp mire, using the mud to avoid each other's holy light bombs. Already in the 3-mile long line, a number of old grunts had rushed onto the grass road and fought the Paladins in melee combat.

If the guy who had trespassed into the Poisoned Swamp today had been an Imperial soldier, there would have been a large number of casualties and poisoned people at the moment. However, the Holy Knights with the blessing of the Holy Light possessed unparalleled lethality when facing these low-level demons and monsters.

No matter how sharp the old devil woman's claws and fangs were, they could not penetrate the holy light barrier and the thick holy light armor outside the holy knights' bodies. And their hard skin, which they thought was as tough and hard to injure as old cowhide, was as thin as a sheet of paper in front of the Holy Knights' long swords that were imbued with rich holy light.

Almost as if they were chopping melons, the Paladins slashed and killed the old devils that rushed up the grass road one by one, and their souls were completely purified. However, the Paladins were a bit embarrassed when faced with a sludge monster that possessed several long-range skills.

A sludge missile would break through the air, and when it hit the Holy Light barrier outside the Paladin's body, it would explode into a foul-smelling mass of sludge. That smell, that content, simply caused a clean Paladin's spirit to collapse and his nose to suffer.

It was simply too wasteful to deal with a bunch of low-level demons with Holy Light Slashing, Holy Seal Sanctioning and other means, so cheap Holy Light Bombs fell on the sludge monsters like raindrops. How could a small sludge monster withstand the holy light purification, and one by one, the sludge monsters exploded without a sound.

However, without waiting for the smiles to rise on the Paladins' faces, the distant rotting sludge-like bodies actually coalesced again, splitting into three slightly smaller sludge monsters.

In the next moment, even more dense sludge missiles and acid splashes flew over.

What made the Paladins feel rather crushed was that an ordinary silt monster could split twice, and each individual could split into three slightly smaller silt monsters. In other words, it would take nine entire kills to completely exterminate a normal sludge monster.

Before that, these silt monsters were already enough to completely cover the area where the Paladins were with the foul smelling silt and the strange strong acid brewing inside their own bodies.

For a time, the entire Paladin team was enveloped by a terrifying stench that pierced straight to the brain!

All the Paladins were fighting and vomiting desperately, the comical and evil scene was simply impossible to look at.

However, the strength of the Paladin team was already far above the monsters and demons in front of them. Therefore, although the scene was somewhat out of control, the Paladin team had not suffered any battle attrition so far.

Whether it was the toxin attack of the old devil woman or the acid splash of the sludge monster, some of the damage was purged away by a brilliant holy light before it could pile up on the holy knight's body as visible wounds.

The only pity was that the holy light could purify the toxins and the acid, but not the stench!

Thus one by one on the battlefield, the holy knights who fell were not physically injured in any way, but purely by the stench 'stink'.

Catherine was caught in the middle of the long line, mouthing words of praise to the divine greatness of the Holy Light, and her hands inspired a single Holy Light Bomb to sway and smash into the shaking figure in the mist.

Her face was so white she could hardly breathe.

The water, the grass, and herself were covered in a slimy, slippery, disgusting acid. This 'bodily fluid' that had been bred in the body of the silt monster for years, no matter where it fell, would emit a fluorescent green smoke cloud, smelling like the horrible odor formed by the dirty and filthy 'waste' in the sewers after it had been fully brewed and fermented.

After just one sniff, Catherine vomited out all the stock in her stomach, and in the end, even the acid in her intestines and stomach.

One Paladin, even though he was vomiting up his hands and feet, was still fighting valiantly... no, slaughtering!

Batches of old devils and silt monsters rushed out of the mists on either side of the grass path, before collapsing miserably and shrieking beneath the holy great swords of the Paladins.

Although the battle was 'brutal', the ranks of the Paladins were strangely casualty-free!

The Paladins that stretched for up to 3 miles all stopped and worked hard to purify the group of demonic monsters. However, at the moment when they were struggling to fight, a huge giant lizard suddenly emerged from the swamp mire.

With a streak of earthy yellow petrified rays shooting out from the swamp lizard's strange pupils, a few of the haggard Black Iron Knights were caught in the crossfire and were instantly paralyzed on the spot.

Visible to the naked eye, a layer of greenish grey was rapidly extending on their surface skin. Soon, not to mention Littlefinger, even the eyes of the Paladin who was hit suddenly solidified, becoming a knocked up hard stone statue.

The Swamp Lizard pounced close, bit the petrified Paladin in one bite, turned around and dragged them into the muddy swamp.

So in the next moment, the entire swamp mud wave rolled, black water splashed everywhere, and the swarming swamp creatures frantically tore at the Paladin, dragging him to the bottom of the deeper mire.

As for the long rope tied on the Paladin's body, it was bitten off, and could no longer be used to lend a helping hand.

"Bastard..."

Some Paladins who witnessed this were shocked and furious, wielding their swords and charging into the mud and fighting with the swamp creatures.

But unfortunately, on land, with their strength, one Black Iron Knight would have no problem handling seven or eight old women. But in this particular environment, two or three old devils would be able to trick them into panting.

With a parasitic demon like the Swamp Lizard, the swamp creatures were able to partially break through the defense of the Paladins, dragging one Paladin into the muddy swamp that was difficult to use.

In almost no time at all, the Paladin ranks suffered up to double-digit casualties!