Age of Adepts

Time flew by.

Almost in the blink of an eye, it had been three months since Grim had arrived at Camp Esoda.

On this day, as he was sitting in front of the wooden table of his dwelling, carefully examining a strange iron stone shining with stars and magical light by the bright light, a sorcerous message from outside alarmed him.

It was that Martin.

As Grim connected to Martin's sorcery message, he continued to deeply scan the piece of star meteorite iron that he had just collected from inside the camp.

Star Meteorite Iron could be found inside most bit worlds, and could be considered a common sorcerer's resource. But the piece that Grim had collected was distinctly different, as if it had been immersed in the magical tides for a long time, some unpredictable mutations had occurred, and even the data detected by the chip was abnormally disordered.

"Grim, are you busy there? If you're not busy, do me a little favor?"

"How can I help?"

"One of my clan's juniors found a batch of Ithra seeds out there, and was blocked by another group of interstellar hobbits while they were gathering them. They just sent me a distress message, but I'm due for a second concoction of the Violet Gold Potion in an hour, so..."

"So you want me to go and bring them back?"

"Yes. Don't worry, you won't get away with it for nothing, and you'll get thirty percent of the seed of Ithra that you get back."

"What about those Star Plane Hobbits?"

"If it's not too much trouble, just kill them all and save the trouble of looking at them every day!"

Grim licked his lips.

The Seed of Isara was a main ingredient for making the Whispering Contract Compound, and the latter was able to grant the sorcerer the ability to cast spells silently. That was why it could be useful in many situations.

One must know that within the Wizard World, a single Isara Seed is worth three to four thousand magic crystals, which is quite valuable. And the price of a successfully refined Whispering Contract Combination was as high as 20,000 to 30,000 magic crystals.

So upon hearing this, even Grim couldn't help but feel a little thumping.

"Alright, I don't have anything particularly urgent on hand, so I'll run it for you! You send me the location message..."

A moment later, as a flame exploded, Grim disappeared.

Above the sky outside the Witch Tower, fire flashed, and Grim directly condensed his body, simply identifying the direction and heading straight for somewhere in the camp.

There was a teleportation array there that went straight to the edge of the continent, and it would save Grim a lot of time in long-distance flying.

In between the towers, small markets and settlements surrounded by huge tents of different colors could be seen everywhere. In and out of them were also exotic creatures of various shapes and races.

When the huge fireball that Grim had transformed into flew through the sky, many otherworldly creatures looked up to watch and pointed curiously, not knowing what they were discussing.

The so-called Camp Esoda was actually made up of hundreds of large and small markets, settlements and forested witch towers. The one Grim was currently going to, however, was founded by the Scatterland Talyn Association, so the percentage of witches in it was much higher than the other bazaars.

Dropping down near the entrance of the bazaar, quickly changing from a giant flame back into a human form, Grim stepped into it in faith.

As an open bazaar, there were not many people coming and going in and out of the place, but there were quite a few.

Among them, there were elemental sorcerers wearing witch robes and holding wands, body alchemists carrying great swords and wearing demonic armor, and of course, bloodline sorcerers with all sorts of different characteristics... There were also some strange and bizarre creatures among them.

From what I could tell, they were quite harmonious and seemed to have formed a battle squad with various races and professions.

They were also mostly of the 3rd rank, with very few 2nd ranks. Even if an occasional few 2nd-stage appeared, they were all exceptionally strong, racially gifted generations.

After staying here for three months, there were simply too many new things of all kinds that I had seen and heard.

Thus Grim was already accustomed to such a scene and didn't care.

And Grim's arrival apparently surprised the group of 'little ones' so much that they all made their way to the center of the road and stroked their chests in salute to Grim.

Grim passed through the center of them and also nodded to a few 'familiar' 3rd rank wizards, before coming straight to a huge cowhide tent.

Waiting here was a brawny man with a huge axe on his back and a bold face, who saw Grim coming over and hurriedly welcomed him.

"Lord Grim, where are you planning to go?"

"Exit five...the cost is on Lord Martin's account!"

"Okay Le, here's the connection for you..."

A moment later, in a flash of white light, Grim was moving as fast as he could from the center of the continent to the edge area of the suspended boulder.

Exit 5 was located in a chaotic meteorite zone.

The surface of the boulder where the teleportation formation was located was the size of a football field, with a black stone of different sizes floating in suspension around it.

The guardian of the formation was an aged 4th rank sorcerer who had a small square table, holding an ancient scroll in one hand and tea in the other, and was leisurely reading in silence.

Hearing the movement in the teleportation array, he looked back, and after seeing Grim and the Witch Tower symbol on his chest, he stopped talking and read the books on his own.

Behind him, on the other hand, stood a huge metal puppet of ten meters in size, with a dense red light emanating from the honeycomb compound eyes on top of his skull, shining on Grim's body. After verifying its identity, this abandoned its alert state and retreated back within the rock wall behind it.

It could be seen that this was a 4th ranked magician from the Silver Alliance.

Not caring about chatting with this same rank, Grim stepped out of the teleportation formation, and after taking two steps, his figure immediately disappeared into the rising flames.

At the same moment, in the vast darkness at the end of the distant line of sight, a fire raged above a suspended stone the size of a millstone, and Grim's body was revealed.

Two flexed fingers, another flame rose, and Grim jumped out once again....

With just a quick and swift leap of flame, Grim was flying forward at almost unimaginable speeds.

And when he left the fifth teleportation array, that 4th level magician couldn't help but raise his head once again, looking at Grim who was rapidly fading into the dark vault of the sky, and couldn't help but mutter in a low voice, "This guy is probably the Grim who was newly promoted in the Scattered Earth Tarin, right? Not even ten years after you've been promoted, you dare to go outside the domain and make a foray, hehe, the nerve is not small!"

Ignorant of what was happening behind him, Grim still kept jumping inside the dark and twisted space.

Disengaged from the Esoda camp, it was also unprotected by large shields.

The outside world was apparently devoid of natural light sources.

The entire vast and expansive world was filled with undulating and vibrating tides of magic, as well as endless darkness and depths.

Only when the magical tides washed over the suspended boulders, splashing out dazzling sparks, could they briefly illuminate a certain area. The only way to know what was in the endless darkness around us was to rely on one's powerful spiritual perception.

Only, the magic tides here fluctuate and vibrate endlessly, often times distorting and dissolving the outward mental tentacles. Thus, the spiritual power that could control the changes of everything within thousands of meters within the bit could only extend hundreds of meters out here.

Therefore, the most frightening thing about being in extra-domain space wasn't actually encountering those powerful astral beings, but losing your temporal orientation completely and not being able to find your way back to the camp.

Grim was flying rapidly through the empty void.

The ubiquitous tidal wave of magic power wrapped around him and blew against his body, creating energy damage every moment that was no less than 210 degrees.

And in Grim's glowing black pupils, the chip's series of alerts were constantly refreshing.

"Subject suffered void energy intrusion, 17% of energy converted to sorcery energy, 41% isolated, 36% resisted, 7% causing minor damage to the body... Body continues to mend..."

Grim wasn't a Star Beast after all.

Although he had fused his Star Beast bloodline and possessed the ability to directly absorb the Void Rage energy, this absorption process also came with minor flesh* body damage. Only that Grim's constitution was now up to 33 points, and the minor damage he had suffered could be repaired complete with just a little bit of sorcery power, so he was unable to cause any visible damage to his flesh yet.

Of course, if Grim didn't have a Chaos Physique and couldn't absorb the Void Rage energy, then if he stayed in this harsh environment for a long time, it was only a matter of time before his own strength would be exhausted. Now with the Star Beast bloodline, he was able to absorb the berserk energy to replenish his sorcery power.

Thus, Grim would also have the ability to survive in the Star Ocean!

As long as he didn't break into those magical tidal rampages, or engage in sustained high-intensity combat, Grim could last longer than any other sorcerer in the sea of stars, even without any replenishment.

The vast curtain of blackness stretched before his eyes, and Grim jumped from one boulder to another, getting farther and farther away from the central continent.

After a full three hours of walking through the black curtain, spanning nearly ten thousand miles, Grim finally drifted closer to the area where the accident had occurred.

It was a lone boulder suspended in the pitch-black canopy, and the nearest suspended boulder in the vicinity was also hundreds of miles away, so its presence was unusually abrupt and bizarre.

At this moment, strongmen belonging to two different camps were fighting bravely on the surface of the boulder, and as far as one could see, a brilliant and dazzling sorcery glow illuminated almost half of the sky.

And when Grim appeared above the boulder with a bang, the two warring sides couldn't help but stop their battles at the same time and looked up at him.

"It's a sorcerer, a human 4th rank sorcerer... Retreat!" One side shouted in fear and dismay.

"It's one of our own... Come on, let's work harder to entangle them..." the other side also shouted vigorously after a surprise cheer.

The battle on the battlefield instantly reached a white-hot stage!