Age of Adepts

The invasion of several powerful forces had triggered a violent upheaval in the Morian Plane.

This turmoil has affected the entire world and may only be a great crisis for the magicians, but for the people at the bottom, it is no different from the collapse of the world.

Over the past ten thousand years, the arcane masters have built up a system of training that is convenient, efficient, and closely connected to the lower levels of the Morian Plane. This system, in turn, had clearly divided Austrians and Sorcerers into two distinct camps of spell casters.

Among the many books on sorcery that Grim had read, there had once been a great sorcerer who had very pertinently and fairly evaluated most of the caster systems.

In the early days of intelligent creature evolution, people had to choose only prayerful and careful contact when faced with lightning and fire power they did not understand. This attitude toward supernatural power evolved, and eventually the equal became the shaman, the creeping became the priest, and the enslaved became the arcane.

In this respect, the arcane carries an uncompromising attitude from its classification.

It might also be seen as an overall character trait of the arcane!

And wizards, as members of the caster community, usually carry an excess of blood, taboo, body modification, and violent enslavement in their research, seeking only the end regardless of the means. And the purpose of witchcraft research is no longer to discover the truths of the world or the origins of magic, but usually just to master some greater power or solve some difficult problem.

As a result, in many places, the local practitioners of sorcery view the sorcerers as tricksters or evil mages.

The arcane masters, on the other hand, claim to be eternal seekers of the world's truths and magical origins!

Based on their own philosophy and system characteristics, the arcane masters built arcane towers that could fly around the world, and huge floating cities that could be used as flying fortresses. The vast Austrian Empire was built around this system.

The Austrian Empire had divided every bit of the continent into provinces of varying sizes, and the true control center of each province was a gigantic floating city. Most of the floating cities were built on top of earth nodes, using magic tides to trigger elemental surges, thus creating elemental pools with a constant source of energy.

Although a floating city built this way could float thousands of meters above the ground, it would be difficult to move freely. Once it left the Earth Vein Node and lost its constant energy supply, the Floating City would have to rely on the energy stored in the elemental pool to support its flight.

If it couldn't reach the next Earth Vein Node before it ran out of energy, then what awaited Floating City would be a great disaster!

It was because of this characteristic of the Floating Sky City that 'it could only act as a huge fortress and could not move freely' that the Arcane Masters had created a more flexible and self-contained Arcane Tower.

With the Tower in their hands, the magicians were able to enter the Void Storm unscathed, dive thousands of meters into the depths of the ocean in search of victory, go deep into the Earth's core in search of resources and treasures... It was thanks to the Tower's protection that the fragile and ordinary human body of the magicians were able to fly and escape.

And in order to meet the needs of the bitter conquest, the Arcane Empire had even developed a terrifying half-surface fortress, transforming a half-surface covering dozens or even hundreds of kilometers into a solid ship and cannon, used to blast open the protective barriers of a secondary surface.

According to the Sorcerers' past dealings with the Arcane Empire, even those Arcane Emperors who were at the 8th level had only reached the 3rd level of the Sorcerers' own physical strength.

The Olympians only focused on the study and popularization of arcane knowledge, but seldom spent as much resources on polishing and transforming their flesh* bodies as the Sorcerers did. They had to rely more on a series of arcane facilities such as arcane towers, elemental pools, mana pools, spell pools, etc. in order for their strength to truly shine.

Once these extras were stripped away, the arcane masters were simply vulnerable!

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

Three days later, early morning.

Grim and his group were walking on a grayish-white carriage road in a dusty manner.

Due to the use of sorcery to conceal the appearance and clothing of themselves and others, to outsiders, the few of them didn't look any different or unusual from the bit natives here.

All of the roads on this journey were crowded with fleeing people with their families, carrying large and small packages. And they had all come from the southeast, trudging aimlessly down a main road, not knowing exactly where they should escape to.

Since Grim and his party were heading in the exact opposite direction from them, there were many kind-hearted people on this journey who advised them to turn back quickly and not to go to those large cities and floating cities. I heard that those were the places with the fiercest battles and the heaviest casualties!

To such persuaders, Grim uniformly smiled and refused, still leading his three companions down the main road and quickly approaching the first attack target.

The first in the series of attack targets that the main team of witches had delineated for them was a small human city with an arcane tower guarding it.

"Since the main team of witches has appointed you as the captain, then... Lord Grim, I wonder how you plan to assign the attack positions for a while?" The dark witch whose journey had been dull and wordless all the way finally managed to open her mouth.

And as soon as she opened her mouth, a strong smell of sour rot spread through the ranks.

Hearing the assignment, the two-headed witch as well as that Silver Alliance's Holly Witch had to raise their heads and look at Grim.

The Dark Witch's name was Shani, and she was a powerful sorcerer of intermediate level 4.

Her appearance and figure were both of the superior class, and she also looked like a very beautiful woman with an unusually tall figure. However, her temperament was unprecedentedly cold and arrogant, and she almost rarely interacted with the other members of the team.

Not to mention male witches like Grim and Holly, even the two-headed witch who switched into Qiu Lisa's personality failed to strike up a conversation with her.

Wizard Holly, on the other hand, followed the tradition of the Silver Alliance and was a top-notch powerful puppeteer.

The magic doll he controlled was a strange starlight armor that could be both remotely controlled and worn with even more power.

As for himself, he was a small dwarf of only 1.67 meters, and his body also appeared to be somewhat thin and withered, with an ordinary appearance and a full head of short yellow hair.

Although Grim and the other four people nominally belonged to a combat squad, they did not have any real unity of command. In addition, everyone's strength was also in between, so the other two were somewhat indignant at the captain's title imposed on Grim, except for the two-headed wizard who had no qualms about talking about captain.

Thus, when the towering arcane tower at the end of the road was already visible, the dark witch Shani chose to be the first to jump into action!

"As you've already seen, war hasn't broken out here yet, so that arcane tower has only the most basic few arcane protections on." Grim led the group to a roadside spar, peering silently at the arcane tower through the swaying canopy of trees.

"If we move fast enough to break in before the Olympians turn on their top-level defenses, those guys' power isn't worth a damn!"

"You mean... let's break in hard?" The Holly Wizard's face could not help but gloom.

Of the four witches present, he was the only magician who was good at this kind of charge and attack errand. If he followed Grim's line of thinking just now, I'm afraid he would inevitably have to take the hardest, most tiring job of all!

"A hard attack isn't appropriate!" Grim shook his head, "Although this Orbital Tower can only be considered small, it's not a big threat to us. But if we were to force it, it would cause us to lose a lot of power. There are many more targets that we need to attack on this journey, and our strength must not be lost in such a pointless place!"

Hearing this, the Holly Witch's face was only a little better.

"So what do you say?" The dark witch, Shani, still had a cold face.

"Create a little trouble in the city, preferably a refugee riot or something to lure the Aurors away from the Tower and run out to suppress it...so we can attack while the chaos lasts."

The crowd bowed their heads in thought, and although they were a bit suspicious and dissatisfied with Grim, the other party's proposed method of attack was indeed also the most suitable one for the current situation.

Thus the crowd nodded their heads.

"The Arcane Tower can have arcane facilities that closely monitor the entire process, and once we strike in the city, the spillover sorcery fluctuations will be easily detected by the enemy. So, we'll try not to use sorcery as much as we can, and whoever has some suitable supernatural means will be able to give it their all at this point..." chanted Grim, and filled in some holes in the plan of action.

"Let me put it to work!" The two-headed sorcerer Mangus couldn't help but laugh maliciously, "My sister is more adept at psychic sorcery and has some special psychic abilities to ensure that she won't alert those Aurors."

"That's good... When we enter the city later, Mangus you are in charge of encouraging the refugees and citizens to revolt, and it would be best to assign some of them to besiege the Tower of Ordeal. Holly, you and Shani will ambush near the entrance of the Orbital Tower together and wait for my signal. Once you receive the signal, force your way into the Orbital Tower... Remember, make sure to destroy their elemental pools first!"

"Got it!"

"Well!"

Those who were able to pestle and stand here were strong sorcerers who had experienced thousands of bloody fights before coming down step by step. For such a task, there was no need to lay out and assign it too carefully, as long as the entire battle plan was slightly picked out, they would naturally understand it.

"Let's go into the city!"

Grim looked up and chuckled softly, taking one last look at the towering arcane tower before he pulled up his hood, wrapped his cloak tightly around him, and strode confidently out of the sparse forest, blending into the noisy chaos of the crowd and walking silently towards the small human town not far away.