Age of Adepts

The seat of the mountains.

It was a monotonous world that stretched and undulated, almost nothing but mountain ranges.

Here, one could not see endless flat grasslands, nor lush green forests and seas, nor slow flowing streams....

The Seat of the Mountain was worthy of its name.

The entire bit was almost entirely a bizarre world of pitch-black, loose dirt and grayish-white solid rocks stacked on top of each other, and even the air smelled of choking dust!

Without water, without clean air, without plants and animals, it would be impossible to give birth to thousands of bite-sized creatures.

Therefore, it was a lonely world, and a cold world!

At the foot of a giant mountain of broken rocks, a small goblin camp was under construction in a frenzy.

Hundreds of goblin machines were spewing out heavy steam and laboriously clearing and smoothing the ground. A dozen or so goblin engineer-looking guys were standing on top of a giant rock, pointing at the surrounding area, as if discussing the size of the camp and the distribution of buildings.

Dozens of battle magic weapons with magic ray guns in their hands were cruising around patrolling the outskirts of the construction site, always on the lookout for any movement around them.

In the center of the camp, an ancient and oddly-shaped magic device was holding up an elemental barrier, repelling the polluted air of the place and re-infusing it with a fresh and sweet stream of compressed air.

A corner of the camp, the airship area.

A dozen or so cigar-style goblin airships were creaking their propellers, struggling to send a goblin engineer and seven or eight goblin combatants up into the sky, then following the terrain somewhere in the distance.

Unable to get used to the air for the time being, each goblin wore a breathing mask to prevent themselves from turning into a stone by inhaling too much of the rich earthy air.

As the goblin craft flew slowly across the sky, engineer Justin Osik moved a wooden crate to the side of the ship and climbed up with difficulty, holding up his somewhat old X-Ray II binoculars to keep scanning below him.

As a veteran geological prospector, Justin Osik didn't even need to land, he could determine the composition of the ores and the proportion of rare ores by just relying on the surface of the exposed rock formations below him.

Often, however, the surface of the rock formations would be obscured by the dust that was everywhere here.

Whenever this happened, Justin Osik would order the goblin airship to fly low and use the great wind generated by the propeller to blow away the floating dust on the surface of the rocks, so that he could observe the composition of their ores.

But such an action would undoubtedly pose some danger to the goblin airship.

On the seventh low hover after flying more than a hundred miles out of camp, the goblin warrior standing at the bow of the ship in charge of the watch screamed in terror.

"Attack...attack...take cover!"

The goblin airship, under the delicate control of the goblin technician, made a perfect sideways flight to dodge a huge rock thrown from the ground. Justin, who was standing on the wooden box on the side of the ship, gripped the top chain with both hands, which prevented him from being thrown off by the airship's fast maneuvering.

After the airship washed and climbed to a safe height, Justin maneuvered his binoculars and quickly darted around the ground, finally spotting the damned enemy.

Next to a thick crack in the ground, a 3-meter tall stone elemental was struggling to crawl out of it and was waving its stone arms at them furiously.

Like blowing a war horn, more than thirty stone elements with 1st rank strength crawled out of the huge crack that stretched for a thousand meters. They roared in a low voice as they condensed face-palm-sized stones and threw them wildly into the sky.

Since the goblin airship was already a hundred meters high from the ground, these stones simply couldn't reach such a height. As a result, they tumbled all the way to the halfway point, and then fell powerlessly.

"These damn stoners..." the goblin squad leader in charge of the airship's safety rushed into a rage, raising his magic ray gun with the intention of giving these natives a fierce comeback. But its action was halted by Justin.

"Don't waste your firepower on them!" Justin tugged at his neck and cried out, the whistling high, harsh wind keeping its words from reaching five meters: "Inform the captain to fly west along this canyon in front of us, there may be something good there..."

A moment later, the goblin airship's hull shook, and after slowly adjusting its direction, it quickly flew off into the distance in the direction Justin had specified.

The group of stone elements beneath them, on the other hand, chased furiously for some distance before returning to their lair.

After this period of exploration, the goblins had come to understand that the rolling hills below them were simply the habitat of the earth and stone elements.

They were either hiding in cracks in the ground, hiding in caverns, or simply lying down somewhere sunbathing... Since this place was filled with dirt and rocks, it was extremely difficult to find them from the rugged and rocky piles or cracks in the rocks.

It's only when foreign objects invade their 'territory' that these grumpy fellows will lazily emerge from their hiding places and chase you away with a casserole-sized rock fist or a face-pallet-sized boulder. And with boulders they can throw up to 60 meters in the air, they're quite a threat to goblin airships.

But the good thing was that they had an extremely strong sense of territory, even if they were angry, they wouldn't easily set foot on another stone elemental family's territory.

This only gave the goblin airships the opportunity to use their altitude and speed to shake them off!

As a last resort, Justin could only order the goblin airship to maintain an altitude of about 80 meters, and then lie on the side of the ship to slowly observe the movements and changes of the rock layer on the ground. When he encountered a place he was interested in, Justin would order the goblin warriors on board to fire a few shots at the rock strata, and then judge the distribution of ore from the reflection of the crushed rocks.

Finally, near a valley 317 miles away from the outpost camp, Justin found something peculiar.

The goblin airship circled in the air for three long times, scanning the surrounding ground and finding no traces of earth or stone elements, before cautiously landing on the ground.

Tugging on the metal lanyard with one hand and holding the magic ray gun tightly with the other, the five members of the seventh goblin squad wore magic armor and landed heavily on the ground.

Knock knock knock....

The wide, thick metal mechanical footplate stepped onto the ground and made two deep footprints.

The puffs of dust on the ground puffed up, causing the members of the 7th Goblin Combat Squad to cough violently one by one.

"Damn damn damn damn... this place is a terrible environment!" Captain Taz backhandedly fastened his breathing mask, and a dull, twisted voice then came out of it, "Hurry up, hurry up...hurry up and occupy the high ground here for me. Beta, you take the magic cannon to the high point there...Xena, establish a fire point near the airship...Hansen, you and I will protect Lord Justin.... "

"Got it, Chief!"

"Leave it to me..."

"Yes!"

A stack of many of the men agreed in succession and began to run to their positions.

Justin, who was struggling to climb down the ropes and down the goblin airship, with a cross pick in one hand and a magic spectrometer issued by the Geological Exploration Headquarters in the other, stood in the shadow of the airship and looked around, finally designating a direction.

"Go that way!"

Immediately, this three-man squad set off without hesitation!

The journey was almost nerve-wracking.

These small goblins were only about half a meter in height, and they were a complete beanstalk in front of the stone elements that were easily three to five meters tall. No need to fight, just by stepping on the stone elements' terrifyingly large feet, I'm afraid that most of the goblins would die.

Therefore, the two goblins in charge of protecting the geological prospector, one in the front and one in the back, were driving the less than 2 meters of magic armor, slowly and with great difficulty moving on the rough ground with one solid foot and one empty foot.

And that geological prospector Justin seemed to quickly forget about the danger, from time to time discussing the cross-axe to knock a certain rock, using the spectrometer to quickly scan and analyze it. Often times, when he found some strange place, he would jump on it and knock on it, forgetting that this was a very dangerous and strange world.

Faced with such a leader who neglected everything after forgetting my work, the two goblin bodyguards could only struggle to follow behind, their magic ray guns always pointed at the more dangerous places around.

Finally, as we explored, Justin's cheers grew louder.

The spectrometer emitted all sorts of strange whistling noises that outsiders might not understand, but it could clearly identify the composition of a variety of rare metals. And as they continued to advance, the composition of these rare metals continued to improve.

Justin dared to assert that there was definitely an extremely valuable vein of rare metals not far ahead!

Finally, in front of a huge and strange rocky mountain, Justin stopped in his tracks, jumped in front of a huge rock five meters away and swung his pickaxe to strike it.

As the gravel peeled off the surface of the giant rock, a purple gem the size of a fist was clearly visible inside the exposed cross-section. Around the jewel, there were stars and silver glittering metal particles.

Purple agate...star mine....

Seeing this scene in front of them, the three goblins were so ecstatic that they could hardly help but sing and dance.

But just as they were overjoyed, the rocky mountain in front of them suddenly trembled and shuddered violently, and millstone the size of a millstone rolled down from the top of the mountain like raindrops, turning a ten-mile radius into a dusty, confused garbage dump.

The three goblins couldn't care less about celebrating, so they turned and fled to the outskirts, crying out for their parents.

When they crawled and crawled a few hundred meters away, they looked back, only then did they discover to their horror that the originally tall and majestic stone mountain had now transformed into a towering stone giant, slowly and painstakingly climbing up from the earth pit.

And on top of its massive body, colorful exotic gems and various rare and valuable metal ores could be seen everywhere.

"Damn damn damn damn.... hurry back to camp! I'm afraid this stone giant is at least rank 3, and our strength is not enough to fight it. Retreat retreat retreat..."

A moment later, all the goblins fled back to the top of the goblin airship, and then struggled to fly off, head back the way they came. And that was when the stone giant had just risen to its feet and was looking around for the wretched little things that had disturbed its slumber....