Age of Adepts

Jero was the god of wisdom.

Although he wasn't considered a great deity, he held the secrets of the gods.

As such, the Holy Book of Wisdom that he had crafted with his own hands was undoubtedly a remarkable artifact as well.

After experiencing the compulsion and infestation of the Holy Book of Wisdom, Grim had to fall into deep meditation to dispel those strange divine powers. Although the process in between was exceptionally hard and arduous, it was well worth it.

At the very least, after reading the first chapter of the Holy Book of Wisdom, Grim's spiritual energy had increased from 40 points to 41 points. That was his greatest gain!

Everyone knew all too well the difficulty of raising mental strength after entering the 4th rank.

Grim had gone through a series of bloody battles in the Morian Plane, coupled with the stimulation of the divine breath within the Wisdom Holy Book this time, it was only after he hadn't moved for a while that his mental strength increased by 1 point. It could be imagined that in the years to come, the increase in his mental strength brought about by this Wisdom Sacred Book must be very considerable.

However, Grim's soul source was still heavily injured, and too frequent mental burdens were not conducive to recovery.

Therefore, under the chip's planning, Grim could only watch the wisdom holy book at a frequency of once a month. The rest of the time, Grim used it to organize and optimize the alternative knowledge that came from the Arcane Empire.

There was the content of the Floating Ring, which Grim sold to the Melting Fire City Lord Alfred was only the initial version. He obviously didn't want to use such rudimentary knowledge himself, so the ongoing optimization of the levitation ring technology was done by the chip.

However, compared to a low-level technology like the Floating Ring, the most interesting part of the Austrian Empire's knowledge system was the kind of terrifying half-dimensional fortress that attracted Grim's attention.

The Austrian Empire had once transformed multiple half-planes into a kind of impenetrable fortress of terror.

Whenever the Austrian Empire needed to invade a certain dimensional world, the one that rushed to the forefront was this kind of half-plane fortress with the half-plane as its base and the floating fortress as its fire battery. It could be politely said that the vast majority of the hundreds of sub-dimensions that the Austrian Empire had dominated or ruled over during its heyday had been brought down by half-plane fortresses.

However, if Grim wanted to replicate the former glory of the Austrian Empire, he would have to comprehensively and deeply study the Mana Pool, Spell Pool, Energy Secret Core, and many other treasures of the Austrian Empire's knowledge system.

It was an exceptionally large and complicated alternative knowledge system, and even with the aid of the chip, it would take an extremely long time for Grim to transfer them to the sorcery system.

Therefore, there was no hurry, Grim could only wait quietly for news from all sides while he recuperated from his injuries.

Half a month later, the first good news came.

That Shadowsteel Demon Armament in the alchemy lab had been successfully refined!

After receiving the news, Grim rushed to the Alchemy Lab at the first time, where a strange and bizarrely shaped Demonic Armament was floating in mid-air, quietly draped in service.

It was a seven-foot tall bizarre magic weapon, made of a phosphorescent black metal that could absorb light. Inside the entire body was a lean and dry metal skeleton, with a black fog that was impenetrable by sight lingering outside.

At the end of the slender and slender upper and lower limbs were sharp metal claws, a dark metal skull was hidden in the mist, and two gloomy gazes emanated from where the eye sockets were located.

It didn't walk on its feet like a normal magic weapon, but floated half a foot off the ground as if it had no weight, moving silently and lightly.

Grim's own body was extremely weak during this time, and it was almost impossible to engage in any kind of battle with a 4th rank enemy anymore. So the arrival of this intermediate 4th rank Shadowsteel Magic Armament filled Grim's power void.

With it, even if Grim's current strength was weakened by half, he was confident that he would be able to make any incoming enemy suffer a violent loss!

"Shadow Demon, you attack me!" Intent on testing the power of the Shadowsteel Demon Armament, Grim summoned a Lava Shield outside of his body.

And at Grim's command, the Shadow Demon slowly floated over, and with just one light jab of its two cold, sharp metal claws, it gouged out a large hole in the lava shield, which had a defense of 700 degrees.

The fire damage rebounded from the lava shield only caused the shadow fog outside of the Shadow Demon's body to shudder and silently melt away.

It was only a mock attack, but Grim had already gotten the basic parameters he wanted.

The Shadow Demon Metal Claw's base attack power was 400 degrees, but since this was a multiple attack, its one surprise attack meant that it could instantly create 400*6 degrees of terrifying physical damage. If you added the accompanying Shadow Shockwave, the total amount of damage the Shadow Demon created after launching a Shadow Raid was between 2900-3200 degrees.

And that, was already on par with Grim's berserk strikes in its heyday!

"Shadow Demon, hide inside my back!" After testing the attack power, Grim wanted to test Shadow Demon's stealth ability again.

After accepting Grim's command, the Shadow Demon arrived behind Grim in a single instant, and then his massive body squeezed into Grim's back with just a few light squeezes.

Grim looked down.

Under the bright and soft lighting of the alchemy lab, his own back was compressed into the small area at his feet, and it was hard to imagine that a magic weapon that large could hide in there.

Moreover, as Grim walked back and forth, his back was constantly changing and stretching, but he could not perceive the presence of life and energy inside at all.

Grim casually condensed a small fireball and threw it on top of the back, blasting the place into a shaking, countless shadow fragments swaying and shaking in the scorching firelight, but still couldn't perceive the existence of any foreign energy breath.

And when the flames disappeared, the backside gathered back into one place, seemingly unable to perceive any movement inside.

But when the blue mane in Grim's black pupils flickered, with his elemental vision, he still found in the end a small dark, dark, and constantly wandering dark shadow in that dark backdrop.

Moreover, Grim, as the owner of the Shadow Demon, had a slight soul connection with it, so even without the use of elemental vision, he could still have a vague sense of its presence and its approximate location.

Thus, after testing the Shadow Demon's concealment ability from multiple aspects, Grim finally nodded his head in satisfaction.

With the personal protection of this Shadow Demon, he had finally become safe once again!

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

Inside the Molten Fire Cave.

A small group of dark shadows were moving slowly through the dark red and dusky cavern.

This was the only path to the Flame Throne, and it was also the area with the highest concentration of flame creatures and metallic magic weapons. So in order to sneak into the Flame Throne, one had to break through this path of flame.

Karin was a young witch with reddish-brown skin, blue eyes, and a devilish figure, wearing a black dragon skin armor that showed off her beautiful body. She was now wrapped in a layer of black mist, moving slowly in the shadows beneath a metal weapon.

Inside the Cave of Molten Fire, the Metal Demon Armament belonged to the fixed guards, guarding every passageway and every cave. On the other hand, the many flame creatures were mobile sentinels, roaming aimlessly inside the twisting and turning caverns.

Whenever a foreign intruder was spotted, all the sentinels would activate instantly, eliminating the enemy in mid-stride with the fiercest firepower.

Karin was only a rank 3 dark witch, but she wanted to break into the private witch tower of a rank 4 legendary fire witch.

At any moment in the past, she wouldn't have been so unwise.

However, the strict orders coming from the family headquarters made it impossible for her to push it off, so she had to grit her teeth and do this dreadful task that was near impossible to accomplish!

Before coming here, she had already investigated that legendary fire witch Grim in depth.

However, the more she investigated and the more detailed information she got, the more terrified Karin's heart became.

This wasn't an ordinary 4th rank new wizard!

His reputation, his achievements, could be written in the blood of his enemies.

What was even more frightening was that the family headquarters had sent her to infiltrate the opponent's witch tower, and the thing she was investigating and stealing was... the Shadow Jewel. That was what was most horrifying and unbelievable to Karin!

The Jewel of Shadows... wasn't that the most important Origin Sacred Artifact of their Dark One Clan? How could it fall into the hands of a legendary fire witch in the middle of the continent?

Are all those people in power at the family headquarters a bunch of losers? You lost the Jewel of Shadows, but you can't even start a Dark War?

While angrily slandering the higher-ups who had sent themselves here by name, Karin carefully dodged the flaming creatures that roamed everywhere, specifically picking metal magic weapons to serve as stepping stones for her shadow travels.

One moment, Karin was lurking at the feet of a metal magic weapon in a flame cave, the next, she was in the shadow of a dome at the end of another tunnel.

Perhaps it was the faint energy fluctuations that accompanied the shadow shuttle that caught the attention of some of the flaming creatures, an exceptionally large and powerful Flame Guard stopped in the passageway and began to stare at the flaming pupils of its eyes, sweeping suspiciously throughout the passageway.

Karin, who was hiding in the dark shadows of the dome, immediately tensed up, her sexy and charming beautiful pupils narrowed into slits, converting all of her killing intent and calmly observing and examining the Blazing Fire Guard.

The Flame Guard wasn't much of a powerful flame creature, only having the basic strength of a 1st rank advanced!

Karin, who possessed advanced strength of the 3rd rank, would only need half a flex of time to kill this Blazing Fire Guard. Only in this kind of environment, a single move would affect the whole body, and once powering this Flame Guard, it would mean that her infiltration had failed.

When she thought of the punishment she might receive if she returned to her family after failing the mission, Karin couldn't help but be distracted and her breath around her body grew more and more unstable.

But the good thing was that the difference in strength between her and the flaming guard was so great that when she did her best to hide herself, the likelihood of the other party discovering her was incredibly low.

Therefore, after making a tour around and not finding anything out of the ordinary, the flaming fire guard then lifted his alert status and continued to leisurely and cozily stroll around this area where the fire element was unprecedentedly active.

And Karin couldn't help but breathe a sigh of relief and begin to continue her journey!