Age of Adepts

Keslin Castle, the premises of the Scattered Ground Tarin Association.

Inside a well-protected sorcery chamber.

The two guys representing the highest rulers of the association sat opposite each other with sad faces and depressed moods.

After a long time, President Fried finally spoke up.

"How is it, how is the situation inside the association?"

The vice president, Milva, who was sitting in the middle of the opposite couch, was scowling and glaring, and was clearly under an extreme mood as well.

"It's pretty stable, basically," Milva replied in a hoarse voice, "Most of the Association witches have signed a service contract, and it's impossible for them to do anything reckless until the contract expires. Instead..."

"What is it?"

"Instead, more than half of the new apprentices that were just sent over from all over this year have not chosen to sign up with the Association. They still seem to be on the sidelines, waiting for the association to come up with more generous terms..."

"These weak-willed bastards... Without the Association stepping in to organize them, they'll be left to muddle and rot in their villages, either as farmers or lowly adventurers... Immediately investigate the families they come from and pressure their families... Hmph, I don't believe they're triple-minded..."

Milva nodded silently, gently fighting the snake-eye ring on the end finger of her right hand, and quickly communicated a new order.

After doing that, Milva couldn't help but say listlessly, "Looks like that Grim is planning to fight us, how should we deal with him?"

Hearing his companion's question, the cunning President Freed also sighed.

"This Grim, although he is young, but he is very experienced and steady in his actions! He didn't directly expand his family's territory to avoid confronting us head-on. As such, we can't even find an excuse if we want to call on the Association Elders to sanction him."

"He's still young, at best he's only three hundred years old now and has plenty of time to waste with us. It's clear from the Crimson Family's current moves that he no longer intends to start a witch war and expand the family's immediate territory. Instead, he's targeting the next two, three, or even four or five generations behind him..."

"Yeah, he can be really patient. It's an obvious attempt to boil us down!"

"In these two or three hundred years, apart from that Grim, the middle of the continent hasn't produced a new 4th rank wizard for a long time. You and I have been advanced for over 800 years, and even if we find more life resources, it will be hard to last another 200 years. The other association elders are similar to us, even the youngest Clara is 500 years old... So, I'm afraid that the other side avoided the frontal battlefield and chose the new generation, just waiting for us 'old guys' to live our lives to the fullest! "

"Hmph, after the old batch of 4th rank wizards boil down in successive life spans, the new generation of 4th rank wizards will probably inevitably live in his terrifyingly huge shadow... At that time, even if he doesn't start a wizard war, who in the entire middle will dare to defy his will!"

The two top executives of the Scattered Ground Tallinn Association were spitting and complaining, but they couldn't come up with any solution to that Grim at all.

In terms of strength, that legendary fire witch was probably already the strongest wizard in the middle of the continent.

Some time ago, this guy had even gone to the eastern part of the continent's Sorcerer's Association residence and had a good 'exchange' with the sorcerers there. According to the information that Fried had heard back, the Sorcerer's Association spoke extremely highly of him, even ranking him as the closest flame sorcerer to a super-strong one.

Super-strong...what was that? Those were powerful existences who were at the peak of the 4th rank and most likely to advance to the 5th rank!

And it had only been how many years since this legendary fire witch had advanced to the 4th level, but he was actually able to obtain such a huge rating from the Sorcerer's Association.

Of course, Fried and the others would never doubt the judgement of the Sorcerer Association, but would only secretly fear that the Legendary Fire Witch's strength had grown too terrifyingly.

If this trend continued, the entire central part of the continent, the entire Scatterland Tower Forest would sooner or later become the bag of this legendary fire witch. The one who had worked so hard to plan for this for so long but had achieved nothing was naturally unhappy, not wanting everything he had done to become someone else's dowry.

But looking over the list of instructors of the Horton Witchcraft Academy, a long list of prominent and dazzling names would come into view...4th step...4th step...4th step...so many 4th steps, from the dragon! Lords to Fire Lords to Undead Wraiths....

Honestly, Fred's heart trembled at the sight of this list.

In the past, he might have still had a fierce ambition to scare off that Grim with the centuries of raw gathering of the Scattered Earth Tallinn Association. But now, looking at the number of strong people that people had pulled together, and then looking around at the three walnuts and two dates around him, the fighting spirit that had gathered in his heart had long since fallen away.

For no reason, Freed was inexplicably sad and frustrated, and his entire taut spirit suddenly slackened, slowly collapsing into the soft couch, a silent tear streaming from the corner of his wrinkled eyes.

"We're not going to be able to fight him..." sighed Milva in a string of sighs as well, "If all of us old guys die, the entire central part of the country will fall into his hands. So, in the next one to two hundred years, I want to carefully cultivate a few more of the family's good seedlings. In the future, whether or not our legacy will continue, it might depend on them..."

Freed was silent and did not reply.

As an ancient family in the middle of the continent that had been inherited for thousands of years, almost every 4th rank wizard had thousands, if not tens of thousands, of tribes and descendants behind them, and as long as they existed, no one dared to infringe on the rights of these tribes and descendants.

As long as they exist, no one will dare to infringe on their rights to survival. But once they die, the fate of their descendants and the people they have blessed in the past will be in jeopardy.

Once the umbrella is gone, those who have been suppressed by them for hundreds of years will take advantage of the situation to fight back, and the family will decline, or the entire tribe will be uprooted and strangled.

There were simply countless such things in the Wizard World!

Therefore, most 4th level witches, after hopelessly advancing to 5th level, would try to leave their family some means of survival, or try to cultivate a new strong person to continue the family legacy.

However, this is easier said than done, but there are many difficulties in doing so.

First of all, those who are not direct descendants of the family will never want to train the strongest person.

Those who are not of our clan will be different!

These half-way witches, even if they were highly talented, 4th rank witches would be reluctant to cultivate. After all, these guys would definitely start another family after advancing to the 4th rank, and would never treat the old East family's clan as their own.

Therefore, the only ones who could truly continue the family legacy would be the descendants of the 4th rank witch's own bloodline.

But then, the options were undoubtedly much smaller.

There were only a handful of descendants who had the potential to reach the 4th rank, and the resources needed to train them successfully were astronomical.

In the event that the 4th rank shamans have no future, they will definitely prioritize their own resource supply, and will only take care of the younger generation with the resources and knowledge that they don't need.

Under such circumstances, the chances of a Sorcerer Genius emerging from the direct descendants of the descendants would undoubtedly be even slimmer!

Therefore, there were simply too few examples of families that were able to continuously emerge high-ranking sorcerers to carry on the family legacy. Most shaman families have their ups and downs. When they are in the limelight, they are the best of the best, but when they are in the doldrums, they are trapped in solitude and struggle to survive.

Many wizarding families even died halfway through their lives, and not even a single descendant of their bloodline survived.

Like President Freed, the Sidemoon family to which he belonged had more than 3,000 people in total, while those who had his direct bloodline were more than 400. Among them, 127 of them possessed the talent of a sorcerer, and only 2 of them were able to advance to the higher ranks and become 3rd ranked sorcerers.

Even these only two 3rd rank descendants were not of much cultivation value. Because their own talent potential was low, they had relied on the accumulation of a large amount of resources to barely climb up to their current tier.

However, within Fried's direct descendants, there was a first-born granddaughter who had good talent potential, and was only 200 years old and was already a Level 2 Advanced. However, the difficulty involved in trying to overtake her to the 4th tier level within a hundred or two hundred years was also incredibly high.

Therefore, when he thought of the decline of his family after his death, Fried's heart couldn't stop twitching.

He knew very well that if he offended that Grim bitterly now, the other party might be helpless to do anything about it. But once he died at the end of his life expectancy, the clan and descendants he left behind would definitely suffer from the other party's bloody and terrible destruction.

The wizarding world was so cruel and real!

When he was around, everyone would look at his face and treat the Sidemon family as an ancient and noble wizard family. But once he was gone...at that time, without a 4th rank wizard in the family to back it up, it would naturally end up miserable at the mercy of others.

Fried looked up at Milva, his eyes filled with hesitation and pain.

He knew that the other party's family was similar to his own, and it was hard to choose a descendant within the direct bloodline who could hold up the scene. A few years ago, Milva's grandson had been quite competitive, giving birth to a youngster with good talent.

But now it was only able to be a 1st rank intermediate, and trying to nurture it up was a hundred times harder than his own granddaughter.

So the two of them, Ada not to mention Aji, both had the same headache and the same dilemma.

"There's no way we're going to fight that Grim any longer. But Clara and Alfred are both young and have three or four hundred years to live. They wouldn't be willing to be suppressed by the Crimson Family, would they! Maybe we should gang up on them a bit!" Milva twirled her beard.

"Alfred... that guy's Molten Fire City has now formed an alliance with the Crimson Family and is making a fortune by selling rare ores underground, so don't expect him to come out and pick a fight." Mentioning that Molten Fire City Lord, Chairman Freed was in a huff.

But then he hesitated, "That Clara can fight for a bit more. Her family's territory is adjacent to the Crimson Clan, so she will definitely be under more pressure than us. If some friction erupts between them, it might be possible to suppress that Grim's arrogance..."

Milva's eyes lit up at the news and couldn't help but sneer with a hehehe, "That's not even a short answer, I'll go and arrange it right away and make sure that the two of them fight soon! Hey, with Clara in the lead, and us pulling Matthew, Nicholas and Gaia in, we can at least dampen the Crimson Family's momentum and buy us more time to respond..."

With that, the Milva Wizard immediately left the chamber in a flourish.