Age of Adepts

Three days later....

The smoke from the city of Rokol had yet to fully dissipate.

The entire interior of the city was littered with wreckage, charred frames with burned through tops, black smoke and a pungent, unpleasant, horrible stench everywhere.

The Sorcerer's Tower located in the central part of the city had also lost its past grandeur and magnificence, standing there like a charred wooden stick that had been charred nearly halfway through, its appearance filled with endless misery and sadness.

The Witch Tower had been breached.

The sixteen Entom Family witches inside had undoubtedly all become prisoners of the Crimson Fleet, including thirteen rank 1 witches and three rank 2 witches.

The reason why they didn't use the internal teleportation formation inside the Witch Tower to escape wasn't because they didn't want to run, but because the Crimson Fleet had used the Witch Formation to interfere with the transmission of the surrounding planes the first moment they arrived at Rockall City.

Therefore, there was no way to escape, and the remaining Entom Family Wizards in Rockall City became deserted pawns, and surrendered after the attack of the Tower.

According to the rules of war in the Wizarding World, no side of the war was allowed to kill the captives of the witches who had given up their resistance. Otherwise, they would be spurned and boycotted by all witches!

There isn't a wizard who doesn't love his life....

These wizards, though, have a service contract with the Entom family, requiring years of service and loyalty in exchange for a corresponding resource or status. But that didn't mean that they needed to give their lives for the Entom Family.

Thus, the moment the Sorcerer's Gauntlet was breached, their contractual mission was considered complete. All that was left was to be good enough to throw up their hands and surrender, and try to trade resources or something else for their freedom.

In the end, if they were really the core members of the Entom Family, they wouldn't have been abandoned to the Crimson Family's slaughter at this critical moment.

The Crimson Fleet had been stationed here for two days, waiting for the arrival of the other two fleets.

Mary and Ames each led two giant floating ships to sweep the other two Entom territories. It was evident from the way they returned that they were in a full and rewarding mood.

War was certainly one of the fastest means and ways to amass wealth!

Although most of the resources had been collected by the Entom family back in Kirthlin Castle, just the little bit that was left was enough to make Grim and his party eat their fill.

After the three Crimson fleets rejoined as one, they no longer stopped and turned straight to Fort Kathryn.

That was why the Crimson Family had a large number of floating giant ships to be so arrogant. If it were any other wizard family, they would not be able to make such an unscrupulous turn with a large number of witch beast troops, affiliated legions, and noble servant troops that were used to do some dirty work.

These guys can't fly, and not only do they travel slowly, but their dependence on logistics and supplies is a headache.

If you took them out to fight, you could only steadily attack them one defile at a time. Otherwise, if the supply lines were cut off, the Witch Beast troops would be fine, and the affiliated legions and noble servant armies would ironically collapse.

However, these problems didn't exist in the slightest in front of the Crimson Fleet of the Trans-Regional Expedition.

All of the legions, all of the troops, all of the supplies, all of the resources were stored within the floating giant ship. Only in times of war would these things be fully revealed to the enemy. And in normal times, they were invisible.

Without ground troops, there was no need to fight all the way through.

After the Bull's Knife had flattened three territories of the Entom Family, Grim had no hesitation in ordering the Crimson Fleet to advance at high speed towards Fort Kirthlin after receiving a long-awaited message.

The previous battle in the Gravel Canyon could only be said to have lifted the shroud of shame from the middle of the continent, revealing the internal conflicts of the Scattered Tallinn without any concealment.

The new forces led by Grim had already gathered a force powerful enough to overturn the inherent forces in the middle of the continent. And the Gravel Canyon was the first stop to unveil the curtain!

However, that battle was won muddled and unclearly due to too many external factors. Therefore, the blow to the inherent forces had obviously not yet reached the point where it would make them bow down, and had left the Scattered Tallinn, and even the entire middle of the continent, in danger of splitting.

Once Freed and the others were given the time and opportunity to make time and opportunity, they would ironically bring in the outside forces at the cost of selling out the middle of the continent. At that time, the entire Scattered Earth Tallinn would inevitably be at war and beacons everywhere!

The battle of Fort Kesling had to be fought, and won, if he didn't want to smash his future circle of foundations into the ground, and a battle he had to win!

The fact that Grim had been so slow to march earlier, and had even had time to sweep the three Entom family territories, was not that there was no urgency in his heart, nor was it that the battle was not urgent enough, but... the time was not right!

Grim was waiting....

He was waiting for a message from Alice, a message whose time had come!

Life is like a chess piece, fate is like a chessboard!

He was slowly approaching, forcing the enemy to make some unwise choices.

And once the enemy did so, for Grim, his march would no longer be about bullying the weak, stirring up the middle, and fighting for territory, but had another, more positive layer of meaning.

That was to set things right and give the middle of the continent a new order it could look forward to!

And it wasn't all done for the world to see, but for 'fate' to see.

At his level, and with the assistance of Alice, the Fate Witch Chief, Fate was no longer a mysterious and mysterious thing for him to see and touch. Rather, it was a great power that could be touched and from which he could borrow power!

Since advancing to the 4th level, everything Grim had done and every action he had arranged was fully considered to take care of the overall interests of the wizard community. Often times, even at the risk of damaging the interests of some Crimson Family, he would 'dress up' himself as a character who looked after the overall situation and endured humiliation.

The establishment of the Horton Witchcraft Academy sacrificed the Crimson Family's short-term interests in order to promote the disintegration of the witch families in the central part of the continent; even the confrontation of the 4-stage forces behind them was the first battle that the other side started, and the Crimson Family was only passive... ...

This one item, one item, made Grim's actions seem passive and cowardly, but it also allowed him to successfully evade the countermeasures of the bit consciousness and position himself on the side of the 'righteous'.

This identity was important, very important!

The reason why so many sorcerer geniuses and sorcerer seniors were deeply rejected by the sorcerer world was because they were unaware of their restraint and unscrupulousness.

The reason why the Sorcerer World bred so many high-ranking and powerful people was not to let them stir up trouble and cruelty in their own world, but to treat them as their high-ranking servants and thugs. This was so that once a foreign civilization invaded, the Witch World could gather enough strength to expel the enemy.

The relationship between the witch world and the wizards was like that of a hive and a swarm; only when the hive grew and was able to continuously plunder more resources and population from the outside world could the hive further elevate itself.

And the hive's advancement can also bring more and more direct benefits and advantages to the hive, allowing them to fly faster, sharpen their claws and teeth, and become more powerful....

The two complement each other in a mutually beneficial symbiotic relationship!

However, the encroachment of the Transcendent Sorcerer was still too powerful for the laws of the bit, so the Sorcerer World had to expel the Transcendent Sorcerers who were beyond the carrying range of the bit. Otherwise, if they were allowed to make waves within the bit plane, they would sooner or later become a cancer to the bit plane's development.

And once such guys were targeted by the bit consciousness, sooner or later, they would be reversed by the power of fate!

Thus, Grim had to be a little more careful and hide his ambition in various ways.

Although his ambitions were obvious to a sorcerer, this set was biased towards being useful to the bit consciousness. Because the Bit Consciousness was inherently an absolute utilitarian who only looked at results, not processes.

Or to be more precise, the bit consciousness hasn't evolved to be able to discern the subtleties of human emotion, and can only judge the value of your existence by the impact your actions have on the world. This nuance also presents Grim with the possibility of lending a hand to fate....

It's always fair and just for the bit consciousness!

All of these sorcerers born in the middle of the continent are its children and its resources. Whether it was people like Fried, who represented the inherent power, or Grim, who represented the emerging power, they were all members of the Scattered Earth Tarin, and were all part of its vast bit of consciousness.

When two such groups struggle and conflict, then which group's existence is more beneficial to the wizarding world becomes the more favored target of the bit-consciousness. And every move of the bit consciousness was done by manipulating the power of fate.

Thus, Alice could completely guess the true intentions of the bit consciousness by observing and perceiving the flow and change of the force of fate in the middle of the continent.

And just as the Crimson Fleet dilly-dallying attacked Rokol City, revealing a large empty rear, Fried and the others who were shocked by the Crimson Will finally made certain decisions. Their decisions were unknown to the outside world, but they could not be hidden from the omnipresent bit consciousness.

Thus, the scales of fate, which had always been fair and impartial, were finally tilted!

And Grim no longer hesitated after getting Alice's cue, and immediately swung his army straight at Fort Kathleen, whose attack was fierce and faster than the enemy could imagine.

And so, on the seventh day since the Crimson Fleet had broken into House Entom's territory, the floating giant ship had finally landed at Fort Kathryn!

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

It was a war fortress that was on high alert.

All the retreating witch troops and family wizards were gathered around the outside of Keslin Fortress, relying on a war witch tower and a defensive witch array, putting up a show of a bloody battle to the end.

The entire perimeter of Keslin Fortress had been solidly guarded, not even a fly could easily fly in or out.