Age of Adepts

The tremendous power they possessed was not suited for direct involvement in combat. They preferred hiding behind the scenes like perverted peeping toms, using the river of Fate’s power to conceal their existences and the moves they made.

The number of factors that needed to be taken into consideration when using the powers of Fate to attack an opponent was countless, so much so that it inspired despair. The two Witches of Fate could only go against each other by pushing their opponent into the whirlpool of Fate with all they had. They would have to rely on the power of Fate to kill the enemy.

However, since Alice knew of the existence of this First Witch of Fate, how could she possibly give her the chance to do so? Alice had barely taken a step out of the Tower of Fate over the past few days. The protection of the planar consciousness left the First Witch of Fate without any chance to work her powers.

Ever since Alice had obtained the artifact-level Staff of Divination from Faen, the First Witch of Fate had lost all ability to control the trajectory of Alice’s fate.

Henvic Plane had now become the strange battlefield upon which the two Fate Witches fought using their control of Fate. Alice had the advantage of the planar consciousness’ protection, while the mysterious First Fate Witch had her own numerous tricks and hidden pieces. The situation in distant Henvic became increasingly chaotic as both of them exerted their influence over the world!

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

In a cave of a wild beast, thirty-five kilometers to the west of Hakans’ outlands.

The five Earth Maulers that called this place home had now been turned into bloody corpses. Blade Princess Katherine had skinned them, removed their meat, and roasted them upon the blazing bonfire.

She tore at the bear meat in her mouth so viciously that it was almost as if she was pretending the meat to be that damned enemy of hers. In just the blink of an eye, several dozens of kilograms of meat was gone, but Katherine was still starving.

Her stomach had been modified to digest and absorb energy quickly and conveniently.

Her modified stomach could crush, dissolve, and completely absorb even hard magical crystal cores or magical crystals of pure energy, let alone ordinary food.

As a high-grade mechanical adept, Katherine’s ability to digest and absorb food had reached an unbelievably efficient level. An ordinary human might only be able to take in ten to twenty percent of the nutrition in the food they ate, but Katherine could absorb as much as eighty percent.

It meant that Katherine obtained more energy substance than an ordinary person when eating the same food!

Even so, even after devouring all the bear meat, the energy meter inside Katherine’s body still remained just as close to the red warning line.

However, the energy she had absorbed from the food was quickly converted into the physical strength required by her body. The energy started to stimulate and repair her carbonized skin.

The crackling sound of rapidly healing muscle fibers could be heard from Katherine’s body as she feasted on the meat. The burnt flesh on the surface of her skin flaked off, revealing red, squirming, and growing fleshy tissues beneath.

The damage to her mechanical parts could be repaired through mechanical magic, but the losses to her flesh tissues would have to be compensated through the consumption of food!

Katherine had no choice but to unleash her ace technique, Bladestorm, to escape from Greem and the flaming tiger’s combined attack back in Hakans! It had undoubtedly made her wounds even more severe.

That was why she had fallen into an eating frenzy after escaping Hakans and running all the way here.

Just as she managed to stabilize her wounds and prevent them from worsening, a strange beeping sound came from her waist.

Katherine’s expression froze. After resentfully hurling her half-eaten bear’s palm aside, she reached down and took out a black, fist-sized crystal.

Katherine threw the black crystal into the air, and two red beams shot out of her eyes onto it. The strange gem immediately started spinning in mid-air.

The cave that had been illuminated red from the bonfire silently turned a dark black as if the curtain of night had swept over the light itself. Everything around Katherine vanished without a trace, leaving only a phantasmal silhouette.

“How...is the...job going?” Like a recording with faltering energy, the message from the black outline stuttered, seemingly disrupted heavily by something.

“My lady, Witch of Fate, you found me a real good assignment,” Katherine laughed coldly and sinisterly, “The information you prepared for me only mentioned that he was a Third Grade elementium adept that had just advanced. It made no mention of a powerful Third Grade golem by his side, along with a Third Grade fire creature that could be summoned from another plane. Did you intend to send me to my grave against someone of such power?”

Katherine had fled too early during the battle of Hakans and had not seen Third Grade Thunder Dragons Arms appear. Otherwise, she would only be several times more furious than she currently was.

As a mechanical adept that excelled at melee combat, she did indeed have over an eighty percent chance of defeating an elementium adept of the same grade. However, that was only under ordinary circumstances. If she had known that the opponent could easily summon multiple Third Grade helpers, Katherine would never have come to this rural, piece-of-shit land to kill herself, regardless of what the Witch of Fate had promised her.

That was why all of Katherine’s resentment and anger that had been accumulating over the past few days erupted when she finally met the person behind all this!

Perhaps infuriated by Katherine’s rebellious attitude, a look of anger shot out of the eyes of the silhouette in the darkness. A faint mental message then flowed into Katherine’s mind.

“Katherine, I won’t be talking nonsense with you. I’m exhausting Fate power to cut off that little bitch’s disruption to communicate with you. Time is precious. Your ineptitude has disappointed me greatly. A veteran adept that has advanced for over three hundred years, and yet you still can’t beat a brat that has only advanced for thirty years?”

“How can you blame me for this? It is clearly a problem with the information you provided me. That brat can easily summon two to three helpers of the same grade at will. How am I supposed to fight with him?”

“Hmph! I have investigated the situation you speak of. That brat is truly somewhat strange. Even my sense for Fate doesn’t allow me to see through him. As such, the prior plan must be changed. Immediately guide Natagu and the two others into Henvic Plane. The mission to hunt down that brat will be taken over by the three of them. Meanwhile, you will immediately go and kill that witch carrying the core for the long-ranged interplanar teleportation array. You must not let her deliver the core to the witch’s tower.”

“You...intend to trap that male adept in this plane?” Katherine hesitated before she spoke, “Then how are we supposed to return after the mission is completed?”

“Hmph! That’s not for you to worry about!” The black shadow spoke coldly, “I will have Natagu bring a temporary interplanar teleportation array with him. It should be enough for the four of you to successfully return!”

Katherine thought for a moment and found no issues with the plan. Thus, she agreed.

Rather than find a new location, it was better to make do with the current one. Katherine immediately started carving a ten-meter-wide array inside the cave.

Katherine shouldn’t have had access to such advanced high-grade teleportation knowledge with what she knew. However, there was currently a Witch of Fate at the Great Adept level guiding her inside her mind.

Even so, it took more than half a day for Katherine to carve the foundations of the teleportation array into the ground.

A proper teleportation array should be carved in an area filled with energy. The land would have to be hardened and flattened before a standard teleportation array was carved out with professional workmanship. There were over ten thousand magical runes and lines that had to be drawn during this process, with no deviation or mistake in the angle or positions of the carvings.

Any slight mistake would cause the teleportation array to fail, and the individuals that were teleporting would be lost in some unknown and mysterious land.

This cave clearly could not reach any of these conditions. Katherine was no professional array master, either. This teleportation array she had carved was as crude as it could get. If anyone dared to attempt interplanar teleportation with such an array, they would not even know how they died.

However, there was no helping the fact that a powerful Witch of Fate backed Katherine. Just by exhausting a ‘little’ of her powers of Fate, this teleportation array with less than a seven percent success rate successfully transported the three adepts.

Milky-white light faded from the cave as dust and smoke landed on the three powerful adepts that had just arrived.

To prevent their elementium shields from disrupting the precision of the teleportation, the three adepts had not employed any defensive spells. They had endured the entire process with their tough physical bodies alone.

However, not a single one of them expected the point of teleportation to be a crude cave with a bonfire, rather than a broad platform or a secure teleportation room.

To lessen the burden of the teleportation array, the Great Adept in Katherine’s mind had even canceled the magical protections around it. As such, the whirlwind from the spatial flux blew all the dust and smoke into the air, causing the three recovering Third Grade adepts to be ambushed by unpleasantness the moment they appeared.

The three adepts walked out of the array, coughing and covered in dust.

“Dammit! Dammit! Dammit! Katherine, you bastard! Can’t you just lay down a defensive array? Who does things like this?” The adept in the lead immediately started roaring at Katherine furiously the moment he walked out of the array.