Age of Adepts Chapter 187

Chapter 187 Upstaged
When Greem removed the defenses on the door, unsummoned the Lightning Giant, and walked out of the stone house, he realized that several adepts were also standing outside of their respective doors, looking at the crude tower.
The expressions on their faces were varied.
Seeing that Greem had come out, everyone nodded and greeted him, then went back to staring at the tower.
Just then, shockwaves caused by the spatial flux could be seen!
Several spatial folds, that looked like ripples on water, started to spread out in all directions. When the ripples reached the defensive array, the two forces clashed and sent out more ripples in other directions. There were already plenty of spatial shards all over the place.
Fortunately, the previously set up defensive array managed to prevent the spatial flux from spilling over, and prevented the shockwaves from spreading beyond the illusion barrier. Otherwise, with the intensity of the spatial shockwaves, the most powerful beings of this plane would have been able to detect the fluctuations of this area through the planar laws they had mastered.
The spatial flux became even more dense.
Finally, the rippling spatial folds collapsed into one spot within the tower, and following an explosive ripping sound, a teleportation door slowly opened.
No one in the base was able to get any information about the teleportation this time, and so no one knew about the size and quality of the reinforcements. Everyone had lost their interest in talking at that moment. They just silently waited on the spot for the final result.
An hour after the teleportation door had disappeared, the entrance to the tower gradually opened. Groups of adepts walked out from within, with Sir Fügen at the lead.
The ones that had arrived were Second Grade Adept Sir Fügen and twenty three other Sarubo clan adepts.
These clan adepts were clearly veterans that were usually stationed in all the lesser planes. Therefore, they needed no instructions. Already they were flying about, doing simple surveys of the adepts' base, and making adjustments based on their observations.
Sir Fügen, on the other hand, walked towards Keoghan and the rest, and began to ask detailed questions about the situation around the base.
Robotic beasts, voodoo beasts, and stone golems were summoned to clean up the buildings within the base. The pockets and bags of the clan adepts were all filled to the brim. It was obvious that they came prepared, and so their movements were especially crisp and swift.
Just as the few of them were speaking, several buildings on the edge of the camp had been demolished. The robotic beasts waved about with their metallic arms and grabbed the bricks and stone, sending them to the outside section of the base. The stone golems were quickly flattening out the ground.
Looking at what they were doing, it seemed as if the reinforcing adepts were unhappy with the original layout of the base, and it seemed as if they wanted to demolish everything and start over. More of the adepts were gathered near the crude tower, pointing and gesturing here and there, like they were discussing the construction of a new adepts' tower.
Keoghan and the other veterans who stayed in the base stood respectfully beside Sir Fügen, carefully answering each of his questions. When Fügen heard that two adepts had gone undercover outside the base and had successfully taken over control of the villages around the forest, as well as a small human city, a satisfied smile appeared on his usually cold face.
As they were speaking, a few adepts commanding a group of stone golems had appeared before Keoghan's voodoo beast lab. When he saw them about to use their stone fists to demolish the lab, the native teenager ran out while screaming, flailing his hands as he stood before the lab.
An adept floating in the sky waved his hand, and a huge bush of thorny, dark green man-eating flowers appeared from beneath the ground, restraining the teenager in an instant. Then, the adept flew in front of the teenager and used his black fingertip to cut open the teenager's skin. He took a little blood and tasted it, nodding in satisfaction.
The next moment, the adept laid out a soul array on the teenager's head, looking as if he was about to squeeze out all of his soul's memories.
The edge of Keoghan's mouth twitched a little as he turned around and explained to Adept Fügen softly, "Sir, this native youth has a bit of casting talent. I was thinking of raising him to be our eyes and ears, as well as our puppet. Don't you think……"
"There's no need!" Sir Fügen didn’t seem to care about what his subordinate was doing, "It's just a lowly native anyway! We can arrange for such things once the situation of this base has settled. Absorbing his soul's memories will help the newcomer adepts to more quickly understand the situation and this world, and greatly increase their work efficiency. This is beneficial for the base's development!"
Keoghan stuttered for a moment, took some deep breaths, and didn't say anything more.
In the time they used to speak, the soul array that the adept was drawing had been completed. Following the pulses of white light that gathered in the array, the native teenager slowly stopped moving. His entire soul's consciousness had been extracted by the array, gathering into a white bead.
The adept put the bead to his head for a few seconds, then opened his eyes and nodded in satisfaction. He then tossed the bead to the adepts beside him, and soon everyone had used their Spirit to inspect the teenager's memories stored in the bead, quickly understanding the basic situation on this plane.
More talented adepts could already fluently interact with the native's language and words. For these adepts who possessed powerful Spirits, browsing through another soul's memories took just a matter of seconds.
Perhaps the entire life story of that native teenager took only three to five seconds of their time to understand!
The voodoo beast lab had finally been demolished, and the voodoo beast ‘material’ that took great efforts to obtain was exposed. A few interested adepts flew over and started rummaging about, taking away with them the few surviving witcher-knights and the withered spellbreaker knight corpses.
As for the rest of the ‘trash’, they were thrown out, along with the bricks and stone.
"Sir, what should we do?" The smile on Keoghan's face didn't go away as he bowed and asked respectfully.
"The adepts' tower in the base needs to be constructed quickly. There's nothing for you to do here in the meantime. I'll send two adepts to take over the human city. You will follow after them and help them with their jobs. Be careful, don't let the forces and organizations here disturb the base. That's all I ask of you!" Finished speaking, Adept Fügen turned around and left to gather his subordinates.
The stiff and unnatural smiles hung on everyone's faces. They had lost the desire to talk to each other, and just silently lowered their head to think. The atmosphere was tense and sombre.
…………
When night had arrived once more, the seven people, including Greem, had arrived in Blue Hillock City.
The group consisted of five veterans of the base here, and two adepts that had just been sent over.
Everyone hid their silhouettes and silently floated through the night sky, three hundred meters above the ground, looking down upon this boisterous human city.
Blue Hillock City was a tourist spot famous throughout the country after all. Moreover, it bordered the resource-rich Greenland Forest. Added together, all of these geographical advantages caused the city to have a very large concentration of the rich and noble. They were the leaders of commercial chains, or nobles that came here to play, or artists that have long heard of the beauty of this place…
Regardless of which they were, their presence in this city brought about a lot of liveliness and activity, causing the city's nightlife to be colorful and extravagant!
Without letting them wait for too long, a scrawny creature of darkness rose from the shadows of the city, batting its wings and swiftly flying before them.
"Sirs, this one has come to fetch you under my master's orders. Please come along with this one……"The bloodsucking bat instantly transformed into a well-dressed young noble, bowing respectfully before the adepts.
Before he could finish speaking, the adept leading the group raised his left hand and a stream of flame hit the youth's shoulder instantly, burning him and causing him to screech in pain.
"From now on, I am the master here! "The adept coldly said, "Bring me to Adept Mary!"
Everyone's gaze jumped for a second. They clearly didn't expect this Adept Muret that Sir Fügen sent over to so boldly rob Mary's position of leadership here before he had even met Mary. Even though Sir Fügen had told them to aid this Adept Muret, the reckless and rude manner in which he was treating Mary had exceeded everyone's expectations.
Keoghan snuck a look at Greem.
However, Greem was still smiling and looking at the night scene of the city below, as if he wasn't aware of what was happening.
The youth that had come to welcome them was only a vampire spawn after all. His position was even lower than those blood servants that Mary had personally Embraced. Faced with the wrath of a powerful adept, he didn't dare to argue or struggle, instead begging for mercy with all his might.
Adept Muret waved his hand and extinguished the fire having, relieved some of his anger.
The vampire spawn didn't dare to delay. Immediately, it endured the intense pain and turned into a bloodsucking bat, flying down towards a spot in the small city below.
The others followed along.
The place Mary ‘received’ the others was still the same hidden bedroom as last time.
The well-dressed young nobles in the shadows of the garden, corridors, and corners gathered together to gossip, curious as to the identity of these mysterious guests that arrived all of a sudden.
Mary used her Embrace to turn the more powerful and influential people into her subordinates. The other group of vampires comprised mostly of young nobles were ones she created through other means. As for the vampire spawn with even inferior status, they didn't even have the right to enter this hidden area!
The adepts entered under the watchful gaze of the numerous vampires, walking into the terrifying pool of blood Mary had specially ordered for herself.
The opulent and extravagantly large bed had now disappeared, replaced with a large, five-meter square blood pool. Mary comfortably rested in the pool, enjoying the service of four beautiful vampire girls around her.
One was softly massaging her arms, while another was holding a golden cup, waiting for her to take a drink. The last two were using toothpicks to send peeled grapes straight into her mouth……
It wasn't spring water that was rippling about the pool, nor was it a warm and comfortable hot spring, but thick and viscous blood!