Age of Adepts Chapter 222

Chapter 222 Hunting Grounds
The expected collision did not happen!
Greem hadn't had a brain stroke yet. He wasn't nearly dumb enough to have the clay golems clash head on with the witcher-knights wrapped in their steel armor.
Of course, if these were all stone golems instead of clay golems, Greem wouldn't mind appreciating a glorious clash between steel and stone! However, it was probably best to forget it since they were made of clay.
Clay golem after clay golem sunk into the dirt beneath them before they even made contact with the witcher-knights. Numerous dirt pillars half as tall as a man and as thick as a child's arm rose from the ground, spreading across the path of the knights' charge.
The witcher-knights were the most powerful force on this plane after all. Each one of them had exceptional riding skills and agility. They commanded the colts under them to leap up and dive low, sometimes even jumping towards a tall tree and bouncing off of it to avoid the impediment of the dirt pillars.
Moreover, the radiant knights and spellbreaker knights standing at the very front of the formation were using all their strength to let out violent blades of flame and ice, ravaging through all the obstacles on their way forward. The clay golems responsible for hindering the army's progress could only change their battle plan when faced with such powerful enemies. They started to create swamps that covered large areas to slow the enemy down.
Numerous forests of dirt pillars and endless patches of quicksand and swamps filled the battlefield. Even though the clay golems hadn't killed a single witcher-knight, they had effectively slowed them down and stopped their march forward.
While the witcher-knights fell into slight chaos, some clay golems would emerge from the woods nearby and attack the enemy using Spear of Mud as well as Earth Spike. Small skirmishes between clay golems and witcher-knights erupted everywhere on the battlefield.
The clay golems’ ferocious attacks disrupted the neat formation of the knights, splitting the entire battlefield into countless smaller, chaotic battlefields.
It was unfortunate that the clay golems' attacks were still on the weaker side. The mud spears they threw at the witcher-knights were unable to pierce that layer of golden armor formed by the golden radiance that gathered about the knights. Some clay golems that were unable to escape into the ground in time had even been hacked to pieces of dirt and stone by the furious knights.
The nearly one hundred clay golems were disappearing at a speed that was visible even to the naked eye!
The only ones that managed to cause some damage were the five stone serpents. Every time they dug up out from beneath the ground, the rocks and sand they sent everywhere, as well as their savage bites, were able to throw entire knight squads into complete disarray. Regardless of how powerful the knights’ armor of faith was, it wouldn't be enough to endure the twelve-ton weight of the stone serpents' bodies. All of the witcher-knights that were targeted by the stone serpents were inevitably squashed into blood paste.
However, every time the stone serpents rampaged about the battlefield, their massive bodies would be hacked at by numerous violent knight battle techniques, sending rocks flying everywhere as their bodies slowly cracked and fell apart. If they took too much damage, the stone serpents could only burrow into the ground and wait for their bodies to slowly regenerate.
Most of the time, this group of pseudo-adept level stone serpents could only throw the enemy lines into disarray. It was impractical to count on them to slaughter the witcher-knights en masse.
Greem had transferred the battlefield command of these golems to the chip in his mind after he summoned all the golems he had. With the detailed and dynamic commands of the chip's superior computing power, as well as its complete understanding of the overall situation in this battleground, this group of golems might continuously suffer casualties but they also effectively contained the momentum of the knights' army.
With the aid of the chip, Greem no longer needed to put in his own effort to command hundreds of individual fights. All he needed to do was to focus on himself and live up to his title as a master of pyromancy.
Greem freely roamed about the battlefield.
He turned into a terrifying Flame Fiend three meters tall, with violent elementium flames surging about his body, and slowly walked into the battlefield one step at a time. The soft black dirt would be turned into half-molten boiling lava everywhere he went. A red and black path of magma could be clearly seen where he walked.
Greem gripped the Fire Lord’s Scepter in his right hand and held the Scroll of Voodoo open in his left. The pages of the ancient tome incessantly flipped on its own, adding a sense of mystery to Greem.
Greem was not willing to use up the six instant-cast spells stored within the Scroll of Voodoo. To maximize his combat strength, he had replaced the spells within it with all kinds of powerful large area-of-effect fire spells such as the devastating Fire Core Explosion and Firestorm.
Use them to slaughter these witcher-knights before him? Honestly, Greem was not willing to waste it on these small fries!
Greem slowly strolled forward, lightly waving the Fire Lord’s Scepter in his hand as he did so and lobbing several Magma Fireballs into the areas where the witcher-knights were packed the densest. Meanwhile, Greem blasted the fools that dared to rush at him into pieces with violent Chain Fireballs.
The armor of faith might be able to help them endure simple spells, but when faced against the continuous bombardment of the Chain Fireballs, even the thickest armor in the world wouldn't be able to save them.
Brave knights repeatedly charged forward while shouting the knights' motto, only to be blasted to the ground by the exploding fireballs. Before they could even get up, the next fireballs would arrive and cause the damage to quickly stack up, break through the armor of faith, and blast apart the armor on their bodies before they were consumed by the surging tide of fire.
The witcher-knights were humans with blood and flesh after all. Without the protection of their shields and the blessing of their faith, even the most exceptional magic resistance would be no more than a joke before the savage fireballs!
Fireballs exploded everywhere, sending blood and flesh splashing in every direction!
The witcher-knights targeted by the Chain Fireballs had no means of escaping the area that was ravaged by flames. Their bodies, along with the bodies of the magic colts beneath them, would be torn into unrecognizable pieces of flesh in a matter of seconds.
Moreover, the runic arrows they shot in retaliation were mostly blocked by the Magma Shields constantly spinning around Greem's body. Ever since Greem's protective spell had been upgraded from the Fire Shield, to the Inferno Shield, to the current Magma Shield, his defensive strength had gone up exponentially.
Now any attack with less than 150 points of damage had no chance of destroying the Magma Shields in one shot. Attacks that dealt less than 150 damage could still deal some harm to the shields. However, the shields quickly regenerated as Greem continuously used his Spirit to repair them.
As such, even though the Magma Shields had already been filled with runic arrow, they were unable to wear away at its defensive strength.
Even the occasional arrows that made it through were unable to pierce the magma armor on Greem's body. As intense waves of flame surged out from Greem's body, those arrows would be burned white hot before melting like wax and turning into puddles of molten iron.
On the other hand, there were witcher-knights that tried to charge forward and engage in close range with Greem. Greem's answered that with a flurry of strikes from his flame whip. The flame whip composed of pure and concentrated flames would cause intense burns wherever it hit a person’s body. If it managed to wrap around a knight's body, Greem would immediately set the person on fire the very next second.
Greem might be an elementium adept, but when he transformed into the frightening Flame Fiend he would have astounding combat strength that rivalled the actual Abyssal Flame Fiends. Fireballs were his means of attacking from a distance. The flame whip was his answer for fools that tried to close in. Any closer, and Greem would use his colossal burning executioner's blade.
A three meter tall flame humanoid waving around a massive executioner's blade made of flame and magma was enough to cut down swathes of enemy without the use of any battle techniques.
It was such a dominating weapon that even being close to it would cause one to feel an overpowering sense of oppression, as well as a burning sensation that ravaged the entire body. Moreover, Greem's Ring of Fire extended for thirty meters around him and was a domain-type spell. Any living beings made of flesh and blood that came within thirty meters of himself would have to endure fire damage as high as 13 points per second.
This also meant that a fit, empty-handed human male entered Greem's Ring of Fire, he would die before two seconds had passed. The witcher-knights fared slightly better, but even they could only endure the burning for twenty-seven seconds at the very best. Moreover, this was with the help of the armor of faith. Otherwise this duration would be cut in half.
Everywhere he went, Greem would leave behind the struggling shapes of countless witcher-knights. And everywhere he walked past he would leave behind the charred remains of squad after squad of witcher-knights.
Of course, Greem's unscrupulous and bloody killing had drawn the anger of the radiant knights. They slapped their horses and raised their runic longswords, bright as torches, high above their heads and roared as they charged towards him.
Greem had no intention of confronting radiant knights.
Every time this happened he would pause for a moment, and with a blast of magical flames his massive flaming body would vanish. The very next second, the terrifying Flame Fiend would appear in another area a hundred meters away.
The messy, chaotic battlefield was clear as day like an open book in Greem's mind, with the wind critters looking on from above and the clay golems below. Not a single change in any of the battlefields within one and a half kilometers of Greem could escape his perception.
Every second, countless streams of vague information would flood in from the numerous points of consciousness Greem had established on his golems. And with the chip's filtering and analysis of the massive amount of data, Greem was able to clearly grasp an understanding of the battles around him. This allowed him to constantly go where it was the most advantageous for him.
The battlefield he entered would never have radiant knights fighting in them. The path he walked down would never put him within a large group of spellbreaker knights. As for those determined witcher-knights– as long as they didn't band together in excessively large numbers, they were unable to cause any real harm to Greem.
The battlefield was chaotic, with numerous opportunistic adepts sneaking into the battles to start a slaughter along with the hordes of clay golems and voodoo beasts rampaging about the enemy lines. Even those radiant knights that wanted to pursue Greem could only chase behind him for a bit before having their attention drawn away by a new enemy and falling into another round of battles.
Through the sacrifices of a large number of clay golems and voodoo beasts, Greem turned into a predator on the battlefield, fearlessly hunting his prey!