Age of Adepts

The ice palace, on top of the mysterious platform.

Starspirit Tulas was still diligently analyzing the mysterious patterns carved onto the platform. However, he had no choice but to put this task on hold when he was halfway through.

It couldn’t be helped. The dragon had returned!

The brutal battle between the fire adept and the dragon that Tulas had been expecting did not happen. Or rather, it was over too quickly. As a result, Tulas was now stuck on the platform as the dragon returned before he could find the entrance into the hidden passage.

Even Tulas felt his heart quiver with sympathy when he saw the skeletal ice dragon emerge from the mist.

It was in such a terrible condition!

Ever since it forcibly converted itself from an ice dragon into a skeletal dragon, all of Nax’s scales and flesh had vanished. The dragon only had its steel-like skeletal frame and those horrifying massive bone spikes on its spine.

What filled the space between its bones and its chest cavity was bright blue ice energy. The blue ice energy completely filled up the dragon’s chest and skull, even causing strange, flickering ice runes to form on the bones’ surfaces.

Soon, countless strange lights shot in every direction, and the starspirit’s shining body disappeared into the mist again.

Nax hurried onto the platform while Tulas was still routed. A strange array appeared when Nax’s aura came into contact with the dense blocks of runes. This array completely engulfed the skeletal dragon.

The dragon’s soul aura communicated with the array of runes to conduct a series of verifications and confirmations. Finally, a pillar of light shone from the center of the platform. A small opening appeared on the platform’s smooth surface and dense ice energy–so dense it had almost turned solid–surged out.

The liquid ice energy broke down into dense mist upon coming into contact with the air outside. The fog spread outwards. Nax impatiently put his jaws at the opening, greedily absorbing this liquid ice energy.

Strangely enough, the moment the ice energy entered its body, all of the golden flames were instantly extinguished. Blue ice energy was once again the dominant force in Nax’s body. Even the dragon bones that had been exposed by the shattered frost were once again covered in an armor of ice.

However, an unusually pale streak of death energy entered its body along with the ice energy.

The addition of this death energy instantly caused the dragon’s still powerful life aura to become weaker and duller. Its lovely bones started to turn black, then yellow, as the aura of rot unique to undead creatures crept further around Nax’s soul.

As a once proud and majestic dragon, Nax hated undead creatures with a passion!

However, for the sake of more power, Nax had no choice but to abandon its pride and glory as a dragon and embrace its identity as an undead. For Nax, who viewed its glory as its very life, this decision was a huge blow to its soul!

However, at this moment of life and death, Nax no longer had the luxury to hesitate.

Nax inhaled violently, letting the ferocious ice energy and sinister death energy baptize its soul and turn it into a suitable host for the Fifth Grade Reliquary.

If no outsiders appeared, Nax could have dragged out this process over the course of a few hundred years. In doing so, the pain that its soul would have to endure could be spread out over the countless years.

It no longer had time. It could only risk its own life to make immediate modifications to its body!

The risk of a failure in modification had risen exponentially in doing so.

Nax reared its head and let out a roar of agony. Its once bright blue body covered in frost was now rotting and falling apart at a visible pace. Ice energy and death energy were intertwined together as they sprinted throughout its body. It was almost as if the dragon had been infected by ink that was rapidly spreading all over, turning his bones brittle and black.

Such a compound modification of both the soul and the body was a tremendous impact on the soul. An ordinary person would never be able to endure it.

Even Nax, the skeletal dragon, could only howl desperately to express the indescribable agony it was suffering!

The mist continued to ripple.

Two figures slowly walked towards the platform, one from the right and one from the left.

They looked at the roaring dragon on the platform, then at each other. Their eyes were filled with unconcealable greed and caution of their rival.

“I never expected how much of your power you kept hidden,” Kanganas was the first to speak. “It seems like you have managed to make the Libram of Wisdom submit. Otherwise, there is no way you’d have such tremendous power!”

His crimson soulfire swept across the tome-shaped equipment in Greem’s hand, his gaze filled with regret.

If he knew the Libram of Wisdom was so powerful, he would have obtained it at all costs, even if it meant injuring himself to defeat this fire adept.

However, it was too late to say anything now.

The fire adept had obviously managed to subdue the Libram of Wisdom fully and turn it into his magical equipment. Obsessing over matters of the past was simply unwise.