Age of Adepts

Pinecone City.

As a human city developed from a small town in the wasteland, the natives were a tremendous minority. The large numbers of new immigrants had replaced most of them.

Fire Throne was the place where adepts lived and indulged in their research, after all. It was ill-suited as a place to deal with the increasingly busy clan matters that popped up. As such, Gargamel had already moved his office to Pinecone City twenty years ago.

Since then, there were two centers of activity within the clan.

Adepts and apprentices delved into their magical research and took on clan missions at Fire Throne. Meanwhile, the daily communications and reports from worldly nobles and local resource sites were managed at Pinecone City.

Pinecone City had undergone a series of expansion and renovations. The outdated, low, and old buildings were all razed. Rows of luxurious mansions were built in their place. Moreover, due to privacy concerns, every single estate had its own defensive array and magical barrier that could prevent scrying from the outside.

Consequently, wandering adepts or foreign apprentices, who had no right to enter Fire Throne to study, loved to rent mansions as their living space. Even the nobles of various ranks from all over the place would stay in these mansions when they came to request an audience with Lord Gargamel.

“Of course, we are talking about that greatest bargaining chip in our hands.” The goblin in military uniform rubbed his hands nervously, “I believe…if…it’s possible, that the old dean is willing to apply some pressure with the golem dragon, the human adepts will cave-in to our demands!”

When the words ‘golem dragon’ came jumping out of the goblin’s mouth, the eyebrows of all the goblin leaders in the room jumped along with it. Their gazes turned sharp and cutting.

This was a pace that would bring the goblins to extinction.

Silently, a few of the goblin leaders exchanged looks. They started to consider their own routes of escape and development in the future.

Betray the Crimson Clan?

Such an idea was a path of no return!

Living in the World of Adepts for so many years, and having their worldviews broadened to this extent, had allowed for the smart and knowledgeable goblin leaders to further understand the massive gulf in power between the Goblin Plane and the World of Adepts.

The Goblin Plane’s fate was sealed the moment it caught the eye of the adepts.

In all honesty, the fact that the Goblin Plane could fall into the hands of the more gentle and open-minded Crimson Clan was already their greatest blessing!

If they had been even slightly less fortunate and had been invaded by any other adept clan, it would most definitely have been a complete take-over, swiftly followed by the brutal and unrelenting exploitation of their race and homeworld. Acknowledge the status of goblins as citizens? Give them a chance to assimilate into the adepts’ system? These policies had never before appeared in the other adept clans.

Citizens and slaves. Every goblin here knew the tremendous difference between those two statuses.

As such, though choosing to betray the Crimson Clan in their time of crisis to join another powerful adept clan may sound like a good idea, it was not. If this plan was executed, it would drag the entire goblin race into an abyss of death.

The enemy desperately needed to do away with the influence and pressure created by the presence of the Fourth Grade golem dragon now. That was why they had promised such incredible amounts of benefits and welfare. However, if the goblins were to truly switch sides, what were they supposed to use to compete with the human adepts of the enemy clan?

Would they really provide goblin adepts with the same status and treatment as the human adepts?

Would they still allow the magical machine golem dragon to remain in the hands of the goblins once they managed to obtain such a powerful machine of destruction?

Could the goblins really obtain freedom and power far beyond what they currently had?

After experiencing the knowledge system of this new world, the goblins were no longer frogs stuck in a well. They now understood the brutality and savagery of competition between the planar worlds. How could they possibly be tricked by those empty lies, like these fools and idiots?

The secret goblin meeting quickly ended with no conclusion.

When the few foolish goblins went out to eat and enjoy themselves with the company of a group of goblin beauties, the leaders who could truly decide the future of the goblin race finally gathered together once again.

“I see it clearly. It’s the people from Musen Merchant Group who are stirring trouble.”

“Agreed! However, in my opinion, some of the goblins in the Risk Investment Company need to be dealt with as well.”

“Mm, we will report this to Lord Gargamel! I will try my best to fight for the right of execution. That should allow us to reduce the damage to our people to the minimum!”