As for what had happened exactly at the depths of the volcano, no one really knew.
Nevertheless, the volcano world which had gone fully rampage was no longer a place suitable for treasure hunting, and it was a fact that everybody knew. Hence, Greem too, mixed among all other visiting apprentices and expressed his anger, before submitting his required portion of mission item and leaving Palmyra Town without alerting anybody.
When Greem returned smoothly to the Magical Swamp with his brand new status as a Pseudo-Adept, a massive storm imdiately broke out in the entire Swampy Tower.
Once upon a ti, Greem was just a nobody among the apprentices of the Swampy Tower and many people hadn’t even realized his existence. But now, following his mighty rise, those experts who Greem used to look up to had been ditched at his back and beca the group who had the most dejected emotions.
And right when a portion of apprentices was still doubting on the authenticity of the news, Adept Keoghan, who represented Sarubo Family had visited Swampy Tower once again and had a eting with Greem at the fifth floor of the tower. As expected, Greem’s decision was exactly sa as Mary’s – he chose to serve Sarubo Family ten years in exchange for the resources required for his level up.
Of course, if Greem had the confidence to find all resources required for the official Adept Advancent Ceremony by himself, then he could always choose to leave Sarubo Family and beco a wanderer. However, with the current developnt situation of Zhentarim Association, they had employed a rather hostile and oppressive policy towards any wandering Adepts and apprentices who didn’t belong to a family. Thus, if Greem wished to spend his apprenticeship smoothly, unavoidably, he had to join an Adept Family.
As for the Byron Family’s chest badge that Greem had obtained at the Underground Cave, it only ant the Byron Family was willing to protect him at the Dagon region, as he hadn’t sign any magical contract and officially joined the Byron Family.
After eting with Adept Keoghan, Greem was imdiately dragged into Mary’s room, by the vampire girl who had heard the news of his return.
“Tell now, what had you done during the mission? How is it possible that you made the breakthrough and beca a Pseudo-Adept?” With Mary understanding of Greem, this guy could never complete a mission smoothly, as every ti he would create big troubles halfway.
Greem responded with a big smile on his face, but said nothing. However, after he stroked his hand across the tabletop, he left behind one big and four small, a total of five mysterious, dark red gemstones.
“What are these?” Curiously, Mary stretched her hand toward the biggest gemstone, but right when her little hand touched the mysterious gemstone, she retracted it instantly.
A light crackling noise was heard, as a small fla ignited on top of the gemstone and ferociously burned her fingers.
Even with Mary’s body constitution of vampire, her fingers which had touched the gemstone had turned dark. But she wasn’t bothered by it, with a gentle wave of her palm, the burn marks imdiately disappeared and her fair and delicate fingers had returned.
Mary didn’t act recklessly this ti, but stood still and pondered for a mont.
Obviously, the fla wasn’t controlled by soone, and it wasn’t the result of so magical arrays. It was a defensive chanism initiated by the instincts of the gemstone. It was like as if... as if it possessed its own consciousness!
“What exactly is this?” Mary asked the question once again, but this ti, she wore a fierce expression on her face and revealed a pair of her sharp fangs. She had a look as if to say that if Greem didn’t give her the answer, she would leap onto him and gave him a brutal bite.
“Second Grade Core!” A weird smile erged on Greem’s face, as he spoke the answer one word at a ti.
The juicy red lips of Mary murmured the sa answer a few tis, before she ca to a rude awakening. “Second Grade Core? Did you kill a Second Grade demon? Where is the corpse? Did you extract its blood? Hurry up... tell quickly!”
“Ugh...” Greem spread his arms and expressed his speechless at Mary’s response. “If I really et with a Second Grade demon, do you think I can still co back alive?”
“You’re right!” Mary smiled slightly and felt surprised for losing her cool just now.
She just couldn’t help it. She was at the most important transition period throughout the entire life of a vampire, and the fastest thod for increasing her overall strength was being fed the blood of experts. With these two reasons combined, it was more than enough for Mary to beco nervousness enough to lose her cool and beco restless and passionate upon hearing news about a powerful creature!
Of course, in the eyes of Mary, the current Greem could barely be considered an expert. Nevertheless, no matter how much Mary tried to convince Greem until the roof fell down, Greem would never agree to let her suck his blood. Because according to the Chip’s analysis, any individual who had his blood sucked by a vampire, would always suffer from a different degree of decay in his overall strength.
And, this decay was most likely the key to why the vampire could evolve by sucking blood!
To put it simply, if Greem allowed Mary to suck his blood, most probably his attribute would drop, and it would effect his Physique and Spirit, which were the attributes he cared about the most. With regard to this, Toril, the Bloodline Apprentice they t at the Underground Cave, was the perfect example.
Originally, that guy had reached the pinnacle of his apprenticeship, and was about to hold his official Adept Advancent Ceremony. However, he was miserably defeated by Greem’s golem team. Such injuries would only take him one to two weeks of resting to fully recover. However, from the news from his family, the Pseudo-Adept Toril had experienced a decay in his Spirit. Though it hadn’t dropped below 20 points, it was more than enough to affect him from advancing normally.
Hence, after summarizing from so many bloody examples, Greem had reason to believe that through sucking the blood of others, the race of vampire could extract the bloodline factor of the host and use it to strengthen themselves and weaken the enemy. Try to think about it, under such circumstances, how could Greem let Mary suck his blood?
After exchanging the latest developnts of each other, Mary rushed back to the Mission Hall, continued searching for apprentice missions that suit her the most. As for Greem, he returned to his own room and started listening to the briefing of the goblin rchant, Snorlax.
During the three months that Greem was not here, following the injecting of information and resources from the outside world, the Swampy Tower had beco livelier, no longer a place of stagnancy and dead quietness like how it was in the past. With Mary’s backing, Snorlax had opened the first Goblin Store in the tower.
There weren’t many items available to buy in this little store, yet they were all rare resources that could hardly be found in the outside world. Also, recently Snorlax had put its eyes on those Beginner and Interdiate Apprentices and had started to purchase magical materials and ordinary resources that they wouldn’t be using for now.
Nevertheless, in order for such a little store to operate in full scale, it needed an endless supply of high-grade items, or else, it would be pretty tough to attract these apprentices.
After finished listening to Snorlax’s briefing, Greem nodded his head satisfyingly. Then, he casually poured out a large pile of magical gemstones and materials from his storage waist belt, and most of them were Fire Diamonds. After all, compared to those apprentices who spent all days wandering at the outer periter of the volcano world, Greem had ventured into the depths of the lava ocean countless of tis and the chances of him finding high-grade magical gemstones were much higher.
Also, those Fire Diamonds and magical gemstones were mostly washed out from the lava ocean during the active periods of the volcano. And, after going through the filtration of Fire elent creatures, the leftover would be all of that lesser quality materials. Yet, the Fire Diamonds Greem brought back from the lava ocean were at least supre grade Fire Diamonds, the size of a human fist. Greem even tossed a huge human skull-sized Fire Diamond over to Snorlax, asking it to find soone to craft it into the shape of a jade pillow.
With that, when Greem laid his head on top of it and ditated in the future, the result would definitely be better!
After Snorlax left happily with a packed waist pouch, the smile on Greem’s face gradually subsided. He started to ponder seriously on so very important information.
During his absence of the past three months, Adept Anderson had actually publicly announced that he would take Evil Bugs Acteon as his disciple. And according to what Snorlax told him, nearly every day of these past three months, Acteon had dwelt in the fifth floor of the Adept Tower, and no one knew what he and Adept Anderson were doing up there!
Facing two enemies who might have joined forces, Greem’s feeling of joy after becoming a Pseudo-Adept imdiately vanished in a flash. Once again, he felt the pressure of ti that waited for no man. Though, after he made the advancent and beca Pseudo-Adept and managed to obtain the protection from the family preventing Adept Anderson from harming him openly, it was still possible the Adept would have planned sothing treacherous in the dark.
And by getting so close with Evil Bugs, could Anderson use Acteon to deal with Greem?
Greem let out a bitter laugh.
Since the day he had a thorough understanding of the conflict of interest between Adept Anderson and Mary, he knew sooner or later, he would be hated by Anderson. He just didn’t think that the enemy would move so quickly, so pressing against the ti!
In the eyes of these treachery and cunning Adepts, all apprentices were rely a bunch of materials who knew how to walk by themselves. If not for the fact that the top managent of the Adepts had put a constraint on their behavior, perhaps these selfish fellows would never allow the rising of new Adepts, who would stand up and fight for rare resources against them.
Nevertheless, no matter what the enemy was planning, as long as the speed of his progress went beyond their expectations, any dangers and traps would pass away like a cloud, and none of them could shake the direction of his progress.
After giving the current situation a thorough analysis, Greem imdiately drafted out a long working plan for the ti to co. Under his arrangent, perhaps for the next half year, every single day would be filled with nurous tasks and no ti for leisure.
In this mysterious world, in order to keep his life safe, Greem had poured all his energy and ti in the learning and researching magic spells.
............
Inside Snorlax’s room.
After coming back from its master’s room, Snorlax had been indulging in an enthusiastic stage.
Every ti when it took out a magical gemstone from its waist pouch, it would always dance with joy, repeatedly kissing and stroking it, before using its magical probing stick to verify the elent and quality of the gemstone.
Staring at the pile of gemstones which was getting taller and taller, Snorlax’s heart was filled with wild excitent. At this ti, it just wished it could run back to its master and passionately kiss his shoes. Perhaps, only by doing this it could let its master experience the passion and loyalty of Snorlax!
But, during this delightful process, a small setback had struck Snorlax.
Within the pile of gemstones its master had given it, Snorlax discovered a mysterious, white stone the size of a human fist. No matter what thod it used to verify the stone, it just couldn’t find out its elent, and couldn’t confirm whether it was a magical gemstone, material or egg of demon beast!
Even after using its magical probing stick to test it, the ssage it got in its mind was a simple ‘unknown item from Outworld’. Since the magical probing stick confird it was an item rather than a living being, it also ant it wasn’t an egg of so demon beast. Yet, its master had included the white stone in the pile of gemstones, it told Snorlax that this was an item of great value.
The info Snorlax concerned the most was the word ‘Outworld’.
Could this white stone be a mysterious gemstone from another plane?
Snorlax scratched its head and had no choice but to put the mysterious white stone back onto the table and turn around and continue to organize the rest of the gemstones.
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