Age of Adepts
chapter-548

Seven minutes later.

Greem met with Second Grade Dragonborn Zacha, who was in terrible state.

It was obvious that the Dragonborn had incredible luck. He had not been too badly polluted by the space energy from the massive explosion. However, that luck of his was also his misfortune. It was what caused him to become Thunder Dragon Arm's rations for survival.

Greem had originally though Zacha to be dead. However, he was surprised to find the dragonborn hanging by his last breath when he fetched him to the surface with the earth elemental.

Sadly, while this might be enough to save Zacha's life, it couldn't help the dragonborn regenerate his four limbs and body that had been eaten by the thunder dragon. Further recovery would have to wait until he was brought back to Fire Throne.

Such terrifying wounds would require several months to heal, at the very least.

While there were spells that could hasten the regeneration of flesh, most of those spells took effect by inciting the subject's life force in a moment of crisis. The missing parts of the body still required proper treatment and healing to regenerate once the effect of the spell was over.

Still, a Second Grade dragonborn's exceptional Physique should allow him to regenerate flesh at a much higher rate than an adept with weak Physique, as long as he was fed enough food and energy.

Dragonborn Zacha's life might be hanging by a thread, but he had always maintained consciousness. He even sent a hint of gratitude to Greem with his weak Spirit when Greem saved him from the hands of the thunder dragon.

Even though Greem didn't know how sincere this gratitude was, he still saw the chance of recruiting the dragonborn as a subordinate!

In less than fifteen minutes, nearly two-tenths of the earth elemental army that Greem had gone to great lengths to create had been destroyed. Twenty adept-level earth elementals cost fifty thousand magical crystals each at the very minimum. If they were all put on sale, they could probably fetch around three hundred thousand magical crystals.

Yet, the only result that Greem had gained from the loss of twenty earth elementals was further worsening the exhaustion of the thunder dragon. Arms had finally used up all the lightning power he had been saving over the past month.

The image feeding back from the earth elementals indicated that the Third Grade thunder dragon was about to fall. It seemed just a little bit more effort would cause the titan to collapse. However, Greem didn't dare be careless. He didn't dare to enter the fight personally either. He commanded the earth elementium golems to circle the thunder dragon and attempt sneak attacks when the opportunities presented themselves.

The thunder dragon could not possibly escape with the earth elementals there.

Moreover, under Greem's command, the earth elementals had even collapsed the tunnel behind the thunder dragon. This way they had sealed off Arms' path of retreat.

Greem started to send an endless wave of earth elementals to shout at the dragon now that he had him cornered. He wanted to take this opportunity to bring this terrifying Third Grade thunder dragon into his fold. Sadly, every one of his golem messengers was shredded with a single swipe, and the battle continued.

Greem finally steeled his heart once his multiple attempts had failed. He no longer tried to send messengers to call for the dragon to surrender. Instead, he started to use all his strength to exterminate the isolated Third Grade thunder dragon.

Greem would never have even dared to think such a thought if this had been in the past. However, multiple coincidences and twists of fate had allowed him to run into this massive fish. Greem would never forgive himself if he let an opportunity like this slide past him!

The excavation work on the surface had stopped. All the goblins had dropped the work at hand and silently waited for news.

As the protagonists of the battle, Greem and Billis were hiding in their respective shelters. Greem hid in a small wooden hut while Billis stayed in his tent. Both of them were remotely commanding their subordinates, launching a constant wave of harassment and attacks at the Third Grade thunder dragon stuck in the small space underground.

It didn't matter how strong a thunder dragon was. In the end, it was the sky that was their stage. The underground was fated to be a nightmare for a thunder dragon!

The earth elementals would immediately dive into the small ditch and harass him if Arms attempted to dig his way out. Meanwhile, they would use their affinity with earth elementium to strengthen the hardness of the ground around the ditch. They might not be able to turn the earth to stone, but it would increase the difficulty of digging through it tenfold.

If Arms gave up on digging and turned to attack the golems, then the golems would escape into the earth and occasionally fire earth spikes and create quagmires to entangle the thunder dragon.

The one hundred golems and scorpions circled the thunder dragon while employing this strategy. They took turns to harass the dragon, significantly lowering the elementium consumption of the golems. After all, much like the thunder dragon, the golems also couldn't replenish their elementium supply in the low-magic Goblin Plane.

One side was stronger, while the other was more numerous. Both parties were giving their all in the underground, and the battle would be decided by who was the first to collapse in exhaustion.

It was clear that the thunder dragon was disadvantaged in this aspect!

The hidden battle that followed underground lasted for half a month. Finally, the exhausted Third Grade Thunder Dragon Arms collapsed and became a prisoner of the earth elementium golems.

The joy of capturing a Second Grade Dragonborn and a Third Grade Thunder Dragon almost overwhelmed Greem.

However, there was an even greater surprise waiting for him.

Two of Billis' sting scorpions had actually managed to arrive at the scene of the space furnace explosion by following the tunnels that the thunder dragon had dug into the earth. That place had already turned into a strange energy space. All substance that drifted in there would be disintegrated into unrecognizably fine dust before being expelled again.

The expelled dust was all coated with extremely intense energy radiation. One of Billis' sting scorpion had fallen apart just from being blasted by a pillar of the dust.

From a distance, the energy space looked like a large black stone with a diameter of ten meters. A fine layer of energy dust shrouded the exterior of the energy space. The center of the energy space continuously spewed out a rainbow energy flow, rumbling and crackling as it did so.

This energy flow wasn't as violent and chaotic as when it had just appeared after the layer of dust had filtered it. The energy clashed with the laws of the Goblin Plane, turning into waves of extremely pure magic elementium that merely dispersed into the surroundings.

Billis clearly didn't understand this strange phenomenon, but Greem immediately recognized it for what it was. After all, he practically had an adept encyclopedia in his mind.

[Beep. Discovered a naturally-occurring magic spring. After examination, magic concentration has been determined to be 78.25%. Attributes of said magic are slightly wild and are unsuitable for direct consumption by adepts.]

"Magic spring!" Greem's eyes lit up.

In all seriousness, this was an entirely naturally-occurring magic spring that had not been treated or subjected to any taming.

Even though the cause of its formation was a strange explosion, it perfectly matched all of the descriptions of magic springs in Greem's memory.

The so-called magic spring was only a name that the adepts attached to the phenomenon. In truth, it was a point of energy intersection of outer space and planar space. Here, the wild energies of the outer space would come into contact with the planar space and a strange phenomenon of a rainbow energy flow would appear.

It was the existence of magic springs that allowed the plane to be replenished with energy from outer space, and thus maintain a stable magic index within the plane. It was precisely the lack of wild magic springs in the Goblin Plane that caused the thin concentration of magic elementium within the plane. That was why it had ended up as a notorious low-magic plane.

At this moment, Greem couldn't help but be amazed by the bizarreness of fate!

If the Third Grade thunder dragon knew that a magic spring had been born in the core area of the explosion, he would never have dug upward. He could have stayed within the radius of the magic spring and replenished his lightning power. When that happened, who in the entire Goblin Plane could stop a Third Grade thunder dragon at full might?

Yet it had apparently been utterly terrified by the massive explosion. Arms had only been thinking of fleeing as far away as he could, not knowing that he had walked past an opportunity to turn the tables! An opportunity that fate had arranged for him!

Magic springs were an absolute blessing for powerful magical creatures. On the other hand, they were hazardous and lethal places for people who were too weak.

Even First Grade adepts were too frail for magic springs. It was very likely that they would be assimilated and turned into demon spirits without bodies and only fragments of consciousness if they ventured too close to magic springs. Meanwhile, as a Second Grade adept that had completed the elementiumization of both his body and mind, Greem would not be harmed by the magic spring. Instead, he would be able to feel the immense concentration of magic constantly.

Even if he had exhausted all of his elementium energies in combat, he would only need to stay near the magic spring for five minutes to replenish all of his elementium.

The significance of a treasure like this for an adept was equivalent to an origin relic!

Moreover, Greem remembered a record in a book that stated that such magic springs could be transported through magical means. If he could add this magic spring to the magic generator furnace, whose initial designs had already been completed, then it could potentially boost the efficiency of the magic generator furnace by more than ten times.

Greem stood approximately twenty meters away from the black ball, remotely sensing the internal structure of the magic spring. However, it didn't matter how he tried to sense for it. The cluster of energy space at the center of the magic spring remained a pure black in his mind.

Neither magic probing nor spiritual senses could receive any feedback or reaction from that energy space.

His spirit would be mysteriously devoured the moment it entered the space.

Indeed, devoured; not just gone missing!

Greem stood on the spot for a long time before sighing helplessly.

Magic springs were genuinely mysterious and wondrous constructs. He was still not qualified to discover its secrets with his current power.

He set up a spatial coordinate in the area where the magic spring was located and thought of a way to seal it.

Now, it was Greem's time to wander underground freely!

Greem could navigate the underground world with extreme ease in a way that the Third Grade thunder dragon hadn't been able to. And the one aid he was relying on was his signature helper– the elementium golems.

He had initially intended to pass the task of excavating the Steel Capital to Bug Adept Billis. However, given what he had seen, he had underestimated the value to be found here. Disregarding the planar door that had yet to be found, just what he had discovered here had already exceeded his expectations.

If he could scour this place thoroughly, he might find even greater yields!