Age of Adepts

The golem hall on the seventh floor was still as crowded as before.

A magnificent metallic spider crouched on the floor in the middle of the massive hall. Many apprentice adepts were busy working on the spider while sitting on the scaffolding around it.

Greem had finally completed the metallic shell, which he had personally designed, after countless days and nights of endless work. He immediately hired a large group of apprentices once the dwarven smiths had departed and left the rune carving process to them.

Right now, the spider-golem beast was no more than an iron can. Numerous runes needed to be carved into its body for it to be able to obey its master’s commands. It required control runes, energy circuits, reinforcement runes, elementary elementium resistance runes, consciousness control centers, energy storage nodes, and more.

The main torso of the spider golem was a disc-shaped metallic cabin five meters in diameter. Fifty centimeters of a magical alloy formed the outer shell, while the gear structures of the magical machinery had been put to use inside the frame. That reduced the heavy use of magical alloy and allowed the golem to possess extraordinary limb agility and flexibility.

Greem had already examined most of the magical statues and puppets of the Silver Union. Their bodies were almost always entirely forged from solid metal in pursuit of greater toughness and hardness. Golems formed in this manner could only move in a limited fashion due to the small number of joints they had. They traded away their mobility for impenetrable defenses.

Such a line of reasoning wasn’t necessarily wrong. After all, the purpose of the magic statues and puppets within the Silver Union was to serve as metallic meat shields and cannon fodder. Long-ranged attacks could be assigned to the elementium golems. These metal creatures didn’t need to be agile or flexible. They only needed to be hard and resilient enough to resist the enemy’s assaults.

On the other hand, Greem had paid more attention to the spider golem’s all-terrain ability and auxiliary powers when he designed the machine.

Defense?

The fifty centimeters of magical alloy might not be impenetrable and indestructible, but it was a solid defense. Greem estimated that two or three adept-level rock golems would have to continuously bash away at the spider golem for fifteen minutes to crack its shell. It wasn’t going to be easy to harm Alice while she was hiding inside.

Meanwhile, fifteen minutes would be more than enough for the accompanying Infernal Tyrant to reduce everything to ashes!

This arrangement was why Greem, after much deliberation, decided to place less focus on the golem’s defense. Instead, he chose to put more emphasis on its mobility and offensive abilities.

Otherwise, a single Quagmire Spell would be enough to render this giant creature useless.

In this regard, the multi-limbed and well-balanced spider form was the best choice!

Modifying the spider golem beast was not an easy undertaking. Most of the crucial runes and circuits had to be carved on the inside of the metal shell. Reinforcement Runes had to be etched onto all of its limbs as well, along with Sharpening Runes and several others.

It was to prevent the spider golem from utterly malfunctioning after receiving damage to parts of its runic circuits.

There was also the problem of vision. Alice would be surrounded by thick heavy metal when she hid in the cabin. Her ability to sense and understand what was going one became a troublesome issue. To solve this problem, Greem attached a metal ball one meter in diameter on the front of the golem’s disc-shaped torso. He hollowed the metal ball and filled the insides with plenty of magical gemstones, turning it into a head of sorts with compound eyes made of gems.

He included Detection Crystals, Laser Stones, large red gemstones that could fire heat rays, Energy Barrier Crystals that could erect defensive forcefields, and the two Eyes of Petrification that could draw upon the powers of petrification.

Greem had searched through his stash of gemstones and put to use every single magical gem that could potentially maximize the spider golem’s survival and combat potential. Disregarding the cost of the magical alloy used in forging the body of the golem, just these magical gems alone cost no less than thirty thousand magical crystals.

It was apparent how much Greem was investing to ensure Alice’s safety!

............

As Greem was busy working in the golem hall, Alice was casually toying with her divinations.

Yes, toying!

Alice had finally obtained a better understanding of divination after a long time experimenting. Its strengths, weaknesses, limitations, how to maximize efficiency; she had gotten the answers to all of this.

Firstly, there were no deities in the World of Adepts.

This fact was the absolute most important thing to get right!

The absence of deities meant that there wasn’t a super lifeform hanging above Alice’s head that could do as they wanted to her.

Given that case, all the feedback that Alice got from her divination wasn’t a gift from some omnipotent god. Instead, it was planar feedback that the planar laws had bestowed upon her.

Which was to say she wasn’t communicating with a celestial existence with omniscience when she used divination. It was a cold and unfeeling system of laws that she communed with.

Thus, Alice had repeatedly been trying and testing out this so-called system of laws for the past few days. She would always do this once she had exhausted all her divination slots.

The scale and severity of the planar law system had already exceeded the limits of her imagination as a First Grade Witch.

Divinations on the same subject at the same time could yield different results from the planar laws. Sometimes, they would even be completely contradictory. Moreover, the more powerful the subject of the divination, the vaguer the information Alice obtained. More often than not, she would not receive any feedback at all.

With her current abilities, Alice was unable to get any feedback if she divined subjects above Second Grade. Even when she did succeed, the information was often vague and unclear. It was of no practical value.

However, Alice’s divination was still extremely useful when used against opponents of the same Grade.

Her chance of success when divining elite adepts was no more than thirty percent. She could, at best, succeed twice out of the five times she divined each day. On the other hand, her chance of success rose to seventy percent when targeting an ordinary adept. At least three of the five divinations would succeed.

If it was anyone below an adept, Alice had almost complete confidence at succeeding.

Unfortunately for that slightly threatening Snowlotus, she was below adept-level. And thus Alice, having fully understood the traits of divination, became a sly and nasty little girl during the past couple of days. She hid in her room every single day and spied on the private life of this future enemy.

Indeed, she spied!

Alice consumed almost all five of her divination slots on Snowlotus.

For example:

What was Snowlotus’ elementium affinity?

What spells was Snowlotus good at?

What was Snowlotus’ personality?

What powerful magical tools did Snowlotus have on her?

What were Snowlotus’ combat habits?

Alice had used less than four days to obtain all the fundamental information she needed. Her following divinations took a strange turn after that.

What was Snowlotus’ favorite color?

How many baths did Snowlotus take in a day?

What were Snowlotus’ sizes?

How many times did Snowlotus use the toilet in a day?

When did Snowlotus get her first period?

Did Snowlotus have any experience related to that?

......

Every time Alice succeeded in divining this information, she would immediately record it in a special notebook she kept for this express purpose. Again and again, Alice spent countless time and effort to pry out every bit of information on Snowlotus. Her jigsaw puzzle of fate slowly assembled, and a true-to-life image of Snowlotus was beginning to appear in her mind.

She had ice elementium affinity, exceptional talent, and she was calm, wise, and beautiful.

Snowlotus had exhibited an extraordinary talent for snow and ice at a young age. For this reason, she was specially sent by her Fourth Grade grandmother Angelina to the territories of the Coldwinter Witches. She grew up there and learned to harness her powers there. It wasn’t until she awakened as a candidate for the Witch of Fate that she returned to her home.

Her life wasn’t very long as of yet, but there were many elements in her life that even Alice envied. The more Alice understood about her, the more she couldn’t help but take a liking to such a ’successful’ teenage girl.

She had no idea how much her frequent harassing during this time had annoyed Snowlotus. Snowlotus had almost been driven to insanity!

Frankly speaking, if it hadn’t been because of her identity as a candidate of Witch of Fate, Snowlotus would have had no chance of sensing Alice’s mischief.

Two girls with different personalities and different fates. One lived in the central area of the Continent, while the other lived in the north. There were hundreds of thousands of kilometers between them. They had never met each other before, and they were unlikely to be acquainted with each other. Yet at this moment, both of their destinies had forcefully been brought together by the power of fate.

Every time Alice succeeded at divining Snowlotus, Snowlotus would feel a chill surge from the depths of her heart. It didn’t matter where she was at that moment. It was almost as if a dead, cold phantom hand reached into her bosom, slowly groping her body and uncovering all her secrets.

She would always be interrupted by the sudden chill when she deep in her meditation within the ice cave.

Her channeling would always be interrupted by the uncomfortable feeling when she was practicing her ice spells.

She would be suddenly awoken by the stimulation when she closed her eyes for a nap.

She couldn’t get a break from this unknown fear, even when she hid within her mother’s adept tower.

It was alright for the first few days. There was still some pattern and order to this uninvited harassment. However, it was utterly random afterward. It would come during Snowlotus’ meals, sleep, meditations, baths, and her use of the toilet. The odd feeling would come out of nowhere, causing her to be extremely frustrated and annoyed. However, there was nothing she could do.

The progress of Snowlotus’ meditation had slowed down considerably due to the interference of this unknown element.

Snowlotus, having reached her limits, finally walked into the small hut of Agatha the Witch.