Chapter 215 Preparing for Battle
Raistlin exchanged looks with the other two green dragons before speaking in his booming voice once more.
"You disappoint me, my child! After all, as a half-dragon with a sheltered upbringing, you have never experienced the bloody and savage plane war! Did you think you could rule over everything else in this plane with the Fourth Grade you achieved through your dragon blood? Wrong. You are wrong."
Raistlin straightened his body and roared in anger.
"Fourth Grade is nothing! A Fourth Grade being can only barely qualify as a proper recruit in a plane world! Who are the ones invading this time? Adepts! The evil adepts!
"I'm sure you have heard of the cruelty and savagery of the adepts! And given that to be the case, do you think we should still enter this war for the sake of some meager human offerings? When the evil adepts have already cast their gaze on this unfortunate plane?"
Willis' face was one full of pain and struggle when faced with questions of the green dragon clan leader Raistlin, his father.
"But… but father, the invading adepts this time are extremely weak. If we gather all of the dragons in Dragon Valley, we can still chase them out of this plane!"
"Haha… my child, you are too naive! You have spent too much time on this peaceful and warm material plane, so much time that your thought process is confined within the narrow perspective of those pathetic humans. So what if you fight off this wave of adepts? The adept clan invading this time might just be a small force. However, if they fail in their invasion, they would most definitely sell the coordinates of our plane to other forces and organizations. Then an even more powerful adept force will be the one to invade this world.
"We, the dragons, have already dealt with the evil adepts in countless other plane worlds. Their greed and cruelty is rarely seen even amongst the few powerful large planes. If we had sufficient prowess, we could naturally keep them outside of our territory once and for all. But we do not! We are only Green Dragons, an insignificant branch of the Emerald Dragons of the Dragon's Plane
"Even if we mobilize the strength of the entire clan and force a stalemate, it still wouldn't be any good. The breeding and development of a dragon is counted in thousands of years. A new batch of adepts will invade before our new members have even come of age!
"When this world's coordinates were exposed before the evil adepts, its fate had already been determined!"
Willis closed his eyes in agony.
As the offspring of green dragon clan leader Raistlin and a native human girl, Willis had the mixed bloodline of human and dragon. On one hand, he was a citizen of Dragon Valley; on the other, he was the highest authority of all witcher-knights in the human's kingdom and the most reliable right arm of the human king.
Now he came here bearing the trust and faith of the king, yet he could not convince his conservative and stubborn father. The pain he felt in his heart, as someone split between two factions he loved dearly, was indescribable.
"Father, I know you have no attachment or feelings for those humans. However, your son has travelled hundreds of kilometers to ask of you just this one request! Are you willing to let him go back with empty hands? Please, I beg of you, save the humans and the lives on this plane!"
Raistlin was obviously put in a difficult position when confronted with Willis' emotional appeal. He turned around and argued loudly with the two clan elders. The atmosphere was tense.
Finally, Raistlin turned around once more and roared loudly at Willis, "I respect your decision. If you wish to fight for the humans, you may leave. If any dragons in Dragon Valley wish to follow you, I will not stop them. Remember, the doors of Dragon Valley will always be open for you. I'll welcome you back with open arms any time you are tired, my child!
"You can leave now!"
Willis nodded in anguish when he heard his father and clan leader's words, before turning and leaving the meeting hall.
A short moment later, Willis' impassioned war declaration rang out from above the skies of the tall Dragon Cliff.
For a moment, the dragons raised a commotion as they roared in reply.
Half a day later, three green dragons trailed behind Willis as he dashed across the sky
and disappeared at the horizon's edge.
Green Dragon clan leader Raistlin, who had transformed into a human with Ultimate Transfiguration, stood at the large cave entrance of the meeting hall. He gazed at the silhouettes of the disappearing dragons and spoke softly.
"Singe, did we make the right decision?"
Fourth Grade green dragon elder Singe walked to his side. His massive dragon eyes were steeped in age and glowed with the light of wisdom.
"I've tried my best countless times to divine the future. The leader of the invading adepts is a terrifying Sixth Grade Great Adept. It is virtually impossible to defy him with the power of our clan. Even if we tried our very best, the most we could do is delay the fall of this plane by one or two hundred years. Such a result is meaningless for us green dragons!
"Unless you are able to ask for reinforcements from our progenitors–the Emerald Dragons–we cannot do anything by ourselves. We will only be defeated along with this plane.
"I am only referring to the future vision I've seen through the Dragon Altar. This is only the image that has occurred the most among the myriad possible futures. As for what is to be done, that is up to you, the clan leader, to decide! After all, the fates of all forty clan members in the Dragon Valley lie solely on your shoulders!"
Raistlin gazed into the distance, the light in his eyes dimming and growing faint.
…………
It had been thirteen days since the last great battle.
The witcher-knights that retreated from the forest gave their base up, redirecting their army to the outskirts of Blue Hillock City.
The conclusion of this bloody battle also gave relief to the adepts.
They took advantage of this rare resting opportunity and swarmed into the depths of the woods, massacring the animals and creating new voodoo beasts en masse. Some adepts with unique tricks up their sleeves were also sent to Blue Hillock City, relentlessly harassing the knights' base.
Greem took this opportunity to hide in his underground lab, conducting all sorts of research in secret.
Just a few days earlier, the third batch of reinforcements arrived.
This time, only two adepts came.
One male and one female. However, they were two Third Grade Adepts!
Their arrival instantly filled the entire adepts' base with confidence.
The very next day, the construction of the tower resumed again after its lengthy delay.
At this point, a simple illusion barrier was no longer able to hide the existence of the war tower. If the opponent sent out any more dragon knights, they would be able to clearly see the tall tower the moment they entered Greenland Forest.
The two Third Grade adepts stayed in the camp to slowly get used to the change in planar laws, while the remaining adepts were busy with their own things. Greem had also successfully obtained the information he needed from Adept Hyde.
A hitlist.
A list filled with the names of the rune grandmasters on the knights' plane!
Sadly, almost all of the rune grandmasters were located near the capital of the knights' kingdom and were under heavy protection. Thus, if Greem wanted to get his hands on the profound knowledge on merging runic and life energy, there was no avoiding a long trip to the capital!
And with the current situation, it was impractical to leave the adepts' base to go on a trip in the human's world.
At least until the end of the next battle, Greem could not leave the adepts' base.
The battle in the woods last time had caused tremendous damage to the witcher-knights. However, with the fifteen days of rest and recuperation they received, fresh blood from all over the continent had been able to arrive one after another, replenishing the numbers of the army outside Blue Hillock City. The number of witcher-knights had reached a historic five thousand men!
The storm of war started to brew once more over the edge of Greenland Forest.
The higher-ups in the knights used high and extravagant rewards to attract bounty hunters, adventurers, mercenaries, and even rogues and thieves of all kinds. Greenland Forest was almost akin to an exceptionally lively market because of this. Every day, countless small squads of human adventurers wove their way through the woods, playing a game of cat and mouse with the evil adepts and their terrifying voodoo beasts and ghouls.
Even though most of the squads never returned, as they were turned into materials for the adepts to create more voodoo beasts, there were one or two fortunate squads. The knight commanders pieced together the bits and pieces of information they brought back, and finally managed to get a basic understanding of the forest’s interior.
The adepts' tower in particular was extremely conspicuous and was hard to conceal from the scouts. All the higher-ups were alerted to its existence and it became a thorn in their hearts, a concern that made them lose sleep night after night. If it wasn't for the fact that the powerhouses of the knights' army had yet to arrive, a new battle might have already started.
It was in such a tense situation that Greem excavated an underground palace of his own in a spot three and a half kilometers away from the base.
Using the large number of clay golems and alligator hunters under his command, Greem dug a small underground palace fifteen meters underground, turning it into his personal laboratory and spending every day in there.
There were over twenty rooms in the underground palace, and important magic experiments were being conducted in every one of them.
Four or five glowstones were placed on the dim and wet stone walls of the corridors. They let out a dim light-green radiance, barely enough to make the surrounding area visible.
Greem appeared in the corridor, still engulfed in a thick and heavy robe. After a slight hesitation, he turned and entered the first stone room on the left.
A massive ice pillar was placed on the stone pedestal in the middle of the empty stone room. There was nothing else besides that. However, just this massive ice pillar alone was obviously no common object. Its mere existence caused the temperature of the stone room to drop to a shocking -157°C.
Snow and ice crystals covered the entire room. Even the floorboards, the ceiling, and the walls were entirely covered under a layer of bright blue ice. If these walls hadn't been reinforced and protected by magic arrays, Greem was sure that the chill would spread out of the room, turning the entire underground palace into a world of snow and ice.
The only thing Greem could do in the stone room was stand before the ice pillar and use his own elementium fire to continuously roast the ice pillar. Then he would close his eyes and sense and feel the traces of planar law released from the pillar as the ice melted.
Indeed, this ice pillar was the product left behind in the fight between Second Grade Adept Sir Fügen and the Second Grade Radiant Knight. Sir Fügen had conjured the power of the planar laws to freeze the enemy within to capture him alive. For that reason, the remains of this ice pillar were also a manifestation of planar law of ice fragments.
If Greem hadn't used his fire against it, this force of ice and snow would automatically absorb water elementium from its surroundings to maintain its existence. It would probably be at least one or two months before it would melt on its own. In this period, any living being that dared to touch the pillar would have to endure chill damage as high as thirty degrees.
This was almost as much as the all out attack of an advanced apprentice!
It was clear how powerful Second Grade adepts were. Just a simple spell casually cast would have such terrifying might. Thus, Greem needed to slowly sense the intricacies of the planar law powers within the ice pillar to find the innate difference between First and Second Grade adepts!