Age of Adepts
Chapter 191: Scheming Against Dragons

It was close to dawn when Mary snuck into Herdurand City.

Besides her army of blood servants and vampire spawn, the three adepts Greem, Keoghan, as well as Ferrier, followed her into the city.

They broke straight into the noble's mansion closest to the city square. In less than eight minutes, they had completely taken control of all fifty or so residents within the entire mansion. If it wasn't to avoid outsiders from detecting any abnormalities, the more efficient method would be to kill those residents. They had to have Ferrier, who was adept in brewing potions, turn them into obedient puppets using Heart-Loss Powder.

Ferrier sounded like a very feminine name, but in truth the name’s owner was a very rugged and burly man. According to Keoghan's words in another, more private conversation, Ferrier was actually a female when he advanced to an adept. He had only turned out like this after an accident occurred during an experiment.

Of course, this was only referring to Ferrier's appearance. As for whether Ferrier's gender identity and anatomy was male or female, there was no way to find out. At any rate, Greem and the rest had absolutely no interest in this!

Greem had long despaired when it came to the group known as adepts.

There was no way there could be a normal person amongst those that could advance to adepts!

The passion and thirst with which adepts pursued knowledge was no less than that of the great scientists back on Earth in Greem's previous life. However, while the scientists on Earth had ingenious brains and countless amazing ideas, most of their time was spent huddled up in their labs, not being able to turn the various innovative and unbelievable ideas in their brains into reality.

Thus, the scientists on Earth thought a lot but hardly ever put their thoughts into action. Constrained by the limits of their power, as well as their financial situations, most of their ideas could only remain as dreams.

But this world’s adepts had no such restraint!

They were like a group of liberated mad scientists– not only possessing the insanity of scientists, but the ability to turn their madness into reality!

The latter was what was the most terrifying!

The first thing the group did after they had settled in was to set up a hidden barrier within the mansion, and use strong spells to hide the overly obvious elementium flux radiating from everyone's bodies. Then they hid in their rooms, secretly spying on the two terrifying green dragons curled up on the square that were snoring as they slept.

Greem removed his black adept's robe, and changed into noble's hunting attire that was easy to move around in. This was to avoid being conspicuous. The attire was a tight-fitting set of clothing that nobles would wear when they went on outings, or to play and hunt. The lower half was a pair of leather pants, designed for horse riding. The upper half had two rows of buttons down the front, much like tight-fitting vests from Earth in Greem's previous life.

Greem was two meters in height; with such a neat, crisp, and delicate costume, coupled his handsome looks and long crimson hair flowing over his shoulders, he looked extremely gorgeous.

It had only been a short time since he became an adept, after all. He had yet to have been twisted by the malevolent and peculiar spells of adepts. Thus, with a little dressing up, Greem instantly transformed into a handsome young noble.

Mary, on the other hand, had changed into a bright red muslin dress. She was as beguiling as a bottle of thickly fragrant wine; so captivating it could draw most human men in and drown them.

Dressed in that manner, they were a very fitting pair, resembling a striking nobleman together with a seductive noblewoman. One would look forward to the fantastic scene of these two dancing together within a crowd.

However, the other two adepts looked very unnatural and twisted when they put on a human nobility's clothes. The look of an adept was too strong on them. The savagely cruel look of adepts on their faces couldn't be wiped away.

But neither Keoghan nor Ferrier seemed to care. The two looked at Greem and Mary, and a wicked smile surfaced uncontrollably on their faces.

These two brats that had just advanced to adepts. They still showed too many human emotions and attributes– still too much passion. Now was the time to indulge in debauchery and to immerse themselves in pleasure. Only when they experienced near a century of the vicissitudes of life, enjoyed all the pleasures of authority and beauties that humanity had to offer, would they finally realize that infinite knowledge is the only worthwhile pursuit in an adept’s long journey through life.

Thus, when they saw Greem and Mary, they couldn't help but recall their own period of debauchery and indulgence when they had personally just advanced to adepts. Naturally, the expressions on their faces were really weird.

Greem was in no mood to slowly consider the two elderly adepts’ odd mentality. He went to the front of the large wooden window and pulled aside one edge of the curtain. Greem silently assessed the large green silhouette, of which he could only see a vague outline at this distance.

Because he could not cast spells freely here, Greem had to rely on the chip's passive probing ability to silently feel the green dragons’ power.

"How is it? Did you find anything?" Keoghan went to the other side of the wooden window and snuck a look out of it, much like Greem was doing.

"These should be two barely adolescent green dragons. One is male and the other is female. As for their power… I can't get a good enough look from here, so I only have a simple estimation…" Greem's forehead was all scrunched up. Clearly, the green dragons' power was the most important thing he had to figure out.

"Oh? You can tell whether it’s male or female?" Keoghan, who was standing right beside him, paused for a second, rubbed his eyes, and stared intensely at the dragons; but still, the only thing he could see were the perfect and smoothly flowing lines of their emerald-scaled bodies. Keoghan couldn't see any distinguishing characteristics on their bodies that would betray their genders.

"Hurhur…" Greem let out an awkward laugh, "Don't think of finding any obvious gender characteristics on their bodies. You need to look at the dragon horns and their build. The one on the left has horns that are large and rough. The degree at which they curve is also larger, along with the slightly larger build definitely makes it a male. The one on the right has shorter and slimmer horns, as well as a slightly slimmer build, which makes that a female."

Having had Greem explain this to him, Keoghan looked at the dragons one more. As expected, he managed to spot these tiny differences that differentiated the dragons.

"These are also things you read in books?" Keoghan asked, shocked.

"It is introduced in the seventh chapter of the third volume of The Tome of Giant Dragons. There were also some descriptions pertaining to this in the Encyclopedia of Dragonspeak’s summary… and also… " Greem replied in a serious manner.

"Wait. Wait. Wait…… where did you read all of these books? Have you actually been planning to go dragon slaying?" Keoghan was so stunned, his mouth was wide open.

"It's all stuff I happened to flipped through at the Underground World's adept tower library. I just happened to memorize them…"

"……"

Keoghan tilted his head and looked at Greem like he was a monster. He couldn't help but mutter, "You little brat, do you actually have perfect memory? I don't understand… I don't understand…"

Then, Keoghan couldn't help but follow up with a question, "Since you can identify the genders of the dragons, can you tell the power of the two dragons before us?"

Greem twitched his mouth and replied, "Even green dragon whelps have adept-level power. These dragons are already adolescents, so their individual rank must be above Second Grade… but considering that they are still young, and the lack of elementium in this plane, they must not have reached Third Grade yet. Their power levels are probably just barely above Second Grade, or in the middle of Second Grade."

Keoghan nodded. He agreed with Greem's judgement.

Even though the two green dragons had yet to reach the shocking Third Grade, just their Second Grade power was enough to roll over the four of them. To put it in more blunt and pessimistic terms– just these two green dragons were enough to obliterate the adepts' forward base!

While the two were conversing softly, Mary pushed open the door and walked into the room.

"We got the things. They’re all at the kitchen downstairs." Mary couldn't help but cover her nose, and wave her hand before it, "They really stink! I am definitely not touching them."

Ferrier smiled slightly, and turned to leave the room.

Dragon feces were something most people would avoid. For potions masters such as himself, they were a very decent brewing ingredient. Moreover, wasn't the reason everyone dragged ‘him’ out here to have ‘him’ brew a potion specifically designed for dragons?

The dragons, having a powerful physique and exceptional magic resistance, would be immune to most low-grade spells. Normal poison and paralyzing drugs would also have no effect. Thus, trying to kill them with poison was only a fantasy, but using it to incapacitate them for a while was still possible.

External curses and offensive spells had no way of penetrating the scales of the green dragons. Naturally, crossbows and daggers were even less effective. Thus, any external attacks were unlikely to have an effect without alerting the Third-Grade Dragon Knights.

Using potions to drug a dragon would be a very unreliable tactic in most situations, but it was the most suitable in this one.

To ensure that the two green dragons' lives were comfortable, the city hall had even specially hired a group of paupers to take care of them. Transporting fresh livestock for them, cleaning the remains of their meals, as well as their feces. This work was extremely dangerous and most peasants would never do such work. It was only the paupers. who were willing to do anything for a spoon of rice, that would take such risks.

As such, Mary sent out a couple of vampire subordinates to bribe some pauper servants with large amounts of money, and have them secretly cart out some of the green dragons' feces and saliva. With these things, the professional potions master Ferrier could brew a potion specifically targeted at, and strong enough to knock out, the green dragons!

Ferrier set up a small secret room downstairs to focus on mixing the potion, while Mary sent out large numbers of her vampire subordinates all across the city to gather information regarding the inner workings of Herdurand. Greem and Keoghan, on the other hand, were standing guard by the window, silently observing the green dragons.

The operation was designated for tonight, as information showed that there would be another large-scale feeding session before midnight. Therefore, if they had any plans, they had to be based around this feeding session.

Yet, just as dusk arrived, something happened on the square!

One of the dragon knights exited the castellan's quarters under the company of a crowd. After some quick farewells, he leapt onto one of the dragons and took to the skies, whistling towards the east.

That was where Blue Hillock City was!