Mage Adam-Chapter "373"

The Gray Wolf Tribe — the name itself was unremarkable, yet it was their defining trait. They were literally a pack of gray wolves that could walk upright, not the extraordinary werewolves of the Dragon Plane.

The other tribes scattered through the mountain forests were much the same — none of them were born as extraordinary creatures.

Adam suspected this was because extraordinary beings only came into existence after the birth of the Fourth Era. Their bodies carried distinct traits of the Fourth Era, which prevented them from being accepted by these remnant planes.

The battle between the two tribes erupted instantly. There was no posturing or ritual challenge — they went all out from the start, as though locked in mortal enmity.

When the Gray Wolf Tribe unleashed their vital energy, it manifested as the element of wind. Against the pandas’ fire-aspected energy, it offered no advantage.

The pandas were simple-minded, but their innate physique completely crushed that of the wolves. Once the initial chaos settled, the pandas, aided by the Forest Elves’ direction and support, quickly stabilized the battle.

The wolves, however, had one defining trait: unity and obedience. The Wolf King’s commands were followed without question — even if it meant certain death.

Moreover, the Gray Wolves outnumbered the pandas many times over. Though weaker individually, they showed no signs of breaking.

Amid the blood and flames, even these seemingly cute creatures displayed the grit of warriors — though, to Adam’s eyes, it still wasn’t nearly enough.

The opposing Wolf King had yet to act. Adam, too, held back, observing. He noticed something peculiar.

Among these martial warriors, the concept of battle formations didn’t exist. Though they stood on a battlefield, separated by sides, once combat began, everyone fought individually. This primitive way of war gave Adam sudden inspiration.

“Lina,” Adam asked, “what do you think?”

Lina scoffed. “With equal strength, and without being outnumbered by several times, the Forest Elves could wipe them out without a scratch.”

“So my earlier assumption was wrong. The Qianyuan Realm is nothing like the Mages’ World. Martial warriors are nothing like mages. For mages, as long as the enemy isn’t ninth-rank, coordinated low-rank mages can bring them down. But martial warriors lack the concept of legion warfare. Which means… I don’t need to spend time building a faction. Here, only personal strength matters. They have no means of countering someone stronger.”

“Survival of the fittest?” Adam shook his head. “A deformed social model.”

With that conclusion, everything before him lost its appeal. Adam leapt into the fray, carefully controlling every strand of power. Within a two-hundred-meter radius, the pandas were blasted aside, while the wolves fell in heaps of mangled flesh.

Adam tore through the battlefield like a meat grinder, ending the war single-handedly in the shortest possible time.

Even the Wolf King, a second-rank martial warrior, collapsed after a single claw strike. Adam casually knocked him out and tossed him aside — the Wolf King couldn’t die yet. Adam needed the wolf’s martial techniques, whether from his mouth or his mind.

The pandas stared, dumbstruck, as Adam turned the battlefield into a storm of blood. When the last of the gray wolves died, they cheered and rushed forward — only to find Adam didn’t say a word before taking off into the sky.

“Where’s Bamboo Rice going?” Smoker asked Lina in confusion.

“To sweep clean the entire forest,” she replied.

———

In a single day, Adam blitzed through twelve tribes, annihilating them one by one. He remembered the mission’s requirements and refrained from total slaughter, sparing the young ones who hadn’t yet reached martial rank, along with their chieftains.

Even wandering martial warriors in the forest were captured.

When he returned to the Panda Tribe, Adam no longer had any interest in conversing with them. With the forest’s resources secured for ten years, he had already done enough for them.

After ordering the Forest Elves to block the pandas from entering, Adam took Lina and Garfield to interrogate the captured tribal leaders, hoping to extract their martial inheritances.

The questioning was done individually.

Just as Sandy had warned, they valued their techniques more than life itself. They would rather die by self-detonating their Martial Cores than reveal anything to Adam.

After three consecutive suicides, Adam paused.

There were countless ways to kill oneself, so why did they all choose to self-detonate their cores? Thinking back to how he had obtained the Fiery Sake Art from Bamboo Leaf’s core, Adam realized sharply: the true inheritance must reside within the Martial Cores themselves.

That simplified things. Since they sought death, Adam obliged. He killed them all and harvested their cores, swallowing them whole. As expected, he acquired their techniques smoothly.

This crude method could only be used by an outsider like Adam. Once a Martial Core dissolved inside a body, it built a second internal cycle and began altering cells — which would inevitably clash with an existing cycle. Martial warriors called this deviation into madness.

But Adam had no such problem. He could easily control foreign energy entering his body, and Garfield could suppress his internal cycles, extracting information without absorbing energy.

The techniques proved crude, no more advanced than the primitive Fiery Sake Art — at best cultivating a martial warrior to the second rank.

Adam also noticed that every technique so far only manifested basic elemental powers when vital energy was released. He doubted that the martial system could truly be so simple. If that were the case, how could they have dominated the last era? There had to be more profound methods.

And the only way to obtain them… was to leave this place, kill more people, and harvest more Martial Cores.

“It’s time to leave. I’m sure Sandy and the others won’t miss such an opportunity. We need to truly step into and crush Qianyuan Mortal Realm No. 5, and join up with them.”

As impurities of foreign energy vented from Adam’s body, Garfield coalesced into form and asked, “Are we taking the pandas with us?”

Adam shook his head. “No. They’re useless now. My initial idea was wrong — moving alone is the fastest. The Qianyuan Mortal Realm isn’t worth wasting time on. The true inheritances must lie in the Sacred Realm.”

“Master, I think you should’ve done this from the start,” Garfield said eagerly. “Those stupid pandas were nothing but a burden. Apart from slowing you down, they were useless.” His eyes glimmered with excitement. Though he had become a Seed Lifeform, his devilish nature hadn’t changed. Of all Adam’s missions, he had enjoyed the Dragon Plane the most — sowing chaos single-handedly, overturning an entire world. That was what thrilled him. Steady, step-by-step development? That was boring.