Badge in Azure

The 300-meter illusion seemed to look tangible all of a sudden, bursting out from the vicinity of the magic tower and leaping a mile away. The scene was frightening to behold. It was after all, a 300 meter giant covering more than a mile with just one leap.

Saleen even felt his mind wavering for a brief moment, recalling the days when there were actual giants to help ancient humans conquer other planes. How tall were those giants? It was said that giants about a mile tall actually existed, and one of the oldest in existence was actually capable of taking up the space of one entire plane.

The illusory giant was one skill in Lex’s arsenal of rare skills. With the enemy only about two miles away, the illusory giant got within range of the dozen of remaining living holy masters with just another step.

Jola felt frustrated. While he had been able to pinpoint the holy master’s whereabouts, the holy master would have switched to another body whenever he killed one of them. The black and white hole still devoured power in a frenzy and Jola had to resist it while attacking, resulting in him being able to use less than 10% of his true power. If it was not for the fact that the enemy was still a low enough level for him to handle, he would have turned tail and run.

The illusory giant came and clapped its hands. Jola dived in a hurry.

Jola was a golden grand swordmaster. The speed at which he dived exceeded even that of mages. The dozen remaining holy masters still maintained the power-absorbing hole, yet they were quickly reduced to mush at the hands of the illusory giant.

The illusory giant squeezed with its hand and the bunch of flesh and blood blew up right there and then. Nicholas took to the air in elation, absorbing slivers of something from that bunch of messy flesh and blood into his Scepter of the Fallen.

Nicholas’ action had been risky. The Winged Skull cursed under their breath. I’ve never seen that old fart so happy before, and was he trying to get me killed? The Winged Skull drew a line the air slowly with the Reaper Scythe, separating Nicholas from the power-absorbing bicolored hole, before yanking Nicholas by his beard and dragging him down to the ground.

Nicholas yelled in pain but the Winged Skull paid him no heed. They resisted the hole simply to buy Jola time to kill the rest of the holy masters, yet the old fart showed up and had the Winged Skull spend at least half of their power with their last attack.

If it had not been for Lex’s giant, the Winged Skull had no idea how long they would have lasted.

The huge hole was being attacked by the giant as well. Having clapped all of the remaining living holy masters to death, the only powerful soul ended up being absorbed by Nicholas.

The giant was a skill casted by Lex, and the skill absorbed more than half of her powers, which made it odd among level nine spells. However, the power supply came mostly from the magic arrays she set. It was the dream of many mages to be able to combine spells and arrays to perform attacks.

Lex retreated back into the magic tower cautiously, holding a magic nucleus to replenish her powers. While she might have killed a lot of enemies and lost only a few spirits on her side, Lex feared being ill-prepared against a level ten professional. Saleen’s one attack depleted all of the Thunder Dragon Blaster’s energy, rendering the weapon a dead weight for an hour.

There would have still been enemies emerging, and quickly.

Nicholas and the others hurried back to the magic tower. The Winged Skull packed up the spirits and summoned them back to spirit space. All of spirits were painstakingly trained and their combat capacity was leagues above those untrained ones.

The Winged Skull had been fast enough in collecting the spirits, but another army showed up outside the mountain. The army consisted of Blood Knights and wardens, and they charged their way in. The army of about 10,000 quickly reduced the spirits the Winged Skull had not been able to collect to pulp.

Saleen thought for a bit and had the Winged Skull fly back to the magic tower. He then activated the magic power furnace and headed for Daliang City, leaving more than 600 spirits behind.

The mighty ones looked on with gaping mouths as their enemy ran and ditched the spirits. They were unable to do anything about it.

They had no idea that the Magical Element Tower was incapable of attacking while in flight. The imposing 24-floored tower had the holy masters looking totally dazed.

The reason that Saleen ran was because Lex had not gotten enough rest, and he did not want to field Sika yet. It was top priority head to Daliang City and crush their enemies there using the War Drum of Fear. Luring enemies in the mountains was not the right way to fight a war.

Saleen found the Holy See’s weakness after clashing with them several times, and that was their mighty ones might have appeared in droves, but they were not as powerful as mages in battle. As for the ones from Cloudflow, they were still mages and they hated more than anything to be bossed around by holy masters. As such, they were reluctant to fight with all their might.

The holy masters were only powerful in terms of their level, as they have advanced so quickly that they did not have enough time to master the tactics to fight high level professionals. One notable example was the troublesome holy masters back there. While they might have brought more than 200 others and that made them very hard to kill, they were unable to do much when they were faced with someone like Saleen, who packed powerful gear. One shot practically decimated the entire group.

If those 200 had not been tied to a single being, Saleen would have been able to kill one with each shot, regardless of how powerful his Thunder Dragon Blaster was.

Professionals who had their powers forcefully upgraded were inferior to those who built their powers over time through experience. Saleen suddenly developed a new insight regarding the army surrounding Daliang City. The enemy was trying to shorten the time taking Daliang City through sheer numbers.

Holy masters were now plentiful among the ranks of the Holy See, and they were no longer in a pinch like when attacking Metatrin City. Even Nicholas would have been able to command an expeditionary force of 100,000.

The Holy See now had no qualms over using newly advanced high level holy masters as cannon fodder, which meant that they had developed ways of creating holy masters in droves. What Saleen felt more distressing was what actually happened within the walls of Holy City.

Theisio had advanced to level ten recently, so recent that he hadn’t heard of it.

If Theisio had been a level ten professional for a considerable time, he would have been able to rearrange and unify the Holy See’s powers with the God Grace Staff and Bramble Crown. Saleen felt that Theisio, when armed with two godly items, would have had powers comparable to Fycro, regardless that he had only advanced to such heights recently.

Saleen headed for Daliang City. Whenever the Magical Element Tower came across enemy camps along the way, it stopped for a bit and dumped all failed scrolls down on the enemy.

Daliang City had received news of Saleen coming. The Magical Element Tower landed within Lex’s palace. However, he did not put the tower away; he simply let it stood to serve as Lex’s residence.

The total amount of military units within Daliang City had reached more than 600 thousand, and that was without taking consideration of more than 200 thousand auxiliary troops present.

The officers and ministers close to Lex came to pay their visits. Only Gusion, leader of the Dragon-slaughtering Mercenary Group, came to see Saleen with his men.

Saleen saw Gusion to be how he had always been. The only notable difference being Gusion’s level had advanced considerably. His armor and weapons were still the ones that Saleen gifted him. That Dragon Slaughtering War Flag hone with golden sword aura.

“Gusion, tell me about how Daliang City was doing.” With Lex being absent all this while, Saleen wanted to know something deeper from the mercenary veteran. The thoughts of the mercenaries were different from the nobles. Saleen needed different perspectives on things in order to figure out how to deal with the Holy City army at their gates.

He could have, of course, simply charged outside and slaughtered everyone using the War Drum of Fear. That method would draw out the mighty ones in the enemy ranks. However, it was a very dangerous move to pull. Having seen what Theisio had been capable of, Saleen deemed it unwise to pull such risky maneuvers. The mighty ones in the Tribunal hardly ever made themselves known. For instance, Van Gogh. Saleen had never heard of him before, yet he was powerful enough to almost kill Saleen.

“My liege, you’re here!” Gusion said with a frustrated tone.

“Yeah? Gusion, are the people not treating you right?”

“Indeed, my liege. Sul said he wanted to focus on training all of the sudden and cooped himself up underground, never seen again for half a year. I’m the only one who followed you, and they gave me the worst of everything,” Gusion said in a very irked tone.

“Weren’t you in charge of defending the palace?” Saleen frowned. Gusion is one of my people, how is possible for the people of Daliang to treat him like that? Furthermore, the mercenaries still consisted of 10,000 elites. Didn’t Daliang City need such force with them?

“It’s happened recently, my liege. The mages from the Grukos took over all command in Daliang City, which included the right to distribute provisions. There is no one left in the palace in charge of anything. Even Master Stephanie refused to come out of the magic tower.”

Saleen’s frown became even more apparent. Arbola made it very clear that she had made them his, which meant that they needed to at least listen to Lex’s orders. But from how the sorcerers behaved, it seemed that there was a change with things.

Jalin!

Saleen recalled all of a sudden. Jalin never showed up ever after he came to Daliang City.

It had to be Jalin. It was thanks to her that the sorcerers from Golden Plains changed their attitude. However, Saleen needed men to serve him and he was unable to do anything untoward to them.

Seeing Saleen in deep thought, Gusion added in panic, “my liege, forget I said anything. I’m not the only one in trouble. There has been a change in commanding personnel in many battalions.”

“Wait, what? We are not organizing things that way!”

“It’s Master Jalin’s orders. The military organization was changed shortly after she came, and it was done very quickly.”

“Master Jalin! Heh…” Saleen snorted. He turned around and asked Sika, “how are the temple guards organized now?”

“Ten, mostly demons,” Sika answered plainly.

“Expand it to 12, and give Gusion a place. The two teams don’t need to have demons as the main force.”

Sika shrugged. She was just a regent and from Saleen’s tone, he seemed to have forgotten that he was the king of Metatrin.

“Gusion, let me look at the provisions that Lex assigned for you later. Your mercenaries are not among the temple guards. Yours will be the eleventh. From here on out, you report to no one, and only I and Lex will get to command your armies. Ignore the sorcerers.”

Saleen panted for a bit after he finished. Things could easily get messy with all the help involved. It was a pity that his men were too scattered at the moment. Nailisi was still holding the line back in Ceylon City. There was no one he was able to mobilize from Lonestar City, and it was the same with Royal Harbor.

The only place he could have mobilized people from was Metatrin City. The problem, however, was that Grand Duke Iron Blood had taken Lianyun City, which was not that far away from Metatrin City. A distance at sea of about five to six thousand miles could easily be covered by the grand duke’s forces within two days.

Heh, like I care. I’ll just let Jalin suffer then. Since there is no way I can simply fall out with Jalin, I’ll just take things slow with her. It was natural instinct that made Saleen try to kill Jalin the last time. This time, he intended to draw things out.