Badge in Azure

The Tribunal was filled with powerful ones. The number of people suppressed by the Tribunal was staggering for the past millennium. Very few of those people were killed right away or executed hastily. Most people were imprisoned in the Black Dungeon to serve as research materials.

The divine smiths in the Tribunal had the greatest number of prisoners in the mainland to serve as guinea pigs. The punishers were some of their most matured works.

There were semi-metallic bones and transformable innards, blood vessels and muscles within the bodies of the huge beasts. There was also a mass of flesh and blood and pulsed at the core, which served as a power source to the punishers.

The messy pulp of flesh and blood served as a punisher’s heart, which was also the control center of the beast. The punishers had no brains. Complex holy prose arrays littered within the heads of the beasts, which enabled to store multiple types of divine arts.

There were untold numbers of souls shrieking within a punisher’s heart. The controlled souls were in pain all the time. While the pain was not strong, the souls within knew that they were never able to break free forever, the knowledge of which served as their true source of pain.

The divine smiths did not want the souls to suffer if it was possible, just like it was with the terminators. However, there were also level differences in divine smithing arts, and divine smiths capable of creating terminators were only a handful.

The strength, purity and contained power of those souls were too inferior to serve as cores of terminators. As such, they were only able to be lumped together to serve as the heart of punishers.

While the punisher armies were only 40 thousand-strong, but every punisher had power exceeding that of a golden grand swordmaster. Other than being incapable of flight, those products of divine smiths were near flawless.

It was especially so given the sheer size of the punishers. They were weapons far more ideal for attacking cities than for individual fights. The very reason why the Holy See had never fielded the punishers in their war with Qin so far, was to catch Holy Rock by surprise when they finally attack the city.

However, the magical catastrophe of Daliang City enticed the three young head inquisitors immensely. According to the Tribunal’s records, a battle between humans and gods had taken place in ancient times. The war involved massive numbers of very powerful beings, and tens of millions of gods perished in that battle.

The record had always been thought to be over exaggerated in the past. To the holy masters, the gods should not have been the ones who lost and the number of casualties at the side of the gods should not have been so large.

However, the Tribunal was able to find related supporting evidence when they went about excavating ruins, thinking that they had been ruins of a battlefield below Daliang City. Furthermore, the materials left behind in the ruins would have enabled the Holy See to craft equipment allowing them to conquer the entire mainland.

Daliang City.

The tense atmosphere within the city was never actually loosened. The metal flyers began patrolling, searching for targets in places near Daliang City. The metal flyers became more important by then, as it became unusually difficult for holy masters or mages to fly within the entire region.

The hum of metal flyers seemed to be able to put the army within the city at ease somewhat. The mages within the army served as living proof allowing all troops to know that it was very difficult for mages to fly in such an environment, boosting confidence of their equipment by a considerable margin.

The metal flyers were all fitted with miniaturized magic power furnaces, which were less than capable of supporting a magic net. Saleen ordered for the army to do patrols with them.

While the cost in low level magic nuclei was immense, they were very effective. The troops gradually returned to the state before the magical catastrophe hit. While things were tense, they were next to no feeling of despair seen in the city.

There was no need to worry about the stockpile of food within the city. Qin cities had never been taken due to food shortages.

The magic towers and turrets below the city locked on to the exit of the cemetery of the giant. The three meter-thick dirt seal was weak even to humans, but nothing was heard from within the cemetery and it seemed as if the gods had vanished.

Lex returned the Metal Titan to Metatrin City and went back to Daliang City. Jason’s reply to Saleen made him feel rather exasperated. According to the calculations of the mages from Sreeger Island, if they were to lay a magic net in Daliang City, they would needed more than four months to do so.

Saleen received intel two days later from the images recorded by the metal flyers that the Holy See army had gathered 130 miles away from the city. The metal flyers dared not fly too close as there were enemy holy masters who took flight and attempted to shoot down the metal flyers.

The metal flyers turned tail and went home, and as such, were able to only record blurry images using alchemy binoculars.

That was a camp that stretched out for miles and their numbers were messy. It seemed to be those survivors of the Holy See army before.

There was no doubt that the force consisted of gathered scattered units, which became an effective fighting force as reinforcements from the enemy had arrived.

Furthermore, the force that came later had incredible control powers. Saleen knew very well that the magical catastrophe that he engineered had been a huge blow to even the troops at Daliang City, let alone the allied forces who had it worse.

Saleen was unable to do much but being anxious. Daliang City was hanging high at a height of 500 meters. Other than mages and grand swordmasters, everyone else, including common troops, needed to rely on ropes to leave.

But then, there was little use leaving now, as the Holy See army was already at their doorstep. What was more exasperating was the land that had belonged to Daliang City, had then being rendered under control of the Holy See.

If there had not been a cemetery of the giant sitting right under the city, Saleen would have taken the metal flyers with him to harass the Holy See. But there was no way he was able to leave.

If the dirt seal of the cemetery were to be broken, they would have needed to reseal it soon and help with his Thunder Dragon Blaster would have been required.

If the fossilized gods ended up coming outside, there was simply no way to throw them back in anymore.

A week quickly passed and things in Daliang City had finally returned to normal. Large scale alchemy binoculars were set up at the four corners of the city and within the tall towers. The Holy See army was slowly approaching from the west side of Daliang City.

Saleen climbed up while Lex and the others went to the walls. His Elemental Eye was being limited, but it was still nonetheless able to see further than the alchemy binoculars.

The Holy See fielded 5000 men to serve as vanguards and they were approaching the city slowly. The ground outside Daliang City had collapsed over 50 meters at the very least and in some places, over a hundred meters.

According to the Holy See’s calculations, there would have been many broken places throughout the city and there might even have been walls that have completely collapsed.

The Holy See’s vanguards were able to vaguely see Daliang City when they were about 20 miles away. They were doubting if their eyes were fooling them!

The now-500 meter-tall Daliang City seemed like a spiked up hill instead of a mountain. The collapsed ground around the city formed a flatland, making Daliang City’s height seem very out of place. They were able to see from the silhouette of the city 20 miles away from their alchemy binoculars.

Magic cannons were incapable of attacking yet at such a distance. Saleen saw the enemy slowing down and called the mages in charge of the metal flyers, letting the equipment fly and throw magic fire shells at the enemy.

Saleen ordered Gusion and Sul in secret to ride on two of those flyers and join the fray.

40 metal flyers took to the air hastily and zipped towards enemy territory. A metal flyer was a four-man equipment, requiring at least two person to control. One of those pilots was usually a mid level spirit or at least, a high level magic apprentice.

It was a given that the ones piloting the metal flyers were spirits, given that the Winged Skull was there with them. Gusion and Sul took a flyer respectively, feeling the experience to be very new.

The metal flyers were capable of flying at great speeds and it did not feel stable in flight. Furthermore, the huge rumble resulted from its flight prompted the two to keep their helmets on properly, sealing themselves all over.

The troops piloting the metal flyers laughed heartily as they took the flyers charging at enemy territory. All 40 flyers split up and formed a straight, lowering to a height of around 500 meters when the enemy was about two miles away.

The vanguards of the Holy See consisted of reorganized troops from the crushed allied army before. The force had intended to serve as a gauge to test Daliang City’s military strength. The vanguard officer ordered their men to immediately split when they saw the metal flyers coming.

It was rather difficult for a force of 5000 units to split up immediately. The metal flyers arrived above them in an instant and went about throwing magic fire shells.

The magic fire shells had limited effect on the fossilized gods, but brutally effective at killing conventional armies. The splashed flames were able to burn anything they touched and could not have been doused using water. The 5000-strong force was totally ruined when the 40 metal flyers had just dumped half of the shells carried.

Screams were heard from the inferno for miles. Only the cavalry units who received the order to split the earliest were able to avoid such a brutal fate. However, they were unable to do anything but to watch the infantry units being burned alive.

The hand crossbows armed by the cavalry units only had a range of tens of meters, which meant that they were utterly incapable of doing anything to the metal flyers. The metal flyers circled in the air and three flyers would have taken turns to dump shells on any spot that had troops gathering.

While the magic fire shells were indeed low level equipment, they were not cheap to make. Saleen no longer paid any heed to cost just for the sake of landing heavy blows on the Holy See.

The 40 metal flyers still had about half of their magic fire shells remained with them. As such, they flew further and went another dozen or so miles forward, seeing the second army of the Holy See.

The metal flyers no longer dared to dive and simply resorted to dump all the shells they had in a frenzy above, before turning around to leave.

Two persons from the army took to the air and went after the metal flyers, just as Saleen had predicted.

Both of them held scepters and their black robes billowed. They were both powerful holy masters. Their scepters shone with bright light, encasing their bodies and provided them with flight powers.

Other than magic fire shells, alchemy crossbows were installed on the metal flyers as well. However, there was simply no way for alchemy crossbows in flight to aim at their targets accurately. Saleen had thought of installing Hogina’s Gun on the flyers, but the problem was that the weapon required grand mages to work.

The alchemy crossbows on the metal flyers shot away without a care at the rear. The two holy masters kept their pursuit and paid no heed to the incoming bolts. None of those bolts were even able to glance at their intended target as well.

Two metal flyers halted all of a sudden in the air and dived. Sul and Gusion took flight from the metal flyers at the same time, charging at the incoming holy masters.

Powerful ones of the Holy See’s ground forces with good eyesight were able to tell that there were two holy masters bisected right away by two figures in the air. The bisected bodies then dropped to the ground.

Everyone wanted to back them up but it was too late. The two figures flew away right away, bursting with golden sword aura. They were both golden grand swordmasters.

The two metal flyers that dived let out deafening rumbles when they were about a hundred meters away from the ground, before turning forcefully upwards and headed back to Daliang City.

The holy masters in the army were all dumbfounded. They all knew that like holy masters, mages were reduced to ten percent of what they had been capable of in such an environment. What they did not know was that the golden grand swordmasters were able to maintain full fighting capacity.