Badge in Azure

Nailisi chased after Saleen. “Master, that guy wanted to steal Her Highness Lex but he wasn’t able to. Don’t do anything stupid…”

Saleen wanted to turn around and slug her in the face, but he did not have time. If he lost sight of his target, who was a level ten assassin, it would be difficult for even his Elemental Eye to detect him when he concealed himself again.

Agares had probably been in the fish’s stomach for a long time. Saleen had not been aware of Agares’ presence, and that meant that his worries had been real.

Agares’ laughter had completely disappeared. Saleen was distracted by Nailisi, and he lost Agares. Agares seemed like he had never been there in the first place. Even under close scrutiny of the Elemental Eye, there was no trace of human activity in the portal to be found.

Saleen slowed down. He had powerful defenses, but they would not be able to resist Agares’ dagger. The dagger had emerged completely unscathed even after being attacked by his Eye of Lightning.

Sika and Nailisi came to his side immediately after he slowed down, taking their place by his flanks, protecting him.

Sul dared not act tough. Agares did not manage to harm Sul with his kick, as the starline cloth armor negated Agares’ attack. If Sul went up front however, he would get in Saleen’s way. He and Cuisi took the rear, on guard against any other tricks the enemy might try against them.

Eleanor held onto the Seven Nights and followed close behind. She regretted not burning lifeforce and shooting the assassin. Agares was the strongest foe that Saleen had to face, but he was the deadliest.

Saleen was still unable to figure out how Agares was able to take both of his underlings and hide them. The two women were at the pinnacle of level nine. Their equipment looked unassuming, but their hardness exceeded crystallized metal.

All three assassins combined their powers and attacked, but they were unable to break Sika’s weapon. The triangular bone piece looked small, but it was not much weaker than Sika’s staff. All of the powerful knights who served beside the third head inquisitor perished by the triangular bone piece, after all.

“Keep a close formation.” Saleen solemnly reminded his people. Agares could not kill them with a single strike, but the same could not be said for the others.

“Master, should I summon the demons?” Nailisi asked for Saleen’s opinion.

“No can do. Assassins can latch onto demons. The greater the number we have on our side, the greater the edge the assassins would get.” Saleen stopped Nailisi.

If they were up against common folk, sheer numbers would be useful. Even beings as powerful as the pope and armed with godly items would have to expend energy to kill.

However, assassins excelled in one thing: ambush. They were capable of bringing massive offensive capacity in a split second. If the place were filled with demons, Agares might have even been able to move between the demons’ shadows and lay in wait for an opportunity to strike.

Saleen buffed them with three level seven Water Shields. The shields were incapable of stopping Agares’ attacks, but they would diminish the impact. Furthermore, they would alert Saleen.

Saleen was incapable of buffing his people with level ten Water Shields. It would only work at level ten when he used it on himself.

Agares disappeared into the darkness and Saleen cast hundreds of Fluorescence, shining light 200 meters away. Assassins excelled in striking in the dark, so Saleen made sure that there was no darkness in close vicinity. At level ten, the Fluorescence spells spent as much as energy as walking.

The portal leading to the temple was huge. Saleen walked for over ten miles before seeing the temple’s gate.

The temple’s gates were shut and there was a hole a little over the size of a grown man. The hole was obviously fresh. There was a word written beside the hole in Qin: coward.

It was Qin slang. It was obvious that Agares never intended to ambush Saleen along the way to the temple; he was moving all the way forward and carved a hole at the door when he saw the gates.

If Saleen had been quick, he would have been able to catch up to Agares before the assassin reached the gate.

It was tremendously difficult to destroy the gates of the temple. Agares had no divine means of entering like Saleen did, so he had to do so through sheer brute force, and that took time.

Saleen had not been angered by Agares. He had simply cast Cleaning to wipe the words off, but when the light of his magic reached the word, the black ink transformed into a venomous snake, which lashed out at Saleen.

If he had not been cautious and had simply passed through the hole, the snake would have attacked.

Saleen conjured a mist and the snake was immediately cut up into pieces by the snowflakes. Saleen cast a water ball and wrapped up the pieces of the snake.

The water ball was over two meters wide, but it turned pitch black in the blink of an eye.

The snake had not been high level, but the potency of its venom surprised Saleen. Saleen tapped at the shenhe at his hips. Rossen came out, and Saleen pointed at the venom-filled water ball. “Can you eat this up?”

The water puppet nodded. “It’s just venom. It can harm a physical body, but it can do nothing to energy.”

Saleen realized something. The venom had sacrificed any attribute for harming souls to gain massive potency against a flesh and blood body. Once the venom touched the body, there was no way of detoxifying the body. The only way to survive was to give up one’s body and transfer one’s soul elsewhere.

Unless one had means like the great head inquisitor, transference of a soul would cause massive damage to the soul. It would result in diminished powers and dimmed intelligence.

“Hold on, master!” Nailisi came up and stopped the water puppet. If the water puppet absorbed the venom, it would earn the water puppet another attribute.

However, the water puppet had been a mage, which meant that he was already capable of casting poison-type magic. It seemed like a bad deal to have Rossen ingest the poison.

Nailisi took out a magic bug egg and threw it into the venom-filled water ball.

The magic bug dissolved. Nailisi asked her master in an awkward tone, “Master, can you please dilute it with ten more water balls?”

There was no way for Saleen to catch up to Agares, so he conjured ten more water balls and diluted the venom. Saleen’s Elemental Eye watched everything closely and found the venom to be alive.

That meant that the venom itself had life and was capable of reproduction. Even after adding ten water balls, the potency of the venom was barely even halved.

Nailisi took out another magic bug egg and threw it into the venom. The egg hatched immediately, turning into a cute green worm.

The worm did not grow just after ingesting the venom. It stopped growing after reaching the size of a human middle finger, and then began laying eggs.

Saleen thought they would have to wait for quite a bit, but the magic bug died after laying its eggs. The new magic bugs hatched quickly, and the cycle repeated itself. The number of bugs grew tens of times with each cycle. After the cycle repeated itself five times, the number of magic bugs had exceeded 100 thousand, even after some devoured each other.

Nailisi let out a shrill voice. The magic bugs stopped devouring each other and laying eggs. She let out short, rushed, and weird syllables, which resembled the noise made by rats chewing on wood.

One bug looked like a caterpillar, which not even a peasant would find terrifying. However, having hundreds of thousands of them squishing within the huge ball of water was rather unsettling and disgusting.

The magic bugs absorbed the last bit of venom before dropping to the ground.

Nailisi continued issuing commands. Hundreds of thousands of magic bugs rushed into the hole in the gate. Saleen and the others had felt considerable relief.

Nailisi explained, “Relax, people. The bugs aren’t going to attack us, as long as we don’t touch them. The bugs will spray venom if they blow up from being attacked.”

Everyone felt relieved hearing that. Magic bugs were food for demons, but there were some that were so powerful that even demons dared not hunt them.

The most powerful attack that the magic bugs were capable of was spraying venom. They had long lifespan. If they had not been forcefully grown and were allowed to reproduce normally, they would be able to live for 20 to 30 years.

“Master, the bugs will be able to spread all over the temple, and I’d know even if one of them dies.” Nailisi bragged to Saleen. “The magic bugs’ venom mutated. Even if Agares was immune to the original venom, he will be afraid of this one.”

The way that Nailisi did it looked unassuming, but it was the best course of action at the moment. Saleen was capable of doing something similar, but it cost him a huge amount of magic chords.

Agares had left the snake behind to cause stress to Saleen, however, the plan backfired, and Nailisi had used it to her advantage, breeding huge number of magic bugs to do her bidding instead.

Agares’ skills as an assassin might have been formidable, but there was no way he would be able to latch on to bugs the size of a finger. He would not be able to use the bugs’ shadows to his advantage either. If he were capable of such feats, Agares would be level 13 instead of level ten.

There had indeed been level 13 assassins recorded in history, but when compared to level 13 mages, they were hardly worth mentioning. Near the end of one’s advancement, any other professions looked weak to mages.

When a mage advanced beyond level 13, they became capable of fighting for prolonged periods, and warriors lost their edge.

Saleen followed the venomous bugs into the temple, which looked different than the ones Saleen had visited and taken apart before. For some reason, the Goddess of Myers never used the same designs to build two temples.

The halls were connected to one another. Agares was not in the first one. Saleen saw the bugs wiggle their way into the first one, so he left it behind and went to the next hall.

“Master, nothing…” Nailisi was incapable of controlling all of the bugs at once. She was only able to tell if they were killed. Two consecutive halls were filled with the green bugs, but there was no trace of Agares.

“We’ll go to the last hall, and we’ll start taking things apart.” Saleen came up with countermeasures immediately.