Badge in Azure

Saleen used violent means of taking the halls apart. While it was very crude, it had gotten Agares flustered. He wanted very much to stop Saleen, but it would expose him.

The simplest methods were the most difficult to deal with.

Agares was able to do nothing but watch Saleen take the halls apart, bagging everything into his space equipment. Even though Agares only wanted anything useful to assassins for himself, he felt a heartache. If he sold all of the material, it’d have made the royal family far wealthier than the local nobles.

Even in their current state of affairs, Qin still had more than one-third of their nobles under control. Agares’ royal family, however, only held sway over less than ten percent of their nobles. It would be a lie to say that he felt nothing about their state of affairs. He would not have dumped his position of emperor to his brother instead of being one himself after all.

Becoming an emperor was not in the way of him being an assassin. He only gave up the position because he felt his efforts were futile and felt dejected.

Grand Duke Iron Blood was not the only forceful noble within the Cloudflow Empire. People like him were all over the place, but the royal family could not afford to take on all of them by force.

If the royal family killed all of their local nobles, it would be reduced to an empty shell. There was nothing to be gained from it.

Saleen came before the steps of the next hall and kept his hands behind him. Sika and Nailisi, who were both standing by his side, monitored their surroundings. If Agares’ illusion showed one more time on the plaza, Saleen would shoot six lightning icicles from his left arm.

He kept his hands behind him to conceal the Thunder Dragon Blaster. The lightning icicles curved when they were shot, coming right before Agares’ illusion when he showed. Six lightning icicles flickered as they conjured an electrical web, blocking any escape for the illusion.

Two icicles were shot into the illusion itself. The projectiles exploded with crackling sparks. The illusion was shocked until it dissolved in the flow of electricity. Saleen was able to vaguely hear the pained wail of the soul within the illusion. Even a soul projection would be harmed when shocked.

Agares dared not stay any longer after he was ambushed by Saleen. He rushed along the path on the right, lurking in the statues’ shadows.

Saleen smirked coldly. While he was unable to find Agares, it felt just fine getting rid of the assassin’s illusion. If Agares showed up, he would have his last icicle lock onto the assassin. Regardless of if it would kill Agares, it would create an opening for Nailisi and Sika to attack. So long as the enemy was exposed, there was nothing an assassin could do to fend off attacks from both Sika and Nailisi.

Agares did not show after a few seconds passed. Saleen laughed, filling the hall with his thunderous sound.

Agares came before the temple’s portal and heard Saleen’s laughter from afar, as well as that sarcastic word.

“Coward indeed! Hahahaha…”

That was something that Agares had left for Saleen at the gates, which was then returned to him word for word. Agares’ expression remained unchanged. The ground was filled with magic bugs. He simply stepped on them and rushed outside the portal.

That was to tell Saleen that he had left. He would no longer be able to hear anything more that Saleen had to say.

“Master, Agares left through the portal.” Nailisi sighed in relief. Agares was so good at lurking and concealing himself that it made everyone around tightly wound.

“I know.” Saleen smirked. He felt pleased with himself. Killing an illusion was nothing worth getting excited about, but he learned some secrets about the assassin’s illusion. If Agares used it next time, he might as well expose himself. The Mark of Lightning was etched on the soul for good.

Assassins were not mages. Every illusion they created was identical, both in appearance and in energy fluctuation signatures, especially when a soul projection was involved, as it had no room for mistakes.

Saleen had no fear of Agares alone. What he was wary about were the two female assassins that Agares was bringing with him. If both of them burst with level ten attacks, it would trigger his Figure of Fate. If that happened, he would no longer be safe when he had to deal with Agares’ attacks later.

It was fortunate that he had spent quite some time training in the Imperial City of the Abyss. There was no way he could resist Agares’ temptations.

Agares left the portal as quickly as he was able to. He came to the fish’s stomach and the two female assassins revealed themselves behind him.

“Your Highness, you’re hurt!”

“No.” Agares shook his head and added, “That was simply the illusion being destroyed. I can’t use it against him anymore.”

“Is he that powerful?” The other assassin gasped in surprise.

“His skills, level, and equipment were more powerful than I anticipated. He didn’t simply rise because Lex was backing him. The spies were trash, feeding me with completely useless intel.” Agares said angrily. His spies were all over the mainland and he had accumulated quite a lot of information on Saleen. He had planned on moving against the mage for quite some time.

In Agares’ mind, he was an emperor, so his target should also be high profile people if he derived any sense of satisfaction from his assassinations. He mentioned killing Theisio, and it was not a lie. It was but a distant goal, one that needed to wait until he was done crafting all pieces of equipment required.

Emperors, princes, lords, and dukes of every single nation on the mainland were Agares’ targets. He did not bother lifting even a finger against common folk.

“What should we do then?” the two female assassins asked.

“What should we do?” Agares turned around and looked at the portal. He had no way of destroying the portal, but portal lay within the fish’s stomach.

“Hehehe, you two, help me out.” Agares took out three bottles, giving one to each of them and leaving one for himself. “I’ve done some calculations. If Saleen intended to bag everything inside, he’d need more than six hours. I bet he won’t even leave the statues behind.”

“Understood.” The two female assassins took over the bottles and poured a drop of pink liquid out of each of them. The pink liquid was suspended by their powers and hovered before them. Both female assassins mimicked Agares and took out another bottle each, and poured some goo inside, wrapping it outside the two drops of pink liquid.

The pink liquid was pain-inducing drugs, the highest level of pharmaceuticals capable of being crafted by alchemist on Myers Mainland. If the liquids were coated on weapons, they would cause their enemies to die of excruciating pain.

A single drop, smaller than the tip of a needle, could be used to make huge amounts of sensitivity pharmaceuticals when diluted. It was useful for heightening a human’s mental powers and sensory powers. Agares had a lot of pain-inducing pharmaceuticals, and he brought them all out just to make Saleen suffer.

Agares knew that his trap would not be enough to harm Saleen. But then again, they were inside the fish’s body, and the fish was a mega-sized magic beast. The fish only needed to open its mouth and suck to tear a Cloudflow armada apart.

If he did not use such a massive magic beast to his advantage, Agares could not call himself an assassin.

The portal was about four meters across. Agares laid out the trap. Even a level ten sorcerer would have no choice but to take it apart through brute force. If the trap was broken, the gooey balls suspended elsewhere in the fish’s stomach would drop into the fish’s stomach acids.

Agares took the two female assassins with him when he was done laying the trap. From the fish’s perspective, the three of them were smaller than ants, so they had no problem slipping out of the fish’s mouth.

The gooey balls suspended in the air were all about to fall and the portal turned unstable after six hours. Saleen’s silhouette was seen at the other end of the portal at that moment.

Saleen caught sight of the trap at the other end of the portal. Nailisi was in Sensory Sharing state, so she simply summoned several thousand magic bugs and had them rush at the trap, breaking it down in mere moments.

The trap would release incredibly toxic gases at their targets. Saleen simply dispelled them with a Cleaning spell and the balls suspended faraway dropped into the fish’s stomach acids. The goo at the surface of the balls was impervious to poison, but was incredibly susceptible to acids. The balls quickly dissolved after they dropped into the stomach acids.

The pain-inducing pharmaceuticals were quickly absorbed into the fish’s bloodstream. It had no fear of poisons and the pharmaceuticals were far less than enough to kill it. However, the sudden surge of pain made the insides of the fish’s stomach turn upside down.

Saleen and his people had just gotten out of the portal and quickly found themselves in a pinch. He wrapped everyone using Water Shield.

The Water Shield that Saleen conjured was from a magic staff. The level ten Water Shield was rather tight, so everyone had to squeeze, but it was far safer than level seven. All of it happened so suddenly that Saleen had no time to take out his Magical Element Tower. All manners of wreckage, metal chunks, and boulders churned like they were thrown into a storm.

The big fish’s stomach contracted violently and something that Saleen never expected happened. Everyone around him, the magic beasts living in the fish’s stomach acids, and some bugs were sucked away by a powerful force, thrown into another digestive organ further inside its body.

The fish had small and large intestines, and they were very terrifying.

The intestines of the fish were wider than any road that Saleen had ever seen, but they were being contracted at the moment, doing their best to flush out anything in the fish’s stomach. The force was so massive that even Saleen had no way to resist. Furthermore, the corrosive properties of the liquids in the intestines were far more potent than the ones in the stomach.

The fish’s intestines contracted and expanded, pulverizing any large sized object within. Saleen had no choice but to keep casting Water Shields, level seven and level ten ones being used alternately. He saw a ten-meter boulder pulverized right before him. The boulder was harder and stronger than metalized steel rock.

Nailisi made a sour face. “Master, it wasn’t me!”

“I know that!” Saleen was incredibly frustrated. It had to be t Agares. Saleen had no idea how long the fish’s intestines were, but he estimated it to be more than a hundred miles long. He struggled to hold on and he felt fortunate that one of the spells that he spent most time refining after advancing was the level ten Water Shield. It was also most stocked in his magic staffs and scrolls.

It was all a matter of luck if they were able to make it out alive. Saleen had no way of taking out his Magical Element Tower with everything in chaos around him.