Badge in Azure

The water fox looked dazed. The cage cracked, the electricity that controlled it was still around, but it had lost some of its sensations.

“Why do you have this?”

Saleen knew what the water fox meant. “I’m a mage, not a believer of the goddess. In your coming days, I’ll need you to play as the goddess’ double. Do you think you can do that?”

“I can, but why?” The water fox was incredibly frustrated. It was easy for it to play as the goddess’ double. It would only need the statue to do so. The mage was probably a blasphemer.

If it had known he was a blasphemer, it would not have bothered resisting. Its actions had resulted in its soul being control. Elemental creatures’ ability to develop souls had more to do with actual prowess. Luck and many other factors came into play as well. Among the tens of thousands of elemental creatures, there might have only been one capable of developing a soul.

An elemental creature could only advance when it had a soul, or they would stay at the same level for the rest of their lives. Elemental creatures that happened to have developed souls would usually hide, avoiding notice from more powerful beings. Elemental creatures were the best bonded creatures, as they lacked means of resisting rules of contracts.

The water fox was captured by Myers as soon as it had developed a soul and was locked in the cage. It bore intense resentment towards the Goddess of Myers, but for some reason, the goddess refused to use any divine arts to craft or tame the water fox, and had simply left it in the temple. That was when it began its long wait.

It had taken Saleen to be a believer of the goddess when it first saw him, and so it was very rude. It did not anticipate the man to be so bold as to have it disguised as a double of the goddess.

The water fox was under Saleen’s control and was able to sense that if Saleen could even wipe its memories if he wanted to, turning its soul completely blank. Is that what he meant by ‘suffering a worse fate’?

The water fox thought about it and walked out of the cage obediently, entering the space in the statue’s heart. Saleen smiled. The water fox attempted to control the statue from within that space and found the statue not budging at all.

“Be patient.” Saleen installed a piece of chlorite on the goddess’ statue, which he siphoned huge amounts of power of faith into.

“Use that sparingly. Use your own magic skills in usual battles.” Saleen pointed at the divine persona hovering above the altar. “Go get that thing and we’ll leave this place.”

The statue was only able to move after absorbing some power of faith. The water fox asked, “why aren’t you signing any contract with me?”

“You’d need some measure of freedom and hope. How am I supposed to get you to work otherwise? Oh right, you’d be called Myers from here on out.”

The water fox nodded and turned to walk towards that hall’s gates. The surface of her body shone with a green sheen of holy light, enabling her to slowly pass through seals created by countless holy prose. She entered the hall.

She turned around to look at Saleen, who smiled at her. The water fox thought for a little bit. What if I refuse to leave this place? Would doing so free me from the mage’s control?

In the depths of her soul, the jade fragment jolted at that thought. The water fox’s body writhed within the statue, wallowing in pain. Hell, the mage talked about freedom and all, but this measure of soul control is far worse than any contract!

She had no choice but to extend her hand at the divine persona and hold it tight. The divine persona was originally meant for a believer of the goddess. The water fox resided within the statue and she was covered with the goddess’ divine power, making her resemble the goddess’ double. It did not trigger the divine spell within the hall when she took the divine persona.

Saleen was pleased to see the water fox walking out of the temple. He took the divine persona and stuffed it into his ring without saying anything.

The temple was erected for believers. Saleen wanted to take it apart but he dared not do so. The halls were interconnected. Taking apart any one of them would trigger a chain reaction, which would prevent him from leaving.

Saleen meticulously searched every storehouse on his way back, as well as spaces beneath the altars. He surprisingly found some other materials, all of which were meant for forging implements of faith, which meant that they were intended for crafting equipment for believers.

Saleen took them all without any hesitation. The water fox asked, feeling rather peculiar, “that umm…”

“My name’s Saleen. You can address me as Your Highness. I’m the king of the Kingdom of Metatrin.”

“Your Highness, if you’re not a believer, why are you taking all these things?”

“That’s because I’m building a nature faith, and I need to resurrect the goddess,” Saleen answered.

The water fox’s hand shook in fright. Saleen smiled and elaborated further, “no worries. The goddess won’t get to live for long even if she’s resurrected. She won’t get to kill you.”

The water fox knew about the goddess’ plans, which was why she thought Saleen would not be able to do anything about her, which was in turn, why she dared to clash with him. She knew that he meant to go against the goddess, and that put the water fox at ease.

She was not afraid of impersonating the goddess but that the goddess would come looking for her when she was resurrected.

Outside the pool, Sika and the others waited in the Magical Element Tower for Saleen for six days. However, there was no sign of Saleen emerging. Sika grew concerned and wanted to look at the pool, and she was held back by Nailisi.

However, Sika did not want to just stay and wait, so Nailisi had no choice but to summon her magic bugs and throw them into the pool. The bugs were immediately frozen to death. It was only then that Sika stopped thinking about going in.

Nailisi had been sending her demons to lurk in the mountains. There were hundreds of battles fought within the span of just one day.

At the beginning, they were only fighting Agares’ people, but as the days went by, there were local nobles from Cloudflow taking the initiative to send small squadrons to find out what was happening.

Everyone knew about the demons in the mountains and immediately linked them to the demon army of the Kingdom of Metatrin.

The nobles were very pleased to find the demon army appearing in the mountains. They did not have too much of an idea about the Kingdom of Metatrin. What they knew was that the emperor had sent troops to attack Daliang City and lost because the Kingdom of Metatrin was backing the Principality of Bitterwater.

Nailisi did not bother with the scouting parties. Even an army with formidable fighting capacity would suffer a sharp drop in performance if they fought in the mountains.

Her demon army, on the other hand, was hardly affected by terrain. Demons were capable of fighting in watery and fiery situations.

However, powerful flying magic beasts appeared on the sixth day. Several grand swordmasters peered down from the magic beasts. One of them was shot down by Eleanor with a single arrow and the others fled.

The captured grand swordmaster yielded and confessed before Nailisi was able to do much interrogation.

The people served the Grants, which was a formidable force within the Cloudflow Empire, whose status was higher than Grand Duke Iron Blood. They had control of most of the southeast regions.

Where they were at the moment was the border of the Grants’ turf. The family had dispatched true powerful ones and were on their way. The black metal grand swordmasters riding flying magic beasts were scouts.

Nailisi did not fear having to fight. The weakest in the party was a level nine warrior, after all. Even if powerful enemies showed up, they needed to be much more powerful to have an edge over Saleen’s party.

But then again, her master had yet to return, and things would take a turn for the worse if the teleportation portal were destroyed.

“Are you saying that Grand Duke Jatan is going to show up personally?”

“Indeed, and he’s a level ten grand swordmaster. I’d advise you people to just surrender.”

While the black metal grand swordmaster was indeed spineless—who yielded before Nailisi had to work on them—they did not forget to brag about their master’s powers. They even went so far as to advise Nailisi to surrender, which she found baffling. Just what are the Cloudflow people thinking…

Nailisi waved and Sul acknowledged her gesture, sealing that grand swordmaster’s powers using sword aura. Nailisi summoned magic bugs surrounded the grand swordmaster. The number of magic bugs grew and eventually became a mound.

The Cloudflow grand swordmaster only had their head sticking ou. It looked funny and scary at the same time.

Nailisi sat down. “Quit your prattling and tell me, that…what’s his name again?”

“Grand Duke Jatan!”

“Right, Grand Duke Jatan. How many powerful people does he have at his disposal? You better tell me what I want to hear. If you tick me off in any way, I’ll have the bugs crawl through every single hole on your body and reduce you to an empty skin. Are we clear?”

There were bugs looking at them. The bugs were slippery and slimy. The eyes on their heads looked complex, but they bore sharp teeth, which made them easy to identify. The grand swordmaster nodded in fright, not daring to say anything useless.

“Talk!” Nailisi did not like spineless people. A magic bug jumped at the grand swordmaster’s face, scaring them so bad that they shrieked.

Nailisi wanted little more than to kill them. Sika tapped Nailisi’s shoulder. “I’ll do the questioning.”

“I ask and you answer. If anything happens, she’ll take over to do the interrogation.” Sika pointed at Nailisi. “Are we clear?”

The magic bug slipped from the Cloudflow grand swordmaster’s face. They were still scared as they nodded. “I’ll tell you everything.”

“Grand Duke Jatan. Is he a true might?”

The grand swordmaster was frightened. Being able to use ‘true might’ to describe a warrior’s level meant that their interrogator knew a lot. “Indeed, he is a level ten true might.”

“How many did he bring with him?”

“Leaving us out of the calculation, 600.”

“Any one of them that are more difficult to deal with?” Sika asked in a simple, concise manner.

The grand swordmaster thought for a bit. “The grand duke himself is very powerful. People of my level, he would be able to squish us without using a weapon. He had 12 mages around him and he brought six with him. There is another sorcerer who just joined and is very powerful.”

“All seven of them are sorcerers?”

“There was only one, the new mage who just joined him.” The grand swordmaster answered truthfully, not daring to play word games. There were several magic bugs burrowing inside his pants.

“A level ten sorcerer?”

“Yes, he fellow just advanced and has a powerful magic amplifier.”

The magic bugs stopped burrowing in his pants when the grand swordmaster finished saying that. In fact, they stopped moving at all. The grand swordmaster felt relieved. If they messed around there, the bugs would make a mess out of him.

“Are you saying that Grand Duke Jatan brought seven mages with him, and the rest of the 600 are people like you?”

“Of course not. He is surrounded by people with a death wish. They are more terrifying than those from the Tribunal.” The grand swordmaster looked troubled when they mentioned the people.

They had talked too much. If the grand swordmaster ended up coming out of this alive, the people would come for them instead.