Badge in Azure

After breaking up the enemy’s formation, the demon army brandished the sharpest side of their prowess. However, the showdown had little to do with the human warriors. Nailisi went straight for the level nine sorcerer.

The sorcerer saw Nailisi coming for them about a thousand meters away. They were initially dumbstruck, but quickly cast Elemental Amplification.

Nailisi was caught by surprise. She knew a great deal about magic and was able to recognize the skill as one cast for the mages around the sorcerer. From the level nine sorcerer’s perspective, the most sensible course of action would be to stop Nailisi’s advance from the furthest possible range of attack instead.

However, what the sorcerer did made Nailisi laugh. The sorcerer simply took the mages around them and flew eastward.

The mage chose to run without fighting!

Nailisi snickered and cursed but did not choose to pursue her quarry. Her flight speed was inferior to Saleen’s, and she lacked weapons capable of attacking at long distances. As such, she simply let the level nine sorcerer run.

Nailisi was confident in killing the sly fellow, but she was not in the mood. She aimed to take down the enemy’s forces as quickly as she was able and let the southwestern allied forces see what true battlefields were like.

The terrain was not actually all that narrow, but there was no way it could accommodate a 50,000-soldier army. The demons’ charge proved lethal.

There were two supreme demons at the front who, while weaker than golden grand swordmasters, were stronger than silver ones. The supreme demons possessed great powers, and the heavily armed demons tore at the Pompeii City’s army. The Pompeii soldiers had no choice but to fight solely to defend themselves.

The hill, as well as the narrow plains right beneath it, were bloodstained in no time. Nailisi gave up pursuing the level nine sorcerer to maintain Demonic Stampede.

She charged with Grey Memory in her hand, looking invincible. Every step she took connected her with the rest of her kind, terrifying the enemy forces.

With such a powerful skill at play, all the buffs of mages among the Pompeii City army’s ranks were practically negated, enabling the demons to bring a decisive edge against their enemy.

Unruly power coupled with heavy, sharp weapons and bolstered with full sets of magic armor stripped the effectiveness of every single spell the Pompeii City mages were capable of casting.

The magic armor was incapable of taking hits indefinitely, and the mages were incapable of casting spells indefinitely on the battlefield. When the need rose, mages were allowed to retreat first before anyone else.

Nailisi charged into the Pompeii City’s army’s heavy forces. Beams of over a hundred meters long shot from her Grey Memory, punching through soldiers, killing them immediately.

The power in Grey Memory was more than just penetration. There was no way human soldiers could withstand something not even single-horned white whales were capable of surviving.

Every single heavy corps in any nation’s armies consisted of elites among elites, and Pompeii City was no exception. However, the Grand Duke of Pompeii was not as blessed with miraculous encounters as Saleen, which meant that he could not have so many true heavy units at his disposal.

There were only three regiments that were truly and fully heavily armed, and Nailisi took three out first.

No conventional soldier would be able to evade or resist her weapon. With Nailisi thrusting away, everything hit by the beams from her spear was torn to shreds.

It was the first time the southwestern allied forces, who were on high ground, saw such an unforgiving, brutal slaughter up close and personal, so much so that they completely forgot to charge downwards and help Nailisi’s demon army out.

There was actually no need for them to do so, as Nailisi was calm enough to guide Isabella, who was in full warrior regalia and on the killing spree together with Nailisi.

“Isabella, your spells need to be your own. Master was able to get as far as he did because he found the best path that suited him and he never gave up on it. Since you’re versed in both magic and sword aura, you need to figure things out from your unique standpoint. Come and kill with me. See if you’re able to figure something out from the resulting bloody mess.”

Nailisi was just mouthing off without much thought, but Isabella believed the imp. Theoretically speaking, Nailisi was completely correct, but one had to wonder what would result from magic learned from going on a slaughter.

In the Magical Element Tower in New Demon City, Qin was listening to Saleen lecturing about archery.

Saleen, a sorcerer, was actually teaching an archer archery.

Furthermore, what Saleen was teaching was a skill that he created on his own. However, he had yet to be able to perform the skill to the fullest, and was only able to provide Qin theory.

Saleen imitated arrow aura employed by archers and told Qin how arrow aura worked, as well as casting methods. It was a unique skill that Saleen employed to lock onto his enemies, which came as a comprehensive summary of his many skills.

Qin employed the arrow aura per Saleen’s instructions, and found that the middle of his brow twitched and bulged, as if a third eye between his eyes had opened as some weird powers started working.

It worked like sensory skills, enabling him to see everything without light. However, the sensory skill was comparatively weak, extending only about ten meters.

Qin had never attacked anything less than a hundred meters away with archery since he was 15 years old.

However, Qin had no intention of giving up, as Saleen had been crafting a set of magic equipment specifically for archers, and to be used specifically in tandem with the skill.

Saleen was not simply blabbering away. He came across a lot of information about ancient times in Gaine’s astrology tower. Most of it had long been lost in Myers Mainland.

There had been several books mentioning that humanoid creatures were the fewest in many planes, but they were also the most powerful. There had been a race of humans who were born with three eyes and possessed powerful combat capacity.

Humans had researched the three-eyed race’s abilities, and it was said that there had been humans who succeeded in opening the mystical third eye, gaining special powers in the process.

Many training methods were recorded, but Saleen dared not let Qin try them out immediately. Saleen had refined and modified them before passing them on to Qin, refraining from telling the archer that he would be able to obtain a third eye, but guaranteeing enhancement of his ability to target enemies.

The skill incorporated attributes of the six eyes of the silverline golden spearfish’s spike. Some methods of manipulating the required energies had been calculated by Saleen using Figaro’s Formula, which was incorporated in the new skill.

Having the Elemental Eye meant Saleen was able to keep a close eye on Qin’s progress and if he found something out of place, he could halt it.

Saleen even modified the arrow aura’s manipulation methods while he was teaching Qin, and the archer was willing to experiment on the imparted skill as a guinea pig.

Saleen determined the final form of the weapon he was to craft for Qin when he no longer found anything dangerous happening to Qin’s body.

The weapon was a longbow, the limb sourced from two broken bows from the ancient battlefield. Saleen used the horn of the single-horned white whale to fuse the two, and an Eye of Rules from the silverline golden spearfish infused on the bow.

The evil-looking eye brought a terrifying lock-on ability when it was still on the body of the fish itself. Saleen was unable to get a hold of a set of six eyes, but he deemed one eye sufficient, as the main ability of the bow was to lock onto a target instantly.

Qin’s skill allowed him to lock onto enemies and a piece of equipment bolstering such abilities would be more than enough. The weapon would serve him well until he reached level 13.

If Qin mastered the power of the third eye, he would be able to use powers above his level with the help of the bow.

The third eye not only enabled its user to lock onto their targets, but was also capable of extraordinary feats such as predicting the target’s movement, possible course of actions, and so on.

The skill was similar to prophecy spells or astrology. If an archer possessed the abilities, there was no target that they would not be able to hit.

Saleen had a lot to gain from crafting equipment for his followers. He developed unnerving understanding of all types of professions and a keen sense of attacks any professional could pull off. The familiarity served to enhance Saleen’s survivability considerably on a battlefield. Saleen no longer feared any archer’s attacks, as no archer was capable of feats as extraordinary as Eleanor’s.

Saleen feared assassins the most. He had no high level assassins in his ranks and had not been able to develop any specific way of dealing with them, which meant his only means to deal with them was the hard way: eliminating any he encountered by direct, violent means.

If he understood most attacks assassins employed, he would not be so frustrated. He wanted to head back to Metatrin City just to check on Bain, who was recuperating. Saleen wanted to learn the secrets of assassins from the veteran.

While the longbow was built on very good ideas, Saleen was not satisfied with the materials, treating it as a transitional weapon as he presented it to Qin.

With Qin and Eleanor by his side, Saleen believed that there would be few to no blind spots that his enemies could exploit within several miles when both of them had advanced to level ten.

A level ten archer was able to shoot through any kind of armor from any angle, even magic metal armors on the front of magic chariots would not be able to withstand the force of a common arrow shot by a level ten archer.

There was no way Saleen would allow his followers to use common arrows. While the ones that he made for Qin were inferior to the lightning arrows crafted for Eleanor, they would still be stronger than anything alchemists on the mainland crafted for archers.

Due to material being difficult to come by, the arrowheads that Saleen used were from rusted metals found on the ancient battlefield. The arrowheads were hollow and filled with dirt stained by the blood of the ancient people. The dirt had fossilized and shined with an azure sheen.

The azure pieces of stone were magically melded with the hollow magic arrows. Saleen incorporated gravity magic patterns from the earth magic that he stole through Water Flame Alchemy.

The gravity magic patterns enabled Qin to control the arrows using his mental powers when he opened his third eye. In theory, the arrows could fly indefinitely.

With the right materials and the right amount of power, the azure arrows would be able to keep flying, using the power of the earth, until the arrows disintegrated.

If the arrows were shot into the air, they would be able to fly through the clouds and reach the stars. The arrows could still continue flying when used in conjunction with the power of the stars.

Qin was impressed by Saleen’s ideas. He trained hard in hopes that he would be able to perform such skills soon.

If the azure arrows were completed, it would enable him to shoot his arrows at any distance he required. If he shot for the stars, then the arrows would keep flying until they reached the stars.