Badge in Azure

Agares laughed. “In that case, I’d tell you straight to the face. I hate all religions. I won’t get in your way if you’d want to propagate Nature Faith, but don’t expect me to help you out.”

Saleen frowned but quickly understood that Agares was the same as him in that regard—they held their professions in high regard, and the matters of their kingdom would always come second.

Agares resented the gods and religions, so much so that his disgust seeped deep into his soul. If he turned on his own convictions and allowed religions to be propagated in his kingdom, then Agares’ professional advancement would be severely hindered.

“Alright. In that case, we shall get to the contract.” Saleen threw the contract to Agares. A beautiful woman flashed before him. The woman was dressed in palace minister garb but Saleen was able to tell that she had been one of the two assassins by Agares’ side.

“An enviable skill indeed!” Saleen sighed. Agares was an assassin and having such a skill meant that he had two more powerful assistants by his side, who were capable of hiding in his shadow.

Saleen was not even able to tell with his Elemental Eye how the two women had been following Agares around.

“I envy you too…” Agares turned his eyes at Nailisi, who rattled her spear at him, shutting him up. He felt a looming scent of death. There were six shut eyes on Grey Memory. Extremely evil aura emanated from the weapon, making Agares flinch.

“Do you still envy me now?” Saleen asked in a peculiar tone, “This servant girl of mine isn’t actually all that obedient. Even if I tell her not to kill you, there’s no guarantee that she’d follow my orders.”

“That is not a good joke.”

“It is not a joke. Our contract is in effect, Agares, but if you piss Nailisi off, I won’t be able to guarantee anything. You do know that contracts with mages always have some loopholes.”

Agares flicked his hand as he heard Saleen. Blood at the tip of his finger dripped onto the contract scroll, which burnt to nothing. It was so powerful that its binding powers equaled plane rules.

“But then again, what I said was a joke. I’m a mage, and if there are any loopholes in contracts, they work on both parties. You’re an assassin, and I don’t like having loopholes in contracts with assassins. It’s too dangerous for me.” Saleen’s smile looked rather despicable to Agares’ eyes.

But Agares smiled. “That’s the spirit. We were originally enemies after all. Your alliance with Grand Duke Iron Blood means that we won’t stay allies for long. So, what shall we do next?”

“Nothing, Your Highness. Just look outside.” Saleen unleashed over a dozen star figures, which split up and prepared a feast.

Saleen laid out tables and chairs in the garden. The table was long, and there was a magic array carved on it on one side, which enabled them to view magic projections of the outside.

“Your Highness, I have no way of leaving, but if we got into the kingdom of gods, we’d stand a chance instead.”

“Saleen, we’re enemies, so just call me Agares and drop the honorifics. That’s what the world calls us, anyway. I’ll be upfront with you. I have two level 9 assassins with me and 101 spectral servants. I only need dark places to summon them.”

“I have the Magical Element Tower, and there are 3,600 enchanters in the tower.” Saleen told his enemy a little bit about himself. Agares was unable to tell that Nailisi was level ten. The assassin was only able to tell that she was not a human and that her equipment was life-threatening to him.

Eleanor’s archery, the water puppet’s Crystal Finger, and Isabella’s training in both martial and magical arts were all secrets. The ones knew about all of that were either Saleen’s most trusted or dead.

The pope’s huge divine rune charm array was nearly completed outside the Magical Element Tower. The humans] sacrifices had their heads chopped off, and their blood flowed into the holy prose.

A huge black hole appeared in the sky. The holy prose continued to spin, the black hole was at the center.

The black hole looked increasingly twisted and as all of the sacrifices died, over 100 thousand dark auras shot up to the sky and gushed into the black hole.

An eerie laugh was heard from within the black hole. Aoo uuuuu…

“Really delicious souls you have here. What do you want, puny beings?”

“Swallow this up!” A thin line of holy light burst from Theisio’s fingers, hitting the Magical Element Tower.

“Alright, I’ll do that.” The head of a huge beast emerged from the black hole, which looked like a toad and snake. It had long fangs. The beast gobbled up the tower without any hesitation.

When the tower dropped to the ground, there was fossilization pinning it to the ground. The huge beast sucked the tower up in one go and it left a huge crater.

“Delicious!” The huge head retreated back to the black hole and Theisio’s face was ashen. It was clear that it took a lot of mental powers for him to communicate with the huge beast.

The black hole did not disappear after the beast retreated back to the black hole. Theisio then told the oracle behind him, “I’ll leave the rest to you. I need to crush Nature City and take all the Heaven Knights away.”

“As you wish, lord pope.” The oracle answered Theisio respectfully.

Saleen was able to feel that the Magical Element Tower traversing a huge portal after the tower was swallowed up by the beast. The portal seemed to be the insides of the beast.

The portal was twisty, which was unsafe, unlike the one left behind by the goddess. The tower barged through untold numbers of elemental storm areas and space tears as it traversed the portal.

If it had not been for the tower, Saleen thought that he probably would have died inside that portal.

It was not that there were pieces of wreckage inside, but that the wreckage was all rotten. Being corroded and torn apart by the energies and space tears in the portal for prolonged periods was not something that anything less powerful than level 18 elementite would be able to endure.

What made Saleen exasperated was that after the tower was re-crafted, some abilities were already etched within the elementite, such as the ability to see what was outside. However, the flying magic patterns were not.

The Sreeger Island mages were incapable of taking level 18 elementite apart, which meant that they were only able to coat the patterns outside the tower.

With the tower being banged up, the flying magic patterns on the elementite were damaged once more.

The flying magic patterns were precious, as without them, the tower’s flying speed would be reduced to below 100 miles per hour. Even though it was still capable of flight, any sorcerer versed in flight would easily be able to catch up to.

Most flying magic beasts were capable of achieving speeds higher than that.

However, Saleen remained smiling, chatting away with Agares.

Saleen had to admit that despite the fact that Agares kept him on edge, he was an interesting man. He was devoid of the common flaws of the Cloudflow people and actually resembled a Qin more.

Both of them whined a lot when it came to running a country. Saleen had little affection for nobles and Agares shared his sentiments.

However, Agares did not like the nobles not because they were disobedient to the royal family, but because they were utterly useless. While the Misty City was extremely lavish, it was possibly the only city in the Cloudflow Empire that did not have starving people.

Regardless of how wasteful the royal family was, they would always get food ready, enabling everyone within the city to have at least a full belly.

Every project undertaken by the royal family brought work to the poor. Nobles were forbidden to get involved.

Agares even told Saleen something laughable. If he distributed supplies to the poor in Misty City, he would be ridiculed. He learned from his father’s ways—getting some ridiculous thing done and reasons to spend money, letting the poor lap up the offer.

Saleen was dissatisfied that his nobles viewed their interests above their dedication to their tasks. While the Qin nobles were not all that bad, it was the same with them as well.

The nobles simply did what they should have been doing and they had the subjects of their fiefs sworn loyalty to them. In Saleen’s view, it was an unequal exchange.

Qin had the greatest amount of food, and the soil was the most fertile. However, Qin still had hungry people.

Saleen was able to identify with the common folk as he was from the slums, but he was unable to fathom why Agares was also able.

The two talked about their training. Since the conversation did not involve their most secret skills, Agares and Saleen were able to talk frankly.

Saleen learned of some very practical skills of assassins while Agares was aghast at how complex a mage’s skills could be. Over 100 combinations could be made from just two common spells for different environments, situations, and enemies.

“Saleen, I think that if you advanced to level 11, it would be very difficult for me to kill you,” Agares grumbled.

“Same goes for me. Your hiding skills might have something to do with dark element, and that’s what I’m bad at. If your level were level higher than mine, it would be very difficult for me to detect you.”

The Magical Element Tower passed through one dangerous area after another in the portal, and finally flew out of the dark and into a bright world.

Saleen and Agares stopped talking at the same time. They were able to see a corner of the world in the magic array’s projections. The disgusting glow was everywhere.

Saleen let out a bitter laugh. “Agares, it seems that there are no shadows in this world.”