Badge in Azure

What frustrated Theisio the most was that he had laid an elaborate trap to throw Saleen into a divine kingdom, yet the mage had actually been able to escape home. That meant that Saleen had interdimensional teleportation portals and coordinates.

Would Saleen have just gone and crafted an interdimensional teleportation portal in Metatrin City without a good reason? He might be rich, but he definitely wouldn’t have been so indulgent. It was worth noting that the cost of crafting an interdimensional teleportation portal would, after all, be equivalent to building a city.

Furthermore, building cities only required common materials, while crafting interdimensional teleportation portals called for precious ones, some of which it was difficult even for the Holy See to acquire.

Therefore, he deemed that there must be some very important secrets in Metatrin City. However, the spies hired by the Holy See had all died all of a sudden for no apparent reason, cutting them off from any useful sources of intel.

Metatrin City was built like a fortress, and all of its vital points were in the temple. Worse still, the whole vicinity within half a mile of the temple was deemed off-limits. The temple guards even performed patrols around the area.

The members of the Holy See all had the power of faith in them, which made it absolutely impossible for them to infiltrate Metatrin City.

Metatrin City’s security measure seemed loose and were hardly checks of any kind. However, the three layers of city walls and nine sets of gates were all designed according to Dante’s Sequence. The temple knew everything that happened within the city. Furthermore, the number of mages in Metatrin City was ridiculously high, and they took turns monitoring everything from the 36 magic towers around the clock.

A level-ten professional was necessary to monitor the place, and even they would not be worth much, as they would be exposed as soon as they tried anything funny.

The members of the Holy See would have needed powerful equipment for concealment and had no way of staying for long in Metatrin City.

As such, all of the spies deployed by the Holy See to the city were outsourced from forces like bands of thieves. The Tribunal had considerable control of them, but they were unclean, which made it difficult for them to infiltrate into the city.

Saleen had practically announced his return from the divine kingdom, yet Theisio could not be seen coming to stop him.

Saleen was in no hurry, as his target was not actually Theisio to begin with. If Theisio were to show up, then he would give up taking on the great head inquisitor. Saleen had gotten very adept at employing such adaptive measures to deal with problems.

Grand Duke Iron Blood sent intel periodically to Saleen, per the treaty, from the shores. Things in Alchemy City began to grow chaotic. The Devil’s Horn had indeed begun to craft warships en masse with materials acquired from Saleen.

Common warships would not have been much of a concern, but the ones being crafted resembled those of the Ancients in many ways. There were building structures like magic towers on the huge ships.

The Grand Duke did not go about making baseless assumptions, but Saleen believed that they were crafting large-scale magic amplifiers.

The Devil’s Horn is actually ambitious enough to build something like that. Large-scale amplifiers would act like magic nets on warships. As such warships were built exclusively out of metal, the combat capacity of the Devil’s Horn had definitely been enhanced a hundred times over.

There was no longer any need for them to fear the Elemental Hand. The completion of the warships meant that both sides were of equal might.

Saleen caught wind of the news that the Elemental Hand had their hands full and wanted to come to an agreement with the Devil’s Horn. They needed to make contact with each other, one way or another, to confirm the power difference between them.

If both sides were, indeed, of equal might, then a fight would not be necessary.

Saleen feared that Alchemy City would take the initiative to mess up his plans, as he had too few men at his disposal. The number of mages in Metatrin City was still inadequate when compared to Alchemy City.

The Magical Element Tower flew at great speed, its entire body wrapped in a cloud of mist, and its flight velocity was gradually approaching 400 miles per hour. That was not actually the fastest speed that the tower could achieve—its max speed exceeded 1,000 miles per hour.

However, if the tower were to do that, the flying magic patterns would end up being damaged again.

However, they could still throw some elemental beings into the magic power furnaces and boost its speed to about 800 miles per hour.

While most mages had no qualms about pulling off something cruel like that, Saleen did not like the idea of killing elemental creatures just because he was in a hurry. However, if his life were threatened, it would be entirely fine by him to sacrifice some elemental creatures.

They made the 20,000-mile journey at a pace of about 7,000 miles per day. The tower had no longer needed to take breaks during flight ever since the magic power furnaces were installed. Saleen reached Daliang City within three days.

It was difficult to cast spells from the top of Daliang City, as the flight of Saleen’s tower was powered entirely by the magic power furnaces, and was incapable of using ambient elements. The most that he could do was to throw elemental creatures into the furnaces.

Saleen only needed one low-level elemental creature to safely land the tower within the grounds of the city’s palace.

There was only one tower capable of flight in the world. The demonic spirits sensed Nailisi’s presence, and no one dared to attack. Lex’s palace was quite safe, as it was under the protection of a magic net.

The Alchemy City mages were dumb enough to not check things thoroughly before making their move there, and they ended up being pummeled by the enchanters.

Lex was not there to receive Saleen, as the fighting was so tense at the walls that even she, the head of the state, needed to be present personally. Lex possessed God’s Ring, and, while no one was certain of its full capabilities, everyone knew that the protection it afforded was unparalleled.

A level-nine archer had once tried to assassinate Lex. The arrow shot right toward Lex but quickly disappeared without a trace, before she even batted an eye at the projectile.

Every single such attempt ended in this manner, and the Holy See’s people eventually gave up the thought of shooting Lex dead from afar.

The battlefield between the two sides was concentrated outside the city’s eastern walls, where the entrance to the Cemetery of the Giant lay.

Daliang City’s walls were 500 meters tall, making it seem like a mountain. They made it inconvenient for people from the city to get in and out. With the Heaven Knights, who were capable of flight, showing up at their door, the people within the city hesitated even to step outside.

It was fortunate for them that the number of fossilized gods had gradually dwindled, and the Holy See was unable to get many.

A hanging bridge had been constructed descending from the walls, enabling troops to charge to the ground from above. The bridge was full of magic equipment and was difficult to destroy, as it was protected by the magic net from the city walls.

Officials from the Principality of Bitterwater received Saleen, some mages among them, all of whom Saleen was familiar with. Saleen instructed Nailisi to unleash the demon army.

It would take some time to mobilize the 500,000 demons. After Saleen was done dropping off Nailisi and had spoken with the officials, he flew the tower to the east side of the city.

The Magical Element Tower landed somewhere behind a city wall that was about 40 meters tall. The tower stood behind the wall, and metal gears extended from its top in layers, slowly turning and forming the magic net.

The magic net of the tower was powered by two sets of sources: the six small-scale magic power furnaces on every floor, and the large-scale magic power furnace on the 16th floor.

Saleen gave no thought to the cost and simply activated the magic net. Coincidentally, there were coincidentally two forces duking it out below the city: the Blood Knights of the Holy See and several thousands of spirits.

The spirits looked very battered. If they were to sustain further injuries, they could only be revived back in the spirit plane.

The Blood Knights were not faring well, either. Both sides consisted of about 3,000 units, and some others were taking on the fossilized gods charging from the cemetery. Although things were indeed heated for the 6,000 fighting each other, they had little influence over how things were going in the battle at large.

Saleen looked toward the cemetery’s one exit beneath the city, guarded by pitch-black wardens, and the other exit, guarded by the demon army.

As the cemetery had two exits, they were split into four groups which were engaged in different activities: two groups from each side guarded the exits, while two other groups from each side charged with doing battle with each other.

These peculiar battles have been fought for over a month.

Death mages did not like such battles much, as spirits were lifeforms, as well. While the spirits who became casualties could be revived, they did not come back as the same ones.

When the mages summoned spirits, they usually did so repeatedly, calling the same spirits to serve them. It was the same with the spirits they used in combat, which were all capable of being summoned repeatedly; that way, the grew in combat capacity.

However, not all of the mages were capable of creating spirit space. Hence, that kind of expenditure was deemed too extravagant.

Saleen’s men were able to afford spending resources like that. While Aini had yet to advance to level ten, his skill in summoning spirits were terrifying. With the help of two spirit plane creatures, Aini was almost capable of performing forced summoning from the spirit plane without any concern for cost.

He then distributed the summoned creatures to his subordinate death mages.

Death mages were usually able to subjugate one or two of those creatures at a time, and saw all those remaining as consumables. They usually subjugated the unusual or special ones, which were usually also the most intelligent.

The others, which were deemed not worth subjugating, just became more cannon fodder in the spirit plane.

The Holy See was frustrated, as such a battle of attrition could only result in dwindling numbers of Blood Knights. However, without an order from the pope to launch a full-on assault, they had no choice but to fight this way, day after day.

Saleen counted and found there were about 4,000 wardens standing guard over the exit to the cemetery. he waited for Lex to enter the magic tower before saying to her with a smile, “Sorry for being late, Lex.”

“I’m glad that you know you are. Take care of those wardens down there for me, will you?” Lex pointed at the 4,000 wardens in a rather tired manner.

Saleen remained smiling, despite seeing that Lex was rather irked, before giving the order to attack. The area covered by the Magical Element Tower’s magic net was far greater than that of the one on the city walls. Saleen was capable of attacking with magic spells within ten miles radius.

They threw one elemental creature after another into the large scale magic power furnace. Under Saleen’s orders, all 3,600 demonic spirits cast a level-seven spell simultaneously.

Pale white rays flashed out from the top of the tower. It was a level-seven instant-death spell: Life Steal.

This instant-death spell had a low rate of success, but Saleen had found that, given the trajectories of fate, everything happening within the cemetery would otherwise take a turn for the worse. Having the luck of the Goddess of Myers at his side gave him an edge.

The Holy See’s forces were not the only ones who were dumbfounded by the 3,600 instant-death spells they cast; even the mages on the walls found it to be baffling. The 3,600 level-seven magic spells ended up killing over 3,200 enemies. Less than 400 of them ended up failing.

It was a form of slaughter accomplished through magic, and one against which the enemy had no way to defend.

Instant death magic was something that could only be evaded through luck, or through a sheer level difference that prevented one from being targeted by the enemy. Once targeted, if the spell happened to work, one had no choice but to accept the outcome.

The effects could only be overridden by level difference; nothing else worked against such spells.

Practically-speaking, only people of level ten and above could truly shrug off this level-seven instant death magic.