Badge in Azure

Grand Duke Iron Blood’s rainbow giant dragon was not willing to enter the cave, so Grand Duke Iron Blood could only stand guard outside.

Inbosa controlled the 12 Iron Blood warriors and followed to enter the warehouse. Saleen looked around. The people close to him were not around. He summoned a star figure to follow him. Only then did he leap into the cave.

The first floor was entirely filled with piles of space boxes. Inbosa saw that Saleen had followed him. “Each person will take half.”

“Alright, each person will take half.” Saleen summoned hundreds of lightning puppets.

Inbosa saw the lightning puppets and felt envious. Iron Blood warriors jumped into the cave. The Iron Blood warriors helped Inbosa move the space boxes that had been placed far away, and Inbosa used his spatial equipment to collect them. The benefits of the space boxes were immense. The space boxes without a compressed space could be placed in a piece of spatial equipment.

The space boxes had all been piled together. The Iron Blood warriors and lightning puppets did not interfere with one another. With a line in the middle as the divider, they gathered the space boxes for Saleen and Inbosa.

Inbosa spread open the third Dissolution Spell scroll, dissolving the ground halfway, and poured in a bottle of metallic poison. Saleen saw all of it and engraved the method into his memory.

Of course, it was not just the pouring of a poisonous liquid. Inbosa still had to control it to corrode the magic array on the mezzanine.

No matter how tough the magic array was, it was still just a lifeless object. The metallic poison did not have any energy waves, and it was extremely easy for it to penetrate the layer of energy of the protective magic array. As for the magic patterns refined onto the base, they were sturdy but could not bear the toxins that had been extracted.

The metallic poison was originally meant for etching out magic arrays. Mages had to be very careful. If they lost the slightest bit of control, they would have corroded too much of the valuable materials, causing the entire magic array to be ruined.

Inbosa had not thought of that beforehand; the plan had been devised at the last minute. That was what Saleen admired. When he encountered a magic array for which strong attacks were ineffective, he would use even stronger methods. Inbosa used indirect methods to resolve the issue from the root.

The magic array had mostly been formed by metallic poison corrosion. After encountering an even purer metallic poison, it resisted for an extremely short period of time before being destroyed.

The magic arrays even had a self-restoring function, but Inbosa took advantage of the split-second when the magic array was corroded to use the Dissolution Spell to completely destroy the magic array. The method was extremely intricate and could not be conceived by an average mage at the last minute.

Inbosa had just taken it as Saleen testing him. He assumed that Saleen could not bear to extract the metallic poison, so he had only given him the Dissolution Spell scroll. He did not know that Saleen had relied purely on brute force to destroy the magic array.

Inbosa did not at all feel that Saleen’s ball of lightning could penetrate this type of magic array, let alone destroy it. The ball of lightning did not look anything ‘lightning’. It seemed to be a type of high-energy magic ball.

Inbosa allowed two Iron Blood warriors to go down first, and followed behind, following the cave path to enter the warehouse one floor below.

They had just entered the warehouse and a puppet rushed in front of Inbosa. The puppet had six legs and three arms. It brandished three iron whips, intending to whip Inbosa into pieces.

The two Iron Blood warriors that Inbosa had dispatched to come along with him had already collapsed and were not getting up. Inbosa did not panic and effortlessly moved to one side. He also had six legs and a long metal tail.

Compared to the puppet, he was more like a monster.

Saleen caught up. The puppet was unable to distinguish who its foes were. As long as it was a moving target, it would attack. Inbosa had hidden and immediately entered a state of still quiet, so Saleen became the target of attack.

The three iron whips formed a triangle and swung towards Saleen. Saleen had come down first, but his descent had been very quick and he easily avoided the three whips’ pincer attack. The star figures also jumped down. In the star figures’ hands was the equipment that Saleen specialized in refining – the magic epee.

The sword was two and a half meters long and weighed 180 kilograms. Its surface was covered with magic patterns. One side of the sword was a serrated blade, and the other side was curved.

A level 9 magic nucleus was mounted within the epee’s magic array and could emit level 9 magic power.

However, Saleen had only added a level 9 Sharpening spell to the epee. The star figures did not need elemental magic spells and could release long range attacks all the same.

“Inbosa!” Saleen saw that his star figures had forced back the puppet with a stroke of the sword, yet Inbosa still had not acted. He was angry. It was paramount that they make the most of their time to share in the spoils.

Inbosa pointed. Only then did Saleen use his Elemental Eye to look at the surroundings. Within the pitch-black warehouse, about 1,000 puppets were neatly lined up. The puppets all had four eyes, and the magic array between the eyes rotated lightly, releasing waves of energy.

“Damn it, it’s a puppet army!” Saleen could not help but swear.

The ancient humans had once created a puppet army. There was a type of puppet army which did not require a human to direct it. Its power was immense, and it demanded almost nothing of its environment. However, it often went out of control. Typically, humans used this type of puppet army to eliminate enemies that were sealed in an area.

More than 1,000 puppets were just like one body. They needed to be destroyed with a true level 9 magic spell.

What troubled Saleen was that he had seen the magic array between the puppets’ four eyes. It was the mark from the legends.

Mages all believed in the conservation of energy. Even a magic array was at equilibrium, it was really just that its consumption was slow, and there were abilities for the automatic replenishment of energy. Such abilities would also slowly vanish with the passage of time and the ageing of materials. Even if you used a divine persona as material, there would still come a day when the divine persona would be destroyed.

However, the ancient humans had once manufactured a type of magic array that could allow energy to circulate repeatedly. It relied on elemental power absorbed from the air to support the revolutions of the magic array as much as possible and could support a huge amount of consumption.

It was the famous magic perpetual-motion engine found within the Paradoxes of magic.

Of course, the magic perpetual-motion engine did not exist, but it was a type of magic array that could endlessly absorb magic to refill the magic nuclei or crystals in the magic array.

In the ancient times, it had taken hundreds of years for the secret to be discovered by humans. However, because the magic array was not a method to initiate control, the puppets created were unable to distinguish between friend and foe.

Later on, humans researched and found the simplest method for control. They made a magic switch, using it to cut off the perception of this type of puppet. The puppets’ four eyes worked independently, and were the only part with which the puppets could perceive.

“Each person will take half!” Saleen saw that Inbosa was not moving, so he retrieved a large net, directly trapping a puppet in it, and used a sealing scroll to contain it.

Inbosa saw that Saleen was not afraid of the puppets. He was unable to distinguish between truths and falsehoods with his intuition. He could only use his own means and begin his own battle.

Saleen’s combat style was simple. He summoned two types of elemental creatures, the elemental stone statue soldiers and the blue ice maiden, to protect himself. Then, he used a large net to capture them one by one.

The puppet troops contained magic perpetual-motion engines within them. Too few of such mechanisms had been preserved as its materials were hard to find. The core of the magic perpetual-motion engine had been refined with the body of a special godly race, which originated from the metal plane.

Inbosa’s method of capturing the puppets was more violent. He retrieved a gigantic metal gear and stood on it. The metal gear rotated and dashed about wildly, causing all of the puppets to be knocked off their feet.

Inbosa did not want the puppet army, but he felt expectant about the magic perpetual-motion engines in the puppets. After the release of the earliest batch of magic perpetual-motion engines, the imitation engines were much worse. The metal divine kingdom had been destroyed and not much of it was left behind. There was no longer the same godly race for humans to capture.

For the sake of the magic perpetual-motion engine, it was worth wasting a little time.

Saleen had keen eyes. He saw that amidst the puppet army, there were 100 whose armor was slightly different. The difference could only be identified using his Elemental Eye. it was a difference of material quality. The materials used for the magic patterns did not have any similarity.

He immediately summoned all of his elemental creatures to block off the 100 puppets to one side and used the large net to capture them. The puppets had no soul, so it was easier to seal them away. After trapping them in the large net, Saleen used a Frozen spell to make the puppets unable to move for a split-second to easily seal them away.

Although Inbosa’s alchemy was strong, in the intense battle, he had not identified the differences among the puppet army. After Saleen had secretly captured 100 powerful puppets, he no longer took things seriously.

The elemental creatures’ numbers were sufficient. The scale of the puppet army was too small, and Saleen continuously held the absolute initiative of the battle. The outermost parts of the puppet army had probably already been taken apart, otherwise they would not have been weak. Alchemy City had preserved the puppet’s core for the sake of future research.

The outer armor and weapons were the truly fatal pieces of equipment of the puppets. If it had been Saleen, he would have separated the outer part and the core of the puppets. The puppets were even difficult for the ancient humans to control. Of course it was the best course of action to take away the puppets’ weapons.

They wasted about an hour downstairs. Most of the time had been spent on sealing the puppets. Between the puppets and the mages, no direct combat had taken place at all. Inbosa’s metal gears flew about, and the puppets could not approach him at all.

“Inbosa, let’s go,” Saleen said impatiently. He had already taken what he wanted and was unwilling to waste time. It had been an hour, and they did not know what had taken place outside. Had Alchemy City taken control of the archangel? If it had been controlled, they could make it in time if they escaped now.