Badge in Azure

The goddess looked at Saleen. Her form was no longer even a humanoid tree creature. She was simply a huge piece of wood with eyes. She then said slowly, “I was the one who made you who you are today, and I don’t want to see you destroyed.”

Saleen smiled and added, “But I’ve wanted you dead before I even resurrected you.”

“Which is why we are different.” The goddess’s tone was neutral, devoid of joy or sorrow. However, she had been sad about the passing of her followers.

“We’re not all that different. It’s just that you’ve gotten old.” Saleen still wore a faint smile by then.

“Such words easily get on women’s nerves.” Thin vines grew behind her back and danced in the air.

“But you’re not a woman. You’re a goddess,” Saleen taunted.

“Isn’t that the same though? The way one is born determines how they live out the rest of their lives, after all.” A whip appeared in the goddess’ hand, which lashed out once and destroyed all the lightning creatures 100 meters before her.

The goddess was still powerful. If Saleen’s lightning magic had been dealt against any other god, he would have finished the fight a long time ago, but he was only able to fight a war of attrition with the goddess. The goddess’s attack destroyed about ten percent of the lightning creatures, preventing them from being restored.

Saleen learned how formidable the divine territory was. He waved and summoned even more lightning creatures from the Lightning Moon.

As the green vines grew, the goddess gradually returned to her human form but still stood at about ten meters tall. The vines coiled around her body, forming a colorful set of armor.

The goddess looked at Saleen and said, “I have to admit that your armor since it is formed by the thunder dragons, is indeed powerful, which is why I’ve only attacked you once. If I’m unable to kill you, then there is little else for me to do about you.”

“Thanks for telling me that.” A huge ball of lightning appeared in Saleen’s hand, which he had extracted from the Ring of Cosmos. The amount of energy contained within the ball was enough to make the goddess feel suffocated.

The goddess did not need to breathe. The suffocating feeling was just an impression left behind by her days spent as a human.

“If I am unable to kill you, I need to at least destroy your world,” Saleen said as he threw the ball of lightning into the air, which drew an arc in the sky and landed in a river far away.

The water in the river was severed immediately, and about a cubic kilometer’s worth of water immediately vaporized, leaving space behind.

The goddess knew that Saleen was telling the truth. He might not have been able to kill her, but he could destroy the space of the temple. She was unable to keep up with Saleen’s movement skills. The Comet Flash was simply too fast, several times faster than her Rainbow.

It was only then that the goddess realized that Saleen’s fixation on movement skills far eclipsed his fixation on attacks. He, a level 17 mage, was capable of flying faster than a level 18 god.

Furthermore, given how the ball of lightning was able to pierce her world, it meant that a lockdown would have limited effectiveness against him. Saleen would need to use Lightning Protection to escape the area surrounded by plants.

The divine beast specter before her continued to grow and expand. Balls of lightning reached her and were strung up by the water current into a string of balls. None of them were destroyed; they were sent into the specter instead.

The divine beast specter flickered for a bit before continuing to expand. The goddess was done waiting and mounted the specter. She charged at Saleen with the whip in her hand.

If the goddess had been fighting against a common enemy, one hit with the whip filled with divine might would have been enough. She would not have needed to do anything else. Creating an illusion using divine powers would have been enough to crush said enemies.

Nailisi leaped from the ground, a boom echoing, and lashed out with the Sword of Rules in her hand. The rumble was caused by her feet hitting the ground as she launched herself up into the air.

Dante unleashed over 100 more thunder dragons from the Lightning Moon as well, which pounced on the goddess from above.

The space within the divine territory had been torn to pieces. If it had not been for both Saleen and the goddess having godly items enabling them to keep space steady, both of them would have ended up being thrown into the spatial turbulence.

The Whip of Divine Might was one of the few completely intact godly items that she had in her possession. That item had been at her side as she waged wars against the gods in ancient times. Back then, it had yet to be a piece of equipment that belonged to a god. It had instead been a rare mental type of equipment among mages, capable of casting powerful pressure of the soul.

The thunder dragons did not even manage to get near the goddess before their bodily integrity failed, much to Dante’s dismay. The power of both worlds tangled. The thunder dragons were unable to make it past all the world power attacks from the other side. They all dissipated while they were still quite a distance away from the goddess.

The goddess paid no heed to the attacks. Her whip was even more flexible than Saleen’s snakes. Tiny wormholes were even seen near the energy vortexes near the tip of the whip.

Saleen pretended as if he saw nothing. He cast the Well of Stars, and his body was covered in water element, forming thick mists around him.

The divine beast serving the goddess roared angrily, which was powerful enough to cause a ripple in the Well of Stars. The goddess took that momentary opening and burrowed inside.

An elemental beast?

Saleen was only surprised when he saw what the divine beast pulled and that the goddess was riding on an elemental beast. All that he deduced about that other divine beast had been useless thus far.

He was fully capable of deception, and it seemed that it was the same with the goddess.

However, that did not matter to him. A fire dragon emerged and coiled around Saleen’s body. The fire dragon shot huge fireballs at the goddess’s steed.

The fireballs were all wrapped in magic patterns and were more than just low-level spells. If Saleen had not had the Scorching Candle on his person, the fireballs of very high temperatures would have scalded him just by grazing him.

The goddess’s expression became severe as she faced the chains of fireballs. The whip in her hand changed targets and trembled rapidly, destroying all of the fireballs. The goddess flicked her hand with every fireball she destroyed. She was able to tell from the power from the fireballs that Saleen had become truly capable of killing her.

The two parties were back on the same starting line again. It had become increasingly clear that they were equal in terms of power. The outcome of the battle was difficult to predict.

If it had not been for resurrecting her followers, the goddess’s powers would have been several times higher but she would have had no way of telling just how frightening the growth rate of the mage in front of her was.

She initially thought that there were no longer any divine personas left in the plane, but Saleen had nonetheless been able to acquire high-level divine personas, using them within the Hall of Gods to reach where he was.

That one misstep became a series of missteps. She wondered when she lost control of the mage’s fate, as everything had gone differently from what she predicted.

Furthermore, Saleen had many people at his disposal. Even without the Nature Faith, he still would have been fully capable of controlling Myers Mainland.

“No. If I lose here, there won’t be a Myers Mainland anymore. It would only take several generations for everyone to forget the name ‘Myers,’” the goddess thought to herself.

The Withering Dance in her hand shattered at that thought, dancing around her like a rain of flowers.

When the divine territory was shrunk to the smallest of areas, the powers became incredibly condensed. Any stray thunder dragon that managed to get near was repelled by her divine territory.

Saleen felt the third eye in the center of his brow begin to twitch violently as if it was trying to break free. It was his only weakness, but it was also his greatest strength.

His third eye broke free of his control and opened. Saleen was able to see a red sun coming at him as if his body had melted and was no longer in his control.

Hmph!

Thundering Sound rumbled in Saleen’s mind. The divine might dissipated, but the sun remained.

The goddess had taken the form of a scorching sun and had charged at Saleen in a determined, furious manner.

A smile appeared in Saleen’s mind’s eye. It was the smile of his teacher.

In the past, Saleen would have chosen to evade the attack. On that day, however, Saleen chose to take hold of a huge icicle and charge at the goddess. He was about to clash with the goddess head-on.

There was no possibility of trickery. Everything power commanded by both parties was laid bare for all to see, and techniques were meaningless. The side without ample power would be crushed, and that was all there was to it.

A mage and a god who had been a mage used the most brutal form of close-quarter combat to determine who would survive.

The goddess’s whip lashed hard at Saleen’s shoulder. The pauldron conjured by a thunder dragon disappeared right away, being sent back to his magic amplifier. Saleen’s icicle hit the goddess’s face.

A huge hole appeared.

The icicle was filled with rules of lightning and was raging, so much so that the goddess’s divine wooden form was unable to take it. However, given that the goddess’s power of the Source had never been in her mind, she was not in any life-threatening danger, even if her brain was smashed.

One hit from the icicle was traded with one hit from the whip. Both sides lost considerably.

Saleen lost a thunder dragon. While the thunder dragon remained alive, it would not be able to participate in any battles for the next 100 years. It was fortunate that he had 24 of them, and every single one of them was capable of taking the form of any part of the set of armor.

Saleen’s Soul Armor was quickly repaired and he cast eight balls of lightning again, which crashed hard into the divine beast that the goddess was riding.

The elemental beast had no sense of pain and did not fear death. Saleen had no idea just how such a low-level being could have evolved to such heights. As such, he used four times the previous level of power to attack it. Common pairs of balls of lightning probably would not have been enough to kill the divine beast, after all.

After eight balls of lightning were sent into the divine beast’s body, the ferocious beast shattered into dust without making a sound.

That exceeded the goddess’s expectations. If she wanted to summon the shattered beast again, it would take twice the amount of time she took to summon it last time.

While the divine beast was powerful, it depended on the enemy it was up against. The fire dragon behind Saleen spit a string of fireballs yet again. The fireballs passed through the magic amplifier, enhancing their powers by over 20 times.

It was due precisely to his magic amplifier that Saleen dared to take on a level 18 god as a level 17 mage. If it had not been for the magic amplifier, Saleen’s magic spells would have been such a meager threat that the goddess could have just ignored them. If that had been the case, he would have had far fewer tactical options available.

The goddess was shocked by his power. The man she faced at the moment was different from the one she had known in the past. It was only then she realized that Saleen had never truly used his true level of power when he was under her scrutiny during all the wars he had fought in the past.

Her whip was able to clear up all the fireballs that were fired the second time. However, her hand ended up rather numb. It had been a lot of time since she had felt any kind of pain.

When elemental resonance occurred, even if she forcefully attacked using godly items, the resonance traveled back through the recoil no matter what she did.