Badge in Azure

Saleen had been planning for quite a long time. He knew that everything he did and said would have been scrutinized by the goddess. As such, he had only used his usual level of powers in battles, instead of amplifying them using his magic amplifiers.

It was not until he faced the goddess that Saleen put his true powers to use, finally showing off just how powerful he could be when he used his magic amplifier.

He had been hiding his powers the whole time just to make the goddess misjudge his power level.

The fire dragon conjured by the Scorching Candle continued to throw fireballs, which he had infused with ball lightning and lightning icicles.

All six godly items had fixed spells in them. The goddess was plunged into the sea of magic. While she was extremely adept at manipulating elemental powers, the six godly items did not rely on ambient elemental powers for spell-casting. Elemental creatures stored by Saleen powered the spells instead.

The six godly items had been created after she perished, and it was after her death that magic had developed a lot. The goddess attempted to deduce the functionalities of the six godly items by relying on her experience, but the six that Saleen was using differed from the equipment of the other mages. He was only relying on the elemental creatures stored within the items for power, causing no fluctuations outside.

The goddess retreated several hundred meters before stopping. She gave up thinking about how to kill Saleen. Her whip had used up about ten percent of her power, but it had only been able to get rid of one of the pieces of armor on Saleen. There were 24 pieces in the set, and there was no way she could use the same attacks to take out every piece.

However, giving up was not an option for the goddess. Her followers had all been set up by Saleen after all. If she gave up killing him, she would no longer be the Goddess of Myers.

The divine territory contracted yet again. All the tall, imposing plants around sprayed green gasses and sealed the entire space off. The huge petals conjured by the Withering Dance fused with her body, which then shrunk gradually back to the size of a normal human.

Saleen was able to see that all of the goddess’ power of the Source returned to her body, and none was left concealed within the Withering Dance.

The external layer of thunder dragon armor on Saleen’s body became instantly covered with half a meter of icy mist.

The goddess’s pupils contracted. However, Saleen was already behind her. He lifted his arm and pointed his finger.

The Withering Dance reappeared on the goddess’ wrist. All of her power of the Source was concealed within the Withering Dance. Saleen’s finger was pointed on the wooden bangle, and crisp cracking noises were heard.

The goddess then saw Saleen’s smug expression. She was startled but proceeded with her plan nonetheless. Hundreds of vines shot from her body, enveloping the mage.

A scroll unraveled in Saleen’s hand, which held a level 17 chained magic spell.

The spell was Elemental Collapse, which was a suicide magic spell. The mage who created the spell was from the Fourth Dynasty. The goddess trapped Saleen, so he cast Elemental Collapse, causing the goddess to feel as if her body was disintegrating.

However, she knew that Saleen was not someone who sought death.

She turned around and saw another Saleen pierce her body with a lightning icicle.

Crack…

The goddess’s body disintegrated bit by bit, becoming green energy that filled the place.

“Seems like we’ve underestimated each other,” Saleen said. He saw the goddess appear on another huge plant faraway. Her face emerged from the bark of that plant. It looked very plain.

“But then again, I’m already used to your deception.” The goddess never thought that it would be easy to kill Saleen. He would have had a hard time killing her while in her world after all.

However, Saleen was incredibly at ease. While that finger attack that he had pulled had not been the Crystal Finger, he was nonetheless able to calculate that the goddess was not that much quicker than he expected when she transferred her body elsewhere.

He would have been unable to kill the goddess using the Crystal Finger right away. However, since the goddess’s power of the Source could not have stayed hidden from his observation, there was still hope in killing her.

So far, both Saleen and the goddess had only been able to wear down each other’s powers somewhat and had not been truly able to harm their true bodies.

She was capable of resurrecting indefinitely while she was still on her divine territory, so long as her power of the Source stayed intact.

Saleen knew that he was facing an enemy far more powerful than any that he had fought before, so it would be extremely difficult to find an opening and finish things up the way he had done in the past.

The Winged Skull swung their Reaper Scythe about and emerged from the magic amplifier, staying close to the ground while they cut up the massive roots of the plants conjured by the goddess.

Their Reaper Scythe dented with a cracking noise. The Winged Skull blew a black breath onto the Reaper Scythe, mending the dented part. A long, narrow eye opened on the huge blade, dispelling the divine territory. The power transferred from the purgatory plane caused the root of the plant to begin withering.

Nailisi returned to her imp form as she opened her mouth, chomping down and chewing away at the vines of the plants in the divine territory. They were all divine trees, but there was no telling what kind of divine trees they were.

Nailisi did not mind at all, as it would enable her to gain a new type of mighty power, which was taking a plant form resembling the tree creature.

Dante was rather concerned about the Lightning Moon. There was no fear of its powers running out. While the power of the Lightning Moon was indeed limited, it was impossible to drain it all in just a single battle. The drain in usual battles was far lower than the Lightning Moon’s recovery rate after all.

The power of lightning was different from other element powers, as while it had a little drain, it was difficult to convert its energy.

Dante continued to attack the divine territory. Although it was unable to see any weaknesses, it refused to just back down. Dante knew well that the battle had to eventually be settled by Saleen’s hands after all.

“You’ve decayed,” Saleen uttered, looking down upon her. His magic amplifier was then scattered. All 27 eyes targeted the goddess.

The goddess’s body was petrified, or rather, decayed.

All signs of life within her disappeared as if that one line had hit the depths of her mind.

It was like asking her what her goal had been, and if she had been truly herself all those years ago.

However, things were different. The world had changed by the time she was resurrected. Nothing that she had been familiar with survived, and her power had been suppressed to the limit. None of her original plans worked, and the one who resurrected her had no respect for her whatsoever.

Saleen’s bare animosity towards her baffled her. It had nothing to do with the Lord of Glory, as Saleen seemed to hate the gods more than the ancient humans ever did.

However, she never had any intention of destroying the world, nor did she want to live forever.

Like Saleen, she only wanted her home to prosper, and she became a master of multiple planes.

She wondered if she lost her way.

After she was resurrected, the death of her followers bothered her, and she forgot that the deaths of people back in ancient times had never been something she should have clung to. She hated those heroic spirits, but her followers were just like them.

The Book of Gaia opened, and the plants on the ground began to die en masse as if they had dried up and then withered and collapsed.

Saleen’s eyes were merciless. The goddess before him was no longer the one he had seen on the mural or the one that the heroic spirits remembered. The goddess before him had aged, and her soul was no longer what it had once been.

Resurrection? From Saleen’s perspective, all of that was ridiculous.

“If I die, then make sure that I die completely!” Saleen thought deep in his mind, bringing all six godly items to their full power and enveloping the goddess within.

The goddess’s face was ashen and did not have a single bit of life left in it.

“Perhaps you’re right, but even old people have the right to continue living. Let our battle be more simple, Saleen!” The goddess let everything go after she said that. A thin magic staff appeared in her hand.

The thin staff was crimson, and there was a divine persona embedded on the top.

It was a piece of equipment that had resulted from the time she had spent in silence for over 10,000 years, a godly item that both mages and gods were capable of wielding.

The Lightning Moon raged all of a sudden. Saleen sensed that Dante was afraid. Dante sensed devastating power coming from the weapon that the goddess was holding. However, if she used the godly item, she probably would not end in a good state herself.

She had no intention of fighting to the death. She only wanted to behave like how she once had—the girl in her maiden stage, one who lived her life to the fullest and fought whenever she felt like fighting, without any other concerns getting in her way.

The divine territory did not crumble, but all the plants that supported the divine territory were all gradually encroached on by the six godly items. With the addition of attacks from the Winged Skull and Nailisi, those divine trees had no way of continuing to provide power to her.

Saleen had lost one Thunder Phantasm. He was still capable of creating new illusory constructs, but he gave up probing. It was past the time for it. He was about to bring about true attacks.

He walked towards the goddess. The yellow light shining from beneath his feet was as solid as the earth. While his speed was nothing extraordinary, the goddess had no way of evading him.

The two parties were less than ten meters away from each other when Saleen pointed his finger.

Pfftt…

The goddess’s body failed to withstand Saleen’s attack, and she was not able to move the damage elsewhere. A bloody hole appeared in her forehead. Blood spurted out from the wound. Immediately after, a green arrow fired by the goddess hit Saleen’s heart.

The goddess was stunned. She discovered that her power of the Source had been destroyed by Saleen in one hit.

She was unable to understand how that was possible. She had stored her power of the Source in the Withering Dance. Saleen’s skills were formidable, but they should not have been able to wreck a level 18 godly item.

Saleen was just as stunned. His Figure of Fate did not react at all, and the goddess’ arrow punched right through the heart of his true body.

The surprise lasted for less than a second before the pain in his heart hit him. His Figure of Fate dropped to the ground, evidently separated from his body.

The wound in his heart disappeared, but the feeling of being pierced remained. Saleen did not dare to move even a single muscle, fearing that he might pass out from the pain.

The arrow from the goddess delayed the flow of time, preventing the Figure of Fate from taking the hit for Saleen right away.

Such an eerie skill meant that she had developed lethal skills against astrologers.

However, the goddess was the more surprised of the two. She was no longer able to move. As her power of the Source collapsed and returned into a chaotic state, coalescing into the primordial energy form, the divine persona on her magic staff shattered into dust.