Badge in Azure

Chapter 276: Planes in Chaos (Part 1)

Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio

Saleen’s life was not as blissful as what those mages from Sregl Island thought to be. Nailisi had only shapeshifted into the image of the Myers Goddess, but she was still a demon at heart.

Saleen had no intention of dating a demon. In fact, he did not have much of a desire to date other humans either. However, he was already less guarded towards Nailisi than before. After going through so many things together, Saleen knew that Nailisi would never harm him.

“Master, you won’t sell me away like Daniel did, right?” Nailisi said pitifully, while nestled in Saleen’s embrace.

Nailisi was speaking heartfelt words now, but Saleen did not take her seriously. Saleen was well aware of what Nailisi had been like in the past. From the day the contract had been signed, Nailisi had been fixated on leaving him. But later on, she had grown attached to Saleen, so her thoughts of leaving him had turned into wanting him all for herself.

Nailisi tried to sow discord among the people around Saleen, because the more chaotic the situation was, the more Saleen would need her powers.

“Those mages are staring at us.” Saleen did not push Nailisi away. In the beginning, Saleen had no choice but to sign the contract with Nailisi by lying to and frightening her. But after spending such a long time with her, Saleen felt that the books’ description of demons were inaccurate.

Demons could not be considered to be cruel, because which creatures were more ruthless than humans?

The Lord of Glory had disseminated his teachings across the Myers Mainland. He thought that humans sinned the moment they were born and needed total redemption. This sentence was largely incorrect, but a portion of it was right. Most humans needed redemption.

In order for a mage to practice magic, they would have to mine for minerals to acquire gems and hunt magic beasts to obtain magic nuclei. In prehistoric times, the powerful humans had traversed between the various planes and snatched whatever was in front of their eyes. Perhaps, the various planes had been hurled into devastation by those humans, so the gods had descended to mete out punishment and caused the humans to gradually lose their abilities.

Even the gods would have to abide by the rules of the different planes, whereas humans were simply unscrupulous.

Demons were much simpler. Nailisi would eat whenever she was hungry and would sleep when she grew tired. She had no other desires. When Nailisi had come across the eggs of the lightning dragon, she just wanted to use one of them. She had not tried to instigate Saleen into taking all the eggs.

“Let them look all they want. Either way, I belong to master.” Nailisi looked shameless, completely unbefitting of her beautiful and elegant appearance.

In truth, Saleen had wanted to talk about how he felt homesick, but now he had completely lost those feelings. Thus, Saleen could only change the topic. He removed Nailisi’s arm and said, “When I was struck by the current from the lightning dragon, I felt like I was dead. Everything had stopped moving. There was a boundless darkness and there was no pain at all. What about you?”

“Whatever feelings Master received, I felt the same ones too. But I recovered faster, and did not want to let those mages know about them.” When Saleen mentioned the lightning dragon, Nailisi grew solemn as she knew how important it was to Saleen. Jason had given large amounts of materials to Saleen, but in order to construct a city, Saleen would have to spend an astronomical sum of money. Saleen could not ask Lex to move the Bitter Water Prefecture here, or else the Holy See would immediately take notice.

Currently, Lex would have to bring a few people from the swordsman’s camp before conducting a mass migration in the Caucasus region. Only the people of Caucasus were willing to live in the plains situated west of the harbor. However, this northern area was not barren. It was even slightly superior to the Caucasus region. There were many mountains in the Caucasus region, making large scale agriculture difficult. Hence, the food production of a village was more often than not insufficient for the Caucasus people themselves.

Furthermore, people from the other regions were not able to tolerate the frostiness of the north.

What Saleen needed to do right now was build a strong foundation for the city, and in order to do so, he would require large quantities of gold coins. The slime secreted by the lightning dragon could fetch a good price. If this thing was marketed in Alchemy City, the mages would definitely be willing to exchange mountains of gold coins in return for it.

“This time, don’t charge up ahead anymore,” Saleen reminded Nailisi. The attacks by the lightning dragon could not be dodged, and even if Saleen was a grade-10 mage, he would only be able to stop the dragon’s reactionary attacks. Once the dragon’s attack was released, the electric current was even swifter than the cognition speed of a human.

Perhaps the power of lightning was released far too quickly, so mages had never been able to use magic to simulate natural electricity.

The magic patterns created by Saleen were a breakthrough, but these patterns originated from two items which were not created by him. Before that, the person who created the badge had already grasped the power of lightning, but this person was neither mentioned in books nor was he talked about among the mages. This man was even less famous than Raphael. At least some high grade mages knew who Raphael was, but there was absolutely no information regarding the person who created the badge.

Saleen was only the heir, and unless he discovered the principles behind this badge, he would never be able to make progress in this aspect. It was meaningless to Saleen if he could only produce an electric current strong enough to kill insects.

“Anyway, we were not shocked to death, so I am not afraid.” Nailisi shook her head in determination. She could not bring herself to hide behind Saleen. The attacks by the lightning dragon had been very terrifying, but Nailisi intuitively felt that what she and Saleen had gone through was only less than one percent of the dragon’s true capabilities.

If the power of the blue electric current had been unleashed completely, the two of them would have been roasted into ash already.

Saleen did not say anything. Nailisi was not a hypocrite. He patted her shoulder and then stood up. The stones on the river banks on both sides had been stored into twenty massive magic arrays. Even though these magic arrays were unrefined, there was a possibility that they would only have to be used once.

Piling up these stones was a job that required skill. In order to pile the stones higher than a magic tower and be able to dump them into the river at anytime, a delicate balance had to be maintained, and this balance could not be achieved using magic. Before the magic arrays were activated, Saleen needed to ensure that there were no vigorous elemental vibrations present.

Magic beasts were very vigilant. Even though the lightning dragon’s eggs were very tempting, the furious lightning dragon would also not suddenly enter a place which it felt was dangerous.

The work upstream was completed in a shorter time. That area was leaning against the river bank. From the start, there was already a slightly loose giant rock there, so the mages only needed to cast a small earth spell in order to cause this rock to fall into the water.

More importantly, there had to be way to lure the lightning dragon into the river. Magic beasts which lived in the sea would almost never enter a river. In addition to being too shallow, the water in a river was freshwater, which was unsuitable for the survival of sea magic beasts.

Firstly, a lightning dragon egg would have to be the bait, but who would be the one to lure the lightning dragon into the river? In the water, Saleen possessed adequate flexibility, but his speed was too slow compared to the lightning dragon.

If Saleen held the dragon egg to bait the lightning dragon, the most probable case was that he would be electrocuted to death even before entering the river. But aside from Saleen, even Nailisi was not that fast in the water.

After a great deal of discussion, the final decision was to have Daniel summon a death creature to carry the dragon egg and serve as bait. Even if the death creature was struck by the lightning dragon, it would return to the death dimension automatically just before it died.

Daniel did not mind at all. Death creatures did not need to breathe underwater and were not afraid of the cold either. Just some simple training would be needed for the death creature to be quicker than Saleen. Furthermore, most of the creatures summoned from the death dimension existed as cannon fodder. A creature like the winged skeleton was an anomaly within the spirits of the dead. Most death creatures would need to surpass grade-7 before gaining a bit of intelligence.

Daniel’s death flames were at a high level, and he had relatively clear coordinates in the death dimension as well. Even though he could still not summon a specific creature, his success rate was not zilch either.

When the green death flames expanded, the three-headed pikoosi within appeared beside Daniel. Daniel adored death creatures like the pikoosi. Death creatures which possessed magical and physical attacks were rare, and furthermore, the pikoosi could still cast three death spells at once. It was far stronger than the winged skeleton.

As the mages observed Daniel’s performance, they were green with envy at the unique powers which a death mage possessed. Absorbing powers from another plane for training was so much easier than tempering with one’s magic chords. A death mage’s advancement might have been slower than an elemental mage’s in the later stages, but using the same logic, how many people would be able to become a sorcerer even if they were elemental mages?

Excluding a place like Alchemy City, only one sorcerer would appear out of every one thousand mages on the Myers Mainland. Grade-6 was mostly the endpoint of the training journey for most mages. Even though many mages refused to acknowledge this fact and continued training day and night, they would succumb to the power of time eventually.

Ever since Daniel had begun practicing magic, this was the first time he had enjoyed so much glory. Even in the Tanggulasi Empire, he had not been very regarded, even before the implication by the orders which the Holy See had given. Mages did not have much status in the Tanggulasi Empire, as that was the haven for holy masters.

To most people, practicing magic was something that was too distant from them. A more worthwhile thing to do was to attain a passport to heaven after death by choosing to believe in a god.

Only true mages would know that the price for that was simply too great.

Believing in a god was akin to losing oneself. If one did not even exist, then what was the point of eternal life? One would only be an extension of the will of the gods.

The green death flames seemed to be boiling. A power contrary to life had formed a colorless vortex. That was not a magic array. It was a rotating long passageway which was pitch black and cold. This passageway had a strong attraction. The moment it was opened, Daniel’s death flames began expanding furiously, engulfing all areas within a radius of one hundred meters.

Hehe…

Ka!

Ka ba ka ka…

Strange noises filled the air. Inside the black passageway, rotten smells were continuously exuded. A colossal death creature was the first to fall out of the black passageway. This black death creature appeared quite similar to a human. It was just that it was around three to four meters tall. Soul flames danced in its black orbital sockets, and the flames looked like they were about to die out at anytime.

Daniel’s face waas scarlet. The death creature which he had summoned was about to die, and it was still so enormous. Furthermore, its build was obviously not suited for swimming.

Peng!

An object shaped like a square dropped out, and when Daniel saw it, he screamed, “Run!”