Badge in Azure

Chapter 297: Mage’s Anger (Part 2)

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

“Let’s go.” Banchajanna twisted his body, showing his true form. Grabbing Daniel in one hand, he stepped into the sky and flew off. Judikaka shook his head, afraid that trouble would be caused.

Besides searching for leads on the scepter in the past few days, Judikaka also gained a comprehension of the current situation from the mages of Sregl Island. He knew this place was away from the four empires in this dimension. It was indeed a good place to stop. If there were no incidents, Judikaka intended to help Saleen build up the city and hide inside. It would definitely not raise any eyebrows.

If they really did kill the disciples of the gods, it would be hard not to draw any attention.

Daniel was held in Banchajanna’s hands. He was over eight meters long with a tail that was over ten meters, making him enormous in the sky. The mages from Sregl Island brought with them two-hundred swordsmen. Moving north by land, they were quickly overtaken by Banchajanna in the air.

Daniel used the death flames to envelope his body, Banchajanna was flying incredibly fast and the cold wind bit into him like a knife. Without the protection of the death flames Daniel would have frozen to death within minutes. The Pikoosi hid inside the death flames in Banchajanna’s hands. It did not even dare show its face.

The Pikoosi already had the absolute powers of grade-6. He was recovering incredibly quickly but that made him even more afraid of the death king.

The mages from Sregl Island saw Banchajanna flying past and were a little relieved. They were well aware of Saleen’s powers. If he was asking for help, he must have met an enemy that was hard to shake off. If not, with Saleen’s powers, he would be able to defeat a grade-5 professional easily.

These mages had been ordered by Jason to protect Saleen. If anything happened to him, they would not be able to go back to Sregl Island.

Saleen was face to face with the black deacon. They had not made any other moves yet. Standing over forty meters apart, they were at the optimal distance for any magic or divine spells.

As the black deacon saw it, the tribunal would win the battle on the ground. The combat powers of the puppet were not incredibly strong, but these two combat puppets were tough indeed. The stronger their defenses were, the faster they would use up their magic chords though.

He could afford to wait. There were at most another two or three more enemies in the forest. He had over a hundred men at his command, so it was impossible that they would lose.

Saleen was not in a rush either. These fully constructed puppets were driven by dragonshards. What was a hundred enemies to them? Even if there were thousands of people on the battleground they would not stop working from a lack of energy.

“Mage, if you surrender now I will consider asking the cardinal to let you go. How about that?” The black deacon had a change in tone, obviously trying to stall for time.

Saleen knew his intentions and could not help but shudder. There was a black bishop here. It seemed like the scale of this hunt was bigger than he had expected. The Holy See had sent so many people for this and he had run into them. Was he really a natural enemy of the Holy See?

He had run into them when they were looking for the ruins of the Second Dynasty. When they were after Daniel he had run into them again. Now that he was in the barren North, he had run into their secret operations. Even an astrologer could not predict something so coincidental.

“Didn’t you want to burn me alive?” Saleen asked in a cold voice. The black deacon was stalling for time but so was he. The black deacon was afraid that if he flew too quickly, he would not be able to catch up. He had trapped him by threatening him, preventing him from deserting the rest and escaping.

Saleen was stalling for time too. When the three kings arrived, they would be able to decimate the people here.

As for the black deacon, so long as he returned to the base of his city, he would not be afraid of any bishop. By the time the Holy See reacted, Lex and the rest would have arrived. By then, there would be dozens of grand mages there. If the three kings did not leave, he would not be afraid of the Holy See’s next move.

Saleen did not want to sacrifice Conan, he knew what the Holy See were doing. There were not many barbarians left in the north and he could keep Conan by his side. He could make use of the hatred between the barbarians and the Holy See to his advantage.

“You want to know what we have been capturing the barbarians for, don’t you?” The black deacon’s face seemed incredibly savage in the red light.

“I don’t want to know,” Saleen replied coldly.

The black deacon could not care less either as he continued saying, “They do indeed have superior bodies. The tribunal wants to create blood knights and they would be the best ingredients for it. Once we have gathered over ten thousand blood knights, the light of God will be spread to every corner of the mainland.”

“Blood knights?!” Saleen’s eye started twitching. They had appeared over a thousand years ago. Back then, the mainland was in chaos and black mages were everywhere. All the empires were finding a solution to deal with them.

The Tanggulasi Empire that the land Holy See controlled was doing so too, but the Holy See back then had been fighting for a long time and had suffered huge losses. To replace the dead knights, the tribunal had created the first batch of blood knights. Strictly speaking, they were no different from the black puppets that the black mages created, but the puppets that the black mages created would eventually be sacrificed to the devils.

The blood knights were essentially sacrificing the souls of knights to the God of Light. They would eventually go to heaven. Before that, they had to go through immense pain. Similarly, they would gain incredible combat powers.

They were created by divine spells and naturally had the blood sword aura. In other words, the blood knights that were created had not gone through any training to attain the powers of a beginner swordmaster.

If a team was created entirely by swordsmen, it would be considered incredibly elite. The Holy See used this to create a group of knights that were made up of swordsmen. With this group they controlled the entire west of the mainland. Even though the black mages could create a large number of black puppets, the blood knights were created incredibly quickly too. With the gods supporting from behind, no one could criticise the Holy See’s actions.

Despite that, creating blood knights was not something to rejoice. The people that had been turned into blood knights would have their lives shortened tremendously, at most living until thirty-five. Once they became blood knights, they would no longer have any conscious and needed to listen to the commands of the holy master.

Many blood knights were captured forcefully and were not willing. Even more had been prisoners of the other empires. When the black mages were defeated it caused non-stop chaos on the mainland.

Eventually, under the pressure of the other three empires, the Holy See had to promise to give up creating blood knights.

If the Qin Empire had not been so strong back then, causing the Cloudflow and Sikeqinya Empire to be worried, the three empires might have joined forces against the Tanggulasi Empire.

Now that the Holy See was back to creating blood knights it meant that they were confident of going up against the other three empires. The black deacon did not deny this, leaving Saleen shocked and angered.

According to Conan’s few words, Saleen gathered that thousands of barbarians had been captured in the north. A group of knights was ten-thousand people, these barbarians alone could form a few groups of them. With tens of thousands of blood knights all at least the level of a swordmaster, this was a worrying amount of power.

When Saleen was little he had heard the rumors in his hometown that the Tanggulasi Empire was involved in the business of human trafficking. They did not need slaves, or at the very least they did not need to buy from the other empires. Finding a connection, Saleen realized that the Holy See must have been planning this for a long time.

Turning a living human into an existence similar to a puppet and sacrificing its soul to the gods was something no mage could swallow. This world was balanced. Anything given to the gods could never be returned to this world.

The Nature Goddess was the god of this dimension, and this problem did not exist. However, the God of Light was from another dimension. Whatever it took away would leave the Myers Mainland dimension forever.

“Mage, consider surrendering.” The black deacon laughed. From afar, a bright light shot across. Saleen knew it must have been from a high-grade holy master flying.

“Why haven’t the three kings arrived?” Saleen furrowed his brows. He suddenly commanded the cloud of mist around him to pounce towards the black deacon.

He was incredibly shocked, even though his sword aura was not revolving as he wanted while he was flying close combat was not the strength of mages. No matter how slow he was he would be faster than a flying mage.

Saleen took advantage of his hesitation and released the scrolls in his hands consecutively. More ice blades appeared silently within the cloud of mist. This time, the ice blades that Saleen released were something he could control. Every time he opened a scroll, it was not finished. These ice blades were released but did not shoot out. Hundreds of them gathered and revolved around in the cloud of mist.

This saved a large amount of magic chords. As for focus, Saleen’s focus was reaching the level of Lex’s. Some grade-6 mages did not even have the focus he had. Saleen was not concerned about using up his focus, it could be quickly replenished unlike his magic chords.

The black deacon was incredibly shocked, his enemy was only a grade-4 mage yet had incredible attacking power. He was slightly slower when it came to flying and it was impossible for him to escape. He was slightly regretful of facing off against Saleen in the air. At that moment the red light on his body shone brightly as hundreds of holy prose shot out from his long robes.

These holy proses gave off a golden light as every ice blade slashed against them slowing them all. The holy proses were easily shattered by the ice blades, but they quickly condensed and reformed.

The black deacon quickly retreated and Saleen gave chase. The cloud of mist around his body expanded until it was almost a hundred meters in radius. The black deacon was completely surrounded in the cloud of mist. Saleen released scrolls almost as if they were free the powers from the scrolls surpassed that of a sorcerer.

Because very few mages had as many scrolls as Saleen they needed to repeatedly practice their technique when it came to releasing scrolls. For Saleen, releasing low-level scrolls was as quick for him as releasing a spell himself.

Ice blades, ice arrows, icicles, poisonous fog; dozens of low-level magic surrounded the black deacon. He quickly turned the pages of his book trying to recite a prayer. Saleen did not give him any chance to retaliate. The water current that was wrapping around his body silently flew out, breaking through the defences formed by the holy proses and wrapping itself around the black deacon’s neck.