Badge in Azure

Contempt was not equivalent to belittling. The fact that the enemy could destroy the flying puppet swiftly, and locate the exact position of the camp, meant that there was at least a holy master who was equivalent to a grade-6 mage present. Since there were so many blood knights, there had to be a huge number of low grade holy masters too.

Lex was lucky. The Tanggulasi army had discovered her tracks very late, so even though they traveled quickly, they were still afraid of letting her get away. Consequently, they deployed the blood knights, who traveled the fastest, to harass her. It was not a planned operation. If there were holy masters among the blood knights, the blood knights would not have been obstructed by the magic traps and fell off their warhorses so easily.

The Tanggulasi Empire did not dare risk the lives of their holy masters. The Tanggulasi people knew that there was a mighty presence accompanying Lex. If the holy masters had entered recklessly without the protection of soldiers, they would be easily slaughtered by the grand swordmasters serving Lex.

Since the holy masters were detached from the blood knights, Lex’s war puppets came in handy. Under Wild Bear’s command, the war puppets wielded bulky blades, slashing at the blood knights ferociously.

As Lex had insufficient mages with her, the war puppets could not be controlled individually, so they had to act on their own. As a result, the war puppets behaved inflexibly even though they could move swiftly. Fortunately, the enemy were blood knights who had lost their senses and the holy masters were not around to control them either. Banking on a higher amount of strength, the war puppets slaughtered all the blood knights who managed to avoid the magic traps as though they were vegetables.

Wild Bear only made two return trips into the midst of the blood knights and he could not see any more of them already. Human heads and amputated limbs were strewn across the ground, it was an extremely grotesque sight. Wild Bear actually calmed down. These monsters could actually be killed, and they could be killed easily.

Once the two Black Metal Grand Swordmasters saw this scene, they slowed down, then they led the swordmasters back into the heat of battle once more. Given their rich combat experience, they immediately identified the weakness of the blood knights. The blood knights possessed inferior skills, they relied on their fearless bodies and immense strength to triumph, which was very similar to some low grade magic beasts.

Even though the two Black Metal Grand Swordmasters were lousier than Jola, they had killed countless magic beasts too, so they were not afraid of those monsters.

To a real warrior, there was nothing to be afraid of as long as the enemy would die. Via the Sound Transmission Magic Arrays in their helmets, the two grand swordmasters disseminated the crux to winning the battle to their swordmasters. Coupled with good chemistry, the twelve people got into an arrowhead formation, before piercing straight into the team of blood knights.

This time around, Lex’s swordmasters had abandoned their usual combat style. They instead began cooperating with one another. Five swordmasters used the large shields to form a circle, while the Black Metal Grand Swordmasters chopped the heads off the blood knights who could not maneuver swiftly in the circle.

Occasionally, a blood knight would use his giant axe to strike the huge shields, but he would only leave a faint scratch on the metal surface. Most of the impact had been negated by the shield itself. The heavier an object in mid-air was, the more difficult was it to agitate it. A giant axe weighed less than one-hundred pounds. After the impact was negated by the huge shield, it would be impossible to use brute force to injure the person holding the shield.

Since the Spirit Snake Armor was sealed, the stench of blood in the air only reached the noses of the swordmasters after being filtered by a magic array. The smell still nauseated them though. The flesh of a blood knight smelt like it had been rotting for a few months. The swordmasters could only concentrate on killing the enemy in order to temper the feeling to vomit.

The magic array only filtered toxins, not smells.

When the double-edged serrated knives sliced the neck of a blood knight, blood would spurt out, gushing in all directions. Most of the blood knights were killed by the two Black Metal Grand Swordmasters, while the ten swordmasters seemed to have acted as guards. Their armor had long been drenched in large amounts of blood. If it was not for the self-cleaning function of magic armor, scabs of blood would have formed on their skin already.

Saleen suddenly felt a sense of being shaken. He felt that he was a spectator in this battle, even though he was also the enemy’s target. That being said, the blood knights only rushed here desperately after receiving information about Lex’s movements, their intention was to harass Lex.

When half the face mask of a blood knight was destroyed, revealing a bearded face, Saleen then recognized that they were barbarians.

The barbarians captured by the Black Bishop were shipped back to the Tanggulasi Empire. Now, they had appeared in this location.

Barbarians did not care about etiquette nor hygiene, and they were not as disciplined as the Caucasus people, so they were never really well liked. Saleen knew that the barbarians were pure at heart and easygoing. If the barbarians had lived in a city long enough, they would also learn to live like a Qin person.

Even though they received occasional mocking, the barbarians would only wave their fists in displeasure, they would not really wallop anyone.

Saleen did not groom those barbarians into very good soldiers, but in his heart, he had already accepted those barbarians as his citizens. There was no difference between a barbarian, a Qin person, or a Sikeqinyan. All of them could cry, laugh, fume, and think.

The barbarians had already become a part of Metatrin City. Now that so many barbarians, who were captured by the Holy See, had appeared right before him, Saleen no longer felt that he was a spectator in this battle.

“Even though it is a war, don’t the people of the Holy See have some conscience?” Saleen could not help but blurt out a naïve thought. Given his experiences, he should not have posed such a question. Given the current situation, he did not know how to express his emotions

Nailisi was jubilant, then said, “Master, you humans have a saying; if this world is not up to par, then one should either tolerate it or rebel, but they should never ask why.”

Saleen cut off the connection with the puppets, as he remained upset. Nailisi propped Saleen up, then said, “Master, stop sulking, we should prepare to leave.”

“Leave?”

“Lex cannot hold the fort, we have to enter the desert earlier.”

Saleen did not ask why. He was in a bad mood, so he did not think about this question. With Nailisi’s reminder, he came to understand that Lex was depending on just a dozen people. Even though she had a powerful assassin with her, it was impossible to continue camping in the Black Rock Mountain anymore.

The people from the Holy See could attack this place endlessly, or they could even besiege the area. By then, Saleen would not be able to leave even if he wanted to. The reason why Lex did not give the retreat order was because the blood knights were too fast, they could even catch up to a skeletal warhorse.

If this emblem group of blood knights was not extirpated, it would be difficult to solve the problem even if Lex’s team had fled into the desert. Lex’s subordinates could not be abandoned, only the war puppets could be abandoned.

Lex had already recalled the injured puppets. In the fight against the blood knights, many more injuries were added onto the bodies of the war puppets. Since the puppets had coarse skin and thick flesh, almost none of them were fully destroyed. More than half of them could not continue fighting already. Some puppets even lost a whole arm. Since the puppets had lost their weapon, they could only kick the enemy, so there was no point for them to remain on the battlefield.

Saleen really wanted to ask Nailisi to release another ten-thousand magic bugs to devour those blood knights. Summoning magic bugs depleted a great deal of resources though, and there was no time to set a secure magic array.

Aiwa was responsible for storing the tent. Indeed, Lex’s subordinates were also dismantling the tents. These tents were specially produced magic appliances. One would not even be able to pitch a tent in the Purgatory Desert otherwise.

Lex was also dispirited. She was going to receive information from Metatrin City, yet she got discovered by the Tanggulasi army. It was likely that the news released by Bifano had been discovered by the Agares family.

For the past twenty days, Bifano had stopped transmitting further information, which meant that he was dead. The Agares family would have deployed many men to investigate into this matter. After Lex left, she tried her best to avoid the cities, yet she could not avoid the villages. Since the Agares family had managed Titan for such a long time, they were in control of most farmers, so there was no way Lex could hide her movements from them.

“Since the Agares family knew that they couldn’t capture me, they decided to leak the information to the Tanggulasi Empire. If I were in their shoes, I would have done so too. The Agares family had acted too quickly though, I cannot even stay for two or three more days.”

The sound of the war drums in the distance were drawing closer. It seemed like the Tanggulasi army had met with some trouble, so they could not follow the blood knights closely. It was possible that they had alarmed the ferocious creatures at the periphery of the desert due to the presence of their large manpower.

The magic beasts in the Purgatory Desert were different from the ones outside. Due to a lack of food, they were highly aggressive. This was the reason why Lex was not willing to bring along a large number of people, instead she was willing to use the pricey war puppets. Had she brought along an emblem group, the blood knights would have been wiped out swiftly.

Lex could not waste any more time, she spoke into the Sound Transmission Magic Array, “Longqi, come back. Leave the war puppets behind to defend the rear. Saleen, put away the fully constructed puppets, don’t have such a high level of consumption for now.”

Saleen nodded. The fully constructed puppets controlled by Nailisi and him were mosaicked with the fragments of the dragonshard, but the other fully constructed puppets were using intermediate level magic nuclei. The dragonshard could self-recover slowly, but a magic nucleus was a disposable item.

Lex’s Black Metal Grand Swordmasters were actually the leaders of her first emblem group. Once the order was given, the two of them immediately led the swordmasters away from the encirclement of the blood knights.

The blood knights gave chase fearlessly, so the swordmasters had no choice but to turn around and use their alchemical crossbows to shoot the blood knights’ warhorses. The arrow of a miniature alchemical crossbow did not have a tail. Its head was triangular, sharp, and wide. It could amputate the leg bone of a warhorse.

After traveling for hundreds of yards, over a hundred blood warhorses collapsed. Without legs, a four-legged animal could not run no matter how ferocious they were. The fallen blood knights thus began running on foot. Lex’s swordmasters dashed into the formation of war puppets quickly, allowing the war puppets to clean up the rest of the enemies.

By now, the mages had boarded the magic war chariots. Other than the tents and alchemical crossbows, the rest of the appliances in the camp compound were abandoned.

This time around, Lex personally gave the directions, leading the rest of the people through the Black Rock Mountain, towards the east.

Without coordination by Wild Bear, the remaining over one-hundred war puppets lost their oppressive advantage, thus they were swiftly drowned out by the hundreds of oncoming blood knights. Lex’s method of guarding the rear was a success though. As long as the core of a war puppet was not destroyed, they could continue fighting. The cognition of a blood knight was inferior to that of a magic beast. As long as the war puppets kept moving, the blood knights would pound them ferociously.

About one-hundred war puppets could actually hold back a group of blood knights many times larger than them.