Badge in Azure

Hidden amidst the grasses and trees along the way were the parasites. These parasites attacked by using a Soul spell to cause their targets to lose control first, then they would burrow through the body and infiltrate the brain.

Even without the mark of the bond, Luola’s soul was too strange to be used as a target. The parasites only chirped, but did not attempt to attack the sprinting Luola.

They were still incapable of going up against a demon even if they tried their hardest.

Luola’s senses were extremely sharp, especially towards creatures that were near him. Even if they were much stronger than him, he would still be able to detect them. Along the way, he could sense that there were countless parasites that wanted to attack him. Precisely because his senses were sensitive enough to detect all these things is why it was so terrifying. “On the Mountain Without End, there was a God that has yet to wake.”

This was what Nailisi had said and he believed every single word now. He had never seen such creatures before and he dared not entirely trust his life to a bond. If he was surrounded by the parasites and there turned out to be a loophole, then he was finished.

What Luola did not know was that after Saleen had left, Nailisi took the chance to devour Ismail’s divine crystal under the protection of Jola and Su. Now, Nailisi possessed a large amount of Holy Prose and her sensitivity towards godly powers had improved dramatically.

After a month of deep sleep, Nailisi had absorbed some of Ismail’s abilities. If she could devour his body, Nailisi would immediately develop her fourth special ability, rather than it being just a vague feeling.

The length and width of the Myers Mainland was not even one-hundred and eight-thousand miles. The height of the Mountain Without End was so long that if it was laid down horizontally, it could definitely split the Myers Mainland in half. With such a big piece of land, it should come as no surprise that there would be gods here.

The Mountain Without End was transported over from the giant dimension. After the Goddess died, there was nothing else to stop the mountain from developing spirituality and producing Gods.

Nailisi was willing to stay obediently in camp because she had already obtained a large amount of knowledge through Ismail. She now understood how terrifying this dimension was.

The humans at that time were able to extract large amount of materials from other dimensions. This allowed the Goddess to quickly build up this dimension that was filled with various substances.

The humans at that time possessed such abilities too. To them, creating a dimension was meaningless and was a waste of effort when they could easily travel across all dimensions. The land, mountains, rivers and stars of this dimension were not created by the Goddess, but were transported over by humans for the Goddess to control.

That river that could submerge any object was probably the River of Nothingness from the abyssal plane. Further away was the jungle that seemed to have no boundaries, and was probably taken from the elf dimension. As for the land, its depth was thicker than the boundaries of the Myers Mainland. It was probably something similar to a complete and whole crust from the subcontinent plane.

If this mountain could produce Gods, then so could the River of Nothingness. Even the jungles, lakes, stars and basically everything possessed such a possibility now that the Goddess was no longer in control.

Based on this point alone, the Goddess must be revived. Many Gods would be produced in this dimension otherwise. These Gods were not produced on the Myers Mainland, so they were not restricted to only one dimension. Once they decided to leave this dimension, the Myers Mainland would be at risk of being conquered.

These Gods would destroy the barriers between dimensions and gather all the creatures from their own dimensions to replace the humans on the Myers Mainland.

This was the most effective way to conquer a dimension, unlike what the Lord of Glory was doing by spreading his faith amongst the human population.

The reason why Nailisi had instructed Luola to destroy the two mages completely was to prevent any shards of their souls from being left behind. If the Gods here became conscious and were able to recognize the unique features of the human soul, they would be able to find its weakness immediately.

Gods did not have souls. Compared to all other sentient creatures, gods were actually pitiable. Without souls, Gods could only exist within a dimension and depend on the dimension’s powers to prolong their own lifespan. If gods desired to leave their own dimensions, they would either have to advance to a higher level or spread their faith in other dimensions.

By right, the gods that would be produced in this dimension did not belong to the Myers Mainland dimension. Since they were controlled by the Goddess prior to being produced, they would be able to survive on the Myers Mainland though. They would already bare the marks of the Goddess of Myers. The fall of the Goddess gave them the chance for freedom, but similarly, they would all be under her control again if she was revived.

Back when humans helped the Goddess to create this dimension, it was out of gratitude for the Goddess who had created a sun that belonged to the Myers Mainland. Unfortunately, an act of gratitude of the past have now created a potential crisis in the present.

Nailisi understood this, so even if the Goddess had not left behind a bond, she would still have convinced Saleen to spread the Goddess’ faith again so that she might be revived.

At first, Nailisi did not really care if humans were to survive or perish. Ever since she could travel from the Myers Mainland dimension to the demon dimension, she had treated the Myers Mainland dimension as one of her targets.

She was under Saleen’s control so even if she summoned many demons and formed them into an army, it would not be considered as an invasion of Myers Mainland. Helping Saleen to gain control of the Myers Mainland was like helping herself. Her Master’s lifespan was not as long as hers, after one-thousand to two-thousand years later, she would be able to build a demon kingdom on this dimension.

Luola reached camp on the fourth day. He secretly passed Nailisi the two rings and the bottle that contained the corpses of the parasite.

Nailisi asked Eleanor along and the two of them began to dissect the corpse of the parasite.

The parasite was about half a foot in length and its body was slender and soft yet very elastic. There were no scales on the surface of its body, only a very sharp mouthpart. On both sides of the mouthpart were slightly more than ten eyes that were of different sizes. Luola’s horse-killing sword might have pierced through the parasites’ bodies, but it did not fully impale them. Their bodies were incredibly elastic and what should be a huge gaping wound had vanished.

The parasite died very thoroughly and no longer possessed any aura of life. Even so, its body was still repairing itself automatically.

Upon opening up its brain, they found no crystallized substances in it. Nailisi groaned, but Eleanor began to record the Holy Prose found on the insides of the parasite’s body instead.

“What is there to record?!” Nailisi asked impatiently when she saw Eleanor recording down the Holy Prose with pen and paper.

“For comparison,” Eleanor answered coolly. She was not bothered by Nailisi’s tone at all. This woman was mentally unsound. If she had time to argue with her, she might as well put in more effort to train up her spells.

Nailisi was extremely sharp and immediately figured out what Eleanor was doing.

Within the knowledge of spells and magic, comparison was not a major subject. By making comparisons between specimens that were very similar, mages would be able to come up with many hypotheses.

Nailisi made a few cuts on the parasite’s body with her dragon’s tooth dagger, then carefully dug out its eyes one by one. The biggest of them was only about the size of a grain of rice. Nailisi tried to squeeze one with her fingers and was surprised that it were not crushed.

Although Nailisi’s fingers might not be as strong as Sika’s crushing a stone should be an easy feat. The parasite’s eyes could be as hard as a magic nucleus. Nailisi did not have powerful mental strength like Saleen. She was not proficient with spells and did not know how to use alchemy equipment to conduct analyses, so she could only keep the eyes very carefully.

By deduction, the main ability of these parasites must be related to the eyes. Although the mouthpart was sharp, its body was so fragile that there was no way it would be used in a direct attack against a strong warrior. In fact, a group of ordinary soldiers were more than capable of turning these parasites into minced meat.

After Nailisi completed the dissection, she came to the conclusion that the mages must not be alone, or else they would be vulnerable to sneak attacks by the parasites. Unless the mages could be alert at every moment or their mental strength had reached the level of a grade-7 sorcerer, they would have no chance against the parasites once they relaxed.

On the other hand, the sensing capabilities of warriors were tuned towards sensing the presence of life forms. Compared to the mages, they would be able to detect such parasites much more easily. Even Lex’s ten swordmasters would be able to kill the parasites with ease. After giving some instructions to Eleanor, Nailisi called for Tolesi and asked him to keep an eye on Lex’s mages. If any mages still wanted to climb up the mountain in search of Lex, they would either be stopped, or Luola would continue to tail them and dispose of their corpses.

Saleen and the rest had been fighting in the temple for six days. The middle-grade scrolls had more or less been used up so the speed at which they were exterminating the dwarf demons had reduced drastically.

They fought for six hours everyday and used another six hours to repair the fully constructed puppets. Saleen’s magic nuclei had not been cut at all. Without Nailisi by his side, he would have to do it himself.

Within these six days, not only had the number of dwarf demons reduced, there were no longer anymore mutated dwarf demons. It was only a matter of time before the dwarf demons were completely destroyed.

On that day, Saleen was cutting magic nucleus and Lex was repairing the fully constructed puppets when she suddenly stopped and was staring ahead blankly.

“What happened?”

“Two of my mages have died.” Lex’s expression was terrible as she looked at the God’s ring on her hand. The God’s ring would never be wrong, two very powerful grade-5 mages under her command had indeed died.

Saleen also stopped and was quiet for a moment before saying, “Nailisi is fine and has not been in battle. They must have left the camp and encountered danger.”

“What danger did we encounter on our way up?!” Lex was agitated and suspected that Nailisi was behind the deaths of her two mages.

“We used Flying spells to come up here, but they could only travel by foot. You should know how complicated the creatures on the mountain may be.” Saleen was unhappy that Lex was suspecting Nailisi.

Lex stopped. She did know how dangerous the mountain could be. Those creatures might not pose any danger to Saleen and herself, but that was not the case to her mages.

“Princess, we must quickly exterminate these dwarf demons.” Bain reminded Lex. He must also have sensed that the there was something not quite right about this mountain.

“Do you remember what the sixth to last sentence on the stone tablet was?” Saleen suddenly asked Lex.

Lex shook her head. The words on the stone tablet were mostly the ancient Myers language, but some of them were in Holy Prose. She barely understood a tenth of the words of the sixth to last sentence.

“On the Mountain Without End, there has been a God for thirty-six-thousand years,” Saleen repeated the sentence word by word.