Badge in Azure

The limit of every kind of magic was different from one another. A lot of spells were not upgradable. Only magic that could have been upgraded to perfection could be called true power.

The attacks from above had stopped. Six whole hours passed. The grade-9 sorcerer kept on bombarding with wave after wave of grade-9 spells, and had rendered all but the magic towers within the palace to smoldering ruins.

The result was not due to a lack of people trying to stop the sorcerer. All heavy alchemy arrows fired from the metal battlements on the palace walls were effortlessly repelled by the sorcerer. He then began to bombard the walls himself, until there were hardly any walls left standing of the palace of Daliang.

Nicholas attempted to get close to the sorcerer, but all his efforts with divine curses were easily dispelled by the sorcerer, scaring him enough to turn around and run instead.

Holy masters were different from mages. If the attacks of a holy master proved ineffective against the enemy, then the difference in power between both sides would have been confirmed to be absolute. Given how the sorcerer was able to easily dispel all his divine curses, Nicholas’ fate would have turned for the very worst if he got within the sorcerer’s effective range of attack.

Nicholas had nothing to gain from tangling with the sorcerer there. The assault on the city was intense, and morale both within and outside the city walls was diminishing. The ones at the first line of defense consisted of new recruits. They were nothing like Lex’s elite troops, who were able to hold the line whatever the situation was. Morale was diminishing, yet the assault by the Cloudflow people grew more intense by the minute. Cloudflow troops showed up in droves at the first city wall. While the Cloudflow troops assaulting the wall were quickly repelled by reserves, the defending side suffered heavy casualties doing so.

Nicholas knew full well that he was no match for the grade-9 sorcerer, and so chose to return to the walls instead, albeit in a glum manner. He stationed himself near the magic tower and began buffing the soldiers around Daliang with his fallen divine arts.

That was actually rather ironic, as the toll suffered by the ones buffed by fallen divine spells were actually less severe. This was due to the fact that, while the buffing took a portion of the buffed one’s life, there was no need for extra offerings to the gods.

The grade-9 sorcerer destroyed Lex’s royal residence and looked at the ruins with a satisfied expression, choosing not to continue attacking other targets within the city. Their drain was a huge one. There was a philosophy whereby one was required to conserved at least one-third of one’s magic chord reserves before one could be considered safe. It was a common problem shared by all Cloudflow mages.

The ruins were still burning. The fires started by the grade-9 magic lasted at least an hour before they were extinguished on their own. Adjacent buildings around the palace began burning as the heat proved irresistible. The reserved army did not dare to attempt putting out the fires. They instead had the low grade mages destroy connected buildings, to prevent the fires from spreading.

The grade-9 sorcerer did not leave. He instead used Sound Transmission Magic at the sky and said, “Attention to the people of Bitterwater prefecture. I will head for the prefecture as soon as I have time to spare. What you see today is just the beginning. The one who killed my follower had better come surrender and accept your death at the hands of my army. If you don’t, I shall come for your cities once every month. Hahahaha…”

Lex’s eyes turned cold as she listened to every word of arrogance uttered from the mouth of the sorcerer. While what the sorcerer had pulled was well within the tolerable limits of Alchemy City, it was well outside of what she was willing to tolerate. “You think you can do as you wish just because you spare civilians?” If her own cities were to be harassed that way no one would have ever dared joining her side any longer.

After all, no one had any assurance that the sorcerer would never go crazy and begin targeting civilians.

The sorcerer was a vengeful one. That meant he had to be killed. Saleen was right. Letting the sorcerer do as he pleased was not an option. Doing so would have brought the end of the kingdom they worked so hard to build.

There was only one eight-floored magic tower within Bitterwater prefecture. Her own teacher was too, no match for this sorcerer. Lex thought that as she stood and walked to the window, looking at the ruins outside and biting her lip.

Flames were still encroaching on the defensive layers of the magic tower. A palace that she spent more than a year designing was utterly destroyed. If such palaces were to be assaulted by conventional armies, she would have needed a garrison of no more than thirty-thousand strong, regardless of the number of assaulting troops. The palace was a huge fortress in itself, which was destroyed by a single sorcerer from Cloudflow.

It was a masterpiece crafted with more than a year’s worth of blood and sweat. The effort invested in rebuilding the ancient city was indescribable. She took on Kroraina on the battlefield, in her earliest days, with the little ancient city serving as her base.

She was seething intensely at the sight of her ruined masterpiece. Whatever atrocities wrought there by the sorcerer was little more than his personal acts of terror though. Civilians were spared in his attacks. There was therefore, no way that she was able to use Bloody Impact against the Cloudflow people as revenge.

The only course of action to be taken was to give up retaliating against Cloudflow for the time being, and return to Metatrin City. Only when both her and Saleen had become grade-9 sorcerers themselves, would they have enough strength to retaliate.

What bothered her most was not knowing if the sorcerer would have really kept his word and made for Bitterwater prefecture. The prefecture was a fief given to her by her father. Did the sorcerer really have no qualms about the Grukos retaliating then?

It seemed that times had changed yet again. The power of one had once again became powerful enough to disregard most rules and laws. She and Saleen had had no other choice but to keep striving to be the best, becoming some of the most powerful people the world had ever seen.

It was fortunate that she and Saleen had the Six Element’s Space, or keeping up with powerful beings would have been near impossible.

Saleen was enveloped by the devil’s armor, and the plates of the armament isolated him from the outside world. His spirit had also completely submerged within the evolution process. He was able to sense the illusionary shadow within his body, while getting familiar with the power of lightning.

The shadow reminded Saleen of the word ‘soul’, as this illusionary shadow seemed to be a piece of his self stacked onto the consciousness within his body, fusing with the physical vessel.

The changes of his physical body was apparent. Saleen’s magic chords expanded to two-hundred and sixteen, and the expansion continued struggling against the limits without signs of returning to the body. The Thundering Sound spell h learned had reached more than three-hundred frequencies. Saleen was able to unleash lightning attacks accurately when he reached more than twenty-four frequencies. As the frequencies of the Thundering Sound increased, the power of lightning grew.

There was no forcing it. The only way Saleen was able to increase the lightning’s power, was to keep practicing.

The Body of Water Element grew increasingly stable, to the point where it was hardly possible to discern the difference between it and the normal human body. The conversion of the six elements had reached perfect balance in Saleen’s body.

This phenomenon was common among sorcerers, with the only difference being the measure of balance. Elemental Conversion was the first rule that every single sorcerer had to learn.

Lex calmed herself down and changed the magic nucleus in the magic array for Saleen. It was to Lex’s delight that Saleen was able to consume so much elemental power. It meant that Saleen had been able to achieve more than she did. At the very least, that was what his magic chords indicated.

Saleen’s performance calmed Lex even further. Her own magic chords had undergone a mutation. With Saleen growing stronger, it would soon be possible for them to take on the mage who came wrecking their palace that day. They would be ready when they both had advanced to become grade-9 sorcerers. No outside help would be needed by then.

“Yes, there is also Sika, the Caucasus priestess. Her advancement is of a frightening speed too. The restoration of a human’s power seems to be more apparent among groups practicing such ancient professions. Nailisi with her demon army too. When Saleen and I have evolved, I will no longer need to restrain the demon. I will just let her take her army of demons into Cloudflow. This world has gone to the dogs. Will there be anything else that can’t be permitted? When everyone comes to understand such changes, all the rules that have been established for thousands of years will be abolished and rewritten once again. Master Merlin’s prophecy was really an accurate one indeed. Not only will I be the one to divide the Qin Empire, I’m also the one to spread chaos further over the entire mainland. Can I be blamed for doing so? The Holy See, Cloudflow, and my uncle; all of them made me what I am today. Nicholas once said, that prophecies were not guaranteed to be accurate. Once the words were spoken, things might just have turned for the absolute worst though. So were Master Merlin’s words proved correct, because he spoke of the worst thing that could have happened? ‘A mage should always be at ease.’ These words are clearly no longer applicable to this era.”

Saleen’s magic chord advancement turned out fine, with the only trouble being the ones advancing during the testing of the Eye of Lightning, and even that was quickly dealt with. That was the only time things went so well during advancement for him. All the other times with advancement proved arduous. The discrepancy in difficulty made him feel rather like a fish out of water.

All two-hundred and sixteen magic chords returned to and fused within his body. The plates of the devil’s armor began to compress and returned to Saleen’s body. There were lights shimmering with his blue eyes, and the golden magic runes had finally been hidden, taking root in his mind and becoming the final pattern.

“You’re done already?”, Lex asked as she looked at Saleen with a shocked expression.

How much time did it take her to advance to the rank of sorcerer? Saleen took only eight hours!

“Lex, how much time has passed?”, Saleen was not quite sure of the flow of time in the outside world. As he devoted himself to advancement, the passing of time, be it one minute or ten days, was little more than a feeling to him.

“Eight hours and ten minutes.”

“I see,” Saleen stood without any signs of backaches or numb legs. His body felt like how it was when Joey had just finished remodeling it. Saleen came to Lex’s side as soon as he stood. Through the magic tower’s defensive layer, he saw the fires outside had extinguished, as he was about to say something.

Specks of flames still burned. Saleen saw the destroyed walls when he looked afar, towards the border of the palace.

Saleen took a deep breath and refrained from getting upset. He simply took Lex’s hand and asked, “That fellow did this?”

“Yes.”

“It’s alright. We can rebuild the ruined palace. There is no need to rush. If the chance presents itself, we will capture that man. I will continue training. If you run into anything you can’t handle, call me up.”

“Continue training?”, Saleen’s choice caught her by surprise.

“I have advanced. The magic on the devil’s armor will also grow more powerful. I will have to master the grade-8 Endless Night as soon as possible.”

Lex was rendered speechless. She would never have thought that the equipment Joey crafted for Saleen was of such a nature. Just what had Saleen done to move Joey so much that he crafted a Sealing Suit for Saleen?

A Sealing Suit was usually the only thing that a mage passed on to their only student, and was more precious than magic books.

The sealing of the fixed magic on the armament could have been undone as a mage advanced. This would have required the mage themselves to do so, which was what Saleen was about to do. He was undoing the seals of the six grade-7 magic on the devil’s armor, upgrading them to grade-8.