Badge in Azure

The judgment seat was taken down in an instant with one swipe from the huge stone pillar. The seat was only about two yards high, and the red bishops seated there all intended to simply fly away. With assassins coming at them, they had no choice but to fall back instead.

The remaining four assassins melded themselves with creatures of unknown planes, which had all of them bloated several times their usual size. Chains penetrating their bodies were used as their weapons, which blocked off a vicinity of tens of yards.

Despite being only grade-4 or grade-5 professionals, their combat capacity was enhanced by several orders of magnitude due to said melding. The price to such power was, however, that they would not live to see the next sunrise.

Bain had infiltrated the Glorious City for some time, and knew that the red bishops would have never gathered in one place like they did now. The previous assassination attempt was but an act to kick things off. What the assassins had been waiting for was that day.

Such methods were called chained attempts by professionals. The second assault was done in a very discreet manner, occurring in a place and time that was unexpected by their targets.

The sky above the Glorious City was stained blood-red. It was a phenomenon occurring in cities under the protection of God, when said cities were under serious assault.

Regardless of the outcome of the assassination attempt, the losses that the Glorious City suffered were irrecoverable. While the Glorious City no longer had any actual ruling power over the population of the faith, it was nonetheless a holy ground to believers. It was a place serving as a spiritual symbol. The assassination attempt thoroughly rattled the Holy See. The loss of reputation could never be recovered in any way.

In the Hell of God’s Punishments, Saleen was still having the time of his life with Sika inside Raphael’s magic tower. His daily routine was none other than brief periods of meditation, conducting some seemingly fun magic experiments, and cuddling with Sika.

Nailisi ran about the place taking care of the family, becoming a true maid indeed. Living creatures there lived brief lives, as they lacked care of any sort. They had deteriorated seriously over the past one-thousand years. These artificial magic beasts had dropped significantly in terms of combat capacity. The fusion beasts that Raphael created during his day were all something of no lower than grade-9.

Nailisi had no need to hunt at all. If Saleen wanted, the magic beasts would have followed his orders, and simply walked to their deaths in front of the tower.

Saleen had broken through the limits of grade-7 without realizing it. Other than the fact that he had not experienced any increase in number of magic chords, he began to be able to have fine control over grade-8 magic. That would have been a phenomenon previously thought incomprehensible, but Saleen had simply regarded it to be part of the rules in the interdimensional space. In the plane of the Myers Mainland, one would not have been able to use magic beyond one’s grade, even when one had better understanding of said magic, so long as one had not acquired the required amount of magic chords.

The phenomenon enabled him to have a deeper understanding of the rules governing the place. Rules of energy balance in every plane were more or less the same, but rules corresponding to magic chords and grades might have worked differently there than they did on the Myers Mainland. Regardless of what actually transpired, he now understood the reason why Jason did not want him to enter the six element space.

Accumulation of magic chords did not require much time. Understanding of grades was, in comparison, the most difficult thing to do for mages. Things would have proven too easy in the six element space, and that would have proven detrimental to such accumulation effort.

His teacher had simply expected too much of him, and that was why he was put onto the tenth floor of the tower to practice.

Grade-9 magic nuclei were once again completely expended on that day. Saleen looked at the magic clock and began thinking. He had been spending quite some time within the hell, and his understanding of the rules had reached a bottleneck. If he wanted to improve further, he would require more accumulation. Meditation and magic experiments were only able to do him so much good at that point.

Lex had only been there once since. She entrusted him with a new sorcerers, while sending five others off. Lex would only be there again in about another three months. A thought came to Saleen’s mind. He decided to craft a piece of equipment he would need within the coming three months.

Saleen knew water flame alchemy, and was very familiar with Figaro’s Magic Formula. He had also crafted more than one-hundred equipments personally. That time, the equipment he was about to craft was one that had surpassed all his previous creations. One that even Eleanor’s Seven Nights longbow would have paled in comparison to.

That time, what he intended to craft required the trunk of four divine trees.

The tree of life, the tree of element, the tree of wisdom and the tree of taboo. These four trees still harbored immense power and special attributes despite being dead. If they were to be used for creating equipment, they would at least produce items at the level of holy equipment, even if one’s methods were common ones. There was no such thing as holy equipment in ancient times. Levels of items back then were something indistinguishable.

In their day and age however, holy equipment was something very rare instead.

The space within Raphael’s magic tower and the Myers Mainland were different. While the tower looked small, it was actually far more spacious than expected when one were to enter. The space compression technique hardly affected techniques employed by human activity conducted within. It was something rare that occurred on the Myers Mainland, as doing so would expend a good load of high level magic nuclei. Mages in general, would be reluctant to do something like that.

The four dead divine trees were something that the Goddess of Myers left for her contractor. In essence, that was part of the trade. Lex did not require such things, and Saleen had only used such materials to craft equipment for close followers, refraining from revealing that he had such things at his disposal to anyone else. Other than crafting some special equipment for Sika, Eleanor, Lex, some close ones, and a magic robe for himself, Saleen had never used the four trees for anything else.

He was at the moment, working like a carpenter. He took the trees out one by one, and began cutting the materials he would require.

Bark of the divine trees was tough, so much so that saw blades would not so much as leave a it on them. Saleen had resorted to using water currents and wearing it off slowly instead. That proved way more difficult to do than cutting white rocks. Despite having coated the currents with fire, progress was still very, very slow. He then split one current into hundreds and had all of them disassembling the materials at the same time.

Saleen had racked his brain for ways to disassemble the divine trees. The simple act of cutting the roots cost him a lot of time. Then there were the tree crowns, and thousands of branches, an endeavor that was enough to drive any mage crazy. Saleen had used large scale alchemic machinery and had mechanical spirits doing the hard labor day and night to get the job done. All that was left was the trunk of the four trees. They were six yards in diameter and several hundred yards in height.

The divine trees were like ordinary plants in that they grew rings and veins, as well as very fine vessels. The space within the ten-floored tower was hundreds of yards tall, yet had very limited horizontal space. Being the hub controlling the peak, Raphael was unable to do much to change the size of the space.

The trunks of the four trees were cut into square cross sections and put around Saleen. Saleen was suspended at a height of eighty-four yards. He took out the mechanical core of the sky city, and opened it up slowly.

The mechanical core of the sky city lacked the Heart of the Sky, which was being kept by Jason. Saleen did not require that part, as there was no way he would be able to create the sky city. What he wanted to build at that moment was a magic tower, one which was able to plant itself anywhere, yet was able to take flight at a moment’s notice.

He had the idea fleshed out for quite some time, and he had been preparing the required materials to build it. With most of the branches of the divine trees being used up for crafting his previous creations, what he needed at that moment was simply for the four trees to combine and create a space within. Then Saleen would be able to create the magic tower of his dreams.

A twenty-four floored magic tower was the highest limit achievable by any human being. It was a magical feat that even the gods would have envied.

The emperor of the first dynasty was a powerful person of grade-18, and had led humans to conquer a multitude of planes. Before the first dynasty, there had been mages reaching grade-24. Their powers were on par with that of the gods. If such humans were to appear on the Myers Mainland, the Lord of Glory would not have so much ass dared to even step foot on the plane, let alone actually preach his religion there.

Saleen understood the fact that he did not need to reach such heights of power within Raphael’s tower. He would make sense of details at such levels, and that would have enabled him to craft a magic tower that would be thought of as inconceivable for tens of thousands of years.

The quality of the materials derived from the four divine trees ensured that the tower would stay in one piece, capable of withstanding any kind of attack anyone was able to throw at it. The Goddess of Myers should have been a god at grade-18, and her divine trees would have been able to withstand attacks of such levels.

Thousands of mechanical arms sprouted from the mechanical core of the sky city like petals, attempting to fuse into the trunks of the four divine trees.

Saleen needed to do nothing else to help with the process. What he needed to do at the moment, was to stand above the mechanical core and craft magic arrays according to the veins on the trunks of the trees.

The crystallized metals of the mechanical core were unusually soft and were able to fuse with the trees by moving along the veins. The magic runes that Saleen crafted on the trunks had also begun to shimmer one by one, aiding the processes carried out by the core.

A flying equipment as large as the flying city would require a terrifying amount of power to move. Saleen had only wanted the magic tower to be able fly, and as such, the magic nuclei expenditure should have been within an acceptable range.

Saleen knew how powerful his enemies were, but he had never lost faith. He knew full well he would get more and more powerful himself.

Golden lights had seeped into the trees completely, penetrating deep within for more than hundreds of yards and permeating all corners. They moved along the veins and vessels. Saleen had also laid out the magic arrays where magic nuclei were to be set. He only needed to wait for the core to completely fuse with the trunks of the divine trees.

Saleen did not ask for Sika to be elsewhere when he was at it. The children smiled with joy watching the divine trees. Saleen only noticed how seldom his children actually cried, and how much they enjoyed watching him conducting all of his magic experiments.

“If these two rascals are to learn the ways of the priests, they would be able to reach Sika’s current level when they reached adulthood. Add a bit of simple training to it, and they would go even further.”

Nailisi looked rather troubled. The construction of that thing that Saleen was creating could only be done at Raphael’s tower. If he were to do so on the Myers Mainland, he would not be able to keep it concealed from any powerful people. That thing would have become a magnet attracting attentions of powerful people. Some would even violate treaties to get their hands on it.

The tower was the best equipment that Saleen had created in this lifetime. After this endeavor, he was unable to find suitable materials to craft anything that would be of use to mages of all levels.

Saleen was immensely fortunate to have acquired the divine trees, yet such fortune had a price on its own. That price was that he was obligated to unify the mainland and spread the faith. If Saleen were to ever be as lucky again, he would never have to pay such a price again.