Badge in Azure

“How did you once fight?”, Saleen asked Vinny directly.

Vinny did not answer Saleen’s question. The magic patterns across its entire body had instead begun to glitter and shrunk into a stone badge. All the other one-hundred and forty-four soldiers’ bodies began to shrink as well, and jumped into the stone badge one by one.

Saleen bent over and picked up the stone badge. The connection between himself and the broken jade was crystal clear in the badge. Saleen gave an order in his mind, which lit up the badge magically. A one-hundred yard tall statue soldier burst onto the space in front of Saleen and stood before him.

Saleen’s mind calmed. Such a way to control them was identical to the ones he acquired before. With Vinny’s control over the statues being greater, the communication between it and Saleen also became easier. He was also capable of assuming direct command over the grade-9 statue soldier before him, making the statue do what he needed it to do.

“This is just way stronger than the grade-7 stone statue soldiers! This is the elemental badge talked about in the legends? It is the equipment ancient humans used to control elemental creatures!”

Elemental badges blatantly disregarded the size of elemental creatures they controlled. The magic arrays within were arranged according to the number of elemental creatures. Each creature only took the space of an elemental point. The badge was a form Vinny was capable of assuming, and there were one-hundred and forty-four elemental points on it, without room for even one more.

The one-hundred and forty-four stone statue soldiers were more far more powerful than the ones Saleen created himself. They were definitely unaffected by inconvenient factors such as time limits.

Saleen contacted Vinny, which triggered the elemental badge to emanate overwhelming magic brilliance. The lights did not trigger any reaction from the magic arrays nearby. Elemental stone statue soldiers were, after all, guardians of the city itself.

The grade-9 soldier standing at one-hundred yards tall began shrinking its body, with the color of the green rock armor becoming increasingly dark and concentrated. When the soldier shrunk to the height of a mere ten yards, its elemental armor’s color turned entirely black. Saleen knew that the size of the soldier could not have been able to be compressed further, but that proved adequate nonetheless. The difference in height between it and the ones created by Saleen was less than one yard, making it entirely capable of being mixed with his own magic.

The black stone statue soldier’s combat capacity far surpassed that of the puppets created from the magic stored in his robe. The soldiers possessed their own consciousness, while puppets required him to pull the strings. If the puppets were to fight on their own, they would not have so much been a match for grade-8 adversaries.

Saleen recalled the soldier and set the elemental badge into the belt of the devil’s armor, instead of storing it inside his own Devil Ring. There were slots on the devil’s armor for equipping gear. The belt was something Joey crafted personally, which enabled a mage to have an extra of six equipment slots on their person.

Saleen came to realize something. Joey had definitely knew something about the skills of ancient mages. Saleen would not have been able to just set the elemental badge on it like that.

The six major elements all had corresponding elemental badges, and that had Saleen hoping to find the others.

When humans first learned to use elemental creatures as defensive measures for cities and troop units, humanity could not have possibly used only earth element creatures to do so. Be it water, fire, wind, light, or dark elements, every one of them would have been very powerful as well. While the humans back then would not have thought much about that, in the perspective of the dwellers of the current Myers Mainland, such badges were revolutionary equipment.

Saleen went straight back to the military depot. He swam to the second floor and looked at the half-broken ceiling, finding the broken pieces. The collapsed ceiling pieces ended up on a small bed. The bed was only three yards long: a length ancient humans loved. The three yard long bed was obviously not something meant for elemental creatures.

There was no body to be found on the bed, making it apparent that humans left before the city was destroyed. Even so, Saleen managed to find equipment belonging to humans.

A magic ring he found was pure black in color and made of unknown gems. The carving of the creature was something Saleen felt familiar with, which turned out to be a six-winged flying snake.

The six-winged flying snake was regarded as a powerful creature in ancient times.

Saleen checked the ring with his own mental powers, and found that he was unable to open the space of the ring. He was a grade-8 sorcerer, whose mental powers had surpassed most grade-9 sorcerers. If the ring was one he was unable to open, then it was more than simply a spatial equipment; it was a sealing ring instead.

There obviously was not a six-winged flying snake in the ring, and Saleen did not dare to imagine having such a luxury. Six-winged flying snakes were powerful creatures. They were also capable of developing intelligence. Even if a six-winged flying snake was indeed in there, Saleen would not be able to control it anyway. He would have ended up being eaten instead.

Saleen put the ring away. “The ring is obviously a sealing ring. If I run into a six-winged flying snake later, the badge might be able to subdue it. The Grukos family kept low level six-winged flying snakes after all, right?” The ring was obviously capable of sealing snakes of higher levels. The snake was a guardian being to the Grukos, but not to Saleen. Saleen would definitely think of a way to seal one such snake into the ring.

Vinny said that the city was twelve-thousand miles long, and eight-thousand miles wide. The place easily qualified as a large country. As Saleen’s chances of finding something diminished, there was little else he was able to do but enter the Imperial City of the Abyss and trying their luck.

“The Imperial City! Vinny said this place was an imperial city. Did that make it some fief bestowed by a king of somewhere!? The entire fief was one large city, but how did such a large city end up in an abyss? Were the early humans even capable of conquering the oceans? It is a possibility. The oceanic ice block is abundant with resources, which means that the region was extremely attractive to ancient humans.”

Human footsteps were found even beyond Stormy Seas, and there might have been even the descendants of ancient humans in the various countries in the eastern seas, instead of foreign races like was the case with subcontinent plane.

Humans of the subcontinent plane and the ones on the Myers Mainland were actually already two different races. The lifespan of humans over there was one-third shorter than those of the Myers Mainland. The ones on the mainland were able to live to the age of one-hundred and twenty despite having trained in no arts, yet the ones considered to have lived a long life on the subcontinent, lived only to about eighty.

Saleen had only wanted two things from the Imperial City of the Abyss: the elemental badge and bone remains of single-horned white whale. When humans conquered the seas in the past, they built a cemetery for those creatures, meaning that the whales were important to humans back then.

He had not dared to subdue anymore stone statue soldiers. The devil’s armor that Joey crafted for him only had six equipment slots at the belt. That was also the limit of Saleen’s mental powers. Even if more slots were to be added, he would not have been able to use them all at once. While he indeed possessed massive mental powers, it was still within Joey’s means of calculation. Joey was even able to calculate what kind of capacity Saleen would reach even advancing to grade-9.

Saleen returned to the area nearby the wall and summoned the water puppet. Rossen appeared quickly and asked suspiciously, “Master, the stone statue soldiers around have disappeared!”

“I have subdued them, Rossen. Take this,” Saleen said and took out his crystal ring, handing it to the water puppet.

“My liege, what do you mean?”, the water puppet put on the ring without actually understanding Saleen’s intentions.

“I’m collecting elemental badges, but…there is something I need to craft for later use.”

“I see, my liege. What about Nailisi then?”

“She is outside,” Saleen did not say much. In Saleen’s mind, the water puppet had always been his equipment. Even though the water puppet actually possessed higher intelligence than most magic beasts, Saleen still had never truly treated the water puppet as a person. It was normal for mages to bring their equipment on adventures.

Saleen knew that if he wanted to enter the heart of the imperial city and search for the single-horned whale’s cemetery, he would need help from the elemental badge. The defense at the outskirts was actually mediocre. Many magical facilities simply broke down from the immense number of years passed.

In the core of the imperial city however, operations of sorts were still running in a highly precise manner.

Saleen would be able to have great confidence dealing with most complicated situations when he was able to collect all six elemental badges. His intention was to simply enter the cemetery of the single-horned white whale, take away a great number of magic nuclei, leave, and come back for more another day. By then, he would be bringing a good number of followers with him, and would sweep the place clean.

As to how to bring his men in, that was where Nailisi’s Twelve Notes of Purgatory came into play. The number of demons he would be able to bring with him would have went up to tens of thousands doing so. There was no worries about the carrying capacity of the pan’s turtle alchemical boat.

Saleen took the water puppet back to the military depot with him. The stairs there were wrecked by the stone statue soldiers, but other places seemed intact. Saleen searched for materials in his own Devil Ring, being very particular with it as he intended to craft Eternal Control shards.

The water puppet stood guard outside the gate. A witcher spider was right above its head. Despite being crafted anew, the witcher spider remained a mid level puppet, possessing only fair combat capacity. It served as a good tool for sneak attacks and digging though.

Saleen took out his last broken jade and began researching it in detail in a large room. He had to gain more understanding on the rules of Eternal Control, before grade-9 or even grade-10 creatures could be completely put under his thumb.

Controlling the stone statue soldiers proved extremely easy, as the broken jade used contained the soul flames of the three kings. Eternal Control shards crafted by Saleen himself might not have been able to control grade-10 beings.

The materials inside Saleen’s Devil Ring were rich and comprehensive, since he acquired a good number of horns of the single-horned white whales. The horns made good materials, but they alone could not be enough to craft Eternal Control shards. Saleen searched within his stores of gemstones, and picked out all the black crystals.

Black crystals were able to contain souls and Saleen had a lot with him. Most of the crystals were given to the death mages who swore their loyalty to him. The black crystals left with him then all came from the Temple of the Goddess of Myers. The crystals were of very high quality and were meant to be used by grade-9 death sorcerers. Saleen had intended to give them away when there were any death mages of his advancing to such levels, but at that moment it seemed that such moments would never come, as his current needs came first.

The horns of the whales were of lengths measuring between one to three yards. Saleen took out five three yard long horns and threw them into the water flame, which he followed with five huge pieces of black crystals.

The black crystals liquefied instantly and seeped into the horns. The horns of the whales were impeccably sturdy, as the single-horned white whales were able to use them to both cast magic and plough right through hard ice to breathe at the surface. Ice sheets of thirty to fifty yards thick would not be able to withstand an impact from the whales. As such, the single-horned white whales were hardly limited by geographical factors of any sort. Even ice sheets hardly inconvenienced their movements.

The horns were white. As the black crystals liquefied and seeped into the horns, clean cut black magic patterns appeared.

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