Badge in Azure

The water puppet’s words were concise. If Saleen simply wanted to take elemental badges, he would be able to do so by defeating leaders of the stone statue soldiers. Doing so would have cost a lot of time and effort though. Saleen had no interest in stone statue soldiers who possessed no soul. The Imperial City of the Abyss was not going to go anywhere. If he still wanted to capture elemental creatures, all he had to do was to come back on a later date.

Elemental creatures with souls however, were something he definitely wanted to get his hands on. An elemental creature would not have been having any problems advancing once they possessed a soul.

Saleen wasted no time, and had the water puppet keep going east with a wave of his hands. The areas about fifty miles away from the walls of the city were probably its line of defense, filled with all manners of large magic arrays, elemental creatures, and most probably troops of various races back in its heyday as well.

Said troops were long gone and the elemental creatures were all that were left. If the imperial city had not been hidden so well, the place would have been plundered clean by the current regimes.

If Saleen had not possessed a body of water element, he would not have been able to survive long in such a place. Despite that, the immense pressure put on him by the abundance of earth elements had him relying solely on magic staffs and scrolls for combat most of the time. He had not dared to use his own skills, as the magic chords for doing so were required for keeping him alive.

Having walked east for about one-thousand miles, Saleen felt more than half of his magic chords were drained, and he had no choice but to pause for a breather. There were still nine other military depots along the way they came, and he had not found any other elemental creatures with a soul. “Am I being lucky or unlucky here?”

There was a tower made of crystals at the eleventh depot. While the murky crystal themselves were not worth much, they were a height of up to three-hundred yards so that meant that the building would have still been able to fetch an astonishing price. Saleen had no intentions of rushing to gather any materials from the imperial city that he was able to find. His goal was still the single-horned white whale’s cemetery. The number of dimension stones he had with him was limited. If he went about picking up any junk that he was able to find, he would quickly run out of space in his Devil Ring or dimension stones for storage. The city was, after all, as large as an empire.

The city had mountains, rivers, great swaths of farming areas, and even small castles. It was clear to him that it was absurd for him to simply take whatever he saw. It was impossible for him to just bag one whole city away.

Saleen turned around and gestured. Nailisi acknowledged and broke out her blade-shield and spear, as well as readying her imp form. There was hardly any use for death magic there. Physical attacks would work far better than death magic when fighting elemental creatures.

The water puppet also returned to its human form, taking a magic staff that Saleen handed to it.

There were three floors to the crystal tower and given how they looked perfectly intact, he deduced that the elemental creatures within would prove to been more capable at combat than the stone statue soldier leader.

Saleen felt somewhat nervous. His Elemental Eye was unable to see into the crystal tower at all, but he was sure that the elemental creatures within were definitely something other than stone statue soldiers. The concentration of water element was higher there. If he was lucky, he would have been facing a water elemental creature, maybe a Blue Ice Maiden.

“Who goes there?!”, a deafening voice boomed from within the tower. Saleen felt joy rushing over him. It was a water elemental creature indeed then!

Saleen unleashed the grade-9 magic infused in his robe: Stone Statue Army. Six stone statue soldiers of nine yards tall appeared and he followed by summoning six elemental stone statue soldiers. He had the summoned ones’ height controlled at ten yards, and stood in the way of tower’s gate.

Boom!

The gate was quickly wrecked by a water elemental creature of more than thirty yards tall made of gushing water. The being charged at him with a longsword in its hand. This water elemental creature had a rather indistinguishable face and a blue translucent body, looking soft and supple.

Saleen knew well that the cores of blue ice maidens were made of ice tougher than the bodies of the stone statue soldiers. The water element contained within the elemental ice was enough to enable the being to take a gigantic form of more than one-hundred yards tall. The blue ice maiden, was a name given to these creatures by humans, as they were a rare elemental creature capable of ‘procreating’.

When the energies of the blue ice maidens overflowed, they would sometimes split out a smaller, weaker, water elemental creature. Said creature would grow into a new blue ice maiden when nurtured in specific environments.

The sword in the blue ice maiden’s hand was made of water element, and the core was similarly made of ice congealed from the water element.

The Twelve soldiers rushed forward to meet their match, all of which were quickly cut in two as the watery being swung its sword. The water puppet levitated itself to a height of thirty yards and launched an attack with its finger.

Saleen had wanted to stop it, but he was not able to do so in time. He had no choice but to fly up to the water puppet and put up a grade-8 Darkness Shield in front of him.

Being able to cut up six grade-9 stone statues with just one slash meant that the watery being itself was a grade-10 creature. Saleen was not sure of being able to defend against its attack, and he was only been able to put his hopes on Nailisi in that case.

The six ten yard tall elemental stone statue soldier swung their hammers hard at the blue ice maiden. The difference in levels however, meant that the attacks hardly made a dent in it. The blue ice maiden’s body simply gushed, and the powerful impacts were completely neutralized.

Saleen reserved half of his mental powers on the earth elemental badge. Doing so enabled him to instantly summon the grade-10 stone statue soldier leader if he was in critical danger, having the leader take the attack from the blue ice maiden for him instead.

Nailisi thrust her spear at the heart of the blue ice maiden. While elemental creatures did not have hearts, they did have elemental cores. When the core was struck, the elemental creature would have been rendered dormant. If the injury proved grievous enough, said elemental creature would cease to exist. That worked exactly like Dismantle Element, making it a very effective method for killing elemental creatures.

Two powerful attacks, Crystal Finger and Energized Thrust, went for the vital part of the blue ice maiden. The creature’s ability to speak human tongue was a testament to it possessing a soul.

The blue ice maiden’s body burst into a glitter of rainbow lights, making a bright rainbow in the pitch black depths of the ocean. As Saleen’s eyes were blinded, the blue ice maiden disappeared.

A sharp energy attack went straight for him from behind at almost the very same time.

Saleen’s Darkness Shield was smashed hard by a slash from a sword, which shattered it into pieces…

The magic spell cast by the blue ice maiden was a grade-9 one: Rainbow. It was an eerie movement magic. The speed of the spell surpassed all other magic spells other than teleportation magic.

Saleen felt a chill down his spine. He had been too careless. “I have the Crystal Finger, but so what? That thing is two whole grades above me!”

Its murky face began to clear up as it stood behind Saleen, giving the impression of a human woman. Elemental creatures used as city defenses by the ancient humans were all humanoid beings. They were capable of complex combat maneuvers, allowing them to adapt to various situations.

Breaking a Darkness Shield with one slash was a feat only feasible when the attacking creature was of an overwhelming level. The grade-8 Darkness Shield was capable to defending against almost all types of grade-9 spells. The very reason why Saleen had chose to learn that spell from Joey was because the Darkness Shield was something only grade-10 mages were capable of teaching.

Saleen, at that moment, was unable to teach the skill to any of his followers unless he advanced to grade-10. That would then allow him to pass down the skill through special means.

Generally-speaking, a mage only learned Darkness Shield when they had advanced to grade-10. The skill was rare even back in the time when the fourth dynasty was in full swing. The conjuring of the spell cost Saleen the equivalent of casting six grade-8 spells.

Saleen cast Darkness Shield again without any regard for its magic chord cost. Water Shield and Ice Plate Armor were utterly useless against water elemental creatures. The water element sword would cut right through water element defenses as if they were not there.

The second strike went ferociously for the Darkness Shield. As the skill was capable of nullifying any residual attacks, including recoil, the second strike did not make Saleen budge, despite the shield being completely shattered.

Nailisi only lashed out with her spear the second time then. Seeing how her master just took two strikes of such intensity, fires burned within her and her eyes lit up with a gold-greenish sheen.

Nailisi’s thrust was definitely capable of doing harm to the blue ice maiden. The creature had, after all, only developed a soul not long ago, and had spent a lot of energy in evolving itself. Saleen would not have been able to withstand such attacks from a grade-10 being otherwise.

The body of the watery being glittered with rainbow colors again. The speed of the Rainbow spell was such that no attacks would have been able to keep up.

Nailisi did not allow herself to fall for the same trick twice. Six tiny eyes behind the tip of her spear opened all the sudden and stared hard at the blue ice maiden. The rainbow colors were snuffed in an instant.

The eyes of the silverline golden spearfish were crafted and inserted right behind the tip of the spear. Once a target was locked down, there was no chance of escape.

The blue ice maiden had never encountered such a predicament before. Rainbow was used right before the enemy attacked, every single time. Such decisions were achieved through overwhelming difference in levels. When the enemy’s attacks were about to reach it, Rainbow would transport her to the blind spots of the attacking enemy.

Nailisi jumped. She did not put any hopes on the spear’s energy being able to pierce the blue ice maiden’s elemental core. The water puppet had only realized what happened then, and quickly turned into a crystal-clear ice mirror, putting itself right behind Saleen.

Saleen turned around, with a small grade-10scroll in his hand.

If Nailisi’s attack proved ineffective, he would have no choice but to use the scroll. He did not want to use his family badge on it, as doing so would have probably resulted in him obliterating the creature.

Six devilish eyes locked down the blue ice maiden’s movements, and Nailisi’s jump sent her more than ten yards up. The spear was thrust right into the creature’s face, and Saleen threw out the Eternal Control shard hidden in his hand without hesitation.

The shard flew accurately at the hole in its face as Nailisi pulled out her spear. Saleen’s mastery at the feat had made the move into a martial art technique in itself.

The black Eternal Control shard flew right into the creature’s brain, and the newly developed soul was sucked right into the shard.

“Let me go!”, the blue ice maiden roared. It had just acquired sapience, and had no idea what it had been subjected to. It was only able to sense that its entire body was being securely tied up by something.

Saleen composed himself and worked the shard telepathically, prompting the shard to send blue sparks of electricity into the being. The electrical discharge might not have worked so well against the creature’s body, but it proved a bit too much for its soul.

Saleen smirked as the blue ice maiden fell to the ground, with its water element body quickly dispersing and revealing a two yard tall elemental core.