Badge in Azure

Grade-12…

Saleen took out his family badge without any second thoughts. Gloria had obviously taken him for an ancient human. A grade-12 creature would be able to reduce him to dust with just any of their skills.

His only choice at that moment was to be the first to act.

Even the Crystal Finger did not seem all that reliable to him anymore. The skill was able to be evaded easily by a grade-10 blue ice maiden. Saleen did not believe for one second that the Crystal Finger would be enough to kill the grade-12 angel of fear.

The Crystal Finger’s effective range was too short. The angel of fear would be able to reach any target within ten yards with that double-edge blade of his.

Saleen believed that the angel of fear would be powerful even in ancient times, as humans back then would have also have wracked their brains to subdue one such creature, instead of destroying them outright. Money or life, Saleen came to his own conclusion with it.

Having money yet without life was the greatest tragedy there was.

Nailisi continued killing pests on the second floor. She had little idea of what was going on. There was only the crisis alert going about in her mind, which she was not able to dispel.

The water puppet stopped helping Nailisi and made for the third floor with Saleen instead. It saw Saleen levitating in mid-air, with a badge the size of his palm in his hand.

Saleen’s Elemental Eye allowed him to see more than one-hundred miles away. There were no tall buildings nearby but the military depot. Saleen had already readied himself to launch an assault when the angel of fear was still twenty miles away.

He was not sure of the absolute limit of his family’s badge’s range of attack. Since the magic cannon from the second dynasty that he acquired could wipe out anything it shot at within ten miles, twenty miles should not have been the limit for his family badge.

“Oh, Angel of Fear, whatever riches you have with you, I want no part of it!”

Saleen continued using Figaro’s magic formula to calculate the angel of fear’s route, getting ready to launch one lethal attack. The angel of fear turned his head all of a sudden twenty miles away, looking at the crystal tower. Saleen was shocked, but quickly recomposed himself. The crystal tower only allowed for the ones inside to look out, not the other way around.

“That thing definitely reacted to my family badge. The badge definitely poses a threat to him.”

Saleen unleashed the power within the badge without second thoughts. A streak of thick blue electrical discharge burst out from the badge. There seemed to be hundreds of thousands of magic beasts howling within the badge, which then turned to a continuous, thundering boom.

The lightning hit the angel of fear within the blink of an eye. The speed that it all took place startled even Saleen himself. The blue electrical discharge’s diameter expanded to fifteen yards to twenty miles away, yet the power remained all the same. The eight yard tall angel of fear was literally swallowed by the attack. The thundering boom with the blue streak reduced his soul to dust.

The powerful grade-12 body turned to dust in the electrical attack.

Saleen laughed his lungs out. He saw the angel of fear being reduced to dust the size of elemental particles. It was more dead than dead. The stress within Saleen’s mind cleared, and he turned around ready to kill the pests again.

There was a sharp pain on his back just as he turned. It was the kind of pain that came from the depths of one’s soul.

He turned around furiously, and saw another angel of fear appearing somewhere about thirty miles away. The other one was also eight yards tall and held a seven yard double-edge blade in his hand. A buzz was heard from within Saleen’s mind, and his hair stood on end.

“There is a second angel of fear!” He could not use his badge again after using it once. Even if he was to give it his all, and had all the help he was able to get from sorcerers around him, he would have still needed about three months to charge the badge full. “I just used up all the power of the badge, and now a second angel of fear shows up. What the hell am I supposed to do?!”

Saleen’s Elemental Eye was able to see clearly that the second angel of fear was making for the crystal tower slowly. That one was also naked, yet a female one. Large breasts were on the naked torso, and beneath it, the familiar ferocious and horrifying face.

The female angel of fear stared at the crystal tower. There was then a hole the size of a basin in the window of the third floor. The angel of fear’s eyes saw right through the hole and landed on the Saleen’s face. Saleen felt like the skin of face was being pricked. If it had not been for the Devil Mask acting as a barrier, Saleen felt his face would have been all bloodied.

“Master, subdue that thing!”, Gloria shouted.

Saleen simply called Gloria back to the water elemental badge. She was of no help going against a grade-12 creature. Having all of the blue ice maidens unleashed and acting as a barrier might have bought him three to five seconds.

“Is there any way to get out of this? Saleen began recollecting in his mind the equipment he had with him. “Maybe a grade-10 magic scroll? This is a grade-12 angel of fear! This Imperial City of the Abyss is indeed something scary. Grade-12 monsters already appeared, and that was just the outskirts! Should I run? Use Nailisi’s Twelve Notes of Purgatory? That thing is only good for trapping creatures below grade-10, and Nailisi herself is not even grade-10. If I throw this thing in there, the purgatories might end up being torn apart. There would truly be no way out then.”

Saleen’s mind raced to think of a way out, as he unleashed all grade-9 elemental stone statue soldiers to the first floor, keeping the way into the second floor completely blocked.

“Nailisi!”, Saleen shouted.

Nailisi put away the last two pests’ soul shards away and flew up to the third floor. Saleen simply shared his senses with Nailisi, allowing her to see the angel of fear for herself. The scales behind her back all stood up in response.

“Master, let’s just run. Just leave everything behind!”

“We can’t, it’s a grade-12 creature. We aren’t fast enough to lose that thing!”

“How about Eleanor? Aren’t her arrows capable of cutting down the lifespan of enemies?”, Nailisi’s voice was croaking. That was the first time she experienced true fear. It was the fear of death, the fear of losing her master forever.

Eleanor was training her magic and archery in the purgatory of darkness. Saleen said that he would not visit her until she reached grade-9.

Saleen himself had considered having Eleanor use life arrows on the angel. To have a life arrow hit its target, it was best to first use elf space arrows to freeze the enemy momentarily. The difference in levels would have however, rendered the space arrows completely useless. Life arrows on the other hand, did not possess such powerful targeting abilities. They lacked the eerie attack speed of the space arrows as well.

“Nailisi, that won’t do any good,” Saleen said bitterly. He did not allow himself to just give up. If he was to die right there, he would take that angel of fear with him.

Saleen was unwilling to just roll over and die. He still had Sika and Lex, as well as his two children who were not even two years old yet.

The angel of fear did not bother moving any faster. In her eyes, Saleen was as good as dead. Even if he was to run, he would not have been fast enough to do so.

Seeing her mate killed had the female angel of fear boiling with rage. She wanted to capture the human alive, trapping his soul forever, and robbing him of peace for all eternity. Making it slowly to her enemy made the fear in his mind accumulate, causing pain and torture. That was what the angel of fear truly intended.

Saleen’s sharp senses were able to pick up what the angel of fear was thinking. Such mysterious sensory abilities were something he picked up after becoming familiar with the rules. Such abilities had always been vague, yet on that very day where there was no chance he could make it out alive, such abilities came to the very forefront.

He was able to make out what was going through the angel of fear’s mind with zero error. If the angel of fear had simply charged at him, he might have been truly at wits’ end. With such pressure looming over him at that moment however, he had cooled down instead. Jason’s lineage dictated for one to become stronger when facing a strong opponent, preventing one from losing oneself due to immense pressure.

“Let’s head out,” Saleen glared at the angel of fear before taking Nailisi’s hand, and jumping out of the hole in the window. It was something many fighters were unable to pull off. Saleen’s constitution was strengthened once again after becoming a grade-8 sorcerer. While he did not learn Isabella’s techniques and he certainly did not practice sword aura, his body was nonetheless stronger than all warriors of swordmaster levels.

The water puppet was terrified as well, but it followed Saleen without hesitation, jumping out of the hole in the window with the duo. There were tens of thousands of pests out there, surrounding the tower.

Saleen went outside with water flame in his hand. He was surrounded by powerful tornadoes, which contained sharpened and cold snowflakes in them. The rampaging snowflakes danced in the tornadoes, cutting up the pests, reducing them to bits and pieces.

Powerful freezing attributes rendered the pests, which were made of dust, unable to lower the damage taken by turning into dust. Combining Tornado with Snowkill was a unique magic spell that Jason created. The spell consumed only mental powers and not magic chords.

The one spell consuming magic chords was the water flame in his hand. Tornado and Snowkill were derivative spells.

A blank space was quickly created on the ground. They were at the edge of the city, where streets were more than one-hundred yards wide. Saleen took out a dimension stone from his Devil Ring. Within the stone, laid his divine tree magic tower.

Saleen did not believe for one second that such monsters born out of soul shards would be powerful enough to destroy the divine trees of the Goddess of Myers. If he was in a secure enough place, he would still be able to endure for half a year and let the badge recharge its energies. He would then be ready to unleash the lightning attack on the angel of fear, and have her end up with the same fate as her mate.

“You want to torture me? In your dreams!”

The divine tree magic tower was still little else other than a prototype despite being crafted again and again by Saleen. The twenty-four floored magic tower would eventually become the most powerful equipment in all of the Myers Mainland. There would also be no limit on the level of sorcerers it could carry within its twenty-four floors.

Any mage of any level would be able to showcase their truest power within the magic tower.

Boom!

The divine tree magic tower landed on the ground, and the pests around began to scurry off. The majestic aura of the divine trees struck fear in the monsters. It was, after all, something capable of easily wiping them out.

The counteracting properties of the tower had the pests running for their lives for the first time.

The angel of fear suddenly felt unsure from more than twenty miles away. A powerful aura was unleashed from afar, something that the human had just unleashed.

Was it to say that the human had some terrifying equipment up his sleeves? Would there be a second lightning bolt getting at her, like the one that just killed her mate?