Badge in Azure

“Your highness, you are giving me too much, I…” Viscount Gugger felt afraid all of a sudden. Saleen was simply being too generous with him. “What will the nobles serving me think? Will they hold a grudge against me?”

“What is there to be afraid of? Aren’t there four great families who were doing business on behalf of the royal family in Qin? From here on out, you will become the first noble who will do business for me. All trades happening in Ceylon City will be put under your charge. No one will take even a single coin from you other than me.”

Viscount Gugger’s head was spinning at that point. What Saleen proposed was equal to waiving all taxes he would have to pay, by making him a royal merchant.

“Do you have any control over the nobles around you?” Saleen asked about the matters concerning Ceylon City. The land under Viscount Gugger’s control was small, only tens of square miles altogether. There was still plenty of land around, and Saleen planned on taking it.

“I have no control, but Your Highness, it is best to avoid killing if possible. Those nobles might be lesser ones, but they have been living here for more than ten generations. If you kill them, the smallfolk serving them will all run as well.”

“I know, and that is why I need to take them along to go see for themselves, how Ironwall City will fall. These people will cause you a lot of trouble otherwise,” Saleen said and summoned Nailisi. Nailisi leapt in from the window and stood before Saleen’s bed.

“Gugger, tell Nailisi everything about the nobles around your estate, and have her take all them in.”

Gugger hesitated, and Nailisi smirked. “Master, please lend me the wind elemental badge. I will take them in one by one personally, and with Gugger by my side. I should be back around sundown.”

“Alright then,” Saleen took out his wind elemental badge and handed it to Nailisi, then turned around to address the viscount. “Go invite the nobles here with Nailisi and come with me.”

Nailisi grabbed Gugger by the belt and leapt through the window with Gugger in her arms, before the viscount even knew what was happening.

Cuisi had only made it back into the house at noon, and Saleen was already giving magic lessons to Truman. The old man Nicholas simply went on finding himself a place where he could sleep, and only Chris was left sitting in the living room feeling bored yet dared not go anywhere.

“Your highness, I have killed every single of them from the Sikeqinyan Imperial city. It was fortunate that I went to have a look. A few almost escaped the city.”

“Good job. I have no further business for you here. Go wait for Nailisi’s return, and then we will make a move.” Saleen dismissed Cuisi and continued talking to Truman about magic.

It was not every day that Truman was able to get someone to guide him. He had only realized after learning the rules of meditation, that the lineage of mages was a hundred times more important than what he had thought it to be. The meditative methods that he had learned before was powerful enough, but the rules taught to him by Saleen enabled his mental powers to spike. Some of the magic experiments that he had trouble performing could be performed easily.

Saleen also taught him a mutated version of Water Shield, and Truman seemed to be near breaking through grade-6. The grade-4 Water Shield would serve as his most powerful defensive spell before breaking through the ranks of sorcerers.

Pop…

The bubble burst, and Truman looked at Saleen with a rather exasperated look. His Water Shield was unable to last altogether. It held for about five minutes before dispersing. Truman was puzzled as to how Saleen was able to keep the Water Shield up for hours.

The grade-4 Water Shield was not a spell with a continuous drain and would not continue to drain the casting mage’s magic chords. Once cast, the duration which the spell would last was dependent entirely on how pure it was.

While Truman possessed ample mental powers, his gathering and arrangement of water elements was still leagues behind that of his teacher.

Saleen felt pleased regardless. He had a body of water element, and that meant he had an inherent edge with using water spells. He had mutated the spell back when he was a grade-1 mage and went on to make the spell an upgradable one. He even mixed rules of energy balance in it.

While the rules were not something powerful, it was the first time Saleen was able to experience the power of rules. With that power, his Water Shield would have lasted indefinitely when it was not being attacked. He had to disperse the spell of his himself every time he was done with it since then.

Truman was a grade-5 grand mage, and Saleen wanted to elaborate rules to him, but did not know how to go about it. Such elaborations would have involved complex knowledge. Only when Truman had accumulated enough experience, grew powerful enough, and was able to see some of the truths of the world, would he have been able comprehend some of the intricacies of the rules.

“Just keep practicing. When I first cast the spell, it didn’t last long either. A magic shield wouldn’t have lasted more than three minutes in battle. Seeing how long you have been able to keep it up, I’d say it’s ready to be used in fights,” Saleen consoled Truman.

“But teacher, I felt like I was only using one-tenth of my power,” Truman added frustratingly.

Saleen realized all of a sudden, that the spell was not strictly a mutated one; it was something that he had created himself entirely. The creation of the spell was made to adapt the Water Shield to suit his body of water element better. Truman was unable to do what Saleen had been doing all that while with it, and that was because his own magic chords were only capable of casting water spells.

If he wanted to use magic of other elements, it was necessary for him to use skills that allowed for elemental conversion. Or rather, if Truman wanted to learn his version of the spell, he would have needed to be able to use elemental conversion himself. The earliest he became able to do so was when he became a grade-6 mage. Truman’s accumulation was more solid than his had been. If he mastered elemental conversion, Water Shield would no longer be a problem for him.

While Saleen had listened to Joey earnestly, he still hoped to be able to pass down skills that he developed himself. Water Shield, Eye of Lightning, Quickcloud, and other unique skills, Saleen did not want to see them die with him.

“Truman. Look at the skill. Don’t bother with learning my hand signs. Pay attention to the process,” Saleen said and conjured an ice bomb in his hand, and had it floating above his palm. The ice bomb’s surface vaporized slowly, and the vapor spun fiercely outside the bullet, like a mini wind dragon.

The ice bomb with a vaporized outer layer began to burn. Saleen deliberately slowed the time of it by more than a dozen of times, in order to have Truman see clearly what was happening. The internal parts of the ice bomb began to burn, and the ice itself continued to vaporize, providing fuel for the flames on the outer layer.

“Elemental conversion!” Truman was shocked, and then looked rather troubled.

“Indeed, Truman. This is elemental conversion. I was only able to use water spells before. If I hadn’t learned elemental conversion, I would have never been able to advance into the ranks of a sorcerer,” Saleen said in a solemn manner.

The fear and troubled look on Truman’s face disappeared in an instant. He never expected his teacher to have gone through such hardships!

In most cases, if a mage were only capable of casting spells of a single element, they would face insurmountable difficulty even just advancing into the ranks of a grand mage, let alone sorcerers. It was no wonder that his teacher was so powerful then, as he had overcome what most people could not even imagine, before getting to where he was at that moment.

If one wanted to achieve or acquire something, they would have had to pay a price equal to what they sought. His teacher paid the price and became a grade-9 sorcerer. Truman had only touched on some theories regarding elemental conversion and had never developed any basics in it.

Saleen took out a book of magic notes and handed it to Truman. He dispersed the spell in his hand without giving any thought about it. His movements at it was fluid and natural.

The collection of notes was an arranged version of his experiences after reading the notes Joey left him. It was rather plain for a sorcerer, yet for a grand mage like Truman, it would serve him well.

“It seemed like I was the one who rushed things, Truman. I made the notes myself. When you are done reading, you should be able to do two types of elemental conversion. Give it about half a year, you should become capable of conversion of all six major elements, just like I did back then. That should clear your doubts and confusion.”

Truman took the notes in glee and went to read them while sitting on the floor. Seeing how Truman poured over it, Saleen smiled from the bottom of his heart. “Wasn’t I in such a rush back then myself?”

Truman had a better start than he did, and his accumulation of experience was more solid than his back then. The young apprentice’s achievement would eclipse his in time.

Saleen came to understand a feeling unique to mages all of a sudden—the urge to pass down one’s lineage to the next generation. He did not need Truman to pay him anything. It would have sufficed to see a student who was meant to practice magic, practice the art.

In times like that, mages were selfless.

Saleen pondered for a bit and took out his replica of the Devil Ring. He was a grade-9 sorcerer, and that meant he became capable of crafting crude spatial equipment according to schematics. While he was still incapable of disintegrating the power of space, the Devil Ring replica was less limited by levels, and one could begin using it at garde-5.

More importantly, he crafted three magic arrays on that Devil Ring, and even inlaid it with a white crystal.

It was an immeasurably pure piece of white crystal, one which would enable mages to quickly recover their mental powers. The restoration was not forced replenishment like the kind provided by divine crystals, but one that sped up a mage’s recovery of mental powers.

Good white crystals were even capable of changing a mage’s constitution. When used for a long enough period, the mage using the crystal would also develop a faster recovery rate. It was something that divine crystals were incapable of doing.

Mental powers were immensely important to mages. Looking back, the crystal ring that his teacher had presented him with long ago felt infinitely precious. If crystals were classed by levels like professionals, the white crystal that his teacher presented him with should have been grade-18.

The one Saleen gave to Truman was somewhat inferior to the one his teacher presented him with, but it was nonetheless a very rare one. It was not that he was reluctant to give something even better to Truman, but it was that the white crystal ring he had, was the most cherished gift he had gotten from Jason. Saleen would keep it with him always, as a memento of sorts.

Truman quickly flipped through the notes Saleen gave him and then pondered with his eyes closed. When the sky turned dark, Truman began chanting the words and an ice bomb appeared on his hand. The surface of the ice bomb quickly vaporized. Truman was unable to keep his control on it and shot it out of the window, making a hole in the colored glass. The hole quickly expanded, and before long, the entire window came crashing down in shards.

Truman rubbed his hands, and Saleen smiled. While his student failed to control the ice bomb, the vaporized thing had already been seen to carry the power of wind magic. The window would not have shattered otherwise.

“Well done, no need to pay for the window by the way!” Saleen continued laughing.

“Thank you, teacher…” Truman’s voice was so quiet that no one was been able to hear it but himself. In that room, Jason’s lineage was finally passed down to the next generation. It was as if everything was ordained by fate. Saleen went around the world and returned where he started out.