Badge in Azure

“Congratulations, master,” Nailisi’s voice was heard outside.

“You’re home.” Saleen opened the door with Wild Wind and saw Nailisi walking in. A group of dead-looking people followed right behind her. Some of those people were wearing their pajamas, obviously they had not gotten out of bed when they were taken in. Some wore hunting garb, they were obviously out hunting before. There was even one person who was wearing an apron, a noble who cooked personally.

“All seventy-six of the nobles are here, regardless of if they actually have their own territory,” Nailisi reported with glee. She had threatened to hang them at midnight for quite some time using Tempest Dragon-mights. Some of them soiled their pants, and a handful were barely able to maintain composure.

Saleen found the stink on them to be repulsive and cast a cleaning spell to clean up the awful smell about them.

Viscount Gugger began to believe Saleen’s words. Nailisi did indeed bring them in, though they were scattered within a one-hundred miles radius from where they were, in less than half a day’s time. He finally thought that maybe Saleen was indeed capable to tearing down Ironwall City.

“Come on,” Saleen called for Nicholas. He went outside the door, found himself a clearing, and took out a piece of dimension stone. He then summoned the Magical Element Tower right before their eyes. The massive tower appeared and Saleen ordered the Tempest Dragon-mights who had landed to stuff all the nobles inside the tower. He then brought the whole party into the seventeenth floor of the tower.

The magic power furnace was activated, and the huge tower took to the sky. The Magical Element Tower originally had its magic arrays broken. The mages of Sregl Island toiled for quite some time and were only capable of enabling the tower to take flight. If Saleen wanted to cast spells in flight, the energy drain would be astronomical. Saleen did not mind at all. It would have sufficed to have the tower cast spells when it was hovering. He would not be able to overpower the towers in Ironwall City otherwise.

The imperials within Ceylon City had all been taken care of. The magic tower flew from the city right to the ocean. Saleen found himself to not need to command the tower like he did warships. It was very easy to control the Magical Element Tower, even easier than riding a horse.

Saleen had it easy, as the seventy-six nobles taken in were all locked up at the bottommost floor. Saleen had easy turned on magic images, to enable the nobles to see the view outside.

The giant tower skimmed on the surface of the sea, flying at a very low altitude. With the surface of the sea to serve as a reference, the nobles knew very well how fast the tower was actually going. They were flying at speeds several times faster than running horses. If they were to collide with anything at sea, that might just have been the end of them.

A huge monster jumped from the sea before them, like a curse finally coming true. The monster sported smooth fleshy wings, which had a wingspan of one-hundred yards wide. The monster had a flat head, and it came right for them riding the wind.

Most nobles shut their eyes to await their deaths, while a handful of them with more guts stared right ahead.

The monster collided head on with the magic tower. The magic arrays onboard required the magic power furnace to be put idle before they could be used to cast powerful magic attacks. The monster was not one with a low level. Saleen did not bother wasting time and magic nuclei, and simply let the tower ram into the monster.

The tower shook violently for a moment, while the monster was thrown off by the tower. The monster’s head turned to mush, and it fell into the sea.

Nailisi laughed her lungs out. The Magical Element Tower was made of elementite, a grade-18 material. If the opposing force did not use magic to look for openings before launching an attack at the tower, there was virtually nothing that would have been able to tear the tower apart.

The grandmaster had originally prepared the tower for his own use when he crafted it. Both elementite and dimension stones were incredibly precious materials. Sheer force alone would never be enough to bring down the tower.

Viscount Gugger had only became aware then, that they had made it to the outer sea. No monsters of such sizes would have been found in the inner seas, and the waves would not have been half as powerful.

After the Magical Element Tower threw off the unknown magic beast easily, there were no others nearby who dared challenge the tower. Saleen took the tower to the preset coordinates, making for his own fleet.

The flight speed of the Magical Element Tower proved inferior to Saleen’s Quickcloud spell. Such a huge construct drew power only from the magic power furnace, and hardly relied on magic arrays for anything. As a result, its flight speed was only equal to that of a grade-7 sorcerer, or maybe a tad faster.

It was entirely possible to make the tower fly faster, but that would have exceeded Saleen’s ability to control it. Even stopping alone would require time to prepare. Saleen had not known there would have been any grade-10 magic beasts appearing at sea, and as such, he was flying very carefully. His Elemental Eye was able to look more than a mile away. Any magic beasts intending to do the tower any harm would not be able to escape Saleen’s notice.

Ceylon City laid at the northwestern side of Sikeqinya, which was more than five-thousand miles away in a straight line from Saleen’s destination. The magic tower was only flying at about one-hundred miles per hour. During the two days in the air, it had thrown off a good number of magic beasts, before reaching the northern waters of Sikeqinya.

The sea in the north was named very simply as well; it was called the North Sea.

“Master, I seem to have forgotten to feed those people down there!”, Nailisi only told Saleen that when he saw the Ancient from a distance.

Having been busy familiarizing himself with the controls of the tower and having stopped for breaks more than a dozen times, just so that he could try casting spells with the tower, he had indeed forgotten all about the nobles down there. It had only been little more than two days since they last ate, and they would not have died of starvation yet.

“Get them something to eat. We are about to land on the Ancient.”

Nailisi took off with her orders, and that sent a chill down Viscount Gugger’s spine. If he had not decided prior to side with Saleen, he would have been locked down there with the nobles to starve.

“No, Saleen would have simply gotten rid of me, and then covered it up. If I hadn’t side with him, I wouldn’t even have the chance to starve.” There had been quite a number of people who remembered Saleen, and it would have been easy to buy them off. Viscount Gugger felt even more fortunate at that point, that he had made the right choice.

Nailisi made it down to the first floor of the tower and saw more than seventy of the nobles slumped on the floor. The floor smelled rather off-putting. She frowned in disgust and said, “Here is food, one-hundred-thousand gold each.”

“Go rob someone else instead,” a few of the nobles yelled when they saw Nailisi taking out some smoked meats. Nailisi used the power of demons when she took them, but the nobles were simply left to starve instead of being killed outright, and so had gotten bold.

“I’m indeed robbing you people. Here are the contracts. Those who sign it, get to eat; those who don’t, I’ll feed them to my demons.” Nailisi took out a bunch of contracts and tens of pens, then dumped them on the floor. She unleashed a few terrifying-looking demons from the purgatory of devils at the same time. One smelled the noble at its feet before licking them.

“I’ll sign it! I’ll sign it!” A noble took a pen swiftly and wrote their name on the contract. It was just a contract after all, they could just refuse to acknowledge it when it was all over.

The contract failed to be in effect when they were done writing their name on the contract, due to that thought coming to their mind. Nailisi smirked and said, “I didn’t force you to sign it. It’s you who wanted to lie to me. Eat that fellow up!”

A demon pounced onto them and bit off their head, then proceeded to chew loudly. Another one moved even faster. It simply tore off the dead body and stuck its mouth at the hole in the neck. It then began sucking the body dry of blood.

The remaining nobles dared not resist any further. Seeing how the demons dragged away the dead body and returned to the void, the nobles simply thought themselves to be unlucky, before proceeded to write their names on the contract. The contracts burned one after another, signaling that they had come into effect. Nailisi only then distributed the food to them.

There were seventy-five nobles left. With every noble paying one-hundred-thousand-thousand gold, the total would amount to seven-million and fifty-thousand gold. It would have sufficed to have them pay ten or twenty-thousand gold each. The very reason Nailisi had them sign the contracts was so that Viscount Gugger would be able to expand his territory.

Some tricks, a bucket of water, tens of loaves of bread, and tens of pounds of smoked meat were all that Nailisi needed to earn creditor’s rights to a total of seven-hundred and fifty-thousand gold. She might just have been the most evil-minded merchant there was to be found on the plane.

The Magical Element Tower got near to the Ancient, and the large-scale equipment onboard aimed at the tower. Saleen sent his voice out to the Ancient. “Genga, it’s me.”

The weapons on the warship were then stowed, and more than one-hundred Mechanical Soul doubles went about cleaning up the deck, to make space for the tower to land.

Only a piece of equipment like the Ancient would have had enough space for the Magical Element Tower to land. Saleen did not stop by. He simply left the tower on the giant ship and took the rest of the party flying off to the dragon skeleton combat vessel using Quickcloud. The dragon remains skeleton combat vessel remained the flagship on the fleet, and both Lex and the winged skeleton were onboard.

Viscount Gugger was dazzled by what he had seen. He was no longer able to see any reason to doubt Saleen. What he had seen throughout the journey were simply things that would only exist in stories told by the bards.

The winged skeleton was not on the pan’s turtle alchemical boat. The Sikeqinyan navy could be ignored altogether. The warships they had on the water would have been able to crush the entire naval power Sikeqinya was able to muster. The winged skeleton was pleased to receive Saleen. His master’s power had grown abnormally stable, and there were no longer fluctuations to be found. That meant that it was time that Saleen make preparations to advance to grade-10.

Within the next one-hundred years, Saleen would have definitely become a grade-10 sorcerer.

“Where is Lex?”, Saleen asked. He was unable to sense Lex’s presence, which was strange.

“She is in the hold.”

Saleen followed the Winged Skull to hold and asked, “How long have you been here?”

“Three days. This place is about thirty-six-hundred miles away from shore. No way the Sikeqinyans would find us,” the winged skeleton answered aptly.

“Saleen, are you looking for me?” Lex appeared before Saleen all of a sudden, which startled him. He was unable to sense anything before Lex stood less than five yards away from where he stood.

“Just what kind of a skill is this? This is just terrifying, if she was a grand swordmaster…”

It was then that he realized that he was wrong. Grand swordmasters were incapable of magic, and what he saw was a magic skill. He was only able to sense elemental fluctuations one second after Lex had appeared.

“Saleen, you really are calm now!” Lex smiled gently looking at him. She had intended to use the power of God’s Ring to play a prank on Saleen, but his mental powers and magic chords remained abnormally still after she appeared. That was a sure sign that Saleen’s own power was able to remain stable at grade-9 and would no longer be turbulent.