Badge in Azure

Nicholas used a spell from Divine Punishment that was slightly weaker; the spell was Righteous Judgment.

There were more than 100,000 complete souls within Nicholas’ fallen staff. It would demand more of his equipment and he would need a million more souls in order to use powerful Divine Punishment spells.

Righteous Judgment had a prerequisite of having to be used against genuine heresies. It would be able to cleanse their souls completely and force them to lose their powers of faith. What made it different from a powerful Divine Punishment spells was that the former could only strip the opponent’s power of faith and not their combat abilities.

Nevertheless, Nicholas was not involved in a one-on-one fight. There were six other towering elemental stone statue soldiers surrounding the huge light-blue monster.

When the elemental stone statue soldiers managed to smash the monster into pieces with their magic war hammers, Nicholas was pleased. The fallen staff jerked on the ground and holy light shot out in all direction. All the powerful souls were sucked into the blood soul tower.

Nailisi dashed forward and put the shredded corpse of the huge monster into the Purgatory of the Fallen. There were rules in the Purgatory, but the sky and land in the dimension were still very fragile. They needed more materials to evolve and become complete.

Boom!

The second huge monster that had been stuck in the temple’s door finally managed to break through, causing a huge crack in it.

A third monster followed behind it and managed to crawl through very easily.

Saleen was dumbfounded. The temple might be hiding plenty of monsters, but if they could only crawl out one by one, they were as good as sacrificial items for Nicholas.

Saleen was curious, so he leaned towards Nicholas and cast an ice arrow; it was a grade-4 spell. Saleen used his mental strength to lock on to the third monster, so that it could not dodge and could only face it head-on.

The ice arrow pierced into the monster’s light-blue skeletal armor before sliding off. That was when Saleen used his elemental eyes to take a closer look and realized the monster’s skeletal armor were layers on top of each other. Each layer was as thin as half a yard and there were thousands of layers altogether.

The blue monster’s soul was weak compared to its skeletal armor. Although Saleen’s ice arrow was a grade-4 spell, it was still capable of causing a lot of damage. The fact it slid off the skeletal armor just showed how powerful the creature’s defense was.

When Saleen had just become a mage, an icicle was already capable of piercing through a solid rock wall. A grade-4 ice arrow was many times more powerful.

Saleen decided not to fight with Nailisi for that material after a moment of hesitation. The Twelve Notes of Purgatory was the most powerful equipment anyone around him had and it still had plenty of room to grow.

Saleen could not even begin to imagine how powerful it would be when all 12 dimensions were fully developed. They were only developing the second dimension, so there was no point fighting with Nailisi for materials at this stage.

Nailisi seemed to sense what Saleen was thinking and whispered to him, “Master, I can provide you with those materials next time. There are not too many of them and it takes a long time to refine them, but they are much better than those ones.”

Saleen only smiled and continued to watch Nicholas battle against the third monster.

Nicholas continued to use Righteous Judgment. After stripping away the power granted by the divine spell, he let the six elemental stone statue soldiers smash the monster into pieces before he collected its soul.

The fellow in the temple seemed to have no idea that such repetition was meaningless. Forty-four monsters were unleashed in total and all of their souls were collected by Nicholas and put in his blood soul tower.

Nicholas’ mental strength surprisingly increased significantly. Holy Masters usually had to borrow the power of the Gods in order to cast divine spells, so they rarely gained anything out of a battle except for victory. Whatever could be gained was returned to the Gods. Nicholas had become a fallen Holy Master. After collecting those souls, the 44 powerful and pure souls were cleansed of their memories on the ninth level of the blood soul tower. They then began to bow towards his soul imprint. The mental strength that Nicholas had used up was constantly being replenished by the souls in the blood soul tower, so he had even more mental strength than before the battle started.

The temple quietened down as the screeching female voice stopped chanting curses. That was when Saleen urged everyone into the temple. Nailisi led the way and had already taken out her skeletal shield and Grey Memory. Nailisi did not feel afraid at all when she was armed with her long lance. The monsters in the temple were not formidable enough to hurt them.

Unlike the Imperial City of the Abyss, which was isolated from the outside world, that dimension was rather stable. That meant that it was subjected to the limitations of the dimension, so there should not be any creatures beyond grade-12.

There were cracks everywhere on top of the temple. Seawater crashed onto the temple as the walls and pillars were already half-collapsed. There were no signs of life anywhere amidst the darkness. Nailisi casually stabbed around with Grey Memory so that she could collect more materials and send them to the Twelve Notes of Purgatory.

The temple of the Goddess was built with plenty of valuable materials. It was the same as the temple that Saleen had first entered. Saleen did not possess the capabilities to harvest the resources back then.

The temple of the Goddess of Nature was different from what it looked like on the map, but one thing was similar. There was definitely a main temple and 24 sub-temples. Those temples were originally full of transparent creatures, but they were empty now, except for a corridor with no end in sight.

Saleen thought about it before casting a Fluorescence spell to light an area of hundreds of yards around him. Although he could have relied on his elemental eyes, he felt more comfortable fighting under normal lighting in case they encountered such a situation. It would also help Nicholas save some energy.

Nicholas might be the weakest amongst the three of them, but he was extremely important to Saleen. Saleen was still counting on Nicholas to help him destabilize the Holy See. If they could attract more Holy Masters to become fallen it would only be a matter of time before the Holy See collapsed.

Saleen did not manage to discover anything as they walked past the sub-temples one by one. He could not determine the location of the screeching female voice either.

The temple was built in a very strange away. The one on top was broken beyond words and was being soaked by the seawater. The one below was completely sealed up. They had to rely on Saleen’s Ring of Gifts in order to pass through most of the places. It was as if the temple was built with the expectation that it would sink to the bottom of the sea one day.

“Nicholas, can you sense the presence of that thing?” Saleen finally asked Nicholas. He could not understand. His mental strength and soul were the most powerful amongst the three of them, so if that female was of a high grade, why would she not come out to fight him? On the other hand, if her grade was low, how had she been able to conceal her presence?

Nicholas shook his head. He was confused by what was happening as well.

“We have already walked past 12 sub-temples, right?” Saleen asked Nailisi.

“Master, if we include that broken one, there should be 13.”

Saleen sensed danger creeping closer and closer to them. Without hesitation, he unleashed 24 Midnight Fangs to surround the three of them. The Midnight Fangs were small in size and were more suitable than elemental stone statue soldiers in such an enclosed space.

A beam of light-blue light suddenly appeared in the darkness and charged straight towards Saleen’s back.

Two Midnight Fangs stabbed at the blue light viciously with their dark-element daggers. The blue light reverted back to its original form with a groan of pain. It was a light-blue creature that did not look too different from a normal human. The creature was different from the transparent ones because it did not have tentacles on both sides of its ribs and its facial features were sharp and clear.

One of the Midnight Fang’s dagger had struck the creature’s right hand, causing it to drop its saber. The other dagger had stabbed into its neck. Its entire neck was almost severed completely as its head dangled to one side.

Saleen laughed coldly. How could it possibly think of assassinating him when he was surrounded by so many elemental creatures?

“Humph!”

A cold voice rang out from the corridor. Nailisi casually collected the dying humanoid creature along with its saber and put it into the Purgatory of the Fallen.

Saleen thought about it and activated the spell on his devil suit. Six stone statue soldiers of about two yards tall appeared and they walked ahead into the corridor.

There was the sound of fighting and it seemed that the six stone statue soldiers were under attack. Saleen had already managed to take a good look at the enemies.

Tens of light-blue humanoid creatures surrounded the six stone statue soldiers and were attacking them. The creatures were wearing real armor and were armed with a variety of weapons.

There were 32 of them!

After figuring out how many enemies there were, he commanded the stone statue soldiers to retreat and block off the corridor. The 32 creatures were clearly more powerful than those huge monsters from earlier. They definitely possessed intelligence and all of them were grade-9.

The Midnight Fangs were capable of defeating those creatures, so Saleen was not worried about that. The only thing that he had yet to figure out was the mystery behind the screeching female’s voice and where she could possibly be hiding.

The creatures were grade-9 and were being controlled by the strange voice, so Saleen no longer dared to be complacent. He realized the woman behind the voice had to be at least grade-10.

A grade-10 creature with intelligence would be much more difficult to deal with than grade-10 magic beasts were.

The 32 blue creatures approached the entrance of the corridor and Saleen’s stone statue soldiers were waving their war axes while blocking these creatures from leaving the corridor. Nailisi gripped her long lance nervously and asked, “Master, what do we do?”

Nailisi was confident in defeating those creatures one by one on such terrain. Grey Memory would use up a lot of her mental strength though. Although the dragon crystal in Grey Memory could replenish her mental strength, there was a limit after all. Nailisi would be completely drained after defeating all 32 of those grade-9 creatures.

“My Lord, may I try?” Nicholas asked.

“I sense something strange about the temple ahead,” Saleen said, “Wait a while more. All of you rest for now. We will wait until the second batch of stone statue soldiers appear.”

The devil suit would create a batch of six stone statue soldiers every six minute and it would keep going for three hours. Saleen sensed danger in the temple ahead and decided that they might as well wait for a while to see if there would be any new developments. Another six stone statue soldiers would make it even more difficult for those blue creatures to break through the corridor.