Badge in Azure

The chained up woman had eyes like lightning, and cold light seeped out of those eyes, shooting everywhere without a target in the void.

Nicholas took note of all that and reminded Saleen, who was standing in front of him, “My liege, this woman is really something. Close combat in not an option. That thing that shot out of her eyes was an attack like Divine Punishment. It is anyone’s guess however, as to why the range was so short.”

“I know. The chains restricted her powers. If all we do is stand here and do nothing, she won’t be able to do us any harm,” Saleen replied calmly. He had no idea what the lights that shot out the woman’s eyes meant, but he was nonetheless able to tell that the power unleashed by the woman was restricted within the vicinity of the altar. The altar itself, served like a thoroughly sealed cage.

“Do I have any choice but to get close? Of course not. That woman is just as fearsome as the angel of fear. Her power has reached the pinnacle of the plane. She might be a little loose in the head, but she is still probably the most powerful figure in this world. If I don’t kill her off while she is still being held back by the chains, the entire mainland will be doomed if she managed to get herself free.”

While she thought herself to be the Goddess of Myers, there was no way Saleen could have freed her and let her go about spreading her faith. If he did, all of the believers’ powers would be hijacked by her, and there would be nothing left for the goddess to get revived with.

While Saleen wanted very much to break the contract between him and the goddess, going about it like that was not an option. His plans were coming together at the moment, if that thing actually was able to escape, breaking off the contract would no longer be a concern. That thing, would just…

Saleen thought for a moment. If that thing would just go about killing all of the Lord of Glory’s believers, it would be quite a nice thing to happen, but she took herself to be the goddess, and from the looks of things, she definitely would not be as sensible as the Goddess of Myers herself. Her bloodlust was just too strong. If such a thing came to the gates of Metatrin City, there would be no city to be had there soon enough.

Saleen came to the conclusion that his city would not be able to defend against her, by just gauging what she was capable of doing alone.

“Well, kill her right here right there it is then!” Mages did not need too many reasons to deal with matters like that. Saleen’s mood calmed and he realized, most of the time, what he was compelled to do seemed to be ordained by fate itself. “If you aren’t going to do this now, you will never get another chance at it ever again.”

The woman who took herself to be Goddess of Myers was not one who was easy to deal with. Saleen did not want his elemental creatures to take the risk, as such, he took control of the Stone Statue Soldiers conjured by his Devil Suit to climb over through the corridors at the flanks. Below the corridors was a giant chasm that seemed bottomless.

A mile long distance was nowhere near Saleen’s mental powers limit for control. The Stone Statue Soldiers quickly made it through the corridors and went up to the altar. The Stone Statue Soldiers did not possess intellect and were driven completely by instinct, or Saleen’s commands.

The six Stone Statue Soldiers stood before the altar, and the woman in chains who had been shooting cold light from her eyes stopped her attack. She went on to glare at the Stone Statue Soldiers. Under Saleen’s control, they conjured their elemental axes and lunged at the woman.

Six axes went down on a layer of invisible wall at the edge of the altar. The resulting metal clanging sounds were loud. The six axes were soon disintegrated to base earth element.

Saleen was able to tell from where he stood that the soldiers were unable to do anything to the woman on the altar. He wanted to recall them, as they were still summoned beings that could last for three hours. It would be a waste to see them destroyed, however, tens of blue humanoid creatures quickly leapt from the chasm of the temple, surrounding the Stone Statue Soldiers.

The soldiers once again conjured their elemental axes and expanded their bodies, becoming nine yard tall war machines. More blue humanoid creatures however, leapt from the chasm. They held strange weapons in their hands, and left gashes on the bodies of the soldiers.

“Master, that woman was just practicing!” Nailisi yelled. She found that the blue humanoid creatures were too of grade-9 yet possessed mediocre offensive capacity.

“I can tell.” Saleen’s face turned pale. He was taking personal control over the soldiers to fight, and it was a given that he was able to tell what the other side was doing. The woman on the altar was obviously mimicking what he was doing with his soldiers. She was too taking personal control over her blue humanoid creatures and was being very bad at it.

She was, however, able to learn very quickly due to being of high-level. If the fight was dragged on, her ability to control her troops would quickly improve. Saleen let out a sigh and relinquished his control of the soldiers. They immediately gave up fighting the grade-9 creatures and went straight for the altar.

The woman at the altar seemed to be very pleased at that turn of events. She lowered the defenses at the altar and went straight for the soldiers. She shot cold light from her eyes and tore the Stone Statue Soldiers to pieces. She then opened her mouth and sucked up all the rich earth element left behind.

Saleen frowned. The cold light from her eyes was just too powerful. Close combat was not an option. Where he stood was about a mile away from the altar. The likes of alchemy crossbows would not be able to do her any harm. Saleen took hold of his family badge without realizing it.

The badge was capable of taking out things even more than twenty miles away. One mile was simply child’s play in that case. The problem however, was that if he unleashed the lightning attack from the badge, there would be nothing left on the altar. Such powerful soul and body materials would go to waste.

More importantly, Saleen felt that the woman must have been related to Goddess of Myers in some manner. She might have been able to dig out some valuable information from her soul. He had signed a contract with Goddess of Myers, with Gaine the astrologer, as well as with the heroic spirits in the imperial city cemetery.

All three contracts were interconnected. Any one of those contracts was connected in one way or another to the revival of Goddess of Myers. The way to break all three of them became the top priority matter in Saleen’s mind at the moment. The key of which, laid with the Goddess of Myers herself.

If the diminishing of power across the entire mainland was actually related to the Goddess of Myers herself, there was no way Saleen could just let her return to the living. Or, if he ended up reviving her, he would have to think of ways to kill her again.

If Nailisi’s purgatory of the fallen was completely, it would serve well to contain the woman. The problem was, however, that the woman’s current power levels exceeded the amount of power that purgatory was able to contain.

“Master, get in touch with the viscount,” Nailisi reminded Saleen. It was only then that he realized that he still had a weapon left with Lex to hold the fort: the miniaturized magic cannon.

The power of the miniaturized magic cannon would definitely be enough to kill the woman right in front of them. Saleen looked up at the broken roof. Only the area within about one-hundred yards radius was being held by six giant pillars and no cracks were found. It was all sealed tight by concentrated earth element. Everywhere else within the temple was thoroughly wrecked.

The earth was shaking and crumbling. Such an environment would have been ill-suited for setting up teleportation portals.

The setup of a teleportation portal required a very stable environment, and that was something known by astrologers and mages alike. The earth was not fixed, and it was something that continued to move in a certain area. Every coordinate actually carried four attributes. Only with the point in the three-dimensional space and the function of passage of time properly set up, that a comparatively accurate teleportation coordinate could have said to been set.

With the earth continuing to tremble, the teleportation of goods would render the goods torn apart in space.

“Heh…” Saleen took out a dimension stone and had the six Elemental Stone Statue Soldiers that were turned into pillars return to their original forms and let the roof collapse. He cast his Water Shield and deflected all the crumbling rocks crashing down on them. Saleen took out his Magical Element Tower and placed it on the ground.

Everyone entered the tower and Saleen began setting up the portal within the tower itself. There was a fixed teleportation portal in the tower, and all Saleen needed to do was to confirm the coordinates of the royal harbor.

He first set up and sound transmission magic array to contact the royal harbor. Lex was brought by her mages in a hurry to the temporary magic tower.

The first thing Saleen did when communications were set up was to ask for the cannon. Lex replied quickly at the array, “Hold on a moment, I’ll get to it right away. Give me the coordinates.”

Saleen felt lucky that the place where he was not somewhere as insane as the Imperial City of the Abyss, and communications with people above water were still possible. Lex got to it quickly, but it was still quite a hassle to set up a teleportation portal. Despite having brought ample material with her, she would have still required six sorcerers to work with her, before the portal was gradually set up.

Saleen waited patiently in the Magical Element Tower. New developments began to take place at the altar faraway.

Seeing Saleen taking out his mobile tower, the woman in chains got anxious. She shook her body about, which rattled the chains, which in turn caused the entire altar to tremble. The chasm in the ground grew increasingly large.

Setting up a teleportation portal took time, and it was not something that could be accomplished in an instant just by having a lot of money. If Saleen did not want to wait, he would not have had any other choice but to kill the woman right there and then with his family badge. It would have resulted the same if Nailisi was to charge at her. More and more grade-9 creatures emerged from around the altar, and all of them were blue humanoid creatures.

The ground of the temple across them began to crumble. The altar became submerged in seawater and floated, instead of sinking down. More and more blue humanoid creatures emerged, and it was no longer illusions; all of them have had solid physical bodies. Saleen was shocked to see the scene unfolding, the number of grade-9 creatures in the temple had reached the thousands!

The woman at the altar chanted some unknown verses, causing the grade-9 creatures beneath the altar to have a dazed look in their eyes. One by one they walked up to the altar, and the woman opened her mouth to suck them inside her. Those grade-9 creatures were soon turned into globs of blue liquid under such powerful suction.

Saleen’s Elemental Eye was able to see it all. Every time the woman began sucking up the grade-9 creatures, her powers grew somewhat. The number of grade-9 creatures beneath the altar continued to grow. Saleen had no way to tell if she would be able to break free of her chains if she had absorbed the creatures in thousands.

“My liege, now I remember. Those chains were Shackles of the Fallen. Until the woman recovers her sanity, she will never be able to break free of them!”

“What are Shackles of the Fallen?”

“Something the gods used to punish traitors. If you have lost your faith in your mind, the shackles will keep you chained up, and you will definitely never be able to break free.”

“Definitely never be able to break free?” Saleen doubted it. “If that is truly so, why did the woman at the altar bother doing something like that?” Grade-9 creatures in the thousands would have posed a lethal threat to him regardless.

“What if the woman is able to master higher rules of power then?” Saleen asked Nicholas.