Badge in Azure

Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio

Nailisi thought it was interesting to hear her master wanting to rope Sikeqinyan mages in. There would have definitely been a lot of coaxing involved, the easy way or the hard way.

The king of Metatrin managed more than just the nobles; he managed the mages of the mainland as well. It was a concept that Saleen had decided for himself. He wanted to become the greatest king in all of the mainland, just like how it had been with the emperor of the First Dynasty.

There were few mages in Sikeqinya and they were of low levels, making them easy to buy over. Saleen intended to use the Sikeqinya Empire as his guinea pig, to prepare for the day when he would take Alchemy City for the sake of uniting the entire mainland.

There would definitely be people refusing to submit to him in Alchemy City. Master is no longer aimless. Nailisi grew to feel secure about her master and stopped feeling so homesick about the demon plane.

Nailisi headed for Yaoyang City the next day, replacing everyone in it with demonic spirits and added a demon, who was about to advance to become a supreme demon, disguised as Hu An.

Saleen contacted Royal Harbor and delivered the necklace to Lex using the teleportation portal as well as elaborating on his plans. Lex was pleased about how mature Saleen had become. He was no longer the boy he used to be. It made her feel a little sad, but then again, she was not the kind of woman who wallowed in such emotions. As such, she replied to Saleen immediately.

They exchanged information using the portal and after determining how they would go about dealing with the Sikeqinya Empire, Lex contacted Metatrin City, requesting them to send reinforcements to Daliang City.

Daliang City, at the moment, only had six magic towers, and Sul was the only one in charge of military affairs. Such arrangements would have been secure enough in the past, but that was no longer so. The Holy See seemed to have avoided the Principality of Bitterwater's territories, but the truth was the city was under constant threat of being assaulted.

The land that Daliang City sat on suffered few natural disasters, with Sanlian City in the west being the only place seemingly easy to defend. The lands in the north were filled with small cities. If the Holy See had wanted to attack them, they would have been able to do so at a moment's notice.

Lex had wanted to send reinforcements a long time ago, but the current predicament of being short of hands everywhere meant that despite having a great number of mages in Metatrin City, they needed to be assigned first to Royal Harbor and Ceylon City. With Lonestar City added to the list, Metatrin City was stretching itself thin.

Saleen's action meant that Lonestar City would be safe for the time being, and it was then possible to dispatch manpower to Daliang City without affecting existing plans, being able to handle any sudden turn of events to a certain extent. What was more intriguing was that Holy Rock City no longer had it took to take care of Phoenix, and the place ended up being taken over gradually by the three duchesses using soft methods, which meant that the Kingdom of Metatrin gained itself a huge swath of land that was easy to defend and difficult to take down.

The frontlines at Huoxing City was no longer a major point. The structure of the great Kingdom of Metatrin was finally completed, and it was safe enough for the nation to hold the lines at two mountain passes. The enemy would have had no choice but to attack Lonestar City by taking a great detour at the north. Doing so would be very costly, and even if the enemy had no intentions of going to war with the Kingdom of Metatrin, the terrible weather at the north would make the troops think twice before venturing further.

Lex's view of the greater picture had always been one notch above Saleen's. If there was anything that Saleen had that she lacked, it was luck. She was even quicker at advancement in magic than Saleen was. Seeing how Saleen's plans had turned the tables, Lex had no choice but to look into things within her home. If Daliang City were to fall, the Cloudflow people would be able to attack from the Separation Sea, and the secret passages in the mountains behind her Principality of Bitterwater would be exposed.

As such, she could not afford to lose Daliang City. Lex knew the stakes at play, so she wrote a letter to Jason without any regard of what others thought about her, requesting for him to send sorcerers to Daliang City.

At the moment, Jason had too many sorcerers who were of average potential. They were all sent to the Six Elements' Space to train and would have emerged as level nine sorcerers within the next few months. Those of greater potential were assigned to the temple to advance slowly, but they were still able to advance several times faster than they would have otherwise.

He had massive wealth at his disposal as well, and all of it was left over by his teacher. Jason's lineage of mages had had only one student and successor for the past several generations, which meant that the accumulated wealth was massive enough to keep people fed.

Even if he was unable to, he now had a student like Saleen.

Jason did not hesitate to send men when Lex asked. Jason chose six level nine sorcerers, according to the size of Daliang City, and had them lead about a hundred mages to Daliang City.

The Holy See knew without doubt that Daliang City was a key point. They were able to connect with the Cloudflow Empire as long as they were able to break through Separation Sea. Grand Duke Iron Blood's pompous and reckless actions made Pope Theisio realize that the pact between them and Cloudflow was an empty promise. The Cloudflow royalty was probably no longer able to keep the local nobles under control, which meant that they needed to include the Cloudflow people on their future list of enemies.

However, things were in chaos within Sikeqinya. Danny was completely frightened with the entire Ironwall City reduced to ashes. He no longer had any means of fighting projected warfare, and it went without saying that he had no means of allying with anyone to fight against Qin. If he were to attack Daliang City, not only would he have angered Saleen further, he would have made the Cloudflow people wary and they might have dissolved the alliance prematurely.

Regardless, Grand Duke Iron Blood's actions of dispatching troops without permission from Cloudflow royalty to take over Lianyun City had thrown northern Qin into chaos. Only the Holy See forces would have been able to make breakthroughs head on and make it into Qin territory.

From Theisio's perspective, it was unwise for Saleen to scatter his forces instead of keeping them together.

Theisio, however, had no idea that Saleen had the 12 Notes of First Purgatory at his disposal, enabling him to easily dispatch 100,000 demons anytime and anywhere on the mainland. From Saleen's perspective, nothing mattered more than keeping his home ground safe.

Saleen was busy building up Ceylon City while Earl Sufonso, at Yaoyang City, spent his days in frustration.

The sorcerer announced all of the sudden that he wanted to train for three years and did not wish to be disturbed. It was clear that he feared Saleen, whose territory had expanded from Ceylon City to about a hundred miles away from Yaoyang City. Saleen had killed his son, and he had destroyed Saleen's family cemetery. There was simply no way and no need to settle such scores in a peaceful manner.

Saleen had the power of a nation at his disposal at the moment. Earl Sufonso felt a noose had already been tied around his neck, yet the noose refused to be tightened. It simply hung around his neck, making him feel as if days were creeping by like years.

Saleen can't take Yaoyang City? It was something even Sufonso found unbelievable. The Kingdom of Metatrin assaulted Ironwall City and even though the city had nine magic towers, it was still doomed. What do I have in comparison? A level eight magic tower that is outside the city, whose sorcerer has shut himself in instead of helping me out. What do I have at my disposal to keep this piece of land in one piece?

If Saleen simply went to attack the city, even if it meant metal flyers dropping magic fire shells from the air, Sufonso would have felt a lot more at ease. Being glared by someone so far away made Sufonso feel like he was about to go mad.

Recent news had it that Saleen had begun to lay down his forces at the border, and there was no way of telling how soon the assault would come. Sufonso had no choice but to send word to the imperial city requesting reinforcements. That Saleen is a madman. If he were to actually make a move, Yaoyang City would be turned completely to dust.

I hope His Majesty will realize that it is not a wise move to keep retreating. Doing so will only enable Saleen to grow stronger. Things will turn far worse if he is allowed to do so.

Sufonso could not have helped requesting reinforcements, despite the fact that Saleen had only been laying down his forces at the border for two days. Everything was seen from the surveillance magic array of the magic tower. Saleen knew his plan worked and so he made haste in crafting weapons and repairing the Dragon Remains Combat Vessel.

The Ancient warship was handed over to Lex and all of Saleen's bone warships had been sunk. All that was left with him were the Dragon Remains Combat Vessel and 12 high speed escort warships. A dozen or so ships, however, proved adequate to take on the Sikeqinyans. With the Sikeqinyan royal navy destroyed, the remaining warships locked themselves up at the small harbor, not daring to venture out to sea.

What was truly worrying was the Tanggulasi Empire, or more accurately, the Tribunal.

Saleen had not imagined in the least that Van Gogh would have betrayed the Holy See after he escaped, thus keeping the Tribunal in the dark longer. The Tribunal might have gotten very angry, but there was no way they could have traced it all to Saleen. The Tribunal had no idea that Saleen had acquired both the divine puppet and the Lance of Order. The black-robed priests and the warden leaders found that things were off when they returned to Tanggulasi Empire and found that Van Gogh had turned tail and ran. Those people, in turn, ran for their lives, hiding themselves in the Cloudflow Empire.

Luck had it that Saleen had no actual need to worry about the threat from the Tribunal for the moment, yet he remained steadfast at building the port and laying down defenses along the shoreline. Saleen was afraid that, one day, the ones from the Tribunal would show up at Ceylon City and trash his home city.

Saleen sent all the elemental creatures down to the bottom of the ocean to dig it deep enough and expanded the port by over a dozen times, to make sure it would serve adequately. Saleen also set up large number of magic cannons along the shoreline for defense.

The magic cannons were made by mimicking the Second Dynasty's miniaturized magic cannons. Saleen had no way of copying them accurately and made big, lumbering ones instead. The 15-meter-long body had a barrel with a diameter of over three meters. The output of their energy beams was not even half the output of the miniaturized magic cannon and were slower to fire. The only advantage they had was that they were sitting on huge alchemy machinery and powered by a magic power furnace, enabling them to change directions easily.

Such huge shoreline defense cannons were far more useful than magic stone cannons. The shoreline cannons were capable of firing in a straight line within ten miles, enabling them to keep their waters locked down. No large warships were capable of easily approaching Magnolia Bay.

Such lavish spending was something only Saleen was capable of pulling off. The great amount of materials he reaped from the temple at the bottom of the ocean served little use to Saleen himself, so he made cannons out of them.

Other than setting up the shoreline cannons, Saleen had also expanded the city itself, growing it to be nine times larger than what it had once been. The designs of the walls were derived from Ironwall City's designs, being built in layers. What was different was that Saleen built huge number of metal towers between the layers of the walls.

The towers were laid out according to the designs on the Ancient, and Saleen decided to lay out magic net there.

It was comparatively easy to lay out the magic net, as Saleen had schematics at hand. When the magic net at Ceylon City was finished, Saleen would be able to quickly nurture a group of people capable of casting high level spells.

Huge numbers of magic power furnaces were placed to serve as power sources to the metal towers. The people manning the towers were only required to have sufficient mental powers, and there was no need for magic chords. They would be capable of casting powerful attack spells only by chanting the words.

The people were not true mages, and Saleen coined a term for them—casters.

When the magic net was done being laid, the entire Ceylon City would be in the casters' control. It was far easier than nurturing mages. As with the methods of enhancing a person's mental powers, Saleen had his ways of going about it.