Badge in Azure

Chapter 1347: Hammer (Part 2)

The idea behind the crystal armor was ingenious, but the armor was mostly meant for fending off attacks from meteor armor. Such close-quarter cutting by air currents was sharper and deadlier than that of sword aura of golden grand sword masters.

The thing is, the air currents were of short duration. If they missed their target and were intercepted by equipment like the crystal armor, follow-up attacks would have been needed.

Armors usually weren't designed this way, because that crystal armor was not really effective against common types of physical attacks.

A huge furry hand extended from the other side of the black vortex while both the skeleton and the angel were whipping the abominations about with their bludgeoning weapons, catching Rafel's meteor hammer.

Powerful explosions blasted through that hammer, forcing intense air currents through cracks on the head, wringing itself free.

The master of the huge hand seemed momentarily stunned, its bloodied hand extended again. But it was the entire arm showing up from the black vortex.

Rafel quickly retreated to evade capture. Unsuccessful in dodging the first catch, she was taken aback at the realization that the enemy's martial prowess was on par with hers.

The wounds on the hand healed right away. While it failed to resist the meteor hammer's attack, it didn't get blown to bits either. Rafel reeled the meteor hammer back and stabbed using the spear on her right hand. The thrust, which dealt a huge puncture wound, caused the hand to pull back.

The six evil eyes on Rafel's spear were even eerie than that huge hand, as it sucked the hand's evil power right there and then.

That was, however, due to the insufficient levels of her spear: If it had been Nailisi's Gray Memory she was wielding, half the body of the hand's master would have been torn apart.

Nailisi was unable to bring the best of Gray Memory's powers to bear because of her own insufficient level.

But then again, it didn't really matter since no more abominations were emerging from that black vortex for the time being. The Winged Skull kept swinging its weapon, every attack bringing enough explosive power to obliterate all abominations in close range.

If it had been Saleen, he would have doubted such tactics. The power of magic was all about balance. While bloodstones were deemed precious commodities on Myers Mainland, they were commonplace in the spirit plane.

The explosive power brought forth by such cheap things had already exceeded the value of the bloodstone itself.

It was similar to having a level-9 magic nucleus emitting level-11 magic energies.

Anything that could not be explained was meant to be researched. Saleen, however, hadn't looked into the meteor hammer since the Winged Skull rarely used it. Besides, he was unable to spare the time because he had all sorts of wars to fight, all sorts of experiments to conduct, all sorts of objects to design.

The minds of mages had always been filled with creativity.

The Winged Skull spread its wings as the meteor hammer was swinging, having its way with the massacre at the hall. Rafel stood at the side of the black vortex to kill any abominations that emerged.

The battle lasted over an hour.

The black vortex slowly shrank and finally dissipated. A huge array that was drawn using the symbols on the abominations were revealed on the ground. The Winged Skull put the weapon away and lowered its head, studying the array.

"Are you staying?" Rafel was curious. What is there to research about the array? It's just something similar to the teleportation portals of elemental mages, after all. If Saleen were to get to it, he would have been able to design something similar.

"Abominations do not have writing systems. Something this complex couldn't have been developed by the abominations themselves."

"The Heretic God. Those are the scripts of the Heretic God."

A memory surfaced in Rafel's mind. She then said to the Winged Skull, "The Heretic God once invaded many divine kingdoms and possessed his own as well. He was later…killed. The one we're dealing with now is either a resurrected one or his successor."

The Winged Skull took out a piece of crystal and recorded all runes on the array before destroying it with the Reaper Scythe. Then it went on to look for a passage going above.

The Winged Skull knew there was a stable set of coordinates at the central Magical Element Tower on the Floating City. Saleen could have laid out a teleportation portal and returned there at any given moment.

He didn't need to protect the underground city, as the abominations had yet to gain an advantage in the entire place. The Qin soldiers had retreated. It was pointless for the abominations to take the outer regions of the underground city.

The abominations were not spirits. They were even inferior to demons. That was because abominations got hungry quickly and had to eat nonstop. The reason they were capturing humans was to stockpile food.

A human mid-level swordsman could sustain an abomination for two or three days. Demons, however, could go without eating for a month, unlike abominations, which needed to eat at least once a day to sustain their combat capacity.

Saleen was still talking with Ojarvis about how to repel the abominations in the magic cube. With the magic door relieved of the pressure from the abominations and shut tightly, the core of the underground city would be safe for now.

The mages opened a magic array in the central room, filling the place with three-dimensional, transparent images. From here Ojarvis could observe what was going on outside. The magic cube slowly became operational. Saleen felt the place was similar to his Magical Element Tower.

Corpses began piling up outside the magic door. Some "dead bodies" were trying to piece themselves back together, a scene many there had grown accustomed to. The capacity to stomach such revolting images increased through constant exposure.

Safilos was resting inside the magic door, watching the mages assemble the large-scale puppet. They were almost finished.

Regardless of where the attack was planned, any abomination intending to attack the magic cube would eventually have to pass through that door.

That was the mystical part about the magic cube. If the underground city was something that could be built by digging into the ground, any nation would have been able to construct one, and it would not have become the last barrier of Holy Rock City.

Since there was no need for fighting, for the time being, Saleen asked about the magic clock.

Holy Rock City's magic clock was a piece of equipment Saleen was very envious of. If it were installed on the Floating City and filled with his thundering sound, he would have been safe anywhere he went on Myers Mainland.

It was only during the conversation that Saleen came to know that there were actually 24 of those magic clocks. A single broken clock would have weakened the devices' defensive capacities tenfold.

We cannot afford to lose even one! That was how Ojarvis put it.

Saleen wanted to look at the remaining magic clocks. He knew there were only 18 taken during the fighting. The enemy had taken the remaining five.

He was exasperated. Does someone actually bother hauling away something like that? How did the abominations know they had to take the magic clocks away?

"It's Alchemy City. I think Alchemy City has been eyeing those things for a very long time, " Lex said.

All remaining 18 magic clocks were stored in her God's Ring at the moment. There was no space large enough in the magic cube for Saleen to do any research. For this reason, Lex resorted to taking out the clocks one by one, chucking them into Nailisi's 12 Notes of First Purgatory.

When Saleen entered purgatory, the 18 magic clocks hovered around him slowly and gave him a chance to study them up close. The clocks were six meters tall and of a bronze color. There was an image of the Six-Winged Flying Snake on the pin, which was forged together with the magic clock.

Red magic runes were crafted onto the body of the magic clock. Saleen's Elemental Eye told him that the runes were in layers. The device was less than a meter thick, yet there were over 10,000 layers of runes on it.

But there were no magic arrays. The magic clocks were so powerful because they worked using rule powers.

Every single magic clock represented a part of elemental rules. Having all 24 of them around made it possible for the magic clocks to work. They were higher than the principles of his magic net whereas the magic clocks were made specifically for mages.

Within the vicinity of the clocks' sounds, a mage would have been able to fight the enemy from his magic tower.

The sounds boosted a mage's combat capacity, preventing their casting processes from being interrupting.

Furthermore, from Saleen's calculations, he could tell that the magic clocks harbored a huge amount of magic powers. If the users of the clocks truly knew what they were doing, the devices would have cast powerful magic without regard to the user's level.

So this is something that can enable low-level mages to cast high-level magic then. Saleen was shocked at that discovery.

This doesn't make sense! If that's the case, it would have sufficient to craft more of this equipment. There wouldn't need to be sorcerers around. A magic apprentice could have done all the work. Metatrin City's power could easily nurture over a million magic apprentices every year.

That was not yet the key. The key was that something was hanging in the inner parts of the magic clock. That thing was of faded golden color and the size of a standard lantern, emanating soft, gentle light. The hanging object contained energy amounts eclipsing that of the total of all dragon crystals Saleen possessed.

There was some matter capable of replenishing its energy automatically, but Saleen couldn't tell what that was.

The power of the magic clocks came from that matter. If he were to possess it, even though he would be unable to keep the magic perpetual-motion engine running indefinitely, it would have at least enabled it to run for hundreds of thousands of years.

After Saleen left purgatory, Lex asked with a smile, "How did it go, Saleen?"

"I can't say anything."

"All those things were actually replicas. The true magic clock was long ago transported into another plane. Those from Alchemy City wouldn't be able to destroy the clocks otherwise."

Saleen recalled matters about the higher crystal wall system. His own Ring of Cosmos came from another crystal wall system and was so resilient that not even his Water Flame Alchemy could do anything to it.

But then again, if the materials of replicas were so powerful, did the ancestors of the Grukos acquire secret skills from another crystal wall system to replicate such things then?

Skills alone weren't enough. Equipment like that required the right materials, and there were hardly any substitutes for any part of it. Maybe the warehouses of the Grukos still has some of this matter left.

"Saleen, you can look into it after I'm dead." Ojarvis' words interrupted Saleen's thoughts. "See? The abominations are growing in numbers. Those few…"

Ojarvis pointed at the abominations appearing in the magic projections. They wore armor festooned with peculiar designs. The armor was of silver-grayish colors and the horn on the helmet was that of the abomination's own, showing through a hole on the helmet.

There was only a handful such abominations, with little more than a dozen found throughout the entire underground city.

A number, however, was displayed on the helmet of that abomination seen within the room in the magic cube: 11!