Badge in Azure

Chapter 1348: Angering the Heretic God (Part 1)

A level-11 abomination!

The magic cube was capable of distinguishing between different levels of enemies, Saleen found that was amusing.

"Ojarvis, what do you mean?"

"There'll be level-12 abominations showing up sooner or later. If we send common troops out there, you might as well tell them to dig their own graves. I'll keep pulling back the line of defense and have all troops get inside the magic door. Help us out with that."

"Wait, you're not telling me to go out there and fight those level-11 things, are you?"

"Of course not. I know you have potent movement skills. Those level-11 abominations would never be able to catch up to you. Just get their attention so my troops can safely retreat. Sooner or later, they will become Lex's troops."

Saleen glanced at Lex, who nodded. Nailisi snorted heavily but didn't object. That was because all 18 magic clocks were still in her 12 Notes of First Purgatory. Neither Lex nor Ojarvis said a word.

"Alright then, Nailisi, come with me." Saleen nodded in agreement.

"Saleen, there's only one place with a set of space coordinates in the entire magic cube, and that is my room," Ojarvis said as he drew the coordinates in the air with his finger. Saleen memorized them.

"Bring those powerful abominations up to the surface while you head back to the Floating City and teleport back here."

Saleen did not expect the magic cube to have a teleportation portal. In theory, a space like that should have been sealed, disallowing any fixed-space coordinates to exist inside. If there were space coordinates inside, that location would have been the magic cube's weakness.

Ojarvis was definitely not someone who was afraid of death. Those coordinates were left behind for Lex.

If worse came to worst and the magic cube remained incapable of stopping the abominations, then Lex—the heiress to the empire—would have still been able to leave.

Saleen knew that Ojarvis wanted to find out if the teleportation portal was a reliable one and if he was being used as a guinea pig. The goal of the experiment, though, was to ensure Lex's safety.

Saleen understood Ojarvis' intentions and did not argue. After all, he had to give up something in order to take the magic cube. Ojarvis' resurrection was a matter to be considered in the far future.

Saleen did not use the teleportation to get outside with Nailisi. He took the stone instead and came to where the large-scale puppet was being put together.

The other side to the site was the magic door, which served as the core of any route getting in and out of there. The abominations would have had to attack the door sooner or later, as there was simply no other way of getting in there.

The magic cube seemed like a parallel dimension; the space coordinates of that place kept shifting.

Passing those mages, Saleen found them focusing their attention on adding the finishing touches to the puppet. It looked entirely different from how it was when Saleen came in through that door. At the moment, it was filled with offensive weapons.

Saleen was surprised. Then he saw the changes on the magic door, which quickly allowed him to comprehend the reason for its design: The door was a one-way magic defense piece of equipment.

The large-scale puppet would have only needed to attack through the door. Once the magic door was in operation, the ones outside the door would have been unable to attack anything inside. They needed to pass through the magic door in order to attack the large-scale puppet.

But passing through the door came with a hefty price.

"Prince Safilos." Saleen came before Safilos and displayed a mage's gesture of courtesy.

"Your Highness Saleen." Safilos' gray eyes looked weary. He had lost sensory connection with his four trusted mages who were probably dead by now. While he never valued mages much in general, those four level-10 mages were his friends.

"If Lex was to become empress, what would you do?" Saleen asked the question before he went off. If Safilo's' answer was not one that he found satisfactory, he would stop helping Qin. That was because Safilos had control of all armies except the Royal Swordsman Camp.

"I shall head to my kingdom, become just a king and stop meddling in Qin's affairs. I think you'd be able to help Lex keep this nation safe, right?" Safilos asked in return.

"I think I'd be able to do that. I myself have no interest in becoming emperor. But then again, Ojarvis said that it will happen someday. Prince Safilos, don't you think that would prove rather troublesome?"

"We'll deal with that when the time comes. Right now, the last line of defense of Qin is right behind me. I need to fulfill my task before I think about those things." Safilos shouldered his demonic long blade that still emanated an aura of death.

"When the time comes then…" Saleen nodded and turned toward the magic door. Those mages saw both Saleen and Nailisi crackled all over with lightning sparks as they walked outside. All of them were in awe.

They had intended to trip him up because of his insolence at Safilos; nevertheless, Saleen walked outside without waiting for them to open the magic door.

The energies on that door were utterly incapable of preventing Saleen from going in or out.

The lightning's energy broke down the energy at the door, boring a hole in an instant, allowing Saleen to step outside while hardly breaking a sweat.

Safilos simply pursed his lips lazily at Saleen's protest. He had no energy to argue with Saleen about anything. As for the matter with Lex, he was not considering it as a personal perspective.

The reason he disliked Lex was because of Master Merlin's prophecy, which turned out to be accurate. After Lex became a viscount, the Qin Empire lost Kroraina, and the north became embroiled in the fires of war.

At present, Phoenix Duchy in the north was annexed by the Kingdom of Metatrin. Lianyun City at Qin's southeast corner was invaded by Grand Duke Iron Blood and the empire was still incapable of taking it back.

When something happened with Alchemy City, it first clashed with Holy Rock City. It later moved out of the city's mages entirely leaving behind an awful mess. The skeletal dragon took Alchemy City for its own, and Safilos was unable to do anything about that.

He was unclear about the level of the skeletal dragon but knew that since the mages of the entire Alchemy City dared not move against it, his armies would not have been able to pose much of a threat to the colossal creature.

The war puppets, on the other hand, moved to the central region and were on hot standby to take on the armies invading Holy Rock City. The city itself in a crisis, as the abomination plane opened a portal right inside the city, trampling the thousand-year-old place.

Although the city was not yet in ruins, its forces were unable to fend off the invasion and would have fallen eventually.

Lex probably had nothing to do with Lex, but sentimentally, Safilos still held her responsible.

Saleen walked outside the magic door. The abominations were nowhere to be found. Saleen saw the aura of death coalescing into tiny footprints hovering in the air. Those were traces left behind by the Winged Skull.

Nailisi was also able to see those tiny footprints through Sensory Sharing. She pouted. So that old pile of bones knew how to play cute too eh. Damn…

Saleen got up to the first level of the underground city by following those tracks.

Abominations were everywhere in the first level. There were very few troops and mages of the Qin Empire to be found there, but all the resistance forces were holed up in magic tower-like structures, attacking the outside and rarely clashing with the abominations up close.

Saleen cast his Lightning Territory and let the lightning warriors clean up those low- level abominations. Abominations killed by lightning warriors basically stayed put. Further, the lightning purification skill Saleen was using was something he learned at Highland City.

The corpses of abomination were reduced to dust after being purified. Occasionally, golden granules were found among the dust and Saleen had the lightning warriors gather them.

Saleen valued those golden granules the most, as there were natural lightning magic patterns found inherently within that enabled them to be used for creating equipment with lightning properties. There were too few materials on Myers Mainland capable of being used for creating such equipment.

If there were sufficient materials of such nature collected, Saleen would then craft an enlarged Thunder Dragon Blaster and install it below the Floating City. It would have enabled him to wreck any defense of any kind of city.

Saleen slowed down after finding that he was able to acquire such weird materials by purifying the corpses of the abominations. He did not necessarily need to carry out Ojarvis' plans, as he only needed to attract the high-level abominations' attention and buy enough time for the magic door to get ready.

How he went about this was entirely up to Saleen.

"Nailisi, grab the dead bodies!" Saleen charged at the place with the greatest number of abominations found as soon as he finished. He was surrounded tightly by lightning warriors. They were mechanical structures but looked different from how they once were.

Every single component in them was designed with combat in mind.

Nailisi took her devil form and held Gray Memory, the square shield, and the Sword of Rules respectively. She reserved the other hand for holding the 12 Notes of First Purgatory.

Saleen simplified the entire combat process. After killing abominations, Nailisi threw them into her collection of purgatories. He needed more equipment of greater power for wars in the future. The granules enabled him to create new Thunder Dragon Blasters.

If he were to collect ample numbers of those materials, then the Floating City would have had sufficient offensive capacities. As it stood at the moment, Saleen was still not all that familiar with manning the Floating City.

"Master?" The Winged Skull appeared all of a sudden with Rafel right behind.

"Where have you been hiding?"

"Heh…" The Winged Skull then spoke to Saleen through the soul, "Master, the black vortexes could be purified as well. I can't do that since I don't have lightning powers though."

Saleen was elated to hear that. The black vortex at Highland City was too big and its power was way off the charts. His lightning proved insufficient to deal with it. He did not expect to find the smaller ones in the underground city capable of being purified at all.

If I were to purify all of that, wouldn't I be able to get more lightning crystals then?

"Lord Saleen, this way please," Rafel saw the joy in Saleen eyes and said exasperatedly. They came before a hall quickly after passing through several tunnels. The area of the hall was far smaller than the one where the magic door was, and a black vortex was formed right in the middle.

The black vortex was less than ten meters in high and was only able to spew one or two abominations at a time. Saleen charged at it and compressed his territory. Lightning covered the entire black vortex, and there were eight Armoring Lightning Beads spinning around it.

The black vortex exploded violently, which was contained by Saleen using his territorial powers. The explosion did not affect any other areas though. Under the attack from electricity and the Armoring Lightning Beads, the black vortex spew golden granules, which were all somewhat larger than a section of a finger.