Badge in Azure

Chapter 1367: Battle of Interdimensional Space (Part 2)

Rafel looked around and sized up the situation: Precious few lightning warriors were capable of reaching a metal angel's level of combat capacity. Most were level-7 warriors, more or less.

But because those warriors had their own god, they could be resurrected even if they died in battle. Unless the soldiers were thoroughly killed, they could keep fighting indefinitely.

Saleen went all out with the massacre. It was the first time he had done that purely for the sake of slaughter. There was no other objective.

His wife and kids were all in that interdimensional space and could never return to Myers Mainland. This was apparently the work of someone from the Holy See messing up space, rendering the original teleportation portal useless. If his family used it anyway, the risk would have been too great.

Fortunately, the interdimensional space wasn't fully developed. Many rules were incomplete and the Holy See couldn't calculate everything. It could have used its immense resources to mess everything up otherwise.

If that were the case, Saleen wouldn't have been even able to open a portal there.

You want to harm my kids? Fine, you can all go to hell!

Saleen was the type of person who would go all out only if his life was on the line. This time he was fighting for his children…and his killing instinct was pure and unyielding.

"Alright, but my powers…" Saleen nodded before Rafel finished her sentence. A peculiar stone flew outside Saleen's hand. It was a transparent piece of chlorite.

Chlorites were capable of storing divine power and few were left on Myers Mainland. Ore veins were only found in the deep sea. No one else could have mined in such deep waters, but Saleen had ways of going about it.

That piece of chlorite was so pure it was considered the highest grade of gemstone. Tremendous divine power was stored within, making Rafel feel as if her god had been resurrected and was bestowing her with unlimited power.

"You've got more?" Rafel mumbled instinctively. While she was loath to believe in gods anymore, her yearning for divine power was something she could not wean herself from.

"Here you go." Saleen flung three more pieces her way.

Rafel noticed that those pieces of chlorite had all been cut prior. At that reduced size, they fit snugly in her godly item—the Inferno Spear.

There were four equipment slots on the Inferno Spear and they were all meant for embedding gemstones. Rafel was a combat angel, and her god would have bestowed her with divine power every time she did battle. The Inferno Spear was something she acquired later.

The stores of divine power left within her were insufficient to fuel the weapon.

It was a good deal for her to follow Saleen. At the very least, she no longer needed to be concerned about divine-power expenditure.

All four pieces of chlorite were embedded in the Inferno Spear. Seeing how Saleen was protected by his weapon spirit, she didn't have to worry about his safety. She then leaped into the air and killed her way through the Holy See forces.

These forces were originally intended to gather there and depart elsewhere, but Saleen's portal appeared right behind their army.

The most powerful holy master in the army went to the portal as soon as it was opened. Whoosh. It was immediately killed by Saleen's Crystal Finger. But then again, that holy master was not the army's commander. The commander ordered the army to turn around and gang up on Saleen instead.

The Lightning Constellation was activated before the warriors could surround Saleen. A huge number of them appeared…afraid of death…lightning gushed through their being. Any holy heart below level-9 was unable to kill them.

This rendered the holy masters within the army useless. As Rafel charged, the enemy formation crumbled in seconds. It consisted of fewer than 40,000 units: more than half were knights clad in white armor, and a small fraction were ascetics.

Ascetics were professionals trained in both martial and divine arts. Their only desire was to temper their minds. They were capable of learning all sorts of cruel skills, the brutality of which was directed to themselves instead of the enemy.

Many martial art skills imparted by their god and divine arts were ill-suited to humans. The ascetics didn't care, however. They wanted to learn them even if it meant breaking their bodies, viewing such acts as tests of faith.

If the demon warriors Saleen had sent in were to fight those ascetics, they would have suffered severe casualties. The ascetics possessed the flexibility and the intelligence of humans but cared little about damaging their bodies. In battle, they were more formidable than zealots.

The ascetics wielded mostly thick, heavy weapons. Even if their weapons were not enhanced with divine power, they would have still inflicted extensive damage.

Since the lightning warriors were fundamentally puppets, they were able to keep fighting despite losing parts here and there. They were the antithesis of ascetics: Even if their heads were split open by mammoth axes, they were still adept at moving nimbly and retaliating with their weapons.

Their sensory abilities came from the Lightning Constellation, which flew increasingly high and covered a radius spanning tens of kilometers, exposing all the enemy's actions.

Saleen decided to use the skill that had the lowest cost on his magic chords—Icicle.

Thousands of icicles were conjured midair and dropped violently. The power of the magic was similar to level-10 magic spells. When the icicles hit, corpses littered the area.

Lightning magic patterns on the icicles imbued the frozen pieces with anti-magic properties. The equipment was destroyed by icicles.

A specter appeared before Saleen. The weapon spirit from the magic amplifier swung its gigantic sword and cut the specter down. The unpredictable, ever-shifting form of the specter crumbled before the golden sword without leaving a whiff of aura behind.

The commander of that army was thoroughly shocked; a shudder ran down its spine.

Saleen took out the War Drum of Fear without saying a word and summoned the Violet Angel, which could be used as a summoned creature. Saleen brought the Violet Angel around all the time, tasking it to beat the drum that would then have been useful for breaking up enemy formations.

The Violet Angel took the bone hammer and began beating the drum. The ascetics were hardly affected, as the sources of fear within the minds were almost all cut out. But the knights crumbled almost immediately when that drum was played.

Dark Night is killed?

The commander couldn't believe its eyes. That golden giant had killed the Dark Night with one swift swing of the sword. What kind of skill was this? The very reason Fycro put Dark Night next to him in the army was to defend against a powerful enemy.

Fycro said that Dark Night was skilled in killing any being lower than level-12. At present, the one thing that filled him with fear was the thought of being killed by a sword. Is that golden giant a level-13 being then?

Pfftt!

A hole appeared on that commander's chest, yet no blood was spilled. With a golden dagger, the weapon spirit of the magic amplifier had executed a perfect ambush, slaying that level-10 True Might in an instant.

While the golden dagger no longer had evil power lingering inside, it sucked the flesh and blood of that level-10 True Might dry. Its skin stubbornly clung to the bony remains like corpses drying in a desert for thousands of years.

The golden dagger didn't return to the huge sword. It remained flying in the air, flashing all over with a specter, warning others it was about to attack.

Not even the level-10 True Might had managed to evade the dagger's attack. It was impossible for those knights and ascetics, who were considered elites since they were around level-7, to avoid getting killed by the dagger.

The sound of the War Drum of Fear had controlled over half the enemy forces. Those knights slumped to the ground and let the lightning warriors decapitate them without resisting. They were entirely robbed of the ability to fight back.

The ascetics were unable to bring most of their powers to bear, as most of those powers had been used to resist the sound from the drum instead.

To cast divine spells, holy masters needed to focus. When the War Drum of Fear was beaten, none of the holy masters below level-10 could resist it. They were only able to struggle to protect themselves using Divine Protection.

However, Divine Protection proved incapable of stopping Rafel's attacks. She had an innate hatred of holy masters, both past and present. To her, all holy masters of evil gods must die.

The red threads on the Inferno Spear expanded and conjured a metal territory. Divine Protections cast by those holy masters broke one after another in the metal territory. The power of rules could not be stopped.

The divine spell reputed to be the strongest was a joke in Rafel's presence.

"Rafel, capture some of them alive."

Saleen said this after seeing the lightning warriors surround the battlefield.

No enemy would have been able to escape. His golden dagger was now able to kill anyone within a heartbeat of his territory. Saleen felt how frightening these attacks would have been, as the golden dagger had an almost negligible mental power cost.

It cost Saleen next to nothing to kill low-level enemies with that dagger.

One portion of the soul's power equaled hundreds of equivalent parts of mental powers. That was the fundamental difference between the two types of powers.

Rafel hoisted a holy master without care; it metalized right away. She then tossed the metalized being to Saleen, who de-metalized it before hitting the ground.

Saleen was much impressed with Rafel's fine control of her powers.

The metalizing skill used on the enemy resembled Fossilization somewhat but was far more potent. If it hadn't been for Rafel keeping such tight control, that holy master would have died. Fossilization, on the other hand, could be healed.

"Tell me, why are you people here?" Saleen used Thundering Shock with his sentence.

At level-7, the holy master was totally incapable of resisting Saleen's skill. All it could do was answer, "The Oracle Corps' forces had all moved here in this interdimensional space. Lord Fycro intends to take over this place to build his divine kingdom!"

"So it's Fycro eh…" Saleen said in a ponderous manner. Blood spilled from the orifices of the holy master's head. His brain, unable to withstand the power of the Thundering Sound, exploded.

Saleen was dumbfounded. Only then did he realize that after rising to level-11, his Thundering skills had all advanced automatically. With that advancement came heightened powers, better control of rules, and fluidity of use.

His Thundering skills also made it possible for him to kill people without having to use them in a lethal manner.

Saleen realized he still had to master Thundering skills at his current level. The holy master would have been put under his control until the skill wore out, returning them to their senses, instead of having them end up dead.

He still had some anger festering inside that influenced his control of power and resulted in the death of that holy master.

Saleen wouldn't have been angry about Fycro wanting to seize his interdimensional space. It was perfectly normal for him to try to do that. That fact that Fycro endangered Sika and his children became the source of Saleen's fury.

Now that it's come to this, this guy who claims to be the one closest to god under the stars is not going to leave this place under my watch. I'm going to kill him this time, one way or another.