Badge in Azure

Saleen's 11 illusions surrounded the mages' metal flying device; the spaces in-between were packed with warriors.

Zzzzzzz. Pang! The puppets crackled with lightning that made the mages' hair stand on end.

The disk-shaped metal device they were flying in was bedecked with wind-magic arrays etched on the surface. The mages kept working even when shrouded by Saleen's territory.

Meanwhile, the illusions focused their attention on their targets. A mage on the disk was trying to figure out which illusion was the real Saleen. As he extended his mental powers to probe them, blood splattered from their mouths and noses as the mages slumped to the floor.

"You people deserve worse than death," an illusion muttered. While they could do little more than attack, speaking was no problem at all for the illusions.

"This is your fault! You're the one who went looking for Safilos and alerted us!"

A young mage trainer in their midst yelled at Saleen.

"Don't go making excuses for all the bad things you did. You're worse than animals," Saleen snapped as he cast eight-ball lightning: the balls were a lot faster now that he had advanced. To protect themselves, the mages immediately erected their magic shields.

It was futile: The ball lightning penetrated the shields and reduced the remaining mages to ashes.

The 500 puppets didn't dare attack Saleen. The God of Lightning in the Lightning Constellation was also a puppet god. Dante had captured those puppets and thrown them into the Lightning Constellation to boost their combat strength.

Saleen pushed the huge metal disk into his magic amplifier. His power of soul was potent enough to activate the device with a diameter of hundreds of meters and transfer it to his space equipment.

This would have been unthinkable in the past. Now, it was a no-brainer.

Saleen killed eight mages in one go, including the one who had tried to bait his illusion. Nine level-10 mages assassinated in a minute—not bad! Such small victories gave Saleen little satisfaction.

The mages of the Elemental Hand were starting to get really crazy.

Forcefully enhanced powers filled those newly advanced mages with brutal rage. Back in the day, the old mages would have talked about the need for balance, a ridiculous idea to the new mages who only worshipped pure power at the moment.

What a terrifying thought as Saleen glanced down at the hundreds of sorcerers.

Alchemy City had acquired some ruins and massive wealth during its conquests, giving the city the means to literally mass-produce sorcerers.

Saleen's magic net had regional limitations. Once the enchanters left the area, they were reduced to nothing. Alchemy City was different. It had created a surplus of mages who ended up as collateral damage on the battlefield.

Rafel and Safilos had finished fighting. Alchemy City did not expect Saleen to show up so quickly, much cause so much destruction and devastation.

Despite Safilos's composed demeanor, Saleen perceived the brewing rage in his gray eyes.

"Your Highness, I'm truly sorry for causing you so much trouble." Saleen bowed slightly in the air. Safilos's territory was moderate, but he still had over a dozen cities. The smallest had fewer than 2,000 people; the population of the largest was under 100,000.

All those cities were destroyed by mages and casualties were heavy.

"Safilos, do you hate me?" Saleen asked, breaking the silence.

Safilos turned and flew off to his residence and said, "I only hate Alchemy City."

"It's the Elemental Hand." Saleen went up to him.

By then, his place was in shambles. The two level-10 mage trainers were incapable of fending off the mages' attacks. It's too bad they resorted to a makeshift magic tower to protect where Safilos had been.

Because the two old mages had no intention of staying there very long, they didn't bother to build magic towers. If they did, they would have been able to keep Safilos's place intact.

By then those mages knew that Saleen was already a level-11 mage from the way he approached them. As such, they behaved respectfully toward him not because of Saleen's power but because of his magical knowledge.

"Thank you for your gear, master. We wouldn't have been able to hold out this long without it."

Saleen presented them with gifts of level-10 magic nuclei and six level-10 magic scrolls in the sets of equipment. This proved to be decisive equipment. One of Alchemy City's level-10 mage trainers had actually been killed by those things.

Upon presenting his gifts, Saleen knew they would come in handy someday.

Seeing them thank him personally, Saleen said, "You both did well to protect your liege. It's good that his highness was left unscathed because many depend on him. Later, I'll replenish the magic nuclei and scrolls you lost. The two of you might still make it to level-11."

Saleen's words put a sparkle in the old mages' eyes, but the sparkle quickly dimmed.

The good thing is that they would be able to extend their lifespan after getting to level-11. The bad thing is that they would have to depend on Saleen to advance to that level, and this meant doing a disservice to their liege.

Naturally, Saleen knew what was going on in the mages' minds: Both had been following Safilos for decades. Safilos's father had assigned those two to his son at birth.

Even though they called Safilos their liege, they considered him family.

When Safilos was young and his bloodline had yet to awaken, there was still hope for him to become emperor. Those two mages were the last candidates chosen for protecting Safilos.

Chanake's bloodline awakened before Safilos's; the former's was pure to the point where he could inherit the most powerful of secret arts of their family. By contrast, Safilos was made a prince right there and then was prevented from becoming emperor.

Safilos only began to take control of the army when Chanake came to the throne. The two old mages stayed at his side the whole time. Most mages who served in Safilos's army had been recruited by the two of them.

The two old mages only retreated behind the scene after the number of powerful mages close to Safilos expanded and he began to focus on their own training. That was the reason for their training delay.

Safilos respected both of them very much; out of loyalty, the two mages couldn't bring themselves to betray him.

"I have a lot of followers and can relate to how you might be feeling. I'm only offering assistance out of respect to you two," Saleen said while taking out magic nuclei and scrolls and handing them to the mages in Safilos's presence.

"Take them. We'll need Saleen's help rebuilding our kingdom." Safilos didn't ask the mages to refuse. They had given a lot for his sake. If they were to advance further, the least Safilos could do was not stand in the way of their training.

With the most powerful of mages killed by Saleen, Rafel would take care of the rest. Plus, the Violet Angel was a powerful being on its own.

Saleen was confident in his ability to crush Alchemy City's power. The key was that he didn't want his name attached to the effort.

Alchemy City, at present, probably no longer cared about its reputation because it had never acquired sufficient power to be a major player.

Saleen did not want to clash head-on with Alchemy City; instead, he wanted to borrow Safilos's name in doing so. However, Safilos's forces were all stationed at Holy Rock City. There were also pathetically few mages around.

Saleen wanted to talk about deploying troops with Safilos next.

If he had not been Lex's husband, that would have been a sensitive topic of conversation. But since Saleen was currently a prince of the empire, no one would have said anything regardless of what he was doing with Safilos.

Saleen realized from what he saw in the trajectory of fate that reputation still mattered a lot, especially when he was trying to expand the Nature Faith. He needed to first ensure that people were okay with this.

If everyone had doubts and kept their guard up, the expansion of Nature Faith wouldn't happen.

Saleen had no time to wait. The millennium-long promise would have been up before he realized it.

Regardless of how kind the Goddess of Nature was, he would have been punished if he violated the contract. There had probably been a good number of people who had entered the temples and acquired power left behind by the goddess.

There was no doubt one needed to pay for the power acquired.

Saleen did not want to see himself advancing to the very last stages and losing his life because of a puny contract like that.

The sooner the goddess was resurrected the better. Saleen was most afraid of the goddess leaving some measures behind that allowed her to grow too powerful when she was resurrected. If that happened, he'd lose control of the Nature Faith.

Safilos's hatred of Alchemy City had reached a critical point. He didn't really resent Saleen, as the location of his kingdom was probably not that far from where the mages of Alchemy City were hiding. It was only a matter of time before he became Alchemy City's target.

Those mages needed to find shelter since they couldn't return to their city. Safilos's kingdom was at the border of the mainland and the environment was semi-enclosed, making the region a perfect spot for the mages to live.

Safilos then asked, "Saleen, you said you'd provide me with a fleet and mages too. I want them now. When can you get them to me?"

"Right away," Saleen smiled and answered.

"Right away?"

"Yes. I came with the Floating City. There are tens of thousands of construction puppets on it, so the cities can be repaired in no time. They can also start digging out deep-water ports. I'm going to provide you with 10,000 enchanters to make sure this never happens again unless it's god coming down personally," Saleen replied.

Safilos somehow managed to keep pent-up rage under control and said, "Very well. I'm going to hit Alchemy City personally. I want to chop off the heads of those mages one by one."

"Rest assured. I'll join you. Those mages…" Saleen didn't finish his sentence. It was too late for words. A great number of Safilos's subjects died and he couldn't replenish his resources in such a short period of time.

Saleen did make good on his word right away, though, leaving the place with Safilos and taking to the air before unleashing the Floating City.

The entire city was covered as soon as the Floating City appeared. The area turned dark as night. Saleen had the enchanters unleash magic powers to shine light onto the city. Tens of thousands of construction puppets were sent below to help Safilos with the building project.

Other than those construction puppets, there were demons helping to deepen the ports. The details were seen to by the enchanters. They sucked the dirt at the bottom up using vortexes and used Dissolution to deal with the coral and rocks.

After excavation, they turned to Fossilization to stabilize the undersea terrain. The area under excavation was vast. Saleen lost a good number of magic nuclei getting the project going. The enchanters used the stores of the Floating City for casting magic