Badge in Azure

Chapter 1461: Fruitless (Part 1)

The God of Magic Net was one of the few gods capable of casting both magic and divine spells. Even the Goddess of Myers would have only been able to cast magic spells with divine art attributes.

The divine spells cast by the God of Magic Net, however, were imbued with pure magic attributes. The spells were only cast in the same form as divine spells.

The head warden felt energy sequences of rules appearing in the clouds more than a dozen kilometers away, spreading out like a huge net and enveloping him. A powerful magic spell was cast moments later.

Elemental Deprivation.

All elemental powers above the Black Dungeon Volcano were stripped bare and unable to be controlled by anyone but Saleen, master of the God of Magic Net. The head warden could not return to the volcano right away to extract elemental powers. Further, all other elemental powers had been cut up, making him incapable of casting flames using elemental conversion.

The flames on the head warden turned purple. That was because he couldn't collect elemental powers to supplement the flames of the underworld.

The situation was akin to a furnace being filled with coal. To keep the fire going, you still had to keep adding more coal to the furnace.

Since the head warden didn't connect with the underworld plane right away, he had to use the elemental powers of the plane he was in to supplement the flames used. At present, he was trapped by the God of Magic Net, resulting in a delay in the casting of powerful skills. His hand flicked and the flaming greatsword shrank to half its length.

Saleen still dared not take out the scrolls. All three were in a dormant state; he had no idea how long he would be able to keep the head warden still with his Signet of Silence. If the period was less than two frames, it would have been pointless to do so.

As the Ring of Cosmos in Saleen's hand began to spin, a large quantity of Aqua Fulgur gushed forth, filling up his family badge. Luckily, it was immediately reactivated and ready to be used again.

Saleen was overjoyed. But the head warden's sword was turned around and aimed directly at Saleen.

He immediately unraveled a level-15 scroll. A 400-meter-tall black image still in an incomplete state stood in the air. That was due to Saleen's insufficient power, as unraveling scrolls would have still required a certain amount of power of the soul. He had to reserve such powers for casting level-18 scrolls, so he had only been able to unravel half of that level-15 one.

Regardless, that action proved sufficient. The head warden's sword came down hard on the black image and got firmly stuck, like a bug in a spider web.

He pulled his hand away. The flaming red greatsword was then taken away by the level-15 magic spell.

The head warden breathed purple flames and conjured a huge curved sword in his hand. The blade was over a dozen meters long. It then expanded more than two times as it was swung.

Saleen's green scroll was fully unraveled by then. Unraveling a level-18 scroll drained half the power of the soul of Saleen. He was startled: He'd been too concerned with speed and had forgotten about his level requirements.

As such, he was only able to use one level-18 scroll by then.

A rain of flowers was seen everywhere. How fragile and beautiful they looked in the thunderstorm.

The head warden's expression changed drastically. He blew up the curved blade in his hand without hesitation, and his body was blown into hundreds of pieces, scattering all over the place. Saleen had taken great effort to create that opening, so he definitely would not have simply given up on it. He unraveled another green scroll. The third eye on his forehead opened and stared at the core of the head warden's body and nailed him in place.

That was a purple piece of fragment, the spot where the head warden's soul resided.

The first scroll had robbed the head warden of his life force, forcing him to break his body apart and scatter his life force. He escaped only because of his formidable combat instincts. Despite having a large area of effect, that single-target attack scroll was still limited. The soul was jumping between the hundreds of pieces of his body at will.

As long as there was one piece capable of escaping, the head warden would be able to stay alive.

But his soul got trapped inside one of his bodily pieces at that moment. A green arrow beam then shot right through that piece.

The Arrow of Nature, a level-18 pure damage-dealing magic spell, reduced the head warden's soul into the most fundamental of energies of the world.

That arrow was inevitable.

If Saleen were hit by that arrow, not even the Figure of Fate would have been able to keep him alive. Its damage potential was unspeakable. Even the lightning in the sky had dimmed because of the emergence of that arrow. The sound of thunder was not heard anymore.

Saleen thought that was the end of it, but he had underestimated the complexity of that level-18 scroll. The entire area submitted to the attack had a green hole emerging in it. The hole then grew increasingly large, swallowing pieces of the head warden's body as well as all other matter.

Even the lightning bolts fired by Saleen's thunder dragons were sucked into that green hole.

"Sh*t! Get out!" Yellow light glowed under Saleen's feet. The three weapon spirits, Rafel and the Violet Angel all retreated quickly. The golden dagger then swiped before Saleen, cutting a green thread off.

Saleen went deathly pale. It wasn't that the Goddess of Myers was trying to set him up, but only that the level-18 scroll was just too powerful. Saleen had not been able to evade the bondage of the threads conjured by nature powers from having spent too much of his power of the soul, which ended up with him almost being sucked into the hole.

That hole was neither a good place nor a portal. Everything inside it would have been reduced to pure energy—the energy of nature, to be specific.

Saleen then roared at the sky. The soldiers in flight, who were still running far away, heard their king's warning and accelerated immediately.

Meanwhile, the crevasse on the ground continued to extend, and the green hole in the air continued to expand. The catastrophe was comparable to the one back in Daliang City many years ago.

Saleen had used three powerful scrolls before he was able to kill the head warden. And what did he get in return? Nothing.

The catastrophe would have destroyed all wealth that Saleen had intended to take for himself.

He rushed off. Fortunately, the hole was not trying to consciously attack anyone and was only a natural phenomenon borne out of the spell used.

If Saleen had known that the level-18 scroll would be able to kill the head warden so easily, he would never have wasted all that effort to amass an army. The level-18 scroll was tens of thousands of times more powerful than what he had expected from his calculations.

The head warden resorted to escaping using a suicidal method when the rain of flowers showed up, as he couldn't resist it even when armed with godly items. When the green arrow was shot, the head warden's soul still would not have been able to escape even if Saleen did not lock it down without his Signet of Silence.

By then, Saleen was full of regrets. If he had known things would turn out this way, he would have reserved the scrolls for killing the Lord of Glory.

The power of the scrolls was immensely pure. Saleen couldn't even imagine how a god with the power of the soul comparable to his would have been able to escape.

Little did Saleen know that those had only resulted because the two level-18 magic spells were incomplete. The scrolls were meant to be used by level-15 beings when they were made. They must be something that mages at level-15 could control and not get tangled by derivative powers from the scroll.

If Saleen had not told the metal angels to go elsewhere beforehand, all of those 100 and more angels would have died from those two spells.

Saleen ran with all his might, but he did not know he had to do that. The area of effect of that catastrophe was only little more than a 100-kilometers radius. Saleen's speed would have made it possible for him to run before he got caught in it. However, he was still afraid of any unforeseen circumstances, and things would have turned dire if the goddess had laid traps in the spells.

Terrifying noises were heard from the ground behind him. That was the noise of the ground tearing apart, causing the rocks underneath to shake. The elements within the space had been thrown into chaos.

The chaotic elemental powers continued to climb and shoot to the air. Then they were sucked in by that huge green hole.

The soldiers on the mountains all knew that something big had happened from which there was no escape. Some cried out in despair. The ancient warriors finally heard Saleen's voice—an order telling them to retreat.

Those ancient warriors hauled two demons at their sides respectively and took flight. Their flight was not based on elemental powers, so they had no fear of the chaotic elemental turbulence.

There were wardens capable of flight, somewhat. They stayed behind to get rewarded when the head warden won. None expected him to be destroyed by such a powerful spell to the extent that there was nothing left of him to recover. If those wardens stayed behind any longer, they would have died in the mountains.

Everyone took flight on their own without bothering to attack each other. If they were to tangle with each other for even half a minute, they would have ended up dead on the spot.

Most of the ones in the mountains had to stay behind since they were incapable of flight. Boiling lava was flowing everywhere below. If they ran into lava streams, their magic armor would not have lasted very long before they were cooked.

That green hole kept expanding, stopping only when it reached the size of about a kilometer radius, which was by then completely joined within the volcano below. All energy ejected by the volcano was sucked by the green hole, which then began to collapse from within.

Saleen did not forget to turn around and take a look. He was so startled by what he saw that he thought he was going to die. He turned the Quickcloud into a block of ice and recalled the 24 thunder dragons at the same time. He would not be able to tell the specific location of the head warden without the 24 thunder dragons at work.

Saleen connected all of them with ice. As a result, its diameter exceeded over 30 meters. It then turned into a comet and was thrown to the edge of the Black Dungeon Island.

The flight speed at that time was indescribable. The distance he had to cover, which was almost 1,000 kilometers, took only two minutes. The speed he achieved was over seven kilometers per second, over 30 times faster than moving by using earth magic.

The huge block of ice disintegrated before the flight ended. Thanks to Rafel's metal territory, everyone in it was not reduced to ashes. The sound caused by the intense friction had even drowned out the sound of the earthquake below.

Saleen never had the chance to hone his Comet Flash, yet the speed he had achieved broke all records when he was escaping that time. The speed could have only been enhanced further when his magic chords had evolved beyond level-15.

If he were to raise his speed further, he speculated that he would have been able to fly out of the atmosphere and roam the true void above.

The green hole had absorbed enough energy and collapsed to a dot before expanding again. There were no forces out to restrict the expansion anymore. All the energies the hole had absorbed earlier were all released all at once. A low rumble reverberated throughout the entire Black Dungeon Island.

The entire island jumped for a bit before cracking up.