Badge in Azure

Chapter 1474: Soul Armor (Part 2)

The two of them flew back to Myers Mainland in complete silence. Saleen gathered different types of metals and fed them to the thunder dragons. What a voracious appetite they had. The soul armor needed to absorb huge quantities of metals, including some precious ones. Luckily Saleen had walked away with a lot of "food" from the temples he raided. As the soul armor matured, scales grew on the thunder dragons' bodies. The horns were wrapped as well, crackling with electricity.

Studying the plane map, Saleen spotted a few independent spaces. Some of the deserted ones didn't seem worth exploring, but the other ruins looked promising and worth digging into.

None of those ruins, however, was more valuable than the cemetery of the giant. Saleen lamented his bad luck. When he and the Holy See were fighting for control of the area many years ago, the Holy See didn't go all out. He, on the other hand, had pulled out all stops and even put all his wealth at stake.

If the Holy See were the one to get the cemetery of the giant, the remains of any god creatures found inside would have enabled them to grow much more powerful very quickly.

The same applied to the Goddess of Myers. It's too bad none of those remains contained divine personas, a consequence of the King of Glory's machinations. If they had, Lightning Moon would not have been able to suppress them.

Should I try to find out where those divine personas ended up? Realizing they had probably already been worked on, Saleen dismissed the idea. That made sense: The founding sovereign of the First Dynasty had the power to break down the divine personas of all gods.

All he wanted was just a few pieces. Saleen regretted the time he spent in the Hall of Gods. If he had enough pieces of divine personas, he could have stayed there and trained until he reached level-16. After that, he would not have been able to advance by expending more time and effort.

Saleen organized the ruins on Myers Mainland into six categories according to their value. To the lowest-ranking ruins, he sent armies headed by a level-12 mage. To higher-ranking ruins, he assigned to the likes of Sul and Jola. The most valuable ruins he saved for himself; he planned on visiting those places himself.

He ignored any spaces that were muddled on the plane map because they might be too dangerous.

He visited anywhere the three empires could have explored, leaving the ones in the Cloudflow Empire untouched.

The Cloudflow people were still a formidable presence at sea.

But then again, Saleen did not care about any of that. His army had grown large in his Baldur's Gate, which was different from the Floating City. For one thing, it had sufficient space to grow crops to feed this army and help them become self-sufficient.

Saleen was well aware of his weakness—the lack of defensive equipment.

It took a formidable enemy with superior troops to fight against a god, yet Saleen was relying only on the Water Shield. That he had twice as many magic chords as mages of his level was irrelevant.

His Lightning Magic Robe did have a decent defense, but only against magic attacks. Though it was effective against divine attacks, it was useless against physical weapons.

Magic armors then? But I'm not a warrior and even if the physical defense perimeters are higher, the armor will break.

Saleen took note of Rafel not equipping the soul armor herself, though he did not understand the reason behind it. If she had asked him, Saleen would have gladly given her the parasite.

His magic amplifier indeed had a decent defense, but the greatest use that thing had served was to boost his magic attacks instead of serving as a shield against enemy weapons.

Saleen needed defensive equipment. The Thunder Dragon Bangle could serve that purpose for now. If all 24 thunder dragons circled Saleen, not a single pebble from a meteor shower would fall on his head.

But that still wasn't enough. In addition to his followers, he needed a powerful corps of personal guards.

In the past, Saleen could have made do with heavy infantry specializing in the defense out of demons. Now that he had the metal angels, he decided to outfit his advanced metal angels in the armors he designed and have them follow him into battle.

It went without saying that Rafel would command the corps of personal guards. The Violet Angel was happy to become Saleen's steed.

His puppet was capable of a myriad of transformations. While its golden dragon form was certainly fearsome in and of itself, at Saleen's request two Thunder Dragon Blasters were installed on its head. The Violet Angel was asked to add another head to its golden dragon form.

Jola, Sul and all his other followers were no longer Saleen's main force for protection. He needed them to lead his armies instead. Saleen dispatched those followers to take leadership positions.

Because he was surrounded by a cadre of capable, reliable people, Saleen was able to explore the ruins, train his troops and do alchemy in peace. If he were to search every ruin on his own, he would have had to clone himself, as the gods did.

Meanwhile, the Nature Faith continued to increase its influence: It was a breeze to propagate the faith in Sikeqinya. Sikeqinyans were people who would gladly accept the faith as long as they weren't asked to donate their wealth. The Holy See had a hard time propagating in Sikeqinya for just that reason.

The Nature Faith, on the other hand, didn't require anything from its adherents other than faith itself.

Things in Metatrin City looked entirely different at present. The temple in the city center, a four-kilometer square, had expanded and all the plants around it were mystical seeds acquired from divine kingdoms or brought back from other planes.

The artificially bred plants had an incredibly strong life force and were found in that magic forest in the interdimensional space. They were given greater emphasis than the others. Under the workings of Eleanor's elfish magic, they were fully grown. Since the site of the city had been converted from a primitive jungle, many large, old trees found there blended well with those magical plants.

A huge number of mages lived in the temple, together with Caucasians and some demons. Many powerful demons, heeding Nailisi's summons, were all subjugated and part of the weird race found in the Kingdom of Metatrin. Generally speaking, human kingdoms rejected foreign races but those demons had managed to assimilate into the Kingdom of Metatrin.

Of course, Saleen only allowed demons of unique bloodlines; to join the city elites, they also had to possess special abilities.

As such, the demons fell into several categories. Those with special abilities were akin to human nobles and bestowed with higher authority.

The more prosperous eastern side of the city was a lively hub of merchant convoys trading goods. The Mining Code of the Qin Empire was ignored in the kingdom. Saleen kept looking for mineral veins in the northern wilderness and sent in mages to open the mines. Low-level magic nuclei were also found there; they sustained the city's prosperity during the war.

A great many Cloudflow people showed up and came together with Grand Duke Iron Blood's fleets. They knew Saleen was probably going to unite the mainland. The war would not cease after the two empires collapsed.

Anticipating shortages, everyone was stockpiling supplies. Metatrin City seemed to have no intention of controlling anything, selling anything there was to be sold.

Trading, however, was usually done through bartering, not by exchanging gold coins.

If gold coins were used, the prices were always higher.

Saleen's nation no longer needed large amounts of gold coins to run. Food production in Phoenix was adequate to meet the nation's requirements. Farms were opened in the interdimensional space, and the interior lands were all Saleen's property. There was no need to consider factors like weather conditions, as everything was taken care of by mages.

What Saleen was looking were rare items, like wrought gold and the like.

Ruins were found in Cloudflow territory. High-level equipment had unearthed material in Cloudflow for the past 10,000 years or so and was comparable to the Qin Empire. Saleen's trade continued to run in such a manner. His alchemy factories needed those materials to craft powerful weapons and equipment.

Saleen kept waiting-not for a god to advent but for Lex to advance. This had been his concern ever since she became empress. She was practically stuck at level-13, unable to take a single step forward.

If Lex could make it to level-14, the defensive properties of God's Ring would have made Saleen confident about battling the gods head-on. At present, he was still didn't have the heart to put her in any danger.

As the number of powerful professionals in the empires grew increasingly large, the powers across Myers Mainland loosened. The plane powers were then capped at level-15. Level-16 powers would have seen severe restrictions when used.

After the Goddess of Myers was resurrected, the Lord of Glory wouldn't dare set foot into the plane alone.

The amount of land Saleen had come to control was vast, stretching from Phoenix to Kroraina, then to the Tanggulasi Empire and Sikeqinya. He did not, however, have many cities in his grip. Most of them only swore fealty to the Kingdom of Metatrin: They were still controlled by the nobles running those places.

Saleen was satisfied with such arrangements, so long as the nobles did not oppose the propagation of the Nature Faith. He couldn't afford to get on the goddess's bad side. He needed to use the Lord of Glory to test how capable his armies were.

Saleen built ever-more magic nets, and the number of enchanters grew exponentially as well.

While the giant weapon spirit was tasked mainly with the management of the Lightning Moon, it was still absorbing the power of faith from the magic net. Anyone using the magic nets would have had to supply power to the giant weapon spirit.

Many people who had been believers of the Holy See had become enchanters. That was the only way to escape persecution from the Nature Faith. Such measures, which were put in place by Saleen, caused the number of enchanters to grow. Nearly a million former clergy members of the Holy See chose to submit to Saleen and become one of his enchanters instead of converting to the Nature Faith.

Holy masters had never been people with low or weak mental powers. That is why they were able to fit into their new role so easily.

In that way, Saleen saw a very obvious portal forming on the plane map, yet it was not a sign of the Lord of Glory's invasion but a subcontinent plane being connected to Myers Mainland.

That portal did not seem very stable, yet Saleen's calculations showed that it would expand more than 100 times over a month, prohibiting travel.

The Heretic God did not show up. It was a subcontinent plane being connected instead. One reason Saleen was anxiously making preparations was the ever-powerful Heretic God: He was still on guard against it.

Despite the prevalence of powerful beings and foreign races found in the subcontinent plane, Saleen was not at all concerned.

Aini, on the other hand, had been idle for too long and wanted to take a look at that plane. Saleen lent the Floating City to him and made him a duke of the kingdom. Then he sent him to offset invasions.

That was a necessary measure as the portal appeared on Kroraina territory. That part of the land was a forest. If enemies invaded from here, the joke would have been at his expense.