Badge in Azure

There were few things in the world that Saleen was able to rely on, and he knew that very well, unless he was willing to give up what he was and what he had. Nailisi and the Winged Skull had taken Saleen to be their backup, paying the price by giving up their freedom.

His teacher was hardly considered his backup. Despite Jason being very good to Saleen, Jason had done everything he could have done for him, so much so that Jason was willing to do things that were unbefitting of his position as Saleen's teacher.

There was no way, however, that Saleen could have always taken Jason to be his backup. Jason was capable of advancing at a frightening rate. It was only a matter of time before Jason left Myers Mainland for good. No one knew which crystal wall systems Jason would end up in. Suffice to say that there was no way Saleen could have continued to be by his side by then.

It was only a matter of time before Saleen would stand at the pinnacle and find no one around him.

Saleen knew all this very well, so he never actually felt lonely. His children were still around, as well as Sika and Lex.

Although it was imperative to enhance his powers as quickly as possible, Saleen did not want to simply cast his own city away. He sent people to keep a close eye on things at the line of defense and then went on to set up defenses at Metatrin City. He told the enchanters in the Floating City to arm themselves with equipment capable of enhancing their mental powers so as to take on enemies at a moment's notice. After he had done all that, he then went into the Hall of Gods with Jason.

Saleen performed rounds of selections before setting the list for those whom he would have taken with him into the Hall of Gods.

Most of those permitted entry into the Hall of Gods with Saleen were trusted mages from Sreeger Island. There were also some who had joined Metatrin City later and fought many battles.

Those taken to the Hall of Gods were mages. With the lone exception of Qin, who was an archer, there were only a handful of warriors taken inside. Saleen wanted mainly to enhance the powers of the mages, and the reason for doing so was simple. When fighting in the battlefield against gods, mages were the ones who posed the largest threat.

Warriors would have needed to be equipped with extensive auxiliary gear to achieve the kind of damage the mages could.

Saleen speculated that if he were to destroy the divine kingdom of the Lord of Glory without the god himself showing up in the battlefield, the fighting could have been drawn out for 300 to 500 years and the place would have remained intact.

The lifespan of the warriors was not long enough. Even if they could have made it out of the battlefields alive every time, they would have died of old age anyway.

Mages, on the other hand, would have had ample life force after getting past level 9, enabling them to live up to 800 years and, in some cases, more than 1,000. It was of extreme importance to foster mages, whereas Saleen could have always gotten warriors in the ranks of demons.

Nailisi had already sought Saleen's permission about this. When she reached level 15, she would have been permitted to open a demon gate near the divine kingdom.

She would have opened up a portal linking Myers Mainland and the demon plane as a devil.

Demons were the race that gods found most difficult to convert, and they shared a closer relationship with humans. Many demons of peculiar bloodlines were even capable of siphoning powers from humans without damaging the Source of said humans.

Saleen valued these parasite-like abilities of theirs. Peculiar demons summoned by Nailisi were all gathered at her Purgatory of the Devil and trained there.

There were also human warriors who worked with those demons.

Saleen took out six pieces of broken divine personas and handed them to Nailisi, telling her to embed them in the magic array. When the divine personas were completely exhausted, she was tasked to swap them out for new ones.

The seventh divine persona was a complete piece instead of a fragment, and Jason had contributed it.

Jason had a level 17 high-level divine persona, and Saleen had no idea how long that one divine persona would have lasted in the Hall of Gods.

After the Hall of Gods was fused with the magic cube, however, the core part of the place was only able to house fewer than 1,000 people, but then again there were many spaces outside of the core area, and those spaces were able to house an almost infinite number of people.

Both warriors and demons would have trained in those external spaces. Their rate of time was not as insane as that in the core of the hall, and to Saleen that was more than enough. The closer a space was to the core of the hall, the faster the rate of the passage of time.

The farthest place away from the core of the hall would have slowed the passage of time. All levels of warriors were to train in the magic cube. The higher one's level was, the greater one's advantage became.

Saleen himself was preparing and entirely focused on getting to level 15.

He had not been able to advance all that quickly before. Despite all of his encounters, his rate of advancement still paled when compared to some of the mages he brought with him. If it had not been for the opportunity to enter a place like the Hall of Gods, he would have been far behind the strongest professionals to be found on Myers Mainland.

Yet Saleen was never discouraged, because hard work would be translated into actual powers nonetheless, so long as one were to keep at it. The most advantageous thing that Saleen had over the others was his persistence. His power of the soul had also grown strong enough to allow him to train and work on the Lightning Moon at the same time.

Blue nebula was found at the internal core of the Lightning Moon, which contained raging lightning powers. Said powers were capable of being gradually unleashed through the external structures of the Lightning Moon. That meant that at his current level, he became capable of drawing power from the Lightning Moon for casting lightning magic.

Doing so considerably reduced the cost of magic chords, and that was of utmost importance to Saleen.

The greatest advantage the gods had was that they would never run out of power. As long as they lived, power would be available to them in a limitless capacity. That was not the case with mages. If a mage were to run out of magic chords, he would have to use mental powers to run their equipment, such as scrolls, magic staffs, and skills stored in magic books.

The value of the Lightning Moon was only shown after Saleen reworked it. If it had not been for the goddess breaking everything inside the Lightning Moon, there was no way Saleen could have really worked on that equipment until he had achieved level 18.

If he were to actually get to level 18, however, the Lightning Moon would have no longer been as important.

A blurry figure was being born in the blue nebula, and it was not a weapon spirit but a sliver of soul that Saleen sent within.

Soul-forging was a skill that did not belong to the crystal wall system they were in. This was the first time Saleen used that skill. If the Lightning Moon were to be destroyed, his soul would be damaged, so he had never done this before.

Saleen only dared to work on the Lightning Moon after it was reworked.

The ethereal form slowly began to resemble Saleen and then hovered in the nebula. Raging lightning bolts penetrated the soul repeatedly, no signs of damage appeared.

Saleen breathed a sigh of relief. None of the accidents that he had anticipated happened. The clone of his soul, on the other, displayed formidable powers right from the moment of its birth.

That was the power to manipulate lightning, as well as the power of soul identical to that of Saleen.

After the Ring of Cosmos amplified Saleen's power of the soul by 64 times, Saleen felt the rush of his power of the soul expanding exponentially again.

By then, he would have been able to sense everything happening within tens of miles, even if he were to close his eyes. His power of the soul had advanced yet again.

His power of sight was not doubled but quadrupled.

Saleen could then see 250 miles away by relying on his naked eyes alone.

Such distance would have befitted that of a level 15 mage.

Only gods possessed such a skill, and Saleen was impressed. He then summoned Dante to work on the Heretic God's tusks. Such processes were tedious, and Saleen did not want to do it himself. Furthermore, Soul-forging was ill-suited for working on things crafted by the bodies of gods.

Soul-forging came with its own risks. It was only due to the Lightning Moon having been repaired by the Ring of Cosmos after it had been damaged that no problems occurred when Soul-forging was used on it.

Knowing this, Saleen handed the tusks of the Heretic God to Dante right away.

He did not want to see himself adding more gear to his arsenal. It sufficed for a mage to master a single type of magic. Everything else was simply supplementary.

Saleen made up his mind. Other than water magic, he would dedicate himself to training lightning magic.

With the Lightning Moon in his possession, he no longer had to worry about magic chord expenditure. What he needed to be concerned with was only the power of the soul. With the Ring of Cosmos in his possession, the strength of his power of the soul and recovery rate far eclipsed any other mage of his level.

Saleen's current power of the soul was already at the pinnacle of level 15 professionals. It would no longer change regardless of how much it could potentially grow.

He needed to get past level 15 before being able to touch rules of the soul. Common mages would have to get to level 16 before they were able to do so.

The Lightning Moon became Saleen's most powerful offensive equipment. It was a pity that the magic amplifier was incapable of amplifying the Lightning Moon's offensive capacity by 24 times. The magic amplifier was mainly used for enhancing elemental magic. It was only able to boost death and lightning magic by about four times.

It was the magic amplifier that allowed Saleen to maintain formidable offensive powers the entire time. Saleen knew from the start that his teacher had been right to tell him to craft such an item.

Jason's magic amplifier was better than that of Saleen. Furthermore, the secret arts that Jason mastered were most suitable for his own training.

Saleen mastered the Water Flame Alchemy, but it was extremely difficult for him to use it in combat. Jason's Water Flame, however, was capable of freezing even the soul.

Saleen had even thrown the Thunder Dragon Bangle into the Ring of Cosmos's Aqua Fulgur. It was a pity that the bangle had only absorbed the Aqua Fulgur and didn't result in any of the changes that Saleen had hoped to see.

All six divine personas were expended to give them more than 100 years of time. The soul clone within Saleen's Lightning Moon had finally grown to its potential, becoming a true clone of flesh and blood; however, the clone had few autonomous powers. Saleen felt as if he had become two people in two separate bodies, and both needed him to be in control.

Saleen was not accustomed to the feeling. It was fortunate that after the level 17 divine persona was embedded in the magic array that he had all the time he needed to get used to it.

Saleen's Thundering Phantasm skill had finally advanced, as well.

If he did not adjust to it, a magic spell as powerful as the Thundering Phantasm would have been upgraded for nothing, losing its original purpose.

Each of the 12 illusions created by the Thundering Sound was capable of being controlled by Saleen, and they all possessed a combat capacity equal to him. But then again, such a description would not have been accurate. In actual fact, it was Saleen who was able to bring his own combat capacity into any one of the illusions, making that one illusion to possess abilities equal to his own.

Only by possessing such traits would the Thundering Phantasm be truly powerful, fitting the characteristics required of lightning magic.

Lightning Phantasm could not have been probed using power of the soul. All 12 illusions would possibly be of formidable combat prowess, while Saleen was still able to control his own powers at will, siphoning such a state of being to any of the illusions.

Saleen was even wondering if all 12 illusions would have been as powerful as he was if he were to upgrade the skill further.