Badge in Azure

Chapter 175: Destroying the Body (Part 2)

Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio

Destroying a body was an easy thing to do, except in the case of a dragon.

Without its heart, skin, and dragonshards, the dragon was no longer immune to magic that was level-8 and below. Even so, Lex had no choice but to employ a level-7 scroll.

Fire Enchantment - level-7 magic.

The fire enchantment was not considered to be a support spell, but it had obvious limitations. On the positive side, fire enchantment had two effects. Firstly, its offensive abilities were tremendous. The attack power created by the fire elements were stronger than that of most level-8 spells. At the same time, the movements of the target who was trapped inside of the fire enchantment would be greatly restricted, more than they would be in most level-7 water and earth control spells.

The only problem was the way in which the fire enchantment attacked. Within a distance of ten meters, the mage could cast a burning area that was approximately forty-five meters wide, but the length of this region would only be less than three meters in total.

This meant that a person would remain unharmed if they were more than three meters away from the burning area. Additionally, the burning area was less than four meters tall.

Mages who were grade-6 could fly, and this spell was not instantaneous. So no matter how powerful the spell was, grade-6 mages would not be affected at all. If a person was fighting mages who were below grade-6, then the spells used would not need to possess the offensive powers of level-8 magic.

If a mage fought against a swordsman, the swordsman only needed to be a grand swordmaster to escape. The height of a swordsman's jumps were proportional to their sword aura, so their jumps would have exceeded the limits of their physical body long ago.

If the swordsman who was being attacked realized that this spell was going to be cast, they simply needed to jump in order to dodge the effective area of the spell.

If this spell was cast in a confined environment, the effects would be abnormally horrifying, akin to a hidden tower of soldiers within a castle. Right now, this spell could be suitably applied because the dragon had already died, so it surely would not escape the flames of the fire enchantment.

Using the dragon as the center of her aim, Lex opened the black scroll. Black flames appeared on the ground and engulfed the dragon's body. Lex felt a little wasteful because the fats in the dragon were also a rare material, but now all would be destroyed by this fire.

Nailisi watched on happily. Many materials within the body had been dug out and stored into her bracelet. In particular, she had obtained those six leaf-shaped lungs. When the lungs were combined with the dragon's unique larynx, alchemical equipment with amazing attributes could be created.

Nailisi was not sure whether or not the equipment produced would be able to spew dragon's breath. However, the defensive equipment produced would surely be able to at least resist a dragon's breath.

The fire enchantment burned swiftly, and even the torrential rain which grew heavier by the second could not extinguish it. The dragon's body seemed to have been soaked in oil. If not for the introversion of the fire enchantment and the black flames, it would have been highly possible that the fire could have been spotted even from dozens of miles away.

Within several minutes, the dragon had been incinerated until only a skeleton without a skull remained. If any death mages had spotted this skeleton, they would have surely fainted out of excitement.

Lex continuously cast a frost array to lower the temperature of the dragon bones. If metals were cooled and heated like this, their internal structures would have been ruined. However, the dragon bones became further crystallized, eventually looking like the most precious tremolite rocks in existence.

Nailisi and Sika began disassembling the skeleton, while Lex cast an earth spell to smash apart the ground which had been burned. The crystallized earth then transformed back into soil. Next, she would have to continuously disperse the elements in order to remove all traces of the high-level spells which had been used.

By the time they finished disassembling and storing the bones, the weather had already begun to clear up. Lex continued casting the Cleaning spell to remove the blood and smell of the dragon from everyone's bodies. Saleen removed his white magic robe and changed into the grey magic robe that Lex had given him as a gift.

A large portion of the dragon's blood seeped into the soil, and Lex did not know what to do with it. Thus, she asked Nailisi to dig up all that soil and put it away. Sika chopped down two trees and Lex burned them into charcoal. Then, the charcoal was crushed and put back into the ground. Thereafter, several huge rocks were placed on top of the ground.

As long as other people did not examine things closely, they would not notice these anomalies. The corpses of the war horses were stored away as well. The rears of these horses had been branded, and as long as people were literate, they would be able to trace the origins of those horses. Hence, those horses could not be left behind either.

The last task was to gather and store all the spare parts that had fallen out of the fully constructed puppet when it was struck by the dragon. Then, the four of them left the scene in a hurry. The methods used by Lex and her team had not been flawless, but as long as the pursuers had not brought along a magic beast such as a magic wolf, then it would be difficult for them to discover the anomalies here.

The torrential rain had done a huge favor to Lex and her team. It was only more than four hours later that a team of people in leather armor passed by. That team seemed to be a team of mercenaries. Within this group, there were two swordsmen who rode on magic beasts a bit more than four meters tall, and they wielded lances which were seven meters long. There was no use disguising those weapons, because only the magic beast swordsmen from the Cloudflow Empire specialized in these overly long weapons.

These magic beast swordsmen might have only been beginner swordmasters, but their capabilities on the battlefield were nearly equivalent to that of one hundred swordsmen. The magic beasts which they typically rode were not gifted in magic, but that was not necessary on the battlefield either way. Those magic beasts simply needed to rampage.

The magic beasts used by those swordsmen were obviously not everyday beasts. The beasts were over four meters tall and had a body length of roughly six meters. Their bodies were slightly bloated and thick scales naturally grew upon them. Only the necks of those beasts were covered with metal armor, and those must have been the weaknesses of the beasts.

The lances in the hands of the swordsmen were also very unique. The four facets of the sharp ends of the lances contained fine magic patterns, while their bodies gave off metallic lusters. The lances were extremely heavy. A metal chain had been attached to the poles of each lance, and each lance hung behind the saddle. Only swordmasters or people who possessed inborn strength could wield such lances. An example of such a person was Sika.

With added force from the magic beast, this seven meter long lance could already cause severe injuries to the body of the dragon.

There were mercenary badges hanging from the bodies of those two swordsmen. They looked abnormally cold, and did not really have any other expressions. In front of them, there was a swordmaster who rode on a white horse. This man was holding onto a piece of metal equipment which resembled a compass. In the middle of this orange-yellow square plate was a circular depression. The top was sealed airtight with crystals, and the surroundings were filled with magic patterns.

Inside the crystal was a levitating magnetic needle, and this needle was spinning about in chaos.

"Why did we stop?" A man wearing green metal armor whispered behind those two magic beast swordsmen.

"Sir, we have lost the direction of the tiago."

"What!" The man in green metallic armor rode his horse around the two magic beast swordsmen and came beside the swordsmen holding onto the metal plate. Then, he grabbed the metallic square plate. Upon noticing that the magnetic needle was spinning about aimlessly, the man pushed his mask aside, revealing a youthful face.

It was a pale face which was very delicate and clean. In that moment, the face had a ferocious expression on it. Then, without any emotion, the man asked, "Bjorn, didn't you say that we wouldn't lose it?"

"Sir, we wasted too much time last night…"

"Bjorn, so you're saying that I was wrong to let you all avoid the rain?" The youth's tone became sharp as he ruthlessly glared at the swordsman on the white horse. That swordsman thought quickly. He swiftly dismounted from his horse and knelt on one leg before bowing down and saying, "Sir was only being compassionate and kind to his subordinates."

As that swordsman spoke, he scolded the youth in his mind. You were obviously infatuated with that showgirl in town. That's why you let all of us take shelter. To think that you are heir to the title of an earl when you actually took a liking to that kind of woman. What an idiot.

"Mm, good that you know that." The youth then pressed on the two triangular protrusions on both sides of his helmet. Ka da! The youth took the helmet connected to the carapace off of his head, revealing a head full of long brown hair.

"What do you all think we should do next?" The youth tossed the metal plate aside and turned around.

The remaining twenty swordsmen could not think of anything, so one of the magic beast swordsmen said, "Sir, why don't we wait until the mages arrive? They will have a solution for tracking the tiago."

"Mages?" Hehe… send four people to seal the front and back of this road. The rest of you shall search the vicinity. Search every nook and cranny within a two mile radius. Once you find any clues, come report them to me," the youth arrogantly commanded his men. The youth had only been putting up a pretense when he had asked for suggestions. Since the last clue had been found here, they needed to search this area. This task could not have been any simpler, and yet the fools still wanted to wait until the mages arrived.

Once the mages arrived, then who would claim the credit?

Lex and her team had already travelled more than one hundred miles. Lex was injured, so Sika was carrying her on her back. With the level-3 Windspeed spell, they still managed to cover one hundred miles in this four hour duration.

Sika did not feel exhausted yet, but Lex could not take it anymore. The four of them then took a break. The place they were at was already very far from the roads of Qin. It was situated at a ridge, so there was a vantage point where they could observe all directions.

As Lex took a sip of magic liquid, many thoughts ran through her mind. After obtaining the tiago's skin and subtracting the six pieces of equipment which would be given to Saleen, Lex would still have enough skin left to produce close to one hundred sets of swordsman equipment. Furthermore, the fine hairs of the dragon could be used to create magic robes. All these things would already enable Lex to create an emblem group consisting of swordmasters and mage masters to serve as her main forces.

There were quite a few experts in the Bitter Water Army, so their equipment had been fairly standard all this while. Even alchemical armor was still inferior to genuine magic armor. The many sets of armor obtained from Dragon's Tooth Town were already enough to equip an entire swordsman camp. After soaking all this armor into dragon's blood, the metallic attributes would be altered, and the armor would be able to resist magic.

Unfortunately, large amounts of the dragon's tendons had been destroyed during the fire, and the remaining materials were pretty good, so they would be reserved for Bain.

Saleen and Nailisi had been the ones who had killed the tiago. Lex had only dealt the finishing blow. Thus, it was fine for Lex to forgo the dragonshards, but she would need a few pieces of the dragon's teeth in order to produce daggers and arrowheads.

The bones could be used to craft hard armor, so Saleen would not snatch them from Lex. It would be impossible to craft so much equipment if she did not go to Alchemy City. If Lex relied solely on the abilities of Bitter Water Prefecture, the equipment would take up to a few years to be produced, and that was under the condition that the grade-8 sorcerer and the mage masters who had returned to the prefecture were around. If it had been any other city, it would have been nearly impossible to craft all of that equipment using the materials currently at hand.

"Lex, are you feeling alright with all those injuries?" Saleen stood beside a tree and looked into the distance, not turning around.

Lex looked at Saleen's back and grew emotional. When she had first seen Saleen, he had still been a child and had not yet grown taller than herself. Now, he was almost an adult, and his shoulders had broadened. Saleen was now calmer, unlike the flighty person he had been during his first meeting with Lex.

"I'm fine. As long as I continue to cast the Chunlin spell, it won't hurt much."

"Mm. Do you think those people who severely injured the dragon will be able to track us down?"

"Yes. We created such a mess in Dragon's Tooth Town that our tracks will definitely be exposed eventually. At the very least, we will be under suspicion, but don't worry. Those people will not enter the Qin Empire. Any mage above grade-8 from the Cloudflow Empire cannot enter the Qin Empire for no good reason. As long as we reach Alchemy City, those people will be helpless even if we had stolen the national treasures of Cloudflow."

"That's good. I feel that this time around, there will be many more people pursuing us." Saleen gently heaved a breath out of his chest and tried his best to relax. However, his intuition told him that danger was still nearby.