Badge in Azure

Chapter 313: Irene (Part 2)

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

"This is too much. We can't accept your kind offer," Irene said. Deep down, it was taking all her self-restraint not to eagerly pounce on Saleen and offer all the words of appreciation that existed in the world.

"Think of it as an investment from me… an investment on your clan, of course. If you feel that it is too much or too sudden, we can sign a contract," Saleen said with a smile on his face.

"A contract?" Irene asked curiously.

"Yes, it's like a loan agreement. Don't worry, I won't be putting any interest on your loan," Saleen assured the young female.

If Nailisi had still been in the tent, she would have been laughing uncontrollably at the notion of Saleen signing yet another agreement with some random stranger. The terms and conditions of Saleen's contracts were often fair, but somehow, the other party would always regret signing them in the end.

"Okay, sounds fair," Irene said as she nodded. The situation was as clear as day to her now. Saleen did not seem to be the type of person who easily trusted other people. Even if he was not the kind who would extort the helpless, there was a high chance that Saleen would have refused to even lift a finger to help her.

Mages had no obligations to help those in need. Yet, if Irene did not accept Saleen's help, at least half of her men would have perished by now. In fact, she might even end up not having any more men to provide for. Now that everything was frozen over, it was almost impossible for Irene and her men to trudge their way through the Northern wilderness to get back to the Qin country.

As far as Irene knew, Saleen only owned one ship. Most of the men that she had brought along with her were skilled sailors. Since a pirate ship was only worth ten to twenty thousand gold coins, asking Irene to sign a loan agreement was a completely reasonable request. At least to Irene, it was a pretty good deal. If Saleen had given Irene a ship just like that, the latter would surely have been more guarded against the male mage.

Saleen's heart fluttered with delight as he saw Irene nod in agreement. He was not going to chase Irene for her debt. To Saleen, as long as Irene did not pay him back the money, she would owe him many, many favors. Saleen could also not be bothered to implement a ten thousand gold coin interest rate. In fact, the only thing he took away from the entire conversation with Irene was that the Oceanic Ice Block could potentially offer riches to him.

"Mage Saleen, would you mind letting me eat something first?" Irene asked politely.

Saleen clapped his hands to summon the swordsmen. Once they entered the tent, the male mage instructed them to make dinner for his guest. All Irene had wanted was a mere piece of bread to curb her hunger. However, she was not about to appear rude in front of Saleen. Thus, she could do nothing but tolerate her hunger pangs for the time being.

Nailisi boarded the pan's turtle alchemical boat along with a Sregl Island mage that she had chosen to accompany her. She told the winged skeleton about Irene's sunken ship before setting off. Because of the fact that Irene had not revealed the exact coordinates of the place where her ship had sunk, the winged skeleton could not do much except scout the entire northeastern shipping route. Technically, she had indicated that it was to the northeast, but that was a pretty useless piece of information.

At this point in time, the bone spirits were released as well, and were being controlled within a two-mile radius from the ship. As of now, their role was to assist the winged skeleton in searching through everything that lay on the ocean floor.

The sunken ship, according to Irene, was six hundred miles from where they were. The pan's turtle alchemical boat was able to maintain a speed of at least sixty miles per hour, and this meant that they could cover this distance within ten hours. Nailisi, however, was starting to become suspicious of Irene's claims. After all, it would be very challenging for someone like her to row a lifeboat six hundred miles.

As the alchemy ship travelled towards the northeast, Nailisi suddenly noticed the ocean becoming deeper and deeper around the four hundred mile mark. In fact, the deepest part of the ocean was about eight hundred meters below the surface. Ordinary ships would only be able to travel about thirty meters underwater before breaking apart from the sheer force of the water pressure. However, since the pan's turtle alchemical boat was built entirely out of the pan's turtle shell, the ship could be submerged eight hundred meters below the surface and still maintain its current speed.

Now that Saleen was not here, Nailisi was effectively the captain of this ship. The winged skeleton was truthfully a little afraid of the demon. Thus, he made sure that every single one of Nailisi's requests were fulfilled to the best of his capabilities so that he would not have to suffer Nailisi's wrath. The grade-3 mage was only there to help Nailisi observe the pictures of the ocean floor that the eye of the dead would send back. He knew that Nailisi was a very important person to Saleen. There was definitely not a simple master-maidservant relationship between them. Thus, he also obeyed Nailisi's commands as if they were Saleen's orders.

After travelling about eight hundred miles away from shore, the ship started travelling along the arc of a random island in search of Irene's ship. Ten hours had passed. Yet, no one found anything. The grade-3 mage was so tired that all he wanted to do was sleep. However, just as he was about to doze off, he heard the winged skeleton yell, "Found it!"

Under the control of the winged skeleton, the alchemy ship sped towards the ocean floor. Nailisi walked towards the magic images, and upon seeing the pictures captured by the eye of the dead, her body tingled with excitement.

As the black-and-white pictures became clearer and clearer, Nailisi discovered that the images projected earlier had not been that of Irene's bounty-hunting ship. Not even close. The piece of the sunken ship photographed earlier was far too big. In fact, it was over three hundred metres long. Plant life was growing through the body of the ship, turning it into a beautiful floating forest. As the winged skeleton steered the ship to get a better view of its base, Nailisi discovered that there was a huge tear on the bottom of the ship. It was this huge fissure that had caused a gigantic metallic ship like this to sink in the first place.

Just then, a small shark emerged from the huge hole. As soon as it saw the enormous hull of the pan's turtle alchemical boat, it turned around and swam away frantically. Even though small sharks were considered just as ferocious as the bigger ones, they were far smarter than their larger counterparts. They knew that it was probably a bad idea to try and take a huge chunk out of the ship.

Nailisi had expected the ocean floor to be so dark that she could not even see anything. In fact, she had even expected to be unable to see the silhouettes of anything here. However, the entire ocean floor landscape had been illuminated by some type of bright blue seagrass that surprisingly did not shine too brightly, though it glowed bright enough for Nailisi to see that it was all over the ocean floor. These plants, which looked to be over ten meters tall, swayed gracefully with the currents. There were thousands, no, probably millions of colorful fish weaving in and out of the seagrass. However, Nailisi was not awed by the spectacular sight before her. In fact, she had sensed some kind of dangerous presence hiding beneath the sand of the sea bottom, waiting for the right moment to attack.

"Master Saleen is so lucky!" the grade-3 mage exclaimed, feeling a flurry of emotions overwhelm him at the sight of the ship.

"What do you mean?" Nailisi asked, pressing the mage for an explanation.

"This battleship was constructed during the Second Dynasty. I believe that most of the items on this ship have already decomposed, but I feel that we should take the objects that are still relatively intact. Who knows, we might find lots of magical items here," he explained.

The Second Dynasty was said to be a magical dynasty, and was actually termed the "Unholy Dynasty" by the Holy See. Magic had actually flourished during those times. In fact, nearly all the items that existed then were either fortified by magic or somehow connected to it. For example, the Heart of the Sky, the item that Lex had traded for the city blueprints, had not been considered a rare magical artifact back in the Second Dynasty.

"I'll take a look!" Nailisi exclaimed as she made her way towards the teleportation portal.

"No, it's way too dangerous!" the winged skeleton yelled in panic. Nailisi scoffed as she waved her hands dismissively, "Relax, it's only eight hundred meters. I can take it." She proceeded to teleport herself outside of the ship, and ended up on the lower back of the pan's turtle shell. The weight of the water above Nailisi caused her movements to be much slower than usual. As much as she wanted to morph into her demon form, she knew that she could not. The grade-3 mage's eyes were following every single movement she made. If she had been able to reveal her true form, she would have been able to tolerate even higher water pressures.

Nailisi took out the brand-new dagger that Saleen had refined specially for her. The white dagger had been made using dragon's tooth as its base. It was a shame that Saleen had not completely mastered the water flame alchemy technique yet. Thus, the dagger that Nailisi was holding could not be transformed into a ring at her will, effectively making the dagger as powerful as any other ordinary weapon.

Besides having used dragon's tooth as the basic material for the new dagger, Saleen had also utilized the machetes which he had seized. Occasionally, different illusions appeared on the body of the snow-white dagger. In fact, they were images that closely resembled blood. The images of these crimson-red fluids looked as if blood was oozing out of the dagger, making it seem as if Nailisi had just slaughtered a group of people. It was a ghastly sight indeed.

Saleen had fully understood the properties that the machetes possessed. The first property was that of deterrence. The second was that the machetes were able to block and even break the sword aura. Since he had wanted the dagger to possess these properties, Saleen had used the machetes to create the weapon as well. Even if the killers under the black bishop's command had not encountered a formidable enemy like Nailisi before, all their enemy needed was four of these machetes to finish them off. In fact, even a silver grand swordmaster was no match for these machetes.

It was unfortunate for her opponents that Nailisi was immune to the power of deterrence. She also did not possess the sword aura. Thus, these unique properties that the machetes had possessed had no effect on her. Never in the two killers' wildest dreams would they have expected people like Nailisi to exist in the world. It was too late to do anything about it now though. They had died wasted deaths.

Gripping her new dragon's tooth dagger in hand, Nailisi sped towards the flat ocean floor and swiped her weapon in the direction of the ocean gravel.

Upon receiving a fatal blow from the dagger, the unknown creature hiding beneath the sand contorted violently in pain. Nailisi brought her dagger down again. Hard. No sooner had the dagger made contact with the creature did it stop moving.

Upon striking the creature, the dragon's tooth dagger's freezing properties were activated, covering the entire flat-looking creature in a layer of ice. Upon take a closer look, Nailisi realized that its mouth was actually located on top of its head. Squinting her eyes, she could see the outline of two sets of tusks which seemed to be able to spurt out venom.

Was it the venomous tusks that made me so paranoid that I had to kill it? Nailisi thought to herself. She figured that a magic beast with the ability to squirt out venom instinctively would be considered valuable. Hence, she wasted no time in tossing the creature into her bracelet. As she did so, she estimated the length of its body. The number came out to be a little over one meter, give or take a few centimeters. Compared to everyone else, Nailisi had a very unusual body type. She was able to ingest an entire bottle of poison and remain relatively unharmed. However, she could sense that the venom secreted from this creature's poison glands was no joke, meaning that something might actually have happened to her if she had come into contact with its venom.

However, since this creature did not contain a magic nucleus, it could not move very fast. Nailisi handled the creature with a bit more caution than she would with other objects or people to prevent herself from being the victim of a surprise attack. As long as the creature did not strike her unexpectedly, she would be fine. After surveying her surroundings and confirming that the only thing actually posing a threat to her was the creature that she had killed, Nailisi swam towards the gigantic hole on the base of the ship, carrying the dagger tightly in her hands.

Nailisi took out a piece of fluorite from her bracelet. The gemstone glowed brightly, lighting up the entire ocean floor using the magic array that was fixed on top of it. Although she had perfect night vision, allowing her to see her enemies in pitch-black darkness, she had not dove all the way down here to fight someone. She had come here to seek out the treasures on this sunken ship. With a light source, Nailisi was able to distinguish the valuable items from the worthless ones. Moreover, it was not realistic for Nailisi to drag this huge ship up to the surface alone. She could only pick and choose the items that she felt would bring in the most money.

The hole located on the base of the ship was more than two meters in diameter. Upon surveying the giant crevice, Nailisi deduced that the hole had been created when the ship had rammed into something. What shocked Nailisi was the fact that a ship with a base more than half a meter thick had not been able to withstand the impact of the crash. What surprised Nailisi even more was the fact that the base had been constructed using rare, refined pieces of wood, meaning that the ship's base would be stronger than that of an ordinary ship.

The ship that had sunk was some sort of gigantic alchemy ship. In terms of craftsmanship, this ship was far superior to the pan's turtle alchemical boat. Even though Judikaka had refined the pan's turtle alchemical boat, Lex was still the primary person responsible for its basic design.

The tear in this gigantic ship's base seemed to have been caused by something, or someone. It was definitely not a result of the ship ramming into some random iceberg. As Nailisi's eyes travelled upwards along the direction of the cracks, she saw the floors of the deck - or rather, what was left of them. Nailisi suddenly felt a shiver run down her spine. Who, or what could have attacked the ship so viciously? she thought. She was more inclined to think that the perpetrator was an "it" rather than a "he" or "she". If all three of Saleen's Sregl Island warships had been attacked by the same unknown magic beast, Nailisi was certain that not a single one of them would survive.

Fortunately, at least for Saleen, the ship looked as if it had been lying on the ocean floor for tens of thousands of years. The creatures responsible for the sinking of this particular ship were probably long dead by now. As Nailisi started patiently rummaging through the remains of the ship, she noticed that there were many different types of fish swimming around her. Apparently, they had made a habitat out of this shipwreck.

The cabins that powered the ship had long since decayed by now. The only things left behind were piles of wooden pieces which could not decompose, and the same rare, special wood had been used to construct the base of the ship. Above these wooden planks lay giant quantities of metallic magic streaks. All of these metallic magic streaks would remain intact even after spending tens of thousands of years underwater, as they were essentially immune to decay. To Nailisi, anything on this ship that had not decayed was probably either very valuable or useful material for the construction of god-knew-what. Keeping this rule of thumb in mind, Nailisi started to sweep up items from the ship.

As Nailisi went about her merry way, she stumbled upon many wooden boxes. The quality of the wood used to make them was so good that probably no one would believe her if she told people that these boxes had spent ten thousand years at the bottom of the ocean. The boxes had remained perfectly intact, without even a single scratch on them. The items inside, on the other hand, had not survived the test of time. Unfortunately, this type of wood did not seem to be the kind that could be produced on the Myers Mainland. Nailisi guessed that they had been imported from another dimension. As Nailisi opened up the boxes one by one, she realized that most of the objects inside disintegrated almost immediately when she touched them, including a few magic nuclei. The only items that did not disintegrate upon contact were made of metal.

Those magic nuclei had been high-grade magic objects, and thus had retained their shape and form even after ten thousand years. However, they were not to be touched. Just one poke and an entire box worth of magic nuclei would turn to powder almost immediately. Nailisi found that out the hard way.

Most of the metals had already decayed over time. The only metals that had withstood the test of time were rare, specially crafted ones. However, Nailisi had no interest in procuring them. All she wanted to do was see if there were any corpses of Second Dynasty mages. Even though most spatial equipment could not last ten thousand years, this rule of thumb could not be applied to the magical equipment that had been created during the Second Dynasty. Who knew? Perhaps they could last for millions of years. Anything had been possible during the magical dynasty. If she did locate a corpse, that would mean that their spatial equipment could not be too far away. Just one set of spatial equipment alone would be worth more than all those boxes combined.