Badge in Azure

Chapter 341: The Power of a Mage (Part 1)

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

In just an hour, Saleen had constructed a snow ice castle. Within those glossy outer walls of the castle were crystal magic patterns. The only flaw of these magic patterns was that their shelf life was too short, a little less than a month. However, Saleen would not even stay at this location for an entire month.

If the situation got to a point of no return, he would have no choice but to leave the Chaotic Swamp. However, if the black mages were not so powerful, then he would go all the way to the Second Dynasty relic to make sense of what was happening there.

Anyway, the black mages' Flying spell was not as proficient as that of elemental mages. Jola was right. At the very least, he could still escape.

Before Saleen had arrived in the Chaotic Swamp, he wanted to seek out the holy masters from the Holy See. Some holy masters could really fly at insane speeds, and that posed a real threat to Saleen.

On a hill in the distance, more and more snowmen emerged from the snowy ground. These snowmen had the shape of an adult man with distinct human features, being very lifelike. The more a snowman resembled a human, the more agile its actions were, and the faster its speed. In an hour, tens of thousands of snowmen had congregated in the hilly region. Those snowmen who were of a higher grade had already begun paying attention to the pirates building the fortification.

The snowmen did not wield any weapons, but had razor-sharp fingernails which were formed from ice crystals. Unlike the scarecrows previously, most of the snowmen had a pair of lifelike eyes, and their eyeballs could even rotate.

In the wilderness far ahead, the galloping of horses could be clearly heard. A cavalry regiment with more than four hundred riders had appeared on the snowy ground. The headless riders had finally appeared on the northern side of the snow ice castle. After the double-headed eagle was killed, the black mages were appalled and enraged, and they had decided to deploy over four hundred headless riders in one go.

Luckily, the snow ice fortification had been built!

Seeing the headless riders in the far distance ahead, Saleen felt a chill in his heart. With the three kings around, he would not die, and he could also fly. However, those pirates around him might not be able to escape death.

At the start, the pirates had not cared. But after the snowmen had finished congregating on the hills and the headless riders had appeared in their field of view, most of the pirates became paler than the snowy ground.

The head of a rider was hung beside the headless rider's warhorse, with its face contorted in extreme pain and suffering. Within the head, a piercing sound was produced, as though it originated from a sealed container.

A headless rider was suffering in pain every minute it existed. And this pain stimulated the power of the headless rider. Even if the rider had been a normal swordsmen when he was alive, he would be as powerful as a swordmaster after being refined into a headless rider.

Woo…

A whimper was produced from the necks of the headless riders, and the more than four hundred riders began charging towards the snow ice castle, waving various kinds of weapons which sent chills down a person's spine.

The headless riders at the front wielded giant poleaxes and meteor hammers. Such weapons were only given to the strongmen in the army for them to wreck the defenses of a city.

"Steel crossbows, get ready!" Saleen's voice was unusually icy, causing the pirates to be tinged with fear. These desperados immediately woke up, as there was no use being afraid. Back at sea, everyone had also been putting their lives on the line in order to make a living. Those monsters up ahead would never be more intimidating than a mage. Recalling that there were three grand mages with them, the pirates regained their zeal.

Jola and the four magic beast swordsmen rushed to protect Saleen and Aini, while Daniel used the pikoosi to block the gates which had been left open. The snow ice castle's area was too small, and it could not be defended in the long run. Once the strength of the enemy was diminished to a certain level, the team would have to quickly change their position.

The headless riders travelled at an astounding speed, and their charging speeds were faster than most human cavalry. They had begun increasing their speed a mile away, and by the time they approached the snow ice castle, their speed was already at least sixty miles an hour. The warhorses of the headless riders were also dead, so it did not matter if they rammed into something at high speed. As those over four hundred headless riders charged over, they seemed unstoppable, just like those magic chariots in ancient times.

Om, om…

The chains of the meteor hammers gave out a rattling noise as they cut through the air, and the end of the hammers created a dark illusion. Over forty pirates were situated at the northern face of the snow ice castle, and they aligned the steel crossbows in a dense formation as they took aim at the charging headless riders.

The walls of the snow ice castle were only four meters tall, and even though the pirates were standing on them, they did not really enjoy a high vantage point. The arrows were shot at almost zero gradient, hitting dozens of headless riders in a sparse manner.

After sharpening, the alchemical arrows with a tearing effect penetrated the armor of the headless riders, tearing huge cavities in the bodies of the headless riders. Had the targets been human, they would not have been able to continue fighting no matter how strong they were. However, the headless riders simply produced some muffled whistles from their necks, then acted in a coordinated fashion and altered their cavalry formation. The injured riders went to the front to receive more arrows.

Such a warring technique did not exist in human armies. In a human army, the wounded would retreat to receive treatment from a mage or a holy master. There were no soldiers as ferocious as these headless riders, who could continue battling even though they had been pierced by alchemical arrows.

The pirates clenched their teeth and wielded their lances. The city wall was too short, so the headless riders could simply toss their weapons at the pirates. As long as that giant meteor hammer came smashing down, any human clad in armor would also be smashed into pulp. The pirates wore thin metallic composite armor with cotton shirts inside. Their actions might have been more agile wearing that, but their defensive ability was also greatly reduced.

Saleen stood on top of the wall placidly. To his left were tens of thousands of snowmen who were making their way here slowly, and in less than a dozen minutes, they would encompass the snow ice castle. To his right were the headless riders who were only two hundred meters away, and those human heads beside the saddle were clearly visible.

The steel crossbows belonging to the pirates yielded no results, causing their morale to fall sharply. The pirates did not know that the headless riders did not have many weaknesses. As their steel crossbows were not those expensive alchemical ones, they brought little harm to the puppets. There would have been an obvious result if the target was a low grade being like the black puppets.

If the rider's head was destroyed, the headless rider would be damaged more extensively. It was a pity the pirates' archery was not as proficient as Jola's. Also, their steel crossbows were unlike the alchemical crossbows. They did not have such a high degree of power and accuracy.

Looks like I have to make a stand…

As Saleen sighed in his heart, he had already prepared a series of spells. After all, the headless riders were not human. The reason they could charge faster than normal cavalrymen was because they had bodies which were not fearful of being hurt by their own power. However, their travelling speed and routes were easily predictable, so Saleen could effortlessly calculate the time required for an interception with magic.

Untransformed warriors would become very frail in the face of a mage. Back then, when Saleen was still a grade-1 mage, he could already gather the people around him to kill two headless riders. Now that he was a grade-5 mage with offensive powers boosted by more than one hundred times, he would not be afraid of a cavalry regiment which only consisted of headless riders.

As gloomy clouds condensed in the sky above, Saleen cast the Quickcloud spell, but he did not fly. Instead, he allowed the black clouds with a width of one hundred meters to be suspended in midair as countless icicles formed. Then, the icicles came pounding downwards at the instant when the headless riders reached Saleen.

Boom!

The three headless riders in the front row were completely smashed into crushed ice by this overlaid spell. A large crater with a diameter of more than twenty meters was formed in the ground. At the bottom of this crater was the flesh of the headless riders, and something was still twisting about in that pile of flesh. If a black mage had been present at this moment, the three headless riders would have been restored.

But the body of a black mage was hundreds of times weaker than that of an elemental mage, and they would not have dared appear with the headless riders. At best, they would be hiding behind the evil dragons and commanding the battle.

At the same time, the pirates were exhilarated by Saleen's spell. They simply needed a powerful captain in order to muster the courage to rob a warship. Now that Saleen had displayed his powerful offensive ability, the pirates were once again filled with vigor.

That was the difference between the pirates and a regular army. A regular army was used to receiving commands from their commander. As long as the commander gave an order, the soldiers would execute it methodically. On the other hand, the pirates had too many emotions guiding their battles. Their emotions had a huge impact on them. With a duration of just several months, Saleen could not properly train these desperados.

Aini stood beside Saleen without making any moves. The targeting ability of his death magic was very strong. Aini would not get skittish even if the headless riders got close to him. He also knew that he could not regain his offensive powers as quickly as Saleen. By letting Saleen take the first wave, Aini would execute the second hit, which would allow Saleen to recover swiftly, thus forming a three-round magic barrage.

After this three-round magic barrage, their offensive powers were not really depleted. But the dashing process of those headless riders could be quickly disrupted. If the headless riders were allowed to charge before the snow ice castle, the four-meter tall wall would not be able to obstruct the jumps of the puppet warhorses, given their strength.

That was the most fearsome aspect of a headless rider. Back then, before the atrocities committed by the black mages, many small cities had lower walls. Only after the black mages had swept through half of the mainland did the rest of the countries start to become massive in size. Even a small city like Ceylon City had walls which were dozens of meters in height.

A normal castle would have outer walls which were at least eight meters tall. Since Saleen was in a rush, the snow ice castle only had walls which were four meters tall. They would surely fail to block the headless riders. Allowing the headless riders to jump over the wall would cause the pirates to end up in a bloodbath.

Saleen's attacks had not ended yet. In front of him, a magic light began glittering as a colossal ice bomb condensed into a circular ball with a diameter of one and a half meters, then was launched. The pirates cheered boisterously when they saw the external layer of the ice bomb vaporizing. After landing into the midst of the cavalry regiment, the ice bomb had already begun burning, causing an intense explosion to occur.

This attack was one which Saleen was extremely familiar with. He was so familiar with it that he did not even need to deplete any mental strength to be able to control it.

The freezing effect of water magic could effectively neutralize the attack speed of a headless rider, but without a warrior's help, the headless rider would not be completely terminated. Hence, Saleen had cast a transformed spell which carried the effect of fire magic with it.

The shards of the ice bomb carried flames in them as they penetrated the headless riders, bursting into flames in their bodies. Shrill screams spread over a great distance across the wilderness. Even a puppet would suffer excruciating pain under the burning of these magic flames.

Following that, Saleen did not continue wasting his magic chords. Those two double release spells did not deplete a huge amount of his magic chords, but the real depletion of his magic chords would take place behind him. More than ten thousand snowmen were standing behind awaiting Saleen's attack, and it would not take much time for them to reach him.

Saleen slapped the gourd hanging around his waist and a green water flow measuring more than six meters flew out, circling in front of him.