Badge in Azure

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Chapter 919: Outwitting One Another (Part 2)Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio

Gaine was not a good teacher. He had a hands-off approach after giving Saleen a grade-12 Star Gathering Needle. To mages, all knowledge could be forcefully memorized, but it was something else altogether to use that knowledge as one's own skills anytime anywhere.

After Saleen's mental powers entered the needle, he was able to see narrow spaces and a limited number of nebulas. At the core, laid a black hole just like the needle he had with him.

Saleen maneuvered his way dexterously into the black hole. The space within seemed rather thin. It was nonetheless still a grade-12 equipment, and his mental powers were locked tight within that space still. Four large transparent crystallized bodies levitated midair. They had complex, intricate writings etched within as before.

Saleen's mental powers were able to make it into the crystallized bodies, and he felt a super-strong connection between the needle and his soul. The writings in the first crystallized body were forcefully memorized. Saleen had yet to use memory magic.

Memory magic were low level spells. To astrologers, something like that was not even worth learning from mages. They had their own ways of passing on their lineages. Before he was able to understand what was going on and knew only for the time being that it was part of the program to learn the language of the astrologers, he was interrupted by Gaine.

"Saleen, there is no need for you to learn further. If you feel like leaving. I can send you out of the imperial city right away."

"That won't do!", Saleen said in a very dissatisfied tone, "I learn astrology best in such an environment. One of my people lost his way coming to the imperial city. You are an astrologer; can you help me see if he is doing alright now?"

Gaine left the room exasperated to do something else. He came back soon after and said to Saleen, "That man of yours is in no mortal danger, but if you leave any later, it would have been hard to tell. I can send you to him."

"How long can he last out there still?" Saleen was unmoved. The two blood soul towers that Nailisi crafted were way stronger than Nicholas' soul bead. Even if Nicholas' soul bead was to be damaged or destroyed, he was still able to compensate him somehow. It was more important to Saleen that he stayed there in the astrology tower to continue learning astrology, as his level would be able to see a frightening increase.

Most importantly however, was that his magic skills were nearing advancement. His magic chords were getting restless. In the entire imperial city, only the areas surrounding the astrology tower had a balance of the six elements. His advancement had to be done in that place. Leaving the Imperial City of the Abyss would mean facing off with the variety of powerful magic beasts out in the oceanic ice block, a place ill-suited for advancement.

The Magical Element Tower needed to be crafted back in Metatrin City, and he would not be able to advance within the tower itself. The astrology tower was therefore, the best place for advancement.

Gaine was not irked. In the long flow of the river of fate, such minor matters hardly bothered him. Saleen's intuition, on the other hand, made Gaine very pleased with himself, as that meant that his predictions were correct. The little king was the one meant to save him from his predicament. It was no big deal that Saleen wanted to keep learning astrology in the tower. Saleen did not even have a level in astrology. Even if he were to train until he reached grade-10, it would hardly expend much of the tower's energies.

"I need to be somewhere quiet." Saleen looked at Gaine in the eye.

Gaine stroked his beard and said, "Follow me."

Gaine took Saleen out of the door, to a corridor where he could clearly see the hall on the second floor. The skylight was at his front, and starlight was shining down on him. Gaine had Saleen stand before the railing and pushed him off. Saleen was pushed off by an irresistible force, and with a whoosh, was sucked into the starlight at the top of the building!

Gaine clapped his hands and thought, "Let's see you have fun in the nebula. One day's time. You can last one day at most there. A grade-8 mage's mental powers can only last you that long after all!"

Mental powers were more important to astrologers than they were to mages. When a mage's mental powers were running low, they would still be able to cast low level spells with only their experience. Such spells could still be powerful. Astrologers on the other hand, required mental powers to be stable no matter what skills they were using. Once Saleen's mental powers were depleted, he would be forcibly booted out of the core of the astrology tower into the Outer Nebula.

That part of the nebula was connected to a starlit sky. Most of the scene was real, with only small pieces of the place being constellations and arrays crafted by astrologers.

After Saleen went into the nebula, he took out the grade-12 Star Gathering Needle and began learning the writings of the astrologers. There was hardly any difference between an astrologer's lineage than that of mages'. The only notable one being that the knowledge system of the mages was more complex, yet very clear-cut. On the other hand, while the astrologers' knowledge system was huge, it was something ambiguously connected between its parts.

Saleen saw one-hundred and twenty-eight-thousand of the astrologer's scripts, which were even greater and more complex than the ones used by mages. Such complex writing system lacked the accuracy seen in magic scripts in terms of their ability to depict things and matters though.

Saleen naturally went about memorizing those scripts used by astrologers and went on to understand them. Saleen had not even thought of encountering such powerful ways of passing down lineages.

He did not have the will to stay and research them however. He simply pulled his mental powers out of the needle and began putting magic arrays around the place. Saleen used thirty-six grade-10 magic nuclei to set a simple three-dimensional magic array in the void. He had the six major elements in the starlit sky rushed at him like gushing currents.

Saleen did not realize that the amount of time which he used to learn the one-hundred and twenty-eight-thousand scripts, which he perceived to be an instant, was actually twelve hours in real time. In the astrologer's method of passing down their lineage, Saleen's speed at doing so was fast enough. Such speeds in such a place meant that his talent was nothing to special compared to other astrologers.

Saleen's current mental powers were stronger than grade-9 mages, and learning scripts was not something that should have taken so much time.

As soon as the three-dimensional magic array was put in place, Saleen began breaking through grade-9 in earnest. All the rules that he was familiar with flowed one after another within his mind. All the experiments he had conducted, all the experience he had from making scrolls, and even the details in the various battlefields he went through; all of them were being recollected one by one. Saleen's magic chords seemed to burst out of his body uncontrollably.

The magic chords absorbed the six major elements like a person who had starved for days, expelling impurities as they went about it. Saleen's magic chords had always been abnormally pure, and as such, the process took very little time to complete. Most mages who had trained to grade-8 had frightening amounts of impurities in their magic chords. As such, it would have usually been imperative for them to spend huge amount of time, during advancement to grade-9, to re-temper their magic chords.

Saleen possessed a body of water element, which meant advancement was trickier than other mages. The purity of the magic chords housed in such a body were unparalleled. Saleen's magic array was unable to keep the powers of the starlight out, and the starlight ended up rushing into Saleen's magic chords as well, but they did little more than help Saleen clean his chords.

Mages of ancient times would have requested astrologers' help in doing so as well. When astrologers used their skills, they were expending soul power instead though. As such, no astrologer would have helped a mage with such a thing unless they shared a very good relationship. Generally-speaking, mages were required to pay a great price to have astrologers do them such a favor.

Saleen was having it easy instead, as he had the most powerful power of the astrology tower to help him clean and temper his magic chords. His chords grew as if there were no limit to them. All thirty-six grade-10 magic nuclei soon went nearly depleted. He was not even absorbing powers of the magic nuclei, as the nuclei were simply there to create the magic array. All expenditure came solely from the running of the magic array itself.

The magic array was being ran too quickly and even grade-10 magic nuclei were barely able to hold. There had never been a mage seeing such a peculiar phenomenon happening when advancing into grade-9, where even grade-10 magic nuclei strained at keeping a magic array running.

Saleen gritted his teeth, taking out thirty-six grade-12 magic nuclei and installing them into the magic array. Only a handful of the magic nuclei given to him by the great grandmaster were high level ones. Most of them being grade-10 ones, and grade-12 ones numbered to less than one-thousand. They were also all were cut. Magic nuclei of a single large-sized magic beast of ancient times would have yielded hundreds when cut into standard sizes.

Saleen still had to use high level magic nuclei to keep the Ancient running. While there were no level requirements in the magic nucleus used to power the magic power furnace, high level ones still enabled the furnace to run longer. A situation where the furnace stopped running in the middle of a battle would not have been something pretty.

Despite Saleen having quite a large number of high level magic nuclei at his disposal, he was still reluctant to waste them. He was advancing to grade-9 at that moment, which was a very critical moment for him. He would not have hesitated to throw in even higher level magic nuclei, or even dragon crystals, if he deemed it necessary.

The situation changed altogether as soon as the grade-12 nuclei were put in place. Saleen was only advancing to the rank of a grade-9 sorcerer. Regardless of how peculiar his magic chords would get, the amount of energy he was able to absorb would still be limited. Absorption of the six major elements by his magic chords stabilized. The phenomenon where his chords kept bloating no longer happened; they became more resilient instead. His original magic chords felt like liquid to him, and at that moment, there were signs that the chords were congealing into solids.

Saleen felt it had only been several minutes, yet Gaine was getting rather tired of waiting in the astrology tower. Saleen had actually spent three days in the Outer Nebula. His life signs were clear in the Outer Nebula, meaning that he hadn't been running into any trouble, but how was it possible for that mage to have such powerful mental powers?

Was Saleen training directly within to become a grade-10 astrologer? While the Outer Nebula's power was immense, it still had to feed the entire astrology tower, and it still provided protection for tens of miles radius from the tower. As such, the amount of power it provided for Gaine was limited.

Saleen did not dare take out his own Star Gathering Needle. He simply let the starlight cleanse his newly formed magic chords. The new chords were still water element ones, but the purity of which reached a level he himself was unable to comprehend. Using Elemental Conversion for casting magic would have been awfully easy by then, and the issue of elemental conversion having higher consumption was no more.

What pleased Saleen even more was that his grade-12 Star Gathering Needle was absorbing constellation power as well. The limited constellation space within was then all filled up with constellation power.

The greatest benefit derived from having his body entering the sky was that he was gradually able to feel the conditions of his own soul. The core of one's soul laid within the brain, but the entirety of the soul was spread out throughout one's entire body.

Only grade-10 mages were able to touch the more intricate secrets of the soul, yet Saleen felt as if his mental powers came from the core of his soul. Such powers seemed to gradually meld with every corner of the soul. Mental powers, soul, and body: all three fused as one. Vitality ran within his own body and the energies became internalized, instead of spreading outwards like how it was initially.

That was to say that, while his magic chords had only advanced to grade-9, his own soul advanced to a level unknown to anyone. Saleen had only been able to feel his own lifespan growing. Or to put accurately, his life force no longer leaked outside, which in turn lengthened his lifespan by a great degree.