Badge in Azure

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

Saleen had lost too many Stone Statue Soldiers to want to lose any more of them and sent in the Tempest Dragon-mights to keep the iron blood warriors at bay. He had never thought that the six Midnight Fangs were able to pull off their tricks, preventing the iron blood warriors from self-destructing.

Saleen decided to meet Imposa in the air. Everything happened due to him. If Imposa had not been around, the iron blood soldiers would not have been a match for the elemental creatures.

Seeing how Saleen charged at him like a warrior, Imposa turned the metallic disk around and ran. The remaining fifty iron blood warriors tagged along from behind. Imposa had no choice but to run. While he deemed himself to be more capable than Saleen in close quarters combat, there was a golden grand swordmaster with mastery of rules by Saleen's side at that moment.

Pure rule power was not something he was able to redirect. If the golden grand swordmaster landed a hit on him, his soul would have suffered massive damage.

Imposa was running ahead, feeling incredibly frustrated. "Why is that Dark Blue not here?" If he had one golden grand swordmaster by his side, he would have had no need to run from Saleen. A grade-9 sorcerer working in tandem with a golden grandmaster would be more than enough to slay any foes of similar levels. It was a nightmare to any grade-9 professionals to be on the bad side of two such individuals.

Imposa had no idea who the one unlucky enough to become the scapegoat of the faulty Calamity of True Flames spell was. The spell would not have simply dispersed, and it looked like one of the grand duke's men took the fall and died. He had hope it to be some rank and file soldier instead of someone important.

Saleen dared not go too close to his target. Gloria was literally torn to shreds, and that was something Saleen would never be able to forget. An attack from Imposa that tore right through a grade-10 being was something Saleen would never ever want to taste himself.

Both sides were on guard against each other, yet Saleen got increasingly close to his target, while reminding himself to stay away from the spot right behind Imposa. He had no idea that what Imposa did back there was something that was possible after accumulating energy for a very long time. Another attack like that would take the alchemist another month to charge, and there simply was no way to speed things up.

If it had not been Saleen's mistake, Imposa would not have needed to fear Jola. Jola gave his all back then to destroy the Hexagram array in one strike. He had yet to truly master the rules, or more accurately, his mastery of rules was limited.

Jola's sword—Tears—developed a spirit of its own. Jola's understanding of rules grew continuously as he trained, with the sword always in his hands as he did. The weak spirit within the sword unexpectedly grew as he trained. The most powerful attack was made possible only when Jola's rules resonated with the spirit of his sword.

Jola's Astonishing Flash depleted all power within the spirit of his sword, which required two or three days at least to charge, regardless of how fast the spirit was able to recover, before Jola was able to use the power of the rules again.

Jola's offensive capacity was simply slightly more powerful than a regular golden grand swordmaster. That terrifying move was not something he would have been able to do again right there and then.

There was no way for Imposa to be aware of such things. He was just like Saleen, who dared not put himself in harm's way. As such, he also dared not prep up any powerful spells, and simply was on guard against any sudden moves from Jola.

Imposa even thought that it was Jola who disrupted his spell back there. From his perspective, only the power of rules would have been capable of disrupting his grade-10 spell. As a result, he dared not use any grade-10 spells at that moment, regardless of the fact that he still had several powerful magic arrays stored on his metallic disk. To him, all grade-10 spells required a very long period of preparation, and all posed different dangers if disrupted.

The easiest to handle was Calamity of True Flames. Some spells would have even retaliated against the caster when disrupted.

Retaliation from grade-10 spells was something Imposa admittedly was unable to withstand. He was more frustrated at Saleen because of that. Saleen had simply lost some elemental creatures, and such losses were something that could have been recovered given enough time. What Imposa lost was iron blood warriors. He had no choice but to keep having iron blood warriors self-destruct behind him to keep Saleen away, holding the pursuing sorcerer off a certain distance.

Worse still, the Elemental Prison was a double edged blade, making it impossible for Imposa himself to quickly fly outside. Imposa had to circle around the vicinity of the six towers instead.

Imposa prided himself of being unmatched by anyone grade-9 or below, but a combination of a grade-9 sorcerer and a golden grand swordmaster made it impossible for him to just stand his ground and fight. He would have been in a better situation if he had all those iron blood warriors by his side, but he had lost too many of them in the air. He had yet to be able to summon the ones on the ground.

Saleen was not able to afford having Imposa run like that. There was bound to be other professionals still about on the island. At the very least, there was still Grand Duke Iron Blood. If more level nine professionals showed up, he would have had to summon the leaders of other elemental creatures.

There were hardly any grade-9 professionals who did not possess unique skills of some sort. Reminding himself how Imposa was able to instantly tear Gloria to shreds back then, Saleen ceased thinking his grade-10 elemental creatures to be invincible in such a battlefield.

"I guess I will have to risk losing yet another leader," Saleen thought as he summoned Flare. His Quickcloud turned flaming red. Flare's flight speed enabled him to catch up to Saleen. His stead grew a pair of horns ever since he left the Imperial City of the Abyss with Saleen. Nothing else had changed different about him.

"Kill that guy. Beware of his rear though, Gloria was torn to shreds by a miniaturized magic cannon," Saleen said while pointing at Imposa.

"Acknowledged, master." Flare sped up his stead and rushed at Imposa.

Imposa was facing Saleen on his disk. The leader of the Vermillion Knights shot out of Saleen's cloud, and Imposa was filled with nothing but envy and jealousy. "Just why does this Saleen have such good luck? I myself advanced to grade-9 when I was young myself. If I had not been so into alchemy, I would have advanced to grade-10 and become the most powerful mage in existence."

Imposa traveled everywhere and failed to find any elemental creatures worthy of his command. Despite being of such a young age, Saleen had been able to gather all six badges!

Dark Blue had not been able to make it still. He simply flew in the sky quietly and watched Imposa's battle from afar. Seeing how Imposa fled about in a panic within the vicinity of the towers, there simply were no words to describe how pleased he was.

"That wretched sorcerer forced me and Belivare out of our seats ever since he came to Dragon Island. The grand duke listened to every word he said and gave him all the materials and resources he could have ever wanted, yet when I asked for just a single weapon, all I got was him rolling his eyes instead. Paying the price for all you have done, I guess? You are far too cocky, mage. Now I am just going to sit here and see how you will hold out on your own."

Dark Blue was born and raised in Cloudflow, and Cloudflow people were known to hold grudges. Imposa had no idea that he had been on the bad side of the golden grand swordmaster, and even hoped that the lauded swordsman would have been able to help him get rid of the pesky trouble that was Saleen.

The Vermillion Knight leader charged at him with four other Vermillion Knights riding Flaming Horses tagging behind. Imposa was unable to hold anything back anymore. If he was unable to kill off the grade-10 elemental creature coming for his neck, he would have been the one to end up dead instead.

The speed of the metallic disk beneath Imposa's feet slowed considerably and let out a grinding noise. The disk with a diameter of over thirty yards folded in surreal ways, encasing Imposa in the center. The huge disk transformed shortly after into something over twenty yards tall and looked like Imposa himself.

Not even the Mechanical Soul would have been able to reach such speeds with transformation. Saleen had nothing but admiration for Imposa's art at alchemy, yet Saleen had no choice but to kill one such talented person. That was because he was able to see nothing but greed in Imposa's eyes, greed fulfilled at his expense. As such, Imposa's desire was something that he could never satiate, and that made it impossible to have the alchemist serve him.

There was no way Saleen would have given himself up to Imposa for research after all, making their conflict of interests an irreconcilable one.

Flare rammed into the large alchemic machine Imposa turned into without second thoughts. Sparks flew, and both recoiled more than one-hundred yards away respectively from the collision. A ferocious smirk was seen on the alchemic machine, unlike Imposa's own that was incapable of showing expressions. The huge machine recovered itself and charged at Saleen.

Saleen felt a chill. Flare's charging attack would have been able to burn even average grade-9 beings to death right there and then, yet Imposa's alchemic machine had not suffered so much as a dent. It went pouncing at him right after instead. Saleen's reflexes were quick enough, summoning Elemental Stone Statue Soldiers, who brought two massive magic warhammers down onto Imposa's machine.

Saleen took personal command of the two Elemental Stone Statue Soldiers, unlike how he did Flare. The blunt impact of the warhammers rendered Imposa, who was inside the machine, dizzy for a moment. The momentary dizziness enabled Flare to show up right before Imposa's face. That time, his Flaming Halberd pierced right through the shell of the alchemic machine.

Flare was obviously hundreds of times more cunning than Gloria. After his halberd pierced the machine, he let go right there and then, leaving the weapon lodged into the machine while he himself went straight back to Saleen's elemental badge.

The machine's massive hands lunged at him in response and missed as expected. If Flare had continued attacking, he would have been clapped by the machine. Saleen's ears were ringing from that unimaginable noise resulting from those metallic hands clapping. The arms linking to hands were armed with powerful magic arrays. The impact from the collision between both hands was far more potent than attacks from golden grand swordmasters.

Jola was unable to hold himself back any longer. Despite Flare being a sly one, the elemental creature was nonetheless able to leave a big hole at the shell of the machine. With the Flaming Halberd dispersed, the gaping hole was like a big red target mark.

Golden sword aura gathered to a fine thread and stabbed right through the hole. Jola had not hoped to be able to kill off Imposa right there. Given how complex the structure of the machine was, there was bound to be more than one defense mechanism to it. He was simply doing his best to wreck the machine in front of him with golden sword aura.

Creaking, snapping metal noises were heard from inside the machine, as the golden sword aura tore through an unknown number of parts within. Imposa's movements were hardly slowed though. The long metal tail behind whipped at Saleen like a scorpion whipping its tail.

Saleen summoned the Midnight Fang leader prior, who cut off the large metal tail with one swing of the dark element short sword in their hand. The broken tail did not simply fall or fly off after being cut; it wriggled for a bit before making for Saleen.

There was a very pointy needle at the end of the metal tail. Saleen was very familiar with such needles, as they resembled Nailisi's Dragon Crystal Needles used for ambushing enemies. Other than being very pointy, all that was left was the elemental attributes inherent within the original magic nucleus used to make it.

Nailisi's needle was crafted from Dragon Crystals, and Imposa's needle would definitely not have been something made of magic nucleus below grade-9. The point of the needle was less than one foot away from Saleen's brow, and Jola felt like his soul was about to burst out of his own body. He could not have imagined himself to be making such a dire mistake—leaving Saleen's side.

There was no way he could have blocked the metal tail's attack in time, and no matter how strong Saleen's body was, he was still a mage. If the needle hit its intended target, death would have been upon the target in one hit.