Badge in Azure

Nailisi was not where she was supposed to be due to her being petty and cautious. As her powers developed, the imp’s intelligence grew. Her way of looking at problems was not what it had once been. It began to weigh a lot more on her mind.

Saleen was in an inconvenient position to dispose of Jalin. He also needed to acquire the secrets of her magic.

Nailisi truly came to want to enter the cemetery of the giant. The very reason she wanted to do so was none other than to set Jalin up. She had her own plans, which she had no intention of telling Saleen.

If Saleen came to know about it, and Jalin knew something was off with him, the plan would not be able to be executed.

The battle beneath the city never ceased. The two head inquisitors were far more at ease by then. While they had lost the fourth head inquisitor, it was clear that none of the people from the city walls dared to come down. They had resorted to throwing magic fire shells from above.

While damage brought about by the shells was deadly to huddled up targets, especially city buildings, the Holy See forces’ camps were no longer packed together and had been set up sparsely.

Furthermore, there were holy masters guarding the camps. Their only task was to stop the spread of any fires happening with divine spells.

Saleen had metal flyers commit arson once every hour. That was done to have his enemies let their guard down. After harassing them several times, the two head inquisitors were no longer all that concerned about attacks from Daliang City.

If it had not been for Lex deciding to go to Holy Rock City and Alchemy City for help, Saleen would have wanted to go all out by unleashing all of his ancient figures, killing every single member of the Tribunal forces.

The cost-benefit analysis of that action would not have been a sound one. The ancient figures had level nine souls and level 10 bodies, but they were only able to bring power somewhat above level eight to bear on their enemies.

Saleen needed time to train the ancient figures to become true level nine elite troops. If he were to fight head on with the Tribunal forces like that, there would likely be no way to repair the lost ancient figures.

There was no way to replenish the numbers brought about by the loss of ancient figures, but the Holy See’s forces were practically limitless in that regard. Saleen was not insane enough to think that his forces were powerful enough to wipe out Tanggulasi Empire’s population, which numbered at 200,000,000.

If he were to truly enrage the Lord of Glory to such an extent, he would turn the entire Tanggulasi Empire into a virtual kingdom of gods and sacrifice all his believers just so that he could wipe Saleen from the face of that plane. He would so even if he risked losing the faith from this plane.

The Tribunal forces slacked. Both Jalin and Nailisi saw an opening that could be exploited.

Nailisi descended from the other side of the city and found a spot with no one around. She took Jalin east of the city, which Jalin did not object to. The piece of the giant’s bone crystal would have easily lasted her for a month. It would have also heightened her understanding of earth magic.

Jalin was indeed powerful. Despite being in such an element-impoverished environment, she was still able to bring Nailisi with her and turn into a shadow, running on the ground like she was flying, just by extracting the energies of the bone crystal from her magic staff.

To put it more accurately, Jalin would have been faster running on the ground than sorcerers flying in the air.

She was gradually able to feel the sealed power within the ground beneath her when she was running, resonating with the bone crystal on her magic staff. While she was incapable of borrowing the power of the ground, she became more adept at controlling her own magic and was able to be more fluid with manipulating the details.

Both of them arrived east of the city, but Jalin did not stop. Instead, she charged right into the other ear hole of the giant. The dirt was over 32 feet thick in that ear hole.

Other mages would suffer concussions so massive that they would have vomited on the spot, even if they were able to avoid getting injured. Jalin, on the other hand, had been able to carve a hole by ramming straight through the dirt, continuing to charge inside with Nailisi.

The Tribunal forces only had cavalry units stationed around the places near the city walls, for fear of getting hit by random rocks flung from the walls. The forces were only alerted when both of them had barged right through the other ear hole of the giant’s statue.

They still needed time to mobilize the army and the powerful ones. Nailisi and Jalin had gone deep into the statue by the time they realized what had happened.

The Tribunal forces were only able to make do with what they had. They mobilized available men to set up defenses, trying to prevent any fossilized gods from emerging from the other end.

Jalin only stopped moving after getting deep into the statue. “So tell me, what do you want by telling me to get here?”

“Your mask,” Nailisi answered with a beaming smile.

“Impossible. That’s something gifted by my teacher.” Jalin refused without any hesitation.

“No problem. Make me a narrow passage,” Nailisi ordered.

Jalin pointed her staff at the front. The 62-foot-wide cave had yellow crystalline bodies growing out of the walls, which spread further as they grew. The passage’s width was reduced to about 19 feet.

“That’s all I’ve got,” Jalin said with a pant.

“Thank you,” Nailisi answered with a pretentious tone.

Jalin felt her chest heaving and even started to get nauseous. She would not have done anything so fake in the past. Yet, Nailisi seemed very adept at being fake. The demon even let her know that her words had no sincerity behind them.

Jalin coldly said, “You’re just a bonded creature. Saleen won’t let you kill me, so what are you going to do about that?”

Nailisi turned around and smirked at Jalin. “I don’t know, Jalin. I’ve got to try it out to know. Just relax.”

Her smirk made Jalin feel dizzy. Nailisi’s smile was incredibly charming, yet it was also cold and lethal. Jalin was unable to do anything but tell herself that the demon was making things clear because she dared not actually do anything.

Jalin had been judging Nailisi’s actions with commonsense. According to the principles of contracts, bonded creatures were incapable of violating commands from their masters.

She had no idea that not only were the two bonded creatures free to violate his orders, they were even willing to suppress their own powers and refrain from advancing just so to not lose that contract within their souls.

There was simply no way Jalin would have been able to figure out something that eerie on her own.

Nailisi had no time to bicker with Jalin, nor was she bothered to do so. Jalin was not the Winged Skull, so she saw no need to bicker with the sorcerer. She took out her 12 Notes of First Purgatory and opened a portal, throwing the Book of Pathos taken from the hands of the fourth head inquisitor into it.

The Book of Pathos was packed with over a thousand demon runes. Nailisi went to great lengths to suppress the powers within and hid it in a dimension stone. The book immediately made the demon runes burst after leaving the dimension stone, casting a strong light.

The new space was the size of hundreds of square feet. The burst of power from the Book of Pathos immediately expanded that space. At that moment, the fossilized gods had also found the other exit and were attempting to rush from the passage that Jalin created.

The fossilized gods rushed straight into Nailisi’s collection purgatories. The Book of Pathos continued to emit bright light, dissolving the hard shell of the fossilized gods’ bodies. The cores of the fossilized gods exploded with a loud bang before being turned into smoke-like energy and absorbed into the Book of Pathos.

The faith of the Lord of Glory had two different sides to it. One side used the kind, compassionate nature of living beings to spread the faith. The other side exemplified the Lord of Glory’s overbearing nature.

The nature of the Lord of Glory’s divinity was also incredibly xenophobic. Once this trait was exposed and the disguise torn apart, the Lord of Glory would have given it his all to kill the other gods.

The Book of Pathos brought those traits of the Lord of Glory to their fullest. When being controlled by someone, the light within would have even dazed someone like Nailisi, who was strong of will, and rendered her almost completely purified.

If the Book of Pathos were to encounter other gods while not being controlled by anyone, it would have turned into an extremely violent and brutal killing machine.

The fossilized gods outside the cemetery numbered in the millions. The fossilized gods that rushed into the purgatory were immediately killed by the book and their energies absorbed. Not even their souls were able to escape.

When the powers of the fossilized gods absorbed exceeded the book’s capacity, said powers would have been expelled and be used to expand the space of that purgatory. The 19-foot-wide cave had the portal to the purgatory right at its end.

Nailisi sat back and watched the fossilized gods rush into her collection of purgatories in a frenzy. They were all quickly killed and assimilated by the Book of Pathos.

The book lost all sense of restrain after no longer being controlled by the fourth head inquisitor. Any fossilized gods appearing before it were shined on with its light and killed.

The awakened fossilized gods were all beings of low level, at only level eight or nine. The equipment, which even someone at the pinnacle of level nine like Nailisi was unable to resist, had an easy job killing all the gods that were just awakened. As the number of dead fossilized gods grew, so did the power of the Book of Pathos.

The ones entering later were stronger, but their powers paled in comparison to that of the quickly expanding Book of Pathos nonetheless.

Any equipment had its limits. If the Book of Pathos had a spirit dwelling within and was controlled by someone, it would have kept absorbing power and chose to slowly digest and absorb, raising its own level before attempting to devour more enemies.

However, the owner of the book died too soon. There were no spirits within to control it. There was no way it could have restrained itself when the other gods were around. The space expanded and gradually reached the limit of the 12 Notes of First Purgatory itself.

Within the space where height, width, and length were all 36 miles, the Book of Pathos silently hovered in midair, casting light of unparalleled power. The only thing unaffected within was the void that separated the spaces of the collection of purgatories.

After the space expanded to its limit, there was nowhere for the Book of Pathos to expel its absorbed powers. The pale yellow book began to bloat itself. Eventually, the book was no longer able to hold the massive power within it. A specter emerged from its pages, which was over 650 feet tall, and shone all over with holy light. It held a scepter and looked around with an incredibly enraged expression.

“Who is it!? Who is it that has imprisoned my will!?” the specter yelled. Where the scepter in its hand was pointed, all fossilized gods rushing at it were turned to dust.

If there were any adherents of the Holy See, they would have been surprised to see that the 650-foot-tall specter was identical to the statue of the Lord of Glory.

With a loud boom, the will of the Lord of Glory came out in full form. The Book of Pathos was torn to shreds. Panic was seen on the face of the specter, without a hint of imposing might befitting a god.

The being pointed the scepter to the sky and cast holy light, attempting to break through the walls around it. But, the holy light reflected was absorbed by its body.

It wanted very badly to stop absorbing energy like that, but there was nothing it was able to do to change it. If it had awakened earlier to control the book, it would not have suffered such a terrible fate.

As the power increased, the Lord of Glory’s will was no longer able to handle it. It began to tear at its body in pain.

Eventually, a fossilized god took flight and rammed straight at the specter’s leg. The leg was quickly encased in a rock-like substance, which lessened the pain.