Badge in Azure

Chapter 1368: Evolution of the Magic Tower (Part 1)

It was not that no one wanted to run, but that Saleen’s lightning warriors already had the external fringes surrounded. Lightning attacks continued to rain down from the Lightning Constellation above, which were difficult to evade due to their speed. Any target below level six would have passed out right away after being hit.

As for those above level six, it would have depended on how well their equipment had been. Those who were well-equipped were able to withstand it somewhat, while those who were lacking in terms of equipment would have been stunned.

If one were to end up stunned and paralyzed in the battlefield, the only outcome that would have resulted from it was death.

Killing Fycro would have proven difficult. Fycro had godly items that Saleen knew nothing about. No one what Fycro’s equipment would have been capable of.

He needed to ensure that his secret stayed under wraps for the time being at the very least, despite not knowing what his enemy’s equipment were capable of. Saleen knew well that Fycro had yet to know that he had advanced, and he definitely did not know what Rafel was capable of.

Furthermore, the weapon spirit of his magic amplifier was equipped with an invisible dagger that no one would have been able to track. If none of those were leaked to Fycro, his chances of being able to kill that powerful holy master would have been increased exponentially.

Anyone who were to escape from the battlefield would have enabled Fycro to deduce how powerful Saleen had became.

As such, Saleen deemed it necessary to kill every single one of the Holy See’s soldiers, not letting even one of them escape the battlefield.

Rafel kept her eyes on those high level holy masters, leaving the low level warriors and ascetics to the lightning warriors. Saleen silent recovered his magic chords and thought that Rafel’s Crystal was the still the best skill he had, for being able to kill the target immediately when hit.

The most powerful holy master in the army was killed with a single finger and Saleen suffered little but having half of his magic chords drained, which could be replenished within about an hour.

The Crystal Finger skill seemed to be something reserved for higher levels. Despite being a potent skill for ambushing powerful enemies, he was unable to use it frequently.

Saleen was able to vaguely sense the mystical thing about the Crystal Finger. It was more than a skill that was able to break anything. He would have only probably been able to learn of the other properties of the Crystal Finger after advancing to level 13.

Raphael was definitely more than a level ten mage trainer.

Saleen only felt fortunately that despite having his family badge and the Thunder Dragon Blaster with him, he had never forgotten about training the Crystal Finger skill. That skill itself was considered something like secret arts. It had formidable power and yet a good number of restrictions.

However, when one were to reach high levels with it, it would have been one of those irreplaceable pinnacle spells.

Despite being an intricate weapon, Saleen knew that one day, he had let go of that piece of equipment and cast lightning icicles on his own. By then, attacks using lightning magic would have reached a crude form.

He was able to accomplish something with his Crystal Finger due to having ample experience with it. Once he was able to make a breakthrough, the spell would have came to possess great power.

By then, there was no need to worry about magic chord restrictions, and the skill that was created by Raphael was able to be used at its fullest.

Saleen recalled the moment when he first saw Raphael’s dead body. The person who had been suppressed by the power of the Seal of Divine Power for over a thousand years, still had more power within the bony remains than Saleen as a living being.

It was quite a pity that a genius like him had to suppress his powers to survive on Myers Mainland.

By the time Raphael found the interdimensional space, it was probably too late for him. He would have been able to continue to advance in the interdimensional space, which did not have rule restrictions, instead of dying.

The workings of fate led Raphael to possess formidable intellect and powers, yet he ended up dead while cooped up in his own magic tower all the same, without being able to make another step further. Raphael was indeed born in the wrong time.

If Raphael had been born about a millennium later and made it in time to see the powers of Myers Mainland loosening up, he would have been able to zip about between two planes and continue to grow his powers, advancing before any mages on Myers Mainland.

Saleen put all those thoughts aside and began to assess his current location. They were at flatlands below a hill and the temperature behind him was apparently higher, suggesting that place to be a volcano in the interdimensional space.

He took to the air and looked to the other side of the hill. There was already a jungle about 100 kilometers away.

His Elemental Eye was unable to see any further but he was able to tell that it was the jungle that he and Lex passed through all those years ago. However, there was no longer any signs of the edge of the jungle being burned by some great fires.

Information constantly sent from the interdimensional space told him that the jungle was growing at a frightening rate. It was already about 1000 square kilometers by then.

Sika and Jason both traveled to the interdimensional space through the teleportation portal, so they would have definitely been at Raphael’s magic tower.

Raphael’s magic tower has had its combat functions restored by the Sreeger Island mages. Jason was a level 11 mage trainer. Even if Fycro were to bring a huge army before the tower, he would not have been able to take the place down right away.

Furthermore, there was also Sika being around. Sika was a level ten nature priest and possessed brute strength surpassing that of dragons. With Sika around, no one would have been able to withstand Sika’s attack in enclosed areas, even if they were to be able to get inside the tower.

Saleen weighed the pros and cons and gave up the idea of flying to the magic tower right away.

The fighting on the battlefield neared its end. Saleen stayed airborne and picked on any remaining enemies on the battlefield using magic. It was due to sheer bad luck that the Holy See forces ended up being annihilated.

Saleen appeared right behind the army and their most powerful holy master was ambushed by Saleen with the Crystal Finger, dying on the spot.

The commander had some lapses of judgment in their command, and Saleen came to have his way slaughtering them.

It was worth noting that Saleen’s lightning warriors would have required about half an hour to have all of them surrounded. Many could have escaped in that period of time.

Saleen had the lightning warriors brought the corpses away carefully and clean up the battlefield. Saleen then cast Purification from the Lightning Constellation and destroyed every bit of remaining information around the place, before putting the Lightning Constellation away and taking Rafel to the jungle.

There was a massive army of Fycro, numbering at millions, around the jungle, attempting to break through the place and enter the magic tower’s vicinity.

Raphael’s magic tower was built on a mountain and the areas surrounding the mountain was where Saleen were to relocate his people.

The Holy See army suffered heavy casualties in the jungle, as there were huge number of magic beasts within and those beasts shared little in common with those found on Myers Mainland. Those magic beasts were ferocious and they did not attack each other due to having little sense of territory, attacking only humans who entered the jungle.

Those magic beasts were also capable of complex skills. Holy masters did not have habits prevalent among mages. If they were to dissect those beasts, they would have found that the magic patterns or magic arrays found in their skulls were not natural ones.

Those magic beasts were creations of Raphael and would have devolved if they were to be let loose on Myers Mainland, making them capable of surviving only in that still-growing interdimensional space. Those magic beasts also served as protectors of the magic tower.

Saleen was attacked by those magic beasts when he first entered the jungle, and things had been dire back then.

Lex had been a level five grand mage back then and even she almost ended up dead in that jungle. The army’s equipment would not have been any better than what Lex carried back then, and their combat capacities would have probably paled in comparison to Saleen, who had countless scrolls with him.

Furthermore, all of those magic beasts shared one common trait—exceptionally high resistance to divine arts. Divine spells would have only worked when the level difference was very high and obvious.

Other than that, killing those magic beasts required use of magic and weapons of soldiers.

There were but only a handful of mages within the ranks of the Holy See. Furthermore, in order to keep things under wraps, Fycro did not bring even a single mage with him. Fycro would not have trusted any mage, as he only trusted those holy masters serving him.

The jungle had an extremely wide area and not even the army consisting of millions would have been able to completely surround the place.

But then again, given that the jungle was surrounded by plains, it became easy for Fycro’s army to maintain contact with each other. There was no fear of anything slipping past them with their scouts covering the areas occupied by the armies.

None of those was actually much of an obstacle to Saleen.

He cast clouds around him and the area shrouded exceeded ten kilometers radius. No one would have been aware of a human flying in the clouds when he was flying high above.

The army that Saleen attacked was outside their barricade and there was a hill standing between those two armies. There were armies like that all over the place and losing one would have only alerted Fycro, telling him that there was someone coming, but he would not have known how said army was annihilated.

By the time Fycro found out what happened, Saleen had been long inside the magic tower.

Saleen continued to cast lightning bolts when he was in flight, going so far to even mimic natural thunder. The interdimensional space was growing and the sun in the sky was far hotter than when Saleen first came. The sun had already grown to look like a huge fireball by then.

It rained frequently around the jungle, so having a huge cloud flying by would have hardly alerted anyone.

Saleen flew past the jungle without problems and even went to check on the enemy around while he was at it. Armies consisting of over 100 thousand were found outside and they were marching into the jungle.

The way it was done was crude, using puppets put together by divine smiths and having slaves that Fycro brought along to chop down trees. He intended to build a road in that thousand-kilometer wide jungle.

That could not have been helped. The Holy See’s armies might have been powerful, but knights required flat terrain to bring their fullest to bear on the enemy. Skills of the Holy See knights were restricted within the jungle, making them inferior to infantry in terms of combat capacity.

Fycro came ready. After the trees were cut down, there were immediately transported to the main camp of the army, where divine smiths crafted all manner of gadgetry and equipment with them. Common fauna which could not have been used to craft equipment were used to build barracks.

Fycro attacked the jungle cautiously. That was how mighty ones do things.

Saleen was, however, at ease. The plants in that jungle grew at frightening rates. A massive, continuous storm was all it would have needed to have the chopped down areas to have trees growing all over them again.

It was simply impossible for Fycro to take his time attacking the jungle. The magic tower was capable of controlling the growth of those plants. If his teacher was willing to do it, he could have dropped magic nuclei into magic arrays and wasted all of Fycro’s efforts quickly.

When Raphael was building his magic tower and planting the jungle all those years ago, he knew something like that would have happened.

Saleen flew past the jungle from above. He looked at the inner parts of the jungle when he reached the other end, finding metal towers built every single kilometer. That was a method of laying down magic net. Constructing metal towers so close to each other was a way to conserve energy.

Some small metal towers acted as nodes of the magic net, providing magic energy to low level enchanters without spending too many magic nuclei.

The magic net did not detect Saleen’s presence, as he was the one who designed it and he oversaw the creation of its parts.