Badge in Azure

If Mofeesto had been a mage, he wouldn’t have bitten the dust so easily. The reason is, Saleen’s Soul Shock skill emitted signals that only higher-level mages would have detected and exploited. In fact, the skill was made specifically to target warriors below level-10 whose souls were comparatively weaker.

Saleen summoned the Winged Skull all the way from Metatrin City.

“Master?”

“Extract his soul,” Saleen snapped pointing at Mofeesto. “I need details on this military town and the procedures for mobilizing the forces here.”

The Winged Skull sauntered up to the dead man and ripped his head off. Then it sucked the blood and guts from the top of his severed head. Imagine: Mofeesto, a true might at the pinnacle of level-10, had his soul sucked into the blood-soul tower of the Winged Skull’s eye.

Mofeesto succumbed to the Winged Skull as soon as his soul was sucked out, giving Saleen all the information he needed.

Saleen then summoned Rossen. The water puppet emerged and changed his looks into Mofeesto according to the magic projections Saleen had recorded earlier. It’s too bad Saleen couldn’t do anything about the soldiers he had just burned. After all, he had only one water puppet.

He had already planned his next steps right before he killed Mofeesto. There was no way he would have weaseled out of killing a general of the empire otherwise. Even if Lex had protected him, both would have eventually been chased out of the Qin Empire.

I can’t just storm the place with my troops. If that was possible, Lex wouldn’t have had to put up with all that sh*t in Holy Rock City.

Saleen knew the key points of the operation very well, which was why he did what he did in such a clean way. He not only killed Mofeesto but also summoned the Winged Skull to take the general’s soul away. No one would be able to find out what actually transpired.

The corpse he left behind was to be added to the list of atrocities Alchemy City was to be blamed for.

Saleen pondered his options. There were still three other towns. If he took all of them, the number of troops taken would be more than a million.

He had only originally planned to take one town so that his men would suffer fewer casualties when storming Alchemy City’s lair. While the lightning warriors were formidable, it was impossible for Saleen to just keep controlling them. If he encountered any danger, it would have been impossible to command the scene.

From the looks of things, it was hard to tell how many others had been taken over by the forces of Golden Plains. Saleen felt he had no choice but to test them out one by one. If Lex needed troops to be deployed, things would have become tricky.

It was entirely possible, however, to coverup Mofeesto’s murder as the work of a solo assassin. But Saleen would have no way of weaseling out of killing everyone else near the general.

Saleen was forced to summon Nailisi next.

Ultimate Shapeshifting was something that could only last a set period, unlike the water puppet’s transformations. He was brilliant at mimicking a person’s appearance and personality based on the data obtained from the person’s soul.

Saleen’s encounters in the other three towns were all the same as the first town. He made a point of killing the general of the other military towns before bringing the troops of two towns and returning to Safilos’s territory.

An army consisting of over 400,000 troops was stationed on Saleen’s Floating City but the area did not seem to be congested. Mobilizing those forces took an entire day, and that was only possible because Saleen had large numbers of enchanters who used magic to transport the troops onto the city.

It was not feasible to repair Safilos’s city in just a day. Saleen left the army from the military towns on the Floating City when he returned. All units needed to swap their gear for storming a city of mages.

Doing that required more time: even the most elite of armies would not be able to swap all equipment out in such a short period of time.

Had it not been for Saleen’s prediction that there would be one such day and getting a ton of magic armors ready, the gear-swapping part would have taken months, and that would have been considered fast.

The troop leaders from the two towns were more than just their respective generals. Before Saleen left, he had duped the leading figures of the armies into the commander’s tent before finishing them off. With a level-13 around, he didn’t encounter much resistance.

The entire group of commanding figures was replaced by the demons.

Fortunately, those demons were from the temple guards to begin with and as such were all exceedingly well-trained, so they had no problem leading the elite troops of Qin.

It was especially easy because those demons were all familiar with how Saleen’s magic armors worked. As a result, the quick training sessions enabled them to proceed smoothly.

All that took three more days to finish. That was about the time the Violet Angel was about to kick the bucket. Coincidentally, it was also the time when Saleen took the Floating City to the set of coordinates given by Rafel to storm the lair of Alchemy City’s mages.

Rafel led Saleen and the others before that tall mountain, where Saleen’s Floating City was looming in the distance. A metal road extended from the Floating City and jabbed into the mountain.

It shook violently as Saleen cast Lightning Explosion from the Floating City. All sound-transmission magic arrays in the mountain were disabled by Saleen’s thundering sound.

The army of bug angels gushed into the place in a frenzy. Saleen had about 100,000 of them that he brought for the siege.

The demon army mixed with the Qin elite troops was then deployed after the bug angels charged. All types of warriors stormed the lair and took over the interior of the mountain. Mages went in after the warriors and provided coordinates for the enchanters in the Floating City right away.

Countless magic spells burst and slithered through the troops, attacking the other side of that Baldur’s Gate.

It was heavily guarded by a group of sorcerers, who couldn’t figure out who the enemy was before they were reduced to elemental dust by the magic bombardment from the enchanters.

With the mages guiding the attacks of the enchanters in the Floating City, the spells hit the enemy swiftly and accurately.

In the blink of an eye, the external fringes of the Baldur’s Gate were lost to the enemy.

Rafel was the first to charge into the gate. Saleen and Safilos followed right behind the Bug Angel Warriors. Safilos changed into the armor Saleen had made for him and held his purple-reddish longsword, who was brimming with killing intent.

However, all he saw was the ground littered with corpses after charging inside. Rafel was just too powerful. She found that the rules of Myers Mainland that constricted her powers were no longer in place after rushing through the gate. In response, she undid her seal and pumped her powers up all the way to level-13.

A level-13 combat angel taking on the mages guarding the gate was a blood bath.

Safilos was crestfallen. He had never experienced a battle like that before. Saleen just smiled and said, “Your Highness, this is normal. When Myers Mainland’s powers rose by one whole rank, our troops couldn’t be used for such purposes anymore.”

“Of course, they’ll still be used to conquer planes. The gods probably would descend on us and we wouldn’t get a chance to be enemies anymore. At the very least, things would stay this way for at least another 1,000 years, ” Saleen added.

Safilos followed the army onward in silence. The Baldur’s Gate isolated the Floating City’s power, but the portal was could not be shut. The Floating City’s power placed a tight lockdown on the elements around. The gate became the best passage for armies to pass through.

As the vanguard, Rafel killed her way through her enemies. It was an independent space instead of an interdimensional space and the area was also smaller than an interdimensional space. There were also mountains and rivers, but no stars.

Although the spaces the Baldur’s Gate were connected to were small, each one had environments suitable for humans. The gates and spaces became forceful arsenals of the Second Dynasty, enabling the regime to deploy troops anywhere, anytime.

The mages of Alchemy City had were not able to completely mobilize that equipment, or they would have brought all the mages to storm Metatrin City.

Saleen naturally understood that if the mainland was to advance even further, it would have been possible to use all of the Baldur’s Gate’s powers. At the moment, he was compelled to take the Baldur’s Gate away from Alchemy City before they had completely mastered using the equipment.

When the powers throughout Myers Mainland slumped to the bottom, Alchemy City had been unable to use the gate despite possessing them.

With the powers across Myers Mainland now capable of accommodating beings between level-10 and level-12, Alchemy City moved everything important thereafter they were able to open the gate. The Elemental Hand came to assume full control of the gate.

It did not bother to fight Saleen all out when he went to attack the city back then, because they were moving their equipment and the things in the warehouses were not the most important.

The very reason the mages had given up on Alchemy City itself and entered the Baldur’s Gate was that the gate was a mobile device and could appear anywhere.

If someone from the Elemental Hand had been able to enter Metatrin City and activate the Baldur’s Gate from inside Metatrin City, he could have circumvented the defense using Dante’s Sequence and killed his way into the temple.

To do that, however, the powers across Myers Mainland would have had to advance yet again, and mages at level-13 and above would have been required to appear among the mages in Alchemy City.

The Baldur’s Gate was more effective than Saleen’s Floating City, which cost a fortune to use. Even with the use of magic furnaces, Saleen wouldn’t have had the Floating City fly for prolonged periods. Baldur’s Gate was equivalent to a magic amplifier.

The problem though is that the person had to be level-13 and above to use that magic amplifier.

Saleen was finished waiting. If he had waited one minute more, the Elemental Hand would have been fully developed by then, and it would have been a case of crying over spilled milk for Saleen.

The space on the other side of Baldur’s Gate was around 5,000 meters tall. Huge crystalline bodies were embedded above that looked like twinkling stars. Ah! So there were others who mimicked the sun and the moon.

Those crystalline bodies moved in the sky and without settling on any fixed positions, yet they were able to add to the Baldur’s Gate’s strength by a considerable margin.

Those things were definitely of higher levels than magic power furnaces—they were products of joint efforts between astrologers and mages. None of them was made again after the Second Dynasty, and no one had been able to replicate them since.

Saleen saw the castle of the mages that consisted of countless magic towers.

Far from feeling fearful, he was overjoyed.

“Your Highness, let’s go together,” Saleen said as he called Rafel to his side to protect him. Then he headed for the castle.

The mages’ castle had not been built by the people of Alchemy City but out of the ruins from the Second Dynasty. It was hardly surprising that the Elemental Hand had been so willing to give up Alchemy City without bothering to fight the skeletal dragon.

With that mages’ castle in their possession, Alchemy City became virtually worthless by comparison.

Safilos was initially rather worried, but the prince knew that Saleen was someone who valued his life a lot. If Saleen dared to charge ahead, it meant he knew what he was doing.

There was no doubt that Saleen knew what he was doing! It was impossible for the Elemental Hand to have level-13 mages in their midst now. They hadn’t been able to spend enough time around here, so it was impossible for them to advance further using the mages’ castle.

Saleen’s teacher Jason was the odd man out. Even if there were a few lucky ones out there, the number of people able to make it to level-13 as of late would not have exceeded two.

Saleen had done his calculations and felt he would retreat unscathed. With all his equipment in top fighting condition, there was nothing he needed to be afraid of.

Saleen followed Rafel and charged into the castle consisting of magic towers while being protected by 100 metal angels.

The light of elements was dim in the dark Baldur’s Gate. Magic explosions of eerie colors were seen everywhere in the sky. Saleen did not bring the Floating City into the Baldur’s Gate. He cast Lightning Constellation and expanded the lightning territory to a radius over 120 kilometers.