Badge in Azure

Saleen was already delayed for a month. Furthermore, he had no idea if the passage of time would be different at the edge of the crystal wall system. If the passage of time there was too slow, he would be delayed for an even longer period of time.

As such, he no longer cared about losses of any kind, and went on to deploy over 500,000 of his lightning warriors out to look for locations of stable elements.

The place where the Star Shuttle crashed was a lair of a magic beast. After Saleen probed the place with his Eye of Souls, he quickly left the place.

The rivers and lakes around were all a weird green color. The location was very odd, and the characteristics of many creatures were very different from the main plane. The elements were unable to align as they usually did, resulting in the weird natural scenery and creatures around him.

Saleen extended his soul power and quickly found that even one’s soul power was limited. He had only been able to search a considerable greater area after trying to spread his soul power like he did when manipulating Water Flame.

His probing range, which usually had a radius of several hundreds kilometers, was restricted to little over than 80, which he deemed acceptable.

Using the lair of the spider magic beast as a base of operations, Saleen and the others searched everywhere around it, and they had actually found an independent space. While said space was not all that huge, it contained quite a number of magic nuclei, dragon crystals, and even broken divine personas.

It went without saying that the highest number of items found there was divine crystals. Gods were capable of consuming those orally. Eating divine crystals when the gods were low in power of faith was like how humans ate food when they were low on energy.

While the loot was indeed quite huge, Saleen hardly felt anything about it. His greatest achievement there was subjugating the Heretic God and getting himself a level 18 divine persona. That piece alone was worth over 100 times more than everything found there.

Level 15 divine personas were still considered relatively commonplace, as their crystal wall system still had many level 15 gods around. However, level 16 ones became a lot rarer. That was why he had been so grateful when Jason gave him a piece of level 17 divine persona for training purposes.

The value of a level 18 divine persona was practically limitless.

But then again, he would only be able to do so after killing the Heretic God, which was, at the moment, being pinned inside the mass of Aqua Fulgur. It would take the god hundreds of thousands of years to tame the place naturally. The resilience of a level 18 god’s divine persona eclipsed that of any material that was known to Saleen.

Furthermore, the Heretic God’s power of the Source had yet to truly disappear. While the goddess had taken a great deal of it, there was still a small portion left in the head, which the Heretic God absorbed into its divine persona in order to prepare for its resurrection.

Saleen had taken the Heretic God’s collection and let the lightning warriors spread out and search for the most stable space on that star. Saleen helped Guffen rework the Star Shuttle while he commanded the search. He loved that piece of flying equipment, and it had only split apart even after diving from heights of several hundreds of kilometers, instead of being irreparably broken. If he were to use it on Myers Mainland, it would have been a lot safer.

The lightning warriors took half a day working outside, and barely managed to find a place where the elements were relatively orderly.

Saleen inspected the place personally, finding it to be around a mountain of copper. A location that was rich in metals like that would not have usually been safe for laying down a teleportation portal, however, things were opposite there.

Saleen thought for a bit and patched up any lacking parts of the mountain of copper he found. The state of the elements had indeed become a lot more stable.

The teleportation portal that Saleen crafted was a permanent teleportation portal, which meant that unless damaged by external forces, the portal would be able to keep working for over 10000 years. If maintenance were to be carried out regularly, it could stay working for an even longer period of time.

The means with which he carried out the maintenance, however, was to leave behind several lightning warriors who had developed a degree of self awareness.

Being able to lay out a teleportation portal meant that returning to Myers Mainland would not be a problem. As for the teleportation portal’s fuel consumption, Saleen did not even care about that anymore. The teleportation portal was finished half a day later. Saleen took the frost dragon and Rafel back to Metatrin City.

The first thing he did as soon as he returned was to contact Lex to inquire about things going on at the frontlines.

Lex was at Holy Rock City, but she was concerned with affairs happening at the frontlines. The divine kingdom had already deployed fighting forces totaling at several hundreds of millions. The fighting at the frontlines was near collapse. Jason brought any surviving men found and retreated to his line of defense. Lion City was already lost.

However, there were few casualties with Saleen’s men. The human army had to pull back and let the legion of angels invade Cloudflow. The people of Myers Mainland had finally realized just how powerful the divine kingdom was. More and more people signed up to join Lex’s army.

Saleen still needed a very long time before he would be truly able to unite the mainland. Without pressure from the divine kingdom, it would have taken him decades more to do so. Resistance to his rule would have been more than just the private armies of the nobles; it would have also been due to the passive-aggressive attitude from the people.

With the god creatures putting the pressure onto them, when the Lord of Glory was out to destroy Myers Mainland without any intentions of taking prisoners, everyone would know what the options left for them were.

Cloudflow had been in such a predicament because the ones submitting to the Fifth Dynasty were not of high enough numbers, and that was why Jason eventually decided to retreat.

Losses at the frontlines were not great, but casualties in the surrounding Cloudflow people were high.

Lex reminded Saleen that Nailisi had an urgent matter that she needed to discuss with him. He headed for the teleportation portal again after hearing the news and came to Daliang City. Saleen did not lay any teleportation portal down near Lion City, as the place was hardly considered safe. Travel between teleportation portals required relatively stable places.

He rode on the Star Shuttle to travel from Daliang City to the frontlines. That Star Shuttle streaked past in the sky, burning like a meteor and producing an intense sonic boom as it flew.

The Star Shuttle was more than a tool for traveling. It was also useful for ramming into things and people, as even the Heretic God had suffered considerably from the crash of the Star Shuttle. While the body was just that of a level 15 magic beast, it was still able to tell just how terrifying the craft was.

Saleen liked the way of flying as well, as it enabled him to sit back and relax in the craft. He could also cast magic spells or use the Star Shuttle for attacks. Unless taken to extreme speeds, there was hardly any need for added defense with that piece of equipment.

Saleen told the frost dragon about the invasion from the divine kingdom. Guffen frowned and said, “Mage, the Lord of Glory is but a level 15 god and while his fighting prowess might be near level 16 in the divine kingdom, maybe even at level 17, but with you, me, and your teacher all attacking him in the divine kingdom, the chances of us killing it would still be very high.”

“So, you’re asking why I would let a god come here and kill the people of this plane?” Saleen was able to see between the lines of the frost dragon’s words. The dragons hated the gods the most. Gods might have looked for humans to become their believers, but there would absolutely never be any dragon willing to take faith in a god.

“Indeed.” Guffen did not shirk the question. While the dragon was unable to just go against Saleen, it needed to voice its thoughts nonetheless.

“There were about 100 million of the Lord of Glory’s believers on this plane, and some of them still harbor thoughts about that god.”

“I understand.” Guffen was not human, and it would never be able to relate to what the humans have been through. The tragedies of war had nothing to do with the dragon. As such, Guffen found Saleen’s explanation very satisfying. Clearing out a god’s faith in a plane was a very difficult task. From the dragon’s point of view, what Saleen did was actually considered merciful.

“Let’s have a look inside the divine kingdom.” Saleen pointed at the gates of the divine kingdom. Guffen laughed and flew the Star Shuttle straight at the gates. There were angels lining up at the gates, waiting to emerge from it. The Star Shuttle was wrapped in a thick mass of fire dragon constructs with a width of several hundreds of meters. While there were few angels that ended up dead at the collision, a great many had their feathers lit up.

The feathers of angels were constructs of energy. Temperatures from having them lit up would be enough to melt steel.

The angels had no idea what actually hit them. They only saw something circled by countless fire dragons crashing into them. Untold numbers of angels were reduced to mush in the collision, and those that were even just grazed suffered torn muscles and broken bones.

The frost dragon found that to be fun, and went on crashing into the army of angels all over the place. The damage done by doing so was far higher than that of magic spells. The Star Shuttle was crafted using hundreds of thousands of kilograms of materials after all. Even without magic spells reinforcing it, no angel would have been able to take on a head-on collision from it.

Saleen remained vigilant and told Guffen to not venture too deep. Slaughtering the angels near the exit of the divine kingdom would have been enough. There were millions of angels gathered there and all of them were above level nine. None of them were able to do anything to resist Saleen’s attacks.

Guffen rammed them for a bit and felt it had had enough with them, before heeding Saleen’s words and taking the Star Shuttle around, returning from where they came from.

The Star Shuttle descended on the fallen Lion City, destroying hundreds of fortifications while sticking near to the ground. Lion City had been reduced to frontline territory of the angels, and the place lost its defenses altogether from what Saleen just pulled.

Saleen knew that Guffen had been locked up by the goddess for too long and resented the goddess, resulting in it taking it all out on the Lord of Glory. He deemed that to be a good thing, as it saved him the need to convince the dragon when he needed to clash with the Lord of Glory head-on. The dragon would have brought everything it had into that fight.

The ones on Jason’s line of defense discovered the commotion that Saleen just pulled. The line of defense had a human army of over a million soldiers as well as millions of demons garrisoned. While it was not to say that the place was impregnable, but until the Lord of Glory were to lead the charge personally, there would be absolutely no way the place would fall.

It was Nailisi’s idea to retreat in the first place.

Jason did not initially want to do so, but once he knew that Nailisi put someone at the side of the Lord of Glory, he yielded and let Nailisi have it her way.

Nailisi was elated to find Saleen home. After he greeted Jason and introduced the frost dragon, Nailisi went inside his magic cube anxiously.

There was no need to worry about being overheard by anyone else in such a place.

Nailisi demonstrated what she pulled by explaining who Abyrus was to them, and Saleen was very pleased. He said to the frost dragon, “Seems like we should be able to get rid of the Lord of Glory for good soon enough.”

“Timing is of utmost importance,” Guffen replied calmly.

Hearing Nailisi’s elaboration of Abyrus’ power, Guffen was already able to tell that the Lord of Glory had become the most powerful of level 15 gods, so much so that some level 16 gods would have a hard time taking him on.

“We don’t need timing. Just let Nailisi disguise us as angels, and we infiltrate the divine kingdom. By then, Abyrus…” Saleen whispered his plans to the frost dragon, and the frost dragon nodded in agreement.

It never expected that Saleen had a level 18 magic scroll at his disposal. Things would have been a lot easier if he had said so earlier.