Badge in Azure

While Saleen devoted all his attention to the process of absorbing the soul, the entire arena was silent. Most of the soldiers were already armed appropriately, but they had all stopped moving when they saw the assassin hanging onto the elf in a strange manner.

No one knew what happened, so no one dared to move recklessly.

If they moved forward, they might be misunderstood to be staging a rebellion; if they moved back, they might be seen as fleeing. When Lex trained her soldiers, the first thing she trained was discipline. The way these soldiers fought might still not be up to the standard of conventional armies, but their level of discipline was already sufficiently instilled.

A member of the conventional army would not have to spend a single coin as the army would take care of everything. One could save up all the gold coins given on a monthly basis. That was ten times better than being a mercenary as a mercenary was responsible for their own armor and weapon. What the mercenary group could provide was not free and needed to be bought with money.

At that point, Nicholas swooped down from the sky. Lex waved her hand to allow him to descend. Nicholas felt goosebumps all over his body when he saw so many elvish alchemy crossbows surrounding Lex. Of course, he would not be shot to death by these crossbows, but it was intimidating. At the end of the day, he knew that all his skills would not save him from being hit by these crossbow arrows, except his fallen divine spells, which could cause the soldiers’ aiming devices to disappear.

When Nicholas descended and saw the water puppet and Tyrant tangled together, he could vaguely guess what happened. He was a holy priest so he knew more about souls than sorcerers did. In order to avoid suspicion, he moved away from the two people standing in the open space and walked over to Lex and Saleen.

“Your Highness, it is okay. My Lord has everything under control,” Nicholas assured Lex then stood beside Saleen to ensure his safety.

Recently, Nicholas’ days had been well-spent as he no longer needed to take care of any important matters and only needed to focus on refining the soul bead. Saleen would call him only when he was needed. They were far away from the frontline, so he did not have to worry about coming into contact with anyone from the Holy See.

As such, he did not have to worry about bumping into anyone from the Supreme Court.

When Grand Emperor Chanake was killed, two out of three of the Head Inquisitors were also killed. The remaining Head Inquisitor was still someone that Nicholas would never dare to cross. Even though the Supreme Court had been weakened as a result, the two new Head Inquisitors were still slightly stronger than Nicholas.

Tyrant saw that his pleading was pointless, so his soul began to chant a curse in the water puppet’s brain. The curse was long and was chanted in the ghost’s language. Countless gray characters flew up and attempted to enter the divine glow.

The ghost’s Curse spell was something he was born with and it could only be used when he was in the form of a ghost. Tyrant knew that there was no way he could escape, so he wanted to use the curse spell to pollute this divine glow. If he succeeded, the owner of this divine glow would also go through the pain he was in now.

The price of the Curse spell was his own life. A ghost of Tyrant’s bloodline had a long life, which made his curse even more powerful. The divine glow of the Goddess of Nature was not something that was produced by Saleen. It was something left behind by the Goddess herself. Besides, even if the Goddess of Nature was still around, the Curse spell cast by a small ghost would never hurt her.

Saleen was using his senses to find out the secret of the soul. This was one of the compulsory components to be fulfilled before advancing to a sorcerer. He did not expect Tyrant to use up his soul’s energy in order to cast a Curse spell. Saleen responded by increasing the speed and absorbing the curse symbols. Tyrant’s soul screamed in pain. The curse was stopped and the entire soul shrunk in half.

It turned out that balance was an important part of using the power of the soul. The soul spell would be broken off if the speed of absorption was increased or slowed down. Saleen understood this principle, so he returned to the original speed of absorption and slowly devoured Tyrant’s soul.

A ghost’s soul was easier to observe compared to a human’s. The exterior layer was a thin layer like that of a grape and was made up of energy. There were countless cracks in his soul that could not be pieced together. Clearly, the soul of this assassin had been badly injured before and never had the chance to recover.

Saleen tried to inject the water element into the ghost’s soul to try and force the soul out. He would absorb the soul directly without absorbing the energy on the exterior layer. The soul was immediately assimilated into the green divine glow and was not cleansed how Saleen had imagined.

What a pity. Saleen had thought that he would be able to obtain a pure soul. He sighed, this divine glow did not belong to him after all. He was not proficient in the energy of a soul so he had no choice but to watch such a strange soul go to waste.

Cuisi whispered to Lex after seeing Nicholas’ arrival, then took her badge to order the soldiers to retreat. The soldiers felt more at ease after being dismissed. That meant that Her Highness did not blame them for what happened. An assassin appearing in the army was a problem that occurred during the phase of recruiting soldiers, so the officers in the army must not be held responsible.

Nevertheless, the matter was not finished yet. Using the appearance of the assassin, Lex ordered many low-level mages to enter the camps to put the soldiers through a magic lie detection and find out if the assassin had any accomplices.

Naturally, the soldiers had no complaints. If Lex ordered something like that the moment the soldiers joined the regiment, they might have had something to say about it. In that case, a soldier from their ranks tried to assassinate Her Highness in front of everyone. It was only natural for Her Highness to react this way.

After checking all the soldiers, there were indeed two spies from Holy Rock City that were hiding amongst the soldiers. Lex did not kill them. She took down their records and branded them with an eternal magic symbol before chasing them out of Daliang City and back to the Qin Empire instead. If they were to try and enter Bitter Water Prefecture once again, they would be killed immediately.

It was an unspoken norm for countries to plant spies in other countries. If these spies were discovered, as long as nothing violent had occurred, they would be chased out and never allowed to enter again.

What surprised Saleen the most was that Tyrant had tried to enter the water puppet’s body, indirectly forcing himself to a dead end. The arena was sealed up and Saleen spent more than forty hours with the water puppet before completing the absorption of Tyrant’s soul. Saleen did not manage to gain anything from Tyrant’s memory. He was not a grade-9 sorcerer, nor a death mage. In order to absorb the energy of a soul, he would still need to depend on the power of life left behind by the Goddess.

Saleen did manage to gain anything out of it. He managed to gain a deeper understanding of souls. During the process of absorbing the soul, Saleen refused to complete it as soon as possible. He kept trying to sense his control over balance instead. As his magic chords were of a single nature, he could only use water element spells to cast spells of the other five elements. It was necessary for him to redesign the structure of spells before casting them using the water element.

Even if Saleen managed to refine it to its maximum potential, it would not affect his balance of elements. The problem laid in the fact that in order to advance into a sorcerer, Saleen must completely grasp all of it while he was still at grade-6.

At long last, Saleen had found a path for himself and that was the rule of balance. Under the rule of balance, he was able to transform his water elements into the states of the other five elements without any conflicts. This had allowed him to have an easier and safer time modifying the spells of other elements.

There was another surprising discovery. Saleen managed to obtain the skin of a soul, which was a body of energy that Tyrant used to cover up the soul. The soul could not be touched, but this body of energy could. Tyrant had left behind two of such skins. One of them was a spatial equipment that he brought around at all times and the other was the soul skin that Saleen managed to refine.

Within the spatial equipment there were more than ten equipments that Saleen could not comprehend. There were also gemstones, valuable items similar to magic nuclei, and the corpse of a woman that had been well-preserved.

Upon inspecting the corpse thoroughly, Nicholas was able to confirm that it was an empty shell whose soul had been taken away. Saleen would have no use for it, but after being refined by the ghost, this female corpse was so well-preserved that it could be sent to the bone castle directly for the winged skeleton to refine a powerful zombie from it.

There were more than ten strange equipments that Saleen could not make any sense of even after using his elemental eyes, but Lex was sure that they were assassin’s equipment. Saleen thought about it and decided to give these items to Lex. There was an old assassin by her side that would have use for them.

Saleen had no idea what to do with an item like the soul skin either. Nicholas was keen to have it, but had no idea how to ask for it. He took no part in the battle. It was settled entirely by Saleen and Gusion.

Back at the palace in Eleanor’s room, Saleen showed the soul skin to her. She recognized it immediately.

“My Lord, this item was refined by a ghost. Its success rate is very low.”

“You recognize it?” Saleen was surprised.

“Of course. If you give this to me to refine into quivers, I will be able to store Life Arrows of a higher level.”

“You can have it then.” Saleen laughed and said, “I noticed that Nicholas wanted this item too. Will he be disappointed?”

Eleanor smiled and said, “My Lord, you can’t do this. You either give it to him or give it to me. I’m not going to make the decision for you.”

“Forget it. I will give it you. The life Arrow… is shot by expending the power of life. This must be the reason why you have been hesitant to increase its attacking power. With this soul skin, you will be able to store a significant amount of power of life. The amount of damage you will be taking will be reduced at least.”

Saleen pointed out Eleanor’s weakness directly. The elvish life arrow might be powerful, but Eleanor still needed to sacrifice a bit of her own life in order to unleash a powerful Life Arrow, even with the help of a longbow like Seven Nights.

The reason why Eleanor did not manage to kill Tyrant in one shot was because she had held back on the amount of power in the arrow. If she had killed the enemy, her lifespan would have been reduced.

If a member of the elvish royal family sacrificed her life in one arrow, even the Gods would tremble with fear. Most members of the elvish royal family used the powers absorbed from the Fountain of Life to unleash a technique like the Life Arrow. Eleanor was far away from home and could not find a substitute for the Fountain of Life. With the soul skin to be refined into a quiver, she would be able to use the power of souls to substitute her lifespan from being used up.

With this quiver, Seven Nights was now a complete piece of equipment that Eleanor would be able to use with ease.

After sorting through the spoils of the battle, Saleen summoned Gusion and asked, “Gusion, why didn’t you tell me that your equipment was not in good condition?”

Gusion blushed and said, “My Lord, I have yet to accomplish anything.”

Saleen sighed and said, “You are my follower, your equipment is my responsibility. Tell me, what are the weapons you usually wield and of what nature are they?”