Badge in Azure

After Lex had advanced, she became much more sensitive to the changing of elements, minor details of mental strength, and the way to control magic chords. What Saleen was doing in that aspects were no different from a sorcerer. The only difference was that his magic chords were still very weak.

In the past, Lex was not able to sense all that, but now that she could, she realized just how unique Saleen’s spells were.

Saleen would become even more powerful after he advanced into a sorcerer.

Lex observed Saleen sensing Lex’s transformation. Those wings were not just simply made from fire elements, there were wind elements at the same time. With both wind and fire complemented each other and Lex’s speed was on par with that of a grade-8 sorcerer.

Saleen focused his thoughts and the water elements around him began to evaporate violently. Their temperatures rose and eventually transformed into fire elements, forcefully turning into a pair of wings of flame on his back.

Lex was staring in shock. She could not understand how Saleen was able to reproduce the Fire Wings spell without any training.

Within less than three seconds, Saleen’s wings of flame extinguished on their own. He sighed to himself. He had not trained for the spell, so he did not know the mantra and rules of arrangement of elements. Even if he could reproduce it through imitation, he was not able to control the spell. If he was a normal mage, he might even be susceptible to the retaliation of elements.

Fortunately, he was more comfortable in controlling his water elements and his flying abilities were comparable to Lex’s. Should they be involved in any battles together in the future, they would be able to help each other instead of becoming burdens.

“Saleen, let’s race each other towards the north!” Lex noticed this strange ability of Saleen’s and wanted to test just how strong he could be. Before Saleen could even say no, she had already flapped her wings of flame and broken through the fog.

When Saleen saw her leaving, he smiled. A small tornado began to spin in the fog, increasing its momentum by hundreds of times. Then, the fog carried Saleen and he headed towards the north.

In the blink of an eye, the two of them were out of the city. The Cloudflow armies were in the south while the north was all Lex’s territory. There was another seven-storey magic tower outside of the city, so Saleen and Lex were not concerned about their safety.

Lex’s speed was close to reaching one-hundred and eighty miles per hour while Saleen followed behind her easily without overtaking her. She was already flying at a speed that was three times as fast as an ordinary grade-6 mage. Without a doubt, Saleen was a grade-6 grand mage, but Lex was still unable to shake him off.

Lex gritted her teeth and the size of her wings of flame doubled to become more than twenty yards wide. Instantaneously, her speed shot up to two-hundred miles an hour and was still increasing.

In response, the tornado in Saleen’s fog also doubled. He bore down hard on Lex and overtook her very quickly.

Lex was a very competitive person, but she could never bear to compete with Saleen. She was only concerned with how she would use up all her magic chords if they continued flying like that. She had no choice but to slow down and her wings of flame shrunk to a width of ten yards. Saleen laughed before slowing down in front of Lex. He expanded his fog to envelop Lex again.

Lex stopped her wings of flame completely and used her Floating spell once again to follow Saleen in the air.

“Lex”, Saleen called out.

“Yes?” Although Lex lost, she was not upset at all. It was a good thing that Saleen could fly faster than her. The enemies that they would face in the future would all be very powerful ones. More often than not, they would fail to defeat them and would have to flee for their lives. She felt more at ease after their race.

Saleen opened his left hand and where there was a cluster of water flame. On his left wrist was a new bracelet, which was made from divine crystal.

“The speed of my fog is dependent on the tornado. This tornado is produced by water flame so, I am only using up mental strength. No one will be able to fly faster than me unless they are a grade-9 mage.” Saleen shared his secret openly. The flying technique was something he had come up with on his own.

The Water Flame Alchemy spell was an attacking spell by nature. Once the water flame had been formed, the tornado would serve as a form of protection for the mage that was refining equipment. The tornado might not be able to deal much damage, but it also possessed some defensive abilities. Enclosed by so many tornadoes, the mage would be able to avoid even alchemy crossbows.

The real attack was the Snowkill spell hidden within the tornadoes. The cutting abilities of the snowflakes formed by water elements surpassed even that of icicles, and even had room to evolve. Now that Saleen’s control of the Water Flame Alchemy spell was almost as good as his teacher’s, the tornado was the secret to his flying ability.

Adding the tornados into the Quickcloud spell would greatly increase the momentum of the spell. As long as the Quickcloud spell did not dissipate, the tornados would remain hidden within, unknown to others.

Ordinary mages did not possess the ability to interchange elements, so they would never dare to execute this in the air. They would crash down if the elements were imbalanced, so only sorcerers would be able to attack and defend while in flight. When grand mages had just learned how to fly, they usually depended on equipment in order to cast spells while flying. The equipment included magic books, scrolls, or even the spells stored in magic staffs. One would only be able to rely on magic chords after one had advanced to at least grade-7 and had learned some of the secrets of the interchanging of elements.

Saleen picked up the ability to interchange elements long ago when Joey taught him. That explained why he dared to create such a complicated spell.

Lex was pleased with how unique Saleen was. As the descendant of the Emperor with a well-known reputation, she rightfully had high expectations of her partner. If she was not in a relationship with Saleen, she would rather be alone and become purely a mage, dedicating her life to understanding the secrets of magic.

She did not care if Saleen was wealthy or whether he was a king. When she saw how outstanding Saleen’s spells were, Lex’s heart softened and she wanted to praise him.

She noticed a small section of scouts with a light-armored knight beneath them that were traveling towards Daliang City at high speed.Even at a height of one-thousand yards, everything was clear to Saleen. He exchanged a glance with Lex and the two of them descended quickly, landing just ahead of the section of scouts. When the scouts saw the mages, they raised their hand-held crossbows and stopped.

“I am Lex. Which battalion are you from?” Lex took a look at the scouts’ attire and knew that they were from her army.

One of the scouts recognized Lex. The captain dismounted from his horse and bowed to Lex, pointing at the young knight and said, “Someone from Sanlian City is here and he claims that they have been attacked by the Tanggulasi Empire.”

“Come over here!” Lex pointed at the light-armored knight. There were bloodstains all over the knight and one of his arms was in a cast. He was quite badly injured.

Lex used a Chunlin spell to stop the soldier from bleeding and asked, “What happened to Sanlian City?”

The knight held tight onto his flag and remained on his horse while saying, “Your Highness, the blood knights of Tanggulasi appeared and made us suffer!”

His voice was trembling. It was normal for Sanlian City to be attacked, but when blood knights appeared, many of the soldiers that engaged them were badly injured. The armies of the Tanggulasi Empire passed through the mountains and launched attacks on Sanlian City. For some reason, the Tanggulasi soldiers were equipped with huge weapons designated for attacking cities. These weapons kept hurling burning stone artilleries and destroyed many houses as a result.

Sanlian City had no choice but to seek help from Daliang City. There were more than ten waves of troops that left to seek help, but he was the only one that survived. The others were killed along the way by the Holy See.

“All of you head straight to the palace once you reach Daliang City.” Lex was frowning. It was clear that Tanggulasi’s attack was coordinated with Cloudflow. Could the two countries have formed an alliance? Why did none of her scouts in Misty City inform her of it?

Up north were the armies of Marquis Antos. Surely she could not possible seek help from Antos? He was still upset over the corp of soldiers he had just lost.

The problem was if Sanlian City was lost, she would have to adjust her line of defense by another five-hundred miles. She had to send aid!

It seemed that many people were intent on making trouble for their wedding, but the more trouble, the more determined Lex was to hold a grand wedding ceremony. At the same time, she had to also be able to repel the enemy’s attacks. She would be disappointing those that had chosen to follow her and risk their loyalty otherwise.

The scouts were originally going about their routine patrols when they encountered the knight, whom they then escorted back to Daliang City. Once Lex gave her command, they left two people behind to continue patrolling while the rest headed back to Daliang City with the knight.

Saleen heard what the knight said as well and was aware of what had happened. There was hatred in his voice when he said to Lex, “These people of the Holy See must be in cahoots with the Cloudflows. Lex, what do you intend to do?”

“Let’s head back before we discuss it further.” Lex was in no mood to linger outside with Saleen anymore so she dragged him along as she flew off.

When they returned to the palace in Daliang City, the knight had yet to arrive. Lex gathered her generals to discuss strategies.

Lex had six main battalions, one palace swordsmen battalion, two field battalions that had been deployed from Sanlian City, as well as Saleen’s two battalions. In total, they had one-hundred and ten-thousand elite soldiers under their command. There were also more than three-hundred-thousand new recruits in the city. Half of them possessed decent combat abilities.

In order to face Cloudflow, they could not afford to reduce the number of soldiers. Lex would only be able to defend and not counter-attack otherwise. It was not realistic to send aid to Sanlian City. If they sent the elite soldiers over, Daliang City would be in danger; if they only sent the new recruits over, there was nothing they could do.

“Your Highness Saleen, would Metatrin Kingdom be able to send sorcerers over?” The battalion commander of the palace swordsmen battalion asked. He was a black metal grand swordmaster and was also Lex’s bodyguard. Typically, the general in an army might not necessarily be the one with the most outstanding swordsmanship. What was more important was the ability to command, so it was actually rare to see a black metal grand swordmaster as a general.

Saleen laughed bitterly. He did have two grade-9 sorcerers, but when both of them signed their bonds, they were only tasked with helping Saleen ensure the safety of the exterior of Metatrin City and western town. Would the two of them agree to travel twenty-thousand miles to provide aid?

“Let me try. Lex, we cannot touch Daliang City’s armies, but what about Bitter Water Prefecture?” Saleen turned around and asked Lex.

“There aren’t many elite soldiers in Bitter Water Prefecture, only about forty-thousand of them. They need to ensure the safety of the Prefecture against Qin so they would only be able to send twenty-thousand soldiers over at most.”

“Your Highness, allow me to lead a corp to aid Sanlian City while the soldiers from Bitter Water Prefecture come over and help Daliang City. I will bring along enough resources to hold the city for half a month.” A newly-promoted general bravely volunteered.