Badge in Azure

Without protection provided by the Golden Sword Aura and armor, Su would have been dead in an instant. A chasm with a diameter of five-hundred yards formed with the angel at the center. All buildings were destroyed, crushed, and flung around by the resulting air current. The temple where Lex and Saleen resided was protected in a ball of colors. Saleen and Lex looked up at the sky.

The heavenly angel looked at both of them on the ground without a hint of expression on its face. Its most powerful attack was not able to do any harm to them.

Before then, the being had never thought of these cunning things as enemies. The grade difference between both sides were simply too great to even consider such a notion. They were indeed difficult to kill, but no one would have expected that its most powerful attack did nothing to the two humans…

Could divine power be repelled?

While the angel had no soul, it was nonetheless capable of thought. It did not fathom why the power bestowed upon it by the gods was rendered useless against those two. That one slashing attack was not something even a grade-9 professional would have been able to withstand. Only a grade-10 master would have been able to survive it. Somehow two puny human beings did, but how?!

The giant sword in his hand had not vanished; it was still more than one-hundred yards long. Due to the questions it had for its god, the angel had began to have doubts about its faith. That was the very reason why it did not launch a second attack.

It had six opportunities to attack. If that kept up, Lex and Saleen would have had no choice but to use the power of the God’s Ring to get out of the range of the attacks. Whether they would have actually been able to escape, was a question of luck.

The Holy See’s plan initially had little loopholes. The number of powerful beings in Daliang was too small. With the sorcerers leaving their magic towers, no one would have been able to stand against the heavenly angel. Employing martyrs on the ground to try to infiltrate the palace enabled them to pinpoint the advent location for the heavenly angel. The angel would have then been able to kill Saleen in a single blow. Its strength easily dwarfed any other in Daliang.

The angel, however, was rendered dumbfounded at a critical moment instead.

At the very moment Lex’s magic chant ended, a black fire dragon manifested in front of her, and began to grow in size as it took flight. The dragon’s movements had a lively grace about them. Clear, well-defined, scales formed of black fires danced as it soared. Lex strained to control the dragon. It went straight for the heavenly angel, spouting dragon breath as it opened its mouth.

It was unexpected to see Lex using summoning magic. Even though the being summoned was simply energy given form, the duration of the summoning was nonetheless very, very long. If one were to usually summon one such black fire dragon, it would have been enough to at least keep one sorcerer occupied.

Tens of fireballs the size of fingernails were hidden in the dragon’s breath. These balls of fire were little more than specks of dust compared to the breath containing them. On the surface of the fireballs, were the faces of people. All of the faces looked nearly identical to Lex’s.

The angel swung its giant sword in retaliation and seemingly destroying the black fire by rendering it into little more than a firestorm. Within the firestorm, however, were fireballs of even greater numbers. All of them flew at the angel.

In the midst of coiling green smoke, the heavenly angel was seen to have more than a number tiny holes about it. All these hole were occupied by tiny fireballs without exception. The wings on its back began to burn. Its expression turned cold as it lifted its sword, and sent it crashing down on Lex.

“Saleen!”, Lex yelled. In the past, Saleen would not have understood anything from that one single word. After marrying her, he understood every meaning Lex weaved into one single word without any need for elaboration. Not only was this the result of bringing their relationship to very intimate levels, but also due to both of them having practiced more than a hundred low level spells together.

The sword pierced the dome of light, going straight for the humans within. The badge on Saleen’s hand struck accurately, conjuring a magical targeting spell.

The moment where the spell was unleashed even had Saleen hallucinating. It seemed as if the badge itself moved and pounced on the tip of the sword, like an animal which had been starving for days.

His mind was filled with yearning. He yearned power. He yearned for the badge to be filled with energy, enabling it to unleash lethal amounts of lightning and thunder at the snap of a finger. This yearning, in turn, filled him with fear. It was not a thought pattern that should have come to the mind of a mage.

As the badge stuck to the body of the giant sword, Saleen’s hand felt as if it was absorbed into the sword as well. The lightning-shaped streaks on the badge crackled wildly, as if it was an ancient beast opening its mouth to devour something. The energy within the sword gushed into the badge like a torrent. Using a badge to absorb energy, Saleen would never again be rendered immobile. The cost of using magic chords was also reduced to two-thirds of what it had been before.

Saleen had long been accustomed to pain. Other than the various debuffs affecting him in the moment, he was still able to feel the excitement exuding from the badge.

“So, this badge loves divine power!” Saleen thought to himself

The heavenly angel had intended to activate a devastating attack by piercing its sword into the multi-colored dome, turning the beings within to dust. Before it knew what had taken place it noticed that the amount of energy within the blade decreased drastically. The speed of decrease was far quicker than the long prayers needed to accumulate and focus energy. To make matters worse, the amount of energy within its own body decreased alongside the blade.

The heavenly angel wanted to let go of the sword, only to find out that its hand had already been fused with the sword, rendering it incapable of releasing the blade.

Its body remained stuck on the other end of the sword, making escape impossible.

“God decreed, that you will die now,” the angel said as it pointed at Lex. It resorted to using an Instant Death Divine spell instead. People would have associated such a skill with death mages instead of angels. What race would have been more proficient at taking lives, than the gods though?

This spell was a branch of divination; the Instant Death Curse.

The amethyst on Lex’s tiara exuded a mild, gentle aura. White-grayish light passed her by and she was unharmed. The heavenly angel however, had its wings crumbling right there and then.

Saleen saw that the upper body of the heavenly angel began to turn transparent. The badge’s energy absorption power was terrifying. The sword that was previously more than a hundred yards long, was then rendered less than thirty thirty long.

“You…will…be doomed!”, the angel shouted. There was no fear shown on its face, only a terrifyingly cold expression.

The tiara on Lex’s head protected her. Saleen had his body fused with the badge and kept absorbing energy. The signature divine spell rendered ineffective.

“You…will…,” the angel started to shrivel. Fires began to sprout all over it. The fireballs about its entire being burned harder and brighter, to the point they almost engulfed all of the angel.

Saleen trembled. While the divination spell of the angel had no apparent effect on him, he felt a deep sense of emptiness in his soul. It was due to the mark of the power capable of bending fate. If it had not been for the protection of the badge, he would have been truly marked by God.

That would have meant that the plane of gods would have always been able to detect his presence, which would then enabled the gods to always dispatch someone to get rid of him.

Lex cast a Chunlin Spell on Saleen. She watched the giant sword get absorbed into his badge, alongside the translucent body of the angel. It was a very eerie sight to behold.

Saleen knew, however, that if it was not for the few arrows Eleanor fired at the heavenly angel, the absorption would not have gone so well. The angel clearly was not at its top form, even before it realized it was being set up.

The pressure in the air subsided somewhat. Saleen realized that he was able to keep the angel in check due to help from the three magic towers suppressing the attack, as well as the three grade-8 sorcerers within each respective tower. The angel’s power had been suppressed all along, until it used the Sword of Burst.

The sweat on Saleen’s face evaporated immediately and a thought crossed his mind. Had it not been for the mages using the large scale magic array of the towers, his hand would have been melted the moment he stuck the badge on the sword.

Saleen knew well of the balance of energies, and that time, his hand dived right into the blade of light and emerged unscathed.

The three sorcerers had been using a balancing spell. Divine spells were powers of imbalance, while magic was a power of balance. “The three sorcerers are far more experienced than I am. I’m just very lucky, and this is all just too risky.” Saleen sweated as he hurriedly made his way to the ruins outside.

He recalled that Su and Cuisi were hurt. Eleanor’s injuries had her life hanging by a thread.

Lex was in deep thought. What she thought about was different from Saleen. If fate really did exist, what happened to them earlier hardly made sense. It was, after all, an angel casting the Instant Death Divine spell on her.

Her tiara was coincidentally something that was capable of repelling such divine spells. The tiara was something Saleen put on her personally that day.

“How did such a coincidence exist? I’m a grade-7 sorcerer, two levels below the heavenly angel. That means the Instant Death Divine spell had more than ninety percent chance of succeeding.” The thousand-year pledge of the Goddess of Myers crossed her mind. “Did my luck change for the better after signing the contract? Is that to say that the Goddess of Myers is still watching over the mainland?”

Lex looked around cautiously as she followed Saleen. Soldiers from afar came close. As they noticed Saleen and her getting near, the soldiers cheered loudly. While this clearly called for a disciplinary action, no military officers stopped them.

They were worried that Lex or Saleen might have died. Their futures were in the hands of those two individuals after all.

The Dragon-slaughtering Mercenary Group was unable to make themselves useful in the battle. It was Gusion, who saved three people.

“Get to the magic tower!”, Saleen ordered concisely. All three injured personnel required medical attention at the tower. While the crisis still lurked in the city, the mercenaries would have been more than capable to handle it. Any resulting riots or rebellions would have been taken care of by the army stationed at the palace.

Saleen made his way to Stephanie’s magic tower and found her still in shock. She saw, with her own eyes, the equipment that Saleen literally sucked the angel into. Even with three grade-8 sorcerers suppressing the sword of light’s fluctuations, it was still a very, very horrifying sight to behold!

Saleen busted into the eighth story as she was still deep in thought over what took place, and said in a rather rude manner, “Master, we need your help.”

“Yes, I’m on it,” Stephanie answered.