Badge in Azure

The lesser prophecy spell was actually a divine spell that was rather disrespectful to the gods. A high-level holy master would have been able to derive it by understanding the workings of a greater prophecy spell. In other words, it was not a divine spell bestowed by the gods, but one that holy masters created themselves.

There were various types of lesser prophecy spells, but Immunity from Death was not a common one. The spell only had a twenty percent chance of allowing the one blessed by the spell to evade attacks of all types.

Such immunity surpassed three levels.

That meant that a grade-7 sorcerer buffed successfully by Immunity from Death could keep themselves from harm even going against a grade-10 professional.

The twenty percent chance indeed proved too mediocre for someone who was fighting a battle with their life on the line, but the ability of being able to cover for such level differences was too great of an effect. The divine spell was essentially a gamble in itself. Due to the enemy being too powerful, Nicholas just buffed the winged skeleton with a spell that had such a low chance of success out of reflex.

Soldier felt a chill wash over him. It was something peculiar for spirits; the feeling was something rarely experienced by those beings. Even when the winged skeleton entered the purgatory of cold, he had never experienced such a feeling before.

The fallen divine spell brought a chill that seeped into the bones of the winged skeleton. His Death Break was a pure physical attack magic. It was rarely seen in elemental magic. The winged skeleton brought his axe down onto the puppet’s head with the chilling cold hanging about him.

The constructed puppet’s head, which was about more than ten yards long itself, was cracked with a loud clang from the axe. The resulting recoil threw Soldier off. He then redirected himself with a twist of his wings. With propulsion derived from the seawater around, he threw himself into the abyss.

Nicholas was all rage by then. “How dare that skeleton thing just run away after dealing a huge blow! What about me?!”

The twenty-four ancient warriors’ spears also landed hits on the massive puppet. The inherent massive power behind their strikes caused huge cracks to form on both of its legs. The movements of the warriors were also very fluid. They went straight into the abyss after stabbing down the puppet.

Nicholas resorted to taking out a divine spell scroll and activating it. Gray lights sparkled and Nicholas disappeared from where he stood, teleporting himself into the abyss.

Such random teleportation scrolls might have been expensive, but the range they worked in was limited. The resulting teleporting coordinates were undetermined as well, but such scrolls worked well when wanting to escape from danger.

There were hardly any teleportation portals that were able to work instantly. Random teleportation scrolls were the only ones that were known to work like instant magic.

“Nicholas,” Soldier shouted. He was sucked into the abyss right after escaping from the constructed puppet’s attack, falling down quickly. It was only then it occurred to him that Nicholas was not a mage and did not know how work in tandem in battle with him. His attack earlier had the statue stunned for one second.

One second was more than enough for mages to cast a powerful control spell. Even cast on grade-10 beings, the spell would have bought them about three seconds. That would have been enough for one to evade the statue’s attacks.

Holy masters, however, had very, very little control spells. Most would have never considered training for one-on-one combat. Only a handful of holy masters would be obsessed with offensive divine spells. While Nicholas was an adept combat holy master, his days spent being a fallen one were short. That prevented him from being able to work in tandem with the winged skeleton without prior notice like he used to.

It was not that the winged skeleton had forgotten about him. It was just that any grand mage serving under Saleen would have been able to work perfectly with the winged skeleton on the battlefield. To combat mages, such things needed no deliberation, as they were drilled into their instincts and muscle memories.

Nicholas was sucked by the same powerful force into the abyss after teleporting himself in. He was furious, thinking that the winged skeleton had simply cast him aside. Upon hearing Soldiercalling out to him, Nicholas’ rage subsided in a blink of an eye.

The winged skeleton was no Nailisi. He would never have done something that would have jeopardized Saleen. It was him who did not take note of cooperating with the winged skeleton. The attacks dealt by the winged skeleton and the twenty-four ancient warriors were able to hold the statue back for one second.

“Yes, I am no longer a holy master, but I should still be able to keep the statue controlled for just that one second. Then I should have been able to keep up with the rest of them without problems. Darn it, just why the hell was I so slow?”

The winged skeleton’s shout came from further and further away. With the speed of propagation of sound in water being faster than in the air, Nicholas knew that the direction of his fall was no less than ten miles away from the winged skeleton’s. The distance between the two of them got wider and wider. The suction force of the abyss did not brought them downward; it brought them forward.

The winged skeleton was immensely frustrated for having lost Nicholas. He was entirely helpless against such a powerful force. He had no other choice but to simply let the current keep pulling him into the abyss. It was fortunate that the twenty-four ancient warriors behind them were able to keep up. They managed to have a certain degree of control with directions using the plates at the backs of their tainted blood armor. That prevented them from losing the Winged Skull.

The ancient warriors were elite troops back in ancient times. Their days spent in the army drilled the instinct to stick together into them. As such, they would never separate from each other during missions.That caused all twenty-four of them to instinctively stick close as a unit to the winged skeleton. They acted together with him. With Saleen’s absence, Soldier had became their commanding officer.

“Nicholas, I’m so sorry.” the Winged Skull thought to himself, yet still kept his eyes forward. His Spirit Gaze was being limited and was hardly able to see beyond the range of a mile. There was no telling how deep the abyss was, and with his wings submitted to such incredible pressure, he dared not try to stop. He feared that his bone wings would be completely wrecked by the peculiar environment.

If he had not absorbed the body of the Golden Zombie, the winged skeleton felt that he would have been torn to pieces by then. He was wondering if Nailisi was also submitted to such pressures alongside their master.

The winged skeleton was concerned for Nailisi, fearing that Nailisi would be inadequate in protecting Saleen, causing him harm.

The depth of the abyss was only eighty miles. He was moving forward instead of falling downward. That meant they had been travelling for one-thousand miles. There was one degree of difference in movement trajectory in the distance between the winged skeleton and Nicholas. In time that widened to a headache-inducing difference.

Nicholas was a holy master instead of a mage. Soldier was only able to hope that Nicholas had some equipment with him to keep himself alive. He had to search for his master. That meant there was no time to go look for him; the possibility of missing out on meeting up with his master was too much. Without the pan’s turtle alchemical boat, returning to the oceanic ice block would prove very, very difficult.

While Nicholas understood what was going on in the winged skeleton’s head, he knew well that he was in a tough spot himself. The ability of holy masters to survive in such environments paled in comparison to mages’. Being a grade-9 professional hardly made any difference in that case. In the abyss, no skills below grade-7 would have lasted long. He needed skills of grade-7 and above, so that he could keep himself alive.

“Darn it! Darn it!” Nicholas cursed in his mind as he took out a divine spell scroll from his ring and activated it.

A ball of light enveloped Nicholas and he did not attempt to control the directions of its movements. He tried to cut down the loss of power, and had the current bring him to fall in the direction of the abyss.

He flew past the thousand-mile distance. The ball of light enveloping him got thinner and thinner. He had no choice but to use another scroll when he neared the edge of the abyss.

It was fortunate that he took the time to create a good number of divine spell scrolls in order to follow Saleen into the oceanic ice block. It was even more fortunate that his lord was a generous one. Despite having wasted more than half of his materials, Saleen hardly said anything. He had simply brought him more materials to make scrolls with.

Nicholas opened up his second scroll and another ball of light kept him protected once again until he reached the bottom of the abyss. He arrived at the outskirts of the Imperial City of the Abyss. While he was unable to see the broken walls of the city faraway, he was nonetheless able to see the great amount magic beast remains nearby.

Nicholas cast a detection divine spell and was overjoyed. The place was filled with soul aura. While soul aura’s energies were unable to compare with the soul shards’, they were very pure. That served well to repair his soul bead.

The source of fallen divine spells’ powers came from the soul beads. The soul aura around was able to repair the broken souls within. That could provide more power for Nicholas.

Nicholas was suddenly filled with faith for the abyss. Soul shards existed in a ratio of at least one in one-thousand among such massive piles of magic beast remains. Collecting the soul shards would have proved difficult, but it nonetheless was a lifesaving straw in Nicholas’ current predicament. He had to struggle just to even keep himself alive. No difficulty would have proved too great for him at that moment.

Nicholas did not bother combing the place over. He simply searched for remains with soul shards in them as fast as he could. He used his soul bead to absorb soul aura at the same time. A bitter smile hung on his face as he did, thinking how uncannily similar he was to a death mage at that moment.

The winged skeleton landed and folded his wings. He turned around to check, finding none of the twenty-four ancient warriors being left behind. All of them were accounted for behind him.

“Master, please be alive…”

The Winged Skull swiped with his left hand and took up his massive battle axe, making his way into the Imperial City of the Abyss. He had no idea that a tall broken wall laid just about eighty miles away. He did note that the heads of the magic beasts remains all pointed in one direction. That served well as an indicator telling Saleen’s whereabouts.

The environment along the way, which was devoid of any living creatures, had the winged skeleton feeling very at home. He sucked as much as he managed at the soul aura lying about, making it as if there was a massive tornado nearby sucking up all the soul aura with the radius of several miles. It all flowed into Soldier’s body. He paid no mind to the soul shards. The ones he needed were the ones left behind by intelligent beings, such as humans. Souls of magic beasts were nowhere near that of humans in terms of sophistication. As such, they proved near meaningless to him.

On the pitch black ocean floor, among the bone remains of magic beasts piling up like mountains, a lone skeletal being was seen shining with a dark golden sheen. He brought twenty-four warriors shining with blood-red sheen about them. Such a scene was very eerie indeed.

Pitch black soul aura formed a great river behind the dark golden silhouette of the skeletal being. Where the being treaded, the bone remains broke and left only ashes behind.

The winged skeleton felt that his fusion with the body of the Golden Zombie was getting more and more perfect. Every breath of soul aura he took made the golden sheen take a paler color. The energies of the Golden Zombie did not get completely erased; they were simply compressed. It made the bones of the winged skeleton take on a jade-like color. A gold-colored heart slowly formed within the body of the winged skeleton.