Badge in Azure

“Nailisi, if I were to just turn away now, I would face great difficulty advancing in the future. Grade-9 will become my limit. I didn’t feel much getting in my way when advancing to grade-8, and that was because I had enough experience with things. Beyond grade-9, relying on experience alone would be meaningless.”

Saleen’s words were extremely plain, yet Nailisi was rendered silent.

To practice magic was to walk an extremely arduous path. Ever since she began following Saleen, she had yet to see her master truly have any time for leisure. Saleen practiced magic with any free time he was able to get. He never went about enjoying himself, and never took long breaks. The way a mage took breaks was to meditate. A mage’s constitutional toughness would be raised tens of times when advancing into the rank of sorcerers, enabling them to train for consecutive days and nights on end.

Practitioners of swordsmanship like Jola would have time to do something to enjoy themselves still, such as going about seducing the royal princess or such. There was basically no such luxury for mages. Once one entered the world of magic, everything else ceased to matter. If Saleen had not been braving countless dangers and coming out alive with Lex, their relationship would not have been what it was at that moment; their relationship would not have differed much from that between strangers.

“Master, since you have made up your mind, we will then follow your orders. What should we do then?” the winged skeleton simply asked, instead of trying to go against his master’s wishes.

“Get rid of that figure. I have looked clearly. The figure did not absorb energy from the star chart, and that makes it a completely independent piece of equipment, just like the constructed puppet. Once the constellation powers of the figure get depleted, it will be no different from a child’s toy.”

“Powers of grade-11, master. If we were to drain all the grade-11 power, it will take us a lot of time,” Nailisi said worriedly. She wished to leave the place quickly, as Saleen had gotten the magic nuclei he came for after all.

“That thing won’t kill us, and that is our advantage over it. We still have elemental badges with us,” Saleen smiled and summoned Vinny’s underlings. His underlings had been completely replenished by the great grandmaster, all one-hundred and forty-four Elemental Stone Statue Soldiers. All the soldiers were armed with large magic warhammers.

Saleen summoned six of them at one time. The soldiers stayed a height of twenty yards, instead of expanding their bodies to a height exceeding one-hundred yards. The astrologer’s mansion was indeed huge, but it was nonetheless a house for human use still. The roof was broken as soon as the twenty yard tall soldiers made their entrance.

The female figure was right outside and was thrown into the air as the soldiers busted through the roof. The figure was unarmed, but hundreds of starlight beams flew from the ground as it danced about with its hands, disintegrating some of the soldiers. The elemental creatures were not ones to know fear. Their pieces simply flew back into the badge, while more flew out to take their places.

The figure would have cut all of the six soldiers Saleen released into shreds with starlight as soon as they hit the ground. As such, the offensive capacities of the starlight were very high. Saleen analyzed the beams and deemed that even his own grade-9 Darkness Shield would not have been adequate to completely nullify the attacks. If the Darkness Shield was broken, his own devil’s armor would be able to hold out for a little bit still.

Saleen had no intentions of risking his own neck and had simply kept summoning the Elemental Stone Statue Soldiers. He also unleashed the stone statue army kept in his robe, having them all flood the compound outside.

The Stone Statue Army was a grade-9 magic, and one which was able to summon six stone statue soldiers as well. The summoned soldiers were only six yards tall though. In an environment rich in earth element, they would have only been able to reach the size of nine yards at most.

The stone statue soldiers of the Stone Statue Army spell were forcefully created elemental creatures, and would not last long. Saleen, however, did not seem to mind at all. The stone statue soldiers created by the spell rushed into the compound and were also cut to shreds immediately by that figure. Saleen was learning the tactics of the figure. Starlight Cutting seemed to be a highly technical skill after all.

Saleen was reminded of his own Current Cutter. If the water currents were to be increased and then unleashed using the methods done with Starlight Cutting, Current Cutter would advance to grade-7 and would be equipped with a level of power exceeding grade-8.

He did not bother learning anything else, as borrowing the power of the stars was not something a mage would be able to learn. Saleen did acquire an astrologer’s lineage, and whatever he was able to learn there would also be very limited.

The figure did not possess intelligence, and its movements became increasingly sluggish as Saleen kept conjuring elemental creatures. Eventually, some stone statue soldiers actually managed to get to its front and began beating it senseless.

The figure seemed to be made of cloth, yet when the soldier’s huge fists pounded on it, one flew after another. Stone statue soldiers had no fear of death, and Elemental Stone Statue Soldiers were even less afraid. As the figure did not possess intelligence, it had only been attacking any elemental creatures getting into the compound or jumping out of the roof with starlight.

The constellation power within its body was limited, each and every attack it launched was something borrowed from the star chart on the ground. It worked in a manner similar to a mage consuming its magic chords. Only by using magic chords to manipulate the ambient elements, would the spell have been unusually powerful. If the spell conjured was dependent on magic chords alone, its effects would be no different from those dealt by normal magic weapons.

Saleen’s Stone Statue Army spell was all used up, and one-hundred and twenty stone statue soldiers were lost. Seeing how the female figure no longer used any other skills like Starlight Cutting and had simply resorted to using its arms and legs to fight the soldiers up close, Saleen finally felt secure enough to charge at the pesky figure with Nailisi and the winged skeleton.

The ground of the compound was all but wrecked. The warhammers armed by the Elemental Stone Statue Soldiers were not for show, and the signs of their power were left all over the figure’s ragged body. A swing with the magic hammer would be able to make craters in the ground after all.

Saleen did not deploy his remaining twenty-four Elemental Stone Statues. Nailisi walked out of the broken door at the living room with her shield, while the winged skeleton took hold of his battle axe and followed closely behind.

Saleen cast Sensory Sharing with his two followers. It was fortunate that those two were his bonded creatures, or Sensory Sharing would have been a highly taxing spell, with a horrifying drain rate on mental powers.

Nailisi and the winged skeleton were both beings with strong mental powers. Their senses were sharp and were at the pinnacle of grade-9 creatures, making them formidable combatants. If they were on the Myers Mainland instead of in the Imperial City of the Abyss, only someone with enormous backing or grade-10 professionals like Joey would have been able to stand against them.

Saleen’s Elemental Eye was an incredibly powerful magic. It enabled its user to clearly see the flow of energies and working trajectories of elements. It went without saying that the magic was also one that allowed one to see something more than a hundred miles away without regard of one’s environment. If Eleanor had an ability like that, the damage potential dealt by her arrows would be incredibly terrifying.

The figure’s power remained strong, yet the constellation power within its body had been severely drained. Had it not been for the fact that it was of a very high level, making it possible to fight the elemental creatures using the lowest level of her powers, it would have been torn into rags quite a while ago.

Nailisi and the winged skeleton were different. The spear in Nailisi’s hand and the battle axe wielded by the winged skeleton were products crafted by the great grandmaster personally. The sharp edged weapons in their hands proved more effective on the figure made of cloth.

Seeing a demon and a spirit rushing out into battle, the figure’s eyes turned furiously, attempting to adjust the charts on the ground. The constellation power left within its body was far from enough to enable it to use skills so powerful. The ground shone with starlight yet attacks like Starlight Cutting were not seen again.

Nailisi was feeling squeamish at first, but upon seeing the figure’s casting fail, she was clever enough to thrust her spear right at the figure’s head.

The energies unleashed from the spear blew an eye off with a loud pop, but Nailisi was dumbfounded still. While the flash of her spear was far from invincible, she had only encountered skills capable of stopping her attacks half way; she had not seen something actually capable of withstanding her spear’s attack until that moment.

Nailisi was surprised, yet the winged skeleton’s attacks flowed like furious gales. There were miniature magic arrays etched on his battle axe on both sides of the blade, which resembled two eyes popping out.

The winged skeleton swiped their battle axe hard sideways. While Nailisi was still dumbfounded, she was nonetheless able to jump up in time, and thrust her spear from above. Both did not get too close to the figure, for fear of any hidden self-destructing tricks up its sleeves.

Both of them had mutually devastating ways to deal with dire, irreversible situations against their favor. The principle was to take the enemy with you even if you were to end up dead. The figure’s level was about grade-11 and given that both Nailisi and the winged skeleton had similar principles to deal with such situations, they did not bother risking their lives against an equipment.

A death magic spell was unleashed with the flash the black axe blade of the winged skeleton conjured, landing hard on the figure’s neck. There was no way that the figure’s neck could have been a critical area. The winged skeleton had simply thought the spot to be the thinnest, and thus the easiest to cut off.

Nailisi thrust her spear from above again, taking out the remaining eye of the figure.

She was able to see what truly happened then. It was not that the thrusting attack hit the eye, but that the figure’s eye absorbed the energy attack automatically. The thrust was warped in space and landed at the eye, which was nullified completely as the figure’s eye exploded.

There was a miniature star chart right behind the figure’s eye, which was stitched on the cotton using golden threads. The star chart was so small that it could have been seen only with a skill like the Elemental Eye.

The swing of Soldier’s axe cut the neck right off, but the figure’s head did not simply fly off. It was able to keep it in place with one hand, while the other held a needle, attempting to stitch its head back.

The figure was not something meant for combat to begin with. It was something used by astrologers to receive guests. The grade-11 combat capacity was obviously something of a sick joke played by the astrologer, to keep guests around against their will. Anyone without a high enough level would have had no choice but to be taken in and kept as guests.

Despite the astrologer having been dead for hundreds of thousands of years, the figure followed its orders faithfully. Any passers-by were taken in to await further orders from the astrologer. Anyone invited was not allowed to leave without the astrologer’s expressed permission.

Still, the figure was not something made specifically for combat. As such, the constellation power within its body was limited. The very reason it remained operational all those years was because there had been no one passing star road by the gate for tens of thousands of years, which meant hardly any of its remaining constellation power had been consumed. The figure did not think of being prudent with energy use when it was being harassed by more than one-hundred elemental creatures. The attacks used were its most powerful. The very reason why it was able to kill off so many elemental creatures was because it was still a meticulously crafted piece of equipment, a masterpiece created by the astrologer.