Badge in Azure

The iron blood warriors were also elite troops of ancient times and possessed great intellect. Their slumber over tens of thousands of years had severely weakened their souls, and they were an inch away from death. The human body alchemy had woken them from their slumber, but also rendered them slaves of Imposa.

Saleen’s Eternal Control rules, in comparison, kept the intellect of the ancient warriors intact, allowing them to have thoughts at rudimentary levels. Human body alchemy on the other hand, turned them into complete puppets with self-awareness.

The iron blood warriors were incredibly precious, but Imposa was willing to have them self destruct all the same. It was just so that he could get his hands on Saleen by killing off the elemental creatures covering Saleen’s escape.

Saleen would have, of course, never let the sacrifice of his elemental creatures in vain, especially after Gloria was sacrificed. Revival of any destroyed Blue Ice Maidens from there on out would require Gloria to be revived first. Saleen did not hesitate to call back all his summoned Blue Ice Maidens, leaving only six Stone Statue Soldiers and two other elemental creatures behind him.

Boom…

Yet another iron blood warrior self destructed but was blocked by the Stone Statue Soldiers. All six of them were conjured by Saleen’s own Devil suit, and their destruction could have hardly been called a loss. There were twenty-four others by Saleen’s side, an Angel of Brightness, and a Vermillion Knight were destroyed at the same time as well.

With the exception of the Elemental Stone Statue Soldiers, all other grade-9 elemental creatures were capable of flight. Not wanting to have more energy wasted by the Elemental Prison, Saleen had them flying at attitudes of less than two-hundred yards high—a height easily reached by elemental or non-elemental Stone Statue Soldiers by jumping all the same. With Saleen taking personal control of them, they were more than capable of blocking of the iron blood warriors’ self destruction attacks.

The six Stone Statue Soldiers released earth element, which greatly diminished the impacts of the iron blood warriors’ self destruction attacks. None of the tainted blood armor fragments were able to harm any elemental creatures at Saleen’s side.

The way Saleen was doing it was akin to having his Magic Stone Statue Soldiers going suicidal. The rhythm at which it was done was eerily accurate. That was the product of his practice with Lex, which enabled him to use low level spells to counter high level ones. Doing so cost considerably less energy than simply blocking attacks with magic shields.

It was a pity that Saleen did not have enough stamina to break the Elemental Prison. He was only running in circles within the area of several miles radius, with tens of iron blood warriors coming for his head behind him. Imposa’s heart might as well been bleeding by then, as did Saleen’s. He had never thought Imposa to be one such obstinate person, who would do anything to get him.

Killing ten-thousand enemies while losing eight-thousand of their own was not something any mage would have liked doing, unless they were cornered.

The problem was that Saleen was the one being cornered. Imposa’s desire to catch him was nothing short of madness, and it seemed that…

Saleen wanted so much to just whip out his family badge again, but he felt insecure doing so. He swallowed his impulse to simply reduce Imposa to dust and stuffed the badge back into his Devil Ring.

Jola made it to Saleen’s side. Saleen’s flight speed was slower than Jola’s, making it easy for the swordsman to follow him. Seeing Saleen’s face colored with rage, he proposed, “My liege, how about I just go kill that guy myself.”

“No. Haven’t you seen how the Blue Ice Maiden leader died?”

“That was an elemental creature, and I’m a human!” Jola lifted his brow. He had not the slightest bit of fear even fighting a grade-10 elemental creature leader, if it was a one-on-one fight. Elemental creatures relied mostly on their instincts to fight and were weak in anything other than using their inherent skills. The Blue Ice Maiden leader and the other elemental creatures had gotten themselves in fights for eons, but their tactics remained awfully crude.

Saleen suppressed his rage and decided to play a war of attrition with Imposa. There were sixty-two iron blood warriors left in the air, and thirty-six on the ground. The ones to truly pose a threat to Saleen were the ones in the air. All sixty-two of them were capable of self destruction, but the impact from doing so was gradually weakened. Saleen reckoned that when the number of iron blood warriors went below thirty-six, the resulting impact from self destruction would have been less than enough to kill elemental creatures in one go.

The wedge-shaped magic array was indeed powerful. When coupled with alchemy, its damage potential was unparalleled. If it had not been an insane mage who had tons of elemental creatures at his disposal like Saleen fighting them, the battle would have been over a long time ago. Other than the first elemental creature victim dying from the self destruct explosion causing Saleen great loss and grief, there had been no more than six elemental creatures sent to block off such attempts since Saleen started running.

The palace on the ground was long razed. Imposa looked at the battle with cold eyes and was no longer fretting over anything. “If that grade-10 leader back there hadn’t fallen for my own special techniques, I would have been killed right there and then. Just what the hell was that? A Rainbow spell?”

Human mages wanting to learn such skills would have to at least need to reach the level of golden grand swordmasters in terms of physical toughness. The blinking would have blown their bodies to bits the instant they cast the technique otherwise. As such, human mages were simply familiar with the Rainbow spell before reaching grade-9, as the teleportation of the spell would not necessarily be faster than flying.

Saleen’s elemental badges’ levels were higher than he expected. One grade-10 elemental creature leader was capable of commanding one-hundred and forty-four grade-9 elemental creatures. The total amount of elemental creatures commanded with six badges was eight-hundred and sixty-four. Even with his iron blood warriors self destructing, he was still less than capable of capturing Saleen.

Grand Duke Iron Blood would not have bothered compensating his losses if he failed to capture Saleen, and the over one-hundred iron blood warriors were painstakingly created masterpieces.

According to the deal made with the grand duke, he got to keep two out of three crafted iron blood warriors, until he succeeded amassing three-thousand warriors. Any more than that, he would have no longer been able to enjoy such privilege. Three-thousand iron blood warriors were vital requirements to his conquest of Alchemy City.

By the time he was able to craft such numbers of warriors, some of the grand duke’s servants would have probably achieved decent proficiency with the art. He would have been disposed of by then.

Imposa let out an ear-deafening shriek at the thought. His voice emanated from his throat with magic arrays crafted onto it, enabling him to be heard at the beach more than twenty miles away.

Nicholas had led the demons to fight their way to the beach. With the ancient warriors at his side and the grand duke’s soldiers being unable to regroup in time, the journey was like a hot knife cutting through butter.

He was stunned by hearing Imposa’s shriek and wanted to turn around to go back to his lord, but Cuisi and the demons required his leadership. The jade skeletons on the pan’s turtle alchemical boat did not recognize the demons. He was put there to coordinate with Saleen. The warship needed to be brought close in order for Saleen to escape without a glitch.

“My job is to look for the warship!”

Nicholas bit down on his frustration and stayed at the beach. He took out his Scepter of the Fallen and cast a lesser prophecy spell.

“Hear my voice, o’ river of fate. I am your god. I command time, space, souls, and rules. In the name of Nicholas, my name, I command all dangers to leave my lord Saleen…”

Half of Nicholas’ hair turned gray in an instant. Nicholas’ age had reversed bit by bit after having the blood soul tower in his disposal, but a considerable amount of his life force was consumed in casting the lesser prophecy spell.

Nicholas did not regret the act. There had been no fallen holy masters known to have advanced to grade-10. It was Saleen who had given him the opportunity to do so. Even with half of his remaining lifespan gone, he would still have the confidence to be able to advance to grade-10. With effort, his life force would be able to be gradually recovered. If his lord ended up dead however, that would be the end of everything.

After casting the lesser prophecy spell, Nicholas jumped into the sea with the demons and the twenty-four ancient warriors. Where he stood was not where he had landed. His lesser prophecy spell enabled the pan’s turtle alchemical boat to be easily located without need for coordinates.

The army chasing after the demons halted their steps. The palace at sea had not been built for long, and there were no powerful magic arrays at the shore. With the enemy gone, the soldiers had no choice but to make it to the docks, mobilizing the ships for search and pursuit.

Imposa gathered energy and activated the grade-10 magic array on the metallic disk. For a grade-9 sorcerer to activate a grade-10 magic array, a good amount of time was still required to gather energy, even if it was a sorcerer who was second to none in the field of alchemy. His throat went bust a long time ago. He would have had no choice but to replace his voice chanting the words with such unique shrieks.

The words of the chants served to calibrate one’s mental powers and mobilize the magic chords. Imposa’s unique shriek opened up a whole new skill of his own.

It was a grade-10 spell—Calamity of True Flames.

It was a resonance spell, able to be used for placing magic arrays, yet the target of attack laid outside the array. Imposa locked on to Saleen. As soon as the grade-10 spell was completed, True Flames would have burned from within Saleen himself.

There were lots of ways to break such spells, but in the perspective of a mage, the only way to do so was to break the enemy’s targeting.

Saleen’s strength of soul was inferior to Imposa’s and his mental powers paled to that of the alchemist’s as well. He was able to sense Imposa’s lock-on nonetheless.

“He is out to kill me instead of capturing me now!” Saleen felt a shiver down his spine. He took out his family badge, as his hands felt severely forced. His intuition told him that if he were to hold anything back, he would be dead for sure once the spell was completed.

Just as Saleen raised his family badge and aimed at Imposa, the alchemist’s voice broke all of a sudden.

One of Imposa’s eyes popped out from the metal frame, and the goatee at his chin burned. He felt a wave of energy in the air break off his aim by force, and he lost track of Saleen’s whereabouts. His grade-10 spell however, had to be cast. Halting it would have resulted in the flames burning him instead.

“Ahh…Ssss…”

Imposa’s voice trembled as he completed the grade-10 spell. In the magic tower about a mile away, a Cloudflow sorcerer’s body suddenly burst into green flames. The grade-8 sorcerer was reduced to dust within a split second. No objects on and about them were harmed however.

If Imposa had targeted Saleen, Saleen would have been able to hold out for several seconds at least as he knew what was coming. The grade-8 Cloudflow sorcerer was made a scapegoat due to Imposa’s failed targeting. The chances of such a thing happening was close to nil. The resonance magic naturally needed to find another target after losing its intended target. The dead sorcerer was not the closest to Imposa, yet they were killed off instantly by Calamity of True Flames nonetheless. If there was anything to be blamed, it was the sorcerer’s own very awful luck.

Seeing Imposa’s attack on him had failed, Saleen suppressed his urge to use his family badge, and summoned six Midnight Fangs instead. The six were released into the iron blood warriors’ midst all of a sudden, and Tempest Dragon-mights followed. Having lost instructions from Imposa, the iron blood warriors were at a loss of what to do, and their formation crumbled soon after.

Six dark element short swords stabbed into the necks of the iron blood warriors, and Saleen called back all six of the Midnight Fangs right after. Saleen knew full well that the iron blood warriors were utterly incapable of defending against one strike of the Midnight Fangs’ at full power.