Badge in Azure

The attacks of the lightning ravens were weaker than Saleen’s Book of Lightning, but their tens of thousands of attacks stacked levels of damage that proved formidable, nonetheless.

Seeing how the goddess seemed to be smirking, Saleen realized all of a sudden that she was telling him that it was impossible for him to kill the Heretic God with the Book of Lightning.

“Why the hell is that?” he wondered.

“You are indeed the strongest monkey I’ve ever encountered. It’s a pity that I don’t have level 18 lightning powers, or else…”

What the goddess said finally prompted the Heretic God to run amok. A lightning bolt seemed to have struck Saleen’s mind, making him realize that unless he reached level 18, there was no way he could kill the Heretic God. He wouldn’t even be able to severely damage it until then.

The only thing that could threaten the Heretic God was the Crystal Finger.

Saleen was utterly confused. According to the legends told of Raphael, he should have been a mage whose level was between 10 and 12, but what Saleen intended to pull off wouldn’t even be something that a level 15 could do.

At the very least, Saleen felt that despite having massive human resources at his disposal—specifically, having tens of thousands of mages to aid him—he would be able to open an interdimensional space on his own, allowing said space to gradually succeed in becoming a full-fledged plane 1,000 years later.

Saleen was also unable to understand how things like the metal totem pole and the Crystal Finger worked.

“Can a skill created by a low-level mage threaten a level 18 god?” he thought.

Attacks from the lightning ravens gave the Heretic God an extremely hard time. Its speed was reduced to the absolute lowest in the Withering Dance, forcing it to resort to resisting the onslaught by relying solely on the toughness of its body.

“Saleen!” the goddess shouted. The holy prose in her hand was converted into the holy prose of the nature gods. One hundred twenty thorny vines shot out of the ground and penetrated the Heretic God’s body.

Saleen could clearly see 1,200 magic soldiers suddenly emerging and then surrounding the Heretic God. Those vines were actually only projections. The goddess bound the Heretic God just to give him one shot at attacking.

Saleen wasted no time. His body was instantly covered in Ice Plate Armor, Comet Flash was cast, and he charged to the rear of the Heretic God. He then simply pointed his finger.

The Crystal Finger squarely hit the wound on the Heretic God’s tail, and raging power blew up the rear of that part, reducing it to flying bits of flesh.

The Heretic God howled and leapt more than 300 feet high. The ethereal thorny vines took solid forms and tore open more than 100 transparent holes all over its body.

Golden blood spilled in a frenzy from all those holes.

Saleen’s Ring of Cosmos spun and sucked more than half of the golden blood away. The goddess let the magic soldiers clear up all the remaining spilled blood, as well.

All of that happened in an instant, and the Heretic God was so severely damaged that the wounds created by the lightning ravens could no longer heal. They remained torn and wiggled about.

It was a pain that struck the depths of its heart.

The magic soldiers were casting attacks again. Three hundred magic spells directly hit the Heretic God, and four magic soldiers cast one magic spell—the Dissolution Arrow of Light.

The goddess wiggled about and turned into a huge phoenix, burning up instantly and shrouding the Heretic God.

The two daggers of the Heretic God shot out from the flames, and Saleen grabbed them and put them away in the magic amplifier.

With his Crystal Finger, he unleashed all of his offensive power, which completely drained his magic chords and half-drained his power of the soul. He was no longer able to fight, yet he did not want to leave. He opened up the Book of Lightning and fired a thick bolt of lightning from it.

Without the help of the goddess, there was no way he would survive if he were to run into the Heretic God again.

Saleen was hating it deep down, but there was nothing he could do about it. That was how the goddess operated—giving someone goodies and having them work for her, whether they liked it or not.

Suddenly, a huge hole appeared on the fiery body of the goddess, which allowed Saleen’s thick lightning bolt to pass through it and hit the Heretic God. More than half of the precious golden hairs on the Heretic God’s body burned away. Wounds were visible everywhere on its skin, and Saleen’s lightning bolt penetrated its body.

Two flaming hands dived inside its body and tore through the wounds, aggravating them and taking a piece of bone from it. The hands tossed the bone away, and Saleen caught it.

“Dante!” the goddess shouted.

Dante charged while still shuddering. It had been hiding in the magic amplifier but could no longer resist the goddess’s summons, as that would have been very bad for its master, if the Heretic God were to stay alive.

The Heretic God had never suffered injuries so grave. Even the Thunder God so many years ago had only been able to blind it.

Saleen’s Crystal Finger, on the other hand, blew more than half of its rear-end away.

More terrifying was that the mage’s skill had also sucked its power from the Source, and repairing that part of its body became immensely difficult.

It could not be repaired unless it could acquire more power from the Source to do so; however, such magnitude of power from the Source would require more than a billion years to accumulate.

A puny mage had been able to wreck what it had painstaking built for so long.

The Heretic God felt so much pain that it was as if its heart was bleeding. It swore to keep Saleen alive, just so that it could throw him in a purgatory it created and then torture him for all eternity.

Dante’s speed of attack was working. It, too, had unleashed tens of thousands of electric snakes into the Heretic God’s body, which severely injured it and left it with no way of resisting so many attacks.

Raging electrical discharges continued to ravage its body, and a thunderous rumble reverberated within the Heretic God’s body. A huge head—torn apart from the neck by the goddess—was then seen flying in the air.

The head penetrated into a huge black hole after it was sent flying before disappearing without a trace.

The goddess twisted up the remains of the Heretic God and put it away in her red bangle.

The bodies of the 1,200 magic soldiers began to crack loudly before disintegrating one after another with electrical discharges.

Saleen was both shocked and angry. The goddess had no intention of killing the Heretic God. She only wanted the Heretic God’s body. With a godly body like that, she would have no problem recovering her powers at level 18, but he, on the other hand, was now completely on the bad side of the Heretic God.

If he were to leave the goddess’s side, she would have definitely no longer bothered with his protection.

She was extremely weak at the moment, but Dante would not dare to act against her. Saleen had expended all of his magic chords with that one shot with the Crystal Finger. The only level 18 scroll he had left with him was something that the goddess had given to him. If he were to use it against her, she could simply detonate it.

The goddess looked at the ground full of the remains of the magic soldiers and sighed. She said, “You can have them.”

Her body then disappeared without a trace.

Saleen was baffled for a bit before calling Dante.

“What is the matter, master?”

“Tell me, how long do you think a god needs to recover from losing its head?”

“In the case of the Heretic God, probably hundreds of millions of years?”

“Well, best be wary of its double then. Let’s head back, Dante.”

“Head back?”

“Head back to the Cemetery of Heroes. The general requires some items from the gods to recover his power, and this would be a big gift from me to him.”

Dante was puzzled by what that meant. If it had been Nailisi, she would have probably understood what Saleen was thinking.

Saleen did not leave right away. He put away the pieces of the magic soldiers and looked out for a bit on the platform. He only let Dante go back into the magic amplifier after confirming that there was nothing left to take.

Most of Saleen’s magic chords had regenerated after resting for a while, which cost him a piece of dragon crystal.

He headed alone to the Cemetery of Heroes and stood outside. Saleen thought for a bit and decided it would be best for him to take out all the godly items related to the goddess, including the divine crystals.

“General, I was forced to do what I did by Myers, too, and I was unable to resist. Here is everything you need for your people.”

Saleen left the items inside the cemetery. A croaked voice was heard from within the cemetery, saying, “Relax, Saleen. We won’t do anything against you until Myers is dead!”

“Good to hear.” Saleen was satisfied and left.

Saleen was not in a hurry, and he remained in the abyss just outside of the imperial city to put all his broken divine personas into the Hall of Gods before taking Dante to train inside.

What he had intended to do was restore the Lightning Moon’s powers. Although the goddess had without doubt duped him, the benefits she had given him were solid and undeniable, nonetheless.

He became capable of mastering the power of lightning, acquired a higher level of combat tactics, and learned one valuable lesson—never try to take advantage of powerful beings. What one could acquire would have to be equal to what one gave. That was a warning from the goddess.

Saleen needed to digest everything the goddess had imparted him with. She had not held back anything when she had taught him, but she had not provided him with any additional assistance, either. How much he was able to remember had been all up to him.

Saleen’s memory was excellent, but what the goddess had taught him had been simply too much. The information contained within a single movement was more than enough to keep him reminiscing for a whole day. It was fortunate that Dante was around because it had three heads. Everything Saleen saw was transmitted to Dante, and that weapon spirit remembered. That was equal to Saleen remembering all of it himself.

The internal parts of the jade that kept Dante in control were packed full of all manner of scripts, all of them containing information cast by the goddess. The knowledge was imparted using different scripts to serve as mediums, and the elaborations were extremely detailed.

The goddess had no idea that Saleen had a piece of jade like that. If she knew, she probably would not have bothered giving Saleen so many pointers. According to her calculations, Saleen would have only been able to select and digest what was deemed most useful and advantageous to him, as well as the information that was easiest to memorize.

She had been completely oblivious to how greedy Saleen was for magical knowledge, and she had not expected that his equipment had abilities that could surpass common sense, enabling him to commit everything he had been taught to memory and also analyze it.

Saleen spent three months within the Hall of Gods relying only on those broken fragments of divine personas. He categorized and compartmentalized everything the goddess had taught him within those three months, learning quickly while working on the daggers left behind by the Heretic God to make his own weapons.

Those two daggers were created out of the tusks of the Heretic God, so there was little need to doubt their sharpness. They were far better than the golden dagger in Dante’s possession.

Both daggers were of equal length and had a natural curve. Golden threads crafted from the Heretic God’s hairs on his own coiled around the handle. Four simple runes were laid onto the daggers by Saleen, and they were runes seen on the Ring of Cosmos.

Invisibility, sharpness, speed, and power were the attributes imbued within those two daggers.

Most importantly of all, Saleen was already capable of controlling those two weapons at will just like an assassin, dealing lethal damage to anyone who got near him.