Badge in Azure

Chapter 1546: World-weary (Part 1)

Thundercloud, a skill that Saleen developed on his own. However, it was only usable in the Well of Stars. The Well of Stars gathered massive stores of water element, conjuring a massive storm cloud.

The electrical discharge in the cloud was no longer something Saleen could have easily controlled. His power of rules was lacking, and it had always been his weakness. However, the grandmaster was unable to easily escape from the Well of Stars all the same, and he would have only ended up being slowly ground to death by the power of lightning.

Accuracy did not matter in this case, as Saleen had all the time in the world.

Using the power of the godly item in an underwater city such as the Imperial City of the Abyss, there was no way he could have run out of water element. Furthermore, the electrical discharge from the workings of the water element was practically limitless.

The grandmaster screamed in despair, after witnessing the amount of power emanating from the godly item.

As Saleen put it himself, a mage like the Grandmaster would have never given up resisting. He would have dealt a lethal blow to the enemy even if he would have ended up dead.

“Let’s die together, Saleen.” A huge burst of energy was seen from the grandmaster’s magic book again. A black hole appeared with the grandmaster at its core.

Saleen was stunned for a bit before laughing. Tens of ball lightning were sent inside the black hole as it appeared, causing the black hole to collapse in less than a second.

This couldn’t be!

The grandmaster’s eyeballs felt like they were about to shatter. Saleen clearly lacked comprehension of power of rules, and that was something the grandmaster had no problem telling. But, being able to instantly dispel his space-devouring skill was something that not even level 18 beings would have been able to pull.

Casting one such skill in such a sealed environment made the grandmaster’s intentions of dying together with Saleen very apparent. Saleen was having the time of his life, so he definitely would not have agreed to just roll over.

Saleen stood at the center of the Well of Stars and watched the grandmaster struggle in vain. The grandmaster had all the skills he needed, yet he ended up trapped by a huge number of lightning creatures. Those creatures, which were conjured directly from the Thundercloud, were over a dozen times more powerful than those summoned by the Lightning Moon.

That massive size of the Thundercloud had raging power, wearing down the grandmaster’s magic shielding layer by layer. The grandmaster was a level 17 mage, capable of conjuring near-limitless number of such shielding. However, the power of one man was eventually limited nonetheless, while Saleen’s lightning powers raged on without limit in the cloud.

As for things at the goddess’ side, the combat remained intense. She fought up close and personal like a warrior. Every single divine spell she cast was almost done very near her body. The general was frightening fast, at least still a tad bit faster than the goddess.

However, the goddess had a better sense of tempo, causing the general’s attacks to miss all the time. The goddess retaliated even more viciously. If it had not been for the general wearing a set of godly armor, he would have ended up killed by the goddess a while ago.

There was no way a level 18 warrior could have taken on a mage or god of a comparable level without godly armor. Any of the goddess’ instant-cast divine spells would have had a hard time breaking through such armor as well.

The general had ample combat experience. He had gotten near the goddess since the very beginning of the fight, never letting her distance herself more than 20 meters away from him.

The goddess wanted to end the fight quickly as well, but she had to do so without sustaining too much damage. She still had to fight Saleen after she was done taking care of the heroic spirits after all, and that following battle would have been more important. Her path from then on out would have depended on the outcome of that battle after all.

She knew right away after seeing the Well of Stars that Saleen cast, that the battle between them would have definitely been a long one. That godly item that Saleen was something that came after the fall of the First Dynasty, and there were definitely more than one of those around.

While the Baldur’s Gate was infamous, it was something that appeared when the Second Dynasty was near the end of its days. While the fall of the Goddess of Myers was actually later than that, but she had been busy setting up things for what came, after all, preventing her from paying too much attention to the mainland.

Furthermore, the Baldur’s Gate did not become famous due to the six godly items it harbored, but due to the concept of its construction being too eerie. The layered, stacked spaces, expandability, and rules like that of a world within were what made the Baldur’s Gate so renowned in the first place. The six godly items were not actually considered the most powerful items to have appeared in the Second Dynasty.

A thunderous rumble from Saleen’s Well of Stars permeated the entire cemetery, and the general, who was still busy fighting the goddess, became restless. The thunderous rumbled permeated the spatial barrier, as the grave was unable to block it. That was to say that Saleen’s power had not been suppressed by the power of the grave’s space.

As such, the grandmaster was probably done for by that point. If the grandmaster were to end up dead, there would have been no way he could have taken on both Saleen and the goddess.

His attacks became even more rushed and relentless at that thought. The blade in his hand crackled and extended to lengths well over three meters, making it a massive blade. Complex shrieks were heard from the massive blade, which would have made the hearts of people shudder.

The goddess smirked, however. A level 18 god could have never been stunned by such noise after all.

But then, the noise became that of a sigh as the blade was brought down.

That sigh was from the emperor of the First Dynasty—heard when the goddess ascended to godhood.

Her mind was shaken nonetheless.

That man, whom she used to look up to, severed contact with her completely after she became a goddess. She wondered why he did not understand why she was doing such a thing in the first place. The secret of the gods was something she could have only completely learned, after becoming a goddess herself.

The emperor wanted to conquer all realms and she went on to do the most dangerous thing there was to be done, yet the outcome yielded only disappointment.

Her hand stopped and the cold blade cut open the skin on her face. She did not feel any pain from it, as even her mind began to feel numb.

A level 18 god had weaknesses in their mind nonetheless. She was born a human instead of a god after all.

The bone on the general’s face looked rather twisted. Casting that one attack cost him most of the life remaining in him. The soul flames in his eyes materialized again, and cracking noises were heard from within the godly armor as if the power from every inch of bone was being unleashed.

The general intended to cut her down with one swing of his blade, destroying her power of the Source once and for all.

On the contrary, Saleen was the one with the advantage on his side. The grandmaster had been struggling to hold out, but his expression changed drastically seeing that strike from the general. He knew that if he were not to get rid of Saleen soon enough, the general would not have had enough to help him, even if he were to win.

Lightning icicles were fired from Saleen’s back as the grandmaster was wondering what to do. The magic shields were capable of stopping the lightning creatures for a while, but the penetrative powers of the lightning icicles were not something the shielding could have withstood.

Seven lightning icicles lined up in a straight line as they punched through the grandmaster’s shields, crashing onto his magic robe and metal clanging was heard. The grandmaster’s body was sent flying from the collision. Defense properties of the grandmaster’s magic robe baffled Saleen, but the robe still was not enough to deflect the lightning icicles’ impact.

Soul flames danced in the grandmaster’s eyes. His entire arm began to disintegrate and he cast six magic spells as he was sent flying.

Saleen was immediately alerted. That intuition saved his life dozens of times throughout the millennia, including mishaps happening during training. Combat was not the only time life-threatening accidents could have happened. There was at least one percent of the total population of mages who died from training after all.

The six spells stopped abruptly before Saleen. Tens of thousands of magic runes scattered all about as if they were shattered glass.

Saleen’s smirk was no more. All ten fingers of his danced as he performed magic hand seals, working in tandem with Thundering Sound and bringing out 24 thunder dragons to circle his body. The magic amplifier behind him grew abruptly in size, and then, there was a huge shock.

A huge formless axe cleaved onto his magic amplifier. The six powerful spells had only been a distraction. The formless axe did not crumble as it hit the magic amplifier. Saleen felt his entire body rumbling. If it had not been for the armor formation of the thunder dragons, his Figure of Fate would have probably ended up being sent flying out of his body, and the next hit would have taken his life.

He opened up his magic amplifier all of a sudden, unleashing powerful suction from within and absorbed that formless huge ax.

The grandmaster despaired and stood with his remaining hand limping at his side. He had already unleashed his most powerful attack, and there was no greater attack he could have cast after that.

Saleen felt his teeth loosening and blood from his lips. It was fortunate that the damage was a concussive one, which hardly did anything to hamper his combat capacity.

12 Thundering Phantasms attacked at the same time. 12 long lines of ice shredded the grandmaster’s body. While the body was quickly reconstituted, it had nearly lost all mobility.

Lightning crackled where the lines cut. The grandmaster would have disintegrated if he were to simply move an inch.

Saleen had been aiming to unleash a big one all along. All 12 Thundering Phantasms had not been doing anything just to wait for a chance like that, and it was an opening that Saleen had to create. It would have been nearly impossible for his illusory constructs would have hit a mage of his level after all.

“How did you know of the Battleaxe of Fate?” The grandmaster asked with a frustrated tone.

“I’ve told you before, I’m an astrologer,” Saleen answered.

The grandmaster smirked as bone fragments of his face crumbled and fell to the ground.

Saleen dared not let his guard down. That ax continued to bang all over the place within his magic amplifier, wrecking a good number of things and killing a good number of warriors. Nailisi and the others were already getting busy in attempting to subdue that thing inside his magic amplifier.

“I’d tell you of the way to wield the Battleaxe of Fate…” The grandmaster panted as he said.

“Conditions?”

“Tear me up completely, send every single piece of the grave to the most distant stars far away. I know you’ve definitely been there before.”

The grandmaster’s answer surprised Saleen quite a bit, but he nodded in agreement nonetheless.

The grandmaster then threw a magic scroll to Saleen, and that single movement caused his remaining arm to break, dropping to the ground and shattering.

Saleen took the scroll, which was written in ancient scripts, dating earlier than the Myers Language.

The method of wielding the Battleaxe of Fate was detailed on it. Saleen took a look and knew that there was nothing wrong, burning the scroll right away.

The grandmaster sighed. “Heh, I could finally be done with living for good. This is nice…”

The grandmaster tumbled backward before he finished. His entire being shattered to dust, just like that remaining arm of his.

Saleen was unable to understand the grandmaster’s last words. He wondered why people became world-weary, as he thought one should have continued striving, so long as there was still hope, no matter how small.