Badge in Azure

Chapter 1417: Result of Clashing Head-on (Part 2)

Saleen was adamant: Seeing how the lightning icicles had failed to do their intended job, he brandished his family badge at once. The weapon spirit of the magic amplifier took control of the golden dagger that suddenly appeared before the skeletal dragon’s eye sockets.

As the blade was repelled with a clang, all the power within dissipated. The golden dagger’s sharpness was insufficient to pierce the skeletal dragon’s soul fire, as it had no way to overcome the powerful rules in its way.

But the skeletal dragon’s soul fire suffered considerably from the attack—and this made it furious!

Such was the rage of spirits, which was beyond the skeletal dragon’s control.

It struggled as it flapped its bone wings and took to the sky, heading straight for the weapon spirit of the magic amplifier. The weapon spirit let out a panicky yelp and retreated to the magic amplifier without waiting for Saleen’s orders.

With it running away like that, Saleen lost another layer of protection.

Rafel snorted coldly and tossed the spear to her left hand before chasing the skeletal dragon.

Another silhouette, however, was emerging from the magic amplifier: the Violet Angel. When Saleen found it, it was completely intact and showed no signs of having been used for research. The Violet Angel was well versed with the War Drum of Fear through years of use. Its level was such that it had no problem confusing several mages who were studying it.

It was recovering inside the Baldur’s Gate, where it was having a great time, and let an illusion take its place. When Saleen came to attack the place, it got so scared it hid where it was originally held.

The Violet Angel was technically freed. Because it did not end up alerting the Elemental Hand’s core members, it should have returned sooner to deliver the news. As such, when Saleen found it, it dismembered itself to invoke Saleen’s sympathy.

Its feeble attempts at dismemberment were faulty due to its reluctance to actually hurt itself. Saleen saw that immediately. He simply threw it back into the magic amplifier and ignored it altogether instead, not even bothering to heal or help it.

The Violet Angel panicked, fearing Saleen would have never used afterward.

Knowing no one in the magic amplifier and unable to find someone to speak on its behalf, the Violet Angel resorted to having its body restored to its usual state and waited for Saleen to summon it.

Saleen didn’t bother to do this. Even after he finished working on the Baldur’s Gate during his time in there, the Violet Angel still couldn’t see itself being summoned by Saleen.

Saleen found the Violet Angel irksome yet amusing. Among the weird beings he’d picked up, the Violet Angel stood out. It was a mass of contradictions! It had had a major attitude yet was ridiculous. It possessed formidable powers yet had no guts to speak of. Fortunately, it was a puppet with inherently limited curiosity, or it would have gone around looking for trouble.

He had not forgotten about the Violet Angel at all. He deliberately ignored it o serve as a warning to the puppet, telling it to know its boundaries with its future dealings. If the Violet Angel had really been able to sneak them some intel regarding the Elemental Hand, the Qin army would not have suffered such immense losses.

Saleen had only brought a 400,000-strong army to the Baldur’s Gate. One-tenth of the troops died when attacking the Mages’ Castle, with more than 60,000 people there ending up as corpses.

The Violet Angel’s level was high enough. Despite having been thrown into cold storage, it still had access to the multiple spaces in the magic amplifier. That’s why when it knew about Saleen’s plan of attack, the Violet Angel prepared itself amply, intending to get Saleen’s attention.

In actual fact, it was indifferent about Saleen paying any attention to it, but then again, Rafel showed no interest either.

How could this be?

The Violet Angel hid in the invisible magic amplifier hanging midair. From the outside, one could easily see all the spaces inside the magic amplifier. The Violet Angel was pissed seeing the weapon spirit of the magic amplifier retreating, berating the weapon spirit for running away from the battlefield.

The weapon spirit of the magic amplifier was a bully who relished picking on the weak while fearing the strong. It took its sweet time beating up Juno because of the latter’s lack of powers. Seeing how the Violet Angel was being so forceful, it tried to weasel out of its predicament by saying, “I’m the weapon spirit of the magic amplifier. It would have been enough for me to simply boost the power of the magic amplifier. If you’re so keen on fighting, go out and do it yourself!”

The Violet Angel then said, “You don’t have to tell me twice!”

It then flew outside the magic amplifier and headed straight for the skeletal dragon.

It then smirked coldly behind, “Some idiot has a death wish. That skeletal dragon is probably around level-15. You really think you can come back alive fighting that thing?”

“That’s so unbecoming of you as a weapon spirit,” Juno interjected from the side.

“Since when are you allowed to talk?” The weapon spirit of the magic amplifier then beat up Juno, who was unable to recover its power right away, seeing how it was being sarcastic. The weapon spirit threw a punch at Juno and sent the other weapon spirit writhing on the ground, also unable to recover for the time being.

The Violet Angel regretted charging outside the magic amplifier. Its level of powers still allowed it to see that the skeletal dragon was more powerful than it was. But it quickly straightened itself up and dusted itself off. I’m a puppet, so what’s to be afraid of? The worse that could happen is getting beaten to a pulp.

Fighting alongside Rafel felt exhilarating and memorable.

The Violet Angel spread its metal wings and headed for the skeletal dragon poetically.

“What the hell’s up with this guy...” Saleen was exasperated. The Violet Angel went into hiding when it should have been doing something. Charging at the skeletal dragon just now was akin to digging its own grave.

The skeletal dragon chomped down hard, revealing two rows of giant fangs that attacked the Violet Angel midair. If those illusory teeth managed to make contact with the Violet Angel, it would have taken a miracle to revive it. The eerie fangs were filled with an aura of death. Any ordinary soul would have dissipated in an instant merely by being grazed.

The terrifying thing about the skeletal dragon was that all its attacks were capable of harming souls.

The Violet Angel vibrated its wings and accelerated, while Rafel called out in a startled manner before passing through the rows of fangs and landing on the skeletal dragon’s long snout. A huge drill was conjured from the Violet Angel’s abdomen.

Whirrllllll...

The drill was filled with crystallized metal that Saleen had given it. The high-speed spinning of the drill caused bone dust to fly from the dragon’s nose.

Did the skeletal dragon panic? Not at all. It swatted with its killing claws. The Violet Angel dropped below. The claws then clamped themselves on the nose, which caused no damage to its body.

The Violet Angel had some ideas up its sleeve; they were wasted on a clever being like the skeletal dragon who would never have fallen for them.

Saleen thought it was too bad he couldn’t use Glimmer or he would have been able to evade the dragon’s attacks easily.

The Elemental Stone Statue Soldiers in the elemental badge then provided him with rich-earth elemental power as those thoughts crossed his mind. A yellow light flashed on his feet as he began moving midair.

It could be said that Saleen had already mastered all the level-11 skills. While this still paled in comparison to what Arbola was capable of, it was far cry from Jalin’s. The sidestep caused the skeletal dragon to miss the mark. Saleen zipped past the dragon and released his lightning badge’s powers.

The skeletal dragon had been careless, or rather, had underestimated Saleen. Whereas other mages feared being closed in by their enemies, Saleen charged ahead with full force the whole time. Of all the battles he’d fought, few were waged at distant locations.

Even if the enemy intended to run, he would have cut them down.

The Crystal Finger was the most adept at using had powers that were considerably diminished when used more than ten meters away. That enabled Saleen to develop a habit for fighting up close, a trait that set him apart from other mages.

The closer he was to the enemy, the better he felt about the way things were going.

The skeletal dragon would not have expected any mage to risk his neck like that. Not only did the mage zip past its body, but he also counterattacked.

The electrical bolt fired from Saleen’s family badge that time was only about half a meter thick. Blasting through the dragon’s body, it was blocked by something before that piece of soul, before gushing like a torrent.

Owwrrr!

The skeletal dragon let out a savage cry that sounded nothing like a noble dragon. The bit of dragon soul it had painstaking built was destroyed in no time flat. That was the point where things usually turned lethal. If this didn’t come to pass, it would have killed the dragon outright.

With a body housing two souls, what Saleen did was cut off its path to advancement.

The skeletal dragon might have only wanted to chase Saleen off before, but now, more than anything, it wanted to see Saleen dead.

The skeletal dragon dived and banged hard on Saleen’s body. Magical light kept flashing on Saleen’s body as layers of magic shields were crushed. Eventually, a humanoid silhouette fell outside of Saleen’s body and quickly disappeared.

That was the life force within the Figure of Fate, torn to shreds by the skeletal dragon.

Seeing that Saleen was in trouble, Rafel drew the power of the goddess from her spear forthwith and thrust it without care, drawing a jury-rigged divine rune-charm array midair.

Boundless golden light flashed and coalesced into a huge metal net midair, separating Saleen from the skeletal dragon.

“Damned divine arts and damned mage. You’re in bed with the gods!” The skeletal dragon died fighting the gods. While it did eventually manage to kill the god it was fighting, its resentment and hatred of the gods had simply deepened.

Rafel’s divine arts had ended up enraging the skeletal dragon. It swiped its large tail sideways, not caring that the Violet Angel was diving from above with its arms turning into spears and coming straight for the dragon’s eyes.

The huge metal net Rafel had conjured with divine power was torn to pieces.

Yellow light glowed beneath Saleen’s feet. The skeletal dragon’s spirit territory made it difficult for him to gather elements. His lightning territory shrank to the point where it was plastered to its body, preventing it from being corroded by the deathly aura.

If he was any other mage, he would have long been assimilated into a spirit for fighting at such a close range with the skeletal dragon.

If Saleen hadn’t brought elemental badges with him, he would probably have only been able to cast water magic and be unable to use powers of other magic. The flight made possible from using water magic paled in comparison to that of earth magic. That’s how things were in combat.

Saleen continued to step on yellow light as he zipped about midair at high speeds. He was grazed by the bone wings, and that almost killed him. He dared not let his guard down anymore. The skeletal dragon’s attack speed was more than ten times faster than what he ever imagined.

Worse, his family badge had without a doubt destroyed that dragon soul in the skeletal dragon’s body. For some reason, the dragon did not manage to survive; it went totally berserk.

Saleen didn’t know that what he had seen using the Signet of Silence was not wrong and not the key to the dragon’s life, regardless of how important that dragon soul was to it.

If Saleen showed up later, the skeletal dragon would have submitted its body to that dragon soul and taken the form of a living dragon. It was still a skeletal dragon at the moment. What Saleen had destroyed was its hope of further survival.

Without that dragon soul, it was condemned to spend the rest of its existence as a skeletal dragon. Worse still, the mage that hurt it was in bed with the gods. He was done for!

The dragon’s eyes were blood red and shot fires of death. The ability of those fires in melting materials surpassed Saleen’s Water Flame.

Not only did that head-on clash result in the failure to slay the dragon, but it also caused it to go berserk. It did not care about dying, so long as it was able to kill the mage that had so enraged it.