Badge in Azure Chapter 268

Chapter 268: Lightning Dragon (Part 1)
Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio
The swordmasters dragged Saleen and Nailisi back ashore. The two grade-5 mages released a Chunlin spell, and Saleen woke up rapidly. His voice still could not produce any noise.
This magic beast’s skills were too incredible. If hundreds of those lightning strikes were to be shot out onto a battlefield, at least hundreds of soldiers would lose their combat power.
It took Saleen roughly half an hour before he regained his voice. Nailisi was a little quicker. She laid on one side, pretending to be unable to get up.
Saleen carefully recounted what he and Nailisi had seen, and the two grade-5 mages could not hide their shock.
“It was a lightning dragon.”
“Dragon?” Saleen could not tell how that fish-like creature had looked like a dragon. Dragons could fly, but this thing had not even been able to leave the water.
The mage talking to Saleen laughed, saying to him in the Myers language, “The lightning dragon isn’t a dragon. This thing only appears in the deep sea and chooses to lay its eggs near islands in the sea. It is a grade-8 magic beast and we cannot afford to offend it.”
Cannot afford to offend it? Saleen became worried upon hearing that. The method of attack of this lightning dragon was indeed hard to defend against, but it was not impossible to kill. If they allowed the lightning dragon to live here, the port would not need to be built. Any ships that dared to come in would need to face the assaults of the lightning dragon.
If they could not kill the lightning dragon, would they need to continue travelling north to find another suitable place?
“Saleen, let’s wait until Lex is back first. She can call her teacher for help,” the mages suggested something that he did not want to accept.
There was no other reason that Saleen wanted to slay it. Saleen had his eyes on the lightning dragon’s eggs.
Most magic beasts did not lay eggs. When a magic beast reproduced using eggs, it was very easy to bind them to a contract. Before the magic beast broke out from its shell, the rate of success of binding it to a contract was incredibly high. If even this failed, the mage’s luck must have been terrible.
This lightning dragon had such unusual characteristics. It would be perfect for his research. If others were to hunt it down, the magic eggs would never be his.
Just as he was thinking, a green current erupted from the surface of the water and charged towards Saleen. The two grade-5 mages stopped by Saleen could not react in time as the current returned into the calabash on Saleen’s waist.
Saleen heaved a sigh of relief. Having fought in the water earlier, the water current had nearly been destroyed by the lightning dragon’s attack. Saleen had not had a chance to store it back into the calabash. He had not expected it to return on its own.
The blue current’s speed was too fast and no other magic was this quick. If he could create such an electric current, even without being able to harness the powers of lightning, it would be enough.
The most important property of the electric current was that it could destroy magic. Saleen’s current cutter was essentially made up of water elements containing life, and its state was more stable than any magic gathered from a person’s magic chords. Even so, it had been dissipated by a single shot from the lightning dragon. If he grasped this skill, even if he had not finished learning the Figaro Formula, he would be able to stop an enemy’s magic attack.
However, Saleen could not figure out a way to kill the lightning dragon either way. Even if he concocted a special poison, he would need to pierce through the skin of the lightning dragon. Using bait to poison a magic beast greater than grade-7 was essentially impossible. What could he do?
Just as he was deep in thought, Nailisi sat up from the ground. She had been able to move a long time ago but did not want to draw attention to herself.
“Master, there is a way.” Nailisi held back her temptation. She wanted to jump straight into the water and swallow the magic eggs.
Those magic eggs. If she ate them, she would not need to fear such electric attacks any longer.
“What way?” The mages from Sregl Island were curious too. They had been living on islands for most of their lives and were much more knowledgeable when it came to magic beasts in the sea than mages on land. They had no idea how to kill a lightning dragon. Perhaps it would require a few grade-9 sorcerers.
“This lightning dragon needs to go out and hunt. It cannot go without food and water in order to protect its eggs. We can steal the eggs while it is out. Without the eggs as bait, we cannot trap it,” Nailisi said smugly. Such tricks were not uncommon in the demon dimension.
Saleen furrowed his brows. This was not a bad idea, but it would be a problem tracking the lightning dragon’s movements. The cave was over a hundred meters underwater, and with the lightning dragon there, it would be hard for anyone who descended down into the water to escape.
He had still been able to count on his special magic to escape the first time, but the lightning dragon was incredibly smart. It would not let him escape so carelessly the next time. If anyone else went, even going down to such depth would be a problem.
“My lord, should we try using the alchemy ship?” A grade-3 mage asked cautiously. He had followed Lex onto the ship before and had seen how it worked. He could not forget about it.
It was a good idea, using the ship to go to the bottom of the sea and using the magic array at the top to observe the lightning dragon’s movements. Once it left, the people on the ship could steal the lightning dragon’s eggs. With the eggs, they would immediately return to the ship, and the lightning dragon could not do much with the alchemy ship protecting them.
The alchemy ship itself was dead, and an electric current was useless on a turtle’s shell. At most, it would damage the magic crystals on the outside. The lightning dragon was barely ten meters long and the alchemy ship was almost thirty meters. Even if it was alive, the lightning dragon would potentially still be unable to kill it.
As to how they were going to kill the lightning dragon, that was not important to Saleen. With the dragon eggs in hand, other people could help them kill the lightning dragon. It would be best if he did it himself though. He could skin the entire lightning dragon and research the magic patterns on its skin. Such magic patterns could contain the power of lightning. Thus, they were incredibly important to Saleen.
Even if he looked to Lex’s teacher for help, that would still solve Saleen’s worries. At least he would be able to get a small piece of lightning dragon skin for his research.
With time, the lightning dragon would hatch and he could bind the baby lightning dragon with a contract, controlling it for his research. However, a mage would not harm his own contract creature, and that would make his research a little harder. If not, dissecting a magic beast was the easiest method to conduct research.
“Who here knows the weakness of the lightning dragon?” Saleen had already decided to use Nailisi’s idea of obtaining the magic beast’s eggs and seeing if they could kill the lightning dragon. If they could, he would not need to wait for Lex.
The mages from Sregl Island shook their heads and gave bitter smiles. If they knew its weaknesses, this creature would not have been a grade-8 magic beast. The lightning dragon’s water-type magic was very standardized. Its strongest magic was its electric current. Moreover, once a lightning dragon was over a thousand years old, its electric current would become lightning. Lightning and electricity were two different concepts. Once it was able to release the power of lightning, it would be able to completely destroy the structure of the elements.
This lightning dragon evidently had not evolved yet. If not, Saleen would have died immediately after being struck by it.
Once a lightning dragon evolved, it would surpass grade-9 and would be impossible to capture or kill.
“Every living creature has a weakness. At the very least, I know that the lightning dragon cannot leave the water,” Saleen encouraged the mages. The mages from Sregl Island hung their heads low.
The lightning dragon could be killed. However, Saleen did not have any professionals by his side. The two grade-5 mages had a similar skill level as Saleen, and were not any stronger than that. A mage below grade-3 was useless against such a creature. It was immune to low-level magic, a common characteristic among high-grade creatures.
If this lightning dragon had not been hatching its eggs near the coast, even a grade-8 sorcerer would not have been able to do anything about it. Many grade-8 creatures could be killed by grade-6 or even grade-5 mages, but this lightning dragon could even survive against a grade-9 mage. The grade was only used to determine a creature’s magic level and lifespan. Having high-level magic did not mean that it had great attack power and that it would have powerful combat abilities.
Similarly, having low-level magic did not mean that it was not dangerous, just like Saleen’s witcher spider. Even though it was only a grade-4 creature that did not have any magic nucleus, when it ambushed its prey, even a grade-7 creature could be killed by it.
The lightning dragon could not leave the water. That might have seemed like a weakness, but if a person considered it from another standpoint, since it could not leave the water, one could not bait it onto land. To kill it, a person had to go into the water.
The combat powers of humans were greatly reduced in the water, but it seemed like the lightning dragon was not affected.
If the lightning dragon had a weakness that could be exploited, humans would have figured it out a long time ago. The mages from Sregl Island were so familiar with the prowess of the lightning dragon that they had no reaction to Saleen’s suggestion.
“Whatever the case is, let’s steal the lightning dragon’s eggs for now. If these eggs hatch, dozens of lightning dragon will take this place as their nest and will live here for at least hundreds of years. We’d need to move then,” Saleen said as he ordered a few grade-3 mages to follow him, letting the others continue with their deforestation of the place.
Bringing with him six other grade-3 mages, Saleen and Nailisi came to the white stone mountain in the north. They boarded a small boat that steered towards the vast sea. The lightning dragon was in its cave protecting its eggs and did not come to disturb them.
The pan’s turtle alchemical boat was sitting behind a combat vessel and Saleen brought the six mages and Nailisi onto the teleportation array on top of the turtle shell, entering inside.
Saleen controlled the gravity magic array while the six other grade-3 mages controlled the oars. With that, the alchemy ship slowly descended towards the crescent shaped island.
The scenery was plain. With the lightning dragon controlling this region, there were no signs of any other living creatures. Besides the azure blue waters, there was nothing else outside the ship. This ship was controlled by magic and Saleen had the grade-3 mages reduce its speed to the minimum. Not making any intense elemental vibrations, they followed the white stone mountain towards the coast, stopping when they were a mile away from the lightning dragon’s cave.
The gravity magic array of the alchemy ship stopped revolving, and the entire turtle shell slowly sunk deeper into the sea, taking a full three minutes to reach the bottom. All the magic arrays on the alchemy ship had stopped revolving. The lightning dragon felt the elemental vibrations from it as it swam out of the cave, not noticing the alchemy ship.
After waiting for over half an hour, Saleen started up the magic illusion again. “Everyone will keep watch for an hour. Once the lightning dragon leaves, we will take action.”
There were a total of eight people onboard. Everyone keeping watch for one hour would not be too exhausting. The six grade-3 mages nodded in agreement. One of them said to Saleen, “My lord, can we take a look at this ship?”
“Of course, but we should wait until the lightning dragon is taken care of,” Saleen replied with a smile. The lightning dragon had not spotted the pan’s turtle alchemical boat, and he realized the lightning dragon had another weakness – its senses.
Although this magic beast had powerful attacks, its senses were not at the same level as its grade. Saleen became much more confident of slaying the lightning dragon.