Badge in Azure Chapter 1354

Chapter 1354: Birth of the Thunder God (Part 2)

Dante continued slaughtering the abominations. While all of them knelt on the ground shaking, Dante gave them a quick death. Saleen was actually pleased seeing Dante work: It was buying Saleen’s party’s time instead of the Evil Oracle.
Sometimes an unexpected event is all it takes to change the course of fate.
All of a sudden Dante started attacking the abominations proactively. Saleen never expected that to happen. The outcome was in his favor, as the Evil Oracle was only able to see Dante slaughtering their people while they were unable to do anything.
If they could stop and redo the whole thing again, it would have taken even longer.
The Evil Oracle cast a blob of gray mist from its fingertip in the form of an abomination and sent it charging at Dante. The Lightning Constellation’s weapon spirit chose to evade this abomination rather than take it on.
Its current level of intellect enabled it to know that the Evil Oracle was simply trying to prevent the weapon spirit from killing more abominations instead of conjuring one to take out the weapon spirit.
The abomination conjured by the Evil Oracle had one-tenth of the Evil Oracle’s powers. That was akin to the Evil Oracle snapping one of its fingers, but it would have still been better than going after Dante on its own.
Dante knew it looked horrendous at the moment. Its appearance kept changing as the golden granules were absorbed.
None of the mechanical parts could be seen anymore as the golden fluids coursed through its body. Now it could use any skills of the puppets or the powers of Lightning Constellation. Some of its abilities were also inherited from the giant.
Dante’s body gradually shrank and started to look like the Evil Oracle instead, which in turn resembled a human youth with a pair of tiny horns on its head. Dante’s horns, however, were molded after high-level thunder dragon’s horns and filled with lightning magic patterns in layers inside out.
Even when the Lightning Constellation’s power was not being used, electricity flashed between Dante’s horns: This looked rather harrowing against Dante’s golden facial features.
At the end of Dante’s transformations, its armor resembled the robe worn by the Evil Oracle but was of golden colors. It still wasn’t satisfied with its appearance though because its eyes were also transparent and golden.
Dante pondered this as it went about killing more abominations. Two complex thunder beads appeared in their eyes eventually. Black and white colors were clearly separated, making them resemble the eyes of the Qin people.
It was only after the transformation of its eyes was completed that Dante began to modify its robe. Billowing in the air, the robe appeared to be weightless but was imbued with the power of lightning.
The golden robe was transformed into black and white; there seemed to be embroidery of Cloudflow on it arranged in beautiful patterns. If those patterns were observed with the Elemental Eye, one could see that they were actually complex three-dimensional magic patterns.
Dante was pleased and changed its skin to white and its brows to black. Its long hair was of crisscrossing black and whites stripes, however.
Saleen’s lightning was of only two colors: black and white. Despite the powers Dante came to control, it was still unable to transform all the golden granules’ colors into some other colors.
In fact, such modifications were limited to its external appearance only. Lightning powers coursed through the external parts of its body, making it look like a person.
After its appearance was transformed, Dante turned around and brandished a weapon—a Thunder Dragon Blaster molded after Saleen’s equipment.
This being was completely under Saleen’s control; unlike Nailisi, it was a weapon spirit. The new Thunder Dragon Blaster on its arm was actually part of its body.
The Thunder Dragon Blaster was elongated, and the tip and the front were transformed into a true spear tip that was then twisted into the shape of a drill. On each side of the blade were seven tiny holes.
The spear was golden. Dante no longer bothered to change color before thrusting the spear at the abomination pursuing it. The abomination dared not take the attack head-on but instead retreated in a hurry.
Six electrical bolts fired from the spear hit the abomination squarely in the face.
It began to shake all over. When Dante went to fire another shot, that abomination had already been reduced to a puff of gray smoke.
The dispersed smoke wiggled about in the air and headed straight for Dante’s butt.
Dante swept its spear around and conjured a ring of electricity to repel the smoke, which then groaned in pain. But instead of lingering, Dante pivoted and continued killing more abominations.
Aided by the lightning spear, Dante’s killing speed intensified.
The Evil Oracle gave up after seeing that its clone was unable to take on that peculiar weapon spirit. It refocused its attention on its chants and didn’t bother with Dante any longer.
Saleen felt something was off. Why isn’t Lex coming for us?
It’s not that she didn’t want to come for them. The problem was that there were more and more abominations blocking the magic door: Over 200,000 were outside, and it was nearly impossible for her to kill that many abominations in order to get outside. After all, a level-10 mage couldn’t cast that many powerful spells.
Although the God’s Ring was useful, it only worked for a limited period of time. If Lex were to take on a powerful attack from one enemy, the ring would have enabled her to last only ten minutes.
That was not to say that the God’s Ring power would have lasted longer simply because it had to repel low-level attacks instead.
All kinds of energy attacks were being fired outside the magic door as the abominations attacked.
There were also arrows, chariots, flying creatures and more.
None of those creatures was afraid of death. The claws of their feet dug deep holes as they ran on the ground, which was then filled with an evil aura. The entire magic door was being hammered by such an aura and was struggling to hold on.
It was actually such energies, unleashed when the abominations and evil creatures die, that would have brought the magic door down. That door didn’t have noteworthy offensive powers, but its defensive abilities were formidable.
Unfortunately, there were too many abominations around. Furthermore, many sacrificed their lives to coalesce a thick aura of death and evil power right before the door.
The magic door couldn’t keep up with such intense consumption for very long. The facilities in the underground city were incomplete, and the abominations appeared too suddenly. Holy Rock City had been lowering its guard for far too long.
No one would have expected any human armies to be capable of penetrating the city’s walls or to get so deep inside.
Holy Rock City had been able to repel over 100 sieges because of the magic clock’s power. Built during wartime, the city had been tested under harsh conditions.
Those gathered on the platform before the magic door were all high-level abominations who had built a bridge out of the bones of their dead. This is what allowed the abominations below to pass through the bridge and charge into the magic door.
The high-level abominations waited at the sides for the magic door’s power to be completely drained. Then they charged inside at once.
On the other side of the magic door, every charging abomination ended up dead. The ones that didn’t make it inside and were repelled by the magic door’s power would not have been able to survive very long either.
Safilos held on to his blade and glared at the attacking abominations with cold eyes. He thought that his enemies would have been the Holy See.
The reason he dedicated considerable effort to learn the ways of the sword was that he hoped to one day step onto Tanggulasi Empire’s soil and avenge his brother.
His brother had been too powerful.
Unless he could surpass Emperor Chanake, revenge would be little more than a pipe dream.
Despite Safilos’s being the supreme commander of the Qin Empire’s armies, the nation’s capital had been penetrated. All he could do was hide behind a magic door and wait for the mages to take care of the problem.
There were six military branches in the empire; except for the Royal Swordsmen and the Palace Guards, Safilos held command over all branches. His army was more than a million strong in total; the troops he was able to command were definitely over three million strong.
It was especially challenging given the despairing state of affairs in the north. The imperial army’s supplies had been increased instead, and the military units in the empire had surpassed five million.
Even with military units of such huge numbers, the imperial capital remained breached. Safilos was consumed with shame over his failures. The hand that held onto the blade had veins popping out; his sword aura was brimming.
No one paid any attention to his wrath though: His personal guards and soldiers had all perished outside the magic door. Even the four most powerful mages in the empire couldn’t stay alive long enough to get through the door.
The magic door’s powers belonged to the emperor, who was his nephew—the young man who even had problems moving about.
Meanwhile, the mages were calmly assembling the large-scale puppet. Every single part had to be activated before the puppet could be completed. It was incredibly expensive to maintain such a complicated device.
Had the underground city not been under attack, the mages would never have considered assembling that puppet to fight the Holy See.
Safilos couldn’t fathom the mages’ composure. They would have patiently finished the magical tasks before them even when on the brink of annihilation.
Lex couldn’t charge outside, because that would have wrecked the magic door and allowed the abominations to gush inside in a heartbeat. If they succeeded in getting through, that would have been the end of everything.
Suddenly Jola charged into the room. The sword he held in his hand was Face. Lex cast a ring of fire and enveloped Jola inside, preventing his strong sword aura from hurting her brother.
“Jola!” Lex shouted angrily.
“Viscount, they sent me to ask you when we’d be heading outside to pick up our superior!”
“When the puppet is finished.”
“We can’t wait that long. Nicholas said he’s in danger now!” Jola retorted adamantly.
“He’s not in any danger. I’m sure of it,” Lex said with a steady tone. There was no way Saleen would have ended up dead because he was in control of the situation. That Evil Oracle probably wouldn’t have even been able to send its true body over, even after the large-scale puppet was assembled.
“I’m sorry, but I can’t believe that. If you’re not heading out, viscount, we’d better go ourselves!”
Lex was dumbfounded. Jola continued, “Please rescind the ring of fire. If I break this by force, I’ll end up hurting his majesty.”
Lex was annoyed. It was unusual for Saleen to gain such loyal subordinates. She couldn’t bring herself to berate Jola, so she said instead, “We’ll wait another half hour. I’ll go out to save Saleen myself while you guys stay here and hold down the fort.”
Jola sheathed Face and didn’t seem to have any intention of leaving. She stared intently at the magic projections in the room instead and said, “Alright, I’ll wait here. If he were to end up dead…”
He was being very clear with his intentions. If Saleen were to die, there was no way Ojarvis would have stayed alive for long.
As a level-10 true might, it was all too easy for him to kill the likes of Ojarvis, because Ojarvis’s physique was simply too frail. The emperor couldn’t handle having a strong peasant bring a hoe down on him, let alone resist attacks from a true level-10.