Badge in Azure Chapter 1424

Chapter 1424: Rampage (Part 1)

Saleen was feeling glum. He realized that he had never bothered to reign supreme on the mainland. He already had Raphael’s interdimensional space in his possession—a place with no gods and nothing to hold him back. When he was done with the business with the Goddess of Myers, he would not bother returning to Myers Mainland.
He was a mage and had no intention of becoming emperor. That was something no one could ever fathom. They always thought he would have taken the entire mainland for himself. That had never been his goal. Fundamentally, he was still the same old Saleen, the Saleen who had wanted little more than food in his belly and magic to practice.
He never bothered fighting for all those things and yet people were constantly spilling blood over things that he never wanted. He thought Grand Duke Iron Blood would have been someone with a personality, but from the looks of things, he was a boorish bore.
Let’s just resurrect the goddess and get this over with. Saleen accelerated that thought while heading for the Floating City.
Rafel was the closest to Saleen and she mumbled right behind him, “My lord, your problems are easy to take care of.”
“Yeah? How so?”
“Get rid of Lex and you will not need to have to bother yourself with any of these things.”
“Hahaha!” Saleen laughed and said, “I’m a human. My problems are different from the gods.”
“Oh.” Rafel’s lips rose. She knew that what she proposed was not actually a solution, but Saleen’s mood lightened right away after hearing what she said.
What Rafel said was not actually amusing. It was indeed due to Lex that Saleen’s mood took a turn for the worse. He had come to possess mighty powers, yet he had to leave Lex behind to deal with those from the Golden Plains all on her own. What he did to vent his frustration earlier was an act to show his support to Lex, a way to tell those people to always remember that day in case they were thinking of going against her in the future.
Rafel’s words made Saleen realize right away that he wasn’t a god and that it was normal to feel troubled sometimes. What would his teacher have done? If people have insufficient powers, they have to develop them. When they come to possess a decent amount of power, then they will settle the scores with their enemies. Simple! So why should he sigh and whine?
Saleen rose to the Floating City once he had cleared his mind and changed his orders. He no longer bothered to head to Holy City but decided to head straight for Tanggulasi Empire.
Tanggulasi Empire was never one to have formidable military strength, totally inferior when compared to Qin. If the knights of the Holy See and the Tribunal were to add to the list, the Tanggulasi Empire would have ten times the military strength of Qin. The quality gap in terms of equipment could have been easily made up with sheer numbers.
Saleen had wanted to hit his core target right away without worrying about anything else. However, he came to realize that he had only wanted to make the Holy See uncomfortable, not destroy Holy City.
Saleen was not all too sure of his powers after all. There would have definitely been extremely powerful godly items within Holy City, and those would have been items requiring many to activate and use, which meant that they were not portable.
That was the city that the Lord of Glory had picked personally. Crushing it would have robbed all of his believers’ dreams.
However, doing so would have seemed too convenient. If he were to simply kill his way there, he would have prompted countless believers to defend their religion.
The Floating City would not have had much of a problem dealing with common cities. Those who dared to defend their religion would have been fanatics anyway, and there was little to regret killing them.
Saleen’s level had become increasingly high and he came to have less concern about such matters related to life and death.
The Floating City headed west all the way and when it arrived above Kroraina, Saleen went to deliberately check out the place. The Kroraina Duchy was in shambles. The place that had once been an incredibly bustling duchy founded on the mainland, where trade with all places flourished as most trade routes passed by the duchy. The place once had a great number of inns and merchant guilds. Convoys and countless merchants roamed the streets.
None of that was left: Only burnt villages and crops that no one reaped, growing among the weeds.
No intact cities were to be found. The Holy See had once repaired the city walls, but they were destroyed once again when the Qin retaliated.
When the Holy See retaliated after that, reconstruction again became necessary. After the skirmishes went on and on, the fighting sucked almost all the life out of the place. The fires of war were more terrifying than magic, as what they destroyed was the root that people called home.
The Floating City capable of reaching a top speed over 500 kilometers per hour in flight, but the fuel consumption would have been over ten times the usual fuel cost. Normal flight speed was maintained at over 200 kilometers per hour and if accelerated slightly, the city would have reached the speed of 300 kilometers per hour. The fuel cost of the acceleration would have been able to be maintained at hardly more than twice what it usually costs.
Saleen resorted to taking the city flying at 200 kilometers per hour. The humongous construct that was the Floating City streaked through the skies and headed straight for its first target—Glog of God Grace Duchy.
The God Grace Duchy had a very small land area. Among the four duchies, it was the only one that would have only survived due to being maintained by the Tanggulasi Empire. The wars that were fought on the mainland had never reached the duchy itself. As such, when Saleen’s Floating City came to Glog, the people did not even realize they were under attack.
Saleen took the Floating City down and loomed over the place, keeping it at little more than 1,000 meters above the ground. It hardly expended any energy at such a height, enabling it to attack at full force.
The Floating City was a 36kilometer square; common cities were hardly that huge, to begin with. Not even Holy Rock City compared in size.
Saleen’s Metatrin City was less than a 10-kilometer square. As such, the 36 kilometer-square city blocked out the sun right away, as if the place had been shrouded by night earlier than usual. There were no longer any metal towers to be found at the bottom of the Floating City. They had been replaced with movable magic cannons.
Saleen stayed with the Magical Element Tower at the core of the Floating City and did his calculations. Glog had 12 churches and the defense of every church was hardly worth mentioning. It was a mid-sized city with many troops garrisoned. However, since most of them were Holy See forces retreating from Kroraina, the city was in decent shape.
Attack the 12 churches!
Saleen gave the order.
The magic cannons were attacking full force at a distance of little more than 1000 meters above the ground. Such attacks could have only been resisted somewhat by magic towers, which in turn depended on how many magic nuclei reserves that towers had. The offense had always been easier and cost less to pull off than defense. While the Holy See had claimed its divine arts to be known best for its defensive capacities, that still depended on the situation.
Magic towers were far more formidable than churches would have ever been. The holy masters had already made their preparations when they found the Floating City, activating the divine rune charm array within the churches.
After the Floating City was done with its first volley of attacks, only one of the 12 churches within the city was left standing.
That remaining church was helmed personally by the bishop of the city. There was one red-robed bishop stationed in the city that had a population of over 100 thousand. However, there was no way the level-9 red-robed bishop would have been able to defend against the second volley of attacks.
The enchanters within the Floating City had quickly calculated the defensive capacity of the divine rune charm array of that church. Ten magic cannons were added to the second volley.
The roof of the church crumbled as expected, with the believers within crying and wailing as they ran outside.
The red-robed bishop’s face was ashen. He walked outside the church and yelled at the Floating City in the air, “Mage, why!?”
“There is no why. I’m just out to destroy the Holy See.” Saleen’s voice was heard in the air, which everyone in the city was able to clearly hear. They were at the God Grace Duchy, where most of its population were adherents of the faith.
A child, who was about six or seven years old, came to the red-robed bishop’s side and yelled at the Floating City, “Are you people abominations? You have come to destroy our faith then?”
“No. We’re just humans trying to take back our dignity.”
“Dignity?”
“Yes, dignity. And dignity isn’t something that can be bestowed,” Saleen answered.
“If I were to refuse to give up my faith, would you kill me?” That child asked in a childish tone.
“I only kill those who are able to fight,” Saleen answered.
The child turned around the red-robed bishop and said, “I’d stay with you then, lord bishop. Then the abominations wouldn’t attack you.”
“If I’m an abomination, I’d be very capable of lying.” Saleen’s words made the child dumbfounded. She wanted to protect the revered bishop, but if she were to believe what the abomination said, she would have fallen. If she were to refuse to believe what was said, then the abomination would have acted against the bishop, regardless if she was around.
“So what now? Are you going to kill yourself, or let that kid die alongside you?” Saleen’s voice was cold and sounded frightening as it was being projected using Thundering Shock. No one would have doubted what he said.
“If I were to commit suicide, my soul would never go to heaven. I know who you’re, at the very least, for now, you won’t kill the child.” The red-robed bishop then added in a light voice, “But those around you would.”
He sighed and let his body fall limply. He did not want to get the child involved. If the one who spoke was Saleen, he would have let the child go for what the bishop just did.
Saleen was dumbfounded to see that the red-robed bishop kill himself. He then said to Rafel, “Take that child up here. Don’t let anyone hurt her.”
He never expected that the red-robed bishop would have been willing to kill himself to protect the child. In the Holy See’s codex, it was said that those who committed suicide would have their souls condemned to hell.
“Are you not going to save his soul?” Rafel asked.
“If what the Lord of Glory said happened to be true, then I shall take a trip to his purgatory and pay a visit to those poor souls.”
Rafel spread her wings and came to the destroyed church. The magic cannons in the air no longer attacked that place but instead turned to the army gathering in the city.
That was not a fair fight. While the magic cannons cost a lot to use, they would not have caused any deaths to their users. According to conventional logic, killing a squadron of soldiers using one whole chunk of a mid-level magic nucleus would have been a terrible waste.
Saleen did not care about the waste. Only sheer, overwhelming power would have been able to rattle those of shaky faith enough to betray their god.
If he were to simply carry out the destruction, there would have been a huge number of believers abandoning their faith.
There would have been more believers whose faith would have become stronger, that would have been their ticket to heaven.
Saleen would not have bothered giving those block-headed believers any chance. Be it the Thunder Dragon Blaster or his lightning territory, both were capable of damaging souls. Broken souls were barred from entering heaven, and they would have been reduced to becoming pests.
After destroying the churches and killing some soldiers attempting to rally together, Saleen then took the Floating City away.
The next target was only about 100 kilometers away, a distance he would have been able to cover within half an hour.
It was a small town with a population of less than 10,000 and there was only one church. The church, however, was a majestic building with a gilded spire.
“Seems like the faith here is strong.” Saleen sounded as if he was making a joke at the believers while laughing at himself at the same time. Over 20 magic cannons bombarded the place, and the church fell in the light of magic.
The small town was considered a historical one and there would not have been any powerful professionals found. Destroying the place was easy.
Saleen had not originally dared to do something like that, for fear of retaliation from the Holy See. He was no longer afraid of that. Metatrin City was rock solid and the families of his most trusted people have all been moved to the interdimensional space.
The Holy See could have been more pissed about what he did, and still, they would not have been able to do anything about it.