Badge in Azure

“Saleen, do you feel death now?” Theisio was chained by the Shackles of the Fallen, but he was not afraid.

While the power of the Shackles of the Fallen were powerful, the Origin Stone of Darkness was gradually cutting away the binding of the chains. It would not be long before the Origin Stone of Darkness would free him.

“Death?” A crisp sound was heard and Saleen saw a silhouette enter from outside the cemetery of the giant beneath the Origin Stone of Darkness. Not even the Origin Stone of Darkness was able to prevent her from getting near.

That was Sika. Sika is here!

Saleen only got anxious then. Sika advanced? However, a level ten nature priest would not be able to do much. Theisio’s level was too high. Not even Sika would be able to take him on.

“Sika, run!” Saleen shouted with Thundering Shock, hoping to etch his words into Sika’s mind.

It did not matter if he died, but if Sika ended up dead as well, there would be no one to take care of their children.

“Hahahaha!” Sika laughed and took a weapon out from her space equipment. It was not the staff that she usually carried, but a huge metal pillar.

That metal pillar looked rather familiar to Saleen.

Sika was shorter than Saleen. The pillar was so thick that she was unable to wrap her arms around it.

The height was something else altogether. The metal pillar was almost 18 meters tall. Sika took and swung it around like, looking like an ant swing a branch.

Boom!

The entire Origin Stone of Darkness shook. Theisio’s expression changed drastically. That stone had been hovering in the air, and Sika swiped it to the ground with just one swing.

Theisio grew immensely confident after he fell, but he was quickly brought back to reality by Sika’s attack. The power of the Origin Stone of Darkness was not his. He was not even able to borrow the stone’s power. He was just a monster that the stone gave birth to.

Saleen and his people stared with their mouths gapping.

Nailisi murmured to herself, “Sister Sika, are you going on a rampage?”

Sika had no intention of going on a rampage. She was wearing a cloth armor that Saleen crafted for her. The muscular lines on her body were smooth, and she was lithe and vigorous, instead of physically powerful.

There was no messy aura coursing about her. Life overflowed from Sika’s body. The metal pillar in her hand was of the same state.

Nature power filled every cell of her body and emanated outwards, forming a Nature Territory.

Saleen finally was able to recall that the metal pillar, which was hollow, was from Raphael’s magic tower. He had once entered the metal pillar itself. But did the pillar shrink?

Saleen had seen many ferocious martial artists, and in the Kingdom of Metatrin, there were humans who were about two meters and a half in height. Demons were even bigger, reaching five meters in height. All of the warriors wielded maces, halberds, great lances, long axes…

But Saleen had never seen or heard of someone making a weapon out of a pillar.

Sika simply swung the metal pillar around and hit the Origin Stone of Darkness. She stepped on it and wherever she stepped, fauna began to form.

Saleen’s Elemental Eye caught sight of something very peculiar. There were lifeforms from another world in the metal pillar, supplying endless nature power to Sika.

The pillar carried another world in it.

“That can’t be!” Theisio saw Sika running at him and was unable to believe that one woman had cut his power supply from the Origin Stone of Darkness using a peculiar weapon.

The Origin Stone of Darkness no longer supplied any power to Theisio and the injuries on his body began to bleed.

The three arrows that Eleanor shot continued to work. His purple hair turned grey and his life force draining away. His body seemed to have been cut up by the power of space, forming more wounds. Fear began to well inside his mind.

“I’ve heard from Rossen that you’re in trouble, Saleen, so I got here as soon as possible. Who’s this monster, by the way?” Sika swung the pillar at Theisio’s face.

“It’s Lord Pope Theisio himself. Our pope here has fallen and betrayed his god, becoming a monster. It’s a pathetic sight.” Saleen saw the dazed look in Theisio’s eyes and took the chance to ridicule him. His words were uttered using Thundering Sound.

Saleen failed to notice that the Ring of Cosmos on his finger had stopped spinning, without releasing any peculiar power. If Sika had not showed up, the ring might have been able to save his life.

Saleen’s Thundering Sound hit Theisio’s mind. The pope was shaken. Why did I fall? Isn’t all this just to protect the Lord of Glory? I’m here to kill Saleen, so that the faith of the Lord of Glory can spread in this plane.

But why did I feel exhilarated from the violence I wrought earlier? Is power really going to corrupt people?

The thoughts were unable to stay in his mind for more than mere fleeting moments, as Sika’s metal pillar slugged him in the face.

There was no clash, as if the power of the entire world was focused on one point. Theisio’s head disappeared.

The head disappeared, not shattered.

There was a complete world in the pillar that was unusually huge. The metal pillar was able to bring out inexplicable powers in the hands of a nature priest.

The body of the Dark God of Destruction clashed with the world in the pillar, so Sika was able to siphon the power within for attacks. If it had not been for the Origin Stone of Darkness possessing attributes like that, Sika’s attack would not be so ferocious.

She pulverized matter into nothingness, absorbed by another space.

The balance of energy was broken. Theisio, who had lost the upper half of his body, was finally dragged into the purgatory of the fallen by the chains. Nailisi leapt out and looked at Sika, not knowing what to say.

Nailisi’s double, in the purgatory of the fallen, dug out the Star Gathering Needle and Saleen’s family badge from Theisio’s dead body. The two were then wrapped in layers of black energy, and only Nailisi’s double dared to touch them personally.

The double was incredibly powerful, possibly more powerful than Nailisi.

“Nailisi, I see that you’ve grown stronger, eh?” Sika smiled and put down the pillar, sticking it on the ground close to her. The metal pillar, which was stuck on the Origin Stone of Darkness, dispelled the Darkness Territory right away. Plants began to grow on the stone’s surface.

Saleen’s remaining four ball lightning would be extinguished soon, so he threw them inside the Origin Stone of Darkness. Where the ball lightning entered, the plants grew even faster. Saleen finally was able to confirm that lightning was able to give birth to life as well.

Eleanor looked at the Seven Nights in her hand. The power of life within the godly item began to gradually restore, but it was siphoned by Sika from the pillar into the Seven Nights. Once Seven Nights regained its life, there would not be any need for energy infusions.

Eleanor’s tightly wound mind relaxed. She had gambled by forsaking the godly item in order to kill Theisio, and she failed. Sika appeared when things looked to be in utter despair, and she killed Theisio the great enemy without doing much.

Saleen was, however, able to see the downside of Sika’s attack—it was excruciatingly slow.

The Origin Stone of Darkness simply hovered in the air without moving. Theisio was as well.

While Sika had incredible strength, she was slow because she had to swing such a huge, thick pillar. If she had been attacking Jola instead, there was no doubt that he would have escaped.

“It’s all thanks to you, Big Sis Sika,” Nailisi bent her knee elegantly, curtseying.

“You’ve improved a lot. It puts me at ease that you’re with Saleen. Don’t go into adventures like that though. If it hadn’t been for the fact that my totem skill had awakened and I acquired this weapon, my kids would lose their daddy,” Sika chastised Saleen for a bit but did not say anything much after that.

It was Saleen’s idea to go into the cemetery of the giant. There was nothing Nailisi was able to do to stop him. Her words were meant for Saleen.

Saleen smiled bitterly. “Sika, I didn’t expect that Theisio would turn into that.”

“Whatever. Where’s Lex?”

“At the center of the cemetery. She has the God’s Ring with her, so she can conceal herself.”

“So we’ll just wait for her to come out?”

Saleen nodded and Sika continued, “Well, since we’re not in a hurry to leave, let’s put this away.”

“Put this away?” Saleen looked at the Origin Stone of Darkness. “It is not dark elemental energy. It’s pure darkness, we’ll…”

“Nailisi, give it a try, would you?”

Nailisi nodded. The stone’s powers had been suppressed, so she tried to put it away into the 12 Notes of First Purgatory. The spaces within her collection of purgatories had been expanded. One of the spaces was actually able to maintain the stone.

Sika only put the metal pillar away then. Nicholas and the others ran over to them like mad men. Every one of them knew that Saleen was fine and their contracts were still intact.

Things were shocking. All senses were cut off and not even Nicholas’ lesser prophecy spell had been able to invoke any responses from Saleen.

Saleen cast Lightning Territory, and Nicholas and the others sensed Saleen’s tremendous presence in an instant. While Saleen had lost the fight with Theisio, he had a lot to gain.

Especially since Saleen had noted Theisio’s ability and crafted a thin scale armor, which was able to defend against energy attacks. Nailisi’s Grey Memory would not be able to pierce through the armor, unless it was the physical body of the lance doing the piercing.

There was the way the black energy insulated the badge. While the Origin Stone of Darkness was needed for the feat, it was an extreme way to do so. If Saleen wanted to trap someone in the future, he would be able to craft similar magic arrays to achieve the same effect.

Such magic arrays would need to be powered by magic power furnace, and someone needed to keep feeding it magic nuclei.

“Nailisi, dig out the three godly items from inside the Origin Stone of Darkness when we get home,” Saleen reminded Nailisi. Even if the three godly items had been destroyed, their materials were extremely difficult to find.

If he gifted them to his teacher, Jason might be able to craft something useful for even level 14 powerful ones.

Saleen understood a lot of things. The godly items were mostly derived from materials from the bodies of other gods.

The bodies of the gods were tremendously resilient and carried some mystical properties with them. For example, the Seal of Divine Power was able to store the Flower of Evil.