Badge in Azure

Jalin’s description was lively. The threat that she received was probably the most terrifying one that she had ever experienced in her life. Her pride was meaningless before absolute power.

There was no way she would be able to resist an attack with such force, even if she trained for a thousand years more.

Saleen shuddered. He had thought himself to be the only person to have mastered the power of lightning. It seemed that there had been humans in ancient times who mastered the use of lightning powers.

His lightning rules were nothing in comparison.

If he entered the cemetery and looked into the moon that unleashed lightning powers, there was no doubt that he would be able to perfect his lightning rules quickly. However, if he were to enter at such a low level…

Saleen recalled the curse of the gravestone. Jalin did not fear curses, but the same could not be said about Saleen. The more he came to know about fate, the more cautious he was when dealing with curses.

However, he never expected the inside of the cemetery to be what it was. It was too tempting for Saleen.

“I was able to recognize that as the crystallized structure of a giant’s bone, and so I bagged some of it. I never expected some fossilized gods to be revived. I ran all the way until I got out.” Jalin felt incredibly frustrated as she recalled the days spent running.

She had fossilized gods on her tail simply because she took some crystallized bone. Worse still, all of the crystallized structures had to be taken away by Saleen.

Saleen was not that greedy. Even if he entered the cemetery, he had no intention of taking any of the bone crystals. The amount of bone crystals was so vast that he would be able to take on the Holy See armed with the power provided by the crystals.

However, every single one of the fossilized gods was level 12 at the very least. The only reason Jalin was able to escape was because of her extremely eerie movement abilities.

Furthermore, the fossilized gods had just been awakened and their bodies were stiff, which made them incapable of using the power of rules they had when they were alive.

Jalin finished drawing the map at that point and said to Saleen, “I’m speculating this to be a piece of space carved out of a huge tract of land by an ancient powerful one. That space had been a battlefield. The gods surrounded the giants and killed them all. The gods were killed by the humans who arrived later.”

“Why build the cemetery then?”

“So visits could be made,” Lex added. “The King of Glory wanted to be able to enter the space at any time from the mainland, so to commemorate the nameless giant, as well as to punish the gods.”

Saleen thought that was the only sound explanation. When the King of Glory was still alive, he would not expect that someday, a puny level nine human mage would move the bone crystals in that cemetery.

While the bone crystals were indeed precious, they were once commonplace. Giants only cared about their heads, thinking that…

Saleen froze. Giants believed that so long as their heads remained intact, they could be revived a million years later.

Was the King of Glory trying to resurrect the giant? Why would he keep so many gods imprisoned and carve out a space, providing it with limitless energy just to keep that head intact?

A million years’ time, just to resurrect his brother?

Saleen was shocked at the lengths the King of Glory was willing to go to accomplish such a feat, and he did not know how he felt about the whole thing.

“Jalin, you’ve got some nerve barging in under such circumstances. Didn’t you have any fear of being killed by the lightning?” Saleen tried his best to calm himself down and avoided thinking about the huge temptation inside the cemetery.

“Why? That lightning was meant for the gods. I just took some bone crystals. The lightning wouldn’t even consider me a target. It was a simple magic principle.” While Jalin was unspeakably terrified then, she had grand words after escaping.

She was not actually wrong, however. Many magic traps or large scale magic arrays had trigger requirements. Power at her level was as good as nonexistent in that ring of energy.

Of course, while she was nonexistent in the perspective of the moon capable of unleashing lightning bolts in the sky, she was very much a target in the perspective of the fossilized gods.

The fossilized gods were held against their will. Anyone who wanted to enter or to touch the giant’s grave, they would have to deal with the fossilized gods on their tail.

Furthermore, she had underestimated the power of the fossilized gods and had almost died. She sacrificed quite a bit of equipment just to stay alive.

“Why risk your neck?” Saleen asked, looking at the map Jalin had just drawn.

Jalin pondered for a bit. She could have chosen to ignore the question, but Saleen asked precisely to see how she would react.

If she kept it to herself, Saleen would chase her away and even if the mission that her teacher gave her was considered accomplished, she would face punishment from her teacher nonetheless.

“The crystals of giant bones contained the power of the earth. The power of giants originated from the earth itself and I train primarily in earth magic. When I get to break into level ten, instructions that teacher would have been able to give me would have been next to none, which means I have to figure something out myself. While the power of rules found in those bone crystals are few, it is still something that fits my direction of research.” Jalin answered.

Saleen found Jalin’s answer satisfying. He knew little about giant bone crystals. While it was possible for him to just go ask his teacher, it was more convenient to get answers from Jalin.

Jalin continued, “everyone knows how large giants were. The shortest were still more than a thousand meters tall. The tall ones were able to reach nearly ten miles in height. The very reason why creatures with such huge bodies were able to fly was that giants’ bones were powerful and enabled them to absorb elements in all environments without exception.”

Lex finally understood why Jalin had been so crazy about it all. Materials regarding earth magic passed down through the ages were the least numerous. Jalin was already a level nine sorcerer.

If she were to advance any further, she would be able to do so easily if she switched to fire magic, which was the most common branch to be trained in.

However, almost every single mage was monomaniacs in one way or another. It would be unacceptable for her to switch her training to one of the other five elements.

Furthermore, doing so would be time-consuming, as she would need to learn new rules. Jalin’s fire magic might be very powerful, but she would need about ten times more effort and time to study the rules.

The temptation posed by the power within the bone crystals of the giants was to Jalin what the moon unleashing lightning bolts was to Saleen.

Saleen took two bone crystals out from his Starline Ring and played with them. He then said to Jalin, “before the crisis of Daliang City is settled, you won’t have these two pieces of crystal.”

Saleen put the crystals away. Jalin rolled her eyes and looked outside the tower, angry at herself.

The calmer and more decisive Saleen appeared to be, the more difficult she found it to hate him. If Saleen went soft and gave her the two giant bone crystals, she would have probably despised Saleen immensely for it.

“That battle was tiring. Jalin, if you have any strength left in you, go see if you can help out with anything at the walls. I need to rest for a bit.” Saleen put the simple map of the cemetery away.

“I’ll go,” Jalin answered while gritting her teeth.

Lex only spoke after Jalin left. “Saleen, is there really a need to keep her around?”

Saleen smirked. “For real? Once we’re done with the business with Daliang City, we will go to the temple and dig all of them out. We definitely can’t bring her along to places like that anymore. Something will happen.”

“The way I see it, if we don’t kick her out now, we might as well be getting ourselves in trouble in the future,” Sika said with a displeased tone.

“What trouble are you talking about? She knows the relations between both sides well now. If it wasn’t for the fact that she had a good teacher, I’d have killed her even if that meant I get nothing out of it.”

“If she knows, then she shouldn’t…” Lex did not continue. She did not wish for Saleen to keep Jalin around. The woman had apparently developed some sort of peculiar liking for Saleen.

“Keep her around. Have her talk about magic or whatnot. That sounds like a good idea.” Saleen smiled at Lex.

“Saleen, just what the hell are you thinking?” Sika was irked. While she had some regrets having Saleen marry Lex, she did not want Lex to be sad.

“Lex, Jalin’s earth magic is powerful. Just wait for her to make another mistake, then you’ll get to demand her to trade her secrets with magic. Someone like her who thinks she can never be wrong will definitely make a mistake sooner or later.”

Lex was startled. She asked, “that’s it?”

“Of course, why else would you think I’d keep her around? Because she’s pretty?” Saleen laughed. Keeping Jalin around was not a choice he enjoyed making, but he was the one who proposed it nonetheless.

If Jalin were to make another mistake, he would be able to fish out secrets about her earth magic out of her. Jalin’s eerie movements unsettled Saleen.

Arbola definitely was capable of something like that. If he faced off with Arbola in the future, Saleen feared that he would be killed before he was even able to take out his equipment.

Just like how it was when the Blue Ice Maidens used Rainbow. The move almost killed him.

Being familiar with Rainbow would enable one to easily determine the location of one’s enemy, Saleen had no way to make sound judgments against that earth magic.

From Saleen’s perspective, someone like Jalin would never admit that she was wrong. She never admitted that her actions put nearly a million lives in Daliang City in dire peril.

She would do something no one would be able to forgive her for sooner or later. The discord between Saleen and Arbola would be increasingly unsettling.

All matters required prior preparations, especially when it came to dealing with an enemy like Arbola.

As for Jalin, Saleen still deemed her to be easy to deal with. If she was able to submit once, there would be a second time as well. If Jalin remained adamant against signing a contract with him and giving up all she had, Saleen would take everything she had forcefully.

That would intensify the discord and it would be up to Arbola to decide if she wanted to be his enemy.

“Alright, Sika. Hand me your armor. I’ll re-craft it a bit for you.” Saleen stopped talking about Jalin. If it had not been for Lex telling him to hand over the mark of the Six-winged Flying Snake, Saleen would not need to be tense when it came to Jalin.

He personally witnessed what the mark was able to do. He would have been able to do nothing to resist it.

Sika removed her armor and threw it to Saleen. She leaned on the chair for meditation and dozed off. The price of using the soul beast was huge, after all.

While the power of soul beasts were unlimited, it was difficult to restore one’s mental powers in such an environment. Sika was very exhausted. She had worked the hardest in the last several battles.

“Lex, go get some rest. I’ll look for you if I need anything,” Saleen shut off the connection between the Magical Element Tower and the outside world. He took out the level 19 Star Gathering Needle.

Other than dimension stones, the most important piece of material used for making Sika’s armor had been the divine trees of the Goddess of Myers. Saleen witnessed the effectiveness of the armor firsthand that day.

Sika was thoroughly unscathed when divine light shone on her. It was a very handy trait, yet it was a pity that divinity still lingered within the armor. Saleen deemed it necessary to purge it of all signs of divinity, making the armor purely magic-based.