Badge in Azure

There were a few small warships struggling to find their way around when Saleen’s fleet made it past the red sea near the nameless island. The ships bore no flags and no markings; only warships from Alchemy City were known to do so.

The warships had been sailing in circles for three days, before finally making it past the nameless island and heading north. The sorcerers used magic to reconstruct the physical images taking place at the location for the past few days. They had finally managed to locate Saleen’s fleet.

The mysterious current disappeared as they finally located Saleen. The Alchemy City warships thus charged right into the red sea and were reduced to nothing within hours. Twelve sorcerers took flight from the sinking warships and saved themselves. As they were unable to tell directions correctly under such conditions, they sailed around in circles for several days, before succumbing to exhaustion and dropping into the water.

It was fortunate that the sorcerers did not drop into the red sea, and there were hardly any magic beasts around the nameless island, with only some small fish and other harmless sea creatures around. The sorcerers possessed strong bodies. They were, after all, from Alchemy City. That also meant that they had some understanding of how the currents of the oceans worked, and that allowed them to make it to the nameless island.

The soil of the nameless island contained terrifying amounts of metal, so there were hardly any plants growing on the island. The twelve who made it to the uninhabitable place were forced to rely on the food stored within the space equipment to survive.

The sorcerers had hardly experienced anything so difficult and frustrating. Not even one of the grand mages on their ships managed to escape. There were also black metal and silver grand swordmasters swallowed by the red sea. The Metatrin City fleet, however, made it past the red sea unscathed. The Metatrin people had easily found a way to do so.

Magic compasses failed to work in the area thousands of miles around the island, and the stars failed to show them their true location. None of the sorcerers navigation magic worked either, leaving them effectively stranded on the island.

They followed Metatrin City’s fleet to make it that far, but at the moment, their chances of being saved by passing ships were extremely slim. Even if Alchemy City sent warships out to look for them, the chances of the ships finding their way to the island were near nil. Even if they were able to make it to the island, there was no guarantee that they would have been able to leave still.

Saleen’s fleet made it to the outskirts of the oceanic ice block early in January. Icebergs began appearing on the waters. The icebergs were of irregular sizes, with large ones being larger than the Ancient. Small ones were only the size of tens of square yards.

Saleen’s fleet consisted of only magic warships, which enabled them to evade icebergs. Even on the off chance they hit an iceberg, they would suffer little more than scratches. The fleet traveled at twenty miles per hour in the area, as collisions with the icebergs at very fast speeds would easily sink the ship in question.

The number of powerful magic beasts grew at the outskirts of the oceanic ice block. The bone warships stopped to hunt small magic beasts like red krill, while the Ancient, the Dragon Skeleton Combat Vessel, and the pan’s turtle alchemical boat began making their way into the oceanic ice block.

Saleen began supplying more grade-9 magic nuclei to the Dragon Skeleton Combat Vessel, enabling the defensive magic power furnace to be put into use. If Saleen failed to locate the single-horned white whale cemetery, or simply failed to even find more grade-9 magic nuclei, his loss would be of astronomical proportions.

Saleen had yet to walk on the Ancient, leaving the enormous warship entirely to the Mechanical Soul. He had it follow the Dragon Skeleton Combat Vessel from the rear. The Ancient had only the main magic power furnace running, as there were no orders from Saleen to do otherwise.

Saleen stood at the vessel’s command room and looked at the vista stretching for more than one-hundred miles out through its crystal window. Icebergs laid beyond such distance still, and the legendary oceanic ice block had yet to be found.

The surface of the oceanic ice block was covered with thick ice. There was no telling how many eons the ice had been around. The deeper the ice went, the harder the ice got, it was near-impossible to penetrate such thick, hard ice.

A single-horned white whale would have only headed for the oceanic ice block when they were near their deaths. Regardless of how powerful a particular whale had gotten, there was no way it would have been able to penetrate the ice sheets and breathe.

Tens of magic beasts were seen playing about on a large floating piece of ice about forty miles ahead. The beasts were around ten yards. All of them have had long white coats. Such appearances had them looking like great earth bears, the only difference being that they were white.

Great earth bears hardly grew to such a size unless they went into berserk mode. One of the white beasts near the edge of the ice slapped on the water all of a sudden.

Blue lights sparkled, which under Saleen’s inspection, was akin to grade-8 magic cast by the beast as an attack. It killed a magic beast under the water in an instant. A large vortex appeared on the water surface shortly after, sucking the dead creature up and bringing it onto the ice.

The white beast walked to it, tore out the beast’s stomach, and began eating its insides. The white beasts around stopped playing and began closing in. Said white beast roared, then decided to stop threatening its companions and allowed them to share the prize. It went on to break the dead creature’s skull and ate the magic nucleus within before anyone else.

A group of grade-9 magic beasts, intelligent ones to boot! Attacks from grade-9 magic beasts without intelligence would still be grade-9 though. Those ones, however, were able to determine the grade of the prey and cast a grade-8 spell instead.

Saleen released the water puppet, which had fully recovered from the prior few days. Saleen took off his crystal ring and put it on the puppet.

The water puppet spoke out of the blue, “Your Highness, I wish to give myself a name.”

“That is good to hear!”, Saleen was surprised. The water puppet had not been recovering its earliest level of intelligence since suffering grave injuries. The act of wanting to name oneself all of a sudden meant that the water puppet had begun to develop an ego once again. It might have even developed a soul in the future.

“I wish to be called Rossen. Rossen Metatrin. Am I…am I allowed to use this as my surname?”

“Tell me why you’d like that name.”

“I do not wish to become a puppet, yet even more I do not wish to leave your side. Please allow me to use your surname as my own. I will always be loyal to it, until…until I lose my conscious again,” the water puppet answered in a solemn manner.

Nailisi was by the duo’s side, and surprisingly, had not uttered any words of teasing. She merely stood by and watched the water puppet, looking interested.

“So the puppet has developed an ego. Interesting indeed. The other shenhe Saleen crafted a magic current for was able to cut just about anything, give enough time. That current was also infused with the power of life from the Goddess of Myers. Will that current also develop an ego then?”

Saleen felt torn inside. “The water puppet knows then if it is to suffer damage exceeding its ability to withstand in a fierce battle, it will lose its consciousness, which would be equivalent to death to a human,” he thought. “Alright, Rossen. You are allowed to use the surname of Metatrin, but…your appearance, it needs a makeover.”

“Of course, your highness. Do you have any wishes in that regard?” Rossen, the water puppet asked.

“Just do as you see fit.”

The water puppet smiled, and its face began to change, eventually taking the form of a charming, young mage. It looked noticeably different from Saleen, yet shared uncanny similarities with its master. Those who knew nothing of them would definitely have taken them to be brothers.

“Your Highness. I know as a mage that the number of follower contracts you can sign is limited. Even so, I still wish to be your follower, or rather, please allow me to address you as my liege.”

Saleen took a look at the water puppet’s crystal ring and nodded. After signing a contract, it would enable the water puppet to retain some of its original memories, so long as it was not completely destroyed. In a way, that would have been what the water puppet wanted: to prevent the destruction of its past memories after experiencing one collapse after another and becoming a different puppet each time that happened.

“Thank you, my liege,” the puppet said as it wrote magic runes between its brows with its finger, and came before Saleen. Saleen extended his left hand and squeezed a bit of blood from his fingertip. The drop of blood contained the power of life of the Goddess of Myers, turning it green. Saleen infused it into the space between the water puppet’s brows.

Saleen felt the immediate drop in the mental connection between him and the water puppet. The water puppet stopped taking his mental energies and had instead begun contributing to Saleen’s reserve.

Before the contract was signed, the existence of the water puppet was sustained by the magic patterns of the Shenhe and Saleen’s mental powers. The water puppet then, however, became an independent puppet. it did not wish to keep being one though.

“Rossen…” Saleen undid the gourd strapped to his waist, wanting to hand it over to the water puppet.

“No, my liege. I have what I wanted. Should I forget everything that transpired now in the future, please remind me of my name, Rossen Metatrin.”

The water puppet waved as he finished, bringing about a dozen demons and a dozen spirits with it, and left the command room.

The water puppet looked somewhat sad as it left the hold. It was little more than a puppet. Its memories became vague after experiencing a heavy mental drain. It seemed to have forgotten even more from before that, and those memories would stay forgotten. Such feelings left it with a bad taste in its mouth, as it meant that its past self disappeared bit by bit. Even if such memories were recorded using magic images, it would never be able to again regain the connection to such memories.

“Master, is the water puppet trying to rebel?” Nailisi waited for the water puppet to land on the ice after leaving the vessel, before asking Saleen.

“Would you betray me then?” Saleen glared at Nailisi, as her bad habit showed yet again; the bad habit of harboring suspicions at everyone around her master.

“Of course not. You are my master.”

“Rossen is my creation, which makes me its father.”

“If you were to die, he would have been able to take your place as king. The father-son relationship of royal families are illustrated very clearly in the plays of humans,” Nailisi said with a singing tone.

“If I were dead, then you’d be free. Isn’t that more tempting than being king?”

The rebuttal left Nailisi speechless. Noticing Tam’enm standing nearby looking awkward, she yelled out of the blue, “What are you standing here for? Go help Rossen hunt. You’re a grade-7 sorcerer. Are you telling me you can’t deal with some grade-9 beasts?”

If it was not for that fellow sticking around, she would have been able to play the coquette around Saleen. “Stupid Cloudflow mage. Know your place. This isn’t some play you can just sit around and watch!”

“Nailisi, you go help out down there. Rossen alone can’t take on so many high-grade beasts on its own.” Saleen did not give Nailisi any chances at playing the coquette, shooing her off the vessel instead.

Hunting more than ten grade-9 magic beasts at once proved dangerous. The water puppet was effectively immune to physical attacks, but the magic beasts were all capable of powerful magic. What was worse, they were intelligent beasts. Just the water puppet alone would not have proved adequate for dealing with them. Even if it was able to kill one or two of them, it would have been impossible for it to take the magic nuclei off their dead bodies in time.