Badge in Azure

Chapter 1514: Divine Ordeals (Part 1)

That day was known as the ‘Bloodless Night’ in history.

The slaughter that had taken place prevented bloodshed spreading out throughout the entire Holy Rock City. Saleen restrained the rebels using magic, before dumping them into Nailisi’s 12 Notes of First Purgatory.

There was no need to spill the blood of nobles to bring about the founding of the Fifth Dynasty.

That had been Saleen’s motto, but those nobles disappeared forever.

No blood had been spilled, nonetheless. Such were Nailisi’s thoughts. The nobles had been purified by the Purgatory of Purification. Not only was there no blood spilled, there was not even a whiff of smoke coming out from any of them.

The storm did not seem to stop once it began, and the southwestern nobles were the first to join Saleen’s forces. In truth, the southwestern nobles were the ones with the most to gain. The nobles had long sent their members to learn magic in Metatrin City. The titles bestowed to them by Lex were one rank higher than those of Holy Rock City.

As such, none of the southwestern nobles’ interests were actually affected. In fact, from a certain perspective, they gained a lot instead.

Saleen elaborated the way forward to them the very first time he got in touch with them. As a result, the nobles no longer insisted on amassing land and gaining wealth. They had instead taken to fostering powerful warriors and mages in their clans, which were initially people they would have simply hired or bought using gold coins.

There were too many nobles who had sizable fighting forces, and they had long forgotten that back in the days of the First Dynasty, people without powerful personal capabilities would not have become nobles in the first place. Saleen established such rules anew and was sure many would have responded to it poorly. However, there were definitely a handful who would benefit a lot from such an opportunity, enabling them to rise from the bottom and become new powerful noble clans.

Everything was definitely turned upside down for everyone on Myers Mainland in the month that came afterwards.

The Floating City was mobilized and destroyed the capitals of three empires, including Misty City. Agares’ absence surprised Saleen somewhat. Saleen had led the expedition personally, and if Agares had appeared, he would not have minded taking out that powerful assassin once and for all.

Someone like Agares would have posed a serious threat to Saleen’s nobles, after all. It was possible that none of Saleen’s followers would have to be afraid of Agares anymore, but then again, there were still the commoners to think about. Nobles who only had level nine troops as bodyguards would not have stood any chance against the likes of Agares.

After being troubled for days, Saleen gave up any thought of locating Agares. Agares might have been dangerous and was extreme in many senses of the word, but he truly did not care about the throne.

If he were given the chance to kill the goddess, he would not hesitate to take up the chance, even if one were to trade that chance with him by offering him the entire plane.

Common assassins did what they did to make a living, but Agares did so only for the thrill of it.

Such professionals were very difficult to deal with, but ironically, they were also very easy to deal with at the same time. At the very least, Saleen’s concerns were considerably lessened. If Agares did not show even when his capital was leveled, then it became clear that his interests did not lie in establishing dynasties.

Agares had his own goals and he absolutely would not falter.

Saleen already knew what Agares was after—the Goddess of Myers.

The only thing worthy of Agares’ attention was the goddess and the goddess only. It went without saying that Agares needed to advance continuously before he would be able to achieve his final objective. The Lord of Glory would have served as his stepping stone.

Saleen knew what the Snakerun, the weapon he crafted for Agares, was like. That weapon naturally contained power of rules, which was something that Saleen had no way of bestowing.

The rules made 12-dimensional metal so formidable. None of the material’s attributes were the top of the line, but the material was irreplaceable and very rarely found. Every single plane had only a set amount of it. When mined, the material would never be found in nature ever again.

The 12-dimensional metal contained plane rules.

Saleen only realized that when he advanced to level 14, but he did not regret doing what he did. He had a lot to gain from the experience, after all. By the time he got to level 16, Myers Mainland would have become his main battlefield. By then, he would be able to tap into the power of the Source to do combat, just how the goddess did.

It would have been the same for Agares as well, but he lacked a piece of equipment like the Hall of Gods, which meant that his rate of advancement would never surpass Saleen’s.

The nobles of the Cloudflow Empire were not able to react in time, as the gates of the divine kingdom were on their land. As such, Saleen’s assault felt rather despicable.

However, the news that came later rendered the nobles speechless.

The Floating City made the same announcement in every city it passed—the founding of the Fifth Empire, with the imperial city being Holy Rock City.

That meant that Saleen wanted to take the opportunity of all the chaos around to unite the entire mainland under one rule.

There was nothing glorious about it, as the only empire capable of resisting such measures—the Cloudflow Empire—was busy dealing with the attacks from the god creatures. If the god creatures had been able to gain the upper hand due to what Saleen did, he would have become public enemy number one throughout the entire Myers Mainland.

Saleen did not care about what the Cloudflow people thought about him. All enchanters and nobles who served him were busy seeing to a single matter—establishing the structure of the Fifth Dynasty.

Structures of professions, schools, nobility, magic net, law...

There were a great many details requiring careful calculations. Saleen intended to build a dynasty that would last over 10,000 years, beginning from Holy Rock City. It was entirely possible, as the previous four dynasties had all reigned over 10,000 years each.

What was truly shocking was that Saleen intended to establish 100 kingdoms as well. Those who contributed in the war against the gods and played decisive roles in such conflicts would be crowned king, and their kingdoms would be the subcontinent planes.

Such rules were applied to those from subcontinent planes as well.

The rebuilding of Holy Rock City was more than just the repair of one city. The repairs that had been carried out previously had been less than comprehensive, and Saleen had no intention of rebuilding the city to look like what it had been previously.

He intended to mimic the ways of the Imperial City of the Abyss—making the city into a kingdom.

That meant that the original Holy Rock City would serve as the center, with the area within a 500-kilometer radius all included within the area designated for urban development. The area would be covered by a huge magic net. It would be transformed into a magical kingdom, given ample numbers of enchanters at work.

Saleen did not mind prolonging the conflict with the Lord of Glory. He needed time to carry out his construction, after all.

He returned to the Imperial City of the Abyss for a bit, collecting any remaining elemental creatures and construction materials. The last time he had been there with the goddess, she had captured most of the elemental creatures and had given them all to Saleen. She had also destroyed magic arrays that created the elemental creatures. Unless those magic arrays were restored, no newborn elemental creatures would be found in the city anymore.

What Saleen meant to do on that trip was to clean the place up thoroughly, using the lightning warriors and tens of thousands of ancient warriors at his disposal. Saleen then moved the entire Imperial City of the Abyss, which was devoid of defense, into his Ring of Cosmos.

The only two sites left of the city were the ruins of a palace and the Cemetery of Heroes.

The heroic spirits in the cemetery were unable to do anything as they watched Saleen strip the entire city away.

The general realized just how fearsome Saleen was. He had underestimated the mage for too long. Saleen turned to the heroic spirits, or just the general and no ones, in the cemetery, from the outside. “I’m the one who killed the 24 heroic spirits you put at my side. I won’t be able to advance without killing them. The goddess already has the possibility of regaining her powers. The next time she is here, she will get rid of you all. I’m taking the city away, so you guys do not squander it.”

If the general had been a living being instead of a heroic spirit, he might have actually puked blood at that. Saleen had last been there as a friendly soul, and the general was baffled as to why the mage had taken such a hard stance the next time he came.

The general was completely oblivious to the fact that the reason why Saleen dared to speak like that was because the mage had already mastered some lightning rules. Saleen had become so powerful that he could have destroyed the Cemetery of Heroes bit by bit if he so fancied.

The process would have taken tens of thousands of years, but then again, without outside help, the heroic spirits would not have been able to shake away the bonds of their graves even if they had tens of thousands of years to spare.

Saleen had been there to incite them, specifically to see if they had developed special means of allowing them to free themselves. If they had indeed been able to do so, then he would have run to the goddess. If they had been still unable to do so, then he would have simply let the goddess come and get rid of them.

I bet the heroic spirits are really, really going to hate the Fifth Dynasty’s guts, eh?

It was never Saleen’s intention to become enemies with people like that. It was just that things had gotten to the point where there was simply no room for reconciliation anymore. The general had been out to prevent Saleen from ever advancing again, and being set up like that was something no mage was able to tolerate.

Of course, Saleen would have had no choice but to bear it if he were weak. But at present, Saleen was about to establish the Fifth Dynasty, and if the Fifth Dynasty was incapable of dealing with the Cemetery of Heroes, it would have been a regime that could have been destroyed at any given moment.

Saleen had been saying so brutal as a way of pressuring himself as well.

But that hardly mattered to him. His fate had been tied to the goddess back when he was still at very low levels, so that turn of events was just inevitable.

Compared to the heroic spirits, Saleen tended to be more friendly towards the goddess. Despite the fact that the goddess would never take Saleen’s wishes into consideration, whenever she was out to do anything and forced him to do her bidding, she still embodied the principles of her former status—balance.

If she were to get Saleen to work, she would make sure to give him ample rewards.

Things were different in Metatrin City compared to Holy Rock City, as few of his people remained in the former. He had been hard at work crafting a magic array in the Hall of Gods, and he was still unable to get the magic array up even when the time was up. But something came out of the work he put in nonetheless, and he needed a divine kingdom to serve as a buffer, which would allow him to establish a connection between Myers Mainland and Raphael’s interdimensional space. There would no longer be any need for him to use teleportation portals for such travels in the future.

In truth, teleportation portals were not actually all that safe, as they could have been hijacked.

If he were to use the divine kingdom as a buffer, however, and let Dante become the ultimate being in the divine kingdom, no one would be able to deploy an army en masse into the interdimensional space. The interdimensional space was hugely important to Saleen. Most of his subjects had already migrated there, and those who were left behind were not suited to be brought there.

Metatrin City would be turned into a magical city, according to Saleen’s plan. He would establish the largest magic academy there and monopolize the magical market throughout the entire mainland. There was no way Saleen could just forsake his old lair. The place held too many sentiments for him after all.

Over two months had passed by the time he was done with preparation work. Lex ascended the throne at Holy Rock City as empress again. The Fifth Dynasty had been established, and the only thing left to do was to fight a unification war throughout the mainland.

Saleen did not forget the fact that there were still many nations in the East Sea that he had never been to before, which had all become accessible at that point. Saleen decided to meet the goddess, before making his way to the nations of the East Sea.

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