Chapter 1067: Tragedy and Fear (Part 1)
Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio
Sul kicked with his legs, one after the other, sending all eight figures flying. He remained undeterred. If he was not concerned about breaking the figures completely, he would not have held back at the very end despite having his weapon broken.
Laughter was heard from outside the door. It was Jola hearing the Saleen wanted to come see Sul, so he followed silently.
Sul did not think much about it. Even Jola would have found it difficult to quickly win without completely breaking the figures. Saleen waved, sending the shards of the longsword on the floor to his hand.
The longsword was a magic weapon, made of refined steel added with gorilla metal and some wind bronze. The edge was treated with crystallization, the sharpness and resilience of which made the weapon a powerful auxiliary item for a level nine golden grand swordmaster.
It was especially so when one looked into the energy pa.s.sages in the body of the blade. It was created from Saleen’s research in the flow of sword aura. When a grand swordmaster unleashed their sword aura, the weapon would enable them to bring out the greatest power at the lowest energy cost.
“Sul, looks like you need a good weapon,” Jola said with lethargic face, tapping at Tears hanging around his hip. When the weapon was recovered by the Winged Skull, there was hardly a scratch on it. Despite the fairy common material of quality not too high used to make the weapon, the blade was infused with power of rules nonetheless.
“He will get one,” Saleen glared at Jola, before returning to observe the shards of the sword in his hand.
There was already a problem with the tip before the longsword broke down. Crystallized metals were products formed when said metals reached their maximum hardness. The crystallization at the tip was done sparingly, thinner than hair for quite a bit. It was done in a way that was incoherent, arranged in a serrated manner on the edge instead.
It ensured the crystallized metal of the longsword would be capable of staying intact when bent, instead of breaking due to being brittle.
The thinner-than-hair metal part had been severely corroded by the constellation power. The corrosion was so thorough that the sharpness of the longsword was no different from a common weapon.
Saleen experimented on how hard crystallized metals could be. A piece of crystallized metal of such grade was placed inside an acidic solvent used by alchemists, and it took a month of being submerged before any signs of corrosion showed. In usual cases, solvents were usually used for etching magic arrays. Acidic solvents were used when materials even fire magic proved difficult to process were involved. But even such materials would have had a hard time dealing with crystallized metals.
There was little mages could do to re-craft a piece of metal like that.
Saleen had finally understood how potent the corrosive powers of constellation powers were, and he developed some conclusions about the combat capacity of astrologers. True astrology figures were more powerful than grand swordmasters. When fighting with mages, both sides relied heavily on luck.
Constellation power could easily be used to corrode equipment below level nine. Such crystallized metals needed to be of quality comparable to that of the core of Sky City to be immune to such corrosion.
“Let’s go, Sul. We’ll give up Daliang City, and you guys will return to your own teams. You will be the first to leave,” Saleen ordered the Dragon-slaughtering mercenaries. He then added, “you will be guarding Ceylon City, my birth place.”
The mercenaries were immediately very excited. Their status in Daliang City had always been an ambiguous one. They were all veterans instead of runt recruits. They were true mercenary warriors. If it had not been for Saleen looking after their families, especially the children, they would have given up a long time ago being cooped up in one such place.
True mercenaries were meant for the battlefield, after all.
Denizens of Daliang City began preparing to retreat. With the pa.s.sages in the mountains destroyed, they needed to find other ways of escape if they wanted to come out in one piece. It was fortunate that Saleen always had a way out. His Magical Element Tower was equipped with six magic cannons on every floor.
The huge cannons possessed offensive capacities comparable to level nine spells and sported a range of ten miles. It was the most powerful a.r.s.enal in Saleen’s hands, so much so that the ancient figures were inferior in comparison. However, deploying magic cannons at such numbers came with astronomical magic nucleus cost. If Saleen’s fleet had not been venturing in and out of the Oceanic Ice Block repeatedly and had astronomical stock to begin with, Saleen would not have thought of it.
There were six windows on each of the 24 floors of the Magical Element Tower, and the total number of large scale magic cannons installed was 144.
Saleen’s Magical Element Tower was deployed as soon as the sky turned dark. There were 360 ancient figures on the ground, leading the 20,000 mercenaries charging out from the eastern gate.
The magic tower slowly took to the air, hundreds of spirits positioned right behind the mercenaries to cover their escape, preventing them from being ambushed by holy masters. While holy masters had advantages against spirits, it was near impossible for them to conceal themselves from them.
The tower needed to pa.s.s by a large military camp when flying in the mountains. The camp had a small fort built by Lex, initially meant for protecting the secret pa.s.sages in the mountains.
With the fort being taken over by enemy forces, Saleen had no intention of keeping it. He had the Magical Element Tower land right in the middle of the enemy camp.
With powerful ones at his side, Saleen planned to be quick. If the three head inquisitors from the Tribunal showed up, he might have been able to escape unscathed, but the same could not have been said for the population of Daliang City.
The tower might have been huge, but it was unable to carry people at such numbers. It had even less s.p.a.ce now that it was armed with so many large scale magic cannons.
The cannons were originally meant to be installed in Ceylon City for defensive purposes. However, Ceylon City did not need that many cannons, and there was no way to install so many along the coast. While magic cannons were indeed powerful, there was little they could have done to powerful ones. Nailisi now relied on ancient warriors to protect the cannons. If too many of them were installed, they would have been caught in a ditch if the cannons were taken.
Saleen took charge of things in the Magical Element Cannon when descending upon his enemies. The Tanggulasians were in a panic. There had been rumors about the flying tower and it was said that when it appeared, there would be countless metal flyers zipping through the sky, raining magic fire sh.e.l.ls and reducing everything to ash.
Regardless of how his enemies reacted, Saleen was able to see everything sitting on the 17th floor. The windows of all 24 floors of the tower were open and the barrels of the cannons were seen. Saleen ordered the cannons to fire at the enemies surrounding the cannon.
144 powerful beams of light sprayed from the tower. Saleen felt a high like no other. I should’ve done this a long time ago. Why bother concealing my strength? The dogs of the Holy See will not stop howling until they are killed. The ones who reign supreme are the ones with the most power, and their G.o.d isn’t going to change this way of life.
Until the Lord of Glory was killed, his adherents would never died out completely. So long as they kept preaching in Myers Mainland, they would never forget their dream of making the entire mainland a holy nation of the Lord of Glory.
There was no escape and no room for negotiations. Such was the current situation with the mages on Myers Mainland.
However, Saleen seemed to have neglected a problem. While the cannons were indeed powerful, ancient humans never used them at such a scale. Humans back in those days possessed far greater resources than he did. He only went hunting at the Oceanic Ice Block, but the ancient humans were conquering planes.
With bombardment carried out at such frequency, a h.e.l.l was born within a 20 miles radius of the Magical Element Tower. Everything was turned to ash, and even the areas between the beams burned from high temperatures. Saleen had to close the windows of the magic tower, and even the mercenaries who hadn’t made it to the camp stopped.
In the eyes of the mercenaries, there was a huge ball—no, a ring of light—shooting to the heavens several miles away from the camp. The light was perhaps even visible from over a hundred miles away.
Elemental storms whipped up, Saleen’s Magical Element Tower at the center. What followed was something Saleen had never expected: elemental annihilation.
Countless cracks of s.p.a.ce formed outside the tower, spewing out all manners of unidentified powers. There were many types of powers outside of the six major elements unknown to man, which any life would find difficult to control.
With more than 100 magic cannons shooting from the Magical Element Tower at the same time, the s.p.a.ce around them were destabilized. Energies spewed from the huge cracks in s.p.a.ces, destroying everything in their paths.
There were many pockets left untouched between the beams from the tower, as the magic cannons fired in straight lines, and the resulting radius of the attack was several hundred square meters of scorching temperatures. What spewed from the s.p.a.ce cracks around the tower, however, formed large energy b.a.l.l.s.
The b.a.l.l.s seemed to be quickly expanding, their diameters going from hundreds of meters to thousands.
The ground shook and even the earth beneath the tower was not spared. Other than where the tower stood, the ground of the camp sank by more than a dozen meters.
The sinking was lethal. Earth element shot out, killing all life in an instant.
c.r.a.p!
Saleen never thought that would happen. It was fortunate that he did not have the mercenaries move with the tower, or he would have killed his own army.
Gusion was an experienced veteran and after advancing into the rank of golden grand swordmaster, he developed an acute sense of danger. He made a snap decision to have the army return to the city.
All powerful ones from Daliang City caught sight of the light faraway with gaping jaws. What the h.e.l.l is that? What kind of power can cause such an astonis.h.i.+ng effect. The ground within a hundred miles radius shook, and continued shaking.
Saleen was speechless. While he had predicted that an attack would cause devastating effects, he never thought the situation would become so insane. Two magic cannons fired in a row would cause elemental resonance. His 144 cannons were installed according to orders of the six major elements. When fired at the same time, the resulting resonance reached a never-before-seen point.
Even ancient humans would have refrained from doing so, as the resulting elemental resonance would have been so powerful than even elite troops and mages would have died.
The energy of 144 magic cannons fired was definitely not something 144 level nine mages could have been able to compare to. No level nine sorcerer would have been capable of casting attacks as ferocious as the beam of the magic cannon.
Cracks appeared in the sinking ground, spreading out in all directions, devouring more lives.