Badge in Azure

Chapter 1372: Ambush (Part 1)

Fycro was able to see himself being shot by the Death Rays, but he was unable to see the outcome. He hesitated and gave up the idea of attacking the metal towers at the edge of the jungle.

The godly item that he had acquired was the Mirror of Fate. If that godly item was unable to calculate the results, then it was to say that there was a possibility that he would have ended up being killed by that mage’s spells.

Fycro had already ignited his divine fire and his lifespan was expanded to hundreds of thousands of years, which made him reluctant to take such risks. Once he became able to gain a divine persona, his lifespan would have been expanded to over a million, or even over ten million years.

That potential of acquiring extremely long life made Fycro reluctant to take risks.

The Road of Glory materialized beneath his feet again, leading straight to Raphael’s magic tower.

The magic net of the interdimensional space was not manned by a God of Magic Net. If Fycro were to simply rush to his target like that, no one else would have been able to lock onto him. The enchanters held their fire, as Jason had already given the order—if they were unable to lock onto their target, then they were to stand down.

Death Rays were very valuable spells. Every single Death Ray was the fruit of a sorcerer’s labor. Once a shot was used, reloading into the magic net would have been needed to be carried out by sorcerers.

Fycro came before Raphael’s magic tower and stopped. His calculations were not accurate enough to allow him to go above the mountain. He stopped at the edge of the peak instead.

Fycro was unable to help but praised. That magic tower was a miracle in itself indeed.

“A little modifications and it would make a fine temple!” Fycro was unable to resist checking out the mountain around the magic tower. The size of it meant that it could have indeed be used for building a temple. By the time he became able to create angels, he would have definitely put them to work at that.

“Fycro, don’t you think that you have already turned your back on our deal?” Saleen’s voice was heard from within the magic tower. Fycro saw Saleen emerge from the magic tower shortly after, looking at him from afar.

Fycro raised the Mirror of Fate and targeted Saleen right away. However, Saleen’s silhouette unexpectedly crumbled. Thunder was heard from the Mirror of Fate.

Saleen’s laugh was heard throughout the mountain. “Fycro, are you really in such a hurry to kill me?”

“Sure. I’d rest easy with you dead,” Fycro answered. When he saw Saleen appearing outside the magic tower again, he no longer tried to attack the mage using the Mirror of Fate.

Targeting was required before attacking, but if that illusion was targeted, it would have damaged the Mirror of Fate instead. Despite being a sturdy piece, but there was inadequate will of his own inside the mirror. If the will were all ended up destroyed, then he would have needed a while before he could use the mirror again.

Saleen’s skills did cause Fycro a lot of headache.

It was actually easy to destroy Thundering Phantasms—a single swing with a blade would have sufficed. That skill would have been able to do little against low level professionals relying on close quarters combat.

Only those who used mental powers or power of the soul for targeting would have suffered the Thundering Phantasm’s retaliation.

The mountain was over 1000 meters in diameter. Both men were several hundred meters away from each other. Even if Fycro wanted to kill Saleen, he lacked close quarters combat measures.

The external fringes of the magic tower was a Pande’s Maze, which had been what blocked Fycro’s Road of Glory, preventing it from passing.

He never expected to be stopped by the small jungle at the edge of that magic tower.

“Saleen, if you don’t want to see the maze destroyed, pull away the defenses and let us have a showdown.” Fycro looked at Saleen from afar. He had already ignited divine fire. A distance of less than 1000 meters was akin to being right in front of his eyes.

“If you want to destroy the maze, by my guess.” Saleen gestured, asking Fycro to make a move. The Pande’s Maze was actually something very difficult to break.

Any maze would have had weaknesses. Pande’s Maze’s weakness was one that everyone knew about. So long as one were to follow certain rules, there would have been no need for answers, as one could have easily walk out of it.

However, the process would have been extremely time-consuming. it could have taken anywhere from three to five months, to up to a decade.

There was no way Fycro would have had that much time to waste. He frowned and said, “Why did you attack my Oracle Corps, Saleen?”

“Are you referring to the time when you duped me to Highland City, where you intended to steal my Floating City?” Saleen rebutted without hurry. None of them were able to lie with their answers, and lies were pretty meaningless at their current levels.

Fycro did not bother with petty matters like that and answered, “The contract is voided then. A pity indeed. I really wanted to work with you.”

“Fycro, I thought that there would have been someone genuinely honest in the Holy See. It was rather unexpected to see that you were even more despicable than most.” Saleen’s expression was all smiles, but his words were as pointed as he could ahve made them.

“If the art of insult was to be a skill, your level would have frightened me, Saleen.” Fycro jabbed in return.

“If a skill of such level would have proven useless against you, then your level of despicability would have been the antithesis of your status indeed. Or should I say, complementarily to your status instead.” Saleen did not mind to keep delving into how despicable Fycro was.

The mages in the tower were still prepping powerful magic spells and inspecting the magic arrays after all.

Fycro showed up too quickly and the mages in the tower had been unable to get much preparations done.

Jason did not actually miscalculate anything. That thousand-kilometer wide jungle would have made it impossible for even level 13 professionals to pass in an instant. Fycro’s Road of Glory was simply too extraordinary. If it had not been for Pande’s Maze, Fycro would have showed up right outside the magic tower’s door instead.

“Saleen, sigh...” Fycro sighed and he had no intentions of continuing. Saleen had been a mage that he came to like better than most and he was hoping to turn Saleen into one of his believers. However, things proved hopeless at that juncture. Saleen was like the ancient mages, who hated the gods with a passion.

But why did he establish the Nature Faith then? That was something that Fycro found puzzling.

Fycro had never ventured inside the temple of the goddess. If he had discovered one before, he would have understood the reasons behind right away.

Fycro took out another piece of equipment, having no intentions of continuing to use the Mirror of Fate. He knew well enough that despite the mirror sporting a myriad of ways of attacking, but mages had an edge when they were inside a magic tower.

If he were to use the Mirror of Fate to tear the maze apart, it would have made it easy for the mages to calculate the rules embedded within the Mirror of Fate.

Even if they were to be able to calculate even a tiny fraction of the rules, it would still have robbed him of his edge in future battles. Furthermore, the Mirror of Fate had limited number of attacks. He was, at the moment, a pseudogod instead of a true god after all.

If he were to possess divine persona, even broken ones, he would have been able to convert all of those power of faith provided by his believers into his own power, instead of having to digest them for a bit before being able to use those power.

Fycro took out a divine-crafted puppet. The puppet’s appearance resembled that of the Lord of Glory’s angels. The puppet headed straight for Pande’s Maze after it was released, unleashing powerful attacks at the maze with the sword of glory in its hand.

Tens of huge trees fell with a loud boom. Fycro stepped forward and tailed behind the puppet, while he himself did nothing else.

“Heh, you think it’d be that easy eh.” Saleen pointed in the air and the toppled huge trees were erected again, blocking Fycro’s way behind. The trees looked as if they have never been attacked.

Saleen used Thundering Shock and Fycro suffered little more than a mild headache, instead of being seriously affected. He knew that the puppet was not attacking actual trees, as those were simply part of a magic array.

All of those constructs were illusions. There were limited number of trees in the Pande’s Maze. All the others were simply constructs created using projection magic.

Seeing how he was unable to confuse Fycro, Saleen then summoned the Violet Angel and took out the War Drum of Fear, telling the puppet to start beating the drum.

Tens of thousands of pests gushed from the drum into the maze, charging straight at Fycro. Those pests were only beings around level six or seven, making it imposible for them to kill Fycro. The former holy master even put up a divine shield, which the pests stood no chance of breaking.

Fycro then laughed. “Saleen, if you are using something like this, I wouldn’t have had any idea of how to proceed!”

Fycro said as divine light lit up in his eyes. He zipped past the puppet and his body lit up with divine light. Any pest that had gotten near to him was purified on the spot, reduced to dirt and dropping all over the ground.

Fycro was able to track how the pests entered the maze with his eyes. He was quick with his feet and passed through the maze soon enough.

A golden sword was lying in wait for Fycro right outside the maze.

The sword was swung horizontally at Fycro’s neck. The divine shield was broken right away. Fycro was thoroughly shocked, as none of that was seen in the Mirror of Fate. Saleen has a level 13 being serving him? Impossible!

Saleen had never expected Fycro to really show up before the magic tower alone. From Saleen’s perspective, what Fycro did was very stupid. If Fycro were to take his time to plan things out and open a path in the jungle, Saleen would have been able to do little against him.

If Saleen were to destroy that passage in the jungle, he would have had to show up personally, but doing so would have robbed him of the backup from the magic tower. There was no way for him to set up an ambush in the wild as well.

Saleen had precisely let the pests into the maze just so that he was able to set up a trap. The weapon spirit of the magic amplifier was not the only being lying in wait; Rafel was there as well.

Saleen saw Rafel thrusting out with her red spear from the other side, which grazed Fycro’s body. He unleashed Thundering Phantasm, all of whom lifted the left arm at the same time, with the Thunder Dragon Blaster showing briefly and shot lightning icicles.

There were 12 lightning icicles seen being shot—11 from the illusions and one from Saleen himself. The lightning icicles were but feints, but if Fycro were to not avoid them, he would have nonetheless ended up being killed all the same.

The Inferno Spear grazed Fycro’s hips. His level 13 divine shield was unable to stop that godly item’s attack. If it had not been for a piece of armor appearing behind him all of a sudden, Fycro would have ended up severely injured.

However, Blood was seen pouring from his hips, so much so that one was able to see the bone under the wound.

With two level 13 beings ambushing him with powerful weapons, Fycro was quickly caught in a ditch. A huge bubble expanded on his body, repelling both Rafel and the weapon spirit. Saleen’s lightning icicle punched into the bubble and were quickly dissolved.

The temperature of the bubble was even greater than that of underground fires. The lightning icicles did not have fire-resistant properties due to being focused on being as sharp as possible.

That was because under most circumstances, even if the lightning icicles were to be dumped inside volcanoes, it would have still taken them quite a while to be melted. Furthermore, lightning icicles had very brief period of offense after all.

Saleen would have never expected that there were actually defensive skills that worked by laying out a super-high temperature layer on one’s body.