Badge in Azure

Chapter 994: Hot Pursuit (Part 2)

Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio

Saleen calmed when he saw the armor appearing around Van Gogh’s body. At that moment, he realized that Van Gogh was definitely not the most powerful being in the Holy See. In fact, he was not even among the top three, even when only the Black Dungeon was being considered.

However, he knew that he still needed to use his family badge when dealing with someone like that, as he was still far from strong enough to take on such an opponent. The elemental creatures were slow to recover, and the souls of the ancient warriors had weaknesses. While he was a level nine sorcerer, he was far from being the strongest among them.

For instance, the level nine sorcerer who destroyed the palace in Daliang City was immensely powerful. There were also the likes existences like Imposa to consider. If he were to take on Imposa in a one-on-one fight without his family badge, he would surely be killed.

In fact, he needed to rely on his family badge for just about everything. However, the badge needed about half a year to recharge after each use. As he thought about this limitation, he shook his head... No enemy is going to give me half a year leeway to wait for me to get prepared. So... What can I rely on other than the badge?

The Crystal Finger? The Star Gathering Needle? But... Both of these items have ranges of less than 10 meters! He knew that this would not work, as an offensive range of 10 meters was inferior to even a silver grand swordmaster’s range.

Van Gogh’s silver-white armor looked to be as soft as silk as it clung close to his body. He did not have any visible patterns on his body, but he did have the space badge, which was fastened on his chest. There was also a small shield on the left arm of his suit of armor.

After Van Gogh had changed into his suit of armor, he jumped into the saddle that was on the wolf puppet’s back. Van Gogh then took the Lance of Order, activated the puppet, then made his way toward the crevice. At this point, if any enemy was to mistake him for being just a holy master, he would have died a horrible death!

Van Gogh was also wearing a silver mask as he traveled, and his suit of armor was fully-sealed. This was because he had no need to keep himself protected using powerful divine spells at the time. It was, after all, quite an effort to maintain a divine spell at the bottom of the ocean!

At the moment, Nailisi’s skeleton king form held a bone blade in each hand. She easily weaved through several tight spaces and managed to kill several low-level beings. Such creatures were found in abundance in such places.

The temperature of the crevice grew increasingly high, which suggested that there might be a volcano below it. Moreover, such a strange terrain was one that was simply not seen on land.

Everywhere one looked, there were places with underground fires flowing at the bottom of the ocean, yet they would never erupted. If there were underground fires at the bottom of the crevice, there would have been many creatures that would have only been capable of surviving with the fire element.

At the same time, the amount of creatures in such places would have increased exponentially, as most of those creatures were only capable of living in places with high heat indexes.

Currently, the heavenly angel was swinging the Sword of Glory constantly, yet not one of the slashes from its blade left even a mark on the Magical Element Tower. After all, Elementite was not just hard, but it had self-healing abilities as well. So, when it was crafted with dimension stones added to it, it was a piece of equipment that could regrow even half of its lost parts gradually, unless it was completely destroyed in one go.

The light on the Sword of Glory dimmed gradually as the tower continued to quickly make its was toward the depths of the sea. It simply allowed the summoned creature to attack it without retaliating.

This was because, without having clear commands, the heavenly angel was only capable of fighting via its instincts. Moreover, the weapon of war that was created by the gods was top-notch among level ten creatures, be it in terms of offensive capacity or speed.

It was unfortunate that its enemy had turned out to be a magic tower that had a shell that was thousands of times harder than a Pan Turtle’s! The heavenly angel had never encountered such intimidating enemies!

Generally-speaking, a creature with such fearsome defenses would possess equally terrifying offensive capabilities. Such a creature would have usually destroyed anything with a mere slap of its paw!

As Nailisi dove down another 2,000 meters, the pressure at such depths became indescribable. If the skeleton king form was crushed, Nailisi would have no choice but to return to her imp form. However, despite its possessing a powerful combat capacity, it would have been difficult for it to transform if it was severely injured.

The bone blade in the skeleton king’s hands proceeded to take care of some obnoxious monsters. Meanwhile, Nailisi’s eyes were sharp enough to locate a cave. She had searched with her senses in order to find the cave, which was thousands of meters deep. The cave had no end, and the branches within it were frighteningly numerous.

However, Nailisi did not have time to worry too much about whether it was too dangerous, so she dove into it, without giving it a second thought. After entering the cave, Nailisi kept running.

She still had her 12 Notes of First Purgatory, after all, so she knew that she could simply hide if things went south. Even if she all of her 100,000 demons were killed and the purgatory of the fallen collapsed, everything would have been worth it as long as she was able to get rid of that fellow that kept pursuing her relentlessly!

While Van Gogh was not as powerful as the Divine Baby, he was far smarter. The truly threatening features of humans were their endless imaginations. Hence, it was far more difficult to fight Van Gogh than the angel of fear.

At the moment, the wolf puppet between Van Gogh’s legs was jumping around in the crevice. Every single strike he lashed out with his Lance of Order ended up killing a creature that was attempting to sneak up on him.

The Lance of Order functioned similarly to Nailisi’s Sword of Rules. While the wielder might not be able to master the weapon’s powers, the power of rules that was imbued within the weapons ended up completely killing their enemies regardless.

However, the wolf puppet still differed from the ones that were crafted by the mages in small ways. The puppets that were crafted by mages carried numerous weapons, while the wolf puppet was modeled completely after the magic wolves. This meant that it was capable of shooting divine light from its mouth every now and then, which revealed that it had things like divine crystals embedded within it.

Currently, all three parties were more than three miles from each other, and two of the parties were in hot pursuit. Upon seeing Van Gogh go after Nailisi in the crevice, Saleen rammed the tower hard upon the crevice before sending out the Midnight Fang and Angel of Brightness leaders.

Both of the elemental creature leaders were level ten beings. As such, they began tangling with the heavenly angel as soon as they exited the magic tower.

Saleen had no intentions of taking part in a fight with summoned creatures, as both of the elemental leaders’ groups brought 12 level nines as they went to suppress the heavenly angel. Van Gogh had not expected Saleen to have level ten elemental creature leaders with him, so he simply had to let the angel cover for him, while he shook off Saleen’s pursuit.

Saleen let Truman take control of the tower, while he brought 12 ancient warriors and Nicholas with him, leaving the tower from the lowest floor. The heavenly angel’s orders were to attack the magic tower.

Saleen still had people within the tower, and as such, he was unable to put the tower away in a dimension stone, as he would have ended up killing everyone within it! So, he let the tower get stuck in the crevice, and the heavenly angel was dumb enough to tangle with two level ten elemental creatures, without caring about Saleen’s leaving the tower!

The dark elemental creature leader was reluctant to get close to the heavenly angel. This was because the divine light around the heavenly angel’s body would have negated its powers.

So, it stood in the shadows, while lashing out with the Sword of Dark Element every now and then, tearing off huge portions of divine power from the heavenly angel before decomposing said power with dark element. It was said that dark element was actually the highest form of power in the world.

It was believed that all types of energy would eventually be turned into dark element. However, many people doubted this theory. Regardless, it remained undeniable that dark elemental creatures possessed very high-quality offensive powers and were even capable of negating some elemental attacks.

The Angels of Brightness used light elemental weapons, which enabled them to launch all sorts of complex attacks. The Angels of Brightness were the heavenly angel’s main opponents. With the dark elemental creature leader helping out every now and then when both sides tangled with each other, the heavenly angel’s tempo became rather disjointed and was greatly affected.

After Saleen chased them all the way into the crevice, Nicholas could not help but remind Saleen to prepare himself for their retaliation. After all, Van Gogh’s attacks were eerie and unpredictable, and he could ambush them with rare divine spells at any time.

Saleen acknowledged Nicholas’ words. At the moment, the mask of his Devil Armament was blocking his face, the anti-magic recoil gloves were on his hands, and he had Raphael’s crystal ring on his finger.

Saleen had also stored his family badge within the Devil Ring, leaving it ready to be taken out at a moment’s notice. He even had the Ring of Gifts on his finger, which pulsed with divine power that revealed the nature’s goddess within. This divine power could be used to attack Van Gogh if the situation called for it.

The divinity of the Lord of Glory was extremely exclusive. The divine power was derived from the power of faith of the nature goddess’ believers, and it was the most potent poison to a believer of the Lord of Glory.

Other than that, Saleen also had the level 12 Star Gathering Needle, which was attached to his glove, and he had the level 19 one in his mouth, ready to be spit out at any moment. Saleen had decided to attack Van Gogh with his family badge when the opportunity presented itself.

If he were to let someone so dangerous return to the Holy See, it would only open the door to more severe troubles in the future. Van Gogh was different from Fycro. Specifically, Fycro was ambitious and intended to break away from the Holy See. Van Gogh, on the other hand, was probably the most loyal of believers to the Lord of Glory.

With his secret exposed, the Holy See would have come for his head at all costs, just like how they had dealt with Emperor Chanake. Worse still, Emperor Chanake had only posed a serious threat to the Holy See due to his immense personal strength.

In Saleen’s case, however, he had many eerie pieces of equipment at his disposal. Thus, the benefits gained from killing him would be far greater than killing Emperor Chanake.

At the moment, Nailisi ran extremely fast within the cave, and before she knew it, there was no seawater to be found within it. Nailisi felt as if she was wearing a layer of a thick membrane around her body, as the temperature had risen in the pitch black cave and shiny gems were embedded in the sides of the walls all around her.

If Nailisi had been how she had once been in the past, she would have stopped to pick several of the gems off of the wall. However, that was something she did not dare to do now. She could sense that Van Gogh was getting increasingly close to her, just about four to five hundred meters away.

The wolf puppet surprisingly had a keen sense of smell. Thus, the scent that Nailisi left along the way became the best way for Van Gogh to track her. In this way, he had no worries that he would get lost and lose her trail, regardless of how many branches there were in the cave.

Suddenly, Nailisi found herself at a dead end as she ran. The dead end was currently only about two miles away from her current location, but she could see it looming ahead of her.

There were no other branches to move laterally. The cave just kept going downwards at an angle, and there was a huge lake of lava at the end of it, where the dead end came to a halt.

At this point, the temperature within the cave had lessened a bit, so Nailisi felt a lot more comfortable. She then took a Bloodstone out of her bracelet and threw it at the turning point behind her.

As the Bloodstone exploded, dozens of pieces of rock fell onto the cave, yet did not block the cave’s entrance. Nailisi had not hoped for the move to block Van Gogh, as she already knew that his weapon would have been powerful enough to penetrate the rocks, while carving a path out right then and there.

What Nailisi meant to do was simply to obstruct his line of sight. So, she continued throwing one Bloodstone after another. Previously, she had thought that the stones would be rather fun to play with, which is why so had picked up quite a number of them from the Winged Skull to use for research purposes.

Her lack of patience meant that she was hardly able to yield anything from her research attempts, so she still had more than a hundred pieces of those stones left with her. While the stones did not possess any powerful offensive capabilities, they were very useful for destroying their surrounding environment.

As the cave kept collapsing, Nailisi and Van Gogh managed to keep their distance from one another. Soon, Nailisi arrived at the end of the cave.

She saw a light at the end of the cave, as well as a lake of lava that had a diameter of less than a hundred meters. The lake was filled with air that was commonly found in the demon plane.

The entire place was filled with the strong smell of sulfur. Then, Nailisi jumped into that small lake, while taking out her collection of purgatory objects at the same time.