755 Prepared for Battle, Prepared for Marriage Part 1 (1/2)
While Saleen devoted all his attention to the process of absorbing the soul, the entire arena was silent. Most of the soldiers were already armed appropriately, but they had all stopped moving when they saw the assassin hanging onto the elf in a strange manner.
No one knew what happened, so no one dared to move recklessly.
If they moved forward, they might be misunderstood to be staging a rebellion; if they moved back, they might be seen as fleeing. When Lex trained her soldiers, the first thing she trained was discipline. The way these soldiers fought might still not be up to the standard of conventional armies, but their level of discipline was already sufficiently instilled.
A member of the conventional army would not have to spend a single coin as the army would take care of everything. One could save up all the gold coins given on a monthly basis. That was ten times better than being a mercenary as a mercenary was responsible for their own armor and weapon. What the mercenary group could provide was not free and needed to be bought with money.
At that point, Nicholas swooped down from the sky. Lex waved her hand to allow him to descend. Nicholas felt goosebumps all over his body when he saw so many elvish alchemy crossbows surrounding Lex. Of course, he would not be shot to death by these crossbows, but it was intimidating. At the end of the day, he knew that all his skills would not save him from being hit by these crossbow arrows, except his fallen divine spells, which could cause the soldiers' aiming devices to disappear.
When Nicholas descended and saw the water puppet and Tyrant tangled together, he could vaguely guess what happened. He was a holy priest so he knew more about souls than sorcerers did. In order to avoid suspicion, he moved away from the two people standing in the open space and walked over to Lex and Saleen.
”Your Highness, it is okay. My Lord has everything under control,” Nicholas assured Lex then stood beside Saleen to ensure his safety.
Recently, Nicholas' days had been well-spent as he no longer needed to take care of any important matters and only needed to focus on refining the soul bead. Saleen would call him only when he was needed. They were far away from the frontline, so he did not have to worry about coming into contact with anyone from the Holy See.
As such, he did not have to worry about bumping into anyone from the Supreme Court.
When Grand Emperor Chanake was killed, two out of three of the Head Inquisitors were also killed. The remaining Head Inquisitor was still someone that Nicholas would never dare to cross. Even though the Supreme Court had been weakened as a result, the two new Head Inquisitors were still slightly stronger than Nicholas.
Tyrant saw that his pleading was pointless, so his soul began to chant a curse in the water puppet's brain. The curse was long and was chanted in the ghost's language. Countless gray characters flew up and attempted to enter the divine glow.
The ghost's Curse spell was something he was born with and it could only be used when he was in the form of a ghost. Tyrant knew that there was no way he could escape, so he wanted to use the curse spell to pollute this divine glow. If he succeeded, the owner of this divine glow would also go through the pain he was in now.
The price of the Curse spell was his own life. A ghost of Tyrant's bloodline had a long life, which made his curse even more powerful. The divine glow of the Goddess of Nature was not something that was produced by Saleen. It was something left behind by the Goddess herself. Besides, even if the Goddess of Nature was still around, the Curse spell cast by a small ghost would never hurt her.
Saleen was using his senses to find out the secret of the soul. This was one of the compulsory components to be fulfilled before advancing to a sorcerer. He did not expect Tyrant to use up his soul's energy in order to cast a Curse spell. Saleen responded by increasing the speed and absorbing the curse symbols. Tyrant's soul screamed in pain. The curse was stopped and the entire soul shrunk in half.
It turned out that balance was an important part of using the power of the soul. The soul spell would be broken off if the speed of absorption was increased or slowed down. Saleen understood this principle, so he returned to the original speed of absorption and slowly devoured Tyrant's soul.
A ghost's soul was easier to observe compared to a human's. The exterior layer was a thin layer like that of a grape and was made up of energy. There were countless cracks in his soul that could not be pieced together. Clearly, the soul of this assassin had been badly injured before and never had the chance to recover.
Saleen tried to inject the water element into the ghost's soul to try and force the soul out. He would absorb the soul directly without absorbing the energy on the exterior layer. The soul was immediately assimilated into the green divine glow and was not cleansed how Saleen had imagined.
What a pity. Saleen had thought that he would be able to obtain a pure soul. He sighed, this divine glow did not belong to him after all. He was not proficient in the energy of a soul so he had no choice but to watch such a strange soul go to waste.
Cuisi whispered to Lex after seeing Nicholas' arrival, then took her badge to order the soldiers to retreat. The soldiers felt more at ease after being dismissed. That meant that Her Highness did not blame them for what happened. An assassin appearing in the army was a problem that occurred during the phase of recruiting soldiers, so the officers in the army must not be held responsible.
Nevertheless, the matter was not finished yet. Using the appearance of the assassin, Lex ordered many low-level mages to enter the camps to put the soldiers through a magic lie detection and find out if the assassin had any accomplices.
Naturally, the soldiers had no complaints. If Lex ordered something like that the moment the soldiers joined the regiment, they might have had something to say about it. In that case, a soldier from their ranks tried to assassinate Her Highness in front of everyone. It was only natural for Her Highness to react this way.
After checking all the soldiers, there were indeed two spies from Holy Rock City that were hiding amongst the soldiers. Lex did not kill them. She took down their records and branded them with an eternal magic symbol before chasing them out of Daliang City and back to the Qin Empire instead. If they were to try and enter Bitter Water Prefecture once again, they would be killed immediately.
It was an unspoken norm for countries to plant spies in other countries. If these spies were discovered, as long as nothing violent had occurred, they would be chased out and never allowed to enter again.