1067 Tragedy and Fear Part 1 (1/2)
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 passages 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 passages 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 arsenal 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 pass 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 passages 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.