1222 Getting Prepared Part 2 (1/2)

What frustrated Theisio the most was that he had laid an elaborate trap to throw Saleen into a divine kingdom, yet the mage had actually been able to escape home. That meant that Saleen had interdimensional teleportation portals and coordinates.

Would Saleen have just gone and crafted an interdimensional teleportation portal in Metatrin City without a good reason? He might be rich, but he definitely wouldn't have been so indulgent. It was worth noting that the cost of crafting an interdimensional teleportation portal would, after all, be equivalent to building a city.

Furthermore, building cities only required common materials, while crafting interdimensional teleportation portals called for precious ones, some of which it was difficult even for the Holy See to acquire.

Therefore, he deemed that there must be some very important secrets in Metatrin City. However, the spies hired by the Holy See had all died all of a sudden for no apparent reason, cutting them off from any useful sources of intel.

Metatrin City was built like a fortress, and all of its vital points were in the temple. Worse still, the whole vicinity within half a mile of the temple was deemed off-limits. The temple guards even performed patrols around the area.

The members of the Holy See all had the power of faith in them, which made it absolutely impossible for them to infiltrate Metatrin City.

Metatrin City's security measure seemed loose and were hardly checks of any kind. However, the three layers of city walls and nine sets of gates were all designed according to Dante's Sequence. The temple knew everything that happened within the city. Furthermore, the number of mages in Metatrin City was ridiculously high, and they took turns monitoring everything from the 36 magic towers around the clock.

A level-ten professional was necessary to monitor the place, and even they would not be worth much, as they would be exposed as soon as they tried anything funny.

The members of the Holy See would have needed powerful equipment for concealment and had no way of staying for long in Metatrin City.

As such, all of the spies deployed by the Holy See to the city were outsourced from forces like bands of thieves. The Tribunal had considerable control of them, but they were unclean, which made it difficult for them to infiltrate into the city.

Saleen had practically announced his return from the divine kingdom, yet Theisio could not be seen coming to stop him.

Saleen was in no hurry, as his target was not actually Theisio to begin with. If Theisio were to show up, then he would give up taking on the great head inquisitor. Saleen had gotten very adept at employing such adaptive measures to deal with problems.

Grand Duke Iron Blood sent intel periodically to Saleen, per the treaty, from the shores. Things in Alchemy City began to grow chaotic. The Devil's Horn had indeed begun to craft warships en masse with materials acquired from Saleen.

Common warships would not have been much of a concern, but the ones being crafted resembled those of the Ancients in many ways. There were building structures like magic towers on the huge ships.

The Grand Duke did not go about making baseless assumptions, but Saleen believed that they were crafting large-scale magic amplifiers.

The Devil's Horn is actually ambitious enough to build something like that. Large-scale amplifiers would act like magic nets on warships. As such warships were built exclusively out of metal, the combat capacity of the Devil's Horn had definitely been enhanced a hundred times over.

There was no longer any need for them to fear the Elemental Hand. The completion of the warships meant that both sides were of equal might.

Saleen caught wind of the news that the Elemental Hand had their hands full and wanted to come to an agreement with the Devil's Horn. They needed to make contact with each other, one way or another, to confirm the power difference between them.

If both sides were, indeed, of equal might, then a fight would not be necessary.

Saleen feared that Alchemy City would take the initiative to mess up his plans, as he had too few men at his disposal. The number of mages in Metatrin City was still inadequate when compared to Alchemy City.

The Magical Element Tower flew at great speed, its entire body wrapped in a cloud of mist, and its flight velocity was gradually approaching 400 miles per hour. That was not actually the fastest speed that the tower could achieve—its max speed exceeded 1,000 miles per hour.

However, if the tower were to do that, the flying magic patterns would end up being damaged again.

However, they could still throw some elemental beings into the magic power furnaces and boost its speed to about 800 miles per hour.

While most mages had no qualms about pulling off something cruel like that, Saleen did not like the idea of killing elemental creatures just because he was in a hurry. However, if his life were threatened, it would be entirely fine by him to sacrifice some elemental creatures.

They made the 20,000-mile journey at a pace of about 7,000 miles per day. The tower had no longer needed to take breaks during flight ever since the magic power furnaces were installed. Saleen reached Daliang City within three days.

It was difficult to cast spells from the top of Daliang City, as the flight of Saleen's tower was powered entirely by the magic power furnaces, and was incapable of using ambient elements. The most that he could do was to throw elemental creatures into the furnaces.

Saleen only needed one low-level elemental creature to safely land the tower within the grounds of the city's palace.

There was only one tower capable of flight in the world. The demonic spirits sensed Nailisi's presence, and no one dared to attack. Lex's palace was quite safe, as it was under the protection of a magic net.

The Alchemy City mages were dumb enough to not check things thoroughly before making their move there, and they ended up being pummeled by the enchanters.

Lex was not there to receive Saleen, as the fighting was so tense at the walls that even she, the head of the state, needed to be present personally. Lex possessed God's Ring, and, while no one was certain of its full capabilities, everyone knew that the protection it afforded was unparalleled.

A level-nine archer had once tried to assassinate Lex. The arrow shot right toward Lex but quickly disappeared without a trace, before she even batted an eye at the projectile.

Every single such attempt ended in this manner, and the Holy See's people eventually gave up the thought of shooting Lex dead from afar.

The battlefield between the two sides was concentrated outside the city's eastern walls, where the entrance to the Cemetery of the Giant lay.