1248 Clipping Wings Part 1 (1/2)

To other people, magic scrolls were incredibly precious. To Saleen, however, they were just another consumable.

He had acquired too much starline paper in the Imperial City of the Abyss. While such things were extremely common things to astrologers, there were still expensive to ancient mages, though they were not prohibitively so.

Scrolls were more commonly seen in ancient times, so Saleen was like someone who was living in ancient times for possessing huge amounts of starline paper. He distributed them to mages who were close to him, and used them to train mages.

Writing scrolls was a part of a mage's magical training, and starline paper was almost immune to failure, which made it irresistible to mages.

Saleen was able to get countless mages willing to work for him simply by asking for completed scrolls in return for the starline paper he distributed. None of the mages would ask for money. In fact, they would pay Saleen to get such a privilege.

It allowed the mages to familiarize themselves with unfamiliar magic for free, which deepened their understanding of magic.

Failure in writing scrolls yielded next to no return for the mages. Only success would benefit the mages. Saleen's mages would create scrolls for him without charge, so long as he was able to provide starline paper for them.

Saleen did not ask for money simply because that was a privilege given to his closest mages. If they had been total strangers instead, they would not get the right to create scrolls for Saleen to begin with.

As such, the scrolls that Saleen took out were all equipped with level nine magic spells. He unraveled them and dropped his altitude further, throwing them down when he was 800 meters away from the ground.

With the level ten holy masters injured and the high level leaders of the knights all wiped out, Theisio was reduced to fighting on his own.

Saleen knew that the power stored within the three godly items was limited, but the amount of scrolls in his possession would drive Theisio insane. He threw level nine magic spells like they cost nothing.

When other mages cast level nine scrolls, they would only be able to cast 24, even at Saleen's level. However, Saleen's mental powers allowed him to continuously cast more than 3000 of them.

The Ring of Cosmos had expanded Saleen's mental powers by 64 times.

With level nine magic spells raining down on them, Theisio was forced to invoke defense territory. If he did not, all of his knights would be wiped clean.

360 evil angels emerged from the Flower of Evil outside the territory and headed straight for Saleen.

Saleen smirked and summoned 360 ancient figures and had them deal with the incoming angels. Both parties consisted of level nine creatures. The evil angels wielded huge curved blades, and the ancient figures were clad in Tainted Blood Armor and wielded seven meter-long spears. The figures were repairable and the angels revivable. Such battles were just fought to buy time.

”How does it feel being cornered, Theisio?” Saleen ridiculed the pope while his people continued to hunt down the knights. The demons and the figures suffered greater casualties, but the knights were the cream of the crop for the Holy See.

Theisio had a massive heartache. ”Saleen, you shall...”

”I shall destroy your faith!” The Puppet Constellation above Saleen flickered with starlight. Constellation Wishing nullified the pope's prophecy spell.

The pope's territory continued to be hit by the level nine scrolls one after another. None of the scrolls were capable of breaking the pope's territory, as the pope was level 11.

However, the pope's territory had to cover the red-robed bishops, and Saleen did not mean for the scrolls to attack Theisio. They were simply meant for using Theisio's mental powers.

Saleen's Puppet Constellation was able to do more than provide him with puppets for combat. It also amplified the powers of astrology and earth magic. The equipment was developed by separating Saleen's territorial powers, so Saleen had effortless control of it.

”Do you really want to do attrition warfare against me, Theisio? You're backed by the Tanggulasi Empire and I have two countries backing me. Well, how about you just stop here and we'll see if you, with a thousand years of accumulated wealth, would win over me, a very rich upstart?”

Theisio was getting rather pissed after being continuously provoked by Saleen, but he knew that if he got angry, he would make mistakes, and Saleen was very good at exploiting small mistakes.

He had seen enough of Saleen's attacks and if it had not been for his men dealing with the attacks badly, he would not have lost so many powerful people around him.

While it would not happen again in the future, the fact that he had lost so many red-robed bishops and grand swordmasters remained, and that made Theisio feel as if his heart was bleeding.

He deemed himself stupid for being intimidated by Saleen then. If he had had a showdown, or simply snuck into the energy barrier, his losses would not be as considerable.The Flower of Evil continued to provide energy for the evil angels. The combat capacity of the evil angels paled in comparison to Saleen's ancient figures, but they were restored by the Flower of Evil, making them difficult to deal with.

If Saleen's ancient figures were broken, he would have to infuse constellation power slowly and personally to restore them.

Nicholas did not stop. The teams continued to move as the Flower of Evil spun. Saleen's attacks consisted of huge rocks thrown downwards as well as the spells.

Saleen was totally unfettered despite seeing his attacks being unable to break the pope's territory. He summoned over a hundred puppets and had a large magic cannon attached to every single one of them.

He was in no hurry and simply let the huge cannons fire slowly: three shots a minute.