1515 Divine Ordeals Part 2 (1/2)

Due to not having established any teleportation portals at the nations of the East Sea just yet, Saleen planned to take a demon army made up of a million soldiers with him on the trip. He would send them home after conquering those nations.

The battles near the gates of the divine kingdom were still of utmost importance, after all. He was unable to just put his trust in anyone else, and it was not certain that the goddess would have helped him out.

Saleen had changed a lot. The most noticeable difference was his attempts at not pinning his hopes on anyone else for whatever he intended to do if he was able to help it.

While Saleen believed that his teacher would have definitely been able to emerge victorious in the battle with the Lord of Glory, he saw fit to keep himself in the loop instead of letting his teacher handle everything. It was not right to make Jason do everything.

Saleen brought Rafel and no one else. Both of them came to the temple at the center of Purgatory Dessert.

The Mountain without End seemed to have gotten even higher, and the myriad of magic beasts within the temple's space seemed to have gotten a lot more powerful as well. The goddess was managing her divine kingdom, and it was difficult for her to do so without using the power of the Source of Myers Mainland.

A god who was familiar with level 18 rules would have been able to expand their divine kingdom hundreds of times over.

It was due precisely to Saleen having felt that the temple's space was beginning to take the form of a divine kingdom that he did not rush his efforts to take on the goddess. If she had become capable of making the place her divine kingdom, then she would no longer have to absorb any power of the Source of the mainland.

So long as she was able to keep her divine kingdom stable, the creatures born within the divine kingdom would grant her eternal life.

But then again, Saleen had no idea where the creatures came from. She had killed a massive amount of god creatures back then, and it was due to her collection of such creatures that she was able to create the space.

The goddess' combat capacity within that space was several times better than when she was outside. That was why she had been capable of stopping Saleen's lightning attack easily, but had to resort to borrowing Saleen's Lightning Moon when doing battle outside.

”Why are we seeing Myers, my lord?” Rafel was unable to fathom why Saleen kept doing so. From her perspective, the goddess was Saleen's enemy, not his ally.

”The goddess stays true to the principle of fairness,” Saleen answered.

”Well said, Saleen. Come over.” Saleen stopped at the shore of a river, and a dazzling, multi-colored bridge appeared before him. Saleen stepped onto it without hesitation.

Rafel followed exasperatedly.

The rainbow bridge quickly receded, carrying Saleen and Rafel back to the temple in the Mountain without End. Saleen felt as if time stopped. The speed at which the bridge moved exceeded his Comet Flash.

What exasperated Saleen further was that the skill that he had wanted to learn for a long time—Rainbow—took him less than a second to pick up while in the temple.

Rainbow was a difficult spell to learn due to the massive stress it put on one's body. No mage below level 13 was able to survive a successful cast of the spell without special equipment. Their bodies would disintegrate, and there was no way to reconstruct them.

As such, despite the spell being one that he could have picked up a long time ago, he never had the courage to actually do it.

At the moment, however, the goddess forced the skill onto Saleen, but that was not a good thing for him. A goddess like her would ask him to work after giving him a reward of some kind.

Saleen believed that the goddess was capable of taking back the skill at any moment if he refused the goddess' request.

But the goddess' version of Rainbow was totally different from what Saleen knew. His intuition told him that it was capable of being fused with his Comet Flash. If the two skills were combined, then his speed at atmospheric flight would be enhanced several times over.

That meant that if Saleen were to cast Comet Flash, he would probably end up tens of kilometers away in an instant, and he would crush himself if he were to run into anything.

It went without saying that anyone unlucky enough to be standing in his way would suffer the same fate as well.

Better save such a skill for after getting over level 16 then.

The goddess gifted him with a skill that allowed him to achieve evolution as soon as he showed up, and it was a gift he found difficult to refuse. Well then, Myers sure as hell was going to ask for something in return, no?

A huge, hovering ball of light in the center of the temple displayed a projection of the entire plane.

Saleen took one look at the ball of light and knew that the table that he had last taken was a defective product. The ball of light was constantly being updated with the latest happenings throughout the mainland—a feat which was unachievable with the table that he had taken away. It would take years for the table to switch to a new map.

”O' Revered Goddess of Myers, may I ask how could I be of service?” Saleen asked preemptively, to prevent himself from being put on the defensive.

”Well, I'm not actually going to ask anything of you. I see what you are doing, Saleen. Great idea founding the Fifth Dynasty, but the divine kingdom's assault is getting worse. Are you trying to get me to do something by putting the entire Myers Mainland at stake?” The goddess sounded rather irked, but Saleen relaxed instead.

”No. I'm fully capable of stopping the divine kingdom's advances.”

”You are fully capable of doing so? Don't you know what the Lord of Glory is?”

”Something you could easily kill at a whim,” Saleen answered.

”That is me, not you!”

”Goddess, even if the Lord of Glory plans to advent personally, I'm still confident of being able to take him out.”

”You're confident? The Lord of Glory has 126 doubles!”

The Goddess of Myers was apparently rather irked. While she was indeed fully capable of killing the Lord of Glory, the last time she left the temple, it affected the progress of resurrecting her people. If she were to leave again, all of them would have had to stay asleep for good.

She was unable to be at two places at a time, forbidding her from taking out the Lord of Glory, and Saleen was going about founding the Fifth Dynasty. The forces throughout Myers Mainland would be spread too thin as a result.