Badge in Azure

Chapter 867: Abyss (Part 2)

Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio

The bodies of Saleen and Nailisi were being squeezed hard by the bubbles sticking onto both of them. They were falling at speeds so fast, that Saleen felt like his heart was going to jump right out of his mouth.

Mages would all performed one experiment when advancing to grade-7, which was to fall from great heights without any magical assistance, attempting to stop only about one-hundred yards away from the ground. Some mages were daring enough to only do so when they were less than fifty yards away from hitting the ground.

Such training allowed humans to get used to flying and never again have fear of it. Needless to say, Saleen went through such a training himself. Yet he, at that moment, felt that the speed that they were falling at surpassed the time when he performed such an experiment.

Saleen however, did not have any fear of his current predicament. His mind raced to calculate the speed he was falling at. He was sure that he would be able to cast spells to stop his fall when he finally was able to sense the distance to the ocean floor accurately. His sensory perception was extended to only about a mile away. His Elemental Eye was scrambled, making it useless for that moment. He was still able to see three to five-hundred yards in front of him clearly, which was a distance that was more than enough for him to prepare amply.

Saleen was wondering what his teacher would have done under such a situation. “Jason would probably be able to handle this a hell of a lot better.”

Nailisi’s three-faced bone demon form was actually the one to have a perception range greater than Saleen. Her form was, after all, a grade-9 one, while Saleen was a grade-8 mage. Nailisi was able to completely sense every single detail even two miles away. Spirits depended on energy vibrations to find their way in the first place.

That huge undersea basin seemed to have no bottom, or to put it more accurately, Saleen and Nailisi were being sucked to the middle of the basin: a huge abyss. They were not falling straight downward, but were moving forward diagonally instead.

There were no living creatures within that region of the sea. Not even the most prevalent undersea microbes existed there.

The abyss’ suction had only began going downwards after moving up to about one-thousand miles. Saleen did not intend to fight it. While the abyss’ suction power was without a doubt massive, the level of his and Nailisi’s powers would be able to get them back to the entrance without problems. As the cemetery was something designed by humans, there would be an exit somewhere else even if they were never able to find the way they came in.

What astonished Saleen was actually how the people designing the cemetery were willing to spend such astronomical amounts of money to build such a place. The length of one such huge undersea abyss, if calculated vertically on the ground, was astronomical. They would have been able to find underground fires, which were hot enough to melt rocks, making them follow like water. The undersea abyss however, seemed to be one without end.

Ten miles, twenty miles, no, thirty miles!

Saleen calculated silently. He was able to feel the bottom of the abyss all of a sudden. The giant bubble wrapping him and Nailisi began expanding forcefully. If it was not for the suction of the abyss, both of them would have simply floated upwards.

Eighty miles deep!

While the undersea abyss was no way near that of the abyss plane, a depth of eighty-thousand yards was nonetheless startling to Saleen. What startled him more however, was the moment his Elemental Eye recovered when they reached the bottom of the abyss. Saleen saw countless number of bones beneath, and there were bones from more creatures than just the single-horned white whales. Saleen was even unable to determine which creatures the bones belonged to.

The single-horned white whale, was but a medium-sized magic beasts in comparison to some of the remains of other dead creatures there.

That was their goal: the cemetery. Saleen and Nailisi cast tens of mid level spells simultaneously, creating a cushion beneath their feet. Water currents shot upwards furiously at them, slowing their fall.

The currents there all flowed to the bottom of the sea, yet the bottom of the sea itself hardly had holes. Such powerful suction was determined to come from the earth. Earth element was so abundant on the ground at the bottom of the sea that Saleen was feeling somewhat hard-pressed about breathing underwater. His body of water element finally had an adverse effect on him there.

His body of water element also found the water pressure at the depth of eighty-thousand yards was something hard to get used to.

Nailisi was doing fine still, as she was in the form of a three-faced bone demon. While she was unable to manipulate water element, such powerful water pressure did not bother her much.

If the pan’s turtle alchemical boat ended up there, it would have been crushed.

Saleen’s eyes did not allow him to find the whale they were looking for there, and where they were at seemed to be the outskirts of the cemetery. The bones Saleen saw there were basically all from grade-9 magic beasts, and a great majority of them came from single-horned white whales.

Saleen put up a hand sign at Nailisi, the Mental Sense between both of them actually worked better there. Nailisi was able to completely tell what Saleen was thinking.

Nailisi also put up a hand sign herself, and made it in front of Saleen with the spear in her hand.

The bones numbering in tens of thousands all belonged to creatures of more than one-hundred yards long. The silhouette of both of them swimming in such a background made them look tiny. Nailisi took the lead and made way to a magic beast bone remains that were two-hundred yards long. She came to the head of the skeleton and poked lightly with her finger.

The bones fell apart without making any sound. The bones eventually turned into powder thanks to the immense water pressure. There were no signs of a magic nucleus within the head.

Nailisi turned and saw Saleen telling her to continue.

Nailisi swam quickly for another whale’s skeleton and poked with her finger again. The bones of that whale fell apart without making a sound as well, turning into powder again, and sank slowly down in the seawater. What was different that time was that the two yard long horn of the whale did not fall apart. Nailisi took it in her hand and stored it in her bracelet.

Saleen paid no heed to what Nailisi was doing. He only felt that his body had been glued to the undersea floor by the force of the suction. Moving like Nailisi did would have put an immense toll on him.

A water shield would have been quickly compressed to the surfaces of his body, giving him no buoyancy at all. The spell was required to be advanced to grade-9 before it could have been easily used there.

“Could we train here? Nonsense. We don’t even know if Soldier and the others are okay...”

Nailisi had no idea what had been going in Saleen’s mind. She simply kept searching the remains one by one, and she had only found some comparatively precious materials once in about one-hundred skeletons searched. Given how the materials were able to be preserved at such depths without signs of decay nor degeneration, the materials could prove to have more value than any that she had been able to find in the past.

The horn of a single-horned white whale was nowhere near the quality of the spike of that silverline golden spearfish, yet its sturdiness enabled it to hold for tens of thousands of years without decay. Even metals would have easily turned to dust under such an environment.

Saleen unleashed the Stone Statue Army after thinking about it. The spell was grade-9. He cast the spell and unleashed six nine yard long stone statues. If he was to compress the size of the statues, the combat capacity of them would have dropped somewhat.

Saleen was surprised to find that the six statues unleashed in such an environment reached a height of nine yards. Saleen had the statues stacked on top of one another, and he climbed on top of them, looking down on the internal space of the abyss.

The view eighty miles away astonished him. There was a huge wall there. Despite having crumbled and being damaged, he was nonetheless able to imagine how majestic the wall had been once upon a time.

The crumbled wall still stood at about one-hundred yards tall. Its original height would probably have been around five to six-hundred yards. Such walls would have proved useful as defenses against giants.

With the crumbled walls, it went without saying that the gate towers were no longer standing either. Just before the gate, Saleen saw stone statues of about one-hundred yards tall. Those ones were far smaller than the ones that had been standing guard at the abyss’ entrance, but those ones were holding weapons. The statues did not seem to be damaged in anyway, and actually looked newer than Saleen’s own statue army units.

“Hardly surprising,” Saleen thought. “Just so long as magic arrays capable of energy conservation are in place, these statues will have been replenished continuously from the earth element around, enabling them to repair themselves. They would easily look just as new even after standing one-million years more, let alone a mere ten-thousand. No, the statues are probably like the ones I got before myself, making them some kind of elemental creature, instead of combat puppets created by magic. If these were stone statue soldiers, then the level of the statues would be higher than grade-9! These statues are able to use rules to absorb the powers of the ground on their own.”

Saleen counted patiently. There were up to one-hundred stone statue soldiers. If about one-hundred elemental creature of grade-10 were getting in his way, there would have been no hope for him to make it into the true cemetery.

Where they were was simply the outskirts of the cemetery. If they wanted to get their hands on the remains of ancient creatures, they would have to make it into the abyssal city.

Nailisi was getting bored after searching around for some time. Other than horns of single-horned white whales, the magic nuclei of the magic beasts there were basically all damaged, or simply so broken that they turned to dust. The occasional one or two complete pieces found were degraded badly in terms of quality.

Nailisi decided to just store all the horns that she had been able to find, and returned to Saleen. He put up a hand sign, and both of them entered the purgatory of darkness.

“Master, there was nothing worth searching for. This junk is just too broken, but...”

“Those ashes would make good death magic materials. If you knew dead spirit alchemy, you wouldn’t have said that,” Saleen tore right through Nailisi’s lies.

While it was true that the bone remains of the magic beasts were damaged, and the damaged bone remains had indeed turned to ashes, they had instead become the best alchemic material for use in death magic. To death mages, bone dust was worth more than the grade-9 magic nuclei used by elemental mages.

“Nailisi, I saw a city. There were guards, probably stone statue soldiers of grade-9 or grade-10.”

Nailisi reacted with joy, which quickly turned somewhat gloomy soon after. Stone statue soldiers were no easy elemental creatures to deal with. They could simply continue resurrecting until their leader was killed. Earth element was obnoxiously abundant in the environment of the abyss. Quickly killing all of the statues in one go and looking for the leader, was not an option.

She only had the capacity of a grade-9 professional. There was just no way she could kill all one-hundred statues at once.

“Master, what do you suggest then?”

“Go collect all the materials you are able to collect. The bone dust will be useful in repairing your purgatory of death.”

“Understood, master, but it will take quite a lot of time.”

“I will go circle around the city and see if there are any loopholes I can exploit. We will regroup here later,” Saleen said calmly.

“Master, no!”

“What do you mean no? I was but a grade-1 mage before I met you, and I survived just fine. Nailisi, meet me here in three days!”, Saleen did not allow Nailisi to refuse, and left the purgatory of darkness as soon as he finished.

Nailisi was baffled. She had only found out then, that Saleen had mastered the way of entering and exiting the Twelve Notes of Purgatory as he pleased.

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