Badge in Azure

Chapter 1364: Not Giving In (Part 1)

There was nothing wrong with becoming emperor. The position was filled with benefits, as it allowed one to take control of resources of the entire empire, making the most fundamental problem of furthering one’s magic training to the top non-existent.

No powerful mages were dirt poor.

The founding emperor of the First Dynasty had been the most powerful mage of his time. He used the spoils of war gained from the dynasty’s conquest as he wished. It was a piece of cake for that emperor to craft equipment and learn anything.

However, there were simply too many who had their eye on the position of emperor. Lex had faced all sorts of obstacles just to become a viscount. She would have definitely been hampered by the House of Commons in her ascension to the throne in an attempt to share her power.

Despite being a prince, Saleen had no intention of suffering restrictions of any kind. If that emissary dared to be so insolent, the terms brought would have definitely been something Saleen couldn’t stomach.

Good. I’ll kill anyone who tries to pull something like that on me again, and I’ll see how Golden Plains deals with this.

But then again, it definitely had something to do with him taking the magic cube away. Ojarvis had been the one gifting the magic cube to him. As such, those in Golden Plains would not have found fault with Lex.

Saleen used to be cautious in his dealings and reluctant to take risks. Those at Golden Plains thought he was a pushover and probably sent someone like that emissary to make him balk.

Saleen refused to back down. From his teacher Jason, he learned to forge his own path. Without courage, his path would have been riddled with insurmountable problems.

In light of this, backing down even for a single step would have been deemed unacceptable. The magic cube was a gift to him by Ojarvis. If they wanted it back, they should have asked Ojarvis for it.

Now that Ojarvis was dead, Saleen didn’t mind sending those who refused to talk to Ojarvis to see the late emperor instead. Of course, if he were to gain powers to resurrect Ojarvis in the future, there was no way he would have resurrected those people along the way.

Saleen’s mood brightened at the thought of this.

Since Sika took the children with her, Saleen couldn’t simply wait around like the Sreeger Island mages. He needed to think of ways to get to the interdimensional space. He still had no idea how to do that, but fortunately, he had over 100 thousand enchanters at his disposal. What those enchanters lacked in creativity they amply made up for with calculative abilities, which were on par with those of mages.

Saleen needed to formulate a space portal even if it was only enough to accommodate him alone.

It was unacceptable for him to just sit around and wait in Metatrin City. With his children still in the interdimensional space, Saleen was compelled to visit them and see what was happening there for himself.

To Rafel, that was unfathomable. It was easy for humans to produce children, unlike the gods, who needed to suffer drops in their levels if they wanted to bear children. Worse, such feats would have taken a very long time.

Even though Saleen was already a level-11 mage, having children would have been thousands of times easier than if the gods were to do it. Then again, Saleen cared for his children thousands of times more than the gods would have.

One big difference is that the gods would never take such risks for their children. Passing through an unfamiliar portal would have been far more difficult than giving birth.

“Saleen, was it worth taking such risks to have your children?”

Saleen took one look at Rafel and answered, “Of course. I gave up over 1000 years of life for those two.”

“So then...it’s how it is between me and the metal angels then?”

“It’s different. I’m willing to do anything for my two children.”

“But you haven’t been at their side for long. Don’t humans usually stay by their children’s side as they grow?”

Rafel’s words hit where it hurt. Saleen recalled his own childhood before the two children appeared in his life. He had sworn secretly that he would never let his children spend their childhood in loneliness and that he would have made as much as time as possible to be there for them.

“I failed at that in the past and it’s a mistake I do not intend to repeat.”

Saleen returned to the Floating City looking glum. Nailisi was initially happy to see Saleen return, but she heard that Sika had taken the children to the interdimensional space. There had been no news from them since. Now she was anxious, too.

Saleen tried to contact Lex and didn’t bring up the matter with Sika. Saleen simply wanted Lex to come to Metatrin City.

Lex also mentioned that the teleportation portal between Metatrin City and Holy Rock City wasn’t finished yet.

Saleen sensed something was amiss. The powers of Golden Plains made it impossible to spend more than an hour to get a teleportation portal for traversing in the same plane up. There was no need to gather materials for construction.

Lex, however, didn’t drop any hints suggesting trouble in her conversation with Saleen. That’s what made him so uneasy. This meant that while Lex was still in a ditch; it wasn’t something she couldn’t manage and things were not yet in a dire state.

Saleen had no choice but to consider the matter with his children for the time being.

If Lex couldn’t leave Holy Rock City, she wouldn’t have been able to use the God’s Ring—and it was impossible for her to hand the ring over to anyone else.

Saleen suddenly remembered that Lex had had a falling out with his followers before he left. She probably knew something like that would happen. If his followers were to stay by Lex’s side, their clash would have been intense and things would have spiraled totally out of control.

Being emperor is one hell of a pain in the neck indeed. Just how much energy is needed to remain on the throne, eh? If a mage had so much energy to put into it, he would have advanced several levels instead.

Saleen sighed. It was Lex’s decision to live this type of life. His argument with her was real. He was all for dealing with things swiftly, and that meant allying with Grand Duke Iron Blood and kicking out all forces and influences from Golden Plains and Holy Rock City.

Lex adamantly refused, saying she would have never allowed Cloudflow people to have even half an inch of Qin lands.

When Lex was done with the troubles at Golden Plains, she would have probably gotten around to dealing with Grand Duke Iron Blood right away.

From Saleen’s perspective, it would have been better to simply let the grand duke become an emperor if Lex were able to do that. She would have only needed to pour her mind into managing the Principality of Bitterwater. By the time that place became a nation of the mages, no dynasty would have been able to stop it.

Saleen’s way of doing it was simple. He would have used any advantages he had to design a magic net that could be activated at will in his nation. Castles would have served as impenetrable conduits linking the magic net throughout his nation, and those castles would have served as giant magic towers. In this way, it would have been possible to fill the entire Principality of Bitterwater with enchanters.

Mages would have served as the backbone of the magic net while the enchanters fought on the frontlines. Saleen couldn’t think of any ways to defeat such a nation. Grand Duke Iron Blood would have been able to squat around for 100 years at most. When the magic net was amply laid out, it would have chased him off Qin lands.

But then again, he was able to relate to why Lex refused to yield even an inch of Qin lands to him. He just thought that her way of thinking did not match her past principles.

At the moment, Lex was at the palace of Holy Rock City. There were only a bit more than a dozen palace mages at her side. Saleen would have definitely known about her current predicament. Golden Plains sent a large number of men over to help rebuild Holy Rock City. It was not a good thing. Nobles from both the House of Lord and the House of Commons were actually bought over by the mage just to take her down.

To put things precisely, those people were trying to make her compromise, asking her to become an Emperor of the Grukos instead of the wife of Metatrin.

They made it clear that she needed to take the magic cube back. Before Lex had heard of such requests personally, the emissaries had already made their move.

Both sides had yet to fall out completely. At the very least, Arbola had to appear in person and demand the space coordinates to Metatrin City. With them in hand, the mages could have simply barged in from the portal and assaulted Metatrin City.

Even if Arbola alone made it through, it would have caused serious problems for Metatrin City.

It was fortunate that she still had the backing of the palace mages: they would have had no way of returning to the magic cube; things had always been patchy between the palace mages and the Golden Plains.

It was something the founding emperor of the Qin Empire had laid down all those years ago. The conflict that lasted over 1000 years would not have been taken care of by benefits right before them. Without the backing of the palace mages, Lex would have totally lost control of Holy Rock City. At the very least, with the rebuilding of the royal swordsmen camp, there was no way Golden Plains would have been able to interfere with how defense organizations of the palace were run. Those details were taken care of by the palace mages after all.

Saleen knew he was in hot water. According to his way of thinking, he would not have simply severed connections with Holy Rock City. He would have come directly to Holy Rock City with the Floating City, forcing Golden Plain’s forces to yield with an embodiment of terror looming above.

Saleen was definitely in trouble for having not done so.

Lex knew it would have taken Sika’s being in trouble to prevent Saleen from taking action, being that she was the mother of his two children. It was even more likely that something happened to Saleen’s children. To have him come looking for me like this, is he having problems with the interdimensional space?

Lex lacked Saleen’s calculative abilities. Even if she had them, as an elemental mage she would not have been up to the task. Not even Saleen’s astrology had been able to do anything. The secret arts of the Grukos had never been strong when it came to calculations. The only arts that allowed people to foresee the future was the one that Ojarvis learned. Learning such arts, however, came at the cost of reducing one’s lifespan to three to five months at best. Not even gods would have been able to prevent such an outcome.

There was no way Lex would have learned such secret arts. She wanted to put everything aside and just go to Saleen.

I would probably be a lot happier now if I lived like Sika, no? She deemed the argument between her and Saleen pointless. Saleen may have been right after all, but there was definitely no way she would have sold her territory out, even if that was a temporary compromise.

The Grukos had never met anyone like that before. Even Safilos, who had given up on everything pertaining to the throne, chose to return to his nation and prepare to fend off possible attacks from Alchemy City.

That was why her father, despite being one of the most powerful three emperors in the history of Qin, was thought to be an average emperor, according to reviews in history books. That was because Emperor Chanake had gone to take risks for his daughter’s sake, putting his duties as emperor aside.

Lex hardly cared how his father was appraised in the history books, but Master Merlin’s prophecy of her being the one to destroy the Qin Empire was something she definitely did not want to happen. The battle between mages and astrologers began anew on the day Lex was born.

What Lex wanted to triumph over was not Merlin but fate.

If a mage were to swayed by fate and it dictates, there would have been little reason to learn magic.

A huge magical sequence was formed on the Floating City. It was a joint effort of all enchanters there, forming a huge sequence that had constantly changing numbers as new data was added. There was no error to the enchanters’ calculations: everything was under the God of Magic Net’s control.

If there were any errors, something must have been wrong with the data fed into the calculations.

Those enchanters were trying to calculate a new portal for Saleen, but there were appallingly few data to be had. The coordinates between the planes and some data that Saleen acquired from having teleported several times were all they had to work with.