Chapter 1200: Ball Lightning (Part 1)

Grand Duke Iron Blood was not disappointed with the information he had paid for with a dragon. The shipping manifest allowed the Grand Duke to have his mages calculate and determine what was the kind of ship the Devil’s Horn was trying to build, and what attributes the ship would have.

Imposa was a master alchemist and was superior to Saleen.

The Grand Duke and Saleen moved to the true trade that they had set up the meeting for afterwards. Dragon Island had lots of materials that Saleen required, such as dragon bones and fresh dragon blood.

Dragon Blood Ink was not truly made of dragon blood but concocted by mages using herbs. If scrolls were made using real dragon blood, they would be at their most powerful. The scrolls could even carry dragon tongue magic.

Saleen had something that the Grand Duke needed as well. Wood from the north served as material for crafting merchant ships, and even warships needed wood for interior spaces. The Grand Duke was in no shortage of magic nuclei; what he needed was magic power furnaces.

Saleen had no worry about the Grand Duke reverse-engineering the furnaces, as they were difficult to craft even if one had schematics. For example, only one of the large magic power furnaces had been completed even though over 10,000 mages had worked at it.

It would be difficult to gather materials to craft another one, and the possibility of getting into the intricate parts and unlocking crafting secrets without schematics was practically zero.

The Grand Duke had an Ancient, and he would not need to purchase magic power furnaces from Saleen if it had been so easy.

It was not worth uninstalling the magic power furnace on the Ancient, as the worth of the warship was far above taking it apart and getting the furnace within.

Saleen was capable of crafting magic power furnaces and the Grand Duke no doubt wanted to get his hands on the schematics, but it was impossible. He would not be stupid enough to put up such a request.

As such, he took the lesser alternative and requested that the furnaces be sold to him at a discount, hoping to pay for them with special materials from Dragon Island.

Saleen did not bother playing any tricks on the magic power furnaces requested, as what the Grand Duke needed was simply small and middle scale ones, which could be mass produced in Metatrin City.

Saleen reduced his profit margin on the sale of the magic power furnaces to 300%, which meant that if crafting a magic power furnaces would cost 100 gold, Saleen would sell them for 400. The price was fair as nowhere else was capable of crafting such ancient equipment.

Saleen refused to sell them for gold, as it meant little to him. The four Grand Dukes of his own kingdom, including Aini, were all capable businesspeople and versed in management. Saleen never lacked funds.

What Saleen needed was material to arm his temple guards. Elvish alchemy crossbows required dragon sinew and dragon horn to craft. Wings of an Elf required dragon scales and hide. Equipment made out of refined materials would exceed the elves’ design in performance.

The trade was satisfactory for both parties. Grand Duke Iron Blood acquired the magic power furnaces that he needed and Saleen acquired dragon materials, which he would hand to the alchemy factories after restocking, crafting standard equipment for the temple guards.

Imposa purchased quite a number of materials from Saleen, and the products he used for trading were exquisitely crafted mage equipment. Imposa was the most powerful alchemist that he had come across other than Jason.

The equipment that he crafted had better attributes than the ones that Saleen crafted personally.

Even if he had similar materials, Saleen was unable to manipulate them like Imposa. Imposa was capable of creating powerful one-time-use equipment using only common materials.

Saleen paid little heed to durability. To him, equipment capable of performing to specification at key moments qualified as good equipment.

Grand Duke Iron Blood stayed in the city for three more days. His merchants purchased huge amounts of supplies from Saleen’s city, including some metal and war time essentials.

Saleen even sold some elvish pills, which were easy to store and carry around. One pill would rid of a person of any hunger for ten days to half a month.

The pills were not like holy water, created using divine arts, and prolonged use would not affect health. The elves commonly ate them all the time, which was why they were all strong and ferocious.

Food storage, even using magic warehouses, had its limit. The elvish pills were capable of being stored for prolonged periods, keeping their effectiveness even after 10,000 years.

Saleen sent the Grand Duke off in the middle of November, and something finally happened at Daliang City.

The mages from Alchemy City went on a rampage to take Daliang City, Lex’s palace serving as Daliang City’s core. The magic net of the palace was activated when the mages from Alchemy City went on a rampage, and all the other parts of the magic net were shut down.

The mages from Alchemy City suffered heavy casualties. Holy Rock City chose to side with their own—Lex, whose surname was Grukos.

Lex talked with Saleen using magic arrays and told Saleen to stay put. She made a list cataloguing required war equipment and told Nailisi to send her some demonic spirits.

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Demonic spirits suffered higher casualties in the battle with the mages from Alchemy City.

Saleen had no need go, as Holy Rock City had taken the opportunity to send hundreds of mages to Daliang City, and most of them came from the Golden Plains.

Saleen calculated for a bit and concluded that he needed to continue searching for temples. The temples were too well-stocked, and the things the goddess had left behind were precious.

Furthermore, the goddess had been a powerful mage before ascending to godhood. Many material supplies that she left behind were specifically for mages.

It was a pity that Sika was unable to accompany Saleen on the trip. She was at the precipice of advancement into level ten. It could take her one or two years, or it could take her up to ten, which was the longest it would take. Sika would become an extremely powerful priest.

Agares was still watching Saleen from the shadows, and he deemed it best to have Nailisi tag along after weighing his options. The Winged Skull was still searching for the Devil’s Horn’s warship, and there was no other choice but to leave the management of the fleet at the Oceanic Ice Block to it.

There was other good news—Bain had fully recovered from his injuries. The veteran assassin was only at level nine at the moment. Due to his aging body, Nicholas needed to continuously cast divine spells on him to make his body grow younger.

Any hidden ailments would cost Bain’s life otherwise and any talk of advancement would be futile.

Nicholas had no idea what the thing that Bain had taken from Glorious City actually was, but it seemed that not even the ones from the city knew what it was. The ruins’ existence was not recorded in the city’s database after all.

Saleen chose a temple north of Qin. The reason he chose that temple was because he had came to an agreement with Grand Duke Iron Blood in their plots to take northern Qin. There was no way for the Grand Duke’s army to cross the canal and attack Saleen’s forces.

Furthermore, Don had established a knights corps serving the Nature Faith and had amassed adherents in hundreds of thousands.

Qin originally believed in gods, but no one had any prejudices against the Goddess of Nature. The first doctrine of the goddess’ teachings was to repel any god who did not originate from Myers Mainland after all.

To northern Qin people, they needed a force like that to bring everyone together and unite them against the Holy See.

Saleen intended to head to northern Qin to open up a temple for Don to serve as a base for propagation purposes.

A religion with a hundred thousand adherents was too small. Compared to Qin, which had a population of over a hundred million, the Nature Faith was but a framework.

Saleen set out with four of his followers on November 25. His Magical Element Tower flew in the skies without making a sound, heading straight for the temple’s coordinates north of Qin.

Saleen left the water puppet behind to pose as him, who was still organizing activities within the temple and giving magic lectures to the mages.

Saleen wanted to find out if there was a spy in their midst. There was no way Agares could watch him when he was flying that high. If Agares still managed to find him, then there was something wrong with someone around him.

Something wrong with the Sreeger Island mages? Saleen did not buy that. If something was wrong with someone, it could only be a temple guard or a close nobles.

Among the four dukes, Aini would definitely not betray him. The one who would was Irene.

The magic tower flew south at 300 miles per hour. The distance between their destination and Metatrin City was but over 8000 miles away. Saleen was able to reach the temple’s location within just two days.

Saleen found thunderclouds gathering beneath his tower after flying for a day. The tower’s altitude had reached over 10,000 meters. Saleen learned that thunderclouds typically formed between 8,000 and 16,000 meters. At an altitude of 10,000 meters, the temperature had dropped to freezing.

It was easy for lightning to form at such a height. The Magical Element Tower was capable of withstanding lightning attacks, but even common lightning could be fatal to professionals, as the temperature could easily reach over 10,000 degrees, a temperature capable of burning up most equipment.

Having found lightning forming beneath him all of a sudden, Saleen let the magic hover in midair and observed the secrets of lightning up close.

Saleen’s Elemental Eye was able to see lightning bolts shooting at the ground from the thick clouds in the air. The resulting thunder was so powerful that not even the Magical Element Tower was able to shut the sound out completely.

Lightning branched out like trees, but its branches were far less visible. The energy dissipated in an instant, making it very tiring for Saleen to watch.

Pure water element did not conduct electricity. Saleen released water elemental creatures to test if lightning was capable of harming said creatures.

A dark blue flying fish swam in the clouds and ball-shaped lightning seeped into the water elemental creature, which vaporized it in an instant.

It was the first time Saleen witnessed ball-shaped lightning, which was was divided into black and white types. The one that killed the water elemental creature was black. Saleen continued to release water elemental creatures. A water snake was killed by a white type ball lightning.

The lightning seemed to have its sights on certain targets, attacking living beings. Interest welled up in Saleen, as the lightning’s energy was slow to dissipate. Saleen was even able to see one hit the ground, which stayed intact for a while without dissipating.