Badge in Azure

Chapter 1202: Ball Lightning (Part 2)

Chapter 1202: Ball Lightning (Part 2)

Saleen mimicked what he saw and cast a lightning attack, but the one that he cast was so weak that it could only numb his enemies. The power of lightning in nature was very powerful, but was unable to stay intact for long.

That was the first time Saleen saw a ball-shaped lightning, and it reversed everything Saleen knew about lightning.

Thunder resulted from the explosive release of lightning, which was imbued with stunning properties, so much so it was better at stunning than dragon’s might.

“Master, let’s go.” Nailisi had the Lightning Protection skill with her, but lightning in nature frightened her.

“Why do we need to? This place is nice for research.”

“Master, it’s winter, and lightning appearing in winter is a bad omen.” Nailisi’s words almost made Saleen laugh.

“Your master is an astrologer, alright.”

Saleen had just finished speaking when a black ball shaped lightning phased through the Magical Element Tower’s walls and hit the tower’s 19th floor.

The demonic spirits watched the lightning flash outside with terrified expressions. The ball-shaped lightning that entered seemed harmless.

A demonic spirit extended their hand to touch it out of curiosity. The lightning hovered in the tower, evading the one intending to touch it and hit another one instead. The unlucky demonic spirit did not even get to yell before they were reduced to a pile of charcoal.

“That thing can phase through the tower!” Saleen yelled. No professional below level 12 could do anything against his Magical Element Tower. Professionals between level 13 to 15 would need a lot of time to find a weakness they could exploit. The ball lightning snuck into his tower without Saleen even sensing how it got inside.

“Bad omen!” Nailisi saw the lightning phase inside the tower, but she didn’t know that a demonic spirit had died.

Saleen grew increasingly reluctant to leave. He released another low level elemental creature and wrapped it in his own dark clouds, sending it outside the tower. The low level elemental creature was a fire spider. It was wrapped in a layer of Water Shield imbued with lightning patterns.

Another ball of white lightning appeared and headed straight for the fire spider. The dark clouds that the spider was wrapped in were infused were Six Element’s Heavy Water. Saleen saw the ball enter the cloud and kick up energy ripples in the dark clouds.

The energy infused in the ball was so terrifying that not even the water element essence in the Six Element’s Heavy Water was able to defend against it.

Saleen felt weird. The ball lightning did not seem to consume much energy in movement, so why did it exhibit offensive attributes as soon as it entered the dark clouds?

He was, after all, human, and it was impossible for him to cast a thick stream of lightning attack like the badge. However, if he unlocked the secrets of the lightning, it would be possible for him to use similar moves.

The lightning patterns on the Water Shield were practically useless. The white ball lightning punched through the Water Shield and hit the spider, disintegrating it in mere seconds.

Saleen, however, was put at ease. Lightning attacks had two parts. There was no need to mention about thunder as any living being without a soul would not be able to defend against it. The ones with souls would probably be injured at their souls instead.

The lightning bolt was capable of destroying any living being. Any matter would melt in the high temperatures, and Saleen even found that lightning over a million degrees could appear.

It was not the most powerful lightning attack. Despite the ball lightning’s attack being so peculiar, Saleen did not find its energy exchange any different than conventional lightning attacks.

Why did lightning did not exchange energy when it passed through the clouds and phased through the walls of the Magical Element Tower? Why was there no dissipation and no loss?

It meant one thing—the ball lightning was stable to maintain a ball shape. Under the works of some rules, ball lightning was capable of maintaining such states.

Saleen took control of the Magical Element Tower and began to release puppets. Elemental creatures were more precious, while his puppets could simply be revived in the Puppet Constellation even if they were destroyed. Every single puppet functioned like they were weapon spirits.

So long as the main weapon spirit maintaining the Puppet Constellation remained alive, the other weapon spirits within could keep reviving.

It was just a matter of energy cost, and Saleen did not mind at all.

A mid-level puppet would not even cost a level three magic nucleus to be revived.

The puppets flew outside the tower clad in Water Shield, testing the power of the lightning for Saleen. The tower itself no longer hovered at one spot, opting to fly around instead.

Lightning powers continued to be unleashed within the clouds very high in the sky. Saleen was able to see through the clouds with his Elemental Eye and look at the ground, finding a majestic, tall church on the ground.

The Holy See is building a church here? Saleen took a piece of white rock and threw it out of the Magical Element Tower. The rock weighed thousands of pounds, and it was thrown from an altitude of over 10,000 meters, heading straight for the top of the church.

It was not magic of any kind; it was pure physical destruction.

The white rock passed through the clouds and landed squarely on the roof on the church. Seeing the top of the church crushed by the rock and the walls around crumbled by the resulting shockwave, Saleen felt a lot better.

There might have been some good, decent people in the Holy See, but it would not be the holy master who ran from the collapsing church.

There were few balls of lightning, but there were still quite a number that ended up inside the Magical Element Tower. The stunning defensive capacity that the tower had been so proud of was completely meaningless before the ball lightning.

Saleen watched how the holy master rescued their believers while observing the formation of ball lightning.

There were no magic patterns in the clouds. The power of nature remained a mystery to mages. No one knew how long it would take them to truly be able to gaze at the truth of the world.

Saleen gradually gained some comprehension on how ball lightning was capable of phasing through solid matter. Lightning was a type of element but smaller than the six major elements known to all mages and very difficult to control using mental powers.

What Saleen was able to see with his Elemental Eye was not even the true nature of lightning. Matter that the Elemental Eye was able to perceive was of the size of an element particle’s diameter.

The standard element diameter was based on water. The lightning element particle was millions of times smaller than that of the water element.

Furthermore, the six major elements were very stable, while lightning was constantly in flux. Saleen’s current level of mental powers enabled him to observe it for less than a minute, before giving him a headache.

Saleen was unable to look into the flux patterns and details, but was able to see what conditions allowed lightning to phase through matter. Most of the 10,000 puppets were destroyed by lightning, providing him with massive amounts of data.

Saleen cast Water Flame in his hand and tornadoes appeared around the tower. The tornadoes were under Saleen’s control, forming a tube. A ball lightning zipped by and went straight into the tube of the tornado.

Saleen was elated to see that in the tornado, there was next to no exchange of energy in the ball lightning, passing through the tube and flying to the other side.

“Master...”

Intense admiration was seen in Nailisi’s eyes when she saw what was happening. It was not due to conventional infatuation, but because the powers displayed by Saleen were impressive.

There were many tornadoes and only one was able to ship the ball lightning away, but it had been a stunning result. To mages, one success would definitely lead to another one.

“Teacher, that’s just...unbelievable!” Truman was watching as well. Despite not having learned Saleen’s lightning rules, he realized what it meant.

The last one that Saleen brought with him was Eleanor, who was learning lightning rules. While her comprehension of lightning was still very shallow, she had a lot to gain from watching the scene.

“Saleen, this can’t be possible!”

Saleen smiled. “It isn’t me. It’s just that the rules of the ball lightning are weird.”

“Well, master, let’s just stay put.” Seeing how Saleen learned so much, Nailisi decided to stay despite the risk. The success was difficult to replicate, but he remembered the details that led to the success, enabling him to test it over and over.

His Water Flame Alchemy had Tornado and Snowkill in it when cast, costing only mental powers and not magic chords.

To Saleen, his mental power capacity far exceeded his magic chords, so much so that his mental powers seemed inexhaustible.

Saleen did not continue experimenting as there were not many balls of lightning. The branch-like lightning bolts were incapable of being blocked or nullified. A bolt of lightning was all it would take to destroy anything that was thrown outside the tower, regardless of if they were puppets or elemental creatures.

It seemed as if the lightning was being absorbed into the ground.

Earth element in the earth was extremely complex, and the formation of lightning in the sky seemed to have something to do with the earth. Earth element, power of stars...

A train of thought gradually formed in Saleen’s mind. It was unfortunate that people who studied lightning skills were few and far between even among ancient humans, with hardly any documents left behind for Saleen to learn from.

“Teacher.” Truman saw the holy masters on the ground were leading the believers in prayers through the projection array of the tower. A huge bolt of lightning shot down to the earth, and three of the prayer believers were killed.

The believers scattered in terror and no longer followed the holy master in prayer. No one even wanted to be near the church.

Not a lot of the church ended up destroyed. A rock was far from capable of destroying an entire church, but it would put a lot of stress in the minds of the people.

Dark clouds gathered in the sky. Lightning flashed and thunder rumbled. It was incredibly rare in winter. Furthermore, a rock had just shot down from the clouds and destroyed a portion of the church, followed by believers killed by a lightning bolt.

The believers were the ones gathered in Qin and had not spent a long time embracing the faith of the Lord of Glory. Their faith was lacking stability.

With something that could not be explained taking place, the faith that the believers held was shaken to the core. Some believers even began to show signs of falling.

“Where is the light? Where is the light?” A believer shouted at the sky like a mad man.

A larger piece of rock dropped from the sky and this time, it was a pillar with holy prose carved on it. Saleen had acquired it from the temples, and half of it was already rotten. The pillar, which was about four meters long, swooped down and fell right onto the shouting believer, reducing them to a pile of scattered meat and blood.

“Those who betrays their faith shall be punished by god!” The holy master called out in vain. Truman found something in the dimension stone that Saleen handed to him that could be thrown, intending to crush the holy master with it.