Badge in Azure

Chapter 200: Heavily Refined Equipment (Part 1)

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

The intelligence regarding Cloudflow was unsettling. After asking a few more questions, Saleen allowed Hogina to leave. As Hogina was leaving, she gave Saleen a magic fragment which had been polished from the horns of a magic beast. This magic fragment could be mosaicked into the magic sound array, and if Saleen ever needed something from Hogina in the future, he could contact her privately using this fragment.

As Saleen accompanied Hogina to the door, he saw that Sumano, the old disciple, was still waiting outside, and felt pity for him. Then, Saleen said, “Leave your contact information. If I ever require your help, I will go and look for you.”

Sumano became flustered, and said, “Mr. Saleen, please don’t say that. I will be waiting at the bottom of the tower every day. If you have any instructions for me, I will be just downstairs.”

“How could I make you do that?”

“I… have already accepted your payment.”

Seeing that Sumano behaved so awkwardly, Saleen did not want to push him anymore and let him be. Saleen then went back into the apartment and began discussing official matters with Lex.

“Lex, how did your men manage to uncover my teacher’s background?” Saleen felt that something had been wrong when even Hogina had never heard of Jason’s name. Jason might not have been an expert, but his background was not too common either. By all rights, he should not have been unknown in Alchemy City.

“He traveled from Alchemy City to Loulan before passing through Laiyin and then reaching Sikeqinya. He never concealed his identity at all. My men simply tracked his movements from Sikeqinya all the way back to Alchemy City. It was that simple.”

“I think we should ask Sumano first.”

“No, Alchemy City will be able to trace my origins very soon. There aren’t many people with the Grukos surname in Qin. It will look very fishy if we go and look for your teacher immediately. Besides, my men did not enter the city to investigate further at that time. Let’s just stay here for now. After two months, we will ask Hogina again.” Lex was not anxious, she simply needed a nod from Saleen.

There were too many complications surrounding the hell of god’s punishment, and Saleen did not want to publicize that he was searching for his teacher. Saleen’s main objective was to recruit more mage masters after locating his teacher. Furthermore, these mage masters needed to originate from the same teacher as Jason because outsiders could not be trusted.

His teacher’s teacher must have been a sorcerer. It would be good if he was a grade-9 sorcerer, because any sorcerer below grade-9 was still considered small fry in Alchemy City. If such a tremendous benefit was leaked to outsiders, then all hell would break loose.

Now that he had thought of this, Saleen could finally suppress his urge to try and obtain more information on his teacher.

This apartment was large enough with over one hundred meters of space, although it paled in comparison to the viscountess’ residence. The rooms were partitioned nicely, especially the room next door. The wall between two rooms was filled with solid magic materials and only metallic beams were used. The brick wall had been wiped with isinglass before being painted with magic powder and a sound cancelling magic array had been set up. Lastly, a layer of wall cloth had been put on.

The training chamber was the largest room but there was only one of them while there were six meditation rooms. All these rooms did not require any decorating. Lex took out the miscellaneous items from her god’s ring and helped decorate the rooms belonging to Sika and the other people.

Besides the main door of this house, only the crystal floor-to-ceiling windows in the flower room were connected to the outside world. Lex placed two metal plates outside the door in that six meter wide hall, creating temporary protection at the entrance of the apartment. Logically, no one would dare to create trouble in Alchemy City, but one would never know when a madman would come and create trouble, just like that Cloudflow mage clad in a grey robe.

It was good to be vigilant. At the very least, the people living in the apartment would be more at ease.

After the decorations were completed, Lex purchased a list which detailed all the goods sold in Alchemy City. Even though this list did not contain any magic items, it had cost almost one thousand gold coins. Before Saleen saw the list of goods, he had been denouncing it, but when the list was delivered, he no longer felt that its price was exorbitant.

This list was actually dozens of books, and each book was four times the size of an average magic book. When a book was flipped open, there were even a detailed table of contents. All the pieces of paper used to produce these books had already been sufficient for creating low grade magic scrolls, not to mention that there was meticulous information ranging from the grade of an item and price fluctuations to pictures.

Books read by an average nobleman were made from normal pulp, while slightly more expensive ones were made from parchment. This kind of paper which was used to create scrolls was highly resistant to tear and could be preserved for centuries. On the other hand, the average commoner used parchment to create contracts and vouchers. These books were practically being given away for free because their production costs absolutely exceeded one thousand gold coins.

However, Saleen knew that this transaction was not a loss to Alchemy City. Even mages from Cloudflow were here in the city to procure materials. It just went to show what great business Alchemy City enjoyed.

Alchemy City was still guarding the southern sea for the empire. It was just that the taxes collected by Alchemy Port were hundreds of times higher than that of Lex’s county.

Lex and Saleen were not afraid of being disrupted during their meditation, but Daniel was. Of the six meditation rooms, five of them had been converted into two alchemy laboratories and two fencing rooms. Fortunately, Lex had brought along all the required materials. No one in Alchemy City would have expected someone to bring so many burdensome items along with them.

Even if the god’s ring which belonged to Lex and all the spatial equipment Saleen owned were combined, they still could not store all those items.

At first, Saleen had wanted to run some errands in hopes of familiarizing himself with Alchemy City and finding out what good materials were available for purchase. However, Lex wanted to build a laboratory so that she could refine everyone’s equipment.

After Sika’s leather armor was slashed open, it could no longer be repaired. And now, Saleen possessed enough materials to help Sika swap out her equipment. The skin and bones from the tiago were good materials to be used in refining armor.

Lex and Saleen embarked on their plan to refine new equipment. Saleen’s alchemy skills could be described as quite poor, so he could only provide minute assistance to Lex and do menial jobs.

Lex separated the alchemy drawings into a few parts, while Saleen helped her to do the most primitive of tasks – treating the materials.

After the bones from the dragon were broken apart, Lex would choose the portion which was most suited for producing armor and Saleen would start the treatment. The first step of the treatment was to use Water Magic to force out the fats within the bone. Then, Fire Magic would be employed to burn the bone. Saleen abided by the drawings provided by Lex and managed to produce a large quantity of bone fragments. These original bone fragments were gathered by Lex before being put into an alchemical machine.

These bone fragments were already very tough, as even a giant axe could hardly damage them. However, that was not enough, because when Sika was severely injured, it had been a weird machete which had caused those injuries. The machete had been put away by Saleen, and now, Lex was going to study it carefully to find out its secrets.

The arrangement of the serrations on the machete’s blade were in full accordance with the rules of Current Cutter, a level-4 spell. As long as the blade had enough speed, it would even be able to cut through dragon’s skin.

Such vicious weapons were uncommon, and a person needed to at least be a grade-8 sorcerer in order to produce them. After Lex had refined the bone fragments, she proceeded to use the alchemical machine to slice the fragments into thin films before sewing them onto the dragon’s skin. Hence, an exquisite leather armor was created. However, this armor could still not resist a true magic blow. Once the dragon’s spirit was lost, the strength of the dragon’s skin and bones would be severely diminished.

Lex began crafting a belt for this set of leather armor. The belt was crafted entirely from the tough bones found in the dragon’s paws, and the segments were connected by the tendons of a magic beast. In addition, Lex had put a magic array on each piece of bone. The magic arrays had been obtained from the skull of the behemoth back in the forest in the hell of god’s punishment.

The functions of the magic arrays were to stimulate strength from the magic nuclei which were mosaicked into the core of the belt. This was so that the impact received by the wearer would be dispersed to every piece of bone, and the bones would all absorb the impact simultaneously.

The behemoth in the forest had applied such methods to gain its groundbreaking defenses. Even now, Saleen was not confident that he could kill that behemoth using his own magic.

In the future, if anyone tried to use their deceitful powers to attack Sika, they would have to destroy all the bones on her body first.

The refinement process for this set of armor was very slow because it had to be placed within a magic array for approximately a month after it took shape. Within this one month, the magic arrays on the bones had to be connected. Furthermore, different kinds of metal needed to be introduced into the bones to make them tougher while not interfering with the operation of the magic arrays.

The belt was split into twenty-four segments, and each segment was hollow so that a magic nucleus could be installed in it. This was an authentic piece of magic armor. When the wearer was struck by magic attacks, the magic nuclei in the belt would automatically release some energy to activate the magic arrays.

Sika’s cudgel also needed to be refined again. With the dragon’s horns and teeth, the cudgel could be transformed into a real weapon of destruction. However, the material of Sika’s cudgel made it very challenging for it to be refined further. The process would be analogous to cutting through a rock using dripping water, so Sika would need to replace her cudgel with another weapon for the time being.

Sika’s cudgel and a leg bone from the dragon were put into the alchemy array at the same as they underwent transformation.

As the process took place, Lex and Saleen did not waste any time at all. They continued producing new equipment for everyone.

Nailisi’s clothes had been destroyed. Luckily, Lex had an abundance of dragon’s skin, so she made form-fitting clothes for Nailisi. Lex also crafted a dagger from the tooth of the dragon. The dragon’s tooth was hollow as Lex carefully carved a magic array inside of it. As long as the tooth was mosaicked with a magic nucleus, Nailisi would be able to stimulate the magic array so that a razor sharp ice thorn, about one feet long, would grow out of the dagger.

The ice thorn was not sharper than the dragon’s tooth, but its frosty temperature would weaken the target. Even if the ice thorn did not work, it still provided a second opportunity for the user to attack their target.

In the process of crafting the dragon’s tooth dagger, Lex employed a small trick. She made the final form of the dagger into a white colored ring. Nailisi simply needed to activate the power of spatial equipment in order to transform the ring back into the dagger.

Nailisi was extremely satisfied even though she did not like carrying weapons on her body. The sharpness of the dragon’s tooth dagger was second only to her own teeth, and this meant that she would be able to conserve a lot of strength in future battles.

Noticing that the material of the dragon bones was good, Nailisi made a drawing and requested help from Lex to produce a weapon that belonged only to demons. Originally, this weapon had only existed in the demonic realm. However, Nailisi had discovered the weapon when she had inherited her memories, and felt that it was suitable to be made from the dragon’s tooth. Thus, she immediately drew out the method of production for the weapon.