Smoke and dust obscured the line of sight. The sounds of metal and rock breaking drifted intermittently from nearby old buildings and deep beneath the artificial ground, accompanied by constant tremors rising from below. Though this astonishingly massive fortress had crashed onto the earth, like the death of a colossal beast, its excessively huge and bloated body would still need a long time to collapse into some stable state. Before then, the "death throes" of this enormous carcass might continue for days, or even months.
Bercetia and Elaine left the completely collapsed central palace. They trekked across the tilted, fractured ground, crossing building ruins belching thick smoke and the wreckage of magical weapons. Along the way, they clashed several times with wandering Aberrants, but never again encountered enemies with discipline and coordination. Perhaps things were just as Bercetia had expected: the immense energy impact released when the Stellar Sanctuary crashed had destroyed the "mental links" between the Aberrant forces in this region, turning these enemies capable of group combat back into mindless monsters. Without question, that was good news.
Of course, Bercetia had also considered an even more wonderful possibility—perhaps the enemy army's supreme commander in this region had been particularly unlucky, happened to be within the sanctuary's crash zone, and had now become a smear of grime in the deepest part of these ruins...
But she also knew that was probably nothing more than a pleasant fantasy. The commanders behind these monsters were clearly cunning and valued their own lives. Since they could direct frontline legions across an immensely broad battlefield, there was no need for them to charge ahead with cannon fodder. Moreover, in the previous battles, the soldiers engaging the enemy at the front had never seen anyone resembling an "officer" among the surging tides of monsters.