The storm had passed.
The once-glorious imperial capital had become a wasteland. At the source of the Annihilation Power's eruption, there were no survivors.
The entire city had been reduced to rubble by the bombardment of the crystal-fueled cannons and the subsequent advance of the ground troops. The city's soldiers and civilians had all mutated into monsters, then vanished into thin air after Emperor Brundin's death. The torrential rain not only washed the blood from the ruins, but also cleansed the smoke and stench of blood from the battlefield. When sunlight pierced the clouds and shone down upon the land, only the words "new life" could describe the scene.
The surviving soldiers began reorganizing their formations and assessing the damage under orders from their commanders. However, their progress was far from ideal, because even their commanders could not help being drawn to the sight in the sky:
In the vast blue sky, now completely clear, floated countless enormous starships. Vast swarms of armed drones flew ceaselessly between them. The starships had clearly just been through a battle: sparks still burst from the hulls of many of the larger vessels, and some even belched thick smoke. A few had lost all power and were being held in the sky by their allies with some kind of towing device, to keep them from crashing to the ground.
After the distorted Spacetime Structure returned to its proper configuration, the Echoes of the past vanished as well, naturally exposing the fleet that had originally been hidden on the other side of the world to the La Rian people.
In fact, the fleet the La Rian people could see at that moment was only a small part of the total forces on the battlefield. Most of the warships had left the atmosphere when the Spacetime