The second and third years of the Wasteland in the future ruins, taken as a whole, could be summed up in four words:
Open conflict and covert struggle!
The foreign races had never imagined that humanity, after losing its firearms, would still possess such tenacious resistance. Even in desperate circumstances, humans displayed unimaginable resilience and determination.
Nor had humanity expected the foreign races' offensive to be so fierce. They had practically thrown everything into battle, launching wave after wave of attacks without regard for the cost, as if they meant to erase humanity from the Wasteland entirely.
Thus, beginning at the end of the first year, the two sides fought openly for a full year.
The death toll, numbering in the hundreds of millions, rose every day. The brutality far surpassed that of any war in history.
It was not until the beginning of the third year of the Wasteland, when that earth-shaking earthquake suddenly arrived, that it seemed as though nature itself had roared in fury at this land ravaged by war.
Only amid the earthquake's thunder did the open fighting temporarily come to an end.
However, that did not mean the war was over.
On the contrary, it continued in an even more covert and dangerous form—covert struggle.
And the objective of this covert struggle was no longer simply to put the other side to death, but something even more crucial: "development."
Because the New Continent's area had not expanded in the ruins, the resource sites on the war-ravaged continent were not scattered. Most were concentrated in the central and western regions.
This factor directly made the covert struggle extraordinarily fierce and cruel.
Both humanity and the foreign races had to dispatch elite forces behind the opposing side's defensive lines to destroy resource collection sites, transportation routes, and