Around three in the afternoon, the gloomy sky swept clear by Valhalla's teleportation finally closed up again. The brief spell of fine weather on both sides of the Paris River Valley vanished, snow began falling from the sky once more, and everything turned gray and hazy.
The enormous fleets of the Sald and Tonigellian forces, which had converged, slowly advanced northward. Yet less than half an hour later, they split up again. The remnants of the Crystal Cluster Army and the Nightmare Insects in the sky began fleeing in all directions, while the fleet divided into more than a dozen independent subfleets and launched its pursuit.
The leaden sky presented a spectacular sight. Against the backdrop of thick smoke rising in all directions along the horizon, scattered fleets spread out into a huge fan like dispersed schools of sharks, as though a gigantic hand had enveloped the entire Paris Plain.
Flashes of artillery fire occasionally streaked across the sky, and continuous thunder sometimes rolled faintly from the north. However, the explosions grew farther and farther away, until they gradually became inaudible on both banks of the Alder River.
The defeated armies of the northern nobles on the ground had not been attacked from the sky. However, after the battle on the ground ended, the Tonigellian forces began regrouping their troops and accepting prisoners under Brando's orders.
Although the private armies of these nobles were no longer Fir Territory's primary opponents in this war, Brando could not allow them to roam unchecked through the southern lands.
Armies without restraint could sometimes cause even more destruction than bandits. Eluin's southern lands had only just recovered from several wars, and they absolutely could not suffer another disaster because of his negligence.
Fortunately, most of them had lost the will to resist—or, more accurately,