Great Victory in the Southern Ridge Defense War and Clearing the Battlefield

The battle was over.

Once it was confirmed that the Great Demon Death Knell had vanished into ashes, and that the Dragon Kings had indeed departed with the Abyssal Dragon, Ian finally let out a sigh of relief.

From the prophecy to the outbreak of war and all the way to now, Ian had prepared without pause, working tirelessly across the entire Southern Ridge. He had not merely improved livelihoods, but extended his hand into both the military and political spheres. Now that everything had erupted at once, the Southern Ridge's forces had indeed unleashed power beyond imagination, allowing them to withstand the assault of the demon archduke.

It had been exhausting work, the kind that left one utterly drained.

Even with Terra's Heart assisting and overseeing the Southern Ridge's entire military-industrial production, Ian still had to make the actual decisions regarding production plans. He also had to personally create the designs for entirely new weapons. Not to mention that Terra's Heart still could not independently manufacture high-precision components; all of it required supervision from Ian or Adalbert.

This victory had, in essence, been a path to victory that Ian had forcibly led the people of the Southern Ridge down through a ninety-nine-percent chance of failure.

But even so, the Southern Ridge had suffered grievous losses.

The Nineteenth Legion and Silverpeak Territory's forces had faced the demon army along the first and second defensive lines, and had sustained considerable casualties.

Silverpeak Territory's forces had fared relatively well. They had been elites to begin with, and they had not directly faced the demon army's first charge. The demon horde had not been at full strength then, and was soon afterward blasted apart by orbital weapons. Their casualties were therefore around nine hundred.

But the Nineteenth Legion had suffered more than five thousand dead and wounded—their mechanization level was far below that of Silverpeak Territory, and they had borne the first wave of beast-demon assaults. Several positions had been uprooted by Fusion Officers leading the charge, and their losses had been exceptionally severe.

Such casualties had already shattered several formations within the Nineteenth Legion. Many veteran battalions had been wiped out wholesale on the front lines... It was an unbearably painful loss. Every veteran in those battalions could have been pulled out to lead troops as an officer, and their wealth of combat experience had been priceless.

But one had to remember that they had faced the first formally deployed transcendent legion on Terra Continent!

The demon army had been utterly annihilated, while the magic beasts supporting it had been swallowed by artillery fire. With the strength of a single legion, the Southern Ridge Legion had eliminated the demon army that even seven legions of the Western Frontier Legion had failed to stop—despite the grief filling every survivor's heart, a blazing pride and the sense of achievement from protecting their homeland still made them cheer amid the ranks.

"Not to mention..."

Ian turned his head and looked toward the silver sun in the Void Realm. "From the perspective of souls, no one actually died."

"Promoting artificial souls across the population the moment danger was sensed did have an effect... Hmph. At least it can replenish our soul reserves."

That was what he said, but the real soul reserves came from the scattered demon souls left behind after Death Knell's death.

Those souls should originally have fled into the Void Realm, where they would eventually be captured and deleted by the Void Realm Machine God, or naturally dissolve—but now, under Ian's direction, Terra's Heart was moving swiftly to retrieve them.

A demon soul was hundreds or even thousands of times more solid than an ordinary human soul. The souls of several thousand demons were enough to rival the soul volume of hundreds of thousands, perhaps even a million people.

For Terra, this was absolutely a qualitative leap—until now, Terra's Heart had held fewer than a hundred thousand souls. With this, it had directly become ten times what it once was!

Beyond that, Ian did not want to do anything for the moment.

In truth, there was nothing that needed doing. After witnessing heavenly fire and midnight transformed into daylight, followed by the final victory, the entire Southern Ridge had already fallen into a boiling sea of cheers—everyone was celebrating victory, celebrating...

A great victory in the Southern Ridge Defense War!

Blazing Flame Lands.

"Blazing Flame Lands profanity, what the hell is going on?!"

At the front lines, Dark Abyss, supreme commander of the demon forces, felt that he truly lived up to his name. His entire being had plunged into a dark abyss.

A great Southern Ridge victory? The Southern Ridge demon legion destroyed? The Dragon Kings had intervened? The Abyssal Dragon had been taken away? The Cursed Earth had contracted? The demon legions were in full retreat?

What kind of nonsense was this? Had they not been doing perfectly well yesterday, assaulting cities throughout the Western Frontier and playing hide-and-seek guerrilla warfare with the Empire's legions? How had things suddenly deteriorated to this extent?!

At this moment, Dark Abyss felt as if one head had become two. No matter how hard he thought, he could not understand what had happened. How had the originally excellent situation collapsed so utterly?!

It was not just him, the supreme commander, who could not understand. The soldiers below and the people of the Blazing Flame Lands could not understand either.

The demons were one thing. They were quite straightforward about it. They had killed enough anyway, and returning to the Blazing Flame Lands would let them continue transforming and evolving. But the civilians were different.

From the moment the Blazing Flame Lands had deployed the demon legions, there had been many voices of doubt and opposition within the country—not because using demons against the Empire was unacceptable. Nearly one hundred percent of the Blazing Flame Lands' residents thought, 'For our sake, use demon legions against the Empire!' They had merely worried whether the upper echelons of the Blazing Flame Lands would use their own people as raw materials for transforming demons.

Yes, the Kings' reputations were not that bad, but in a place like Terra, one should not put too much faith in the morality of the powerful... Suspecting a little more might be meaningless, but perhaps it could help one evade a great crisis?

With victory after victory, the people of the Blazing Flame Lands had become increasingly accepting of the demon legions. It was much like one's own side bringing out weapons of mass indiscriminate destruction during a war of vengeance against an enemy nation. It was frightening, certainly, but when one truly saw destruction fall upon the enemy, it also felt damned satisfying.

But now, the demon legions had suddenly been defeated, and fear returned in an instant.

—If demons could lose, then what if the Empire used demons too? What if they invaded us with troops even stronger than demons?

Though it sounded somewhat like if you knew this would happen, why did you do it in the first place?, most humans had this sort of mentality.

Especially since the Empire's agents had stopped carrying out sabotage lately. Instead, they were distributing pamphlets everywhere about the Blazing Flame Lands' defeat in the Southern Ridge and its consecutive setbacks in the Western Frontier, making it impossible for the Blazing Flame Lands to cover things up with public opinion.

For a time, the Blazing Flame Lands carried the air of a storm-tossed, precarious land.

Yet the side of the Alliance of the Kings of Flying Flame Land was unexpectedly calm.

One could even say they were a little too calm—abnormally so.

No matter what faction it was, even if they had prepared for failure from the beginning, when suddenly confronted by an enemy who theoretically should never have intervened, they would show at least some resentment, or stubbornly refuse to retreat in order to save face.

But in truth, the Kings of the Blazing Flame Lands were remarkably straightforward. All demons on the Southern Ridge front had been annihilated, yet they said not a word. Meanwhile, the surviving demon legions in the Western Frontier continued fighting while retreating, defending only the entrances and exits around the Mist Forest. Clearly, they were shifting from an invasion war to a protracted war.

However, with the Cursed Earth drastically contracted and the Abyssal Dragon taken away, whether they could survive the Empire's great counteroffensive was another question.

Still, despite that, quite a few within the Alliance of the Kings of Flying Flame Land turned their attention toward the Southern Ridge.

When they had deployed the demons, they had already prepared to hand over the Abyssal Dragon and leave behind the Abyssal consciousness.

But they had never expected that day to come so quickly...

And the demon legions had not been dealt with by the Empire's transcendent forces, but in the remote backwater known as the Southern Ridge.

No, it was no longer a backwater.

The powerful figures who truly turned their gaze upon the Southern Ridge now discovered a startling fact.

Under Silverpeak Territory's full-scale transformation, development, and construction, three major urban clusters had taken shape around the transportation arteries connecting Rosy Glow City, Nauman City, and Harrison Port. Within them, all kinds of electronic information-network technologies, including terminals, had come into use. Many small inventions and tools that seemed to exist only in Pre-Epoch Civilization were being incorporated into people's daily lives.

An entirely new agricultural system, all kinds of industrially produced fertilizers, highly safe industrially processed foods, and a complete mechanized warfare system...

At first glance, the things Ian had used against the demon legions seemed like nothing more than various alchemical combinations and some simplified armored equipment. But upon closer observation... Did this kid have a Pre-Epoch Civilization database on him or something?

"He may truly have one."

One of the Kings said, "The South Sea Grand Labyrinth, the Xenobiology Research Institute, and perhaps even that fellow Inyaga's legacy... Back then, there had been enormous opposition from the Empire's nobility, which was why they failed to restore it."

"But in a small place like the Southern Ridge, where the Empire's nobles have the final say, no one can object to his reforms in these areas."

"Count Silverpeak first transformed his own territory, then spread those changes across most of the Southern Ridge during the war. By now, the Southern Ridge is no longer a remote region. It should be considered a high-tech development zone with enormous potential."

"Now, the only question is whether the Empire is treating the Southern Ridge as a testing ground to observe the consequences of these technological transformations. If so, then our position is likely even more dire than we imagined."

Amid a silence difficult to speak of to outsiders, the Blazing Flame Lands quietly revised their assessment of the Southern Ridge.

Then what of the Empire?

There were indeed people in the Empire who had stood by and watched Ian reform, viewing the Southern Ridge as a testing ground.

For example, the First Prince and the Second Prince. The reason these two supported Ian was that they believed in his ability, and Ian had demonstrated technological inclinations similar to their own.

When the First Prince received news of the great victory in the Southern Ridge Defense War, he smiled and clapped his hands in praise. As he continued reading the relevant reports, his gaze grew brighter and brighter.

The Spirit-Veneration Church's unity of countless hearts, the Giant of Light's activity, and the final blow against the Great Demon Death Knell... Every one of them scratched his itch. Every one of them made him feel that Ian was fully worthy of the great talent in which he had invested, truly accomplishing everything he had hoped to do.

"I must seek instruction from Ian regarding the Giant of Light's technology, whether its psionic arts or Origin Matter techniques."

Carlos nodded slightly and praised, "It can let people wield Third Energy Level strength. If the Blazing Flame Lands' earlier sneak attack had not forced Ian to reveal this trump card, then anyone who thought they could raid Silverpeak Territory would have received a head-on blow from it—ordinary Third Energy Level experts would gain no advantage at all. As for the Fourth Energy Level... Looking at that Great Demon, I suspect that in the future, even Fourth Energy Level experts without a sufficiently confident trump card will not be willing to cause trouble in Silverpeak Territory."

Of course. What Silverpeak Territory had displayed this time included four Third Energy Level combatants: Ian, Sheo, Manyan, and the Giant of Light. Marquis Barton's decision to wash his hands of the matter had truly been incomparably correct. If he had insisted on monopolizing power and suppressing Ian, would not four Third Energy Level experts in rebellion have been able to swagger sideways through the Southern Ridge?

Even Fourth Energy Level experts would not want to make trouble in a place like that. If they were delayed even slightly and the Empire's corresponding Fourth Energy Level expert caught up, the chance of falling would be far too great.

Meanwhile, on the other side.

Compared to the First Prince's delighted surprise, the Second Prince felt something closer to alarm.

As commander-in-chief of the Southwestern Legion, Mikael had spent this period confronting the Kings of Nemasas while dealing with demon unrest across the land. Every day, he heard of cities and villages being leveled and massacred. Every day, he heard of military formations being wiped out... His fists had been clenched so tightly that he had wanted nothing more than to charge into the Blazing Flame Lands and unleash a massacre in return, tooth for tooth and blood for blood.

Yet who could have imagined that after the demon legions sent one-third of their forces into the Southern Ridge, Mikael had already informed the Empire and prepared to dispatch the Soaring Phoenix Knights as reinforcements—only for them to be completely unnecessary. The Southern Ridge had fought back on its own!

What the hell was this?

The Southern Ridge had suffered more than twelve thousand casualties in total. Counting the civilian dead and wounded of the Golden Plains, the number even exceeded two hundred and fifty thousand. Yet they had only killed around three thousand demons and lesser demons.

The military casualty exchange ratio exceeded four to one, and counting mortals made it even more horrifying... But one side was merely mortal troops armed with mechanized equipment, while the other was a transcendent legion!

Those losses were certainly terrifying, but no matter how one put it, this had absolutely been a resounding victory.

And that result set Mikael's heart surging.

"Grandfather's technology was indeed correct!"

He studied the Southern Ridge report in his hand, his resolve hardening. "It was worth allowing him to freely use every technology for development in the Southern Ridge. This is exactly what I wanted—Grandfather's reforms failed back then for many external reasons, but though the Southern Ridge is chaotic, as long as one establishes a firm foothold, there is no one who can point fingers and interfere."

"New technologies take root and sprout in places where there is nothing. Even if they are simple, implementing them in a place like the imperial capital would be fraught with difficulty... That is it. This was Grandfather's mistake. He always sought top-down reform, spreading it from the imperial capital to the entire nation. That was wrong. Development should begin in rural places like the Southern Ridge. Once results emerge, the people in the imperial capital will instead envy it, grow jealous, and choose to follow!"

"This is the correct path!"

At this moment, the gloom in his expression caused by the Western Frontier Legion's severe losses was swept clean away. His entire being brightened. Then he lifted his head and looked toward the imperial capital.

"Father... You should have seen it too, right?"

"What exactly will you do?"

The imperial capital remained silent. The Emperor had observed everything in Silverpeak Territory before anyone else. He knew, but did not care. He approved, but would not act.

Because he, too, had his own path.

Different from his father, different from that beautiful and idealized vision... The one who guarded the land had always walked his own road.

At this moment.

On the Southern Ridge battlefield, after a brief celebration of victory, Ian led his people in clearing the battlefield.

Compared to strategic advantages and the open road ahead, the mess scattered across reality... and the harvest scattered across the ground, were what truly mattered.

In just one night and one day, the Southern Ridge forces' gains had already become immense.

First, Terra's Heart had recovered the souls of nearly all the fallen—the reason it was nearly all rather than all was that demons also possessed the ability to destroy souls. With the battle having been so intense, it was impossible for every soul to have remained undamaged. This was rather irritating, and made Ian resolve to modify artificial souls somehow, perhaps give them a shell, to ensure Terra's Heart could recover every soul intact.

But Ian was the only one dissatisfied with such a result. Everyone else, including Adalbert, found the Spirit-Veneration Church's power unbelievable. They had actually recovered more than ninety-eight percent of the souls on the battlefield! Light's Embrace above, this was simply... simply unbelievable!

Regarding this achievement, a clergywoman of the Church of Light's Embrace, a bodyguard assigned to the professional rescue unit known as the Holy Light Squad, a Miss Ying-X who was unwilling to reveal her name, stated that even Light's Embrace found such a thing difficult. Though the souls of clergy had an inexplicable connection to the Holy Mountain, once the distance became too great, that connection could no longer maintain its protection.

The Spirit-Veneration Church was, after all, still only a local faith. Achieving something at this level was already absurd beyond measure—who would fear death now? Who would fear war? Before the Southern Ridge's army had even gone to war, it had already won more than half the battle!

Beyond that, Terra's Heart had also recovered a great number of demon souls.

Because the process of recovering demon souls and dismantling and purifying them would take some time, they could not yet count as true gains. However, Void Realm creatures such as lesser demons and demons did indeed leave behind some spiritual materials after death.

Demon horns, demon hearts, demon claws, and so on... Though these materials could not be used for bloodline true forms, they could certainly be used in psionic accessories.

Of course, psionic accessories made from these materials might make their wearers somewhat irritable and short-tempered, but having them was better than not having them!

Not to mention... Ian could try purifying them!

On the Southern Ridge battlefield now lay more than two thousand portions of demon materials, along with a great deal of magic beast materials left behind by the magic beasts drafted into service. Ian announced that Silverpeak Territory would purchase all battlefield spoils at market prices, hoping that the soldiers would bring out any materials they had privately kept.

He plainly explained the dangers that demon materials and magic beast materials might pose, and swore on his own reputation that the process would be absolutely fair and just.

If it had been any other noble, the Southern Ridge soldiers would surely have remained silent and uncooperative, even if they were afraid—reputation? What reputation? Who the hell were you?

But the one saying this was Ian!

The prophetic lord who had just led them to defeat the demons, who had bravely battled the Great Demon Death Knell, and who had never retreated from beginning to end!

What ill intentions could he possibly have toward them? Certainly none. He was definitely doing it for their own good!

So everyone obediently handed over their spoils.

Of course, some soldiers only wanted to keep a little of the enemy's remains as trophies to take home and show off. Ian would also very kindly appraise whether the trophies in such soldiers' hands harbored malicious curses or resentment. If they did not, he was willing to be generous.

This measure immediately made the Nineteenth Legion and Silverpeak Territory's forces cheer in unison for their commander-in-chief—if the Nineteenth Legion's original officers and commanders had witnessed this scene, they would surely have burst into tears before blacking out. But things were no longer up to them. Even if their expressions were incomparably gloomy, they had to cheer along with everyone else.

Because from this day onward, due to the Blazing Flame Lands' invasion war, the Southern Ridge would no longer be a scattered cluster of small and medium-sized nobles!

It was a complete, unified province governed by Ian and the Governor's Office!

Naturally, the most important spoils were certainly not these minor scuffles involving little demons and lesser demons.

Ian, Adalbert, and the others came to the Void Realm, to where the Great Demon Death Knell had fallen.

There, a mass of pitch-black evil soul was condensing anew, attempting to reform into a dark gemstone.

The mist-like cluster, resembling a gemstone, constantly gathered and scattered. Like a conglomeration of stardust, it reflected the blazing bloody light within the Void Realm... It seemed to be trying to draw something from every direction, but in the end, it could never manage it, and could only give up in dejection.

"What the Great Demon left behind."

Ian murmured softly, "Though the abyss has dispersed, or perhaps been taken away by the Abyssal consciousness, this most refined soul core remains."

This was the true harvest.