Postwar Inventory

The war was over.

Benjamin stood at the edge of the enormous temporary teleportation array and looked back at the land behind him, now utterly unrecognizable.

The gray-white wasteland of old had long since vanished.

In its place lay countless deep ravines, black rock layers formed from congealed lava, and bizarre crystalline terrain created by repeated scouring from energy aftershocks.

In the sky, the four "suns" had vanished, leaving behind only several spatial rifts that were slowly healing, like permanent scars upon this plane.

This war, which had lasted for months, had ended just like that.

More than three million troops had been committed by both sides. Counting the constructs and biological weapons used as cannon fodder, the number of lives lost probably had to be measured in tens of billions.

And the beginning and end of all this had merely been because of...

A single sentence from a Level 8 Wizard.

Benjamin remained silent, an indescribably complicated emotion rising within him.

He had long understood the importance of power from other battlefields.

Without power, one could not take a single step in this supernatural world.

Yet only now, only after personally experiencing a war on such a vast scale and witnessing countless lives perish solely because of the will of a few at the very top, did he truly gain a new understanding of the two words "power."

Power truly was important.

Important enough to determine the fates of billions upon billions of living beings.

"Let's go. What are you spacing out for?"

Viola's voice came from behind him.

She was already standing in the center of the teleportation array, her silver-gray eyes fixed on Benjamin. Rarely, she did not tease him, merely waiting quietly.

Benjamin withdrew his gaze and suddenly found himself laughing at himself inwardly.

In truth,