Battle Settlement

Gu Hang sat inside an Infantry Fighting Vehicle with a pale face, eyes closed to conserve his energy.

He had noticed the commotion outside, but he couldn't be bothered to deal with it.

He had expended a great deal of energy in the battle just moments ago.

The main reason was taking a direct hit; his Psionic Protection had blocked almost all the damage, but it had also drained every ounce of his psionic power.

In truth, this was an incredibly dangerous situation.

According to the education he had received in his memories regarding psionic arts, completely exhausting one's psionic power could lead to uncontrollable consequences. Death, insanity, mental abnormalities, personality fragmentation... all of these were possibilities.

After the battle ended, Gu Hang checked his own psionic state while resting, and the results left him relieved.

Those dire scenarios had not manifested; his current symptoms were merely some fatigue and a slight headache. Generally speaking, these would improve after some rest.

However, he still took a lesson from this.

This time, he had been a bit too reckless, putting himself in a perilous position.

But looking back carefully, Gu Hang didn't feel he had done anything particularly wrong. He was the Governor, yes, but he hadn't reached the point where he couldn't risk his own safety. His cause was still in its infancy, and some things required him to step up and fight.

Just this once, he couldn't find a second psionic user in his entire sphere of influence. If he didn't step out personally, the situation today would have been impossible to resolve.

He also couldn't just stand by and let Yan Fangxu and the 3rd Battalion he led get trapped in the woodlands and wiped out.

But the outcome this time was definitely positive.

The method the Primal Angry Owl Sect used to catalyze and control so many monsters couldn't have been easy, otherwise, they wouldn't still be rats in the gutter. Having used such means and lost three powerful Storm Divine Officials here, their losses must have been quite painful.

In fact, they were likely already hurting before this.

If he hadn't ordered Revival City to intensify the crackdown on cults, forcing them into a corner, they wouldn't have tried to pay such a price to assassinate him.

That's fine. Since you failed to take me down this time, just wait for me to go to Revival City and tear your entire foundation apart.

After resting for a good while, he felt his condition had recovered significantly.

Only then did he truly have the energy to properly tally his gains.

This time was a resounding victory; although the losses were the highest in any battle to date, the results were equally significant.

[Slightly gained the upper hand, obtained 86 Grace]

[Losses: 103, Eliminated: 6597, Captured: 0]

[2nd Infantry Battalion: Losses: 77, Eliminated: 4447]

[3rd Infantry Battalion: Losses: 24, Eliminated: 1613]

[Marine Corps: Losses: 2, Eliminated: 537]

Looking purely at the kill-to-loss ratio, it was beautiful, but Gu Hang couldn't bring himself to be happy.

Everything eliminated was just mindless monsters.

If they had acted according to Yan Fangxu's strategy, they could have burned the monsters' nests one by one over the next few months with almost zero losses, rather than facing them all at once after they were collectively catalyzed.

Not to mention facing them alongside three Storm Divine Officials.

A total of 103 soldiers were lost, with the 2nd Battalion's losses already exceeding 25%.

These casualties occurred mainly when the gale and thick fog had enveloped them.

Among them were two Marines he had just upgraded to T3 level; they were both killed by that most powerful Divine Official, meaning 2 points of Grace were gone just like that.

And the two regular infantry battalions, especially the 2nd, would need significant reinforcements.

Gu Hang's entire current population under his rule was less than six thousand. Excluding the Servitor battalion, he had previously supported two infantry battalions of six hundred men, a mobilization rate of over ten percent. From a demographic perspective, the pressure was already immense, not to mention that besides the military, Gu Hang's rapidly expanding production lines also required manpower.

An excessively high mobilization rate was already affecting production efficiency.

Especially regarding young, able-bodied labor; the shortage at the Waste Mine Society was significant and had become a constraint on development.

The military's need for replacements would require pulling another hundred from the labor pool... it was exhausting. Gu Hang could already imagine Patel, who was in charge of heavy industrial production at the Waste Mine Society, tearing his hair out.

That man wouldn't set any obstacles for the young men joining the Governor's army; in his heart, it was an honor, a defense of their labor. But when manpower dwindled, he would certainly struggle with how to maintain, let alone expand, production.

As for other costs... the textile factory had opened, military uniforms could be produced in-house, and the relevant blueprints had already been sent; the Alloy Plasteel line could produce armored vests; firearms could be salvaged from the battlefield or produced anew. Even soldier training only cost 1 point of Grace for a hundred soldiers; these were all fine.

The problem remained the population.

He still had to "bleed" others.

It wasn't easy to squeeze the Quintet in the sky anymore, and there was no point in draining the low-end population. Gu Hang had other designs on the female captain; there was plenty of talent on the Quintet that he coveted. Eliminating the Primal Angry Owl Sect, or at least dealing them a heavy blow, would require the female captain's strength, which could also serve as a return for Yelicia, but that could be discussed later.

What remained were Revival City and Trash Town.

Trash Town was mostly filled with adventurers harboring dreams of getting rich; it wasn't impossible that some had been through the wringer and were now looking for an honest life... no, that wasn't right, but one couldn't force it.

Revival City was a massive source; Gu Hang wouldn't turn his nose up at the refugees who couldn't survive outside the city walls there.

Taking in hundreds of thousands all at once wasn't realistic, but he now had plenty of jobs and ample food to support quite a few people.

Having finished thinking about the losses, the next step was the gains.

86 points of Grace—this was the largest windfall Gu Hang had received to date.

It was even more than all his previous gains combined.

This gave Gu Hang a feeling of having "struck it rich."

The shadow cast over his heart by the heavy casualties among his soldiers dissipated significantly in the face of this joy.

Of those 86 points of Grace, he estimated that over thirty had been "contributed" by the three high priests, with the strongest one alone providing more than 20 points.

That high priest, in terms of pure Psionic Power intensity, was actually a cut above Gu Hang.

However, in the application of Psionic Power, Gu Hang possessed the exquisite Soul Severing technique inherited from an ancient family and the Psionic Protection granted by the system, making him far superior to the high priest, who could only borrow from a native evil god to wield Storm Sorcery.

In other words, Gu Hang's victory relied on his superior techniques and his numerical advantage; if they were truly comparing Psionic Power intensity, Gu Hang, only at LV2, could not match his opponent.

Eliminating such a formidable enemy and receiving more Grace in return was only to be expected.

As for the remaining fifty points, those were the fruits of the battle, earned from the six thousand-plus xenomorphic monsters his soldiers had wiped out.

Clearly, the lives of these monsters were not worth much.

But the sheer quantity was undeniable; with over six thousand of them dead, they had managed to scrape together quite a bit of Grace for Gu Hang.

It was just a pity that the battle victory rating had only reached "slightly superior," meaning the post-battle Grace multiplier wasn't high enough; otherwise, there should have been room for even more.

Next came the question of how to spend this Grace.

He happily summoned his panel, only to see an old item flashing, along with the appearance of something new.

The one flashing was the [Hero] panel.

The newly appeared item was a feature called [Event].