The suspected appearance of the Holy Light Church was like a lion suddenly turning up among a pack of hyenas. Every faction in Void World 26 grew cautious.
The situation had been on the verge of exploding like a powder keg, yet the uproar had died down. Every faction was waiting for someone else to make the first move, or for the Holy Light Church to show its hand. Whether the threat proved to be a false alarm or all too real, it would lose some of its power to intimidate once the truth was known.
Amid this atmosphere, Green returned to the Eastern Bastion under Vakarant's identity.
The Eastern Bastion remained in the Human Kingdom's hands. Although the Undead Army led by the Spider Queen had bypassed it and established a territory roughly a hundred kilometers long and a hundred and seventy kilometers wide behind it, human forces had quickly assembled farther back and stopped them. Confined to that territory, they had made no further gains.
Overall, individual Undead were far weaker than humans, and their weapons and equipment were much worse. With equal numbers, victory was difficult. So when more than two hundred thousand human troops surrounded the Spider Queen's force of fewer than four hundred thousand Undead Troops, it soon found itself on the defensive. If widespread rebellion had not suddenly broken out across the Human Kingdom, leaving the central government too preoccupied to send more reinforcements, those Undead would have been wiped out long ago.
Green arrived in Philo City, a key strongpoint in the encirclement of the Spider Queen's army and an important supply hub for the human forces.
With Vakarant's rank as a major in the Anomalies Bureau, Green passed through Philo City without obstruction and checked into an upscale hotel.
The influx of