On the third day after the battle ended, not a single insect remained within a thousand miles north of Frost Glaive City.
Every hive seemed to have withered, dissolved, and collapsed overnight.
The black tide that had once blanketed the mountains twitched a few times like a decapitated creature whose nerves had gone haywire, then fell silent forever.
The surviving knights donned their full equipment and gas masks before stepping into that dead land. Every footstep brought the crunch of collapsing rotten flesh and the splash of spore slurry.
The air reeked of blood and decay, sickening enough to make them retch, as though the entire land were slowly rotting.
The Doom Brood Hive had been destroyed. That colossal shadow, which had loomed over the world with godlike might, had finally fallen amid the flames.
And with it had collapsed every "will" controlling the swarm. The monsters that had once ruled the Northern Frontier's nightmares were now nothing more than puddles of filth.
The war was over, and everyone could finally breathe a sigh of relief.
Yet as they looked around at the burned-out ruins, collapsed cities, and terrain eaten away by insect eggs, none could ignore the cruelest truth.
They had won this war... but the price was horrifyingly high.
According to rough estimates, the Northern Frontier's total population had fallen by more than four-fifths.
Millions of lives had vanished like an ebbing tide in just a few short weeks, before their names could even be carved onto gravestones.
Dozens of once-prosperous towns had become breeding grounds for the hives, strewn with bones, broken walls, and ruined buildings.
One ancient family of the Northern Frontier after another had been wiped out completely, their bloodlines severed, their banners gone.
Even the terrain was no longer what it had been. Cavities