Chapter 1334 A Crazy Plan
[Do you know what trick they are using to cause such explosions?] Even when using my Hawk Eye skill, I failed to see through what was going on at the front.
The hectic and chaotic confrontations between the two sides made it quite impossible for anyone to see through what was going on out there.
If I didn't risk going there myself and examining things out, I'd not be able to get what they were using.
[I got reports about a weird weapon that's made out of many small orbs, lined together by a thread or something…]
She started to explain and describe the kind of weapon the enemies were using. From her words, I got to know that these weapons were used mainly by the Silence race members.
They were the ones who got enough intelligence and self control to use such weapons. As for the locust type enemies, they were like headless moths dancing around fire.
They acted in a similar way like the zombies in the fifth apocalyptic quest. They ran like mad dogs, damaging everything in their path, and wanted to get a bite from my forces at any cost.
As for that weapon, according to the few witnesses who saw the Silence race use it and lived to tell the tale, it got triggered the moment the thread was cut.
Then these orbs would scatter around the ground, breaking up into much smaller orbs, covering up a huge area before the detonation would start.
It seemed a wide area kind of attack, and it was quite impossible to guard against. Yet from her words I knew that the explosive power of these orbs wasn't that high.
Against common warriors, these orbs were enough to kill them. But against the full state warriors, they were only able to wound them.
And many ended up with light wounds. However in return for that, many orb weapons worked together to produce a much fiercer wave of explosions.
So even if the damage brought by a single orb weapon wasn't enough to take down my warriors, much more orbs would jump in and add more damage.
Thanks to their nature to break up into tiny orbs, they could cover up large areas easily, allowing many weapons like these to stack up and deal more damage in the end.
[So they are using these orbs and didn't spend much of their forces to the frontline?] I asked just to make sure I grasped the entire picture clearly.
From the middle of such fierce explosions both sides were using, I could see silhouettes of many races. I couldn't tell how much from the enemy was out there, but from my side, there was a lot.
[According to the reports coming so far, the Silence race stood behind and just used these weapons. Only few of them are moving out to stop our advancing forces]
[And?] I knew if the enemy used such a tactic from the start till now, it'd be impossible for my forces to feel such pressure and risk.
[That new race takes the task of charging at our side] She paused for a few seconds, as if she was arranging many reports and knowledge in her mind, [That race gives me the same vibe as the zombies]
[They indeed are] I said in agreement, [So one race stays behind and uses these bombs, and the other one is charging to the front and keeps our forces busy…]
[That race is ferocious and fearless, not giving our boys any chance to properly retreat or regroup… And that's why so far it's a one sided battle]
I got her meaning. From such a line up, I could tell that many of my forces fell during the first hours of this clash.
The enemy didn't care about the locust-like race. After all they weren't the sole race fighting here on their side. And they could simply replenish their lost numbers using that nasty egg tactic.
"So they decided to use the locusts first… How interesting!" I didn't find this to be bad news.
I was struggling to find a way to separate the two races apart. And luckily, the enemy decided to save me the trouble and do it themselves.
[Listen up… I'll need one hour then you'll spread these orders for everyone… Retreat and stop using any star arrays until reaching the central zones of each region]
[This…] I knew how insane my orders seemed. In one hour, I'd do many things and wouldn't be here. So I had to give out such orders now. [Do you want us to abandon everything we did so far and return all the way to the centre without fighting back?!!!]
[Yes] I paused before adding, [We aren't fighting to keep the defences we built, but to win this war. And to win, we have to pay a considerable price for that]
[But…]
[Make sure my orders are relayed out to everyone, and make sure they get what I want]
[Which is?]
[Full our retreat, retreat as fast as their forces' legs can carry them. Even if they have to throw away most of their forces, they have to do it!]
[...]
I knew how shocking my sudden orders were, but in the middle of such madness victory lied.
[Make sure they got this order… If they can cross the entire distance in one hour or less, it's better for them to do it this way!]
[I'm asking you again, are you sure?] she asked, and I got why she repeated the same question again.
[I'm sure. Just don't waste my time and do it!] I decided to change the entire plans I had from before.
The enemy just did me a great favour and separated their two races apart! If I didn't make the best use of such a chance, and use their actions to backfire at them, then I'd be worth losing here.
My plan was simple. I'd let my entire armies retreat in full power after one hour.
Chapter 1335 They Dare To Disobey Me?!!!
If the enemy acted the same way I expected, then they'd never have plans or countermeasures for such a crazy move.
After all who was in their right mind would give away his defences to the enemy and retreat all the way back to the centre?
So the enemy would think that I planned to flee from here and was trying to cut down my losses.
If they followed through this line of thoughts, then they'd end up following the same plan and tactic they were currently using.
One race was using their minds and the other wasn't. So if my forces ran without caring for anything else, this entire war would turn into a marathon between the two sides!
That locust race would keep following my forces like mad dogs. As for the Silence race, they wouldn't be able to keep up with the speed of my side and their locust forces.
Even if at some point they felt something was amiss, it'd be too late to try and stop the far away locust race.
After the two hostile races would pull enough distance away from each other, I'd step in and start the next part of my plan.
As for what I wanted to do in that one hour period, it was simple… I'd go to each zone, fortify the central area there using my pillar's shields.
Using densely packed shields and scattering them to merge together and cover up enough area in the heart of each zone was crucial for stopping the crazy locusts.
And I'd also leave behind tons of warriors and stat crystals, to act as reinforcements for my hastily retreating forces.
My earlier plans didn't have any value now. I stored up the location of this frontline area before returning back to the centre of this zone.
Then I started to create densely packed shields, and scattered them around, letting them merge together and expand to cover up a large area of land.
The question was how much should I scatter my shields to cover up enough area? I didn't just have one hour, but around four to five hours.
Making shields didn't take much time from me. And as I was working to cover up a small area and expand outwards, it seemed like I covered an area of twenty miles radius within the first five minutes.
But starting from there, trying to expand the area with my shields took much longer.
I had to move around by my chariot, cover up the area around the edge of the already formed shields. I kept rotating around, moving as fast as I could, until another twenty minutes passed.
Then I stopped working, didn't even look around before jumping back to the centre, and passed through the portal leading towards Sara's zones.
"You are finally here!" Sara said the moment I appeared in her world. It seemed she was anxiously waiting for my arrival. And from the look on her face I got how deeply worried and conflicted she was.
"I'll leave enough warriors for you to train," I paused before adding, "I'll also form a central shielded zone, covering up enough area for your forces to stand on guard inside without suffering much harm."
"That's not my point," she hastily interrupted my words, "I want to know why you suddenly issued such an order!"
"About that? Oh, it's related to a plan in my mind," I didn't dare to speak up my thoughts. After what I suffered, I had to be more careful about what to and what not to say.
"You won't tell me?" She gave me such a blaming look as if I was betraying her or something.
"Can't, sorry but there are too many eyes around to guard against," I slowly shook my head before adding, "and there is no time to waste. You shall focus on training the new warriors on how to make these arrays. Or else we'll end up in a much worse situation."
She looked in silence for a long minute, and I didn't sit idly and started to form shields and take away my warriors.
"Are we going to live through this?" she suddenly asked. And her sudden question made me instantly freeze in my actions.
"Definitely," I firmly said, "we aren't going to fall in such a cursed place."
She looked me deeply into my eyes, nodded slightly before starting to do her task.
And I left her to her business, and kept my focus and care towards my own stuff.
Then I resumed what I was doing at the other zones.
During this, I took tons of warriors and lots of stat crystals. I lost count of how many I took out, but each time I decided to leave, most of the area I covered was filled up with warriors.
-n0ve1,com I decided to stay in each zone for almost fifteen minutes each. I did this based on my estimation for my forces to take five hours to cross the entire zone and return back to the shielded centre.
However, after I finished my task, my forces still didn't return.
I jumped over to ground zero, and checked. Not a single warrior of mine returned yet.
[Where are everyone?] I looked around again and even moved to the edge of the shielded zone here.
[They are retreating but…]
[But what?]
[They didn't like to retreat without a fight]
When I read such words, I couldn't help but get unsettled and quite enraged.
[Are they revolting on me or what?] I asked with endless rage and zero patience or tolerance to what they did.
[No, they are just trying to kill as many enemy as they could while retreating]
[Fine! Tell them this, if I didn't find them here in less than an hour, then I'll recall the entire warriors myself back]
If I did that, then I'd risk exposing my generals. I could recall everyone back with a simple thought, but in return for that my generals would be left in the open to the enemy to hunt down.
Even with their fast chariots, they would still face grave dangers and would fall!
Chapter 1336 Waiting For Half An Hour
[Wait! Don't do that!]
She got how deadly doing this would be. [Make them return or else you do know what they'll face. I won't punish them myself, won't dirty my hands. The enemy will do this for me. They got one hour, and after that I'll recall all my warriors back]
[Ok. just calm down and don't be this mad, ok? They just want to help you]
[Disobeying a direct order? And you dare to call this as a help? Come on!]
What they were doing was the exact definition of doing opposite to what I wanted! Help? Help my ass!
I was totally enraged by what they did. The hit came unexpectedly from my side, which made me feel like everything was working against me.
Their fast retreat was essential in drawing apart the two races from each other. As I got one hour, I decided to add more shields to the zones.
While doing this, I tried to keep myself busy by thinking about how to use this mistake to my advantage.
I knew I got to separate the two races apart from each other by this unexpected move. However as my side delayed all this time, that meant the Silence race wasn't that far away from the locust one.
It might seem bad to my plans, however I got to see some good news in the middle of such a mistake.
First this delay would wipe out any possibility for the enemy to detect anything. Seeing how fierce my forces fought for all this long would make their sudden retreat more likeable to be bought up by the enemy.
30+ Freaking Awesome GadgetsTrending Boom
And secondly, the point where the enemy forces would split up wasn't going to be too far away from the central zone.
Despite this placed more risks for the enemy troops to catch up with their frontline, but at the same time it'd make it easier for me easily reach there.
When I realised this point, I instantly stopped what I was doing. I already scattered enough shields to keep these zones safe. And now it was time for me to go to the front, save points far away from the central areas.
I left one hour as a threat for my forces to retreat, however I never planned to call back a single warrior back.
It wasn't worth the effort. And I also needed time to travel enough distance and save the points there.
I'd leave two hours for them to come back to the shielded zone. And that meant I had around five minutes for each zone.
In five minutes I'd travel across a couple hundred miles. That wasn't anything close to the huge distance of each zone, but at least it'd bring me closer to the point of action later on.
As for what I should do to stop the incoming Silence race at these points, I got a few ideas in my head.
First would be the shields. The shields would be quite effective against the Silence race. But in return for that, I needed to cover up enough area with my shields.
Travelling for hundreds of miles meant I'd have at least one thousand miles to cover using my shields. If I had time, it wouldn't be a problem. But I got no such a thing.
So using shields wasn't going to work. My other option was to use my technique. However when I thought about the grand distance I wanted to cover up, I knew how hard this was going to be.
-n0ve1,com "Then… I should do a mix of all this," I paused while thinking of all the options I had. Trying to mix up the shields with my technique would be quite possible.
However it wasn't going to be enough to stop all of them.
"If I can't stop them all then…" I thought to myself while considering doing something I once did before.
In my mind, an imaginary replay of battles that never took place yet was going on and on. I didn't just have one zone to take care of, but twenty.
And that meant my first and foremost ferocious enemy in this entire battle would be time.
"Hmm… So they are still not back?" When I finished saving up my bookmarks, I moved back to ground zero. And there I found the entire zone void of my retreating forces.
[So even after two hours they didn't return? Give me a good reason to not go right now and kill each and every one of them!]
[They are almost here! Just give them half an hour and they'll all retreat] she paused before adding, [Only your souler general and the five elites you gave to me are back]
[I know] I already met up with Lucas and the other five elites during my jump around the zones. But the remaining zones were still empty.
[Tell me, when I asked you to send them back two hours ago, how long were they from here?]
[They were at least four hours away in normal marching speed] she paused before adding, [They are running for two hours straight. They didn't fight again and kept running all this time]
Hmm… If what she said was the truth, then that meant they were too far away from here to begin with.
Running for hours to come here meant they were at least a few thousand miles away. Giving the enemy time to chase after my forces, then the Silence race would be at least one thousand miles away from the points I already saved before.
"I still don't know how fast those bastards are…" if they moved at a higher speed than my warriors, then it'd be hard for me to guess where they'd be.
I have two options… Either I'd just go to the saved spots and start doing my preparations there. Or… I'd travel forward until I'd meet up with the enemy and start my rushed up plan to stop them.
Doing the first would save me lots of trouble later on. Crossing a thousand miles at normal speed would take at least five hours if not more from such a race.
Chapter 1337 Something Is Fishy
That was in case they were moving at the same speed as my forces. I recalled one point which Silverlining once told me about. He mentioned in the middle of his long talk about the Silence race that they were strong enough to contend with the end game level of elites from the apocalypse and crush them down with part of their strength.
The forces who came here before used arrays to weaken the Silence race members. And even with all these factors, they failed to gain a single victory for such a long time.
There were lots of variables in this comparison. And when I thought about this at this moment, I couldn't help but feel something was off here.
How come much stronger forces than mine fail in forcing the enemy to show up their second layer of defence for all this time? Was there something Silverlining missed?
I previously thought something was fishy about this situation but never had thought deeply about this like now.
As the clash with the Silences was impending and knocking on my doors, I found it weirder the more I thought about it.
If there was something that I didn't count for, then it'd be too late to make plans to counter it.
"Should I retreat and give up or what?" The more I thought about it, the more uneasy I felt.
If the enemy got a hidden card that Silverlining didn't know or missed to tell me, then things would end up quite bad for me.
During this dilemma, I decided to go for the first option I had.
I decided to start up my preparations at the points I saved before.
30+ Freaking Awesome GadgetsTrending Boom
As for what I planned to do, I was going to use my shields, my warriors, my techniques, and my weapons.
So far I kept my weapons stored up into my inventory and never had time to use them. I wanted to keep them for the second layer of defence. But as these locusts finally joined the fight, I got nothing to hold my hands back.
The weapons were deadly to the second wave, but not that deadly to the first. Except for the fire energy coming out from the explosions the missiles and grenades would create, nothing else would harm those Silences.
It didn't make any sense to use these weapons to handle the Silence race. However with the presence of locusts, they got a place to show their might at.
My plan was simple; I wouldn't just aim towards the Silence race but also point my guns towards the locusts.
Doing this would help my forces back at the central zones to fight the locusts on equal grounds, or even have a slight advantage over them.
I knew that I wouldn't be able to stop the silent race for a long time, and many of these would find their ways to my shielded zones at the centre.
That meant my forces had to fight two different enemies at the same time. And so it'd be better to relieve part of that pressure over them, to enable them to compete against such fierce assault in more perfect way.
In fact I still haven't used my zombie orbs yet. I also planned to use them against the locusts. But even when the locusts joined the war, I didn't consider using them.
And I got a good grade for that. If the enemy had a hidden weapon or something Silverlining didn't tell me, then the odds of my retreat and giving up on this entire golden quest would be quite high.
I wanted to limit my losses here.
[They are here!] And just as I waited for my forces to arrive, I received this message from Lily.
In fact I didn't need her to tell me anything. I saw my forces coming from everywhere, filling up the line of horizon, drawing a growing black line that kept getting thicker with the passage of time.
"Time to act," I took out my staff and activated the stored bookmark of this zone.
The moment I appeared at the other end, a grand and scary scene filled the entire world around.
Creatures who ran so damn fast were filling the entire ground like a terrifying tsunami wave.
The moment I saw them, a very weird familiar feeling grew up in my heart. They were weirdly like the zombies in the fifth quest, and that made me believe more in my earlier guess.
The system higher ups didn't just arrange the apocalypse quests based on their desire or even on a whim. They did all this to train the races all over the universe, to be better prepared against different enemies and scenarios.
Even the locust waves here were arranged against by the zombie quest.
And that meant they already knew about the presence of these locusts. Someone managed to break through the first layer of defence before, not like what Silverlining told me.
Realising the mistake Silverlining committed, I felt more unease about the other puzzlement. If he was wrong about one thing, then he might have told me, or missed telling me, more valuable intel.
Dammit! I clenched my fists and looked at the endless tsunami running towards one direction, the direction I came from, my shielded area at the centre of this zone.
"That's quite weird..." while I absorbed the shock of such a terrifying scene, and started to closely watch these creatures.
They ran on many limbs, looking more like spiders. They seemed to lose any reason, even to the extent of jumping over each other and even wounding and killing each other in the process.
They just wanted one thing, to cross the ground fast and arrive towards the hastily retreating forces of mine. And that was typically like the mindless actions of zombies at the fifth quest.
But when I observed their speed, I was surprised to realise that their speed wasn't that high to begin with.
I expected a fast train like speed, or a bullet like speed. I estimated such speed based on the facts that race members had high stats and more strength and speed than mine.
Chapter 1338 Unexpected Response
But when I saw it, I noticed that their speed wasn't that much higher than my forces. In fact, both seemed to be equal in speed!
What was going on here?
I felt more puzzled the more I looked. I couldn't tell how strong they really were as there was a fight going on around. So I decided after a few minutes of observation to move forward and check the rear of this incoming wave before deciding what I should do.
And when I did so, I got more shocked by what I found!
[Can you gather a piece of news for me?] As I was puzzled, I decided to ask for Lily's help.
[What do you need?] she directly asked, feeling how tense this situation was.
[Ask the survivors about the strength of these locusts] I paused before adding, [I also want to know if they were chased by locusts or locusts and Silence race members]
[Why?]
[I can't see any Silence race members even after crossing hundreds of miles]
[Hmm… Give me a minute then…]
I knew she'd take quite some time to find out the answer to such a question. And so I kept moving forward, and kept checking the ground and the creatures down below.
I even used my Hawk Eye skill, and even used my technique to test controlling scattered groups of the creatures down below.
Everything pointed out towards the presence of locusts only, invading the entire zone up to what my eyes could reach.
I got a scary thought about the infiltration of the Silence race members in the middle of such dense waves of the locusts.
However after using my skills and techniques, I was sure this was just an extra worry for me.
30+ Freaking Awesome GadgetsTrending Boom
And when I thought more about it, I found that there was no reason for the fiends to decide on using such a tactic.
There were only locusts down at the ground, filling the entire world around. And that made me realise what they planned to do here.
They heard what Silverlining told me about, and ended up deciding to shuffle up the cards. I didn't know why they didn't move the Silence race members to join this crusade, but it saved me tons of time and effort if that proved to be right.
The enemy was helping me more and more in what I found hard to achieve myself.
"If they planned to just use the locusts for now, then the initial attack wave that got the Silence race members was just a show…"
I couldn't even believe this as such a possibility was too perfect for me and my forces.
The enemy mistook everything, it seemed, and instead of coming with everything they got, they just sent one race out.
I didn't know why they did that, and didn't care. I just wanted to confirm the current situation before deciding to take any further steps.
I kept flying for another half an hour before I finally got the answer I wanted.
[Ever since that first clash, the Silence forces never showed themselves up. It's all endless streams of the locusts, and nothing else]
[Cool!] I stopped flying when I got such confirmation, [Select one thousand brave warriors from each zone. And also make sure this is happening everywhere]
[I checked, and this happened in every zone]
[That's great!]
pAn,Da n<0,>v,e1 [Sorry but what's great about any of that?]
She didn't get what I wanted to do before, and so she wouldn't understand. And I didn't even try to explain anything.
[Spread out the orders, just make everyone defend inside the shielded zone. Even if they got a chance, they won't take a single step out]
[They won't dare to go with such crazy folks running wild at them from every possible direction!]
[What about the strength of those locusts?] as she answered one of my two questions, there was still one left without an answer.
[According to many testimonies, these locusts aren't much different in strength, nature, and abilities than the zombies of our fifth quest]
I could tell they were similar in nature and abilities, but also in strength? [Are you sure? Are you sure they are alike in terms of strength?]
[That's what everyone said] she sent in confirmation, [According to their words, and I asked many from all zones, if not for the unstoppable numbers of these creatures, they could have crushed them easily]
Interesting! So the individual strength of each creature of this race was just on par with zombies.
Was it just the Silence race members who were strong enough to contend against endgame level powerhouses? Or were also the Silences this week?
When I thought about the abnormal ability of the Silence race to lower the strength of anyone they fought against, things became clearer in my mind.
It seemed the strength of these races wasn't that much, not even much stronger than our strength.
Was this a coincidence? An act from the system? Or were there many golden quest entrapment zones like this one that Silverlining wasn't aware of?
I thought about that last possibility. If there were many golden quest zones like this one, then the races defending these zones would be in different levels of strengths.
However from Silverlining firm words, I could tell there was only one of these golden quests. Or he might have got things wrong or something.
[Don't forget to select one thousand of each zone] I closed the chat with her, took a deep breath, and started to act.
If the enemy only sent locusts here, then it'd be easy to handle things using my last plan.
I started to form many scattered and apart shields from each other. The moment the shields appeared, they secluded part of the locusts inside, preventing anyone from entering or leaving.
And then I took out my warriors.
The moment my warriors appeared, the entire world froze as if a time pause skill was used.
Without any tacit agreement, the endless numbers of locusts stopped in their tracks, shifted their attention towards the shields I just filled with warriors, and then started to fiercely roar.
Chapter 1339 A Great Chance
As mad dogs, they ran towards these shields, wanting to devour these and the warriors inside.
Seeing such a scene made me frown. I totally forgot the effect of taking out my warriors to these creatures.
They were like zombies, mindless and would only care about eating more flesh. Taking out my warriors here changed the current course of the battlefield entirely.
"At least my shields can stand in front of them…" I didn't stand idle after realising what was going on and started to fortify my shields by adding others.
In the span of the next hour, I kept creating shields around, filling them with my warriors, and dividing up the locusts into many smaller armies.
Each surrounded my shields. And no matter how hard they tried, they couldn't take down my shields.
The energy absorbed from their attacks were added to repair the damage in my shields.
As for my warriors inside, they kept fighting the entrapped locusts. After killing all of the enemies inside, I gave an order to kill anyone with wounds, incinerate all the bodies with fire.
During this hour, I scattered lots of shields in this zone to count. In the end I stopped and didn't keep doing this.
"I need to let these locusts keep heading towards the central area…" I slowly muttered, putting the grand picture in my mind.
I could easily stop the flow of these creatures towards my forces at the centre. Yet if I did that, I'd attract the attention of the Silence race, and might even force them to join in.
I didn't want that to happen, not right now at least. I wanted to lure them in but not at this moment nor place.
Besides, I got nineteen other zones to take care of. And this task would take at least half a day from me.
30+ Freaking Awesome GadgetsTrending Boom
I didn't take out any weapons I got from the research department. It wasn't needed at the moment. And these were big guns, real killers, and would instantly wipe out tons of the locusts.
I didn't want to do that. I wanted to keep some sort of hard balance where the enemy had a slight advantage over me, an advantage that I could crush at any moment.
[What have you done?!!]
And just before I'd take out my staff and teleport back to the central zone, I got such a message from Lily.
[What?] I feigned ignorance about her point.
[The number of locusts coming decreased tremendously. At this moment, less than twenty percent of them are coming at my forces]
[That's great then]
[I know! And I wanted to know what you did!]
[I don't have time for that] I wasn't lying, [Just make sure that no one steps outside the shielded zone. Kill whoever comes at you, but don't get hot headed about your advantage, ok?]
[I'll tell them about these orders… By the way, when are you going to other zones? Things there are quite ugly]
[If you stopped interrupting me like this, I'd have gone to another zone by now]
[Oh, sorry about that. Good luck!]
[To you too] I closed the chat with her, stored the location here before jumping back to the centre.
I moved towards the first portal I saw, and there I found how truly ugly things were!
The shielded zones were covered with a massive gathering of shields that covered up a huge area of tens of miles in radius.
As I stood on my chariot, high in the air, I could faintly see the edge of these shields under normal situations.
But right now things look quite different. The horizon didn't show that faintly shimmering transparent layer of shields that could refract portion of the light.
Instead I saw a black and red wall that gave me the impression we were inside a huge cave or inside part of hell.
"This…" I didn't need to go there to see what caused such a bizarre scene. These colours matched the colours of these locusts. And that meant they were climbing all the way around my shields, even blocking anything from the outside.
I imagined my grand ball-like shields getting fully covered and buried underneath an endless number of locusts. That was a scary sight indeed, but it was pretty easy to solve.
*Rumble!*
The shields normally absorbed the damage coming at them, turning part into energy that'd get stored inside. If I didn't activate the offensive repulsion energy wave attack, then this energy would be used to repair the shields.
And now I just activated the offensive attack, releasing a mighty wave of energy that swept past all the enemies covering up my shields.
These locusts were weak against energy based attacks. And that meant the energy wave coming out from my shields was quite deadly to them.
When the wave erupted, a massive rumble happened. Most of this came from the attack itself, and then I saw the red black curtain blocking my sight as locusts started to fall like rain.
And then another violent rumbling noise came, with a massive shaking of the ground that lasted for a long time.
The black red curtain got removed, and I could now see the bright world outside. I could see a massive wave of energy coming out from my shields, one that went to the end of the world in an unstoppable way.
"This will take more time to get done," I felt that my attack would last for a long time. And after that most of the locusts near the shields would be wiped out.
That meant the locusts from far away would need quite some time to arrive here and attack the shields.
"I should get to other places then," as I had to do nothing but wait, I decided to jump over to other zones and do the same thing.
In every zone I went, the situation looked the same as the one I saw in the second zone. And by using the scary attack from the shields, the same result was repeated.
Chapter 1340 Keep Defending!
One by one, I jumped from one zone to another, wiping out endless locusts in cold blood. After taking a full tour through all the twenty zones, I returned back to the second zone.
I took almost one hour to do so, and when I returned I found the situation typically like what I expected.
The world was filled with endless dead bodies of the locusts, while the new ones were finding it difficult to move in between such weird gatherings of dead bodies.
Their number wasn't that high yet, and I estimated they'd need a couple more hours to end up forming a great army around my shields.
"Time to build more shields out there then," I didn't know how far this wave of energy reached, but I got the feeling that it went past the places I saved before in my staff.
I took out my staff and moved to the stored point here. As expected, the entire ground was littered with dead bodies of the locusts, while new ones were racing against time to reach my central region.
Yet their numbers were much lower than what I found back at the previous zone. And that made me regret not using the same trick out there before coming here.
If I did, I'd have wiped out all the locusts surrounding even my advanced shield zone.
"I can return back and do that after getting done from this," I muttered to myself while knowing that facing these locusts was going to be a long battle.
Their numbers looked endless. But right now they were still trying to build up momentum and numbers, not in their perfect state.
I decided to move forward like what I did back at ground zero. The more I advanced, the more locusts I saw dead and alive.
After flying for half an hour, I stopped and started to spread out my shields. At the same time, I took tons of warriors to handle the locusts, leaving behind instructions about killing the wounded and incinerating the dead bodies.
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As I flew for a bit longer, I took slightly one hour more than what I did back at the first zone. By the end, I finished scattering enough shields to hinder the advance of these locusts. At the same time, I left a wide enough gap to let locusts reach my central area as well.
I saved many places there, before returning back to the central zone and moving to another region.
The more zones I worked on, the more locusts I found at my central zone when I jumped to the next zones.
That was something expected. In The end, it took around three hours in each region. So after five to six zones, enough time passed to make the locusts swarm the entire world again like nothing happened.
Even the dead bodies of the killed wave of locusts ended up being covered with the newly arrived ones.
That made the formation of shields and spread of warriors look the same as the first ground zero zone.
It might look like a bad situation, but it didn't stop me from deploying my shields and warriors.
By the end of the last zone, I estimated it would last more than one and a half days at least.
After lasting for this long away, I returned back to ground zero after checking on the current training situation of my warriors under Sara and Legend.
Both were quite absorbed in doing what I asked them to. And it seemed from their responses that they got news about what I was doing all this time in all the regions.
[What's the situation right now?] I jumped back to ground zero before starting to take a wide tour around.
I didn't hurry to jump to the frontline shields right now. I knew as long as my warriors kept themselves inside, killing those locusts would be a breeze for them.
But my greatest worry still lied at the unseen yet Silence race.
Everything would be quite fine if that race kept themselves away from here. I made sure to lead enough locusts through the shield zone so that the enemy wouldn't doubt anything.
[It's still quite the same as last time you left] she sent me this message before adding, [The locusts are coming in great numbers already. However thanks to what you did, we are holding up quite fine]
[And the Silence race? Did they appear?]
[Not yet]
I already kept examining the zones which I jumped at before for any traces of the Silence race. I even took more care towards checking the areas I created my shields at, especially at the last five zones.
I knew by then, enough time passed. If the enemy suspected anything, then it'd be enough for them to mobilise their Silence race troops.
Yet either my act was quite perfect and they didn't suspect anything, or something else kept them from sending the Silence race here.
If there was something stopping them from sending two races at the same time here, then it'd be simply perfect!
I'd take my time to tear apart all the locusts they'd send at me. And that would relieve me from dealing with such troublesome foes when invading the ten worlds of the enemy later on.
"Time will tell," I muttered to myself, knowing that getting such an answer wouldn't happen anytime soon.
[Keep defending then]
[Aren't we going for the offence? We can deal with the number of locusts attacking the central zones quite easily now]
[No!] my answer came firm and swift, [Don't move a single soldier outside, got it?]
[Ok!] I knew she didn't get the entire picture, and I didn't intend to explain anything.
What I wanted to do most right now was to keep killing these locusts while thinking about what I should do next.
According to my early plans, I should have stopped the first incoming enemy waves before trying to send out Sara's and Legend's armies.
Chapter 1341 The Threat Of The Silences
However such a plan was now impossible to be executed. I needed these two to keep training more troops on how to execute that deadly array.
And that left me with the most important question right now; what should I do next?
My top worry came from the yet to appear Silence race.
The enemy didn't send them out, and weirdly enough their absence became more stressful on me than if they were present.
I didn't know why, but every single move I thought of had to be dropped thanks to my worry from that Silence race.
"Tsk! Those damn fiends… Even when they did nothing with the Silence race, its infamy is enough to make me doubt my every move…"
All the moves I thought of and can be executed perfectly without any worry were limited to my twenty zones.
And I didn't like that!
I wanted to move the battle over to the enemy homelands. However when I thought about the situation of dealing with two races at the same time, I knew I couldn't just use simple moves.
"Should I act personally or what?" This was the only idea that could be executed without any worry.
The main worry came from the need to take out more generals from the current zones. If the Silence race acted, my arrays were the only thing that could stop them.
So taking Legend and Sara away was out of the question. All I could do for now was to use other generals to do such tasks.
But doing so was going to be risky, especially if the enemy didn't send out their Silence troops to wait for me to do such a move.
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Hmm… It was quite a headache! The only scenario where there wasn't any risk of weakening the defences here would be by personally going out there.
And if I did that, I knew I'd not be able to easily extricate myself from these battles to aid here if needed.
That made me pause and think deeper about such a move.
"Before I can do this, I have to think about all the possible scenarios and make preparations for them…" I wrecked my brain while moving around and checking the current situation of my defensive shields at every zone.
The situation was just like what Lily described, it was still the same like before.
Locusts were trying to get through my shields and reach my warriors. At the same time, my warriors used everything in their power to kill these locusts.
"I shouldn't use them for now," I wanted before to spread out the weapons I got from the research department and use these killers to exterminate large numbers of locusts in a short time.
However, that wasn't needed right now. I only thought about doing this when I considered the appearance of Silence troops alongside these locusts.
And that didn't happen so far.
So taking out these weapons would alarm the enemy about their potential and threats. So instead of making such a mistake and using them here, I decided to keep them hidden.
My warriors were doing just fine in dealing with these locusts. I still felt puzzled about why the ones who came here before never succeeded in crushing the Silence race or these locusts.
They looked quite weak to me! Even my warriors without stat points were enough to kill them.
There was a single reason behind this, the ones who arrived here didn't prepare as much as I did.
They might be much stronger than myself, however only twenty could arrive here.
If they didn't use my human wave tactic, using endless tokens to support themselves, then they'd end fighting by themselves.
I looked at my inventory and saw the seemingly endless amount of warriors I got. And even with them, I felt like things weren't that easy to handle here.
If I just depended on my twenty team members, a few warriors, then things would turn out quite ugly for me no matter how strong I was.
That was the only possible explanation I could think of. And when I did, I felt how silly such a reason was.
If that was true, then why didn't any of the big races support their offsprings and give them lots of warriors?
I got that I was different thanks to my class and bones. And that made me feel quite lucky.
Even if I came from a race without a strong backing, I was wealthy enough to support myself and get anything I wanted.
And yet that also made me question the motives of the higher ups in each race. Didn't they know about the great story behind the races entrapped here or what?
As I was thinking about that, I recalled the words Silverlining once conveyed on the tongue of the head of the Toranks.
He wanted to test me, and was going to select another test before finally settling on using the golden quests as a suitable test.
In their eyes, it seemed this golden quest was some sort of a test to their offsprings and future sovereign candidates. And if that hypothesis was true, then I couldn't help but feel weird about how things ended up at.
The higher ups tried to solve the problem of the entrapped races, and the big races in the universe dealt with it like it was some sort of a game or something.
Tsk! I decided to throw away all these useless thoughts and shifted my attention towards the possible scenarios my forces might face here.
The most troubling situation would be the one where my forces had to fight against two races at the same time. And that made me consider leaving behind the many deadly weapons I had back at the central zones.
But that wouldn't help much. I thought differently and finally found a way to handle such a tricky situation.
If the enemy decided to send up the two races combined, then I'd force one race to stand down. To do so, I'd use the same method I used here, building up a great number of shielded zones and letting my warriors occupy them.
Chapter 1342 Angelica Is The Answer!
Like this, no matter what the enemy did, the locusts would be greatly decreased in numbers the closer they came to my central zone.
"Doing such a thing now would trigger the alarm inside that enemy…" I could do such a thing right away, however for a moment there I couldn't help but pause in my tracks and not do it.
Just one layer of shields with warriors was enough to cut a large number of enemies. If I added more layers, then more enemies would be kept away from the central zone.
And if I overdid it like I planned, then no locust would find their way not just to the central zone, but even to the closest layer of shields to that place.
That wasn't going to end right to my forces here. "I have to use their help then," I recalled something, and instantly flashed back to ground zero as I sent a message over to Lily.
[Where is Angelica?]
[She is in one of the zones out there, why?]
[Send for her to come here] I paused before adding, [And make sure she'd leave someone capable to lead behind her zone]
[Are you sure? We lack generals, you know!]
[Just make one of the three elite soulers leading a single zone to move out and help taking over her zone]
I lacked enough generals, that was a given fact. But that didn't mean I couldn't handle taking one general away.
Especially when that general was asked to just lead the zone and make things rolling like usual.
[Fine! But can you at least tell me why?]
[I'm changing her position and role in this entire war] I paused for a moment before adding, [She will handle something pretty important. So make sure she isn't attached to any task at all]
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[Give me an hour then… Doing such a thing isn't easy right now]
[I'll give you five days] I said while considering the next move I had to do.
[That's more than what I need]
[I have other stuff to do. So I won't come back in five days]
[Won't tell me what this is all about?]
[Not now, besides you are going to know everything soon enough]
I knew she grew curious about my entire plan. But after my last hiccup, I didn't intend on revealing anything or else the enemy would end up knowing everything.
After I closed the chat with her, I started to do my stuff.
I needed five days, or even more. I jumped to the group of shields I left at the forefront, before starting to move out.
I thought about the grand layout of the shield areas I planned to leave here and other zones.
"Half an hour is enough distance between each area and the next one," I decided to use my flying time as a unit of measurement to determine where I'd place my shields.
I planned to create my shields in each zone first. I'd arrange them in layers, separated by an almost half an hour flight by my chariot.
As for warriors, I decided to not use these right now. And that was why I needed Angelica.
Spreading out my shields was a long task without doubt. The further I flew forward, the more area I needed to cover.
While doing this, I kept a close eye on the entire ground. I was still worrying about the appearance of the Silence race at any moment.
However after working for days, jumping in between zones, and creating an endless number of shields, I still couldn't see a shadow of this race.
Damn those fiends! They managed to put such pressure over me without doing anything at all!
[I'm back!] It didn't take five days as I expected, but around ten. That was thanks to underestimating the vast space of the lands I needed to cover up at the end parts of each zone.
At the edge of each zone, I could see how these locusts arrived at my zones. There were hard to count portals surrounding the entire zones.
From these portals, endless streams of locusts appeared. And there I finally managed to spot the Silence race members for the first time.
The ones I saw were the ones with big bodies. They stood like guards, surrounding the entrance of each portal.
Aside from these spots, there wasn't a single Silence race seen around. And that made me realise the enemy made the Silence race to act as guards to prevent any attempt to infiltrate their ten worlds.
I couldn't tell which world these portals led to. But it seemed all the ten worlds had locusts and Silence race members in them as I learnt.
[She is already here for days now!] Lily sent before adding, [I'm coming and bringing her with me]
I knew she was dying to know what I was planning to do. In fact I didn't intend to explain much to Angelica even.
I just wanted to deliver something over to her, ask her to do something if a certain situation arose. In addition to that, I'd take her on a grand tour everywhere before finally setting my course towards these ten worlds.
"Why are you acting in such a way?" In less than five minutes, the two arrived, each on their own chariot.
"We are being watched," I simply responded to Lily before turning to Angelica, "I want you to come with me."
"To where?" Angelica asked, while her eyes showed her desire to be with me regardless of the reason.
"For what?" Lily didn't drop her attempt to know what I wanted to do.
"To prepare for the future," I paused before adding, "wait here and take over the entire defensive operation. Under no circumstances, don't ever try to send troops out."
"Tsk! We didn't come here to sit inside your shields and not fight," she complained, and I knew this wasn't just her words alone.
Many if not most of my generals would object to such a passive approach. In their eyes, these locusts were a pushover enemy, one they could simply crush in direct conflicts.
Chapter 1343 Angelica
Their experience in dealing with zombie outbreak boosted their confidence and made them think they were invincible.
I didn't think like them. I didn't want to win a battle and end up losing the entire war. I wanted to win this damn thing, end up being the top victor in all this mess.
"Just do as I say," I stressed over, "a time will come when I'd need you to move forward without even taking a single moment of rest."
"We'll see about that," she rolled her eyes, and during our little talk, Angelica jumped over my chariot and recalled her back.
"See you later," I waved my arm to Lily, opened a portal and led my chariot through it.
And the next moment I appeared at the nearest layer of shield defences in the region.
"Did you miss me or what?" Just when I was about to tell her about what to do, she was half a beat faster and asked me this.
If this was another time, I'd be surprised by her sudden question. But the great tension of this entire situation left a deep shadow over me, making me unable to feel any surprises at all.
"I want you to do something for me," I seriously said, ignoring her question.
"You, the great Hye, want me to do something for him? That's funny!" she said these mocking words with a face that showed a totally different emotion than what her words conveyed.
I sense longing, deep longing in her eyes and face. And seeing her like that made me inwardly sigh.
"Sorry girl, I can't curse you like I did with my previous girls," I told myself this, without sharing any with her. "I want you to do something, something that's too important for all of us here."
She looked deeper into my eyes, and I couldn't tell if she turned quite serious or got lost in her feelings for me.
"What do you want me to do?" she paused before sighing, "trying to chase a king isn't that easy, but at least give me some hope for the future of the two of us, can you?"
"I… I can't promise you such a thing," I couldn't help but add, "if I do, you'll end up losing much more than you imagine."
"Being with you is enough!"
"Even that can't be guaranteed," I sighed, recalling my long gone girl whom I didn't know where she was right now.
Even being with me, staying by my side, wouldn't be an option for my curse. Just open your eyes and see what happened to Hilary! She was with me, and wasn't!
"Tsk! You are just too overprotective for me, even to the degree of hurting me like this."
"Small early loss is much better than long term disastrous grievances, right?" I paused before adding, "I want you to lead my people here in case something bad happened."
"And what about you?" she gave me a weird look, "aren't you here?"
"I might be busy doing something else," I didn't say out loud that I was going away. But for a girl like her, it was easy to guess such a point by her six senses.
"How do you expect me to help anyone the same way you do?"
"That's why I brought you here," I looked around before adding, "you got that staff from before, right?"
"This one?" She took an exact copy of my stuff and showed it to me. And I nodded.
"Start saving the places we'll visit from here onwards as bookmarks."
This was why I needed her. If I thought about what my forces would truly need, then it'd be the ability to jump over and fill any place with needed reinforcements.
With her staff, she could easily jump all over the zones, just like me. She wasn't going to have the same impact over any distressful battlefield, not when she lacked my artefacts like pillar and Libra, lacking my techniques, but at least she could fill in the gap left by my absence for a little.
"And?" she could tell things weren't that simple at all.
"I'll give you enough warrior tokens," I paused before adding, "enough to cover up the twenty regions here with floods of warriors if needed."
She went into silence, raised her staff before nodding to me to jump over another place.
I started to jump around the layers of defence in each region, while transferring tons of warriors and stat crystals over to her.
She was smart enough to know what I wanted from her. And when she saw the grand number of emptied shields in the advanced layers, she could easily link the missing dots together.
I wanted her to take up my role as the main warriors giver, jump all over the zones and fill the emptied shielded zones with warriors and stat crystals.
She'd also act as fire fighters, jumping to the most dangerous and weakened spots anywhere, taking out enough warriors to fill in the gaps and support the defences.
"For how long… Do you want me to do this?" After we ended up on such a grand tour, she looked at me in a weird way.
I transferred what I promised, enough warriors to fill the entire twenty zones up with warriors like sand grains.
And that made her realise that I might be gone for a long time.
"For as long as it may take."
"That's why you prevented us from shifting into offence?" As expected, Lily wasn't speaking before just for herself, but in the stead of many others.
"That's right," I nodded, "and also there are other reasons I'd like to keep for myself for now."
"Pretty mysterious, huh? Don't you realise that acting this way makes you sexier?"
She winked, and I simply ignored her flirtation. She kept trying all this time to tempt me to touch her, but I was already too busy with problems that I couldn't yet solve.
Chapter 1344 Time To Act
One of these problems was time. How long would I be gone from here?
I wanted to create trouble back at the enemy ten base worlds, forcing them to activate their third layer of defence. If I succeeded, then the entire ten worlds would be swept clean from all the hostile two races inside.
But that also meant the twenty zones here and even the twenty worlds out there would be at great risk. I didn't know how other universes managed to evade such disasters. But if they succeeded, why wouldn't I?
I knew that by the demonesse words, that disaster would only affect the ten base worlds. But I used to expect the worst just in case.
What if the enemy used this third layer of defence and extended it over the twenty worlds here? I had to be prepared for such a disastrous possibility.
And so I needed to not only create chaos out there, but to explore these worlds and see if I could find the buried technology of that extinct race and explore part of their secrets.
To do so, I knew I'd take a long time. It was quite hard then to tell how long I'd be gone from here. And so I could only arm up Angelica with everything I could, hoping she would help others to stand for a long time against the dangers here.
"You know what to do," I returned her back to the ground zero central zone before adding, "keep what I gave you to yourself. Don't try to act until the Silence race approaches."
"But…"
"Legend and Sara are now training endless warriors to execute the star array perfectly," I knew what she wanted to argue about, "you will help them as well by adding more warriors every now and then. As for the ones they trained, you'll take them back with you and use them to stop the Silence race."
"Will they be enough?" I knew she feared the abnormal abilities of the Silence race.
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"As long as you all stay inside my shields, then it will be fine… One moment…"
The next instant I activated the offensive ability of my shields. The entire zone changed and a brutal attack appeared.
This time the shields stored up attacks for a much longer duration than before. And that made me realise the attack would last for a bit longer and even expand to reach far away places.
But to think this attack would reach the edge of the zone wasn't logical.
The edge of each zone was protected well enough by dense hordes of locusts and Silence race elite forces.
"This…" she got shocked by what I did, and I managed to distract her from what I just said. I didn't want to expose much about my shields ability to stop the Silence race, or else the enemy might find a way to counter them.
"I'm going now," I went towards a portal leading to another zone, "good luck!"
And by then I vanished, leaving her behind.
I ran across all the zones, activating the devastating attacks of my shields. Once done, I returned back to ground zero and found no trace of Angelica at all.
[If you need any help at any time, just inform Angelica] I sent to Lily while passing through a portal and ending up at the edge of this region, [And make sure no one steps outside the shield zones. Or else they'll die!]
[Die? These locusts are weak to even be compared with the zombies of our homeland! And what about this thing with Angelica? Why shall I contact her, not you?]
[Contact both of us then] If that would make you feel better! I knew trying to get to me would be quite impossible in the future, [And don't underestimate our enemies. We aren't just fighting locusts, we are also fighting Silences and god knows who else!]
I had to scare her, scare everyone, from taking such a crazy step and advance.
As long as they stayed inside the shields, nothing would hit them. Not the locusts, not the Silences, and not even the deadly third defensive layer.
But all of this would change the moment they started to move out and attack.
[Ok] I didn't know if she was sincere in her response or not. However I did everything in my power to keep them safe. If they wanted to get killed, then be my guest and step outside.
And now it was time for me to make the last step before going towards the first enemy world.
I needed to go to the first enemy base world, but endless locusts and elite Silences stood in between me and them.
I could use my warriors to kill them, use my technique to recruit them. However I didn't intend to waste my effort and time on doing such a thing.
After all, I didn't want to alarm the enemy long before I'd step through these portals. Thus I had one option left for me to do.
I took out my warriors, spread them all over many shielded areas around the edge of this zone.
The moment my warriors appeared, all the locusts surrounding this region stopped in their tracks, turned their attention towards my shields, and started to run and attack them.
I kept moving using my chariot while the entire world down below got stirred up. I watched this in amusement, while adding more warriors at all the shielded areas here.
It took me roughly two hours to pass through these areas. And if not for me to save many locations around, I'd have taken much more than that.
After doing all this, I didn't hurry to act and waited for two days. During which, the entire shielded areas got totally buried underneath the endless streams of locusts.
These shields were tens of miles away from the portals of the enemy. As such, no matter how many locusts my warriors killed, it was far from enough to stop the ceaselessly coming locusts.
Chapter 1345 Unbelievable Result!
I knew doing this would trigger the attention of the enemies. But they wouldn't get that much pumped up yet.
It was still far from enough to stop the advancement of their locusts. My shields managed to lower the pressure over the distant inner zone shields and forces.
As long as locusts kept coming at my forces and inner shields, the enemy wouldn't have any reason to adjust their plans.
But what I planned to do next was going to set them on their feet!
*Rumble!*
It appeared as if a nuke just exploded everywhere. Taking my shielded areas as a centre, and after waiting for two whole days, the shields released violent waves that crushed the endless locusts covering them up first.
The shields that looked totally buried underneath swarms of locusts were cleaned and cleared of these rodents.
And then the shocking wave started to spread over, expanding towards the enemy portal region, fiercely slamming against them.
"What the heck…?!!!" and just as I watched this happening, I saw by my own eyes the portals of the enemy getting burst out like they were made of thin paper.
What the heck was wrong with these enemies? How come they use such cheap portals to link their worlds with here?
Dammit! The shockwave I released was unstoppable! And it was overbearing enough to crush not only the enemies coming out from the portals, but the portals themselves!
Within the span of a few minutes, all the portals here got crushed and that stopped any enemy from setting foot in my zone.
Such a result… Tsk! I never expected such a result at all!
I did this to clear up all the enemies blocking my path to the portals. However I never wanted or expected the portals to get crushed in that way.
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Would they summon more portals here or what?
If not then it'd be quite bad… Or a mixture of bad and good news.
I waited for my terrifying wave to clean the locusts who went deeper into my zone. The attack lasted for almost an hour, and when it died down, everything looked empty and silent in my eyes.
There wasn't a single enemy standing anywhere! And not only that, the enemy didn't summon another portal even after waiting for a few hours there.
I didn't stay idle, as I used this chance to collect as many bones as possible.
Before facing these locusts, I got the impression that their level would be quite high and so their bone grading would be quite high as well.
But when I saw how weak they were, I knew the bones coming out from these would be all low grade.
Yet at this moment, I knew I was gravely mistaken in both!
"Dark realm monster bones? How come?!!!" I watched the densely packed dark dots racing towards my hand from a huge area around.
As the locusts were already converging in endless numbers around my shields before, the number of them was quite insane in such areas.
I started collecting bones from there. And that was when I noticed that I wasn't gaining common bones like before, but the extremely rare and precious dark realm bones.
To me, these bones have much higher energy than normal bones. Not to mention I could turn them anytime to deadly bombs, ones that could last for days burning and killing any enemy daring to pass through them.
I tried for a long time to get dark realm monster bones or find a stable source for these. However I only got a small amount of luck from the grand monsters I faced and killed before.
Yet right now, I could get them from the locusts here! And just imagining the endless number of these locusts made my heart thumbs uncontrollably.
All these would turn into my precious dark realm bones? Damn! Damn! That was way beyond my wildest expectations!
I started collecting bones just to kill time while waiting for the response of the enemy. But right now I didn't give a damn about anything they'd do, and got myself absorbed in collecting my precious loot.
I let my generals test the application of the star arrays using normal bones. But with such an insane amount of dark realm bones, how come I'd care about that anymore?
I'd better use these dark realm bones in making these star arrays and see what changes that would result in.
Would they just add more energy to the arrays, elongating their time for a bit more? Or would they show new changes?
I wanted to stop what I was doing and test the array out. However I couldn't bring myself to do so.
The bones were something I craved for, and these dark realm bones were like precious gems to me before.
I started roaming around the edge for days, before finally collecting all the bones of the dead locusts at the outer region.
And there were still many more locusts lined up and waiting for me to collect their precious bones inside the entire zone.
[How did you do that?!!!]
In the middle of my spree of collecting my precious bones, Lily sent me this message, [I thought you were going away for a long time. Never expected that you'd find a way to stop all the locusts from coming here!]
Tsk! If I told her I never planned for such a thing to happen, would she believe me? I thought in my mind before answering her:
[I just tried out something and it worked]
[Is this going to last?]
[That's the million dollar question I wanted to know the answer to as well] I didn't hide the fact that I didn't know the answer to that question.
After all, such an answer wasn't in my power to control. If the enemy wanted to continue their assault, they'd open portals here. If not, or for a reason I didn't know, they wouldn't be able to get access here again.
But I couldn't tell any of that until enough time had passed.
[What about us then? What shall we do?]
Chapter 1346 Gathering Bones
[First send as many as you can to train on making the arrays] I got more excited about using my dark realm bones in that array. Yet I got to test this first myself.
If the enemy didn't have a way to get access here again, in case their access to here was one way though, it would be great for my forces and the battles going on right now in my zones.
I'd not block the enemies from entering all my zones, but it'd be better to control the number of zones we were fighting them at.
It'd be better to keep half of the zones active. In one way, we could train our forces to better deal with these enemies. And on another hand, we'd keep killing more of them, lowering the number we'd face back at the sealed twenty worlds.
And above all, I'd still keep getting more dark realm bones.
After collecting all the bones from all the killed locusts, I ended up reaching the central area.
"Time to see if they are going to send anyone here," Enough time passed for the enemy to make up their minds.
So I returned back to the edge area, and there I found the entire world in weird peace and calmness.
There were no new portals, nothing appeared out of the ordinary right now. I didn't hurry to consider the enemy's decision, and started to roam the world.
After two more days, I finally stopped and realised that the enemy wouldn't send anything. That meant either they decided not to, or they didn't have the ability to do so.
I jumped back to the central area, checked over my gains this time.
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"Hehehehe, they are really generous," I laughed when I saw the hundreds of millions of dark realm bones inside my inventory.
It was like I got so hungry and thirsty for a long time, ending up arriving at a grand party and feasted out there to my content.
"If they have the choice, then they'd not make such a decision..." I thought about this, and reached to such a conclusion.
The enemy would never give up the fight over this area. And so that meant the enemy got forced to.
It seemed the access to here was limited by one chance. If that was true, was it also the same for me? If I went out there, would it be the only chance for me or what?
I refused to believe so. After all, I was the one invading them out of the rules and logic. The enemy would never place such a limitation over me or others in my place, as such possibility wouldn't cross their minds.
Besides if that was the case, then how come other universes managed to clear this obstacle? If they just relied on defending and didn't invade the enemy at their homelands, then it'd be impossible to secure a victory no matter what.
And then it came down to the next troublesome choice, should I keep doing this and follow my earlier plans or what?
I feared that if I closed too much of the portals too soon, the number of enemies out there would be unimaginable.
After all, the forces sent here came from their homeland. Even if they were quite threatening, they were helping me in reducing the total number of forces at the homeland worlds.
If I closed half of the portals as I planned earlier, would this mean I'd have to face tons more of the enemy forces once reaching these worlds?
"If I was from the enemy, I'd move forces from the blocked worlds to the still opened ones," I'd do that if I was taking care of things out there.
But assessing such a possibility from one locked world wasn't going to work. I had to start killing portals at five worlds at least to see such a result.
"I'll kill five more before assessing the situation at other worlds first," I decided before sending a message to Lily, asking her to keep track of the enemy movements at the other zones.
Right now this zone is considered safe. There was no enemy here, and it seemed the enemy wouldn't come at all.
She asked me again to send forces from here to other worlds, but I declined. I first needed to make sure the enemy wouldn't find a way to come here.
If so, then it would be better to send part of the forces here to aid the remaining zones under fire. I also told her about the five more zones which I planned to stop the enemy portals at.
[So we are going to have six free and calm zones? Like this we can use the generals of these to lead the armies and go to the other zones, right?]
Generals? I totally missed that! [Let the generals on the side for now. I need them later on] I lacked generals to be left over at the ten enemy worlds.
Realising this point, my desire to crush ten worlds again resurfaced.
I needed ten generals. And if I managed to clear out ten zones' portals, and the enemy didn't find a way to send troops over, then it'd be awesome!
[I'm going to hunt down ten more zones] I finally decided. If the enemy found a way during this time, then it wouldn't be too late to keep the generals and armies at these zones.
Each zone would take almost twenty days from me to clear the portals and collect my trophies. That meant I'd take close to seven months to do so.
If the enemy didn't come during this time, then it'd be safe to presume the enemy wouldn't come at all.
Despite the long time spent in doing this, the gains were huge! The number of dark realm bones would reach a staggering number, making me able to use these bones freely for a long time.
And that would be my gains from the forces they sent, and not including the remaining nine zones nor the ten worlds of them.
I didn't yet kill lots of Silence race members to know if they'd give me dark realm bones or what.
Chapter 1347 Eight Months Passed
As the locusts brought me such delight, then why wouldn't the Silences do the same?
I jumped over to the next zone and then to the outer layer there. I scattered out my warriors, left the locusts to gather around them the same way that happened before.
Yet this time I didn't wait here, and jumped to another zone, and then another. I kept doing this for ten more zones before finally returning to the first one again.
I decided to attack ten and not nine as Lily was needed to stay here as the general leader. So I had to clear ten more zones to obtain ten more generals aside from Lily.
After I finished doing this, at least two weeks passed from the moment I scattered warriors at the first zone. During this time, the entire shielded layers out there became buried under endless locusts, and I couldn't even see a single speck of my shields from these locusts.
The locusts seemed to level up the ground, cover up my shields entirely, and make them look like they got buried down.
The situation looked quite serious indeed, but I knew my warriors weren't at any risk thanks to my shields.
"Time to clear up this zone," I didn't hesitate to activate my offensive skill, releasing a terrifying wave of energy that spanned everywhere.
I saw blinding silver light coming out from my shields, merging together to turn slightly golden before slamming heavily and fiercely crashing down the portals at the edge of the zone.
At the same time, the wave expanded inwards, killing and sweeping clean all the enemies deep into this zone.
I didn't wait too long there, and jumped to another zone and did the same. The last zones I created shields there showed a much weaker attack than the first zones' attacks.
But it was enough to crush down all the portals and kill tons of locusts.
"Time to gather up my loot!" After waiting for a few more days, the attacks in all zones stopped. The number of killed locusts was just too much to count, making me feel more excited about this.
I spent the next months collecting bones. Most of the time spent was to travel across the vast space of each zone. As for collecting bones, my turbo mode was overbearing enough to collect bones from a grand area without the need for me to personally move.
I tried to check and see if I could get anything from their inventory. Yet to my disappointment, it seemed such races didn't have any inventory at all.
"Perhaps they got no inventory out there, so the system couldn't get me anything out of them," I muttered after trying for many times and failing.
If they didn't have inventories like us, then how could they carry their belongings with them? I looked around and couldn't find any portable bags or storage devices of any sort on them.
They got no bags, no sacs, or even deep pockets! In fact, they got no clothes or gear whatsoever.
"Perhaps they are considered low ranked soldiers in their race or something," I couldn't tell if this was the case, or that race just hated bringing their own stuff with them.
Anyway, I held higher hopes to find something valuable to the Silence race members when I'd meet up with them.
During these months, I kept checking over the situation all over the other zones from time to time. As I expected, the number of enemy forces there showed a remarkable increase.
I went personally to check things out there, and I found the number of enemies increased. If the locusts before were like a flood, these locusts in the remaining nine zones looked like grand tsunami waves, rushing to the deeper parts of the zones in successive wave motions.
When I went to the outer layers and checked things there, I was surprised to see the number of portals out there had increased tremendously.
If before the portals scattered around the outer layer with gaps of tens of miles in between them, then right now these portals were closely packed, and there were even many places where there were no gaps at all.
At many points, these portals crumbled together to form clusters.
"So each world of theirs has a single chance to open portals at one of my zones..." I started to get a better understanding of the rules limiting my enemies.
They weren't that limited actually. I thought they had to send forces first to other worlds before sending them here. But it turned out they could open new portals at other zones. And that was what brought such fierce waves of new locusts to the nine zones.
After checking over the current situation of the shielded areas with warriors out there, I saw no different image than the one I saw before releasing the deadly attacks at the other eleven zones.
The entire shields got buried underneath seemingly endless locusts. And even so, more locusts kept trying to bypass their comrades, trying everything to reach the shields down below.
"I hope this will buy them enough time," I activated the offensive attacks of my shields at the nine zones, killing tons of these locusts before returning to the ten other zones and resumed collecting bones.
I knew that releasing such an attack wasn't enough to reach the outer layers and destroy the portals. So from time to time, I went back to these nine zones, and activated the attacks again to relieve the pressure.
Even if my forces out there were still secured with my shields, and they kept killing enemies as hard and fast as they could, they couldn't match the speed of new enemies coming at them.
And after waves and waves of these locusts getting killed, I finally gave them the permission to go outside and move the dead bodies away after I collected bones from them.
Doing such a thing took me slightly longer than I expected. After eight months of jumping around and collecting bones, I finally managed to collect all the dark realm bones from the eleven worlds.
Chapter 1348 Something Seems Off
At the same time, I collected a lot of the dark realm bones from the dead locusts outside my shields. After killing, collecting bones, and moving the bodies away for all this time, big mountain series like gathering of dead bodies of the enemy appeared next to each shielded area.
I lost count in the number of dark realm bones I collected. And at a point, I grew numb to getting more of these bones.
pAn,Da n<0,>v,e1 It looked as if it became normal to get more of these bones, as if they were commonly found anywhere. I knew this was just a temporary effect thanks to the endless supply of bones I got from the locusts.
But this was temporary and only limited to this place.
Once I finished the golden quests, then finding more of these dark realm bones would be quite hard and challenging for me.
During this time, Lily kept updating me of the general situation of my forces from the eleven zones.
Part of these forces were sent to Sara and Legend. The two kept doing great in training these forces how to use the star array.
I made sure to include the two zones of these two inside the eleven ones I cleared. By doing so, the two turned their zones entirely into a grand training camp.
Another part of the freed forces was sent to reinforce the forces fighting at the nine hot zones.
Under the request of Lily, I established many portals linking the central areas at these zones with outer shields that were empty before.
As the number of enemies increased, it made sense to occupy more shields and fill them with my forces coming from the other eleven worlds.
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And just like this, the enemy and I kept shifting our forces from other areas to these nine zones, filling them up to the brim.
Spreading more forces at new shields took a little pressure off the deeper forces. But after a few months, this effect seemed to vanish as if it never existed.
The enemy got the upper hand in terms of the total number of forces they could use. And that made my efforts look like they were for nothing.
But the end result was quite the same. No matter how many of these locusts they sent, they never posed a threat to my shields and thus to my forces.
I kept releasing the offensive attacks from time to time. As the number of shields getting hit increased, the magnitude of these offensive waves grew as well.
Fearing that I might impact the further away portals at the outer layer of each zone, I made sure to not add more warriors to the shields close to the portal zones.
Even when Lily kept asking me to send troops out there, I didn't. I wouldn't shoot myself in the foot like this.
Without having portals leading to their homeland worlds, I'd cut myself off from any means to get to their homelands. Then my only choice would be limited to waiting for the twenty worlds to get opened to me and try my luck out there.
Thinking about that made me wonder if I should postpone the assault over the ten enemy base worlds after opening the access to the twenty race worlds or do it now.
"There are ten great worlds out there, taking them down will take a long time… Still it's better to cause them a little headache before the official opening of the twenty race worlds."
Almost ten months have passed since coming here. And that meant I got only two months left before the grand opening of the twenty race worlds.
I decided to invade one enemy world first, get to know how they arranged their defences out there, and see what the enemy had in these worlds.
Then by the time of the opening of the twenty race worlds, I'd return back and pause the invasion mission till getting to know the details of each race world.
At the same time, there was something that kept bothering me.
"The higher ups didn't release any lists yet…" This was something that kept me annoyed for a long time already.
It was supposed for the system to issue the final list of participants just before the one month peace period would be over.
Yet that didn't happen. And I thought the enemy interfered somehow, delaying the release of such a list.
But after the passage of ten months, the list wasn't yet released. And that was quite weird to be honest.
I now started to doubt that another scheme was going on. I estimated the enemy to focus solely on my zones, attacking them with everything they got and leaving the other contestants alone.
When I thought about such a long time without releasing the final list, a bad omen overwhelmed me.
For a reason I started to think about another possibility, one that I didn't consider before.
"What if these folks sent more forces to the other contestant zones, crushing them one by one while only toying around with me?"
This was the worst possibility I had in my mind. If there were no other living contestants in this golden quest, then there was no point in releasing a list at all.
If that was true, then either the other participants got crushed and killed, or were met with an unstoppable challenge that made them choose to forfeit early on.
Thinking more by following this path, I realised there was something I might have got totally wrong before.
The sudden increase in the enemy forces at the other nine zones… It seemed I got the entire thing wrong!
I thought the enemy opened portals directly over these zones, shifting the forces which were cut off the eleven zones to take part in the ongoing war at the remaining nine zones.
But it seemed there was another possibility for such an increase, and that was for the enemy to not send their entire troops out from the start.