Chapter 337: A Very Profitable War

The coalition scattered its formations again and again. Every Lord still feared that the next spell would fall on them.

Behind Divine Province’s lines, the defenders watched one tremendous surge of energy after another cross the sky. More and more of them reached the same conclusion.

"A Mythic defensive tower. It has to be!"

"With that here, Riftward is a fortress no one can break!"

Cheers spread along the walls.

The Fenwick reinforcements were just as excited. They had come expecting a desperate battle. Some had been prepared to die. Instead, the enemy was being slaughtered before they could even join the fighting.

Several family leaders exchanged relieved looks. Their matriarch had been right to bind the family’s future so firmly to Cassian’s.

An elderly Fenwick Lord finally spoke.

"I’ve seen Mythic defensive towers before. An ordinary one couldn’t do this. And have you noticed? Every spell belongs to one of the five elements. Metal, Wood, Water, Fire, Earth."

"Great-grandmother, do you mean...?"

"Wasn’t the Legion Contest a World Wonder construction contest? And wasn’t the Wonder a Five Elements Temple?"

The others began talking at once. The pieces fell into place.

The Wonder that had carried Divine Province to first in the Construction Ranking was no gift from a god. Nor was it some kind of shop. It was the Five Elements Temple they had built during the contest.

That left another question.

How had Cassian managed to claim it for himself?

——

Several hours later, the coalition finally reached Divine Province’s defensive lines.

It had lost a third of its hundreds of millions of troops on the way. Worse, Lyra’s targeted strikes had removed all its strongest Legendary fighters.

Marius’s eyes were bloodshot.

"Attack! We still have most of our army! Kill the Lord controlling the Temple, and we can win!"

He raised his voice over the troops.

"If we take the Five Elements Temple, we’ll be the greatest heroes of the empire! No sacrifice is too great!"

By now, the coalition’s leaders had also worked out what they were facing. The thought of possessing it had driven them half mad with greed.

Marius had forgotten something.

The lights on Lyra’s map told her how strong a unit was. They did not tell her who it was.

His shouting did.

Thousands of blades formed around him.

"No—"

Wardsteel sword energy tore him apart. The Black Banner’s chief commander in the invasion, a lieutenant general of Sector 632, had managed only that single word.

Percival and Cormac saw him die. Both shrank behind their troops, terrified of attracting the next strike.

Laughter rose from Divine Province’s walls.

"So these are the mighty War Marshals of Western Beacon, the Black Banner, and the Jade Court? Hiding behind their soldiers?"

"General Ashcombe! I’m calling you! Do you dare answer?"

With communications silenced, orders had to travel by signal flags or shouted commands. Neither could be concealed completely.

Several more commanders tried to direct the battle. Lyra picked them off. After that, no one in the coalition’s leadership dared reveal themselves.

The army lost what order it had left. Troops crowded against Divine Province’s defenses in a confused mass.

Dain Torren licked his lips.

"Our turn."

He had grown to two and a half meters tall. Seven or eight pieces of Legendary armor covered his massive frame as he jumped from the wall and landed on a Tyrant more than ten meters high.

The creature burst apart beneath him.

Dain charged out of the scattered remains and hurled himself at a second Tyrant. It hastily raised its spiked mace across its chest.

His short halberd struck the weapon with a deafening clang. The mace, seven or eight meters long, flew hundreds of meters away.

Then Dain hit the Tyrant bodily. Its huge frame came apart under the impact.

"Thirty years raising Legendary troops, and this is all you’ve got?"

He tore through the army. In less than a minute, twelve Legendary troops lay dead behind him. Two had been Three-Stars.

Dozens of chains suddenly emerged from the void and wound around his body.

"Veylan’s Faerie Dragons?"

Dain gave a small shake. The strands of Void Entanglement broke along their lengths.

He sighed.

"Lyra, couldn’t you have left a few strong ones for me?"

A Warbound Lord lived close to death. Those who survived grew steadily more formidable, and Dain’s bloodline gave him far greater Load than other Lords of the same Aptitude. He could carry seven or eight pieces of the finest Legendary armor without difficulty.

Their combined attributes, his accumulated gains from Ravenous Appetite, his A-grade Aptitude, and One Against Many—now also Grade A—had made him a monster.

At his peak, his raw attributes stood well above Seraphine’s, far beyond those of an ordinary Legendary Nine-Star Hero. Judged by attributes alone, he was almost a Mythic.

With the coalition’s strongest fighters already dead, no one could stand against him.

The five Valcrests fighting here alongside Lyra exchanged looks. Seraphine was away, but they had no intention of letting Dain take all the glory.

"Come on. We can’t let him have everything!"

Five auras rose, each comparable to a Legendary Nine-Star Hero’s. They plunged into the enemy ranks. They might have been weaker than Dain, but there was no one left to stop them either.

"Fighters like these, and they aren’t even taking part in Race Ascendancy?" a Fenwick veteran murmured.

The older Fenwick Lords sent their own strongest forces into battle: three Legendary Nine-Star Heroes and dozens of Nine-Star troops.

"Where are the generals? Why aren’t they doing anything?"

"They’re sending us to our deaths!"

"Run! Save yourselves!"

In less than ten minutes, the eastern coalition army broke. It was a collapse fit for the history books.

Mira immediately raised her voice.

"Dain, take the eastern entrance. Don’t let a single invader escape! The five of you, reinforce the southern battlefield. My Crystal Maiden will guide you."

A Maiden changed into a Bloodcrystal Bat and rose into the air.

She belonged to Mira. After the Contest of the First Age, Cassian had prepared her for Mira by using Life Essence on her Embryo before it hatched. Crystal Maiden Embryos could be traded freely, making such an arrangement much easier than providing Dawnwings or Faerie Dragons.

The method mattered. Raising an ordinary Epic Maiden to Legendary with a Troop Soul alone did not grant Crystal Metamorphosis. Cassian’s Life Essence route produced the special line capable of changing forms through recorded templates.

His transforming Maidens were something other Lords could not simply copy.

Mira turned toward the fleeing enemy and used an amplification spell. Her voice carried for fifty kilometers around her.

"Coalition Lords, listen carefully. Divine Province wants your money. Surrender, and you live."

She let that sink in.

"One friendly suggestion: surrender early. The Five Elements Temple’s spells won’t wait for you."

Cassian had arranged this before leaving. Renewing Dragon’s Blessing so heavily on Windward Isle had left him with only tens of billions of Aether.

Unlike the last naval battle, this time the enemy was trapped inside Riftward. They could be dealt with at leisure. No one was getting away.

Lyra helped make Mira’s offer persuasive.

Another Cinderfall struck across the fleeing army’s path. A wave of scorching heat rolled for dozens of kilometers. Many Lords abandoned all thought of resistance.

"I surrender! Don’t kill me!"

"I’ll have my family prepare the ransom!"

"My Hero is my wife! Can she surrender with me?"

Mira and Lyra exchanged a smile.

Most of these captives came from wealthy, powerful families. There were hundreds of billions of Aether to be made here.

The roundup lasted more than two days.

This time, not a single coalition Lord escaped. Divine Province took hundreds of thousands alive, including Percival Ashcombe and three other War Marshals.

The only disappointment was the missing Peacebringer. So certain had the coalition been of victory that it had not brought the weapon along.

On the third day, Riftward’s spatial seal and communication silence expired in succession. Only then did the outside world learn what had happened in the battle.