Ch. 203
Chapter 203: Efficiency So High It Made Adolf Weep
While the City Lord was mobilizing troops, the chaos outside the city gradually subsided. Valak glanced at the now completely empty display of the Detection Spell, cold sweat the size of beans continuously seeping from his forehead.
“Roar!!!”
The sharp howl was filled with overwhelming resentment.
Before the creature was seen, its voice had already arrived—a suffocating pressure hung over everyone’s hearts.
Valak finally lost his composure: “City Lord, quickly send a signal to request the nearest Saint to come over, hurry!!!”
The City Lord swallowed hard, nodded, and hurried down the city wall.
“Boom!”
Suddenly, the city wall began to tremble violently. A thunderous explosion rang in everyone’s ears. Only then did the true form of the howling creature appear at the city gate.
The once illusory giant cat, covered in bloodshot veins, had now solidified. On its blood-red fur, clusters of crimson flames flickered—yet each flame was actually a grotesque, phantom face.
Together, they opened their mouths wide—
“Roar!!!”
Another sky-piercing howl of resentment echoed as the giant cat turned into a streak of blood-red light and slammed into the city gate’s barrier once more.
The shield—capable of withstanding a full-power strike from a Saint—shattered with a “crack,” exploding into countless fragments of light.
Valak closed his eyes in despair: “A Sacred Beast! It’s over!”
…
Not long after, the Empire’s Saint, having received the distress signal, arrived at Boster City. By then, Boster had already become a city of the dead. Not just Boster City—even all territories below the Marquis level had turned into a dead zone.
Enraged, the Saint tracked the creature by its aura and successfully intercepted it outside Fract State. Only with the help of another Saint who arrived later were they able to capture it and take it away.
Preliminary estimates suggested that in just half a night, this thing had slaughtered nearly 500,000 people—efficiency so high it could make Adolf weep.
But just as they returned to the Imperial Capital, a distress message came again from Hostden State. This time, the situation was entirely different from Boster.
Countless blood-red humanoid creatures were being systematically deployed into various Beastmen refugee camps that had been expelled by the Empire.
By the time they noticed, the entire grassland was already filled with these monsters, spreading rapidly and invading other regions of the Britian Empire—completely impossible to contain.
Mechanical Soldiers, mid- to long-range magic, and volleys of arrows could still hold them back. But once it came to close combat, even the Empire’s regular magic soldiers struggled to resist.
Because these things did not care about taking damage at all—they fought with a suicidal exchange of lives, determined to leave wounds on soldiers even at the cost of their own destruction.
Once a soldier was hit, within ten minutes, they would become one of the monsters—and noticeably stronger than the previous ones.
At the same time, the Beastmen Empire launched a large-scale offensive, pinning down Britian’s border armies and preventing reinforcements. It was clear that the Empire of Mantogore could not be uninvolved in this incident.
“Smack!”
“Ardashir, look at the disaster you’ve caused! Ten million! There are ten million homeless Beastmen roaming across the western Empire!!!”
The Emperor of the Britian Empire glared furiously at his son, whom he had just slapped to the ground—his most beloved youngest son.
Lying on the ground, Ardashir flashed a trace of viciousness in his eyes, but quickly suppressed it, even feeling a hint of satisfaction.
How could he, a mere prince, have triggered such a massive wave of expulsions? Wasn’t it all carried out under the tacit approval of his so-called father?
Yes, he was a Greater-Humanism supporter—but he wasn’t an idiot to stir up something like this before ascending the throne.
No… in truth, he wasn’t even that extreme.
But the Empire’s old noble families needed a Greater-Humanism Emperor—so they could plunder other races’ wealth under the most legitimate pretext.
The Emperor ignored his son and paced back and forth anxiously. All of the Empire’s top experts had already been dispatched to the west, yet the situation remained dire.
Even if only half of those ten million Beastmen were infected, that would still mean five million soldiers—enough to overwhelm any nation, even an entire continent, through sheer numbers.
In fact, five million wasn’t even necessary.
No—three million would be enough to collapse Britian. Once a single state fell, hundreds of thousands of monsters would instantly multiply. Who wouldn’t panic?
These infected had physical capabilities no weaker than magic soldiers. If even a small number slipped behind the lines during suppression, within a day, an entire legion could be surrounded and annihilated.
Ardashir stood up and lowered his head: “Father, the most urgent matter is to seek assistance from other nations. This is not just a disaster for our Empire alone.”
“You—!”
“Father! We cannot commit all our forces here. We must resolve this as quickly as possible. If things spiral out of control and our living forces are completely wiped out, we will truly be finished.”
“Even if other nations agree to support us immediately, the time required will still be extremely long. We will have to hold on alone for at least one to two months.”
His meaning was clear: stop worrying about face— even if help comes, they must endure the losses themselves first, and those losses were growing exponentially.
The Emperor opened his mouth, then sighed helplessly: “We’ll do as you say.”
Ardashir had a Saint carry him in flight and quickly arrived in the Kingdom of Suria to convene a Seven-Nation Alliance meeting, seeking aid from their allies.
However… the Seven-Nation Alliance was merely a commercial alliance, with no military authority or obligation. Naturally, everyone’s response was indifferent.
The two Derro nations closest to Britian were already locked in a brutal war, with no capacity to care about the Empire—they might collapse themselves first.
The Kingdom of Ixia and Kingdom of Pue Lent leaned toward the Beastmen Empire, with mixed-race populations and no obsession with Greater-Humanism.
The Kingdom of Suria was willing to help—but it was fundamentally a commercial nation. Its military strength could only be described as… negligible.
Worse, Suria was currently in internal turmoil. After Prince Bratt was rescued by the Seris Alliance, the eldest prince had fled, and Bratt was now conducting a large-scale manhunt within the country.
After looking around, Ardashir realized that not a single nation could truly help. In frustration, he slammed the table—but it had little effect. No one cared.
The reason was simple: better others die than oneself. Even the relatively closest Kingdom of Ixia was tens of thousands of miles away from the disaster zone—why would they worry?
In the end, Ardashir placed his hopes on the Seris Alliance.
For this, he personally went to the Alliance’s Royal Capital to request an audience with the Empress, hoping for direct negotiations.
Mitia was quite surprised upon hearing what had happened in Britian.
“This is basically a biohazard outbreak?”
But even if it was, so what? Wouldn’t Saints just wipe them out? No matter how many there were, how could they withstand Saint-level powerhouses?
When Mitia met Ardashir, she asked exactly that.
Ardashir could only reply with a bitter smile: “Your Majesty… the density is too low, and they are too dispersed.”
“These things rarely gather in groups exceeding ten thousand. Most operate in the range of 5,000 to 10,000—just enough to break through everything except the few heavily fortified cities in each state.”
“And… because of our previous… operation, there are actually a large number of displaced people outside the defensible towns.”
Mitia casually asked: “How many could there be? Just have your troops defend major towns and let the Saints eliminate them one by one. Killing thousands at a time would be trivial. As long as your cities hold, it’s fine.”
“…If we take the river as the boundary, preliminary estimates put the displaced population at nearly ten million.”
Mitia instantly jumped up:
“How many?!”