Yamato Archipelago...
The fight ran from afternoon all the way into night.
In the middle of it, Rocky ca back twice to rest. Dopey never did.
Dopey didn’t rely on skills, and its body was absurdly tough. One punch, one kill—clean and simple. The only downside was speed. It was steady, but slow.
Rocky was the opposite. It killed fast... and burned through energy just as fast.
After an entire afternoon of nonstop slaughter, the two soulless thralls had wiped out more than half of the million-strong Infernal mass. What was left finally broke apart and fled in all directions.
Originally, the Infernals had planned to fight to the death. They understood that running usually got you killed even faster. If they held the line long enough, maybe sheer numbers could force so kind of qualitative change.
Too bad that only works when you’re down, like, two or three Tiers.
This wasn’t that.
The gap was so ridiculous their attacks were basically tickling Dopey and Rocky. No "miracle breakthrough" was happening today.
So once they truly couldn’t see any hope, the Infernals chose to run.
Because running ant maybe living a few more days.
Staying ant dying right now.
As the sky darkened, Ethan didn’t have Dopey and Rocky chase. There were crystal cores everywhere, just waiting to be collected.
He contacted Chris and called everyone back.
Not long after, Chris returned with the Fallen Star Guard, swooping in on Flabirds.
In that sa afternoon, their interception teams had killed another two hundred thousand-plus Infernals on the routes leading in.
All told, in a single day, they’d killed over a million Infernals.
Ethan imdiately had people start cleaning up the battlefield.
There were over six hundred thousand corpses here. Even with twenty thousand-plus people searching, it was still a grind.
It took more than an hour to finally gather every crystal core.
Ethan pulled out the batch the Fallen Star Guard needed and had them keep pushing their Tier upgrades.
By the end, out of the twenty thousand Fallen Star Guard, more than eight thousand had reached Tier 22. Just under two thousand were at peak Tier 21.
The rest were still stuck at Tier 18.
No way around it—too low-level. They couldn’t use these cores.
Seeing that, Ethan pulled out his phone and called Maxwell.
The line connected quickly.
"Ethan," Maxwell said, sounding puzzled. "Aren’t you supposed to be in the Yamato Empire? Why’re you calling this late?"
"General Kane, quick question. Has our crystal-core breakdown tech made any breakthroughs?"
"Not yet," Maxwell admitted. "We’ve already gotten breakdown up to Tier 18. I figured that was enough, so lately we’ve been focused more on crystal-core synthesis."
"Oh." Ethan exhaled through his nose. "General Kane, can you have them speed up breakdown research? I’m kind of in a hurry over here."
"If you’re asking, then it’s not a problem." Maxwell didn’t hesitate. "I’ll arrange it right away. The researchers have told breakdown should be simpler than synthesis anyway. It shouldn’t take too long."
"Good. Thanks."
"Between us? Don’t ntion it."
Maxwell paused. "By the way, what are you even doing over there?"
"Just a small problem. So Void Realm creatures crawled out of a spatial passage. I’m here to clean it up."
"Oh." Maxwell’s tone went serious. "Alright. Be careful. You’re the Atlas Federation’s hope right now."
Ethan let out a short laugh. "Hope, my ass. I’ll be happy if they don’t start calling a bandit."
"How could they?" Maxwell snapped back. "You’re already the Atlas Federation’s hero. If anyone dares call you a bandit, I’ll be the first one to wipe them out."
"Yeah, yeah." Ethan cut in before Maxwell got too worked up. "Just push the research. Later I’ll send you guys so high-tier cores—get your strength skyrocketing."
"Seriously?!" Maxwell’s voice actually shook.
"Seriously. When have I ever lied to you?"
"Good. Good." Maxwell sounded like he could barely sit still. "I’ll go handle it right now."
They hung up.
Maxwell imdiately summoned the research center’s director.
"Pause everything," he ordered. "All of it. Full focus on crystal-core breakdown. I want a breakthrough as fast as humanly possible."
"Yes, sir!"
After he hung up, Ethan pulled out that massive energy crystal. Then everyone settled in and started absorbing mysterious energy to push their Tiers up.
They trained straight through until the next morning. At dawn, they set out again to hunt the remaining Infernals.
By now the Infernals were hiding, but the Yamato Archipelago was surrounded by ocean on all sides. They couldn’t exactly run to sowhere else.
Ethan led the group on Flabirds and began searching inch by inch.
With True Sight, he kept flushing them out—one hidden pocket after another. Every ti he found a group, the team dropped on it and wiped it out.
Maybe because big groups were easier to spot, the Infernals had scattered. Most of what Ethan found were clusters of a few hundred, maybe a few thousand at a ti.
Those numbers were easy to kill.
Finding them, though? That took ti.
The Yamato Archipelago wasn’t huge, but it still covered over a hundred thousand square miles. Back in the day, this place had held over a hundred million Yamato citizens. Hiding a million-plus Infernals in that kind of space was effortless.
Still, Ethan had manpower, and he had altitude. If they stayed patient and thorough, they could dig them out.
And that’s exactly what happened.
It took four full days, but they finally finished hunting down the remaining million-plus Infernals.
At that point, the Infernals were effectively extinct.
Not absolutely—Ethan couldn’t swear there wasn’t one last straggler wedged into so forgotten hole sowhere. They searched hard, but nothing was perfect.
All he could say was: anything they saw, they killed. And if any were still hiding, there couldn’t be many.
Once the cleanup was done, Ethan turned the whole group around and headed straight for Atlas City, in the Atlas Federation.
Back on the third day, Maxwell had already called him with good news: the breakdown tech had finally advanced.
Just like Maxwell had said, breakdown was a lot easier than synthesis. Under Maxwell’s hardline orders, the researchers had ground themselves into the floor for three straight days and forced a breakthrough.
It was only one Tier—up to Tier 19—but for Ethan, that was perfect. Being able to break down Tier 19 crystal cores was exactly what he needed.
When twenty thousand Flabirds carrying the Fallen Star Guard swept into Atlas City’s airspace, the locals looked up with naked envy.
Fallen Star Guard.
By now, it was the unit every Enhanced dread about joining.
As they landed, the pressure rolling off the Guard hit like a wall. Atlas City’s Enhanced instinctively stayed at a distance, suddenly very polite, nobody daring to drift too close.
Ethan had the Guard remain where they were. He followed a guide soldier and walked straight toward the central zone of the Atlas City compound.
Maxwell had already gotten word. He’d called Charles and the others over, and they were waiting in the reception hall.
The mont Ethan appeared, they all stood and ca forward.
"Ethan..."
"Ethan!"
Every one of Atlas City’s big shots was all smiles, courteous as hell.
Ethan didn’t waste ti. "Let’s break down the crystal cores first."
"Of course," Maxwell said imdiately.
With Maxwell and the others escorting him, Ethan headed to the research compound again.
He took out twenty thousand Tier 19 crystal cores and had them broken down into a hundred thousand Tier 18 cores.
That was enough to bring the remaining ten thousand Fallen Star Guard mbers up.
Maxwell and the others just stared.
Twenty thousand Tier 19 cores—pulled out like pocket change.
Ethan was being way too casual about it.
If they knew Ethan still had close to a million Tier 19 cores sitting in his storage ring, they’d probably choke on air.
And that was the funny part: Tier 19 was basically the lowest grade he had now. Add up all the higher-tier cores, and he still had over seven hundred thousand of those, too.
With the cores handled, Ethan’s mood improved noticeably.
Now the Fallen Star Guard wouldn’t have a glaring weak link.
Once those last ten thousand caught up, all twenty thousand of them would be able to reach Tier 22.
No dead weight.
Just a blade that could carve through anything in its path.
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