Chapter 656: Wildfire

I wasn’t even the slightest bit surprised when I heard the latest information that the undead army’s offensive against the Nightrain Fortress of the Bardi Empire had suddenly become much stronger. It was something completely within expectations. When the demon wave truly descended, that would represent the beginning of the Holy War for real. All battles for the sake of testing the waters would end, and the true battles would begin at full power.

However, everyone inhaled cold breaths when they heard that five Undead Emperors had simultaneously appeared on the battlefield.

It had been so many years already. There had only been one Undead Emperor in the mortal plane in recent times. However, the Yongye Calamity from a century ago had threatened the entire world. All the leaders of various species along with the most powerful individuals would all know and remember the name of Emperor Yongye.

The more a powerful individual understood undead magic, the more they would understand what an Undead Emperor truly represented.

The undead naturally possessed incomplete souls. This meant that entering the old SemiGod or the new Level 4 rank would be almost impossible for them. Powering up to the next level would require the critical step of making one’s own soul have a completely unique light. However, leveling up to the highest level would be theoretically impossible without a complete soul.

Yet, there were always people out there capable of making the impossible possible…

“…Five Yongye-level existences arrived at the same time?”

In fact, this assessment was no overestimation. It was actually an underestimation.

When considering pure power level, Roland as Yongye would be easily beaten by any other Undead Emperor since he had by far the least experience. His experience was so little that it was only a few percentage points compared to the other Undead Emperors whose age was measured in the tens of thousands.

In order to calculate the overall combat strength of any undead mage, you would have to add his personal undead army to his personal strength. Conservation had been in a hurry to invade the mortal plane, which was why she actually hadn’t been able to bring most of her forces. Roland would have lost to her had she waited for the Holy War to truly begin, lifting dimensional restrictions and allowing her to bring all her troops. Actually, Roland as Yongye with his entire army would have still lost to Conservation by herself if it weren’t for the fact that the latter became imprisoned and restricted within Roland’s bug-like personal Hell world.

Since the undead lacked complete souls, it was far harder for them to reach the highest power level of Level 4 compared to any other species. However, breaking past this bottleneck would mean that they had overcome such natural limitations, surpassing even the Creator Goddesses in certain aspects. It would be impossible for the Undead Emperors not to be strong.

Roland was an expert in soul magic. Conservation had her own unique understanding of energy conservation. Aso’s talent was… well, he didn’t get to use it before he died facing Roland. However, the main foundational difference between Undead Emperors and Undead Lords was that the former would all have miraculous powers truly their own, and could transform the impossible into the possible.

The Undead Emperors didn’t choose to gradually add pressure to the undead attack. Instead, they went all out the moment they arrived, simultaneously fighting together against Bardi at Nightrain Fortress.

The end result… was that Bardi suffered a massive defeat, and Nightrain Fortress was lost. 12 dragons and their dragon knights all perished. Now, a dozen newly born bone dragons could be seen patrolling the skies above Nightrain Fortress.

The Undead Emperors had the temperament of ancient undead rulers. They didn’t view the living as their own kind. During the battle against Bardi, they unhesitatingly used many kinds of magic considered extremely evil, such as biohazard poison mist, enslavement of dead souls, corpse summoning, and so on. The Undead Emperors also unhesitatingly cast an Undead Calamity forbidden spell after conquering Nightrain Fortress, transforming tremendous amounts of captives and commoners into the undead. The unending wave of undead then poured towards the next battlefield.

This was the undead’s classical strategy: using an unending sea of undead. Although this strategy had barely evolved over the past several millennia… it didn’t matter at all, because this strategy was quite practical. There was truly no good counter against the undead sea that would only constantly increase in size as it fought battles.

Additionally, due to the now deceased Undead Emperor Aso’s tampering with Bardi’s food supply, the Bardi citizens’ bodies had far more negative energy than usual, which would make them into excellent undead magic resources for cultivation and summoning. Many high-level undead and elite troop types appeared in this Undead Calamity, improving the undead army’s overall level many times over.

The Death Planes were still constantly teleporting more undead over, and as long as the next fortress was conquered, a snowball effect would begin—the number of undead would more than double. This would instantly worsen the situation even more.

All of Bardi was astonished that Nightrain Fortress had been lost. The extravagance of five Undead Emperors simultaneously appearing and fighting together was something that made everyone anxious and trembling in fear.

The longer an Undead Calamity lasted, the more difficult it would become to deal with. Once an Undead Emperor summoned enough troops, plenty of elite undead commanders would be born from the tremendous number of low-level undead. A sufficient amount of undead would also mean that the Undead Emperor would have plenty of experimental resources from which they could produce even more powerful undead creations. The basic undead troops would also be gradually upgraded. As the entire undead army “evolved”, things would eventually develop into a state where the undead could seemingly conquer the entire world.

In the very first month after the Holy War truly began, Bardi faced its most severe challenge yet. However, their plight wasn’t unique to them.

San Antonio had also suffered massive losses in their battle against the demons and great demons. Murjin, the ancient tribe leader of the great demons, had personally arrived to defeat the defending allied forces of San Antonio and Holy Church.

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His witchcraft poison enchanted spear sunk an entire city into a light green swamp. Murjin, the great demon hero who was more than four meters tall, single-handedly destroyed an entire squadron of angels and human rangers. Not a single person was able to survive in front of him. The way how Murjin literally fought thousands by himself astonished many powerful individuals who had previously been looking down on the great demons.

Perhaps the people of today had already forgotten Murjin’s name, but he’d been a hero from the ancient Great Demon Empire. After reports of his combat strength were recorded by those who witnessed his fights, the fairies temporarily assessed Murjin’s power level to be 17 Stars. Basically, even if he wasn’t confirmed to be at Main God power level yet, he was already quite close to the Main Gods’ 20 Star power level.

The great demons, who were allied to the demons, had finally brought out their true power. Unlike elven magic which was exquisite, the great demons used extreme passion and fervent willpower to summon the power of the elements, and so many corrupted elemental creatures appeared on the battlefield in large numbers. The great demons were actually capable of melding together with such creatures, transforming into distorted half elemental, half great demon monstrosities, which would know no fear of death, and feel no fatigue or pain. They were pure meat grinders—butchers—on the battlefield.

Evidently, the great demons’ witchcraft and voodoo magic had their own unique traits that were completely beyond the modern understanding of magic today. The arrival and intervention of veteran great demons meant that this ancient species was truly determined to attack with their full might. They wanted to prove that they had the power to challenge this new generation and become the ruling species again, taking back their former glory.

The battles against the great demons and the undead weren’t the only major battles. In the first month after the demon wave’s descent, all the powerful countries in Eich met with enemies, and several hundred battles simultaneously erupted—countless ancient artifact-like existences crawled out from the trash heaps of history. All the battles were extremely vicious, and combat reports constantly flooded me as if the entire world had been swallowed by the fires of war in a single night.

“Then, has Bardi requested military assistance?”

Reyne was going more overboard every day. She constantly sent me every political matter to deal with. Still, I was indeed quite interested in military affairs, and this would save me the trouble of having to find my own information.

“No, not at all. Halent is quite a stubborn man. It would be quite unseemly for a mega empire to request reinforcements so quickly. Besides, Bardi truly has a strong foundation, and they won’t lose so easily. Their envoy just arrived, would you like to chat with him?”

Just thinking about the Bardi Empire’s truly frightening amount of territory and combat potential made it easy to realize that they could indeed fight a prolonged war against the undead. There was no need to worry about them quite yet. Besides, the Mage Country neighbored Bardi, and the wood spirits’ territory was also within Bardi. Even if Bardi wanted to request reinforcements, they wouldn’t request reinforcements from the Northlands, which was so far away.

Right, there was also the Southern Sect within Bardi. As long as they got involved, they would truly be a natural counter to the undead. There was no need for Bardi to request reinforcements.

However, Bardi had voluntarily sent us war intelligence, and even sent a diplomatic envoy to deliver it. They were acting like a perfectly good ally. This wasn’t the way that a mega empire like Bardi, which typically acted so domineering, would act. Being so “kind” meant that they definitely had some type of request.

“That envoy did mention twice already the strange and miraculous Holy Light technique you previously used in the Sala Dukedom. I think he mentioned it on purpose.”

“…Holy Light technique? Is this envoy a priest from the Southern Sect?”

“Yes.”

“Ha, I understand.”

Forbidden spells would leave far too many aftereffects. It would be impossible to conceal from the major countries the information about the Seeds of Holy Light spell that I had used in Sala Dukedom. In fact, the Southern Sect had originally developed this spell for me. However, it would be impossible for them to cast the same spell with the same power as I had. Since the undead were their current enemy, this spell would indeed be greatly effective. Basically, they were using their own way to request my version of the Seeds of Holy Light spell.

“Sure, I can give them my spell formula. I modified it based on their prototype anyways. They could probably develop something similar with some more time. But, the fact that my Seeds of Holy Light spell was so powerful was due to many factors. For instance, I had the elves’ Tree of Life as a magical catalyst, buff effects from a mage tower, divine resources from Hell’s Pillar God of Holy Light, and other God Equipment. Moreover, I’m a forbidden spell mage who’s used to casting forbidden spells. Apart from mage towers and forbidden spell mages, the Southern Sect probably doesn’t have anything else of the sort…”

Still, even if that was the case, it would help everyone out, and I had no reason to refuse. How far they could develop my spell in the end wouldn’t be related to me.

Besides, having a major country owe you a favor right now would be extremely valuable in this time of war. Since they didn’t intend to officially request this in order to save face, I could charge a really high price… I wrote down my spell formula to hand it to the Bardi envoy. The fairies’ delivery system would soon take it back to Bardi, at an even faster speed than internet delivery from my previous world.

“Right, how come I haven’t seen your two concubines over the past two days?”

I was rather curious about this. Previously, whenever I saw Reyne, at least one of her two concubines would be by her side, constantly giving me strange looks, but now that they were absent for the past few days, I wasn’t used to it anymore.

“Since Halent’s country has met with such major trouble, his sister has been quite worried. I told her to go out and get her mind off her troubles. As for Avi… Avi received quite a huge impact from you being right and her being wrong. I think she’s voluntarily working overtime on buying food right now.”

“Impact?” I paused for a moment, but instantly understood. “Oh.”

San Antonio had now come under attack from a Main God level great demon along with the demons. Their food production had definitely been affected. We had all received several hundred combat reports over the past few days, and they directly dashed all the optimistic hopes of the Northlands government officials about food prices stabilizing. They probably didn’t have any time to regret their mistake, as they were now all busy trying to buy as much food as possible on the international market.