Chapter 745: Participation

Everyone knew that the Bardi Empire had immense foundational strength. Destroying the Bardi Empire in a single direct battle would be basically impossible.

Even though the undead had obtained a temporary victory, Bardi still had vast territory and combat potential. With such a tremendous population and abundant resources, even if the undead wanted to invade and conquer Bardi completely, that would take several years, or possibly even several decades.

It was the same way for San Antonio. Even though San Antonio was dealing with a civil war as well as a demon and ogre invasion, San Antonio was foundationally so powerful that it would take many years before it was fully defeated.

Meanwhile, Bardi’s situation was actually far better than San Antonio’s. Bardi didn’t have the biggest problem that San Antonio did, which was internal chaos and infighting. Bardi’s previous ruler, Emperor Orloss, had left Bardi with an excellent foundation as well as international situation. Now, Bardi was under Halent’s leadership and had the support of the Southern Sect. The entire Bardi Empire was improving its strength.

During this process, Bardi would naturally also improve its combat strength. Bardi would improve its combat strategy, modernize its weapons and equipment, and focus all of its society and resources on total warfare. The result of getting bogged down in war would mean that its foundational strength would be tested on the meat grinder frontlines. Bardi’s other allies also wouldn’t possibly just sit back and watch Bardi be defeated.

But while a speedy war was possible against a small country, it would be impossible to conquer any major country quickly unless you immediately broke its spine and absolutely suppressed them. The major country would also have to be foolish enough to send the majority of its forces for the enemy to devour. Otherwise, the war would have to proceed slowly. But, the undead wouldn’t be given an opportunity to fight a long and slow war of attrition.

Everyone knew that the undead would only constantly increase in number and strength due to their undead sea strategy as the battle went on. Precisely because of this, no enemy of the undead would ever give them that much time.

Although Bardi had lost 200,000 soldiers in the previous battle, when considering Bardi’s territory and population, Bardi’s foundational strength hadn’t been damaged at all. The bigger problem was that Bardi had lost a significant amount of face, damaging the royal pride. That was why Halent urgently needed a way to raise his people’s morale.

Big countries could afford many losses. As long as the big country could win one major battle, it would be capable of winning everything. A small country with countless victories still wouldn’t count as having won against a big country. The small country would lose everything if they lost even a single major battle.

This was why war was also referred to as a competition between countries that tested their overall national strength. Major countries had abundant resources and plenty of strategic buffer zones. A single loss would rarely be catastrophic enough to cause the major country to lose the entire war. Only small countries which lacked foundational strength would prefer riskier strategies which might see successive victories but then end up losing everything with a single loss, just like a gambler would.

The undead might have gained 200,000 new undead soldiers, but that was actually quite easy to deal with. The newly created zombies and skeletons would be so weak that they wouldn’t even be able to defeat a regular farmer who had received only the most basic combat training. Bardi was only afraid of the undead’s powerful mages.

Starting a few decades ago, former Emperor Orloss had changed Bardi’s laws and forced all Bardi mages to register with and serve the Bardi government. This had caused friction with the Mage Country. Many Bardi mages also chose to move to other countries because of this. Plus, the past Bardi hadn’t focused very much on raising mages, so Bardi was only an average country with its mages’ overall strength.

Thus, Bardi had requested top-level mages from the Mage Country, wood spirits, Auland Empire, and Southern Sect in order to fight back against the Undead Emperors’ advantage in magic.

I had just sent a Chaos Main God back to the Chaos Abyss. I also represented the Mist Alliance. Since I had come here, Bardi naturally hoped that I would be able to help them.

“In the end, this is trouble caused by my title of being the Strongest Holy Knight…”

Holy Knights had been considered the natural enemy of the undead for forever. I was also an Undead Emperor myself. It could be said that I was the person the most suited for dealing with undead in the world. It was only natural that Halent would want me to help out.

However, I had a headache because it wouldn’t be that easy to help out here, and it might not be that beneficial for me if I did help.

Just how powerful were Undead Emperors? It would be really difficult to measure them by any standard. At the very least, it was a definite that they would have undead magic power far surpassing that of any regular Undead Lord. They would also have large and high-quality personal undead armies. However, the biggest headache of all would be their astonishing achievements in their personal research field.

More than 90% of Undead Emperors were outstanding mages and researchers. They would be vicious individuals who had reached the peak in their personal research field. Not knowing the Undead Emperors’ true specialty and simply turning on auto-battle and sending an army to attack them would be no different from sending them free kills.

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I trusted Undead Emperor Sandro’s sincerity in allying with me. He had mentioned a little to me about the other Undead Emperors’ research specialties.

Undead Emperor Anina, the “Witch of Eternal Sleep”, supposedly specialized in researching dreams. Even though the undead clearly weren’t capable of dreaming, she had managed to develop miraculous spells which affected the dream realm.

However, I felt that dreams were intimately connected to the soul. It was likely that dreams were a lower-level concept under souls. It was highly likely that her research field overlapped with mine significantly. Moreover, she was the youngest of the five Undead Emperors, so she would probably be the easiest one to defeat.

Undead Emperor Shupnus, the “Undead Wizard”, was only slightly older than Undead Emperor Anina. He didn’t have many known combat achievements. It was said that he had many varied research fields, and that he was highly skilled at creating compound undead species, so his personal undead army was very strong.

My inference was that Shupnus was likely a mage who specialized in undead creations, but that his focus was simply on the undead physical body rather than the soul.

If only it had been possible, I would have loved to have a friendly chat with these two Undead Emperors and exchange research information with them. I would likely learn much and be inspired with many new research topics by this. Unfortunately, it was quite a headache that they were my enemies.

It would be quite foolish to view the five invading Undead Emperors as being in an ironclad alliance. They were just like a pile of loose sand. Some among them wanted to fight, some among them wanted peace, and there was even one who asked “Can I go back now?” every day—a perfect bystander.

The good news was that only two of the Undead Emperors truly intended to go all-out against Bardi. The bad news was that just two Undead Emperors would still be a huge headache.

Bardi had suffered a serious loss. Bardi’s soldiers’ corpses had even become more cannon fodder for the enemy. It would be a joke at this time to try and say pretty words like “Let’s abandon past grudges and make peace.” Bardi would definitely want to take revenge. Otherwise, it would be quite difficult to explain things to the Bardi citizens.

These two Undead Emperors definitely wouldn’t be willing to give up on conquering a portion of the mortal plane for themselves. Since they had already gone all-out, they wouldn’t possibly stop now. No more restraint would be shown by either side. It was likely that there would be no more probing attacks, and that this battle would immediately elevate to a meat grinder Armageddon style battlefield.

And once the battle’s intensity was elevated, that would make the other Undead Emperors’ standpoints rather awkward. It was likely that they would end up getting dragged into the battle.

I would never doubt my ability to taunt others into focusing their attention on me. Even if I only wanted to stand on the battlefield as a bystander, it was likely that I would become the center of attention.

In that case, it might even be good for me not to go fight the Undead Emperors, as this could prevent elevating the battle’s scale even more…

However, refusing would be quite inappropriate as Bardi was an ironclad ally of the Mist Alliance. Bardi was supplying the Mist Alliance with abundant resources. What a sucker… er, I meant important lifeline of ours.

“Alright, I’ll help you out. But, I need to first go visit the Mage Country. I need to consult with the archmage ‘Truthful Environment’ Akama regarding something.”

I wasn’t lying about this at all. Akama was the most outstanding prophecy magic archmage in the entire Mage Country. I did want to ask him for some prophecies.

However, Halent’s expression became rather strange. It seemed as if he really wanted to laugh, but was holding it in. Finally, he ended up coughing gently.

“Cough, archmage Akama arrived in Bardi just yesterday, and you’ve arrived today. It seems that your luck is quite good?”

“What? My luck is quite good? What a funny joke… Haha, yep, I mean that my luck has always been quite good.”

“…Your Highness Roland, are you feeling sad?”

“Not at all. It’s just that some sand flew into my eye. Luck or whatever, I wouldn’t care about such a thing at all!”