Yamato Archipelago...
The fight ran from afternoon all the way into night.
In the middle of it, Rocky came back twice to rest. Dopey never did.
Dopey didnât rely on skills, and its body was absurdly tough. One punch, one killâclean 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 some kind of qualitative change.
Too bad that only works when youâre down, like, two or three Tiers.
This wasnât that.
The gap was so ridiculous their attacks were basically tickling Dopey and Rocky. No "miracle breakthrough" was happening today.
So once they truly couldnât see any hope, the Infernals chose to run.
Because running meant maybe living a few more days.
Staying meant dying
right now
.
As the sky darkened, Ethan didnât 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 Flamebirds.
In that same afternoon, their interception teams had killed another two hundred thousand-plus Infernals on the routes leading in.
All told, in a single day, theyâd killed over a million Infernals.
Ethan immediately 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 itâtoo low-level. They couldnât use these cores.
Seeing that, Ethan pulled out his phone and called Maxwell.
The line connected quickly.
"Ethan," Maxwell said, sounding puzzled. "Arenât you supposed to be in the Yamato Empire? Whyâre you calling me this late?"
"General Kane, quick question. Has our crystal-core breakdown tech made any breakthroughs?"
"Not yet," Maxwell admitted. "Weâve already gotten breakdown up to Tier 18. I figured that was enough, so lately weâve been focused more on crystal-core synthesis."
"Oh." Ethan exhaled through his nose. "General Kane, can you have them speed up breakdown research? Iâm kind of in a hurry over here."
"If youâre asking, then itâs not a problem." Maxwell didnât hesitate. "Iâll arrange it right away. The researchers have told me breakdown should be simpler than synthesis anyway. It shouldnât take too long."
"Good. Thanks."
"Between us? Donât mention it."
Maxwell paused. "By the way, what are you even doing over there?"
"Just a small problem. Some Void Realm creatures crawled out of a spatial passage. Iâm here to clean it up."
"Oh." Maxwellâs tone went serious. "Alright. Be careful. Youâre the Atlas Federationâs hope right now."
Ethan let out a short laugh. "Hope, my ass. Iâll be happy if they donât start calling me a bandit."
"How could they?" Maxwell snapped back. "Youâre already the Atlas Federationâs hero. If anyone dares call you a bandit, Iâll be the first one to wipe them out."
"Yeah, yeah." Ethan cut in before Maxwell got too worked up. "Just push the research. Later Iâll send you guys some high-tier coresâget your strength skyrocketing."
"Seriously?!" Maxwellâs voice actually shook.
"Seriously. When have I ever lied to you?"
"Good. Good." Maxwell sounded like he could barely sit still. "Iâll go handle it right now."
They hung up.
Maxwell immediately summoned the research centerâs 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 couldnât exactly run to somewhere else.
Ethan led the group on Flamebirds and began searching inch by inch.
With
True Sight
, he kept flushing them outâone hidden pocket after another. Every time 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 time.
Those numbers were easy to kill.
Finding them, though? That took time.
The Yamato Archipelago wasnât 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 thatâs 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
âEthan couldnât swear there wasnât one last straggler wedged into some forgotten hole somewhere. They searched hard, but nothing was perfect.
All he could say was: anything they saw, they killed. And if any were still hiding, there couldnât 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 Maxwellâs hardline orders, the researchers had ground themselves into the floor for three straight days and forced a breakthrough.
It was only one Tierâup to
Tier 19
âbut for Ethan, that was perfect. Being able to break down Tier 19 crystal cores was exactly what he needed.
When twenty thousand Flamebirds carrying the Fallen Star Guard swept into Atlas Cityâs airspace, the locals looked up with naked envy.
Fallen Star Guard.
By now, it was the unit every Enhanced dreamed about joining.
As they landed, the pressure rolling off the Guard hit like a wall. Atlas Cityâs 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. Heâd called Charles and the others over, and they were waiting in the reception hall.
The moment Ethan appeared, they all stood and came forward.
"Ethan..."
"Ethan!"
Every one of Atlas Cityâs big shots was all smiles, courteous as hell.
Ethan didnât waste time. "Letâs break down the crystal cores first."
"Of course," Maxwell said immediately.
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 members up.
Maxwell and the others just stared.
Twenty thousand Tier 19 coresâpulled 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, theyâd 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, Ethanâs mood improved noticeably.
Now the Fallen Star Guard wouldnât 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.