Chapter 719: Getting Closer to the Truth

Translator: imperfectluck Editor: Kurisu

In a way, Empress Maria gave me a rather good impression.

She was quite polite as she thanked me for my assistance. She didn’t even make any requests of me, such as asking me to help them on the battlefield.

Our first meeting ended in less than five minutes. Since there was still an ongoing war right outside, this was indeed a poor time to be talking.

Even though I cleared out this portion of the battlefield, even more fire element ogres and demons would swarm this place soon.

The Chaos Faction hadn’t sent any mega powerful individuals here, because there was no need. In a long war of attrition, cannon fodder would have almost no value. The Chaos Faction would never lack for cannon fodder.

I didn’t volunteer to help here, since this had nothing to do with me, but even more because I needed to recover my mana.

Although it was great fun to clear out a large number of enemies with an AOE spell, every time that I used such a spell, I would require a long time in order to replenish the mana that I used up.

This war didn’t end just because I arrived. Rather, it was the opposite. After a momentary silence, some Fire Demon Lords arrived to check out the situation. They started an even more vicious battle against the humans.

I simply watched from the sidelines, but there was much to exclaim over.

This frontline battle was already nearing the level of bloody battles in the Chaos Abyss. San Antonio’s foundational strength was also truly astonishing. No matter if it was the aerial knights fighting in the sky, the mages on the fortress walls, or even the regular soldiers, they were all combat veterans.

On other battlefields, they would all be considered strong individuals who were capable of holding their own, but such individuals were incredibly common here. I even saw several mages whose magical wavelengths were more powerful than average Level 4 mages, yet I had never even heard of these mages’ names before.

While most people would only look at the surface, those in the know would analyze deeper.

Although the battle here seemed chaotic, there was actually plenty of order among the chaos. The battle was far from being utterly chaotic.

The commanders were unhurriedly giving orders. The lower-ranking military officers were steadily transmitting orders from above. However, what attracted my attention the most were the seemingly ordinary mages.

The mages appeared to be highly experienced at fighting while cooperating with the ordinary warriors. They used all sorts of large AOE buff magic spells. They also effectively used attack magic spells to suppress the enemy.

Every single bit of mana was used to improve the situation on the battlefield rather than trying to immediately destroy the enemy before them. Although this seemed rather basic, this was actually the core strategy for any mage on the battlefield.

Every explosion had a standard radius and standard attack power. They would all be precise at supporting whoever needed it, further improving the warriors and mages’ tacit cooperation. The benefit of such standardized spells was that they would really help to conserve mana and concentration. Not only that, any other mage would be able to replace a mage with no mana at any time.

After the first attack wave of magic spells ended, a second mage would replace the first, and continue a barrage of spells for 10 minutes. After that, a third mage would replace the second.

Perhaps this would be insufficient to destroy the enemy, but it would ensure that their own side would always have magical support.

I had already seen far too many mages who were the type that could only fight for three minutes but then require two hours of rest, or fight for 10 minutes but need to rest for an entire night… Fine, I admit that the Mist Alliance still wasn’t experienced enough at using mages on the battlefield in cooperation with warriors.

San Antonio was known to be potentially the strongest human mega empire of all. Perhaps this didn’t sound much different from other powerful human mega empires, but the difference in foundational strength here was quite obvious.

The differences were in all areas, in traditions as well as minor details. All such things would require time to gain.

At the very least, the moment that I returned to the Mist Alliance, I would immediately be writing a new combat mage strategy guide for cooperative warfare.

By dusk, the battle returned to how it had been originally, as if nothing had happened at all. It was as if the major AOE cleansing that I had performed had been forgotten entirely.

Perhaps this was why both sides’ higher-ups were staying tacitly uninvolved. On a frontline battlefield where countless thousands were fighting, individual strength would be far too meager.

1000 people would be more than enough to fill someone’s field of vision, but if the battle was instead on a scale of millions, even if one person cleared the entire battlefield that they could see in front of them, the battlefield would soon be filled with other fighters again.

And to the demons, losing a few thousand or tens of thousands of low-level demons didn’t matter at all.

It would be impossible to change the battlefield and the map without using a forbidden spell. Using a forbidden spell would mean a battle to the very death. In a way, using major weapons like forbidden spells had its own troubles.

The battle finally ended late into the night.

Maria directly welcomed my arrival at a simple welcoming party. As for business and trade, she told me to talk to someone named Xilan, who was her chief financial officer.

Although Maria wasn’t a member of the Hell Faction, due to her relationship with Ayer, we had a relatively friendly relationship.

Besides, when compared to Winston, who simply waited for news from the front in his capital city, I preferred to deal with Maria, who personally dealt with things on the frontline herself.

“The ancient ruin of the Sun God?”

I directly told her what I was looking for at the welcoming party for me.

Searching by myself for some ruin that might not even exist while alone on the battlefield? I still wanted to live longer, thanks.

Since I was here already, I decided might as well ask the person in charge about any information that she might have.

I brought out Sun God Aloyo’s holy emblem, along with a drawing of what Aloyo looked like with his eagle head, but the end result was rather disappointing.

Maria simply asked the local elders about this, but nobody knew a thing.

It would seem that I would have to try and think of something by myself then.

Since Maria had some free time now, I naturally chatted about the ongoing war with her. She was somewhat interested in my new weapons, and even asked for some experimental data on them.

However, I could tell that she wasn’t actually that interested, and that she was only asking out of politeness.

It was evident that she was quite confident in San Antonio’s traditional military and magical might. At the very least, the current war wasn’t at a scale that she couldn’t handle.

As we discussed, we then went to the topic of the Chaos Abyss and the demons’ movements.

Maria hesitated for a moment before she described a dream that she had recently been having. She would constantly repeat this nightmare in which she would constantly kill others and be killed.

“You’re probably overthinking things due to the war here. Don’t think too much about it.”

I had zero interest in the worries of a “little girl” like Maria, so I was only going to ignore her with a bad excuse like that, but I hadn’t expected to hear a familiar name from her mouth.

“You are a mage as well. You should understand how important dreams are to us. Sometimes, dreams are a mirror that can reflect another dimension. Sometimes, dreams are a prophecy. Recently, I’ve always been dreaming that I’ve been killed, but the person who’s dying isn’t me… I can’t explain it. It’s such a strange feeling. It’s as if I’m both the killer and the victim.”

Maria was rather confused. She had asked for help from her “adopted father” Ayer, who told her that Roland was an expert on the soul that might be able to help her.

And, for some reason, even though this was clearly their first meeting, Maria felt like Roland was trustworthy.

“I’ve been repeatedly having such dreams ever since I was young. There are many different killers. But recently, I’ve been dying more and more. The one who keeps ‘killing’ me is a silver-haired half-demon that I refer to as ‘Elisa’. I even call her ‘Sister’ in my dream, and keep asking her why she’s being so cruel to me.”

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