Chapter 708

Chapter 708

That evening. The Lord's office.

I was lost in thought, twirling a fountain pen in my hand.

‘The recovery of the bodies and the reconstruction of the city... It's happening unbelievably fast.’

As the imminent destruction disappeared, people from all over the world, realizing the gravity of the frontline's work, volunteered in droves.

Thanks to this, we have an abundance of manpower, and it's expected to increase further. The scale of the volunteer army is also rapidly expanding.

‘But the elite forces gathered from various countries are virtually annihilated.’

Volunteers and workers will leave tomorrow morning to retrieve the bodies of those elite soldiers...

I steadied my aching heart and began to assess the current state of the frontline.

‘First, the troops.’

The 30,000-strong unit of elites from the World Guardian Front is annihilated. The airship fleet is similarly wiped out.

The only operational airship is 'La Mancha'. Even that needs significant repairs due to the strain from the 'Night Closing' operation.

‘If there's a silver lining, it's that the soldiers who were originally part of Crossroad are still here.’

Specialists in monster battles who have fought alongside me in this hell since the first year. The main force of the Monster Front, who grew from a ragtag bunch of rookies to master monster hunters.

Additionally, the Everblack Empire infantry have also maintained their strength.

The allied units of other races have also maintained their strength, though they were never numerous to begin with.

Living under oppression in their autonomous regions, they couldn’t amass large forces. However, their quality of troops is high.

There are also several remaining units, and finally...

‘The volunteer army...’

The volunteer army began to integrate into Crossroad during the Autumn Festival.

Their numbers are quite large, and they've been undergoing solid training since then, but they're still unpolished. Especially against the current enemy, the Black Dragon, they couldn’t be deployed at the frontline.

‘Their morale is high...’

Can they really be deployed in battles against monsters? Even if they are, can they fight properly against the dreadful monsters of the late third year?

"..."

After organizing the remaining units and small units from various regions into documents, I placed my pen on new papers to handle the next issue.

‘Next, the defense facilities.’

It’s awkward to say this myself, but Crossroad has become very proficient in demolishing and rebuilding.

All sorts of facilities and collapsed structures within the city can be quickly restored.

The problem, as always...

‘The city walls.’

They were completely destroyed by the body slam and subsequent self-destruction of the King of Flies, and when we finally rebuilt them, they were torn apart again by the Night Bringer’s breath and darkness.

The southern wall has always had a hard time.

‘We need to restore it.’

Yes, we need to, but...

‘How are we going to do this? Ugh.’

Structures like city walls naturally require years of construction time.

During the last reconstruction, we were able to drastically shorten the construction period thanks to magical construction technology from the Lake Kingdom and wall parts airlifted from the Imperial Capital of New Terra,

But this time, we can't rely on such luck.

‘The broken wall... the wrecked forward base...’

With my hand on my forehead, I let out a deep sigh.

‘There's really a lot of work to be done.’

No immediate solution is in sight.

At least the wall parts brought from New Terra were assembled in a modular fashion, so the undamaged parts are still standing firm.

We’ll have to focus on restoring from there and devise some kind of strategy as we proceed.

City walls, forward bases, barracks, supply depots... After reviewing the list of damaged facilities and outlining a rough restoration plan,

I looked down at the next stack of documents.

‘And lastly, the equipment.’

The equipment of the heroes fighting the nightmare monsters at the frontlines is even more crucial than ordinary military supplies.

And that vital equipment...

‘Wow, this is insane.’

As I flipped through the documents listing the damaged equipment, my jaw dropped lower and lower. Damn, how much did we wear out?

Starting with my own equipment.

[Great Commander’s Banner], lost.

"Ugh!"

I couldn't help but cough violently, hastily grabbing my coffee cup and drinking it like water.

‘More than anything, we obtained a lot.’

It’s not just the purified equipment.

We defeated that damned... no, more than damned, the most wretched monster in history, the Black Dragon, so the rewards were also enormous.

First of all, we harvested a massive amount of materials from Night Bringer's corpse.

I didn't manage to get an intact corpse since I burned it all with the bombardment of light at the end, but I still managed to gather a lot.

A dragon's entire body is made of top-grade equipment materials.

A mountain of these materials is piled up right in front of the city. Scales, bones, horns, claws... all sorts of parts were swept into the forge.

Without exaggeration, it's enough to outfit all the soldiers on the frontline with weapons and armor. The equipment of the entire frontline will be able to level up.

‘The materials to watch out for are, of course, the magic cores and the dragon heart.’

Night Bringer had a structure with the dragon heart, the core of the magic power, and another magic core assigned to each of its seven heads.

So, there should be one dragon heart and seven magic cores.

‘We got one dragon heart and eight magic cores.’

At first, I wondered why this was, but upon examining the recovered magic cores, I found the reason.

One magic core belonged to Scalian, who had been absorbed by Night Bringer at the last moment. Although his body was lost, the magic core wasn’t fully absorbed and thus remained.

I could tell because it had the mark of my flag, which had pierced Scalian’s heart.

"..."

What should I do with this?

Should I make equipment out of it, or...

Pondering, I reviewed the rest of the list.

Besides the intact seven magic cores (actually, six auxiliary heads were eaten by Jörmungandr, so we recovered them from Jörmungandr's severed body).

And, similarly, the dragon heart with the mark of my flag.

‘As much as you destroyed our equipment, you shall become our equipment, Night Bringer...’

Since the forge is extremely busy right now, I'll make the equipment request when things settle down a bit.

I looked up at the pile of golden and white boxes stacked in a corner of the office.

These are the stage clear rewards. Besides the EX-grade boxes, I also obtained eight SSR boxes.

‘In the game, I could barely get ten in one round...’

It seems I got close to twenty SSR boxes during this three-year campaign. Why is the game being so generous? Did Aider pull some strings? Or...

‘Looking back, they did provide some weirdly complete set items... They are pretty generous with items.’

Despite the hellish difficulty of the game, at least there's a minimal sense of fairness. Hmm.

Thinking this, I reached out to the boxes. I intended to open them all right here.

But then,

Thud-thud-thud-thud!

I heard someone running down the corridor, and

Bang!

The office door was flung open.

Startled, I looked towards the door. It was Lucas who burst in. Catching his breath, Lucas shouted.

"It's an emergency, my lord!"

"What? What's going on?!"

Lucas panicking like this? What on earth happened?

‘An enemy raid? Or internal strife? A construction site collapse? A defection of an allied nation? Which one?’

All sorts of thoughts flashed through my mind in an instant,

"Uh, Evangeline! Evangeline...!"

"Evangeline?!"

Hearing the name of our melee commander made me even more flustered.

What about Evangeline? Is she hurt? Did she have an accident? Did she run away? Did she get PTSD and splash pink paint all over the construction site? Damn, which one is it?!

Then Lucas delivered the answer I never could have imagined.

"She got a confession of love-!"

"...?"

For a moment, I was so confused that I stood there blankly.

Then, without realizing it, I screamed.

"Don't lie to me-!"

--TL Notes--

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