The battle between Darion and Vesalius, the two Princes of the Empire, lasted for a full three days.
Darion's blood descendants were not many in number, but the size of the army under Vesalius's command wasn't considered large either, as the main forces had all been concentrated over at the circular fortress.
After the initial fierce battle, both sides realized that they could not quickly determine a victor in combat, so they tacitly lowered the intensity of the fight.
Therefore, even though they had been fighting for three days, the casualties on both sides were still controlled within a certain range.
The tip of Vesalius's sword swung, splitting a giant bat that dared to approach him in two: "Darion, you've lived for so many years, and your brain has ended up like this? Just because a few random outsiders said a few words, you brought this little bit of your household here to throw your life away?"
"They weren't any random outsiders," Darion looked at the falling giant bat with an aching heart and gritted his teeth. "Besides, I am not betraying! The Demon King has returned, he is the true master of the Empire. The one who is betraying is you!"
"You chose the wrong side. Just wait to face His Majesty's reckoning."
Right at this moment, two bats flew in from different directions, one from the left and one from the right, landing on his and Darion's arms almost simultaneously.
The two Princes exchanged a look from afar, and then simultaneously opened the letters brought by the bats.
Darion looked down and scanned it; the letter only had a few sparse lines of words.
He finished reading, read it again, and then threw his head back and laughed heartily!
He laughed so hard he bent over, laughing until the surrounding blood descendants, who didn't understand what was going on, turned their heads in confusion to look at him.
Vesalius also finished reading the letter. His hand dropped, and the letter paper slipped from between his fingers, flipping over in the wind before falling into the mud.
A layer of disbelief first surfaced on his face, as if he didn't recognize those words on the paper, or as if he recognized them but refused to comprehend them.
Then that layer of disbelief shattered, revealing the thing underneath—fear.
Back when Mortis usurped the throne, he was also one of the masterminds, which was why Mortis trusted him instead of Darion when dealing with the Demon King.
But now... Mortis had been killed by the Demon King?!
With the assistance of nearly half the Empire, even the Demon King should have...
However, the truth was just so.
Under the watchful eyes of everyone, Vesalius suddenly pulled his cape, transformed into a bat, and flew rapidly toward the east, leaving behind the still bewildered blood descendants and soldiers.
"Hahaha, Vesalius! Vesalius!" Seeing this, Darion laughed even louder. "You said I stood on the wrong side, so what is this? You ran away quite decisively!"
Further away, Grey and the other Demon-kin secretly observing this scene—although they still didn't know what had happened—couldn't help but form a guess in their hearts: the sky over the Empire was about to change!
After returning to the throne, the Demon King issued an ultimatum to the surviving Pillars of the Empire in the name of the Empire's Emperor.
Unsurprisingly, Eleanor decisively dropped to her knees and submitted. The precarious Duke Levi also submitted after receiving a promise that the Empire would support him.
Darion hurried over even faster to pay his respects to the Demon King.
The half-demon Veralis used the opportunity of paying respects to the Demon King to launch a sudden sneak attack. After being taught a lesson by the Demon King, she finally settled down and became obedient.
As for Sigmund, who was guarding High Keep Fortress, he ultimately chose to submit after the Demon King promised to resolve his bloodline advancement issue.
Thus, the Empire, which had already been on the brink of collapse, finally did not erupt into an even greater civil war again over a trivial matter like changing the Emperor.
However, this still could not change the Empire's current situation.
Taking back his Empire and analyzing all the compiled intelligence, the Demon King discovered that the Empire's greatest enemy was actually the Puchis.
Not the human Puchi Masters, but the Puchis, the mushrooms, and the fungal mat itself!
During his time in hiding, the Demon King had also conducted a certain depth of research on the Puchis.
In just a few short years, Puchis had occupied more than half the world, completely changing the landscape of the continent.
The speed of this progress absolutely could not be explained by the mutation of some "low-level monsters." In the Demon King's eyes, it seemed more like the handiwork of a god.
Moreover, those diverse and high-level skills on the Puchis...
"[Greed]? But why can it affect all Puchis?" Summarizing the intelligence from all sides, the Demon King pondered various possibilities but failed to arrive at a reasonable answer.
Regardless, Puchis had clearly become the Empire's greatest enemy today.
The fungal mat in the North was still spreading toward the central region of the Empire. Even though the Mushroom Fortress was busy digesting its occupied territories and didn't continue marching south, just cleaning up the spreading fungal mat left those cities feeling completely overwhelmed.
Some cities even had local lords who simply abandoned the city and fled because they couldn't stop the fungal mat from spreading, resulting in the city being overgrown with mycelium.
If nothing was done to stop it, the Empire being occupied by the fungal mat would just be a matter of time. When that time came, the plan in the Demon King's heart would naturally be out of the question.
Therefore, the manufacturing blueprints for a new type of magical instrument were distributed to the various border city fortresses through the Empire's communication crystals.
This instrument only had two functions.
It gathered mana from around the city, artificially creating a high-mana environment sufficient for Slimes to be born in massive numbers.
Then, through a control item linked to the instrument, soldiers holding the control item within a certain range of the instrument could drive the Slimes to move.
Unlike those red and green Slimes that fell from the sky in the circular fortress, these newborn Slimes were generally under level ten, which meant they practically had zero combat power.
But they could eat the fungal mat.
There was no need for specific control; as long as they were driven onto the fungal mat, they would instinctively eat it, even the parts deep underground.
Although the corrosion resistance of those mycelial threads was extremely high, it wasn't immunity after all.
With the construction of these Slime controllers in the cities, the soldiers and laborers who were exhausted every day from cleaning up the fungal mat finally breathed a sigh of relief.
At least the situations where people were forced to abandon their cities due to the fungal mat had finally disappeared.
But blocking the fungal mat in the north was not enough. Thanks to a certain "smart Duke," there was also a giant bomb made of the fungal mat within the Empire—Eleanor's territory.
Being well aware of the danger of Puchis, the Demon King naturally couldn't tolerate such a bomb being placed inside the Empire.
Furthermore, those so-called Blood Livestock Factories truly made it impossible for the Demon King to have much of a good impression of the place.
Thus, after slightly stabilizing the situation within the Empire, Eleanor received news that the Demon King would dispatch an envoy to reorganize her territory—clearing the fungal mat and dismantling the Blood Livestock Factories.
"I never agreed to this! How can he...!" Eleanor's first reaction upon receiving the news was furious indignation, followed immediately by terror.
Both things were the bargaining chips she relied on to settle down and get on with her life. Without them, how could she still be the wealthiest Duke?
But she also seemed powerless to resist.
What Eleanor didn't know was that in some unknown corner of the Mushroom Garden, a cyan mushroom was equally infuriated by the Demon King's actions.
That guy Mortis had been defeated too fast, so fast that it didn't give Lin Jun a chance to intervene.
Once the Empire fell into the Demon King's hands, he immediately whipped up this detestable method of using Slimes to clean up the fungal mat.
And this actually wasn't the end of it. The evil Demon King actually wanted to dismantle all of Eleanor's Blood Livestock Factories. If he dismantled them, what was there left for him to save?
Although there were still some details that hadn't been fully prepared, looking at it now, Lin Jun had no choice but to execute the rescue operation ahead of schedule.
(End of Chapter)
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