One for the Expeditionary Force, One for Me

"BAM!"

Before those two idiots could react, you grabbed their heads, channeled true energy into them, struck their souls, and forced their spirits to separate from their bodies.

Then you swung the Ten Thousand Souls Banner, pulling their souls into it.

The banner purified the two dragon-kin, and in an instant, they turned traitor.

Finally, you ordered them to return to their bodies.

With this smooth series of moves, you had fundamentally transformed them from the depths of their souls, making them sincerely decide to abandon the darkness and embrace the light.

"We pledge allegiance to you, Master!"

"Tell me everything you know about the dimensional rift!"

The two dragon-kin began to report.

It turned out that this dragon army's passage between two dimensions—the rift—had indeed been achieved with help from someone on the human realm's side.

But the dragon-kin didn’t know who that was.

In the past, when they tried to open a stable rift to the human realm, they failed repeatedly.

Because your intelligence base had been destroyed, they couldn't mobilize resources on the human side, making everything inconvenient.

During one forced attempt to open the rift, when it was about to fail again, someone on this side stepped in and stabilized it.

The Dragon Realm Lord figured the situation on this side was unclear, and a rash invasion wasn’t wise.

But the Sixth Expeditionary Army hadn’t campaigned for centuries. The entire force was eager to earn merit to exchange for lifespan, and they repeatedly petitioned for deployment. The Realm Lord had no choice but to agree.

However, while using this rift, the expeditionary army discovered a problem.

The rift wasn’t very convenient.

Mainly, the transfer was slow, and the mass that could be transferred per trip was low—even when things were stored in storage items, their mass didn’t vanish.

This forced the Sixth Expeditionary Army to send people and supplies through in batches, one after another.

Before the final batch completed its transfer, the earlier dragon-kin had to hide in countless nearby seabed caves.

These seabed caves weren’t natural formations.

This was the Chaos Crystal Sea. Beneath the seabed lay vast deposits of crystal ore veins.

These caves were left behind after the Wang family had mined out the crystals.

To avoid detection, the dragon-kin dug deeper into the caves and set up defensive measures and anti-surveillance techniques around them.

The whole process took a full forty years.

"You mean you people hid under the sea for thirty or forty years? Dragon-kin aren’t fish—how did you endure it?"

"Reporting to you, Master, it was indeed awful, but we had Breath-Retaining Pearls. Holding them in our mouths let us breathe underwater like fish, and we fed on the fish around us."

The two idiots, who’d come up for a smoke, showed you the green pearls under their tongues.

The dragon-kin sure liked making items into bead shapes.

Probably because they all had dragon pearls inside them—it was a racial fetish.

"Since this rift is so inconvenient, why didn’t you open more?"

"Reporting to you, Master, the home realm did try to open more. But the mysterious being who stabilized the first rift didn’t help again. And those of us who’d arrived couldn’t act openly—without a full expeditionary army’s setup, if we made a move and the human realm caught on, the war would be a mess. Plus, we had to consider the cost..."

Maintaining two rifts didn’t cost just twice as much as one.

Every world had basic rules to keep space stable.

When one rift appeared, the world’s rules’ self-repairing force was weak—like a minor illness that barely triggered the immune system.

With two rifts, the immune system would take serious action.

Keeping both rifts running smoothly would deplete far more resources.

The Dragon Realm could afford it—they’d plundered many worlds already.

But was it necessary?

The dragon-kin had many internal factions. One faction could file a complaint with the Realm Lord, and the Sixth Expeditionary Army would struggle to get special funding.

After all, since there was already one rift, if the Sixth Expeditionary Army couldn’t fight, the Seventh or Eighth could take a turn.

Why couldn’t they manage with one rift when others could?

There were no excuses. The great Dragon Realm wanted results, not reasons.

Hearing this, you couldn’t help but sigh.

The dragon army that had thrown the human realm into chaos, caused the tragic deaths of countless heroes, and brought suffering to all living things—was just the Sixth Expeditionary Army.

Even if, for argument’s sake, the human realm defeated them today—

So what?

There were still the Seventh and Eighth waiting in line.

Even if they didn’t attack all at once, wearing the human realm down one army after another, how could it endure?

"To truly solve the dragon-kin invasion, we have to stop them from crossing over. That would give the human realm more time to develop, at least enough to hold its own in defensive counterattacks on home turf."

From years of fierce battles, you had confidence in the human realm’s growth.

Humans and demons—two former great races.

Now, they were merely covered in dust.

Give them enough time—even if they couldn’t restore their former glory, self-defense shouldn’t be hard.

You pushed the more distant worries aside for now.

The immediate issue was dealing with the Sixth Expeditionary Army—otherwise, there’d be no future to think about.

What should you do with this rift?

Destroy it now, cutting off the Sixth’s retreat and blocking their supplies and reinforcements?

No. You chose to keep it.

But you transformed the souls of all the guards at the rift, right down to their core.

To avoid raising suspicion, you didn’t touch the generals above the Martial King level—you only quietly turned the dragon soldiers.

The issue of reinforcements from the dragon side wasn’t a real concern.

It took forty years to move two hundred thousand dragon-kin across. This war wasn’t going to last another forty years.

If it did drag on, you could always destroy the rift later.

By leaving the rift open, the Sixth Expeditionary Army would think they still had an escape route. On the day they tried to retreat—surprise!

Meanwhile, all the guards at the rift were now your people, playing along with the generals.

If any resources came through this rift, they’d be split—one share for the Sixth, one share for you.

Who knows? The weapons sent to the expeditionary army might end up missing a screw or having an extra handle.

Year seventy-nine of the invasion. You were ninety-eight years old.

The dragon-kin’s inter-dimensional rift was now completely under your control.

So you went to their stronghold east of Hundred Death Mountain.

The dragon-kin’s architecture looked twisted and sinister.

They hunted large animals and demons, skinned and dismembered them, used bones as frames and hides as roofs—setting up a military camp thick with the stench of blood.

"Such barbarians!"

You sneered in disdain.