While Anbaixiu embarked on his grand deep-sea adventure with the princess, things were equally thrilling on the other side of the continent.
Ever since this lich burst onto the scene, the continental war had taken a dramatic turn.
The once-invincible Ryan had finally begun to suffer defeats—and with each loss, the outcome grew uglier.
Setting aside the battle where the Ryan Emperor had crushed his own troops underfoot—which could at least be excused as the Githyanki catching Ryan off guard—the subsequent beating dealt by the orcs left them with no excuses whatsoever.
This time, the orcs had mobilized their entire nation's might, deploying all of their elite forces. On the front lines, their count of legendary combatants even slightly outnumbered Ryan's.
Ryan, however, could not afford to do the same. Over the years, the empire had made far too many enemies. Powerful figures were needed to garrison the orc border, things were looking amiss in the Emerald Dream Forest—where the druids might well kick them while they were down—and the former lands of the Unholy Hymn, now reduced to the Volcanic Sea, were largely overrun by the undead, Ryan's mortal foes.
After fighting for so long and expending vast amounts of manpower and resources, the empire ended up surrounded by enemies on all sides, as if all its previous victories had been an illusion.
To make matters worse, the orcs were not merely bringing overwhelming high-tier combat power to the table; they were also displaying an extraordinary command capability.
In the past, an order telling a scout squad to shift laterally by ten meters was nothing more than a military joke.
Battlefield conditions shifted in the blink of an eye. By the time an order reached the front lines, the situation would have changed beyond recognition. Generals had no choice but to anticipate moves well in advance.
Through an understanding of both foe and self, through constant probing, and through directives of attack and defense, commanders lured the enemy into their traps, thereby seizing superiority on the field.
Winning a battle from a thousand miles away was no idle boast, but an indispensable skill for any general.
Ange Watson was arguably the most brilliant general among the younger generation. Though not a legend himself, his talent for commanding troops was second to none across the empire.
One had to admit that the former Supreme Arbiter possessed formidable genes: he had fathered three sons, each uniquely gifted and outstanding in his own right.
Yet, on the battlefield, Ange Watson still lost to an orc general whose name no one had ever heard.
Ange Watson had calculated the orc army's path of advance with utmost precision, laid the ambushes, and eliminated every scout the orcs had sent out, waiting only for the enemy to walk into the net. Yet time and again, the orcs managed to break out even after triggering the traps. It was as if every single one of them possessed far-seeing eyes, watching the encirclement tighten and pinpointing the weakest link to stage a breakout.
Such an occurrence could be brushed off once or twice, but the reality was that it happened every single time.
Any tactical intention of the Ryan troops, once witnessed by a single orc, was as good as known to the entire orc army.
Then came the transmission of orders. The orcs possessed a means of relaying commands even swifter than magic mirrors.
At one point, the orcs executed an absurd tactic where they contested a high ground multiple times throughout a single day. As if calculating the Ryan army's movement intervals down to the minute, the orcs beat them to the summit every time, resting comfortably on the heights while waiting for Ryan's forces to arrive. They would unleash a brutal barrage from above, only to pull back swiftly.
Just when the Ryan forces assumed the orcs had truly fled and the main body set out in pursuit, they would discover that the orcs had circled back to strike them from behind. They exploited the orcs' natural advantages in mountainous terrain to perfection, catching the Ryan army off guard at every turn. Gathering and dispersing at will, maneuvering troops like divine beings, they made their enemy dance entirely to their tune.
Ange Watson initially assumed that a host of brilliant orc commanders had emerged on the front lines, adapting on the fly to dismantle his tactical formations. In the end, however, he discovered that the front ranks were composed entirely of standard warriors—the most common orc marauders. Troops of this caliber could only charge forward with savage roars; expecting them to execute such nuanced tactics was an impossible feat.
A mysterious adversary was pulling the strings behind this orc army, possessing an intelligence transmission network that operated with uncanny speed.
Ange Watson attempted to exploit this by feeding his opponent false information. While this yielded minor results initially, the enemy grew wise by the second attempt.
The adversary not only commanded a method for lightning-fast intelligence sharing, but was also a consummate general in his own right, capable of adjusting strategies anywhere, anytime, based on the evolving situation on the battlefield.
What made it all the more terrifying was that every single orc obeyed his commands without hesitation.
When these fearless orcs submitted completely to the will of a formidable commander, their army transformed into something truly monstrous.
Even so, Ryan and the orcs managed to trade blows for a time, and the empire's losses were not yet disastrously unsightly.
The real issue was that the people of Ryan found such defeats hard to swallow. They had always been invincible; how could they now be humiliated by mere orcs?
Public opinion gradually turned against Ange Watson, whose family background was sensitive to begin with.
A father who had resigned as Supreme Arbiter, a younger brother suspected of inciting rebellion—with all these factors compounded, people could hardly help letting their imaginations run wild.
*Could Ange Watson be losing on purpose?*
As the rumor spread, Ryan was forced to replace its general mid-campaign.
And that replacement triggered an immediate disaster.
While Ange Watson had managed to hold his own, the orcs immediately detected the shift in command style once the new general took over, launching a relentless sequence of night raids.
Feints could turn into full-scale assaults at a moment's notice; an all-out charge could instantly become a diversion; a controlled withdrawal could disguise itself as a rout, and the moment one pursued what appeared to be fleeing troops, one walked right into an ambush.
This almost magical command style left the newly appointed Ryan general completely at sea. It flew in the face of everything he had learned about leading troops over half a lifetime.
The consequence was a devastating and bloody defeat for Ryan in a matter of days.
The Ryan military remained overly reliant on the renowned might of its paladin legions—fearless, unyielding in their resolve, and capable of turning the tide even in the direst of plights.
Habitually relying on this tradition, the new commander committed the paladin legion to the fray, hoping to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat at the critical hour.
Under normal circumstances, it would have worked. Ryan's history boasted countless triumphs against overwhelming odds, all forged by the blades of its paladin legions.
This time, however, the outcome was entirely different.
Ryan's paladins were unafraid to die, but neither were the orcs. Howling for vengeance, the orcs threw themselves into the meat grinder with equal fervor.
When two elite forces capable of fighting down to the last man clashed, but one side held the tactical advantage, the outcome was foregone.
An entire paladin legion was wiped out: two thousand paladins and three hundred clerics of light fell on the battlefield. A border city was lost in the aftermath, and twenty thousand Ryan citizens were taken captive by the orcs.
Though Ange Watson had suffered defeat after defeat, he had done no worse than contract his battle lines; never had he outright surrendered a city.
With this catastrophe, every citizen of Ryan finally understood.
It wasn't that Ange Watson had thrown the battles on purpose. The opponent they faced was simply formidable beyond comprehension.
The Ryan Emperor convened a grand assembly and shouldered all the blame himself, declaring a general amnesty for all past slander directed at Ange Watson. At the same time, he granted Ange Watson supreme military authority, demanding only one thing in return: not another inch of Ryan's territory was to be lost.
Entrusted with command amidst the crisis, Ange Watson had no choice but to rally the battered forces.
He brought every magic mirror he could muster to the front lines. Taking advantage of the enemy's momentary complacency following their sweeping victory, he wiped out two overextended orc detachments, barely stemming their further advance.
Next, Ange Watson leveraged the natural barrier of the Emerald River to halt the orc vanguard.
Spanning more than three hundred meters across, the Emerald River was the second largest river within Ryan's borders. If the orcs wished to press their offensive, they had to cross it. Ryan maintained a strict, vigilant defense, preventing the orcs from breaching the line in the short term.
The orcs possessed ships, given their own coastline, but their seagoing vessels could not navigate river channels, nor could they haul them overland to the Emerald River.
Consequently, the orcs resorted to an alternative ploy.
They sought to trade Ryan lives for Ryan ships.
After overrunning the border city, the orcs had refrained from their usual indiscriminate slaughter. Instead, they had locked up all the survivors and now marched them before the Ryan lines, using their lives to blackmail the empire.
This was another unprecedented first in Ryan's history.
In the past, Ryan had always lived by the creed that whoever infringed upon the empire would be hunted down, no matter how far. When the dwarves had merely acted with bias in border trade disputes and swindled Ryan of some gold, a succession of wars had followed until the dwarves lost half a desert.
Now, the burden of choice fell upon Ryan.
Were nearly twenty thousand Ryan lives to be saved or forsaken? Saving them meant handing the orcs the very means to push deeper into Ryan's heartland.
Yet Ryan could not afford to deliberate for long. The orcs had already begun their executions—one person killed each day, regardless of age or gender, publicly butchered across the river in full view of the Ryan troops.
Ryan was pushed into a corner.
Just as Ange Watson was buckling under the immense pressure, the Ryan Emperor issued an absolute decree: no compromise with the orcs was permitted under any circumstances.
With this edict, the Ryan Emperor thrust himself into the eye of the storm, shielding Ange Watson from the brunt of the public outcry. Accusations of cruelty and cold-bloodedness were leveled directly at the emperor, plunging the realm into renewed unrest.
The orcs did not stand on ceremony. Since Ryan was so resolute, there was no reason to waste provisions feeding twenty thousand mouths. They slaughtered them all and cast the corpses into the Emerald River.
The river ran red with blood, bodies drifting downstream until the Ryan forces fished every last one of them ashore.
Twenty thousand men, women, and children. The horrific sight turned the eyes of every Ryan soldier crimson with grief and helpless rage.
They despised the brutal orcs, but they also harbored resentment toward their own emperor.
Soldiers were meant to lay down their lives to defend the homeland—why should the lives of common civilians be used as collateral?
However, that grievance vanished almost as quickly as it arose.
Once all the bodies had been recovered, the Ryan Emperor appeared, transforming into a time dragon. The silver-white dragon unleashed a power rivaling that of a deity, winding back time itself to bring all twenty thousand people back to life.
The spectacle left every onlooker dumbstruck.
Resurrecting twenty thousand souls in one stroke—was this something a mortal could achieve?
No wonder His Majesty had insisted on zero compromise. He had possessed the means to save everyone all along! This was a visionary monarch; this was the ordained sovereign of the Ryan people!
However fierce the public fury had been before, that was how deeply the Ryan Emperor was revered now.
Yet only the common folk rejoiced. Anyone with a grasp of the mystic arts was already filled with dread for His Majesty's physical state.
Time carried weight. Across identical spans of years, different lives bore vastly different significance. Turning back a thousand years for an ordinary stone was trivial, but rolling back a millennium for Arthur Ryan was a feat even deities might fail to accomplish.
Making every resident of the imperial capital one year younger was simple enough, but restoring twenty thousand souls from death back to life required pulling their spirits back as well. Whether ascended to divine realms, dragged down to the Hells, or dispersed into nothingness, every soul had to be reconstituted. The aggregate weight of such an act was staggering.
The greater the impact of reversing time, the heavier the toll exacted upon the caster.
Every time His Majesty wielded the Dragon Tyrant Armament, he had to pay a steep price. Were it not so, why shouldn't the emperor simply transform into the Demonic Dragon and revert every orc into an infant?
Just as the discerning feared, the Ryan Emperor made no further public appearances after resurrecting the twenty thousand civilians, remaining secluded in the palace under the pretext of "recuperating from illness."
Yet contrary to what outsiders imagined, the Ryan Emperor was not bedridden and breathing his last.
Instead, he was in the throes of madness, thrashing wildly against the walls and floor. His body had gradually fused with the Dragon Tyrant Armament, granting the young emperor, Price Ryan, immense physical power—every punch shattered solid stone to dust.
Unfortunately, the violence brought him no relief.
A tearing agony continued to spread, gnawing at his very soul. No medicine or healing magic could abate it.
"Damn you! You lied to me! I'm dying—I'm dying of pain!"
Veins bulged across Price Ryan's contorted face as he roared in frenzy.
Within his mind, another voice echoed: *"Calm yourself, Your Majesty. Like you, I am enduring the agony of a torn soul. Besides, I told you the consequences from the beginning. We have yet to master the full power of a prime time dragon, so side effects are inevitable. But for the sake of your prestige, the sacrifice was worth it. You are now stepping closer to becoming greater than Arthur Ryan ever was!"*
"I don't care! I'd rather those twenty thousand died! I don't want to suffer this pain! It hurts—it hurts so much! I'll kill you! You liar!"
*"Endure it. Just hold on, and your soul will slowly heal."*
"I can't! Didn't you say your soul was damaged too? Why aren't you in agony?!"
*"A dragon's soul is far more resilient than that of a human. Of course, another reason is that I inherited the memories of the Demonic Dragon, giving me superior willpower. If you truly cannot bear it, I have a method of soul transformation that can alleviate some of your suffering."*
"Tell me! Tell me right now!"
Price Ryan had already reduced the chamber to rubble, yet the pounding agony in his skull did not diminish in the slightest. At this point, even if he were told that eating filth and drinking urine would soothe the headache, he would not hesitate.
*"Don't agree so hastily. This method carries its own side effects, so don't blame me for not warning you beforehand."*
The tone of Artross, the dragon soul awakened from the Dragon Tyrant Armament, shifted slightly. Yet Price Ryan was in no state to care, already writhing on the ground in torment.
"What side effect?! Just say it! I can't take this anymore!"
Artross replied in a low, heavy voice: *"Once this method is employed, your soul will gradually convert into a dragon soul. When that happens, you will no longer be human."*
"That doesn't matter! I don't care about being human!"
Amidst Price Ryan's furious roar, a bizarre energy seeped into his soul, rapidly soothing the excruciating pain.
However, a flood of memories that did not belong to him surged in alongside it.
When Price Ryan finally pushed himself up from the ground, his right eye had changed from a human blue pupil into a golden, slitted dragon's eye.
The young emperor let out a sigh of relief. "Finally, I no longer have to put up with this foolish waste of space. Arthur, I will come looking for you soon. Just wait for me by that lich's side."
Chapter 463