CHAPTER 64: THE GREAT BEASTMEN REVERSAL

From the beginning, Lucina knew the beastmen would eventually collapse, but she never imagined it would come so quickly. Under their army’s constant harassment, exhausted and starving to the extreme, the beastmen legion’s will lasted only five days!

The soldiers around Lucina couldn’t help but shudder when they saw this scene. What they were looking at—enemies who were once incredibly brave—now felt... not like living people.

This wasn’t an isolated case.

In the time that followed, they encountered countless such "enemies."

Their minds seemed to have been destroyed. One by one, they were like walking corpses. Even when magic bombs fell right beside them, they showed no reaction. As long as they had any strength left, they would unconsciously walk across the grassland. Once their strength was exhausted, they would just sit down and never move again...

Surrender?!

They seemed to have lost any concept of surrender.

They had become like puppets without any intelligence. They seemed to have lost the ability to think. In fact, with just one command, they could abandon everything, including the weapons and armor they depended on for survival.

"Looks like it’s almost over!" Lucina stood on a small hill, gazing ahead with somewhat deep eyes. "This war has really gone much smoother than expected!"

The beastmen soldiers who had lost their fighting spirit were being escorted by the Dawn Legion like a winding river toward the heart of Dawn territory.

The originally chaotic beastmen legion was now neat and orderly, with no whispering or disorder. If they hadn’t lost all fighting spirit, you might think they were some kind of highly capable soldiers at first glance!

The number of prisoners kept growing, the battle line kept getting longer. Sometimes a single Dawn soldier might need to escort hundreds of people, but these soldiers who had fallen into numbness would just obediently follow orders...

Teylir Emirates, Almiran City.

In a rather rough-looking great hall, over a dozen leaders from the Council tribes gathered together. The chief was dead, but they still had their second and third in commands.

"The Dawn Kingdom’s army is still fighting in our territory, with large numbers of troops being slaughtered or captured every day, and large amounts of territory being occupied. We have to find a way to get the Dawn Kingdom out of here!" The new leader of the Giant Elephant tribe looked grim. "We don’t have much time left!"

"What can we do? All our tribal elites have been sent out, and now they’re starting to retreat. We have no bargaining chips for negotiation!" A beastman with a lion’s head and human body looked terrible. "Forget everything else—all the golden warriors from my tribe have gone missing! The God of War has abandoned us..."

Ever since that day when they summoned the miracle, their priests hadn’t felt any response from the God of War. Nobody knew what had gone wrong, and this situation filled them with unprecedented panic.

Could it be... the God was disappointed in them because of that battle’s defeat?!

But whether victory, defeat, peace, or surrender, these were all part of war. Even if they lost despite borrowing the God of War’s miracle, that was still part of war, the nourishment the God of War needed!

Why would this kind of situation happen?

The already tense atmosphere became even more silent after this statement.

"Maybe we never should have worshipped the God of War or started this war. This year, the weather wasn’t actually that bad. Our food supplies were basically enough..."

"What do you mean ’basically enough’! For thousands of years, whenever we hit a big snowfall, we’ve invaded some of the more agriculturally developed areas for plunder. This has been our stable system. It’s just one defeat—who here hasn’t been defeated before?! How can we abandon our faith in the God of War over such a small thing..."

"What do you mean ’small thing’?! Our territory is being invaded by the Dawn Kingdom, we don’t know how many of our warriors have died or been wounded, and now they’re all retreating. You call this a small thing? Then you solve this problem!"

The God of War’s faith was deeply rooted in the Teylir Emirates. Since the savage era, the grassland tribes had seen the God of War as nature itself, as the foundation of everything. They had always followed in the God of War’s footsteps, launching war after war. Even when facing fellow beastmen races, their bloodthirst never stopped. Massacring villages and wiping out tribes was routine, something they took for granted.

The moment someone suggested no longer worshipping the God of War, quite a few people got fired up. They hadn’t experienced the Church of Technology believers’ bombing—they had no idea what fear meant!

The two sides were at each other’s throats, and for a while, neither backed down.

"Enough! Look at yourselves—what do you look like? If your tribespeople knew... forget it, let’s get back to business!"

A powerful aura appeared, instantly calming down quite a few people on the scene. They all turned their attention to the hunched old man who had just walked in from outside.

Though hunched over, he was still about 2.8 meters tall, his whole body like a huge door panel. Even though he was old and weak, everyone who saw him instantly felt that if they crossed him, they’d probably get slapped to death.

The strongest of the beastmen race, the ape-man Bicker. Legend had it he still had traces of Titan bloodline.

"Elder, whether we worship the God of War or not, it won’t help now. Things have developed to this point. If we want to survive, if we want more soldiers to survive, we have to find a way to deal with the Dawn Kingdom’s invading forces..." The ape tribe leader quickly and grimly explained the current situation.

"Organize forces, hold Red Leaf Forest, awaken the ancestral spirits, then negotiate with the Dawn Kingdom." The ape-man Bicker seemed to have thought it through already. Without even pausing, he laid out his plan: "Also, I want you to collect as many non-believers in the country as possible. I want them to become believers of the God of Technology, to bring Magic Conductors and the Magic Net into our land! We’ve been... too isolated all these years!"

The reason Bicker could become the strongest of the beastmen race, the embodiment of power, was probably precisely because of this mindset of constantly changing to pursue strength... This war had made him realize that the God of Technology was changing the world. If they kept maintaining their previous state, they would inevitably fall into deep despair!

At almost the same moment.

In a small border town in the southern part of the Gray Fort Empire, a young-looking elf was walking down the street, curiously observing everything around him.