The Abyss Empire was facing a greater crisis than they initially anticipated.

A simple border skirmish turned into a border war. It was still bearable. Abyssals had fought too many wars with the Fairies in recent years.

But things took a drastic turn when strands of death energy started to pop up in the Fairy Army.

The dead members from both sides became the Undead and were used as the vanguard against the Abyssals' Blood Province.

Blood Province was fortified enough that if 100,000 Abyssals defended it, the enemy needed to bring in at least 200,000 attackers.

Even with the addition of Undead, Fairies didn't have that number.

So, the Abyssals thought they were safe. But reality slapped them in the face when one of the Fairy Sovereigns used a concentrated strand of death energy on the defense.

Unlike the previous strands of energy that were diluted by a million times, this one was highly concentrateddiluted by only around a thousand times.

So, when the strand of energy hit the defenses, the Abyssals that stood in defense instantly lost their vitality and turned into Undead.

These Undead attacked the Abyssals around them and threw the defenders into chaos. Blood Province was breached that day.

Once they were past the first defense line, the Province's defenses collapsed like dominoes.

This war was far worse than what Humans recently experienced. In the solar system, there was a battleground that separated combatants from civilians. But the whole Blood Province was invaded.

As a result, hundreds of millions of Abyssals died under bloody conquest.

At the edges of the Blood Province:

A tower was suddenly bombed by a fireball and turned into ashes. As the smoke cleared, ten charred Abyssals corpses were revealed at the bottom of the tower.

"Is this the final outpost?" High from the sky, a winged man asked.

"The final one on the list." The winged woman next to him flapped her wings and answered.

After verifying the surrounding areas, the Fairies took the charred corpses of the Abyssals to their military camp.

Since conquering the Blood Province, Fairies established their military bases in strategic cities closer to the border Provinces.

The victory in Blood Province was a huge step forward, but the overall goal had always been the complete conquest of the Abyss Empire.

They had a long way to go. Especially because of the Abyss Emperor.

'Would Zions can help our Emperor grow stronger to crush that bastard Haedon?' In the largest tent of the main military camp, the Fairy Commander got into thinking.

The Fairy men and women across the table were also engaged in their own thoughts.

Finally, one of the Fairy men slammed the table, drawing attention. With a pissed-off face, he said. "Why are they pushing us to attack the Abyssals so fast? Yeah, we won a Blood Province. But see how much we lost. Call them anything, but Abyssals are tough bastards."

The unfiltered words caused some of the members to grimace while others scowled.

It was taboo to question Zions in public. But this was the highest Fairy line up excluding the Fairy Emperor. So, it wasn't forbidden.

Still, some people preferred not to address these topics.

An Old Man coughed and said. "How about we focus on what we should do"

"No. Abyssals only lost 20% more soldiers than us. The losses we got are something that a losing army would register. We didn't win. The Abyssals lost.

It doesn't end there. We conquered a complete province. But did we get anything? Fucking bastards took away everything they could and burnt down the rest.

That mad Emperor even activated the toxic formations and created a poisonous storm to flood the Blood Province."

The more he spoke, the angrier the Fairy man got. He was famous for pissing people off due to his straightforwardness.

But every word he spoke was true. So, not a single person had any refutation.

Abyss Emperor, despite failing to protect the Blood Province, ensured it didn't help the Fairies.

After realizing that the hundred million dead in the Blood Province would be turned into Undead, he took a drastic decision and activated a huge formation.

This formation 'devoured' all the corpses it could and turned the Blood Province into a toxic wasteland.

This also put a halt to the Fairies' invasion. This was only temporary. But even buying that was a feat in itself.

However, the Zion Ambassador recently appeared and asked them to speed up their invasion.

When they invaded the Blood Province, the deadline was five years. It was already too short. The conquest of an Empire with a population of tens of billions was a time taking process. Even more so when the invader and defender didn't have any significant gap in powers.

Of course, the Zions promised them support to ensure this quick conquest. But the ones paying dearly for the invasion would be Fairies.

"ZionsI think they found something suspicious about the Abyssals." The Commander suddenly said.

"Suspicious?" A Fairy woman tilted her head. "The only suspicious affair is the disappearance of their eight Abyss Worlds. But didn't they all get lost in a space storm more than a hundred years ago?"

"That's what they said." The Commander intertwined his fingers and rested his chin on them. "This is a top-secret newsbut the Zion Envoy recently discovered an interstellar space formation in the Abyss' capital."

"What?!"

"Do they have a camp elsewhere?"

"Damn Abyssals. We're only able to fight them because they don't have the Abyss Dungeons and Sovereigns. But if they were never destroyed, eight Abysses can ambush us and we'll be dead meat."

The tent got noisy as the Fairies voiced their concerns one by one. All of them were legitimate concerns.

Even without this ambush, if they continue down the path of invasion without any loot, Fairies would be incredibly weakened when they'd have to face the Providence Trial.

If they lost in the trial, they'd have no protection.

The rational decision would be to withdraw from this senseless war and consolidate their strength for the trial.

After all, the enmity of Fairies and Abyssals was very recent and very shallow.

Peace could be negotiated. But the Zions wouldn't let them.

Their only option was to conquer the Abyss Empire and get enough loot so that they could survive the Trial.

Or even if they succeeded in the invasion but didn't get enough loot, they'd be in danger of extinction after failing the trial.

The Commander smiled bitterly. "Fate of the weak."