He was making quick progress thanks to his squad. He was already tough to deal with alone. With a hundred S-rank creatures moving at the same speed as him, they were practically stampeding through every opposition in his way.
Not even the elf who came up with the smart idea to make a great python twist itself around a spiked tree to protect it could have foreseen that it wouldn't make a difference.
The great python was at least 100 meters long, but it was quickly torn to pieces. Everyone grab a piece of it and pulled it apart.
The Python hissed in pain and fought back. It bit on some soldiers and tried to crush others with its body. But its resistance didn't save it.
It bled out quickly. Then the tree it was protecting was destroyed. All of it took less than 5 seconds.
Then Kelvin moved on to the nearest target. His squad followed him without a word.
He looked at them and then looked at the Lignum world struggling to oppose them. Then he thought to himself, "I must be free. Or I must die."
It is hard to say if the soldiers of the first division are alive or dead. Between the control of their mind and the many times they have been resurrected from death, they had more in common with the undead than living things.
It is not that they don't think for themselves. They do, but their thoughts are highly influenced, and they don't think of themselves.
They don't have preservation instincts anymore. But they are still smart and are very hardworking. They are the perfect slaves. It is not a state he is envious of. He would rather die than be in their situation.
He shook his head and said, "It might not even be up to me. So at the very least, I must grow strong enough to be able to determine if I will die or become a slave."
He understands that it is a perpetual circle. In his pursuit of power to prevent himself from becoming a slave, he is invading a world and helping to enslave them.
He can be honest about that, so can the Yggdrasil civilization. They are not hypocrites. They know what they are doing is causing a lot of pain for others. But they don't care. They are selfish and only care about themselves.
The Yggdrasil civilization knows that they are considered the evil by the inhabitants of this world. But they also know that the opinion of the inhabitants of this world won't matter when they become slaves and their world is turned into a breeding ground for slaves or used for resource mining or both.
It is what Kelvin was raised on. So he doesn't see anything wrong in it. The strong eat the weak. Survival is for the fittest. And if he isn't willing to do everything to survive, then he doesn't deserve to survive.
So he thought nothing of what he was doing. It is not running a cabal or killing small-time villains. It is invading a whole world for subjugation. But it might as well be another day at the office for him.
This was what was on his mind for the twelve days of fighting. It was nonstop fighting for all twelve days, including in the night.
It was a war of worlds. Fighting didn't stop for anything, including adverse weather conditions. Rain or shine, night or day, the two sides were always trying to kill each other.
There was an unspoken arrangement that the side that asks for a break or gives up first will lose. No one wanted to be the first one to back down, so they fought with all they've got.
As more and more spines trees were destroyed, the sky became less dangerous to soldiers dropping onto the world. This increased the rate at which the soldiers of Yggdrasil were reinforced, so they were able to push further and destroy more defenses.
Even so, no matter how quick or how much reinforcement arrived for the humans, it couldn't compare to the rate of reinforcement of a whole world.
As the rate at which defenders died increased because of the increase to the rate of reinforcements of human soldiers, the rate of reinforcements of the defenders also increased. The inhabitants of the world were literally converging on the battlefield every moment.
It was because of the order of the elven kings. These powerful entities cared too much about their world and refused to surrender.
Apart from the naked demigod that could turn into a fireball, there was also another elven king that visited the battlefield. This one was more sinister and sneaky than the fireball. She only came at night.
She is the main reason why human soldiers can't bear to sleep. They have to be awake and alert because she could come at any time, and she could hit from any direction.
But all in all, Yggdrasil was making good progress. It was mostly because of the soldiers of the first division.
The weakest of them was S-rank, and they had better coordination than even the soldiers of the second division. They also didn't tire.
The other soldiers needed energy stones to keep fighting. Even then, their concentration faltered. But not the soldiers of the first division. Their attention was always laser-focused. It is one thing that Kelvin had in common with them.
In quality alone, Yggdrasil beat out the defenders of the world. Lignum as a whole is a peaceful world. There is natural competition between animals, but the elves don't allow for major wars.
If anyone had a problem with another person, they could duel them. They were not allowed to cause widespread bloodshed and destruction. So the defenders were not used to the kind of conflict that the Yggdrasil civilization had forced them into.
The defenders of the world had strong entities, but they lacked large-scale coordination. The best they could do was throw bodies at a difficult enemy.