The biggest winner of the fight between Dem Paltrow and Sir Cedric was undoubtedly Eren, as without Dem's intervention, the leader of the Virex Corps would have undoubtedly succeeded in his mission to kill the poor boy.
However, while he was the biggest winner of this event, he himself was not even aware that his life had been saved by a notorious criminal, as he remained purely focused on capturing more and more human territories.
Over the two past two months, he successfully managed to infiltrate the Empire's land, breaking through several choke points as he managed to claim about 100 square kilometers worth of land from the Empire, which was a significant achievement.
With every win, his level skyrocketed and his personal strength improved with him being able to now participate in the demon attacks which he previously only commanded, an action which helped further solidify the respect that his men had towards him.
The demons were a simple race that only acknowledged strength and it was not until Eren delivered them one military victory after another that the demons under him finally began respecting him, as after two months of raiding human lands alongside them, they finally began viewing him as their leader and not as a human slave.
"So we did not find any blacksmiths amongst these rounds of captives either?" Eren asked his underling, a high demon in demon tongue, as the man shook his head in denial.
"No, we asked for any blacksmiths, but there seem to be none amongst the bunch we captured" The high demon replied, as Eren let out a long sigh.
While Eren had made progress on the battlefield front, his promise to the Demon King did not just include battlefield victories.
What Eren had promised the Demon King was that he would capture territories and help him acquire human technology, however, progress on the second front was negligible.
The humans cleverly seemed to evacuate all normal-citizens who were non-combatants before the demon raid began and this led to the demons being unable to capture any talented professionals such as blacksmiths or potion makers.
"I need siege weapons soon….. while I can take down villages surrounded by wooden walls with ease, I cannot take down actual towns or fortresses without proper equipment.
While the demons are strong in one vs one battle, they do not have the technology to take down forts and without it, I cannot advance towards the next town…" Eren muttered to himself, as he seemed to have run into the first big roadblock to his expansion campaign.
To make matters worse, there were hundreds of thousands of players who had traveled from more in-land regions to fight against the Demon Kind, with all of them gathering in the next town, 'GeoVille', which now seemed like an impregnable fortress.
"What I don't get is, why do the stupid players have to get involved in this? Don't they have better things to do than to sit around and wait for a demon attack to commence?" Eren wondered, as he was extremely pissed about how the difficulty of capturing Empire's territories was going up by the day with the players getting personally involved in this war.
"At this rate, I will soon need to call for back-up, calling on the aerial mounts of the demons to help us launch a high altitude assault.
Or ask for reinforcements, as with my measly group of 30,000 soldiers, capturing a town is going to be impossible–" Eren muttered to himself, as he acknowledged the limitations of his current forces.
*********
( Meanwhile the players )
The hype amongst the players on killing the demons reached a fever pitch when it was posted by one of the rankers on the global forums, that killing one adult demon gave 1.5x the EXP of killing a monster of the same level.
That particular ranker shared a clip on the forums where he killed a dozen demons in one of the Eren's recent raids on an Eastern Border Village, managing to gain 7 levels in the process before dying and losing 2 and a few items.
Overall, it was a net-negative experience for him as he lost some of his expensive gear pieces, however, his feat of gaining 7 levels made many players feel interested in killing demons to level up as more and more players started to flock towards the nearest battle lines, hoping to get-on the action against the demons alongside the local NPC forces.
Since the theme for the next evaluation was 'Legacy', every player seemed to be keen on killing lots of demons and earning a name for themselves as the 'Demon Hunter', which caused the border towns to see hundreds of thousands of players flocking towards them in recent days.
So far, 99.9% of them were yet to actually face a demon in proper battle conditions, which was why many were hopeful about killing them.
However, the reality of the situation was that 9/10 were going to fail in killing a single demon, as they were simply not skilled enough to take on one.
An average demon soldier was anywhere between level 170 - 210, which far exceeded the level of a common player between 70 - 130, making most cannon fodder to the demon enemy.
And while players between level 160 - 250 did have a fair shot in taking down the demons, the players that belonged to this range were the top1% who had already left their mark on the Terra Nova world and did not need to fight with the demons to create a legacy for themselves.
Hence, in the end, although the total number of humans resisting the demon incursion seemed to have increased, the strength of those defenders was no different than ants which had minimal effect on the bigger picture.
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/// A/N - Chapter 14 of 15. Almost approaching the end of mass release and my wrists have started to hurt again from overworking.
Hopefully I can make it across the finish line! ///