A few extremely exhausted-looking officers bitterly smiled at Aven’s statement that things weren’t going as they would want them to go.

No one could deny the veracity of what he had said.

“It’s not easy for anyone,” a dark-skinned woman passively emitting one of the heaviest authorities Aven had ever felt in his life said, “The Vow Kingdom and the Mist Republic have also suffered heavy losses, and it’s not like we’re on a breakdown trajectory. But please develop your strategic trapped retreat plan, is it somewhat similar to the… 4th arrow group?”

An assistant highlighted the concerned arrow group the moment it was quoted.

Eyes looking over all the different arrows symbolizing front migrations, the expected firepower increase, the impact on the rear, the weaknesses created, the trap sections opened, Aven nodded, “Exactly. And…”

Narrowing his eyes, his brain was overheating from all the changes he was making and small plans he was creating from scratch, “Add to it the 3rd alternative schedule adjustment, create a grade 5 task force to oversee every individual wall caving, open the special rewarding clause, and that should do it.”

“Special rewarding clause?” An officer who didn’t know how to hold his tongue, or maybe was too honest, asked aloud.

And his question found an echo on a lot more faces than Aven could have expected.

Upon seeing that, a certain knowledgeable assistant who seemed to have done a marvelous job of reading everything linked to the abomination surge decided to open a digital version of a document Aven had written when he had still been at the Eland-manned part of the wall.

“Tireless apples?”

“Wonder flowers?”

“Self revolving energy mutation elixir?!”

“Inexhaustible Body Mutation Serum?”

“Energy Furnace Constitution Mutation Elixir?”

“Spiritual Awareness Drop?!”

“On-Demand Materialization?”

Garnering a much more exaggerated, but not incomprehensible, reaction from the officers, Aven decided to surf on this wave to assert his recently acquired authority even more, “You need tangible gains to help motivate grade 4 and 5 supers risking their life, and me owning a materialization type innate ability wouldn’t have remained a secret for long anyway~”

Seeing this clause, the smart officers, who were supers too, understood instinctively how this reward clause would greatly ease the assembly of a grade 5 task force while making sure grade 4 supers would hold strong while facing grade 5 abominations for a few hours.

“Now, you all simply need to say yes,” bringing its two hands together in the shrewdest way he could imagine, the small fairy flying above the table acted as if he was offering the unrefusable devil deal, “I’ll do the rest for you~”

In the end the Athal Federation had no reason to refuse, so a few minutes later…

“Let’s start with caving in A8, push him to the third layer trap section T589 directly while keeping the second layer invisible, erase the grade 5 presence in the entire surrounding 5 battlefield, move all the grade 4 and 3 over. The repartition should be 20, 15, 35, 30 from north to west.”

With nothing to hold him back anymore, Aven started establishing the most optimized orthodox military action plan he could come up with.

“The moment A8 is downed, the B14, B19, B28, B46, and B51 abomination group will be the next target, stabilize the caved-in section by positioning the reward winner there, allow the rest to choose whether to rest or continue, then follow with another manpower reallocation and rear support purge to seal the deal…”

A few hours of planning quickly passed by, and at the end of it, after the Athal Federation officers had proven they weren’t here by accident by refining section caving action plans by changing the intended used trap sections to more suitable ones for certain abominations, everyone agreed that if the plan was to be executed, it was better to execute it as soon as possible.

Thus, Aven departed the command center and returned to his bunker room where he resumed his artillery support activity against the abomination ocean while ignoring the faraway A8 who was inevitably approaching despite being under a flood of attacks.

While he was firing, logistic officers entered his bunker room to start taking away all the ammunition they could and all but one of his artillery snipers. Their orders were simple, they had to empty everything.

2 hours later, an alarm very much different from those heard until now in his wall area echoed and reached Aven in his now much emptier bunker room.

‘It’s starting.’

Hearing this alarm, he didn’t hesitate a single second before asserting energy telekinetic control over all the armor cracking shells that still remained and retreating, leaving the single remaining artillery sniper behind as it wasn’t worth carrying it for all the shells he could take in exchange for it.

Joining a flow of extremely chaotic but nonetheless organized flow of people who had already been told that this retreat alarm would go off sooner or later, Aven cut through the air as he headed to a special trap section.

Behind him, a mere 5 minutes after leaving, gigantic explosions rang out as pre-installed explosives weakened extremely precise parts of certain front wall sections to allow for a planned and controlled wall breaking scenario to happen.

The rear support stopped focusing on this area and instead intensified their support on the adjacent battlefields, using the mindless abominations’ most basic instinct to guide them where they needed to go. And that was inside a gigantic trap designed exclusively for them.

Arriving at a new bunker room located on the front side of the 4th wall layer, or the back side of the 3rd wall layer depending on the point of view, Aven opened a single shutter that allowed the single artillery sniper present in this hastily prepared room to see the … Not light of day as it was currently night time.

With massive light projectors turned on though, it didn’t really matter if it was day or night as he could perfectly see how abominations were filling all the gaps purposely opened like water.

“If the retreat hadn’t been carefully prepared, all the corridors sealed, and the personnel evacuated… So scary,” being reminded of what an abomination surge truly was when seeing how fast it engulfed every bit of space that had been opened, he started to infuse the artillery sniper.

Merely a few minutes later, the new front line started retaliating at the fodders doped by the dark green fog, except this time the attacks didn’t only come from the front but also from the side.

And with how far this particular section caving retreat had been taken, with 3 wall layers having been taken down, the amount of firepower that could be exerted compared to before and the flexibility of the attack patterns had exploded upwards.

“And it’s here…” Observing the dense dark green fog advancing unstoppably towards where he was, Aven felt some trepidation at the whole plan going completely wrong, but he was more so confident in its success.

A8, in all its abomination mindlessness, couldn’t understand it was being led into a trap, one of unimaginable proportions that should have already gotten the surrounding wall area swamped with more difficulties than ever due to their high-end power, the grade 5 supers, having vanished.

Continuing firing at the nimble armored targets, everyone did their best to eliminate as much of the abomination mass as they could before A8 arrived at the location of its planned demise.

Inevitably, not only A8, but also a small dozen of grade 4 abominations who had similarly been freed from the endless fights that had sealed them far from the wall, passed through the 3rd wall layer.

No one attacked them, still only focusing on the fodders, making all these very premium targets advance further and further past the 3rd wall layer.

Then the signal was given in the form of an alarm.

“Let’s see if they can survive that,” instantly stopping firing, he switched to fully automatic mode and aimed at one grade 4 abomination, only waiting for the show to start to pull the trigger.

And the one that ended up opening the show was a dark-skinned martial super who descended from the sky, piercing through all the dark green fog as if it didn’t exist, provoking violent shockwaves all along.

Feeling a massive wave of hot air hit his face at the same time that the martial super, or martial deity at this point, hit something, Aven pulled the trigger.

The moment the grade 5 martial super connected his opening strike, a huge amount of dark green fog instantly vanished from the air aspiration he had provoked, allowing everyone to see the true appearance of A8, that of a dark green behemoth with metallic bones gushing out of its deformed head, if it was even a head to begin with.

Its appearance didn't matter to anyone however, as soon enough, a downpour of unique individuals each invoking their own mind-blowingly powerful colored strikes, spiritual pressures that didn’t bother with distinguishing friend or foe, and even missiles and bullets above anything Aven had seen until now began raining down.

The dark green behemoth, already completely stunned by the grade 5 martial super that had descended from the sky, couldn’t cope at all with so many beings similar to it in power and started rampaging against… Everything.

A grade 5 couldn’t be killed like that, much less such an ancient grade 5 abomination, and soon the dark green fog mutated into a much lighter version, becoming sickly pale green.

Once this fog iteration spread, nothing was spared, all the abominations around it, all the projectiles, all melted.

All except one thing.

The dark-skinned martial super, as if he didn’t care about the change, continued raining down punches and kicks that sucked big amounts of air with every contact, a witness to the power behind his every strike.

‘Who is he?’

Seeing something so abnormal, Aven absolutely didn’t believe for one second that this man bullying A8 was someone unknown, so he appraised him, his curiosity demanding an answer.

Aeric Athal

Faction: United Federation of the Athal Continent

And just the name gave him the answer he needed, so he stopped thinking about the presence of a literal legend that had risen during the human era as a prodigy and continued focusing on taking down his own grade 4 target.

Armor cracking shell after armor cracking shell, his situation was objectively even more abnormal than the one taking place between Aeric and A8, he was simply and purely dominating his grade 4 target while still being a grade 3.

Yet, his “fight” went unnoticed as all eyes that had time to look elsewhere were focused on the exceptional central fight opposing a martial super and a pure super. It was what it was in the end.

Even the other grade 5 supers present only took on the role of supporters in this fight, telling and displaying to everyone that even at the supreme grade 5, there existed potential massive differences between each individual.

Half an hour passed just like that, and the trapped retreat had achieved everything it had been designed to do.

Apart from killing A8, everything had been achieved.

And this objective was imminently going to be achieved.

Aeric, with his human body emitting massive heat waves that would burn any normal human to a crisp if they were hit by it with each of his punches, had finally taken full control of the situation with the supporting efforts of 7 other grade 5.

The berserk phase A8 had gone through when it had intended to flee had been defused methodically, and the only thing that remained behind was an abomination that wished to take the main culprit behind everything that was happening to it, Aeric, with it.

But that simply wasn’t happening.

Admiring this unique situation from a protected bunker room, Aven felt something bubbling, boiling inside him as he spectated the whole scenario that would end up in the death of an ancient being that had terrorized multiple abomination surges.

“I want to be like him…” He said absent-mindedly, “And the answer to be like him… Is to create a mechanical suit.”

Assisting at the final execution of the dark green behemoth externally seemingly impassively but internally more excited than ever, his thoughts quickly moved to the reward clause he had opened, “It’s not much of a mystery who has contributed the most in this fight though…”

Leaving his bunker, Aven began heading for the reward room where the winners were expected to come to claim their reward.

‘It’s time to maybe make some real long-term friends~’

…

“Nice to meet you, Aeric Athal~” Extending his small hand in comparison to Aeric's human-sized ones, Aven had a big smile at this mischievous joke he was pulling.

“As feisty as the reports said I see,” raising one eyebrow at his joke, he similarly extended one of his hands and they ended up doing the most stupid-looking handshake in history.

“Well, that’s how I am so there’s nothing I can do about it~ And my ambitions tell me this will not be the only time we’ll meet, so why not skip through the acquaintance process and directly start as good friends? Just take it as an arranged marriage, but for friends! Hahaha!” Not searching far, Aven simply followed his true self nature and the conversation flowed smoothly.

“I’ll hold my friendship for when you proved yourself more than with just high tactical attainment,” not sharing his enthusiasm, Aeric held back on answering positively and changed the subject, “I want a Self Revolving Energy Mutation Elixir.”

“Ho~ What a good choice~ Coming right up!” Posing stylishly, he mentally opened the shop and claimed what needed to be claimed.

Faction Contribution Shop: Nation of Eland

Faction Authority: Violet Fairy

Faction Contribution Points: 7 791 458

…

Self Revolving Energy Mutation Elixir (1 460 000 FCP): An elixir created through an ancient rainbow fairy formula with most of its ingredients being extremely difficult to gather. Gives the self revolving energy energy talent to anyone consuming it.

Self Revolving Energy Mutation Elixir (Claim?)

When the same as ever manifestation phenomenon appeared, Aven resumed enjoying his own kind of reward, a much more intangible but similarly as thrilling one, “So, we got a few minutes before the elixir that will change your way of cycling your energy forever finish manifesting, so let me ask you because I’m curious about it: How many abomination surges did you live through?”

“Six, including this one,” instead of remaining taciturn, Aeric voluntarily shared one of his life accomplishments before elaborating on it, “One at the very end of the fairy era, before all of your kinds disappeared, and all the others during the human era.”

“And can you tell me how it was during the first surge of the human era?” With eyes radiating intense interest, Aven wanted to hear from the mouth of someone who had really been there and was surely involved in numerous important events, how it really was.

“The same as today, just…” Eyes unfocusing while still looking straight at the small fairy before him, the dark-skinned martial legend related what he really thought of it with a few words, “With much more despair involved.”

The small meet and greet and interview ended a few minutes later as the elixir finished materializing and Aven handed it to him, not insisting to ask more questions, “Do with it as you want, it’s yours now. Just be warned that it’ll dematerialize in 24 hours and the time it takes to acquire the talent is half an hour to be on the safe side.”

“Thank you, young fairy,” receiving the elixir without showing any pretense of being a literal legend, Aven even believed to see a faint trace of excitement in his pure black eyes that had only radiated wisdom and amiability until now.

“Well, the next section caving should start soon, so while it’s regretful for me to not be able to acquaint myself with you any further, I still firmly believe we’ll meet again~ With that said, goodbye!” Speaking extensively in the most formal way, Aven bid goodbye to Aeric and left the reward room.

…

Entering yet another bunker room furnished with only a single artillery sniper and enough shells for it to last for as much time as was necessary plus an additional time margin just in case, Aven repeated what he had done previously and began infusing the weapon he was soon going to use.

“If grade 3 energy can take it, then I should have attained the 1 000% tech-enhancement threshold…” Whispering a truth he was fully certain of about his always-developing capabilities, he wondered for how much longer he would have to grind his knowledge application skill before feeling like he could finally mobilize everything he knew.

All he knew at the moment was that the timespan range necessary, at his current grinding rate, was counted in years, not in months. That fact, he didn’t doubt for even one moment.

Pulling him out of his thoughts, explosions echoed out from everywhere, making the reinforced concrete wall tremble before large chunks of the 1st wall layer and 2nd wall layer began collapsing under their own fractured weight.

“This one is for 5 important grade 4 abominations… A walk in the park compared to the last one, right?” Stopping his infusion, he settled before the scope and aimed the artillery sniper at the 2nd wall layer currently caving in, preparing the field for yet another trap.

Things could certainly go wrong, but the choice of taking that path had been made, so stopping in the middle would be foolish.

Hence, the second of many section caving trapped retreats began.