Imperial Crown.

Chapter 507 Life and death are also cause and effect
If we're talking about the most relaxed person in the entire final battle, it really wasn't Raven. After all, before Sliver's werewolf appeared, Raven was always quite on edge.

The most relaxed of all are the air forces on both sides outside the Bloodstone Wall!

That's right! It's the Eagle People and the Wind King's Squad.

Since Igni took control of the Eagle People clan for decades, she has enforced a so-called monogamous system, which in a sense is tantamount to physically castrating the Eagle People clan, resulting in the already small Eagle People clan becoming even more sparsely populated.

Therefore, Igni only brought a little over 3 eagle-men to this campaign against Raven. This was all the able-bodied and elite members of the eagle-men race. However, in the struggle for survival, flying orcs naturally have difficulty producing offspring, as are dragons and elves... because a large number of flying orcs would give them an overwhelming advantage over other races! It can't all be blamed on Igni's policies.

In the battle where Thor ambushed the enemy with the magic crystal cannon on the banks of the Tallinn River, he killed and captured about 8000 eaglemen. In addition, those who had run away, secretly left, or were killed in the past four months... left Silvermane with only a little over 2 eaglemen!
2 may not sound like much, but for the Wind King's army, which has less than 600 of them, it is a terrifying number! In order to prevent the javelins and snake-head fruits from accidentally harming their own people, the Wind King's army had no choice but to choose the battlefield outside the Bloodstone Wall, that is, on the side of the Bloodhowl Province outside the gap.

Banks and Lennon, naturally following Raven's instructions, formed a three-person team and began engaging in guerrilla warfare against the eagle-men. Although the Wind King wasn't as agile as the eagle-men, in terms of flight speed alone, he was no less capable. Initially, the two sides fought fiercely back and forth, with the Wind King's forces using javelins and snake-head fruits to inflict heavy losses on the eagle-men! When the eagle-men fearlessly flew up to the Wind King, they were either blown around haphazardly by their racial magic, [Storm Vortex], or electrocuted blackened by [Pulse Surge], plummeting straight down from the sky.

Later, both sides were exhausted! When Banks soared into the air riding a green dragon, the harpy race was completely stunned! Riding atop it were Chirp-Chirp Linga and Igni, bound by the Demon-Sealing Steel Chains! These two orc leaders were truly "brothers in misfortune." One had lost his horn, the other his right wing. Even Thor and his second-generation transcendents couldn't use their Life Essence, let alone these two orc captives; their injuries were naturally incurable, leaving them with permanent ailments. In a sense, this was a testament to their fierce battle with Raven and a testament to their achievements.

"Fellow tribesmen, let's stop making pointless sacrifices!"

The thought of being ambushed by Thor, while Silvermane and Broken Tooth, on the other side of the Tallinn River, remained motionless to rescue her, filled Igni with rage! After all, Thor, though possessing magic crystal cannons, only had three, and his forces numbered no more than seven or eight human extraordinary beings. Yet Thor had waited on the other side of the Tallinn River for days, while Silvermane and Broken Tooth remained unmoved. How could Igni not hate Silvermane and Broken Tooth's stupidity?

So, while Igni's urging for peace was partly due to her own life being in Banks' hands, it also genuinely stemmed from her own heart. The outcome of this final battle, whether Silvermane or Raven won, was irrelevant to Igni. Neither side was willing to share any more spoils with the Hawkmen, so why should the Hawkmen fight again?! What was the purpose of their fight?!
However, Igni's fervent efforts to persuade Raven to surrender harbored a hidden agenda. Silvermane and Broken Tooth possessed an army of 20, making it impossible for Raven to win the final battle! Igni understood this from the beginning, which is why, despite being captured, she didn't submit to Raven like Chuchu Linga, but patiently waited! She would ransom him after Silvermane decisively won the final battle!
But once the Eaglefolk have been overexerted and become completely worthless to Silvermane, why would Silvermane be willing to pay the price to redeem her? However, Igni naturally wouldn't tell anyone these things. Only after being persuaded by Chuchulinga and threatened by the human leader of the Wind King's brigade wearing gold-rimmed glasses, did she reluctantly begin to persuade her people to make peace.

"This……"

The group of eagle-men in the sky were completely dumbfounded, not knowing how to handle the current situation.

Although Igni was captured and lost her right wing, she was still a fourth-tier powerhouse of the Eagle People. As long as she lived, no Eagle People could shake her position! Moreover, Igni had been in power for nearly a hundred years and had accumulated great prestige. Even though she was captured now, her influence remained. Although the Eagle People were somewhat unwilling, they began to shirk their duties.

Without her right wing, Igni had technically lost the right to lead the Eagle People, but that would only be possible after a tribal meeting or a formal revocation of her authority by a coalition of powerful Eagle People. However, they had been urged by Silvermane to march hastily to the Bloodstone Wall, and upon arrival, they were immediately thrown into the decisive battle, leaving no time for any meetings. They had all assumed Igni was dead! Therefore, their surprise and disbelief when she reappeared was understandable. Furthermore, while Igni implemented many policies that displeased the male Eagle People, her methods of governing the tribe were quite lenient, and she was known for her integrity and fairness—the true reason the Eagle People trusted her.

To put it simply, this is a decisive battle between orcs and humans. If they were to stop fighting, it would be tantamount to betraying the orc race. Moreover, most eagle-men are more afraid of the sixth-tier Silvermane and the fifth-tier Broken Tooth! This is the real reason why they are unwilling to stop.

So the two sides tacitly began to "play a real game," with shouts, curses, and battle cries filling the air, but no one was injured or killed. Every now and then, a clump of feathers would fall to prove the "fierce fighting" between the air forces.

……

"Broken Tooth is dead! Drop your weapons, and those who surrender will not be killed!"

Eric strode over to Broken Tooth's corpse, cut off Broken Tooth's head, held it high, and roared!

In his understanding, including his past experience, the death of a leader is a fatal blow to morale. Often, a powerful army will immediately fall into a state of collapse without a leader once its commander is killed in battle.

However, he underestimated the orcs' ferocity or overestimated their intelligence. When they saw their leader's head being severed by Eric, the orcs immediately unleashed their bloodlust or their manic genes, and swarmed towards Eric!
"Ah, oh, oh"

Caught off guard, Eric was struck hard in the chest by a boarman's spiked club and flew away with a scream!

"What's going on? What's happening?!"

Eric roared in bewilderment, his large and small eyes showing confusion. He hurriedly stuffed the broken tooth's head into his storage ring, then drew his longsword and began to fight the orcs around him.

Eric, a fourth-tier warrior, was indeed ferocious. The remaining 30,000 orc cannon fodder were no match for him. However, as the saying goes, many ants can kill an elephant. In just one or two hours, Eric was already panting heavily.

A sense of foreboding rose within Eric. "Steel Devour!" he roared, unleashing his third-tier combat skill, locking his target onto a tiger-man on the outer perimeter. He was quickly pulled out of the vortex of encirclement. "Thank you!" Eric flew to the tiger-man's side, thanked it through its helmet, and then decapitated it with a single sword strike!
"Kill! Kill!!"

The orcs roared and continued to surge towards Eric, as numerous as ants, seemingly endless. Their goal wasn't so much revenge for Broken Tooth, but rather a purely instinctive act!
"I'm going to die." Eric murmured desperately and unwillingly, "My life is over!"
Just moments before, Lu San hadn't expected that he, also a fourth-tier expert, couldn't even withstand a single sword strike from Eric, and Duan Ya hadn't expected that he, a fifth-tier expert, would die such a humiliating death at Eric's hands. And at this moment, Eric would never have imagined that he, a fourth-tier powerhouse, would be brutally beaten to death by a group of fearless ordinary orcs.

Just as he was feeling utterly defeated, he heard the roar of "Night," a roar so powerful that it made even a fourth-tier expert like him tremble in his soul.

……

"Damn you! Jing Ge! This is your fifty percent certainty! This is the flaw you've been observing in the human army formation all day!!"

Looking at the almost completely wiped-out elite tiger-men, Bagjinban could no longer contain his rage and cursed loudly at Jing Ge.

Jing Ge had fallen silent at some point. The moment he saw the werewolf soldiers rushing towards his clan, he knew he'd been tricked. The so-called flaws, weaknesses, loopholes… they were all traps set by Raven of the Trench! In truth, the werewolf clan wasn't that powerful; if they were, they wouldn't have gone to such lengths to build the Bloodstone Wall! There were simply too many of them! Their numbers were overwhelming! Nearly twenty times that of their so-called elite forces! It could be said that in the nearly thousand years they'd been neighbors with the Orc Empire, the werewolf clan had never fought such a costly war! Centuries of old and new grudges had been settled by the werewolves in the final battle of this great war!
"Charge! Charge out and find your father! We still have a fighting chance!"

Seeing that Jing Ge remained silent like a mute, Bagjinban was unwilling to curse any further and shouted loudly.

Upon hearing this, a glimmer of light finally flickered in Jing Ge's lifeless eyes. He silently led the charge towards the breach! It seemed that only in this way could he wash away his sins and the shame of being toyed with by Raven!

After killing the dozen or so extraordinary knights of light who had come to surround them, Jing Ge and Baggins finally broke through the gap.

However, what they saw suddenly plunged them into darkness again.

What did they see? Eric, a fourth-tier transcendent being, was bursting with dazzling battle aura, slaughtering a group of orc cannon fodder with his martial spirit greatsword, moving with unparalleled might as if he were in an empty field! He truly displayed the aura of "one man can hold off ten thousand"!

Then, everything went black! Pitch black! So dark you couldn't see your hand in front of your face!
A chilling gray mist swept in, accompanied by howling screams and groans from skulls, their eyes blazing with eerie green flames! Horrifying! Wherever the gray mist passed, countless skeleton armies swarmed towards the orcs! Even the lifeless corpses of orcs staggered to their feet, wielding their weapons viciously at their former comrades! And many more unarmed zombies opened their blood-red maws, tearing at their bewildered companions!

In an instant, screams echoed through the sky, and the nearly 3-strong orc army scattered like birds and beasts, wishing they had been given more legs!

"Necromancers?!" "The Order of the Dead?!"

Baggins roared in disbelief.

He couldn't understand why the Death Hand Church, hidden deep within the Miracle Mountains, had suddenly arrived in the Orc Empire! He also didn't understand why, even if they had come, they would participate in this great battle between orcs and humans! And he couldn't comprehend why, even if they were involved, they would side with the humans!

Could it be that Raven also made some kind of deal with them?!
But the Holy Knights of the Holy See are right inside that gap!

What benefits did Raven offer, and what kind of magic did he possess, to get these two sides to fight side by side?!
"Damn, this world is too absurd!" Jing Ge rubbed his pig eyes hard. "The Holy Knights of the Holy See of Light fighting side by side with the necromancers of the Hand of Death?!" If he hadn't seen it with his own eyes, even if he were kicked to death, he would never have believed it was true! Even novelists wouldn't dare to be this absurd! If they did, everyone on the continent of Middles would think that this bard must have mental problems!
咵嚓
The broadsword slashed into flesh, striking bone with a deafening crash! Jing Ge coughed up blood, his eyes glazed as he stared at Baggins beside him! Baggins calmly sheathed his sword, wiping away the blood. "This defeat is all your fault!" Baggins's voice echoed deep and resonant, no longer able to contain his rage. "It's all because of you, you arrogant bastard, that this situation has arisen! When Lord Silvermane descends from the sky, someone has to take responsibility, right?"

In his dazed state, Jing Ge thought of the eagle-man Mupei. He had said these words to Mupei before, but now the tiger-man Bagkinban was returning them to him verbatim.

History is a cycle, and life and death are also a matter of cause and effect.

Jing Ge, at the third rank, died under Baggins's longsword, not at the hands of the Eagle Army, nor the Holy Knights, nor the necromancer.

"Everyone, heed my command and charge out with me!"

Baggins raised his arms and shouted, charging towards the necromancer. A thick armor of battle aura condensed on his body. As a third-tier, nine-star powerhouse, he was naturally not afraid of the dead things and skeletons summoned by the necromancer!
He swung the longsword, its aura dazzlingly bright. Wherever it passed, the skulls and inanimate objects had their heads explode and died once more.

With a buzz

A blinding white light suddenly appeared in front of Baggins. He was so struck by the light that he quickly closed his eyes and unconsciously swung his long sword forward.

The sound of clashing weapons rang out, and then the battle energy rebounded like a whale swallowing its prey, shattering Bagginban's longsword, cracking his armor, and tearing his arm apart... Bagginban let out a miserable howl and was thrown off his warhorse.

This combat technique is called Mirror Shield.

The person standing in front of Baggins was, of course, Eric!

"Where's Lu San? Where's Duan Ya?"

Baggins refused to believe the truth in his heart and couldn't help but shout.

“You’ll see them soon.” Eric walked over, brandishing his longsword, and Baggins’s head flew off in an instant!
“Eric, you’ve wasted a fine high-level puppet!” A gaunt man shrouded in black robes suddenly appeared beside Eric and said in a sinister tone.

Eric glanced at him, a flash of disgust crossing his eyes, but he quickly suppressed it. "He's my trophy! Not yours." Even though the other man had just saved him, Eric still couldn't muster any goodwill towards the Death Hand Order. In fact, even he was completely unaware of the contingency plan the patriarch had arranged.

The patriarch truly lives up to his name; even if he were to die at Broken Tooth's hands today, it would likely have no impact on Raven's plans. This left Eric both shocked and somewhat conflicted. The patriarch's backup plans were truly endless; no wonder he dared to wage this decisive battle!

After this bloody final battle, Bloodhowl Province will be utterly desolate.

……

(End of this chapter)