After being forced to step down, the once-annoying nun eloped with me.

"Is it this kind of octahedron? The kind with lots of tubes wrapped around it?"

"Definitely. How did you—"

"Because demons also have this inside them?!"

The black dragon showed Elena what it had just dug up. After a surprised "Huh?" Elena jumped onto the black dragon's back.

Black Dragon braved friendly fire to ascend into the sky. They had no time to deal with the demon's reactor; they had to leave before the demon colossus exploded.

Elena sat on the black dragon's back, examining the things she had taken from it before jumping on.

It was an unnatural octahedral structure that a demon had generated on its own.

The Edenians' magical dolls have similar structures in their bodies. Their scientific name is "Magic Absorber," which allows the Edenians to obtain the energy necessary for their physical activities by absorbing artificial magic without eating, and the efficiency of energy absorption is far, far greater than that of regular eating.

...Long, long ago, during the battle against demons, many magical dolls suffered damage to their bodies.

Not all bodies are completely destroyed. In the thousands of years of battles, except for a period of demon hibernation in the later stages, there must have been many magical dolls that retained the integrity of their internal organs after being damaged.

If one body isn't enough, then a second, or even a third, can be used.

Demons can always gather a complete corpse from a magical doll, and they can always piece together complete organs. Naturally, they might also be able to analyze the function of certain organs...

"bump--!!!"

Thirty seconds later, a violent explosion erupted from the demonic colossus behind them. A brilliant blue light illuminated the backs of Elena and the black dragon. They flew silently through the air, while the belated Eagle Knights dragged heavy bombs towards the demonic lair.

On the ground, the golems and the allied forces also approached the entrance to the valley. The remaining demon larvae and demon magma were no match for the allied forces and were quickly suppressed by their firepower, eventually being eliminated one by one.

Elena continued to stare at the demonic organ in her hand. Expressionless, she used her hand to pry open the organ's outer layer, and sure enough, she found a familiar structure inside.

Magic flows internally, eventually being digested into pure energy—the demons don't create organs that can feed themselves within a magically imbued environment. They are... clumsy imitators, plagiarists, shameless bootleggers.

"Relax: Demons' magic absorption organs are less efficient than ours... I may already know why the later stages of the war become increasingly difficult in the fight against demons."

They don't create, but instead, their ability to mimic evolution is incredibly strong... The most threatening evolutionary ability of demons stems from their learning ability. In a sense, if we can maintain our primitive form to fight demons, then demons will also forever remain primitive... They can never evolve on their own. The reason they invade other worlds is to learn the knowledge of those worlds and then imitate them...

Just like on Earth, a group of college students who only know how to copy homework choose to copy the correct answers in order to graduate. Demons, in order to evolve, naturally choose to copy the correct answers as well.

The magic absorption organs of the Kingdom of Eden are like this, and so are the dragon scales and appearances of some high-ranking demons that have evolved to resemble black dragons. The wheel demons are modeled after the extremely fast horse-drawn carriages of the human world, the jet-wielding demons imitate the gun structures of the United Nations, and the shield-breaking demons...

Elena suspected it was a creation modeled after Golem.

The demons simply added too many demonic details during the copying process, so the people of Eden didn't realize that they were completely devoid of creativity.

...In a sense, as long as one's civilization is primitive enough, the most threatening evolution of demons will not be a problem at all.

But conversely—

“If we truly maintained our primitive structure, the demons would have wiped you out long ago, wouldn’t they?” The black dragon sighed, carrying Elena towards the rear of the allied forces where Yang Hao and the others were. “The paradox is here… If our civilization is primitive, the demons could easily wipe us out without evolving—but if our civilization is advanced, the demons could learn from us… After all, copying is always easier than writing it ourselves. To prevent the demons from learning, we must eliminate them before they learn our technology…”

"Definitely. But we can't eliminate the demon's mother immediately. There's no way we can just rely on numbers."

"Perhaps the yield isn't big enough? If we had a floating continent as big as... the kind of mineral the United Nations calls 'explosive ore,' I think the demons would be blown to bits the moment they landed, right?"

"Question: What do we do then?"

"...That's another story."

Although the true nature of the demons has been figured out.

However, the situation remains far from optimistic.

Each of them, preoccupied with their own thoughts, moved toward the direction where Yang Hao and the others were.

Above the heavily bombarded demon nest, the Eagle Knights, dragging heavy bombs and contemplating their next move, gazed at the nest below, which was covered in countless demon larvae, and fell into deep thought.

“I say, our bombs should inflict physical damage during their fall, right?” one of the Eagle Knights said. “In that case, its magic-resistant skin shouldn’t be a problem… But with so many demon larvae surrounding it, will our bombs be able to successfully damage the core of the mother structure?”

"Of course we can. We'll throw them one by one, making sure each one hits the crater created by the previous bomb. Wouldn't that take down the mother ship?"

"And there's Golem artillery support on the surface... Alright! Let's begin!"

The Eagle Knights lined up, and the captain, shouting wildly, launched the first round of dive bombardment before the attack on the Demon Mother itself officially began.

To avoid being instantly killed by the Colossus Weapon, the Demon Mother not only evolved a large amount of magic-resistant skin on her body, but also had countless demon larvae with similarly evolved magic-resistant skin cover her body, forming a thick [external armor] to ensure her complete immunity to magic attacks.

But the problem is, this time it has to deal with an extraterrestrial object weighing 500 kilograms.

This heavy object, which could create a crater even if dropped from the height of a two-story building, lost its restraints hundreds of meters in the air and, dragged by gravity, struck the armored belt of larvae above the demon mother at an ever-increasing speed.

The delayed fuse did not explode upon the first impact. Due to its weight and speed, the bomb first smashed the demon larva's body, creating a relatively inconspicuous crater relative to the demon mother's massive form, before finally striking the demon mother's surface before exploding.

The moment the tip touched the Demon Mother's skin, it exploded.

The violent magical reaction didn't cause much damage to the demon mother's completely magic-immune skin. However, it blasted away the surrounding demon larvae, clearing a path for the eagle knights above to bombard the demon mother's flesh directly.

They whistled, and before the demonic mother could evolve its hard armor, the second bomb was launched, followed by a third, a fourth, a fifth...

Not all bombs could accurately hit the ring of fingers created by the first bomb, but those that successfully hit the surface of the demon mother all penetrated the mother's anti-magic skin under their weight and caused a series of deafening thuds after penetrating deep into the mother's body.

The Demon Mother's skin is immune to damage from magical weapons.

However, this does not mean that the flesh and organs inside the Demon Mother can withstand the explosion of a magical bomb.

With a desperate howl before its death, the mother demon's body gradually emitted an unnatural blue light. After the final magic bomb entered the mother demon's interior through the gaping crater of flesh, the demon mother demon, now deprived of the protection of a high-ranking demon, finally perished in a final explosion near its brain.

"We did it!"

"I fucking love the feeling of things being thrown from high places! Next time, we absolutely have to get the logistics team to come up with something similar!"

The Eagle Knights cheered wildly for their victory, celebrating their destined triumph.

On the ground, the Allied surface forces successfully entered the valley, which had been turned into a hellish wasteland by heavy bombardment, the moment the Demon Mother was destroyed.

They killed every demon, and the demons, having lost the command of their mother, seemed to have completely lost their intelligence. They struggled madly, and even after being shot, they still tried to attack the allied soldiers who were within arm's reach.

But the demons have utterly failed. They may have tried very hard to evolve, but they don't have much time left to evolve, nor do they have much of an upper limit to their evolution—the limitations imposed on individuals by the demon race have exposed their limitations when facing mixed forces.

Perhaps the original demons were only this powerful at most—but it's hard to guarantee that the new demons that appear next time will be as weak as their predecessors.

The intelligent life in this world still needs to stand firm when facing the invasion of demons.

......

An hour later.

The original demon race on the floating continent has been completely wiped out—this is the conclusion reached by everyone who participated in the war.

After the battle, they dealt with the demons' corpses, trying to make them as useful as possible before they rotted.

The situation was left to the Allied commanders to take charge, while Yang Hao and the others returned to the Great Library. Looking at the obelisk-like structure burning fiercely in front of the library, he shook his head and asked Elena beside him:

"Can this thing be repaired?"

Elena shook her head and pointed to the magical dolls around her that were putting out the fire:

“Denial. Once the Colossus Weapon is destroyed, it will be permanently burned. After we forcibly extinguished the flames with magic, the overall internal structure also became a mess... Rather than repairing it, it's better to spend the time building a new one. At least that would be better.”

"I understand. Let's start by summarizing this war."

"affim."

They returned to the conference room where they had previously held negotiations. This time, however, Elena looked disheveled and completely different from her elegant demeanor during the meeting.

Heilong slumped wearily on the table and said that she had done a great service this time—if Yang Hao didn't offer her more money, she would never help him again.

For a moment, Yang Hao wanted to retort with, "Don't you care about Isgard's feelings?" But seeing how exhausted Nia was, he could only smile and say that he would give Isgard more rewards to show the black dragon's efforts.

After exchanging pleasantries, everyone naturally moved on to the post-war debriefing.

After a day of fighting, the United Nations had exhausted its ammunition reserves, enough to last three months for production. For a considerable period to come, the United Nations would need to recuperate and ensure a sufficient ammunition supply before making any further plans to invade Roman Empire.

In addition to the consumption of ammunition, the United Kingdom suffered more than 4000 casualties—the vast majority of which were minor injuries. Those who were seriously wounded and might have died were saved by the high proportion of elves. After a few days of rest in Gaparia, they can return to their posts under the healing of elven magic.

In addition to the consumption of ammunition, some guns were also damaged due to the intense fighting – the most notable of these was the Japa 1405 heavy machine gun.

After prolonged and continuous firing, almost all the heavy machine guns suffered from barrel explosions or melting. The operators noted these problems, and ultimately, after a full day of fighting, all the heavy machine guns transported to Eden were completely unusable and beyond repair.

If Arthur were here, he'd probably say something like, "Are you guys dipping gun barrels in a furnace to soak before firing?!" But it's true, even weapons capable of continuous fire still have to consider heat resistance...

In addition, several hundred Golems were lost. Although the vast majority were cheap stone Golems, the loss of the howitzer Golems still pained Naruja.

The final loss was Fen's exhaustion from casting observation magic for so long—but that was nothing compared to that. After confirming that Fen would need to rest well for the next few days, Yang Hao put down the report in his hand and looked up to say:

"But overall, the United Nations did not suffer any other losses beyond material ones... So what about the Kingdom of Eden?"

"I'm pleased: the loss to the Kingdom of Eden isn't too great."

For Elena, the loss to the Kingdom of Eden was not significant.

The artificial magic reactor was successfully restarted, the magic network was slowly repaired, and the last 400 fertile bodies were preserved intact. No magical dolls died in any real sense after the magic network was restarted.

The greatest losses were probably the permanent damage to the upper floors of the library, the burning of a large number of books, and the fact that the colossus weapons were completely beyond repair.

To be frank, the truly important books and materials had already been uploaded to the magic network for storage. If the colossus weapon was destroyed, they could simply rebuild it. Compared to the fact that the Eden people could rebuild their families after completely annihilating the demon race on the floating continent, the loss of the Eden Kingdom was truly negligible.

So Elena was very happy, and the magical dolls were also very happy... Naturally, the next step was the distribution of the spoils.

The Edenites do not have much demand for demon corpses, but the United Nations, due to the traders' need for demon corpses, hope to seize the demon corpses on the floating continent for themselves.

The Edenians generously gave all the demon corpses to the United Nations. Not only that, they also provided a long-term artificial magical cryopreservation service for the demon corpses free of charge—however, the specifics of how to mine and transport these corpses would require the production of [airships] capable of traveling between the floating continent and the surface.

Those were the flying vehicles that were common in the Eden Kingdom in the past. The Edenians wouldn't provide these vehicles in large quantities to the United Nations for free, so Elena made a request to Yang Hao and the others:

"So... you want the Kingdom of Eden and the United Nations to form an alliance, on which we can learn from each other's technologies, trade with each other, open our borders, allow us to build our own factories on the floating continent, and allow immigration between nations...?"

"Absolutely. In compensation, Eden is willing to provide the United Nations with finished technology and services free of charge. Moreover, we will assist the United Nations in building your own artificial magic reactor. This is what you deserve."

"What does the Kingdom of Eden need?"

"Condition: When the next demonic invasion occurs, we must be close allies standing on the same side to fight against the demons."

"...That's practically giving us a free benefit. How about this: the United Nations will provide the Kingdom of Eden with the regular minerals you need every year, free of charge, how about that?"

"Calculation in progress... This condition is acceptable. Now, I would like to inquire about the strategic policy of the United Nations."

“Then we should rest and recuperate—we can’t just throw ourselves into another war right after fighting a demon, can we? But… we need to face the high-ranking demons in the north, known as the ‘Cataclysm of Ice,’ together.”

"Definitely. The Ice Calamity might require a rebuilt Colossus weapon to deal with... Correction. The opponent is a [Titan Demon], not a [High-Rank Demon]."

"In short, it's all about being a demon."

Yang Hao sighed.

今天才4月8日。帝国历006年的4月8日。

He should have at least secured about six months of peace for the United Nations—and as expected.