Chapter 525: Chapter 511: An Unexpected Discovery

[The main cannon’s charging cycle has been recalculated. Based on the parallel model of two hundred Earth Vein Magic Furnaces, the estimated time for a complete charge is two years, eight months, and seventeen days.]

Allen’s hand, holding a cup of hot tea, paused in mid-air.

Two years and eight months was far too long. The Demons wouldn’t give them that much time.

"Jarvis, build another hundred."

[Warning: The existing two hundred Magic Furnaces have already caused irreversible damage to the local ecosystem. Adding another hundred will exponentially accelerate the environmental desertification process.]

"Execute."

[Command confirmed. The charging time has been revised to three months and seventeen days.]

The teacup returned to the table with a soft CLINK.

Environmental damage was the least of his concerns; they could worry about that after winning the war. Only the living had the right to discuss the future.

Only by doing this could the Zero main cannon transform from a shelved strategic deterrent into a trump card ready to flip the board at any moment.

In just seven short days, Allen showed the native Wizards of Ionia what it truly meant to reshape the world.

Before thousands of Hercules Engineering Golems, the rolling mountain ranges were as fragile as sandcastles.

Through a seamless operation of blasting, excavating, and transporting, mountains were leveled and basins were filled. Ionia’s topographical map was updated almost daily.

Dozens of massive mines sprang up from the ground. Hundreds of Mining Golems operated around the clock, like a horde of greedy steel Giant Beasts intent on sucking the very marrow of this land dry.

Every day, five new Earth Vein Magic Furnaces were erected. They were like toxic needles piercing deep into the earth, savagely extracting the Earth Vein Magic Power of the entire Plane.

The four Witch Kings, who observed all this from afar through a Magic Mirror Image, were left completely speechless.

Their homeland and the wealth they had accumulated over generations seemed to be nothing more than a string of expendable numbers in the other party’s eyes.

They were heartbroken to the point of suffocation, but more than that, a bone-deep terror gripped them.

On the eighth day, they obediently teleported all the compiled intelligence, along with the first batch of promised supplies, to the designated receiving area beneath the Ten Thousand Miles of Sunshine.

On the bridge, Allen was studying the intelligence summary Jarvis had compiled.

"The Demons’ cross-world passage was only securely established after three hundred thousand civilians were sacrificed all at once.

"The location of the sacrifice was deep within the territory of the Star Secret Place, in an area known as Black Stone Valley.

"This Witchcraft organization, the Star Secret Place, was intrinsically obsessed with various occult rituals, possessing a profound understanding of astrology and Otherworld communication. The mortals under their rule were heavily influenced by this culture; secret societies and private sacrifices were common occurrences.

"Before the Star Gate was destroyed, a series of disappearances involving Wizard Apprentices below Level 2 had occurred within the Star Secret Place. At the same time, several public cemeteries in their territory suffered large-scale grave robbing, and residents of several border villages and towns migrated en masse without any official records, vanishing without a trace."

Allen strung all the clues together.

The grave robbing was for the corpses. The disappearance of the apprentices and the mass migration of the civilians were for living sacrifices.

It appeared that the Burning Legion’s invasion was a coordinated internal and external operation that had been planned for years, perhaps even decades.

Those Cultists lurking in the shadows were the true source of the infection. They undoubtedly possessed a massive, subterranean sacrifice network. What had just been eradicated was merely Baroque’s vanguard, eager for quick merit.

The real threat lay in the unexposed Believers who could tear open a new Demon Teleportation Gate in any corner of Ionia at a moment’s notice.

[Commander, this significantly escalates the unpredictability of the war. Rear cities could become new battlefields at any time.]

"Therefore, we must accelerate our pace." Allen’s gaze shifted from the intelligence light screen and landed on another monitor.

On it was a live Demon, strapped to an examination table—an Abyssal Hound over five meters in length.

Dead Demons possessed no souls, and the number of specimens captured alive could be counted on one hand.

In the Seventh Biological Laboratory.

Allen changed into a white lab coat, his aura instantly shifting from an iron-blooded Commander to a meticulous scholar.

He circled the examination table. Dozens of high-precision sensors scanned, analyzed, and digitized every inch of this Demon’s flesh and blood.

"Its physical structure is simple. It’s a biological weapon born purely for slaughter. The muscle fiber density is seventeen times that of a similarly sized beast, and its energy conversion efficiency is exceptionally high."

Allen was in no rush to dissect it. Instead, he extended a finger, pointing it from a distance at the center of the Demon’s brow.

An invisible fluctuation rippled outward as Allen activated his Soul Law vision.

The entire world lost its color, and everything manifested in its most fundamental soul form.

The shell of the Abyssal Hound before him grew transparent, nakedly exposing a mass of chaotic, berserk Soul Energy to Allen.

This was a Demon Soul.

Filled with primal desires for destruction, slaughter, and bloodlust, it was as turbulent as a boiling pot of tar—utterly chaotic and devoid of any rationality.

He had previously analyzed the souls of humans, Elves, Beastmen, and even Giant Dragons. No matter how powerful or weak, their soul structures all followed a certain pattern of natural evolution—complex, exquisite, and entirely unique.

Just as no two leaves in nature were exactly alike.

But this mass of Demon Soul before him...

Allen’s eyes narrowed slightly.

Under his probing, the deepest core of this seemingly chaotic soul actually exhibited a... modular structure.

It looked as if it had been... assembled.

With his mastery of the Soul Law, he could clearly "see" it: destruction, slaughter, bloodlust... these most basic desires were like standardized data modules, forcibly spliced together in a crude manner to form the prototype of a soul.

Its outer structure disguised everything, making it appear berserk and primal, but peeling back this "wild" exterior revealed an entirely uniform "industrial product" inside.

Allen repeatedly confirmed his findings.

He was right.

These Demons from Purgatory were... mass-produced on an assembly line!

Just like the Golems produced on the Cybertron assembly lines, they possessed uniform formats and standardized specifications. Different types of Demons merely had varying functional modules installed before leaving the "factory."

This discovery filled Allen with immense astonishment.

Had Sargeras, or rather, the entity behind the Burning Legion, also mastered the technology to "mass-produce souls"?

No... that wasn’t right.

Allen immediately overturned this theory. If the Demons could produce and reuse souls endlessly in an infinite loop, what would be the point of running out to invade others? They would have long since achieved a post-scarcity utopia in their homeland.

The issue lay in... the unique Plane of Purgatory itself!

No wonder the Demons in Purgatory were always endless. As long as they had sufficient energy and "raw materials," they could conjure an inexhaustible army out of thin air.

This also perfectly explained why they were so fanatical about sacrifices.

They needed to establish a connection with Purgatory to use the massive quantity of souls plundered from the Otherworld as fuel to power the "assembly line"!

Allen’s long-standing goal was to study the Soul Law and ultimately achieve the Creation of Life.

Yet now, he discovered that this damned place called Purgatory seemed to have already reached the culmination of this technology, developing it into a deranged industry of war.

[Commander?]

Jarvis’s voice roused Allen from his deep thoughts.

Allen slowly lifted his head and looked at the still-struggling Abyssal Hound. His gaze was scorching, as if piercing through its flesh to witness a miraculous Plane naturally endowed with the Power of Laws.

"Jarvis, next time, catch more live Demons for me. They will serve as excellent teachers for me to master the Soul Law."

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