BIOLOGICAL SUPERCOMPUTER SYSTEM

The last Thaid fell to the ground with a thud. Its blood pooled beneath its body, staining the forest floor a dark crimson.

Erik lowered his hand, what remained of his power dissipating into the air.

"That's the last one," Erik said, looking at the battlefield.

Various thaids' bodies lay scattered around like broken toys after a child's tantrum.

Amber wiped her blades clean. "The thaids are getting stronger the closer we get to the mountains."

"We expected this," Martha said, checking for any stragglers. They expected this. It was true, but not like this.

The journey through the wilderness had been hard. The group went through forests, crossed rivers, and navigated valleys. All while facing the constant threat of Thaid attacks, which got progressively stronger as they went deeper into the Lorogia region.

Erik walked among the dead creatures. He paused in front of one of them. There was something going on in his mind, but he wasn't the only one pausing in front of the thaids.

Floyd nudged one of the smaller Thaids with his boot, checking if it was still alive. "Think we've cleared enough of them for now?"

Erik nodded. "We should move on. There's still ground to cover before sunset."

The group gathered their equipment and continued their journey through the forest. The terrain grew steeper as they progressed.

Two weeks passed since Erik found the lake's lab. It had been an eventful period.

First of all, Erik made more clones each day, and thanks to his mana reserves, they were not few. They were going around enslaving the local thaid population and building an army while simultaneously searching for the blackguards.

Thanks to the data they got from the lake, they knew where the blackguards could be hiding: the Silverline Corporation's ruined labs and facilities. Those were the places where Erik and the clones were searching.

It wasn't taking much, after all. Now Erik's clones were in the tens of thousands.

Unfortunately, they were not that strong, not like the Chimaeric Demons, at least. But that didn't mean they were not useful. Quite the contrary. Besides, what was important was that the new clones were strong enough to survive the low-level thaids even without enslaving the monsters.

Their main goal was to scout and to do other kinds of jobs. The real muscle of Erik's army was the Chimaeric Demons.

Erik's group itself went to the Lorogia Region, but while it would have been faster for them to cross the mountain range, they decided to go around it to avoid having to fight things even Erik could not fight against.

Most of the labs on their way to the northwest had already been searched. The clones didn't have to do much, because if the place was infested by thaids, it meant the blackguards weren't there, and they simply skipped forward. Erik wasn't there to get rid of the Thaids' presence but was there to kill the Blackguards.

As for the labs they conquered, the one at the lake and the one in the underground city, Erik left them to his clones and to Becker's soldiers.

As promised, the man sent people, fully equipped to take care of the facility.

As Erik assumed, Becker was interested in learning about the Silverline corporation and what the blackguards did. There were many reasons.

The first was to learn what happened. Sure, Becker knew about the relationship between the Silverline corporation and the blackguards, but he didn't know everything.

He wanted to know how the Mur continent fell, and since everything here had been left untouched since those days, he could still get a lot of information if he restored those data servers.

Aside from that, Becker could actually fill the void of knowledge about what happened to humanity during the past centuries thanks to the Blackguards.

Not much was known, especially about what happened during the criminal phase, but the Blackguards, being the successors of an organization that existed way long before the fall of humanity, were bound to have a lot of information.

They might have also been behind some important events; they most likely were.

Erik didn't care about that. He only wanted to know where the blackguards were and kill them all. After that, he was going to have a long, long rest.

However, to do that, he needed more power. It was unlikely the blackguards remained idle during these months, and the gap between his forces and theirs was likely thinning as the days passed.

He and the others kept training, but there wasn't much they could do given the short time available.

For example, he got ten neural links for his Dark Shapes brain crystal power and gained enough experience to level up twice. The others got some more neural link, too, but it wasn't enough.

Erik was focusing on the Dark Shapes' brain crystal power since getting more neural links made them stronger and easier to create.

They weren't as strong as the Chimaeric Demons, but they needed far less mana to be made, and this meant he could make a lot more of them.

Five thousand a day was his limit. What Erik wanted to do, at that point, was to flood the battlefield with the weaker clones, exactly like the thanatocoleoptera queen did. It was ironic; he was using a Thaid's tactic to narrow the gap in forces. However, his forces could enslave thaids.

Erik didn't know how many blackguards were on Mur, but they must have been in the hundred thousands since they had years to move to Mur.

Besides, the clones would mind control thaids, so his army was bound to reach a large enough number to kill those fuckers.

Becker brought with him Chimaeric Demons for weeks, too, so not only was Erik going to have an army, albeit smaller, made of Chimaeric Demons, but they would also make dead puppets.

However, the ones Erik was looking forward to fighting were the latest batches, the Chimaeric Demons with Essence Flow. They were currently marching. Not too far away from them. Based on what the Dark Shapes said, they were utterly unkillable thanks to essence flow.

They could heal indefinitely and attack with as much mana as their pool allowed, only for that to be replenished a millisecond later.

Since there were 5000 clones able to increase the regeneration speed, it meant that the regeneration speed was 5000 times higher. Even with their meager amount of mana, they could fight for extended periods of time.

No, that wasn't even the right way to say it. They could fight forever. No matter the wound, they always had the mana to heal. No matter the situation, they could pump as much mana as they wanted into Hais' brain crystal power and find a solution.

No matter the thaid, they could pump mana into the Xeridon Anteris' brain crystal power and increase their strength. But it wasn't even needed since, thanks to Vibration burst, they could basically turn into mush anything that approached them.