Chapter 145: End

Chapter 145: End

The casualty board crossed one hundred thousand before the first Draeven defensive belt had fallen.

Noah watched the number continue climbing while Viridian soldiers fought through the remains of a city that had already been destroyed once during the previous decade.

Rifle fire flickered from broken windows while explosions shook streets buried beneath rubble. Fresh formations kept moving forward whenever those ahead of them stopped answering their officers.

The offensive had begun three days earlier, and Viridian had committed enough soldiers to surround the occupied region from three directions.

Only a narrow western corridor still connected the Draeven garrison with its remaining positions farther inland.

That corridor remained under constant attack, yet severing it completely proved far more expensive than the generals expected.

One goblin regiment reached the highway shortly before dawn and immediately began digging positions along the approaches.

Draeven artillery found them before the work was finished. Noah watched the regiment disappear beneath repeated explosions, leaving survivors scattered across fields and drainage ditches.

Another regiment arrived that afternoon and occupied the same ground. There was no shortage of replacements, only a shortage of time to recover the bodies before the next formation moved forward.

The Draeven counter on Noah’s interface fell by eighty-seven soldiers that day. Viridian lost more than six thousand during the same period.

Noah closed the casualty comparison and continued watching because there was nothing useful in staring at the ratio anymore.

The four empires had already chosen how Round Six would end.

They were going to remove every remaining Draeven soldier from the planet. The only uncertainty was how much of their own strength they would spend before reaching zero.

In Varkesh, the final offensives had already swallowed three armies. The first broke the outer defenses of an occupied industrial region, while the second pushed through factories and rail yards beyond them.

The third now fought inside neighborhoods where streets had been reinforced with trenches, concrete barriers, and buried explosives. Noah watched one Varkesh division disappear from the military records after five straight days of fighting.

Its number was reassigned two weeks later, and the rebuilt division carried the same designation. Almost none of the soldiers serving beneath that designation were the same people who had marched into the first battle.

That happened often enough that Noah stopped thinking of formations as collections of individuals. The governments below treated them as structures that could be emptied and filled again as long as recruits, weapons, and officers remained available.

The process worked, but it also destroyed experienced leadership faster than training systems could replace it. A newly promoted Varkesh colonel commanded forty thousand soldiers despite having led fewer than five thousand only three years earlier.

He survived less than a month before another officer took his place. The offensive continued without stopping.

Draeven positions disappeared from the map one after another. A fortified depot fell after nine days, while a vehicle repair center was abandoned after its fuel storage burned.

Three surviving artillery batteries withdrew toward the interior when goblin forces captured the heights overlooking their original positions. The enemy was shrinking, but the goblins were bleeding faster.

By the time the Draeven total dropped below thirty thousand, the four empires had already suffered more casualties during the final offensive than during several previous years combined. Noah saw the result most clearly in the replacement camps.

There were fewer veterans among the instructors, and some recruits learned from soldiers only a year or two older than themselves. Weapons arrived faster than experienced hands capable of teaching people how to use them properly.

None of it stopped mobilization. Skargrim’s last major campaign began in the northern valleys while new troops were still being trained behind the front.

The Draeven force there had retreated into a chain of fortified settlements connected by a single mountain road. Destroying the road would isolate them, but Skargrim needed the same route afterward to move food, ammunition, and wounded soldiers.

The northern commanders chose to take the ridges above it instead. For nearly four months, mountain infantry fought for high ground while Draeven artillery shelled every captured position.

Goblin units sometimes held a ridge for less than a day before bombardment forced them to withdraw. Another formation climbed the following night and attempted to occupy the same position again.

Then another followed after that one suffered too many losses to continue. The ridgelines eventually remained in goblin hands long enough for riflemen and heavy weapons to dominate the road below.

Draeven convoys stopped moving once the route became exposed. The valley bases began consuming whatever supplies remained inside their depots.

Noah expected Skargrim to wait until shortages weakened the defenders further. The northern commanders attacked instead because they knew every additional month gave Draeven engineers more time to strengthen the positions.

The first assault reached the outer trenches and failed. The second captured two defensive sectors before being driven out by concentrated fire.

The third attack entered the settlement itself and continued through workshops, bunkers, and storage areas. By the end of the battle, more than forty thousand Skargrim soldiers had died to eliminate fewer than three thousand Draeven.

The surviving northern troops received little time to celebrate. Orders for the next operation arrived before the dead were fully counted.

Luminous suffered a different catastrophe during its assault on one of Draeven’s last operational airfields. The western empire could not leave the base intact while enemy aircraft continued supporting nearby strongholds.

The first assault never reached the runway. Draeven guns destroyed the leading formations across open ground while aircraft struck reserves assembling several kilometers behind them.

The casualty list reached twenty thousand before the commanders called the attack off. They returned twelve days later with a new plan.

This time the infantry approached from several directions while engineering teams crawled through drainage routes toward the outer defenses. The runway remained active until shortly before sunrise.

One aircraft lifted off while fighting had already reached the perimeter. Another exploded during refueling, while a third never left its maintenance shelter.

The goblins finally broke into the airfield after dawn. Fighting continued around hangars, fuel pits, and command buildings until evening.

When the last organized resistance inside the base collapsed, Luminous had lost tens of thousands more soldiers. The airfield was unusable, and most of the goblin formations that captured it were also incapable of continuing without replacements.

Noah watched wounded soldiers being carried across the same runway they had spent so many lives reaching. The Draeven total fell below twenty thousand shortly afterward.

That was when the enemy began abandoning territory across several fronts. Occupied cities that had required years to capture were emptied within days as surviving Draeven units consolidated.

Equipment that could not be moved was destroyed, while fuel dumps were burned and bridges demolished behind withdrawing columns. The surviving soldiers carried whatever ammunition, vehicles, and artillery pieces they could still operate.

Noah understood immediately what that consolidation meant. The map looked better for the goblins, but the remaining battles were about to become much worse.

Viridian encountered the first concentrated stronghold outside what had once been one of its largest provincial capitals. Nearly eight thousand Draeven soldiers had gathered there after withdrawing from surrounding regions.

Years of occupation had turned the metropolitan area into a fortress. The city contained prepared firing lines, internal checkpoints, fortified industrial buildings, ammunition bunkers, vehicle shelters, and fallback positions layered through the districts.

Viridian surrounded the region with more than half a million soldiers. The first month produced almost no meaningful progress.

Entire companies disappeared while attempting to cross exposed avenues. Draeven artillery broke up concentrations before they reached the inner districts, while tanks moved between prepared positions instead of roaming freely.

The armored vehicles appeared only long enough to destroy an assault before withdrawing behind cover. Viridian changed its approach repeatedly as commanders tried to find routes through the defenses.

Tunnels were dug beneath several streets, while walls were broken between connected buildings so infantry could advance without crossing open roads. Night attacks targeted observation posts rather than trying to capture entire districts at once.

Each improvement gained something, and every gain cost thousands. The battle entered its third month and then continued into its fourth.

The casualty numbers stopped resembling anything Noah had seen during the earlier rounds. One week killed more goblins than all of Round Three, while a single month consumed more soldiers than some empires had lost during entire previous campaigns.

Viridian continued replacing them because Draeven could not do the same. That difference finally began showing inside the stronghold.

One artillery position stopped firing after its crews were killed. A second continued operating with only half its original guns.

Several armored vehicles remained parked because no trained crew was available to replace the men lost during previous counterattacks. Goblin forces entered another district and then pushed into the one beyond it.

The defensive perimeter contracted. Noah watched the Draeven counter fall below ten thousand for the first time.

The number should have made the end feel close, but the fighting only intensified. The last enemy soldiers were gathered inside the strongest surviving positions on the planet.

Varkesh eliminated one concentration after a siege lasting four months. Skargrim reduced two isolated garrisons through repeated assaults, while Luminous closed around the surviving coastal force after destroying the last usable airstrip in the region.

The counter dropped rapidly as those battles ended. It fell from 7,640 to 5,203 and then to 3,811.

Every change represented another enemy position disappearing somewhere below. Every victory left fields filled overwhelmingly with goblin dead.

Noah opened the combined casualty report once and immediately regretted doing so. The number of military deaths had crossed ten million while the final offensives were still continuing.

He closed the report because there would be time to understand the cost later. He was no longer certain that a number that large could ever be understood simply by looking at it.

The last organized Draeven force on the planet formed inside Luminous territory. Fewer than two thousand soldiers remained within an industrial district surrounded by workshops, warehouses, rail lines, and concrete structures damaged repeatedly during years of fighting.

The Luminous army encircled them from every direction and cut the remaining roads leading out. No meaningful escape route remained.

The battle lasted eighteen days. During the first week, the goblins destroyed the remaining Draeven armored vehicles one by one.

The second week pushed the defenders into several connected factory complexes. Goblin soldiers crossed assembly halls filled with wrecked machinery while rifle fire echoed through spaces that had once produced engines and naval components.

Draeven withdrew floor by floor through the surviving buildings. Warehouses were abandoned after ammunition ran low, and workshops became temporary defensive positions before they too were lost.

The counter dropped below five hundred as Luminous soldiers continued entering the district. Some units fighting there had been rebuilt so many times that their oldest surviving members could no longer remember everyone who had once belonged to the regiment.

The final hundred Draeven defenders occupied a reinforced administrative building. Noah remained focused on it while thousands of goblins surrounded the structure.

The counter fell to seventy-three and then to forty-one. A section of the building collapsed after goblin explosive teams reached the lower floor.

Twenty-six defenders remained after the collapse. Fighting continued inside the rubble as the remaining rooms were cleared one at a time.

The number fell to eleven and then four. The last exchange of gunfire lasted less than a minute before the counter finally reached zero.

Goblin soldiers were still firing into uncleared rooms, medics were carrying wounded away from the building, and officers continued shouting orders because nobody on the ground had received confirmation yet.

A new message appeared across Noah’s vision.

ROUND SIX COMPLETE

Difficulty Five

Round Score: +100

Total Score: 600

Noah dismissed the score almost immediately and opened the casualty reports. More than twelve million goblin soldiers were confirmed dead, while millions more would never return to active service because of permanent injuries.

Civilian deaths already exceeded three million, and several ruined regions still had incomplete records. The final campaigns had accelerated the destruction exactly as Noah feared.

The goblins had eliminated the remaining forty thousand Draeven, but they had spent millions of their own lives doing it. Noah expanded his awareness over the planet and saw the consequences everywhere.

Some cities still burned while others had no intact districts left to burn. Military camps surrounded refugee settlements, and hospitals overflowed into schools, temples, warehouses, and tents.

Roads were filled with returning soldiers moving past columns of displaced civilians who had nowhere to return to. Noah had wanted his civilization to survive Difficulty Five, and it had accomplished that at a price he could no longer ignore.

Continuing any further would no longer test whether the goblins could survive. It would only test how much destruction Noah was willing to accept for another hundred points.

The academy interface changed again and displayed a simple question.

Proceed to Round Seven?

Noah did not request the invasion details because he had already decided. "End the assessment," he said while keeping his attention on the damaged world beneath him.

A confirmation prompt appeared immediately afterward. Noah selected it without hesitation.

MONTHLY ASSESSMENT COMPLETE

FINAL SCORE: 600

The red invasion indicators vanished from the planet, and no replacement markers appeared. For the first time since Round Six began, Noah looked across the four empires without seeing another enemy army preparing to arrive.

The goblins below did not understand immediately. Soldiers remained inside trenches with rifles pointed toward empty approaches while artillery crews waited beside loaded weapons.

Officers continued sending scouts beyond ruined cities because decades of war had taught them that silence usually meant another attack was coming. Hours passed before reports began spreading from one army to another.

Draeven positions were empty, and no reinforcements had appeared. No aircraft crossed the skies, while scouting parties found no new enemy formations beyond the old fronts.

The war had ended, but the realization traveled at mortal speed through four battered empires. Some soldiers refused to leave their positions until repeated orders confirmed that no further attack was expected.

Noah remained above the planet while the news spread through trenches, cities, refugee settlements, ports, and military camps. There was no victory parade waiting for the survivors.

There were cities to rebuild, millions of wounded to care for, refugees to resettle, fields to restore, industries to convert, and an entire generation that had grown up knowing nothing except invasion. Round Six was finished, while the consequences of surviving it were only beginning.