Chapter 1224 — The Ancient God's Pursuit
Blade of Dawn · Page 4 of 4
They were two black dragons. One was smaller in build, yet clad in terrifying steel armor and intricately structured arcanomechanical devices; the other was massive and powerfully built, yet its strong, broad wings were covered in wounds, and its back bore hideous scars that ran the entire length of its torso.
"This is the boundary of the safe zone," said the black dragon whose body was covered in scars as it came to the edge of the hill, its deep voice rising. "See those beacon lights flickering in the distance across the wilderness? That's the boundary the adventurers and the soldiers of the advance forces carved out together. Every time we clear a region of its monsters and repair the local elemental rifts and spatial tears, we set up these beacon lights along its border. When we clear a new area, we push the beacon lights a little further out—but this expansion doesn't always go smoothly. Often roaming monsters will suddenly appear and reoccupy a safe border that isn't stable enough, and then we have to push the defense line back again... Sometimes this back-and-forth drags on through several rounds before a safe region is truly stabilized.
"Because of this, the new council has assigned each region a clear 'safety level.' Major cities like Agondor and the coastal counties, along with their surrounding outskirts, are green safe zones. Such areas are fully stabilized—there are no elemental creatures or malevolent spirits, the corruption has been cleared away, people can live there in peace, and the facilities are relatively intact.
"The more distant wilderness is classified as orange zones. These areas still have scattered monster activity, or unstable geological structures and corruption sources not yet fully purified. Disasters happen occasionally, but activated elemental rifts rarely appear anymore. The chance of these areas deteriorating is very low—they are basically all transitioning toward green—and most newly arrived adventurers operate in these zones. Their main task is to maintain stability in the orange zones, clear out small-scale monsters within them, and ensure that the various resources produced in the orange zones can be safely transported to the green zones.
"Further out are the unsafe 'red zones'—essentially the very edge of the 'survivable area.' These regions have only received basic clearing and guard posts; apart from the few supply lines that can barely be kept open, the wilderness still holds elemental creatures and malevolent spirits operating in organized numbers, and unstable elemental rifts and spatial tears can appear at any moment. These areas are mainly the responsibility of the dragon warriors of the advance forces, though a small number of seasoned adventurers who have passed the assessment also assist, handling reconnaissance and mopping-up work."
Here, Coletta paused briefly, then continued with a touch of emotion in her voice: "Before those adventurers and the support supplies from the Loren Continent arrived, our advance work was extremely difficult. Nearly all our warriors' energy was consumed at the borders of the 'orange zones,' and insufficient supplies were another important cause of the slow progress—it was only when support from the Loren nations arrived that our dire situation was finally alleviated."
(End of this chapter)