At the same time, I collected a lot of the dark realm bones from the dead locusts outside my shields. After killing, collecting bones, and moving the bodies away for all this time, big mountain series like gathering of dead bodies of the enemy appeared next to each shielded area.

I lost count in the number of dark realm bones I collected. And at a point, I grew numb to getting more of these bones.

It looked as if it became normal to get more of these bones, as if they were commonly found anywhere. I knew this was just a temporary effect thanks to the endless supply of bones I got from the locusts.

But this was temporary and only limited to this place.

Once I finished the golden quests, then finding more of these dark realm bones would be quite hard and challenging for me.

During this time, Lily kept updating me of the general situation of my forces from the eleven zones.

Part of these forces were sent to Sara and Legend. The two kept doing great in training these forces how to use the star array.

I made sure to include the two zones of these two inside the eleven ones I cleared. By doing so, the two turned their zones entirely into a grand training camp.

Another part of the freed forces was sent to reinforce the forces fighting at the nine hot zones.

Under the request of Lily, I established many portals linking the central areas at these zones with outer shields that were empty before.

As the number of enemies increased, it made sense to occupy more shields and fill them with my forces coming from the other eleven worlds.

And just like this, the enemy and I kept shifting our forces from other areas to these nine zones, filling them up to the brim.

Spreading more forces at new shields took a little pressure off the deeper forces. But after a few months, this effect seemed to vanish as if it never existed.

The enemy got the upper hand in terms of the total number of forces they could use. And that made my efforts look like they were for nothing.

But the end result was quite the same. No matter how many of these locusts they sent, they never posed a threat to my shields and thus to my forces.

I kept releasing the offensive attacks from time to time. As the number of shields getting hit increased, the magnitude of these offensive waves grew as well.

Fearing that I might impact the further away portals at the outer layer of each zone, I made sure to not add more warriors to the shields close to the portal zones.

Even when Lily kept asking me to send troops out there, I didn’t. I wouldn’t shoot myself in the foot like this.

Without having portals leading to their homeland worlds, I’d cut myself off from any means to get to their homelands. Then my only choice would be limited to waiting for the twenty worlds to get opened to me and try my luck out there.

Thinking about that made me wonder if I should postpone the assault over the ten enemy base worlds after opening the access to the twenty race worlds or do it now.

“There are ten great worlds out there, taking them down will take a long time… Still it’s better to cause them a little headache before the official opening of the twenty race worlds.”

Almost ten months have passed since coming here. And that meant I got only two months left before the grand opening of the twenty race worlds.

I decided to invade one enemy world first, get to know how they arranged their defences out there, and see what the enemy had in these worlds.

Then by the time of the opening of the twenty race worlds, I’d return back and pause the invasion mission till getting to know the details of each race world.

At the same time, there was something that kept bothering me.

“The higher ups didn’t release any lists yet…” This was something that kept me annoyed for a long time already.

It was supposed for the system to issue the final list of participants just before the one month peace period would be over.

Yet that didn’t happen. And I thought the enemy interfered somehow, delaying the release of such a list.

But after the passage of ten months, the list wasn’t yet released. And that was quite weird to be honest.

I now started to doubt that another scheme was going on. I estimated the enemy to focus solely on my zones, attacking them with everything they got and leaving the other contestants alone.

When I thought about such a long time without releasing the final list, a bad omen overwhelmed me.

For a reason I started to think about another possibility, one that I didn’t consider before.

“What if these folks sent more forces to the other contestant zones, crushing them one by one while only toying around with me?”

This was the worst possibility I had in my mind. If there were no other living contestants in this golden quest, then there was no point in releasing a list at all.

If that was true, then either the other participants got crushed and killed, or were met with an unstoppable challenge that made them choose to forfeit early on.

Thinking more by following this path, I realised there was something I might have got totally wrong before.

The sudden increase in the enemy forces at the other nine zones… It seemed I got the entire thing wrong!

I thought the enemy opened portals directly over these zones, shifting the forces which were cut off the eleven zones to take part in the ongoing war at the remaining nine zones.

But it seemed there was another possibility for such an increase, and that was for the enemy to not send their entire troops out from the start.