"Then go ahead and proceed with the plan, and have Zero go help the others with their situations," Chu Yin said softly from within the bathtub.
Zero wasn't actually dead after all, despite her initial intentions. Golden Lion had to work hard to carefully convince her about how an SSS-tier talent was far more valuable kept alive than simply killed. And since Zero had offered to form a binding magical contract, she had reluctantly allowed Zero to continue living and managing his own region under her supervision… yeah, she was the strongest.
"I will personally go to South America myself to help them with their monster problems," Chu Yin said softly after a moment of thoughtful consideration. "I want to distract my mind from other things that are bothering me."
The Amazon rainforest felt like a good location for her to play around in and unleash some of her pent-up frustration.
Roughly 10% of the Earth's total land surface had been inhabited by humans before all of this happened. This was before Earth suddenly and inexplicably grew dramatically in size, expanding far beyond its original dimensions.
Now that percentage number has dropped to less than 0.1% of the total land being inhabited. Even in North America specifically, less than 1% of the vastly expanded land was currently inhabited by humans. The rest was dense forests, huge agricultural farms, and endless wilderness. The land was simply too impossibly large for them to use all of it effectively.
Approximately 592 million had been the total number of humans living in North America before the apocalypse struck. If they couldn't cover the whole continent, then with that population, how could they possibly now, when North America was far larger than before?
Now, the total number of surviving humans in North America had dropped dramatically to only about 10 million people or so. That was a huge and devastating drop in population, and that was with 4 SSS rank talents actively on this continent working to protect people.
The number of survivors would be far less around the world in regions where conflict and fighting were even higher and more intense. Although Chu Yin made it sound like she was simply going to the rainforest to distract her troubled mind, her main actual goal was to weaken and slow down the monster population growth there. She wanted to ensure that those humans surviving in South America would last long enough for proper help to arrive and save them.
She would freely admit, she and everyone in North America had it relatively easy compared to others. After all, North America could honestly be considered an easy difficulty mode when compared to other regions. Although Europe was honestly the easiest continent of all—if everyone there worked hard together and cooperated, they should have been able to completely erase all of the monsters in just a few days.
***
"How are things going here?" At the very edge of North America's southern border, Chu Yin stood and looked at the vast army of shadow soldiers standing guard at the massive defensive wall, all of them looking towards the dense forest up ahead with vigilance.
The land they were currently standing on was the former country called Panama, technically still part of North America. It was the critical land bridge connecting North America to South America geographically.
"Not good at all," Shadow Monarch reported honestly. "Dinosaurs are the main type of monsters that have been spawned and are thriving here in this region. The strongest individual one we came across so far was a tier 9 spawn monster with a combat power of 750 thousand. It was incredibly powerful, but fortunately slow in its movements, so I managed to kill it eventually."
He spoke with a distinct hint of regret in his voice since he had desperately tried to raise that dinosaur as a shadow soldier under his command, but had failed.
"I see…," Chu Yin said calmly. "I will personally clear a path for you and your army of monsters to advance. Wait exactly 30 minutes, then follow directly behind me. Try and use that necromancy skill of yours and bring back as many dead monsters as you possibly can to add to your forces."
Chu Yin gave her clear orders while flying forward into enemy territory, and instantly, a supernatural chill filled the entire world around them.
Shadow Monarch watched in awe as the monsters that tried to near her simply froze solid before they could even get remotely close to her position. Their life force itself was frozen in place—an odd and deeply unsettling sight to witness firsthand.
But this is what it truly meant to have the overwhelming power to freeze absolutely anything she desired. Even gravity itself was something she could freeze with her ice abilities. Even intangible shadows themselves could be frozen completely solid by her power.
Soon, she stepped into the region that was controlled and dominated by the dinosaurs, but she didn't care about the inherent danger. She kept moving forward until she reached a specific area where the region boss called home and ruled.
As soon as she entered that territory, a magical barrier suddenly formed around the area and froze into place, sealing her inside with all the dinosaurs. Many of them were humanoid in shape and form, equipped with advanced armor and deadly weapons.
[Name: Sharp Teeth
Race: [Hell T-rex]
Talent: [Hell's Chef (S Tier)
Title: [King Of the Dinosaurious
Tier: 7 Tier (9 million/10 billion XP)
Combat Power: 6 million (x3 within Territory/+75% with Gear)
"Warriors, take the lead, mages cast buffs and debuffs. Play the role of support for now!!" Sharp Teeth roared the command instantly the moment he realized they were under attack from a powerful intruder.
Wasting absolutely no time at all, the disciplined dinosaurs roared in perfect unison to cast their spells, all of them casting their own individual buffs simultaneously and rapidly, which stacked efficiently on top of each other along with the additional buffs the dedicated mages were casting from the back lines.
Many different debuffs shot directly at Chu Yin in coordinated waves, just before a shimmering protective barrier appeared around her body automatically, blocking and deflecting some of the debuffs entirely thanks to her naturally high resistances.
But for those specific debuffs that she wasn't completely immune to through her resistances, they managed to affect her to some degree, although their overall effect on her was extremely small and minimal in impact, and they didn't have a long lifespan before fading away completely.
"Death Blizzard."
Chu Yin didn't even bother to waste time casting any buffs upon herself to prepare for battle. The moment she spoke, the sky above them darkened dramatically and ominously as thick, heavy clouds rapidly covered the entire world above.
The dinosaurs all suddenly began shaking uncontrollably and violently, not out of fear or anything psychological like that, but purely from how cold it had suddenly gotten in mere seconds.
The chilling, biting cold seemed to be actively trying to freeze their very essence of life itself at its core. No, it was worse than that—even the buffs they had just cast moments ago weren't free from this supernatural cold.
Their buffs were being frozen solid and killed off one by one. Their protective armor froze and cracked apart, dying. The dinosaurs themselves froze solid where they stood and died in place.
They were all dying at exactly the same rate regardless of power, their individual strength completely ignored as if before this overwhelming cold, they were all perfectly equal in vulnerability.
Their strength and power levels had zero weight or influence in determining how long they would last before death. But only one single dinosaur managed to exist and survive the longest out of all of them—that being Sharp Teeth himself, the region boss.
He desperately channeled hellfire from deep within his core. He began to burn his own lifeforce as fuel, something which allowed him to fight off against the cold which was trying to freeze his lifeforce completely solid.
"Annoying."
Chu Yin said the single word softly with mild irritation. The move she had just made was absolutely huge in scale and scope, designed to cover the whole battlefield simultaneously, which stretched for hundreds of miles in all directions across the land.
Well, it wasn't easy for her to accomplish at all, and it had used up all of her MP reserves completely and entirely. But even if she was tired and drained from the effort didn't mean the blizzard itself would stop functioning now that it had been summoned into existence.
It began to snow heavily across the entire battlefield, but not white snow like normal snowfall, but black snow instead, which froze everything it touched instantly. The air itself began to thin and disappear as the snow that was falling was actively killing the air molecules themselves.
The hellfire flying towards her position froze in mid-air and died, its flames completely extinguished. If Sharp Teeth thought that the chilling air from before was deadly and dangerous, how could he possibly face the snow that was now falling and slowly increasing in intensity and coverage?
Sharp Teeth roared defiantly with everything he had, trying his absolute best to fight against the chilling hell surrounding him on all sides and closing in. But his flames were being frozen faster than he could produce new ones, and soon he dropped heavily to the ground with a thud, a thick layer of black snow covering his entire being and burying him completely.
Chu Yin successfully cleared the entire region of all hostile forces and enemies. And after taking time to recover enough MP to cast the devastating spell again, Chu Yin moved on to the next region to repeat the process of extermination.