ALL NOVEL Chapter 400: The Reality of Life
Elandria is strong. She is in the late stage of the Martial God realm, so surviving the beast tide would not be too difficult for her. Even if she encounters a beast she cannot defeat, she can at least run away. However, she is worried about her tribe.
Her tribe has only about one million wood elves, but they live in a very wide area. It is impossible to protect all of them like that; after all, she can only be in one place at a time.
As a Martial God, she can easily defeat beasts ranked 11 and below. Defeating a rank 12 beast takes time but can be done. However, if she meets a rank 13 beast, she can only run. Once a rank 14 beast appears, she may not even be able to run. As for rank 15, she has no chance even to run away.
By spreading her martial will and surveying the area, she was able to discover tens of thousands of beasts below rank 10. Fortunately, there are no beasts above rank 10, at least for now, so the tribe itself is not in danger. But in the last beast tide thousands of years ago, many Martial Gods died. This implies that, based on past experience, eventually, beasts as strong or stronger than rank 12 would appear.
If she encounters a beast she can’t defeat, she will abandon her tribe and run away alone. Nothing is more valuable than one's own life. Dying for the tribe and nation is not in her nature. In fact, if she had such a mentality, she would have died in the last beast tide.
The other Martial God of her tribe, Varis, thinks the same way. He also barely survived the last round because he was smart and ran away early. The nineteen Martial Saints of her tribe would probably do the same. She would not stop them at all. In fact, if some remained loyal to the tribe and wanted to protect it to their last breath, she would scold them and order them to run and hide.
The value of an ordinary elf’s life is not comparable to that of a Martial Saint. Even though elves are the most talented species, very, very few can reach the level of a Martial Saint. Over tens of thousands of years, only less than 50 people have reached it. After the end of the disaster, these Martial Saints will have to form the backbone of the tribe. She would prefer the whole tribe to die than to allow the Martial Saints to die.
Therefore, she plans to gather the whole tribe in one place and hopes not to attract any strong beasts. But once a strong beast comes, she will take the martial saints and Varis and would run away, using ordinary wood elves as bait to draw away the strong beasts.
The hundreds of thousands of other wood elf tribes and settlements would most likely do the same.
In the southern continent, there are hundreds of thousands of wood elf tribes and settlements. Elandria's tribe is the most prominent tribe, but not the biggest settlement. Wood elf tribes are born of one bloodline, while settlements can have many tribes living in the same place. So, it’s not accurate to say that Elandria's tribe is the biggest wood elf force. They are not. There are wood elf settlements with many more people, but considering just one tribe, then yes, her tribe is indeed the most populous.
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There are trillions of intelligent beings on the southern continent, but that is a little misleading. In fact, over 95% of them are goblins. Even though the population growth on the southern continent has been significantly suppressed, goblins still hold the advantage when it comes to increasing their population. Over the years, the goblins have slowly but surely increased their numbers to the point that now, they are the most populous species by a wide margin.
Despite being so numerous, goblins hold the least influence. The reason is simple: their bodies are the least suitable for martial arts cultivation. Now, even goblin tribes with hundreds of billions of members have, at best, a few Martial Gods. Simply put, there is no way for the majority of goblins to survive the beast tide.
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The most significant goblin settlement in the entire southern continent, Grubblestone Warrens, has over 800 billion goblins. Despite being so numerous, they live in a tight space. It’s not uncommon for hundreds of goblins to live in a tiny house.
The southern continent is hugely vast; it can easily accommodate quadrillions of mortals. Even though trillions of intelligent beings live on it, compared to the available space, the continent is actually very sparsely populated. Most areas do not have strong beasts, so it’s easy to clean the land and transform it into agricultural farms.
The goblins of the southern continent are hardworking, usually farmers or hunters, and have a peaceful life. Fights and wars are entirely prohibited. One must not look down on them only because of their bad reputation in other parts of the world.
However, despite being much more cultured than other goblins, they are still far worse off than other species. Their living conditions are the worst among all other intelligent species. They also have the shortest lifespan—a mere 500 years.
Wood elves of this continent live in personal houses; each family has their place to live in. Greenmen live directly in nature, usually feeding off sunlight, so they do not need houses. The lizardmen usually live in tents but still value personal space. But goblins live in group houses, where tens or even hundreds live in the same house or even the same room. This is the reason they can all fit in such a comparatively small land area. This may be an evolutionary development, where they derive a sense of security from being in a big crowd, or it may simply be the setting some high-level civilization instilled into them.
The Grubblestone Warrens is very technologically advanced. They set up transport systems to drive workers to the fields and get them back to the main village. The fields are far outside the main village, with only some high-level goblin martial artists there to protect them.
This peaceful life came to an end when a loud roar was heard throughout the whole settlement.
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“Rank 13!” the leader of the goblin settlement, Varkun Peacebringer, thought with horror. He is a peak Martial God practitioner with incredible power that can easily defeat rank 12 beasts. However, even he could barely resist a rank 13.
“Such bad luck! Damn it!” He immediately notified all the other strong martial artists of the settlement.
After only a minute, hundreds of mighty goblins, all in amazing-looking armor and armed with impressive weapons, responded to the summons.
“Varkun!” a female goblin in the Martial God realm, Urgra, quickly came to him.
“The rank 13 beast! Did you sense it?” Varkun asked.
Urgra nodded and said, “I counted at least twenty rank 12 beasts and hundreds of rank 11. There are countless rank 10s and below. Varkun, we should escape!”
Varkun nodded. “Everyone, follow me! Time to jump ship!”
In total, the settlement has twelve Martial Gods and a little over 800 Martial Saints. Despite this massive force, if they genuinely fought against the rank 13 beast, they might still lose. In fact, even if they won, it would only be after devastating losses. Once a rank 13 beast comes, even Martial Gods have to run.
This sealed the fate of hundreds of billions of goblins. With their strongest warriors gone, the rest had absolutely no chance. Maybe some Martial Domain martial artists could get lucky and sneak away, but the overwhelming majority could only die.
This is the reality of life, no matter how unfair.
Out of hundreds of Martial Saints and Martial Gods, not even one protested Varkun’s decision. They all knew how terrifying a rank 13 beast is. They all value their own lives above all else.
All of them have many relatives in the goblin settlement, but as very long-living goblins, their direct and close relatives have long passed away. As for distant relatives, they wouldn't endanger their own lives to save them. Many of them have friends and apprentices, but again, time is tight. If they start running around the tribe to find them, it would put their own lives in danger. Aside from the problem of finding them, carrying the weak around might endanger them on the way. The current group consists of only Martial Saints and Martial Gods, so they can take care of themselves. But if they add thousands of weak goblins, the group cannot move as fast and would have to spend a lot of effort protecting the weak.
It would be very illogical to take anyone below Martial God. In any case, once the beast tide is over, it would only take a few thousand years to build back another village.
Without looking back, hundreds of strong goblins started running. They didn’t fly because it would be easy to be spotted.
Behind them, the beasts moved in. The remaining goblin forces, those at Martial Domain and lower, immediately collapsed.
Anyone who was able to escape escaped.
As for the rest, they were all eaten by the beasts.
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