"Regardless of whether the Garden's capital falls to the Spider Tower or the Oasis, the Garden Legion must already be on edge and pulling back its forces," Ashe analyzed. "There's no way they'd deploy commanders to secure Resource Points right now. This is our chance."

His prediction proved spot-on. Navigating by the Garden's map, Ashe swept through the Resource Points, finding each one still packed with abandoned garrison creatures and massive, untouched stockpiles of materials.

He also noticed an anomaly. The resource yield in the Garden region was double or even triple that of other territories. There were only two logical explanations. Either the Garden harvested at vastly longer intervals, allowing wealth to accumulate over time, or the colony creatures under its control gathered resources with two- to three-times greater efficiency, producing a massive surplus within the same window.

After raiding several sites, the evidence clearly pointed to the second possibility.

Compared to colony creatures elsewhere, the Garden's denizens showed no obvious boost in raw combat power. However, their tactical awareness and coordination were in a league of their own. When Ashe's group tried to lure them into narrow terrain for a textbook choke-point slaughter, the creatures simply holed up inside the mines and refused to take the bait. A few even glared at Ashe with unmistakable disdain, as if mocking him. "Tricks like this? Is that the best you can do?"

The surprises didn't stop there. Ashe soon realized...