The tide had turned against Paty IV completely.
He sat atop his golden chariot, his body shaking. The army he had assembled with everything at his disposal had collapsed in a single afternoon.
Soldiers scattered and fled, bodyguards lay dead across the field, and the Corviknight Legion that had once filled the sky now lay in pieces on the ground below the walls, frozen solid and shattered.
The royal banner had long since been trampled into the mud by the men who had carried it.
"Impossible... my army... how did this happen?"
He could not understand why the people of Galar would trust an outsider over their legitimate king. He could not comprehend how a small port city, a collection of refugees, without a proper army, had become this.
Lucien looked at him from the wall. No pity in his eyes.
In the original course of history, the Galar Royal Family had stolen the credit for what Calyrex, Zacian, and Zamazenta had done during the Darkest Day, causing Calyrex to lose all belief in itself and fall into a thousand-year sleep, its memories fading.
This outcome was simply the consequence of what they had always been.
"Your Majesty, should we capture him?" Chelsea asked.
Lucien shook his head slightly. True victory was not in taking the old king's head. It was in letting the old king live to see that every person who had once followed him had already turned away. Paty IV, abandoned, was already finished.
Chelsea and several surrendered generals stepped forward and bowed. "Your Majesty, the army has fully surrendered. Should we march into the Galar interior immediately?"
Lucien looked toward the distant fortresses.
The Battle of Slumbering Town was not a defensive victory. It was the opening note of a new era for all of Galar.
"No need to rush," he said. "The news will travel for us."
And it did.
Within three days, word of Calyrex's miracle, the army's collapse, and Paty IV's defeat had spread through every town and village in Galar. In Motostoke, farmers in the fields dropped their tools and wept.
"Lord Lucien won! We won't pay those taxes anymore! They can't drag us off to war anymore!"
People ran to spread the news. Others stood at the edges of their fields and bowed toward the distant walls of Slumbering Town.
In Wyndon, slaves in the workshops heard and threw down their tools where they stood.
"The King is defeated! We're free!"
City guards who had always had divided loyalties opened the gates themselves, tore down the royal insignia, and threw it in the dirt. They waited for Lucien's army to arrive.
Hammerlocke, Circhester, Stow-on-Side, one city after another, one village after another. Farmers, slaves, common soldiers, low-ranking clerks: all of them had endured enough. Enough taxes. Enough conscription. Enough hunger and separation from their families.
And now they had seen something different. They had heard what Slumbering Town had become.
"When Lord Lucien arrives, we'll welcome him properly."
"We'll guide his army through the gates ourselves."
"The corrupt officials, we've already tied them up and are waiting."
People quietly sabotaged royal defenses from within. Others passed information. Others simply cleaned their doorways and prepared water and food and waited.
Galar was no longer looking toward its old king. Every face was turned toward Slumbering Town.
On the walls, Lucien watched the stream of people coming in from every direction, heard the distant cheering, and allowed himself a small smile.
Calyrex stood beside him. "The people's hearts have turned. The old Galar is already only a name."
Zacian and Zamazenta stood to either side, their sword and shield radiating steady light. They understood what was coming.
A new era. Not approaching. Already here.
Lucien moved quickly. He restored order in Slumbering Town, settled the surrendered soldiers, and then set out under the straightforward purpose of liberating Galar from its old authority.
Zacian and Zamazenta remained to guard Slumbering Town. Lucien rode out on Calyrex, Calyrex in its full form, mounted, its fertile aura moving across the land as they traveled. Where Calyrex passed, dry soil grew shoots, withered trees put out new leaves.
More than half the army was made up of former royal soldiers who had surrendered. Now in clean uniforms, their eyes no longer held the despondency of conscripted men. They watched Calyrex's power work on the land around them and felt something settle in their chests: with that Pokémon present, their families would not go hungry.
The first stop was a small farming town adjacent to Motostoke. Its people had lived under suffocating taxation for as long as anyone could remember: more than half of every harvest taken by the crown, people going hungry, farm Pokémon treated badly.
When Lucien's column arrived outside the walls, there was no resistance. The gates were already open. The townspeople were already in the streets.
Elderly farmers leaning on hoes, eyes red. Children in worn but clean clothes watching the Legendary Pokémon with wide eyes. Even the royal guards who had been stationed in the town stood at the front of the crowd, their weapons already set aside.
"Lord Lucien! The King of Abundance has come!"
"We're saved, we won't starve anymore!"
An old farmer, gray-haired and bent, walked forward through the crowd with shaking steps and bowed deeply.
"My lord. We have waited for this day a long time. The royal officials are already gone."
"We submit to you willingly, and ask you to be the lord of Galar!"
The entire town knelt without hesitation.
"Rise," Lucien said, moving through the crowd to help people to their feet. "No one will bully you again."
He looked at Calyrex. Calyrex extended a hand, and fertile energy spread across the barren fields surrounding the town. Seedlings pushed through the soil in moments, green and strong.
The villagers stared with open mouths.
Several old farmers stood and spoke up: "Lord Lucien, we know every road in this area. We will guide your army to the other towns still under the royal family's control."
Lucien bent and helped the nearest farmer to his feet.
In half a day, the town had been brought into the new order without fire or suffering, filled only with relief and anticipation.
The column moved on. Town after town, the pattern held.
In Wyndon, the great mechanized city, whose miners and workers had toiled day and night for wages that barely kept them alive, where farm Pokémon were shackled and conscripted, the defending generals had already fled on hearing news of the defeat at Slumbering Town.
The nobles had sold their possessions and run. When Lucien's column arrived, the city gates had already been broken open from the inside by the miners themselves. The royal banners had been torn down. The officials who had not escaped were bound and waiting.
The workers poured into the streets.
"Lord Lucien, come in! Come in quickly!"
Lucien looked at the faces pressing around him.
"From today, Wyndon abolishes all royal taxes and levies. Workers are paid according to their labor. All conscripted Pokémon are released. People and Pokémon work together and share in the city's prosperity."
The city erupted. The residents cleared away every trace of the old authority before nightfall.
In Hulbury, a port city, the people had used their fishing boats to blockade the harbor and drive out the royal guards themselves before the column arrived. They guided the procession in through the water.
In the farming villages along the terraced hillsides, the roads had been cleared and the crops tended in preparation. Elders knelt in the fields to greet the column.
In Hammerlocke, the ancient city, a thousand years old, where the royal family and their garrison had intended to hold their strongest position, the people opened the gates from within before the army reached the walls.
The guards scattered. The citizens came out into the streets carrying food.
Ballonlea, Circhester, Stow-on-Side. Every town, every village. The same scene repeated: royal flags knocked down, officials captured or fled, not one city willing to spend lives defending the old order. Commoners, farmers, miners, and the lowest-ranking soldiers joined the column as guides and led it to the next town.
In the fields, farmers stood at the edges of their plots each day watching for the column's dust on the horizon.
In the villages, food and water were prepared and waiting.
In the cities, streets were cleared and windows thrown open.
In under two months, more than half of Galar's territory was free. The old royal authority had collapsed entirely.
Lucien stood on the upper terrace of Hammerlocke Castle and looked down at the crowd gathered below: farmers, miners, workers, former soldiers, people who had traveled from distant towns to be present.
Calyrex stood beside him. In the three months since the campaign had begun, Calyrex had released its fertile power over every town it entered.
By now, nearly every person in Galar knew the name King of Abundance. The Power of Faith that had accumulated around Calyrex had grown to something that neither of them had fully anticipated.
Calyrex, standing there, still processed the reality of it as something that should not have been possible and yet was.
Lucien looked out across the crowd, then spoke.
"People of Galar. For hundreds of years, the old royal family levied exorbitant taxes, treated every living being as expendable, let you go hungry, and enslaved Pokémon without limit, leaving this land hollowed out and broken. From today, that rule is over."
The crowd went silent for one moment.
Then the roar came: cheers and shouts and the waving of farming tools and flowers, hundreds of years of accumulated suffering finding its release all at once. Paty IV's dynasty had lost its last footing. The word "over" carried everything that every person present had been waiting to hear.
When the noise had subsided, Lucien spoke again.
"The old order is gone. A new one takes its place. I declare the Galar Region Pokémon League officially founded."
Murmurs moved through the crowd. Confusion, curiosity, but underneath both: trust. Whatever Lord Lucien established, it would be something worth having.
Lucien explained it plainly.
"Galar will have no royal lineage and no royal authority. The Pokémon League is Galar's sole governing body, staffed by Trainers from Unova working alongside the people of Galar to manage this land.
The League will abolish all excessive taxes and levies, divide land and tools so that farmers have fields and workers have wages, abolish slavery in all its forms, and ensure that no person may oppress another. Humans and Pokémon stand as equals, supporting one another, protecting this land together."
He paused, and looked at Calyrex beside him.
"The King of Abundance, Calyrex, will serve as Guardian of Galar, above the League, a protector who blesses every living thing on this land."