The battlefield had divided itself into four zones.
In the first, Haru dominated both the Ancient Evil Supreme Gods.
In the second, Yvonne and Zakaria were matched as intermediate-stage Supreme Gods. They traded blows across a section of broken space.
In the third, Nova was handling Micteya and Mordra simultaneously, the two newest and weakest Supreme Goddesses in the Evil Faction facing the Angel of Creation alone.
In the fourth area, two hundred thousand Imperial Gods fought nearly a million and a half Evil Gods, holding a four-to-one kill ratio that still wasn't enough to close the numerical gap.
Gods were continuously falling in the fourth zone. The formation was holding, but the math said it wouldn't hold forever.
…
"Pff—"
Both ancient Supreme Gods coughed golden blood simultaneously.
Malakar stared at the blood on his hand. The last time he'd been injured was a hundred thousand years ago, in the Ancient Era's Divine War of gods. A hundred thousand years of building himself into something the Endless Continent feared, and a Castle Lord not even twenty five years old, someone who'd been cultivating for less than two months had just made him bleed.
Haru raised the scepter again.
"Even if you suppress us." Malakar said quickly, "What does it matter? Look at the fourth war zone. Your Gods are falling. I don't believe your resurrection magic works at this scale. These are, after all, about two hundred thousand Gods. After this battle, you'll be ruler of an empty empire."
Malakar was framing it as a truce offer. The watching Gods in the surrounding fields actually debated it.
"Lord Malakar has a point. Our true enemies are the Dimensional Demons."
"Consuming the Endless Continent's strength in internal war helps no one."
"If it were me, I wouldn't agree. Suppressing two ancient Supreme Gods is worth sacrificing any number of ordinary Gods."
"That's ruthless…"
"No, that's math."
Haru, on the other hand, smiled.
"Merely a million odd Evil Gods destroying my Imperial Army?" He looked genuinely amused, "That's a fool's dream."
In the fourth war zone, every Guardian Angel in the Great Aetherium's formation raised their divine scepters simultaneously.
Resurrection magic, which was the Guardian Angels' innate talent, erupted across the battlefield in a wave of holy light that overwhelmed everything else in the nearby space. The fallen imperial gods rose. Their Divine bodies reconstituted. Souls reintegrated. Even those whose souls had been fully obliterated came back, whole and standing.
Two hundred thousand True Gods were back to full strength again.
The Evil Gods in the fourth war zone stared at the army they'd just spent considerable effort weakening, now standing in front of them at full capacity. They just... rose back up from the dead.
The spectating Gods were equally stunned. Castle lords at the edge of the field started talking over each other.
"That's… that's a healer's resurrection skill. It exists here too?"
"Those Angels with the halos above their heads must be the Guardian Angels. This resurrection must be their innate talent."
"I saw a Dragon God get his soul obliterated mid-battle. How did he just come back?"
"And look at those other Angels moving through the fourth war zone, the ones nobody's attacking. They're called Angels of Peace. Is their innate magic literally making both sides leave them alone?"
"The Angel Race is something else entirely."
The strategic implication settled over everyone simultaneously: the Great Aetherium's Gods couldn't be killed in any permanent sense as long as the Guardian Angels were active on the battlefield. Every Evil God's kill was being undone in real time.
The numerical advantage of one and a half million evil gods against two hundred thousand meant nothing if the two hundred thousand kept coming back.
What the spectators didn't know was that the Guardian Angels couldn't convert their targets before resurrection. Bringing a fallen God back to full strength was one thing. Remaking them as Haru's believers required the Holy Grail's soul transformation followed by the Angel Reincarnation Pool. Two entirely separate processes.
Malakar and Skarion understood immediately what the threat had been worth.
"Young Emperor." Malakar said, his voice heavier than before, "Is this your source of confidence?"
"In this game of hunter and prey." Haru smiled, "You were always the prey."
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