The battle exploded across the battlefield.
The numbers weren't close, but within the first minutes of contact, the Evil Gods discovered that numbers were doing less work than expected.
The Imperial Gods hit differently. Angels carried the brunt of it, a god-level race with individual combat power to match, but even the Nature Elf Goddesses, Dragon Gods, Golden Beamon Gods, and God Tier Troops of Light were cutting through evil gods at ratios that made no sense on paper.
There were three buffs running simultaneously: Angelic magic blanketing the imperial formation, the Holy Light Temple's twenty-percent attack-defense boost, and the Temple's morale halo pushing the Imperial Gods into periodic frenzy states that doubled their output. Evil Gods who expected to trade blows were dying in three moves.
The casualty ratio settled at four to one. Four Evil Gods for every Imperial God.
"At the same rank, the Evil Gods are losing four to one." The spectators couldn't process it, "How?"
"Even so." Others said, "They have an eight-to-one numbers advantage. Run the math forward. The Evil Pantheon will still win on attrition."
They weren't wrong. Not yet at least.
…
On the other side of the battlefield, Haru broke the two Ancient Supreme Gods' combined Divine Power on his own. Malakar and Skarion had both hit him at once. Late-stage Supreme Gods, both of them, pooling their output. It should have been enough to at least contest the exchange. Haru dispersed it like smoke.
Watching him seal the battlefield and then push both those Gods back alone made the entire battlefield go silent.
Then everyone started talking at once.
"He's a Space-Time Lord! THE LEGENDARY SPACE-TIME LORD!"
"Hey, wasn't that title just a myth? That law is one of the strongest ones in existence, comparable to the Law of Fate commanded by the 'Goddess of Fate'. A God who masters both the Law of Time and Space simultaneously, while integrating them into a single source has never existed in the history of the Endless Continent. Not once."
"He's the first." Christine stared at the figure in the center of the sealed battlefield—slender, composed, radiating a Divine Aura that pressed against the edges of the battlefield.
Selene, the Goddess of Moonlight and Hunting, stood beside her equally still. The other Goddesses from the Nature Pantheon had stopped talking entirely.
The Native Gods who'd been calculating the Great Aetherium's defeat began revising their math.
"A late-stage Supreme God, that too, a Space-Time Lord. Not to mention he's an emperor with a Lord Type Natal Artifact who can draw on his people's collective power. He has also mastered the sources of more than a hundred Divine Laws, already documented from the previous Divine Battle." An ancient God shook his head slowly, "He didn't just match Malakar and Skarion. He suppressed them. With room left over."
"The seal wasn't defensive. He planned this from the start. He's not trying to survive this battle, he's trying to wipe out the whole Evil Pantheon. All of them. Including the five Supreme Gods."
"The Evil Pantheon is in serious trouble."
At the edge of the battlefield, the Castle Lords had abandoned any pretense of neutral observation.
"How many incredible things can one person do?"
"The local Gods said the Great Aetherium couldn't win. Lord Haru finally gave them a slap in the face too."
"As expected of Lord Haru. He never disappoints."
Some of them were looking at the surrounding Native Gods with barely concealed contempt. The same Gods who'd been writing the empire's eulogy five minutes ago.
…
The gods from the Dark Pantheon and the Lich Pantheon, whose masters were now sealed inside the battlefield, were having a worse time.
"Can we break the seal from outside?"
"With what? Our combined power can't touch a Space-Time Lord's cage."
"The Beast Gods and Nature Goddesses won't let us try anyway."
"Then we pray."
"Where is Varkath? Didn't the Evil Pantheon bring him specifically for a moment like this?"
"Who knows." An ancient dark god muttered under his breath, "I knew it even back in the Ancient Era, those Thunder Titans were unreliable."
…
Deep in the void world, Varkath had problems of his own. The Titan Lord stood thousands of meters tall, purple thunder wreathing his frame, and his twin hammers in hand. He was staring at an Eighteen-Winged Angel who had just materialized between him and the battlefield with the calm expression of someone who had already decided how this ended.
Celestia. Peak Supreme Goddess. The same level as him. Varkath had agreed to this arrangement expecting an easy fight. The price Malakar and Skarion paid him was fair compensation for showing up at the right moment, making an impression, and tipping the scales without serious risk. A cameo, essentially.
He hadn't spent tens of thousands of years in retreat and burned through countless rare artifacts just to get into a genuine battle to the death in someone else's war. Then Celestia's aura hit him, and the word *cameo* evaporated.
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