Someone asked the obvious question.
[What about the Great Aetherium? The Astral Cities and Angel Army are the difference-makers at the Battle of Nivara. Has anyone contacted them?]
[His Majesty doesn't have any of us as friends. Everyone knows that.]
[Then contact the Imperial Army directly. Find Lady Lysandra.]
It didn't take long. The Castle Faction Gods, each capable of scanning hundreds of thousands of kilometers in a single sweep of Divine Senses, located the Imperial Army within the hour. One Castle Lord, a peak Lower True God, was brought aboard an Astral City and presented to Lysandra.
He was careful about his posture. Lysandra was a Supreme Goddess after all. One look of genuine displeasure would end him instantly, and they both knew it.
"Lady Lysandra." He bowed, "The Castle Faction will join at Nivara River before dawn, with close to a trillion troops. But our Gods, over two million of them, are mostly Lower True Gods, with a small number of Intermediate Gods and no High Gods at all. The Light Empire still has more than twenty High Gods and a Supreme God on their side. If they enter the mortal battlefield, our army won't hold. We need the Great Aetherium's protection."
Lysandra closed her eyes briefly. With the thread of faith connected to Haru, the query went up, and the answer came back.
"My Lord has issued his oracle." She said, "The Imperial Army will join you at the Nivara River at the appointed time. This war is under my Lord's direction, he will not stand by while you take heavy losses."
The Castle Lord exhaled. The relief on his face was unguarded.
"Thank you, Lady Lysandra. Please convey my thanks to His Majesty as well!"
"Go."
He withdrew. On his way out, he passed close to the edge of the Astral City's walls and slowed, looking at the structure around him with open envy. No Castle Lord had anything approaching this. Their airships were beyond most of them, let alone a fortress that could sail across outer space and strike planets. The rumors said the Astral Cities of the Angel lineage could do exactly that.
He didn't know if it was true, but he believed it anyway.
…
Beneath the Blood Moon, hundreds of Castle Faction armies converged on the Nivara River from every direction. Their total scale approached a trillion.
Above them, the twelve Demon Monarchs of the abyss watched. For the first time, something in their expressions shifted, not confidence, not contempt. Something that looked like unease.
By now, the Space-Time Gate, the sea of blood, and the twelve projections had all vanished.
Their real bodies had arrived. On the surface of the Endless Continent, ordinary creatures exhaled. The blood moon looked almost normal again, just a faint red glow, nothing more. They just didn't know that it was the 'calm before the storm'. The projections were simply gone because they were no longer needed.
The Demon Monarchs were now on the blood moon itself, using the demon nests there to begin teleporting over their armies. The Burning Legion was next. After that, the Battle of Planets.
What the Endless Continent's Laws have spent a hundred thousand years building toward was arriving anyway. It had done two things in that time. First, after the Faith Faction evacuated, it created the Truth Faction from scratch, cultivating millions of Gods of Truth and a generation of Empire Lords comparable to Supreme Gods in power.
When that still didn't feel like enough, it pivoted. The second plan was the Castle Factions: summoned from another planet entirely, seeded with growth mechanics no native faction possessed, and given less than two months to develop.
The result was a trillion-scale army, over two million Gods, and one Great Aetherium that even the Titan Pantheon didn't dare provoke openly. If the Great Aetherium had been given more time, it would likely have ruled the entire Endless Continent and built the first Divine Dynasty in history.
Unfortunately, time was the one thing it didn't have.
…
Above the Blood Moon, the twelve Demon Monarchs looked down at the war unfolding in the Light Empire's territory. Supreme Gods, all of them, their Divine Senses covered the battlefield in full detail. They watched the golden promotion lights flickering across the Castle Factions' lines, each one meant someone was ranking up in real time, and the mood among them was something between calculation and unease.
Their hundred thousand years of cultivation had not stood still. The Demon Monarchs who had been Intermediate-stage Supreme Gods in the Ancient Era were at the late-stage now. The strongest had reached the peak, one God Monarch Tier Law away from Pseudo God Monarch Tier. Across the board, the twelve were meaningfully stronger than they had been. And yet, they couldn't feel confident of sweeping the Endless Continent on their own.
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