Haru was still working it out when two figures appeared in the square. It was the Angel of Creation Nova and the Angel of Fate Caelith who arrived together, eighteen wings and sixteen respectively, moving the way they always did lately, in step, like sisters. The only gap between them was that Caelith had just broken into the High God Tier and hadn't yet closed the distance to Nova in raw power. More than that: Caelith's growth ceiling was fixed at the peak of High God Tier. Without Haru finding a way to evolve her to eighteen wings, the door to the Supreme God Tier would stay shut.
He hadn't managed it yet, not with Caelith, not with any of his Sixteen-Winged Angels. He'd been routing every [bloodline evolution blueprints] the Great Aetherium acquired through wars to Celestia, his imperial butler, to distribute among them. Caelith, Seraphina, Ariel, Mary, Auriel.
None had broken through. Still, the blueprints weren't wasted even in failure. Each unsuccessful attempt improved an Angel's foundational potential, raising the odds for the next try. The breakthroughs would come eventually, but so far, the only Eighteen-Winged Angels under his command had gotten there by other means entirely.
There were five of them. Celestia and Yvonne had been conceived directly at that level. Lysandra, Eveline, and Nova had each achieved the breakthrough through the GM's assistance, a different path entirely from the blueprint system, and one he couldn't replicate at will. Not a single one of the five had made it via the blueprints he'd been spending so carefully.
He looked at Nova, then back at the pool, and asked her directly.
"I upgraded it." Nova said, bowing, "I returned this morning before using today's build allocation. When I reached the Supreme God Tier, I gained a second ability — beyond constructing one God Level pool per day, I can also upgrade an existing ordinary pool to the God Level. The upgrade takes three days per pool."
Haru ran the math immediately. Six ordinary Level 9 pools remained. With three days each, it would take eighteen days to convert them all.
He thought about the evolution slot he'd given her, one of three rewards from the GM for his 1st place finish in the Demon Slayer Tournament. He felt the decision vindicate itself all over again. Without it, he wouldn't have a single God Level pool right now, let alone four.
"Build today's pool." He said, "Then go join the battlefield."
They bowed and withdrew.
…
A brief note on what this meant, because the gap between pool types was not small.
An ordinary Level 9 pool could recruit a thousand Angels per day, a mix of levels, including Demigod Tier Two-Winged and Four-Winged Angels that were essentially filler.
A God Level pool bred three thousand per day, every single one of them a True God. The floor was a Six-Winged Lower True God while the ceiling was an Eighteen-Winged Supreme God. Demigods didn't come out of God Level pools at all.
Four God Level pools. Three thousand Angels each. Twelve thousand Gods every day.
For context: the Truth Faction had accumulated roughly ten million Gods over the past hundred thousand years. Accounting for losses, that worked out to roughly one new god every three or four days across the entire faction.
One per three days. Versus twelve thousand per day.
If this number became known, every power on the Endless Continent, even the Dimensional Demons, would move to destroy the Great Aetherium immediately, before that growth rate compounded into something unstoppable.
Which was why the major factions had already quietly abandoned any notion of defeating the Great Aetherium directly. Their only remaining play was the upcoming Divine War and the God King's Throne. Whoever seized the Throne and its divine authority might be able to suppress the Great Aetherium from above.
It was the only angle left. Even the Titan Pantheon, the strongest among the Faith Faction on the Endless Continent, had reached the same conclusion.
…
Haru activated all four God Level pools, then the six ordinary ones.
The menus were familiar by now. He skipped the holy spirit option on each, that was the slow path, and poured Divine Crystals until every pool's timer hit zero. Ten pools total took around twenty thousand Divine Crystals.
He had nearly a hundred million in reserve, and his two natal artifacts, the Scepter of Sovereignty and the Armor of Sovereignty, had both recently been upgraded to top-level Supreme God Tier Artifacts, meaning no major expenditures were competing for those crystals anytime soon. The recruitment budget was secure for a long time to come.
------------------
Become A Member At My Patreon For Access To Bonus Chapters Or Even Multiple Chapters A Day!
» Patreon.com/LordArchduke