"Find the thief." Said the First Demon Monarch Eisenfaust, from inside black armor that seemed to absorb the surrounding darkness, "His Majesty has given me that task personally. Whoever this is, I will kill him myself."
Eisenfaust was the only Demon Monarch in the history of the Abyss who had challenged the Demon Emperor and survived. Challenges to Abyss' throne were within the rules, even welcomed by the Emperor himself since every defeated challenger deepened Aschenkranz's integration of the Abyss Law and accelerated his God Monarch Tier Law's comprehension.
But stealing the Emperor's artifact was face-slapping of an entirely different order. There was no mercy for that, regardless of the thief's power or bloodline.
"Twenty-four hours." Eisenfaust continued, "Our bodies arrive at the Blood Moon and we guard it. Any God of the Endless Continent who approaches gets killed. After that, the Burning Legion and the Twelve Demon Armies follow. When the Shrine falls and the wall cracks, we go straight in."
All twelve agreed. One Demon Monarch, who had been watching the Endless Continent, said, "There's already a war going on down there."
"It's their Castle Faction, the Great Aetherium, attacking one of the native empires." A hideous-faced Demon Monarch said, "They didn't exist in the Ancient Era. The spirit of Endless Continent summoned them from another planet, even spent its own Divine Source to do it. Within less than two months, they've already produced multiple Supreme Gods and a large number of Gods."
"The combined Supreme God count of the Endless Continent now number more than thirty." Another one said, "Faith, Truth, Castle Faction together. More than the Ancient Era."
They paused, then came laughter. Cold and unhurried.
Twelve Demon Monarchs against more than thirty Supreme Gods. On paper, the numbers favored the Endless Continent but they weren't worried about the paper math.
"When His Majesty arrives with his servants." One Demon Monarch said, "This planet would fall too."
The word 'servants' landed differently than the rest of the sentence. Something shifted in the eyes of the Demon Monarchs present. Not confidence, not cruelty. Something that looked, briefly, like fear.
Only they knew what the Demon Emperor had done with his servants in the Ancient Era, hundreds of thousands of years ago.
…
Back on the Endless Continent, the Castle Faction had stopped caring about villages.
With the twelve Demon Monarch projections now visible near the Blood Moon, every Castle Lord and Ranger understood what it meant: the Battle of Planets was close, and time was the resource they could least afford to waste. By incomplete count, at least 300 billion castle faction troops were operating in the western regions of the Light Empire alone.
Moreover none of them were being directed at villages anymore. Villages yielded mere resources for upgrading territory like Wood, Stone and Refined Iron. Cities yielded valuable exp. Only killing the supernaturals improved their strength, and only strength would keep them alive on the battlefield of the upcoming Divine War.
The rules around civilians were straightforward: killing ordinary people yielded zero exp and even triggered a loyalty reduction penalty on troops from the GM on top of that. Castle Lords had every incentive to restrict their armies accordingly.
Surrendered supernaturals were a different matter altogether. They were absorbed into the Castle Faction and turned around to fight their own cities. Most Castle Lords handled this carefully, since enemy soldiers who had just switched sides were a loyalty risk on any active battlefield.
The math was simple. The army of hundreds of billions had reorganized itself into hundreds of large-scale legions, each driving toward a different city while the overall current pulled everything toward one destination, the Imperial Capital of the Light Empire.
Once the capital fell and the Imperial Heart of the Light Empire was destroyed, the Light Empire would cease to exist. The northwest, west, and southwest were already a continuous fire. Almost every city in those regions was under assault simultaneously.
In the east and southeast, the picture was different. Those regions were falling to the Dark Empire, and falling fast, almost without resistance. The Dark Empire's army was a fraction of the Castle Faction's size, yet the territory it had claimed was several times larger.
The reason was Asher's strategy: the Light Empire had quietly evacuated its eastern and southeastern defenders ahead of the Dark Empire's arrival and teleported them west to reinforce against the Castle Faction front. The Dark Empire was walking into empty cities. The Castle Faction was walking into prepared defenses, paying a price for every wall.
The castle lords assumed this was simply the natural difficulty of fighting an empire-level power on its home ground. They didn't know about the Dark Empire at all.
Only the Great Aetherium did.
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