A core minister stood up, "Your Majesty, urgent news from the front."
"What now?"
"The Castle Faction recruited a new day's troops. Trillions of fresh troops have entered the battlefield. Our defense line has collapsed across the board."
The hall went silent. The core ministers had calculated at the start of this campaign that the Nivara defense could hold for at least a week. It lasted less than two days.
"Two trillion supernaturals." Someone said, "And the Castle Faction, on the other hand, adds trillions overnight. We cannot defeat them, not truly. As long as the Castle Lords live, their troops keep coming. The Lords themselves hide in the rear of the battlefield, shielded by Gods and Demigods, with the Great Aetherium's Angel Supreme Gods overhead. Even if His Majesty Asher personally took the field, killing them would be impossible. Even with two other empires helping us, we couldn't win. You cannot defeat an army that regenerates faster than it dies."
The logic was sound and unanswerable.
"Stop talking about the distant battlefield." Another minister said, "We've already lost it. Focus on the capital."
Everyone agreed. The distant battlefield was gone. The over one trillion supernaturals still fighting there were on their own. Asher could watch but not reach them. Sending the True Gods would only get them killed by the Great Aetherium's Supreme God Tier Angels. The capital was what mattered now.
Another minister stood, "Your Majesty. More news."
Asher's expression said everything about how much more news he wanted.
"The Aurora Goddess Amelie has been resurrected and has joined the Great Aetherium. She has arrived at the distant battlefield. The Great Aetherium's Supreme Gods on the battlefield now number four: Amelie, Yvonne, Lysandra, and Eveline. Two of them are at the late-stage of the Supreme God Tier, two in the early stage."
Asher's scalp prickled. He turned to Pandora.
She met his look without flinching, "I saw Amelie when I was at the Great Aetherium. I'm not surprised."
He wanted to ask why she hadn't told him immediately. He thought it through and stopped himself. He turned the question of how to go in a different direction, the Great Aetherium had resurrected fallen Gods before.
The most famous precedent was Maddox, Micteya's younger brother, who had appeared on the battlefield against the Evil Pantheon, fighting for the Great Aetherium. Amelie fit the same pattern exactly.
"Your relationship with Amelie—" He started.
"Will not affect my promise to you." Pandora said, before he could finish, "I will be here when the war comes."
She left the hall shortly after, settling into the capital to wait.
The same minister who had delivered the bad news cleared his throat.
"Your Majesty. There is also good news."
Asher looked at him with the expression of a man who had stopped believing in good news.
"The Dark Empire's army has now entered the core area of our empire. Under our initiative to concede, they have occupied tens of thousands of cities and a vast territory."
The Holy Lord Asher gritted his teeth.
"Yes." He said, "That is indeed good news."
It was, genuinely, good news. That was the strange part. A decade ago, a year ago, or even two months ago, hearing that the Dark Empire's army had invaded the core territory of the Light Empire would have sent Asher into a fury.
The feud between the two empires ran back millions of years, to the Ancient Era of Faith. Since then, across the rise and fall of empires and countless wars, both large and small, the two had never stopped fighting.
The Light Empire won more than it lost, it was by most measures the most powerful human empire in the central area, but no one had ever landed a killing blow. The hatred had simply compounded with every generation.
Now the Dark Empire's army was in his core territory, and Asher felt relief. The strategic math was straightforward. The Great Aetherium and Castle Faction could threaten his Imperial Capital directly, they had the Supreme Gods, the ten trillion troops, the Astral Cities.
The Dark Empire had none of that. Its army could occupy cities and noble territories, but it could not break a capital defended by hundreds of thousands of True Gods and the special Divine Barrier.
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