By afternoon, the two advancing armies began making contact. The first encounter was a Castle Faction army of roughly one billion, smaller than the Dark Empire contingent it found, and neither side opened hostilities.
The Castle Faction didn't push. The Dark Empire force, following orders from its high command not to provoke the Great Aetherium or the Castle Faction under any circumstances, actively retreated.
The Dark Empire had occupied more than half the core area's territory already and wasn't interested in gambling those gains on a fight it wasn't certain to win. Webster, Lord of the Night, the Dark Empire's sole Supreme God, was not going to send his army into direct conflict with forces backed by eight Supreme Gods. The arithmetic was too obvious.
The Castle Lords, however, were operating with different intentions. They knew what was coming. Sooner or later, they would fight the Dark Empire anyways so they weren't inclined toward restraint.
They occupied whatever they found, including cities and noble territories already under the Dark Empire's control, deliberately applying pressure. The Dark Empire's supernaturals inside those cities were killed. Their forces who encountered this swallowed their anger and pulled back. They had their orders and the Great Aetherium's strength was the ceiling of what they would accept as a fight.
The contradictions deepened through the afternoon. Small-scale skirmishes began appearing as evening came on—border incidents, disputed cities, castle forces taking territory the Dark Empire considered held. Neither main force moved to escalate. The Castle Faction wasn't in a hurry. The Dark Empire didn't dare.
But there was a third party that very much wanted escalation.
…
Under the Blood Moon, figures gathered above the Dark Empire's army positions and inside their home territory simultaneously.
"The time has come." Someone said, "The two armies have been in contact. Contradictions are building. The Dark Empire's high command is holding its anger, which means they're primed. We strike now."
They moved as Angels, perfect disguise, pure light and holy Divine Power radiating from every surface. They even had Peak High Gods among them. They had their targets locked. High-level descendants and direct bloodlines of the Dark Empire's High Gods.
"Kill every target. Leave no evidence. Rather kill a thousand wrong ones than let one go. If someone is caught, self-destruct. Absolutely do not let the Dark Empire see through the disguise."
"Everything for the empire."
The Angel-shaped figures dispersed into the darkness.
…
The figures struck simultaneously across every major Dark Empire legion headquarters in the core area. They appeared out of the void radiating holy light, convincing enough that the legion commanders' first instinct was confusion rather than defense.
That confusion was enough. By the time anyone understood what was happening, the attackers were already killing.
Their method was precise. Each figure had a locked target: at least one direct descendant, embedded within the legion commands as officers and inheritors, sent to gain experience and earn merit for the Dark Empire. The assassins killed these first and, since anyone else present in a major legion headquarters was unlikely to be inconsequential, killed others on the way out.
There was no massacre, they didn't unleash their Divine Power to sweep through formations, which would have drawn sanctions from the Endless Continent's Laws. Individual kills only, each one deliberate.
The Laws have always been permissive about Gods killing the occasional mortal when they had specific cause. It was mass slaughter that drew punishment. This was surgical.
After completing their targets, each figure dropped into the void and vanished. No engagement with the Dark Gods who came to investigate. No answering questions. Target dead, mission complete, gone.
The same pattern played out across hundreds of legion headquarters simultaneously. Tens of thousands fell. Not many, relative to the six trillion total force, but these were not random soldiers. They were the top-tier leaders and the precious bloodlines of the empire's strongest figures.
As previously mentioned, Gods rarely produced children and the stronger a God was, the lower the probability of successful inheritance. What the Dark Empire's Gods have managed to create and raise to adulthood over thousands of years was gone in under a minute.
The army camps went into chaos immediately. The Dark Empire's Gods rose into the sky across the entire area, roaring.
------------------
Become A Member At My Patreon For Access To Bonus Chapters Or Even Multiple Chapters A Day!
» Patreon.com/LordArchduke