Baldwin went still after hearing the reasoning.
"And there's one more thing." The minister paused, "That Emperor Kazehaya. He is a peak Supreme God, a Space-Time Lord. In his recent war against the Evil Pantheon, he reversed the self-destruction of a late-stage Supreme God. Reversed it entirely. He doesn't need to stop you in advance, he can undo what you've already done."
The hall was very quiet.
Baldwin let out a long breath and turned to face Asher, "Your Majesty. Forgive me, I didn't think it through."
Asher looked at him for a moment, "The fact that you are willing to sacrifice everything is enough."
He sat back. The faint warmth of a plan, briefly present, then gone. That was what this war had become. Moments of something like hope, and then someone explaining clearly why it couldn't work.
"If our Empire falls in this war, then it falls." Asher said, "But we will give our all to change that outcome."
The ministers lowered their heads. Privately, each of them made the same resolution: if it came to the imperial capital, they would hold the Imperial Heart regardless of the cost.
Asher straightened, "But we're not there yet. Pass my orders, mobilize the Empire's top elite forces to the Nivara River. Everything we have. Hold that line. Tell the soldiers and supernaturals on the battlefield: the longer they hold, the closer we are to the Battle of Planets. If they can delay until that battle begins, the Great Aetherium and the Castle Faction will withdraw on their own."
…
Location: Nivara River.
It ran from the northernmost edge of the Light Empire to its southeastern coast, tens of millions of kilometers of water that eventually opened into the sea. At its widest, the river stretched thousands of kilometers across, far enough that the opposite bank disappeared entirely.
It was the empire's central artery, the boundary between the territories the Castle Faction were burning through on the left bank and the core imperial regions on the right: the most fertile land, the most prosperous cities, the heart of everything the Light Empire was.
Asher's plan was to hold the right bank. Keep the enemy on the left side of the water. Buy time until the battle arrived and the Great Aetherium's priorities shifted elsewhere.
Hundreds of billions of imperial troops and supernaturals were teleported to the eastern bank through the teleportation arrays that connected the Light Empire's cities. It was the largest single mobilization in the empire's history. Airships, magic cannons, trebuchets, every siege and defensive weapon in the imperial arsenal followed.
Viewed from the sky, the right bank looked like a black tide had washed up against the water's edge and frozen there. It was dense, unbroken, stretching the full length of the line.
"The Nivara Defense is our Plan A. If it fails, abandon everything and return to the Imperial Capital." Asher had added, before the meeting ended, "We will then execute Plan B."
"Yes, Your Majesty."
The resolution in the hall was real. No one who left that room intended to let it come to Plan B.
…
Two days into the Imperial War, the Castle Faction had already produced over two million Gods.
The gains were approaching what the Demon Slayer Tournament had yielded, and that war wasn't over yet. Castle Lords were ascending fastest of all, their entire armies generating exp that fed back to them directly.
Rangers promoted slower, fighting alone without that bonus, but still outpaced individual troops of the Castle Lords' armies by a significant margin.
On the World Chat Channel, Castle Lords compared notes between battles: cities captured, resources piled up, territories leveling up. Several had hit Capital Cities. Even their troop buildings were pushing Level 9 across the board.
Someone raised the question of whether barracks could be leveled up beyond that, but since the upgrade conditions were shown as unknown, none of them knew how to upgrade their barracks further.
[I asked the GM. God Level Barracks exist. But Power Stones and Magic Crystals won't do it. The conditions to further level them up are unknown.]
[If anyone has one, it must be His Majesty Haru. I heard he already has almost ten barracks and every single one of them is at Level 9.]
[My intuition says he already has God Level Barracks too.]
[But what kind of effects would a God Level barrack even have?]
[Probably only His Majesty knows.]
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