On the western bank, the Castle Faction was quiet. Their armies had been assembling through the night, pushing down from every direction after their sweep through the empty western cities. The Light Empire had tried to disrupt the assembly by launching large-scale attacks against the gathering Castle Faction before they could consolidate.
The skirmishes had been costly on both sides. But the Castle Faction had finished gathering anyway, and now the Light Empire had no reason to press further. Crossing the Nivara to attack the assembled western camp would mean surrendering their geographical advantage.
The eastern bank's fortifications, the defensive terrain, and the river itself as a barrier, all of it. That was a military taboo. They held time, place, and people on the eastern bank. They simply needed to hold the line.
Behind the main western force, newly built castles hummed with teleportation activity as Castle Lords jumped back to their territories, recruited the day's new troops, and returned. The Castle Faction's total count of Castle Lords and Rangers had reached 3.5 billion, with Rangers making up roughly one-third of that, about 1.5 billion. The remaining 2 billion were Castle Lords.
Two billion, each recruiting a minimum of a thousand troops everyday, produced at least two trillion fresh troops before the battle had even started.
Although most of those initial recruits were cannon fodder, Tier 1 or Tier 2, fragile enough that a single strike from any competent supernatural would end them. But that wasn't the point. They would be brought to the battlefield and even if only a fraction of them survived, and those survivors would emerge from the fight as seasoned, rank-promoted troops.
A thousand cannon fodder producing ten hardened veterans was an acceptable trade in the Castle Faction's math and the troops themselves had no concept of fear. They were soldiers whose loyalty was their faith, who had fought without flinching against Dimensional Demons in Arboriel's underground. A defensive line from the Light Empire's army wasn't going to change that.
The total count was somewhere between eight and ten trillion, depending on who was estimating. The Light Empire had mobilized every supernatural in the empire, roughly two trillion. The Castle Faction were recruiting that many in a single day's cycle, on top of everything already assembled, the comparison wasn't really a comparison.
In the sky above the western camp, roughly a million Castle Faction Gods floated in organized clusters—Castle Lords, Rangers, Troops. They couldn't fight directly in the mortal-level battle without triggering GM's sanctions, so they watched, buffed their armies, and kept their eyes on the Light Empire's contingent of Gods across the river.
"Their defense line is extensive." One Castle Lord said, scanning with his Divine Sense, "Military fortresses, magic cannons, a million airships, battleships standing like a wall across the river. They've clearly decided to make us pay for every meter."
"We have eight to ten trillion troops. We can pay whatever they ask."
"Once the remaining Castle Lords finish their recruitment, we move."
Someone looked up, "The Great Aetherium is here… with three Astral Cities!"
The Castle Lords and Rangers craned upward. In the distance, three white-jade war fortresses were flying in from the west in formation. There had been two before, but now unmistakably three.
The camp went briefly silent.
…
Three Astral Cities.
The camp spent a few minutes on this. Two had been the number going into the war, now there were three, flying in from the west in pin formation. The Castle Lords and Rangers understood exactly what a third one meant.
They have, after all, watched those two Astral Cities crack the barrier of Havenloch City. Later, they even watched one of them summon an Eighteen-Winged Angel phantom to shatter a large city's defense barrier with a single sword strike.
Someone had recorded that latter moment on a photo stone and sold it through the Hyperspace Trading Channel. Everyone had seen it. Everyone understood that during the Havenloch siege, the Astral Cities had been holding back their strongest attack entirely.
"Where did the third one come from? Special mission? Hidden mission?"
"I've never heard of either."
"Neither has anyone else, or we'd know."
The Castle Lords who were coveting the Astral Cities already knew they couldn't act on it. An Astral City was the Angel Race's exclusive weapon of mass destruction. Ten kilometers long, roughly two thousand meters high, built from special metal and covered wall to wall in Angelic runes, with offensive weapons inside, especially the cannons on the city walls, and flight speed matching Gods themselves.
Even interstellar travel was within its capabilities. And its control core could only be interfaced by Angels. Any other Castle Lord who somehow obtained one would just have a very large, very expensive statue.
A top-level Castle Lord cut through the speculation, "Stop thinking in terms of a month ago. His Majesty Haru is a Peak Supreme God. He commands hundreds of thousands of True Gods. What's surprising about building a few Astral Cities?"
A moment of silence fell.
This guy wasn't wrong. A month ago, most of them had been afraid of even goblins and wolves, scrambling to survive at the bottom of the Endless Continent. Now they were Gods, standing above a continent-spanning war.
Haru had left them behind so thoroughly that the gap had stopped being a competition and become something closer to reverence. Peak Supreme God Tier Divine Power was theoretically enough to create entire planets from nothing. If a legion of Astral Cities appeared in full formation, that would be normal too.
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