The three Astral Cities descended over the western camp and began deploying.
First out: roughly four thousand airships—about six hundred from the Great Aetherium's Airship Corps, the remaining three thousand-plus captured from the Light Empire during the campaign, their varied designs making the fleet look assembled from a dozen different nations. All of them took position at an altitude of about ten thousand meters.
Then the Angel army. More than 2.4 million, up from the roughly two million present at the previous battlefield. The increase was visible. Several Castle Lords noted it immediately and correctly attributed it: the Great Aetherium had taken a large number of Troop Summoning Blueprints from the captured cities and used them to expand the Angel Army.
The Angels were deployed in formation across the sky, and the Castle Lords and Rangers who had been fighting alongside them for four days still stopped to look.
"Every Multi-Winged Angel, female, without exception. And all of them—"
"There aren't words to describe their beauty."
"In our original world, as beautiful as an Angel was just a saying. Seeing the real thing, I am at a loss for words."
One Castle Lord sighed, "The best I can do with Troop Summoning Blueprints is recruit golden griffins while His Majesty recruits Angels directly. There's no comparison at all."
"Golden Griffins?" someone said, "I'm still recruiting Dwarf Musketeers."
The first Castle Lord's expression immediately brightened, "Hearing that, I feel much better."
Several Castle Lords with even lower-tier troops stared at him with barely contained hostility. Classic show-off.
"What I find most remarkable is that they're also a God Class Race that can fight eight-to-one and win." Someone else said, steering back, "They're absolutely flawless."
The contingent of Gods—over 200,000 strong—hadn't been deployed into the open air. Their Divine Aura was concentrated inside one of the Astral Cities, dense enough to feel from the outside. Several Castle Lords scanned it with their Divine Senses and pulled back immediately with a look of fear in their eyes.
"Their composition is terrifying. In most Pantheons, the majority of True Gods are Lower True Gods with extremely few High Gods while In the Great Aetherium, the largest group by number are the Intermediate Gods and a large number of High Gods. The average quality is absurd. Even without our Castle Faction, the Great Aetherium's Angel army and True Gods alone could sweep the Light Empire alone."
The Angel Race's recent record was well known. In the recent war against the Evil Pantheon, the two hundred thousand True Gods of the Great Aetherium had engaged and destroyed over a million enemy True Gods, more than eight times their number.
In that same engagement, the Great Aetherium's Supreme Gods had killed five enemy Supreme Gods. And Celestia, the most powerful of them all, had defeated the Titan Lord Varkath in the Void, taken his arm, and claimed his Natal Artifact. That last achievement had settled the question of whether Angels were a God Class Race or not. The answer was known across the entire Endless Continent now.
…
"I just got a message from a God of Faith contact." One Castle Lord said, in a different tone, "The Beast God Pantheon has submitted to the Great Aetherium."
"Me too. All of them, over a million Beast Gods led by the Goddess Christine, are now under His Majesty's command. The Beast God Pantheon is formally a subsidiary Pantheon of the Great Aetherium. They receive Haru's protection, and they pay tribute with the power of faith in return."
"That can't be right. The Beast God Pantheon is an ancient faction of Faith with over a million Gods. They'd submit to a Castle Lord?"
"My initial troops were beastmen and I have contacts in the Beast God Pantheon. I confirmed it directly with them and the news is real."
The calculation ran itself through every mind present. Over 200,000 Gods of the Great Aetherium plus the 1.18 million Beast Gods of Faith. There are around 1.4 million True Gods under Haru's command. More than half of the entire castle faction's two million gods combined, held by a single Castle Lord.
"The entire Castle Faction has about two million True Gods in total. On the other hand, the Great Aetherium alone has over a million. Even without their Supreme Gods, they can fight all of the Castle Faction alone…"
Nobody had a response to that. The pattern had been clear for weeks. Haru wasn't someone to compete with or aspire to match. He was something to follow, and hope that following kept you close enough to matter when the Divine War arrived.
…
By nine in the morning, every Castle Lord had completed the day's recruitment. Eight trillion troops assembled on the western bank. The war horn sounded.
Every Castle Lord, Ranger, and Troop turned toward the Nivara River.
------------------
Become A Member At My Patreon For Access To Bonus Chapters Or Even Multiple Chapters A Day!
» Patreon.com/LordArchduke