Ten o'clock in the morning. Clear sky, no clouds.
The artillery started. Hundreds of millions of magic cannons on the eastern bank opened simultaneously, beams of light weaving into a dense net above the river. Giant trebuchets added their own contribution, not equipped with ordinary boulders but alchemist-made bomb stones that detonated on approach, each explosion shaking the air for hundreds of kilometers in every direction.
The space above the Nivara River cracked. The clouds above ten thousand meters shredded and didn't reform.
Eight trillion Castle Faction's troops crossed toward the eastern bank. The math was simple and brutal: eight trillion against two trillion, but the two trillion held the bank with the help from the cannons, the military fortress cities, and the geography.
Every round of artillery fire from the Light Empire killed tens of millions of Castle Faction troops. Even Demigods caught in the center of converging cannon fire were torn apart. The layered magic cannon bombardment could collapse a Demigod's law field and shred the body underneath it in the same instant.
The river surface turned red within the first few rounds. Water element monsters emerged to feed on the dead, and the castle faction kept coming anyway.
…
On the river itself, the Light Empire's fleet of hundreds of thousands of warships and modified civilian ships had been firing upward into the crossing army, but they didn't fire for long.
From beneath the surface came the army of alliances with troops like Murlocs, Nagas, Mermaids, Shrimp Soldiers, Crab Generals, and the others. The territories of such Castle Lords was located on islands near sea areas, which was why their armies were naturally sea-based.
They owned battleships and civilian ships too, but had deliberately left them behind. The Light Empire was a land based empire, and the Nivara was the only major water theater in this war. Their sea-based troops were exactly what was needed here, and nothing else would have been useful.
They hit the fleet from below, for which the warships had no answer. Tens of thousands of vessels were torn apart within minutes. The Light Empire's supernaturals who survived the sinking were forced into the water. They fought without hesitation. Brave, unafraid of death, exactly what the empire had always produced.
Unfortunately it made no difference. In the water, sea-based races fighting on home terrain beat land-based races at equal rank without exception. And beyond those troops themselves, the water element monsters that had been feeding on the battlefield dead were commandeered mid-feast and forced into the fight, adding another layer the Light Empire's supernaturals couldn't overcome.
In under an hour, the river fleet was gone. A few ships escaped by chance, but the rest were debris. The sea-based armies rode the current toward the eastern bank.
…
An hour earlier, at the battle's opening, a separate front in the sky had begun separately.
The castle faction's flying troops including Dragons, Harpies, Thunder Eagles, Golden Griffins, Gargoyles, Vampire Bats, etc. had formed up around the three Astral Cities and the four thousand airships, then moved directly on the Light Empire's aerial fleet.
That fleet was formidable. Millions of airships, regular ones from the Light Empire's Imperial Army plus civilian commercial airships modified and equipped with magic cannons, constituted a force whose sheer volume of fire was enough to make even Gods uncomfortable.
The largest airships on this battlefield carried magical cannons with God Tier lethality: capable of killing Lower True Gods outright, injuring Intermediate Gods, and threatening even High Gods if the Astral City's strongest attack method was deployed. Against Demigods and Saints, even a single hit from weaker cannons was fatal.
The Light Empire's first priority was to neutralize the Astral Cities. The threat was obvious: one artillery round from it could flatten a large defensive area, one strongest-attack strike could even shatter the barrier shield of a military fortress and render it useless. Three Astral Cities firing continuously could tear through millions of airships faster than they could be replaced. The fleet focused everything on the Astral Cities and fired, but they accomplished nothing.
The Astral City's walls were covered in God Tier Angelic runes. Penetrating them required God Tier attacks. Of the millions of airships in the Light Empire's fleet, only a handful of the largest carried cannons with genuine God Tier lethality.
The rest, including all the converted civilian ships, produced energy ripples on the Astral City's barriers and nothing more. After several full bombardment rounds, the energy value of Astral Cities' barriers had dropped slightly. The walls themselves remained untouched.
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