The grand world upon which the divine civilizations relied was known as the Celestial Dominion.
Within this vast, boundless universe suffused with divine radiance, the structure of existence was divided into five major planes layer upon layer, each clearly defined.
These five planes were: the Inner Plane; the Aether Plane; the Material Plane also known as the Real World, the one closest to mortals and governed by the most tangible laws; the Outer Plane; and the Star Realm.
The Material Plane was where the current battlefield of the Thirteenth Plane resided. It had been aggressively transformed by the mechanical wizards through the use of interdimensional purification devices and almost completely turned into a wizard-dominated "real-world battleground."
However, atop this Material Plane, now thoroughly reconstructed by the "Poison Pill Plan," a rift of holy light suddenly tore open the sky.
The Weave Goddess, with an avatar possessing the full power of a true deity, directly summoned her divine kingdom from the higher-dimensional Outer Plane!
Because of this, the mechanical wizards' plan could not be deemed a success.
Though they had indeed rewritten the laws of the Material Plane, the Weave Goddess had brought her followers into the Outer Plane.
Now, the confrontation between the Goddess's army and the wizards had shifted no longer a battle of the Material Plane, but a cross-plane war.
At that very moment, on the horizon, a massive floating fortress like a mountain range suspended in the sky hovered silently.
Deep within the floating stronghold resided the will of the City Lord of the City of Machines.
At his command, the entire Thirteenth Plane would undergo a sweeping transformation.
A single word could change heaven and earth his control was near-divine, as if he were a creator god.
And yet, even as the Weave Goddess opened a path to the Outer Plane and summoned her divine realm, thereby thwarting his plan.
The City Lord of the City of Machines showed no change in expression. There was no disappointment at the plan's failure only calm, and a hint of deep contemplation.
"...Something's off."
"The Thirteenth Plane... seems far more unusual than I had imagined."
He pondered in silence.
Based on prior monitoring of various battlefield planes, the Weave Goddess's avatars had, at most, only ever reached the demi-god level.
But only here, in the Thirteenth Plane, had her avatar attained the authority and power of a full deity strong enough to tear through realms and summon a divine kingdom.
This was not something that could be explained merely by "abundant faith energy."
The cost of summoning a demi-god avatar and that of a true god avatar was worlds apart.
No one would casually initiate a conflict of such magnitude unless necessary.
So then, what exactly was she after?
Was it the plane itself?
He quickly dismissed that notion.
Since the City of Machines had descended upon this world, it had scanned and analyzed its spiritual veins, material resources, time flow, and spatial density countless times...
All were average or below nothing showed potential beyond its limits.
In other words, her target wasn't the world itself.
Then it could only be... a certain existence.
The City Lord of the City of Machines slowly lifted his head.
His will pierced through the fortress's metal walls passed through layers of floating systems and surveillance satellites, and shot straight toward the Eastern War Zone.
That was where the Weave Goddess had first descended with her divine kingdom.
It was also the place where she had repeatedly intervened with divine power.
It was as if she were searching for something refusing to give up, even going so far as to overlay the first projection of her divine kingdom over that very battlefield.
"What on that battlefield... is worth her intervening?"
"Some kind of mysterious relic? Or a particular individual of importance?"
With that thought, the City Lord of the City of Machines issued a new command.
This time, it targeted the entirety of the Thirteenth Plane.
From the scorched desert frontlines of the west to the rift-riddled coastlines in the south, and the ironclad fortifications stretching across the north
All mechanical wizard legions were ordered to withdraw and converge upon the Eastern War Zone!
The City Lord had made a bold decision: to mobilize the entire might of the City of Machines for an extremely risky operation.
A direct assault on the divine barrier of a true god's kingdom!
"We must be fast…"
"We have to act before the Weave Goddess finds what she's looking for…"
His voice was low, cold, and carried an unwavering finality.
Though the information was still scarce, with the aid of a massive computational matrix, a profound understanding of divinity, and a flash of precise intuition
He had already pieced together more than eighty percent of the truth.
The Weave Goddess's true target wasn't the territory, nor was it resources it was a particular existence.
And now, she had opened her divine kingdom, locking in on that target.
In that instant, the City Lord no longer hesitated.
He made a swift and decisive choice to rally all the magical forces within the entire plane and launch an invasion of the Outer Plane's divine kingdom.
At that moment, with the Weave Goddess withdrawing her presence, under normal circumstances, this would've been the perfect time for the wizards to seize vast territories.
But this was no ordinary planar conquest. Whether they could claim the plane or harvest its resources no longer mattered.
The only thing that mattered… was this divine incarnation of the Weave Goddess.
Because of this, the wizard legions did not spread out to capture more land amidst the material plane's upheaval. Instead, they abandoned their previously occupied territories and converged upon the Eastern War Zone.
It wasn't just the wizards. Even the most powerful warriors among the goddess's forces had no desire to claim the plane.
At the same time, the goddess's forces responded in perfect mirrored symmetry:
The divine legions once stationed across various battlefronts charged with purifying and spreading divinity also moved into action upon hearing the soul-piercing "Divine Call" from the goddess's avatar.
Even if they were in the icebound extremes of the far north, or among the burning isles of the southern seas, or even encircled by the mechanical wizards
So long as their faith remained, divinity would answer.
They needed no vehicles, and no paths across battlefields. All they had to do was call out the name of their faith, and a divine "summoning circuit" would form to guide them into the goddess's kingdom.
Thus, figures of believers began to rise from every corner of the plane, shooting across the skies like meteors toward the eastern heavens resonating and harmonizing with the goddess's divine realm.
In just a few short days, the landscape of the Thirteenth Plane had been utterly transformed:
Two colossal factions, at nearly the same moment, abandoned their battles across all outer territories and converged entirely in the east.
One sought to invade the divine kingdom.
The other is to defend it.
All forces, all strategies, all wars now centered on the Eastern War Zone, shrouded beneath the projection of the goddess's divine realm.
Meanwhile, silence and stillness fell over the lands that had been forsaken.
The wind whispered through empty ruins. Blades of grass began to sprout through scorched earth. Some of the plane's native people, long suppressed, finally tasted freedom once more and looked up to see the open sky.
No more metal golems of the wizards.
No more divine emissaries walking among them.
The world seemed to revert, suddenly and strangely, to its primal state quiet and unfamiliar.
An old man, having lived for centuries, stood hesitantly on the broken battlefield, staring blankly into the clear, empty sky. He murmured under his breath:
"If not for the laws of the world having changed… I might've thought… all of this… was nothing more than a dream."
With no gods nor wizards to oppress them, long-forgotten memories began to stir.
It felt as though they had returned to a time long past an age before the divine civilizations had swallowed their world.
............
"…We are now inside the Weave Goddess's divine kingdom."
The voice of Maple Tree echoed within the Spirit of Azure Sky. He had been continuously channeling its power to aid Lynn and thus had witnessed everything that had happened. Now, he spoke slowly, with a tinge of unease in his tone.
"The divine kingdom… so this is the Outer Plane…"
Lynn murmured, eyes scanning their surroundings, his expression heavy.
Without hesitation, he activated the Greyhawk Armor. Cold metal plates swiftly enveloped his body, and intricate runes shimmered across the surface in flowing patterns.
A faint cyan light glowed from his chest, resonating in harmony with the energy fluctuations of the Spirit of Azure Sky.
Standing here, he understood more clearly than most just what kind of existence he was facing.
Lynn had once worked in the City of Machines on a research project dedicated to "divine civilizations," possessing a level of expertise on the gods' worlds and civilization tiers that rivaled that of any arcane scholar.
He still remembered the words of Vidar, the elderly lead researcher:
"Divine civilizations are structured in five tiers. The most enigmatic of them all is the 'Outer Plane' the realm of the divine kingdoms."
It is the final destination of all deities, the convergence of power, faith, spirit, and mystery. It is the ultimate space where transcendent laws are woven into a net, abstracting reality into sacred totems.
It is the edge of illusion the stronghold of divinity.
Lynn looked up.
There was no land, no rivers, not even sun, moon, or stars.
Only layer upon layer of rolling cloud seas dense, heavy, yet faintly luminous, as if woven from laws beyond mortal comprehension.
These clouds twisted and folded into one another, forming an endless, borderless terrain.
Vivid colors swirled in the air, their intensity so thick it seemed liquid.
In the distance, strange hues pulsed in rhythm deep blues, blood reds, and pitch blacks intertwined like a slumbering dream of divinity.
This divine kingdom was not made to welcome mortals.
It rejected logic, rejected science, rejected all worldly understanding.
But what disturbed Lynn most was that, aside from himself and Maple Tree there was no one else.
No outlines of war fortresses, no sign of the mechanical wizard legions, and no trace of Qi's presence, not even the believers of the goddess remained.
As if, the very moment they entered this divine realm, they had been sifted through by the "Will of Divinity," reorganized and separated each cast into a different part of the divine kingdom.
Now, what lay before him was a dreamlike world isolated and devoid of aid.
Lynn slowly withdrew his gaze, drawing in a breath of the cool, slightly biting air. His mind raced to replay everything they had just experienced.
And swiftly, he made a calm assessment:
One piece of good news, one piece of bad.
The good news: within the wizarding forces, there was indeed someone powerful enough to rival the Weave Goddess herself.
Not long ago, the world outside the divine realm had trembled violently that was the clash of transcendent wills, the collision of power and law.
The existence of that powerful wizard had held back the Weave Goddess and disrupted her to a certain extent, preventing her from continuing to track down Lynn and Qi.
However, the bad news soon followed:
A battle between top-tier beings was like a game of chess each move met with another, back and forth.
Just moments ago, the wizard side had the upper hand.
But now, the balance had begun to tip.
The will of the Weave Goddess was once again gaining the upper ground, and Lynn unfortunately was right within the "core domain" of this terrifying deity's divine kingdom!
Lynn knew full well how relentless this Weave Goddess was. She had chased them from the Seven-Star Temple just to find the culprits him and Qi.
It was no surprise, then, that the pressure weighing on Lynn right now was immense.
"At this point, all I can do is take things one step at a time… Let's hope that powerful wizard can break through the goddess's divine realm before she finds me…"
Lynn took a deep breath. Three permanent arcane sigils shimmered faintly across his body, resonating with one another.
This raid on divine faith had come with considerable risk so much so that he was still living in its aftermath, the threat of being discovered by the goddess looming over him at any moment.
But the gains he'd reaped from it… were equally staggering.
In terms of time saved, an average First-Level wizard might have spent one or even two hundred years to make this kind of progress. Lynn had done it in a single night.
Even using himself as the baseline, Lynn estimated that he had skipped over at least ten, maybe several dozen years of hard cultivation reaching the level of a Second-Level wizard.
And not just the beginning of Second-Level.
He had already entered the mid-stage of the Second-Level realm.
Through the feedback from the Greyhawk Armor, Lynn gauged his current status.
"Lynn. Mental Power: 249. Physique: 20."
The Second-Level wizard stage was divided into three sub-levels: early, middle, and late.
Early-stage Second-Level: Mental power from 200 to 225 points. During this stage, gaseous mental energy begins its initial liquefaction.
Mid-stage Second-Level: Mental power from 226 to 250 points. Mental energy fully liquefies, opening up a great deal of internal space.
Late-stage Second-Level: Mental power from 251 to 275 points. The entire mental domain becomes filled and fully liquefied.
"I'm already at the mid-stage of Second-Level… Just a little more, and I'll be able to break into the late stage!"
Lynn took another deep breath. This leap in power was massive.
If he could return safely, the danger he had taken on would be well worth it.
"Besides mental power, my physical body has also been further enhanced…"
Lynn recalled the moment when his second permanent arcane sigil formed and how the bursts of energy radiation had reshaped his body, once again improving his physical strength.
"Apprentice-level Second-Level brought an initial physical boost, but the radiation was too weak, resulting in only a minor increase of three points. At First-Level, thanks to the permanent sigil, the energy radiation increased, and so did the physical enhancement…"
"But the Second-Level permanent sigil holds even more energy factors than the First-Level one. As expected, the physical boost is also much greater… My body is still adapting. It might take a little time to fully absorb the change…"
Lynn clenched his fists. A physique score of 20 wasn't even his true limit yet...
"My Second-Level permanent arcane sigil… is unlike the one I had at First-Level…"
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