The first encounter between my forces and the Sun’s turned out exactly as I anticipated. I’d even been right in my predictions of signs visible for future battles. Every one of the spawn was class six and their forces were bolstered with several thousand class five chickens. The sheep that teleported into my army were easily dispatched, sheep were very difficult to catch but not hard to kill. Especially when they left their wool behind. They proved that the Sun had access to spatial runes. 

 

The battle devolved into a mess of creatures incapable of controlling their own abilities properly, unleashing their best at the enemy. Many physiques were limited by their initial design, leading to many that accidentally launched themselves into the sky only to be rejected or they failed to time their steps properly. The number of slips and falls outnumbered successful attacks by a large margin. 

 

Another common flaw was the power of the user surpassing the circuitry in the equipment. Boots were an easy example, their treads failing to adhere to the ground making them drop to their hands and knees against their will. Many boots were designed with circuitry that increased their ability to grip the ground, but that became wildly inadequate at class six. Or they gripped based on mana and their uncertainty caused the wearers to overload the boots, either destroying them or tearing blocks from the earth that they had to drag around with them. 

 

All equipment tended to have similar issues, though. Heads moved too quickly, turning helmets into blindfolds. Weapons broke mid-swing, unable to survive the forces applied by the air, let alone the impact against the enemy. Hands tore through shields or were left holding handles while the body hurled across the battlefield. Armor turned to nets when limbs moved too fast for the material to keep up. Hafts, hilts, and handles shattered in the grip of the user, often sending the rest of the weapon hurtling toward an ally.

 

My forces were better than the spawn in one regard; they knew they didn’t have any effective weapons. The spawn still maintained textile armor that failed to stop the most casual of blows and spears that shattered against the flesh of their adversaries. My forces were at least competent enough to know that their weapon circuitry was far too basic to be useable in a battlefield where class six was the norm. Perhaps if I’d advanced all of my forces to their peak long ago I’d have developed weapons that could be effective, but hindsight wouldn’t invent weapons any more than it would allow me to prepare my forces better for this war in any other way. Watching the spawn weapons fail in the memories of my warriors was extremely valuable in future research. What failed, when, and why was always a good starting point to develop an array to incorporate into artifacts.

 

I’d predicted the excessive destruction and wasted equipment, assuming it would reign for months, if not longer. My forces would acclimate faster, as they were reclaimed and sent back into the fray instead of being bolstered with fresh forces. Every time that thought crossed my will-core, I recognized that I’d almost failed to prepare my forces with will circuitry and made sure to thank the necromancers for having their debates.

 

Perfectly in line with my assumptions, few were competent in using the forces they unleashed. Even after equipment was abandoned, their lack of experience with their abilities caused many problems. They often overshot their targets or knocked themselves off balance with strikes they started competently, or with the preparation for a blow, though whether or not the enemy was capable of capitalizing on the vulnerability was very uncertain. The number of times knees impacted the chests of their owners as they tried to prepare for a kick alone was significant, let alone the number of times they were dragged off their feet by a successful kick. Both often resulted in the user slammed into the ground after an ill-conceived attempt at a double flip. The forces at play were extreme, in comparison to what the world had known previously. 

 

A class six army had probably never existed before. It was entirely possible that no human had ever reached class six, let alone enough of them to constitute an army. Apart from old stories of colossi, but it was hard to tell how much of those stories were real. They also described colossi as being able to stomp on chickens, and that was far from accurate. Unless there was a chicken predator that had kept them low class that had become extinct since the time of the stories. The stories were vague enough that there was a lot of ambiguity in the classes of the creatures involved.

 

If the chickens were class four, they could have been as easily stomped as the ogres were in the southern battlefield. What had been the unbreakable backbone of my forces had become a weakness. They were very competent with their circuits, but they weren’t at a standard that could make them effective.

 

Class four ogres were batted around like toys, used as distractions, or hurled into the path of approaching enemies by both sides. It was a very different war from the invasion of Adrian, where they’d been unstoppable behemoths. Their frustration became a driving force in their wills, pushing many to develop philosophies along the same lines as Glrt on their own. Hating their own weakness, and the complacency that allowed it to grow. They’d spent too long as the abnormally powerful creatures they were in the old world. They were far from prepared to be among the weakest of the southern battlefront.

 

Class eight quail were among the few to be effective, as I’d been training them to be effective for a long time. They didn’t bother jumping or actively attacking at all, merely rushing through whatever foes happened to be in their path. The banshees also learned quite quickly that it was much easier to create circuits with faith than will, allowing them to cast the spells required to keep quail effective despite lacking the true ability. Those banshees that were still zealots left their quail friends in the hands of other banshees that had become priests, with much grumbling but they’d done it. 

 

At least, the banshees that were among the first to be advanced followed that path. It was what they were optimized for. The younger banshees had been altered with elves in mind, maximizing their own circuitry. Without needing to worry about poison regulation, they were capable of delving much deeper into their confusing screech and other manipulative abilities. The new set weren’t ready for combat, yet, as I was still refining their physiques. Not open combat, at least. A battlefield was no place for a banshee, but the cities that supplied the spawn forces with their mana were exactly the sorts of places a banshee would be effective. I had some plans to use elves as infiltrators, perhaps the second generation banshees would join them.

 

Boars were also extremely effective. Hardly a surprise, as their methods were far from complex. They rushed through the enemy lines, breaking up any formation that threatened to form. Boars weren’t used to being powerful, and they reveled in the impunity with which they could traverse the battlefield. An occasional competent blow would shatter their earthen shell, but deal no real damage to the boar beneath. Before the attacker had realized they’d succeeded, often enough, the boar would have already gored them on one of its tusks. I’d thought them herbivorous because of their dull teeth apart from the massive tusks, but they turned out to very much enjoy the taste of flesh.

 

That was especially true in the case of the class five chickens. Boars seemed to take great joy at tearing the throats out of any chicken they happened to come across, though that could as easily been due to how excellent the chicken tasted as much as any military purpose. Some of it was driven by a petty need to experience it as the scales were balanced. Boars had been a secondary food source in cannibal cities, but a high-value food source. Goblins fed the masses, whereas boars fed the farmers and others of importance. It was no doubt a refreshing turn of events to be able to eat another species bred to taste good.

 

All of that happened under my notice as the true battle raged everywhere at the same time. From the perspective of the mana ocean, the battlefield was even more chaotic than the uncoordinated class sixes wrestling in the shattered earth. From the perspective of the mana ocean, the battlefield was a roiling sea of my will and the Sun’s faith. Both of us were wary of being consumed, so the two seas could more accurately be described as a writhing city of threads, none touching any other. An occasional thread formed a circuit, but then touching began as the surroundings boiled in order to protect it or destroy the circuit before it could activate.

 

Compared to the incompetence of the new class sixes, the threads showed a massive level of coordination and skill. A frothing mass from an outside perspective, but every bend and whirl was carefully planned. A pure battle of wits and calculation, one that was evenly matched.

 

The Sun unleashed thousands of circuits every second, each one shredded by me before it could activate. As each of his circuits were shredded, so were mine. Mine were more difficult to deal with, being true circuits, but the Sun was able to write more circuits. The end result was a stalemate. A stalemate that was a worse outcome than I’d predicted. I’d thought I’d have a huge advantage, this early in the war. I had far more experience in fine-tuned control of my will. So much so that I’d thought I’d effortlessly win the first few battles, at least. Instead, I was forced to concentrate my will to be able to keep up.

 

The Sun was an extremely quick study, to an unnerving extent. It was lacking in variety, having obviously specialized extremely heavily into light-based circuits, but the skill was still unquestionable. The Sun may be imperfect, but a very difficult enemy to deal with nonetheless. If I lost the war, there would be plenty of time for it to learn the rest of the vastness that was the entire capability of circuitry. Assuming that specializing early didn’t have any effects on future growth after more advanced classes. I wasn’t sure there were any, but I wasn’t about to risk my future development for fast gains in a specific field.

 

A propensity that may lead to my doom. The Sun was perfectly willing, and it was showing results. Had I specialized, this would be a much easier war to win. Or harder. The Sun specialized because I was polymathic. Had I been specialized, perhaps it would have become the polymath and found a counter that rendered my specialization moot. It had an unfathomable amount of faith available to it. My familiarity was also making it easier to counter the Sun with each circuit I shredded. I could hide will traps in my circuits, the Sun was nowhere near that level of sophistication. As I became better at dealing with it, the Sun became more cautious in how it dealt with me.

 

To make up for the fault, it fell back on useless taunting. Taunting that seemed to be a core attribute of the Sun, as every one of my destroyed circuits resulted in a “What a nasty trick.”,  “An unseemly artifice of weakness.”, “Surely you could do better, oh false god.”, “Was that the best you could have accomplished, miniscule one?”, “I could have left it alone and my victory would still be assured.”, or “Did you truly believe this pathetic spell could slow me down?” in the same pompous tone that tried in vain to hide the strain. Strain that was both a blessing and a curse. Blessing because it had to split its focus, curse because despite the split focus it was keeping pace with me. Keeping pace while coming up with snide comments.

 

If jeering was a combat skill, I wasn’t sure if I’d have won any battles against the Sun even if I was given decades to prepare. The Sun never ran out of steam, constantly making up new insults. It rarely even used the same insulting name for me, an impressive feat given how many jeers it had to come up with and how often it incorporated a witty new name for me into them. Truly, godhood was wasted on such a talented jester.

 

Regardless of our stalemate, the battle progressed. A battle that was indicative of the future in many unnerving ways. The only real value it served was proving that my army did indeed have a greater ability to lock down the will of their fallen adversaries. The result was a feast for me and no true losses. A true victory, as far as the battle was concerned. Far from an absolute victory, but a victory nonetheless.

 

Despite the victory, as the last spawn was slaughtered and my army cheered I struggled against inadequacy. There was strain behind the Sun’s communication. It had successfully taken back both radiant shards, or as the spawn called them; sun seeds. I had gained as much will as a radiant shard, but there had been three times that quantity available at the battle. We’d been evenly matched to the point that no powerful circuits had managed to activate, but the Sun was still coalescing. I’d probably slowed the consumption of the whole sun down by a bit, but the Sun would eventually become a singular entity. It had already grown too singular for the chaos to be able to overwhelm it. The only reason for the strain was because the Sun was rushing to become one. When that happened, I’d find myself at a significant disadvantage.

 

Chickens were arrogant creatures, but eventually he’d get all of them to worship him. Nor would they be limited to class five in the future, either. I should expect class eight chickens in the next battle, easily able to counter many of the more effective members of my forces. He was probably advancing his core population first, meaning he had so much mana available to him that he was already advancing chickens to class five and spawn to class six on the frontier. As the capital filled out, the frontier would be able to consume more resources at the same time as the quantity of resources available increased. He had sheep, meaning mana was the only requirement for teleportation. A cost that would get cheaper the longer the war raged. 

 

The battle was won, but the war was not looking good. When the Sun had finished advancing, I wouldn’t be his match. I’d need to compensate with a more powerful army that could survive multiple of his spells slipping through. A prospect that seemed nearly impossible. Most of his circuits had been at class six, but they’d have been effective in killing class six creatures. Most of my forces maxed out at class six or lower.

 

With each battle, the balance was tipping more in favor of the Sun’s forces. It wasn’t even a month before losses became more common than victories. Pyrrhic victories, in the Sun’s case, but victories all the same. That the chickens tended to do as much damage to his own forces as mine when advanced to class eight was far from an ideal solution. 

 

The few battles I’d won easily because the spawn became overconfident about the power of their chickens didn’t really count toward the fate of the war. Chickens needed their suicidal protectors in order to be effective. Boars didn’t like swimming below the surface, but they were capable. They really liked taking bites out of the chickens’ feet, though. Without the spawn to ride the chickens’ feet and attack any boar faces they saw, the success rate of chickens fell drastically. The multitude that rode the backs of the chickens and increased the suppression, also increased the pressure that the boars felt from the waves. Even if many of the spawn dropped from the chicken, unable to keep their grip, the crushed boars in the earth were worth the sacrifice.

 

I was winning the war of attrition at the cost of battles, but morale was a larger aspect of my army than his. My forces had become accustomed to death, but losing was something else. I’d won every fight they got in, always proving that worshipping me meant perpetual victory. I hadn’t endorsed that perspective, but it was an easy trap of complacency for my forces to fall in. Every loss hurt morale slightly, while the spawn didn’t care how many of their armies were annihilated in the war against the forces of darkness. Far from losing morale, the spawn seemed to be bolstered with every ally that fell. With their worship reinforced by a very real contract, many of the spawn began to actively seek their own destruction in order to become closer to the light.

 

The addition of my encirclement of trees and the pyramids that allowed them pushed the balance back in my favor. My circuits were still dealt with, but the arrays allowed for the casting of extremely powerful circuits by many more of my worshippers, instead of being entirely reliant on me. The pyramids were also cheaper in both mana and degradation of will than living creatures to replace. Especially since pyramids elsewhere could fill up with mana and be sent to replace depleted or destroyed pyramids from the south. The mana reserves of pyramids may be insignificant in comparison to what was available to me, but only priests could tap into my own reserves.

 

The fact that I started adding chickens to my own forces at the same time helped quite a lot, though they were still massively outnumbered by the chickens in spawn forces. Experience was valuable as a training tool, though. Both my chickens and those controlled by the Sun were extremely young, barely understanding the situation they were in let alone the complexities of a battlefield, but mine had the ability to learn with every battle they participated in. Spawn chickens only learned when their armies won. After a dozen battles, one of my chickens was worth ten loyal to the Sun. They even developed a way to direct their earthen waves, after a lot of cooperation with banshees between battles, focusing it from an omnidirectional assault into a cone. It required a circuit far beyond their comprehension to be effective, but using faith as a crutch allowed them to use it against the enemy. Rapid deaths in succession was a good way to create priests, especially when the chickens realized that their most effective weapon was dependent on them intensifying their devotion.

 

Cats and ursas joining the fray helped even more, not only because they were both more capable of coordination and picking targets but also because unleashing their maximum potential didn’t destroy allies. The goliaths were ready to join, but I wanted them at class eight first. Goliaths needed time to become ready for their next class, unlike everything else. Once they attained eighth class they’d be able to regain power much faster, but the initial growth period was longer for colossi than many other species. Until they were ready, however, cats and ursas were the most effective counter against chickens available to me.

 

There was a gap between “most effective available to me” and “most effective” that irked me. A chasm of difference. Cats and ursas weren’t the best possible counter for chickens, far from it. Taking down a chicken required four working together with above-average levels of cooperation. It was closer to six to one on average, and even those units occasionally failed. They were much closer to “most effective” against spawn, they absolutely ravaged the human forces. Especially cats. They shared the unreasonable bloodlust that drove the cannibals to be as effective as they were, but cats were class eight. They moved so fast it sometimes seemed like the space between where the cat was and where it was attacking didn’t exist. For the class six humans, it may as well not have. With ursas churning the earth and destabilizing spawn footing, the cats had an even easier time.

 

The balance shifted in my direction for another month, but then the Sun finished consuming himself. The balance swung back in his favor as a spell made it past me almost every couple of seconds. He used almost exclusively light-based attacks, but they were very precise and very deadly. Every spell cost me at least one eighth class soldier. Ursas and chickens more often than cats, but the losses were still grievous wounds to my forces.

 

I’d gained some ground in fending off the Sun’s circuits when it advanced the circuits it was using from class six to class eight, but the Sun’s learning curve was disgusting. Luckily, it seemed to stop trying to make more complicated circuits at class eight. Light being a class eight rune probably had a large part in that limit. Regardless of why, I was very glad the Sun was limiting itself to class eight. The difficulty of interfering with Class nine circuits was far from proportionate to the difficulty of doing the same with class eight ones. I wasn’t sure why the resistance was so different, but it was such a huge risk that I hadn’t even used class nine circuits, afraid of cluing the Sun in and doing damage to my chances in the war for the sake of a few battles. Hopefully, the Sun believed that light was the ultimate rune, as I had with will. If it never considered making class nine circuits, and never discovered a class ten rune to make it possible, that would be way too soon as far as I was concerned.

 

I was already straining with the pressure of forcing my will into too small a space. Keeping up with a megalith was far from a healthy endeavor. I was also starting to match my accumulation rate of mana, straining for additional mana reserves for the first time since I’d built my first mana true circuit. I’d started creating armies of mana accumulating avatars in addition to all of the mana true circuits, but they were very much in the early stages. I had a few ideas for how to use them, but those were plans that would need me to have a lot of excess mana.

 

A month after that the balance shifted in my favor once again, the colossi had joined the battle. Each one so massive it could punch out a chicken with ease. Each one so resilient that the Sun’s spells barely warmed a patch of their flesh. The Sun was undoubtedly shocked, his spells were perfectly capable of penetrating metallic flesh, but I knew the reason. At class eight the material colossi used for their flesh was no longer a simple metal summoned from the earth, but a metal summoned from within mana. A gold-like metal they called adamant. Their flesh was inherently resistant to circuitry and direct damage caused by it. Class nine circuits would struggle to deal damage to class eight colossi. They’d even overcome the weaknesses that were their eyes and mouth at class seven, replacing them with similar true circuits to horse eyes hidden behind solid eyes. The mouths were replaced with devouring true circuits that turned a vulnerability into a weapon, removing what little circuitry had been in their guts that was now redundant and giving themselves greater reserves of mana.

 

With how resistant the physique was, colossi had surpassed their religious tenet of using their flesh to protect their offspring. Unless they had a class eight creature acting as a blacksmith for miniscule armor, efforts to use adamant to protect their children would fail. Not that their class eight bodies were capable of reproduction, in any case. Their removal of vulnerabilities included their reproductive holes. 

 

The same was true of titans and their mythril flesh, though titans inherently respected the tradition less. Without my intervention the mythril would be reclaimed by mana as soon as the titan died, as their flesh circuits were all about conducting mana and electricity instead of hardness.

 

I had few titans available to me. The vast majority of the titans I had access to were still far from eighth class, if they weren’t so weak as to limit themselves to lower classes. As titans poisoned themselves early, oftentimes their first advancement was harder on them than their colossi cousins. Thya proved to be exceptionally rare, even among her species. Rare as they were, each class eight titan was a devastating addition. 

 

Their strange motion that allowed them to learn to spray their poison flesh turned out to be even more valuable as they advanced in class, though they threw bolts of lightning instead of spraying poison. I wasn’t entirely convinced it was an inherent quality of the lightning, as it had been with the liquid flesh, but whatever crutch allowed them to utilize the lightning effectively was good enough for a combat situation. Research and perfection would come after the war was won.

 

Their mythril was also summoned from the mana ocean, but their silvery flesh was much softer than adamant. Still harder than any earth-based metal, but adamant was impossibly hardy. Soft but so charged with electricity and mana that the snapping bolts of silver and blue energy never ceased flickering across the planes of their bodies. Whether they loosed the power in a single strike capable of turning a class eight chicken to char or split it into a field that eradicated swathes of class six foes, the titans seemed to be designed for battlefields. With a nearby colossus to protect them, they were unstoppable.

 

After a month of dominance, I decided it was time for the elves to start wreaking havoc deeper in spawn territory. A task they took to with great enthusiasm and competence. They were accompanied by the second generation banshees, but the banshees had to learn how to use their physiques, as they were based on my research rather than being inherent. The balance shifted even more in my favor. Especially in regards to the focus from the Sun. As it needed to watch the rest of the spawn territory, it couldn’t focus entirely on the battle.

 

The Sun’s choice of response directly ended my chances at victory; the beasts from the capital were unleashed. The attention the Sun could spare may have lessened, but the mana remained the same if not growing more abundant. I’d anticipated the beasts joining the fray, but I hadn’t expected them all to be class eight additions. I’d thought at least one species would be class six. Unfortunately, I was wrong.

 

High class eagles turned out to be living monsters made of fire, wingspans a stade across that scythed through my forces. They were so hot that they melted even colossi flesh. They were also more deadly than chickens, knowing how to limit their destructive abilities to the enemy. They didn’t even need to use their most deadly abilities, in most cases, as merely flying through my forces won battles for the spawn. The only real threat to them was titans, but even when the lightning ripped their body apart and the eagle became ash, it evaded the will circuits my forces used to restrain the dead and rejoined the battle as if nothing happened. If I’d had equal numbers of titans to the Sun’s eagles it could have been a stalemate, but I only had nineteen titans and the Sun had thousands of eagles.

 

Bulls were boar-like creatures that were coated in a flesh that looked like bronze, but turned out to be as resistant as colossi flesh at class seven that sunk my colossi into the earth up to their waists with ease. They may not have been able to directly deal with colossi, but they certainly made everything else a truly deadly threat where colossi had been nearly invulnerable previously.

 

Lions were probably the inspiration for cats, many of their features being extremely similar. A basic resemblance was the most of how their males were similar, but the females were much more comparable. The sexual dimorphism being so blatant seemed to be a commonality between them, as the lions seemed reversed but equally different. Their males oversaw the battlefield from their flying vantage point while radiating light that increased the strength of their allies, working very well with the unicorns’ scintillating clouds of rejuvenation, while the females matched my cats step for step and bite for bite while being as strong as ursas. It seemed to be a very personal challenge for the cats, but a challenge they were rarely capable of actually meeting.

 

Mammoths dwarfed colossi, a feat I hadn’t thought possible. There were larger creatures, but not ones that acted as brute-force juggernauts. Trees were the only creatures I knew of that exceeded their height. Mammoths would be able to shred trees effortlessly, though most of that was due to trees devoting almost all of their circuitry to the mist. Their bark was hard, but that was it, mammoth tusks were easily strong enough to break bark without taking any damage at all. Their tusks may not be able to gore colossi on the first try, but with the bulls dropping colossi to their waists a heavy stomp was enough to kill even a colossus. Even if their flesh remained intact, joints breaking inside could easily kill a colossus. Chickens were mere prey before mammoths. They were also extremely resilient, their thick hair being almost as strong as the bronze bulls.

 

Utilizing the wasps as shock troops against the interior of spawn territory managed to draw the Sun’s attention from the battles a bit more, meaning my spells were the ones that occasionally made it through the Sun’s defenses, but it wasn’t enough to turn the war in my favor. There were just too many of the eighth class beasts. Despite my circuits being able to end at least one each, the numbers were not in my favor. The wasps also had limited use in taking the Sun’s attention off of the battles.

 

Even with the increased viability of the pyramids over their usual hives, wasps weren’t designed for this level of war. The drones maxed out at class four, being almost utterly useless, and the soldiers barely matched the average spawn. Only princesses and queens were truly dangerous, in class, but they weren’t designed for direct confrontation. There could have been greater gains if I advanced the queen to class ten, but I wasn’t ready to have such a powerful creature among my worshippers yet. Sowing chaos was the best they could accomplish, and chaos that was not even comparable to the banshees that spread violent confusion in cities they swooped over. The elves were even more effective. Wasps were only the best in numbers, being able to reproduce as fast as mana was added to their systems.

 

What was required for me to actually win battles was allowing the Sun to bombard one of my armies for a full three seconds while I shredded a unicorn to learn its secrets. I lost that battle, decisively, but I learned the secret; they activated their inherent circuits with faith. Such a simple solution, one I should have been able to see without relying on spawn research.

 

With that weapon now shared between us, unicorns and bicorns joined the fray with devastating effectiveness. The unicorns allowed the fallen to rejoin the battle with less recovery time while bicorns directly did damage to the Sun’s forces. Their black fire bolstered by the density of my faith was a vicious weapon, one that was especially effective on the eagles that dove right into the middle of my forces and had no defense beyond the Sun’s passive reinforcement of their wills. They didn’t recover when they were pulled out of the sky by nightmares. 

 

Nightmares also allowed the capture of species that I would never have gained otherwise while gnolls allowed me to rejuvenate their original will to allow for proper breeding of the species into members of my forces. Gnolls got along with bicorns like they were family, proving to be a massive hurdle for the Sun’s forces to cross. There was a reason the Sun had always made sure to hunt any demons in its territory.

 

Barghests were unleashed into the depths of spawn territory, teaching the south what it meant to experience the cold. The barghests never even died, their mobility being absolutely without equal. They could annihilate a city so quickly and return to the air before a real resistance could marshal. I’d originally wanted them on the front lines, but they conflicted too much with cerberi to be effective. I also had a small population of them, meaning cerberi were better as the ones allowed to turn the tides of the war. They were also significantly faster than cerberi.

 

The cerberi turned out to be the final nail in the coffin of the Sun’s victory. They utterly neutralized the eagles while being able to devastate entire swathes of the enemy even more effortlessly than the eagles had mine. The only counter the Sun could consider was light, but the heat of the beams was insignificant before the burning depths of a cerberus. The Sun shared Glrt’s weakness, specialization. It allowed for extreme speed in progress, but was easily countered.

 

Had the Sun had access to wolves or circuitry that did damage in a way other than application of heat it could have been different. Fortunately for me, the Sun didn’t allow foreign species into his territory and was extremely specialized. Specialized to the point that I wasn’t even sure it knew a single attack circuit that didn’t incorporate light in some way.

 

The string of victories meant that I quickly gained enough will to advance to class seven while being confident of my continued ability to keep the Sun in check. The increased clarity of my vision allowed me to see the core of the Sun within his maelstrom of zealots. A core that was advancing in class. A slight worry, but one that I thought I could deal with. Both Atlas and Sekhmet maxed out at class eight. I didn’t see why the Sun would be different. I could work with a single class of difference between us. I’d take more losses, but in comparison to the utter failure the battles had become when the Sun unleashed the beasts it wouldn’t be that big of a deal.

 

A strand of intent slammed into me at that moment. “Behold, inferior demon, for I have learned your deceptive trick! I see your pathetic form, as well as those of other minor gods that disgrace themselves into your service! Witness the number of my faithful children and despair! Despair at the coming of the Children of Raginor, for they will be your death!” perhaps the pressure was getting to him. He’d found a proper name, which was a worrying sign but one I didn’t yet know the significance of. More than that, however, his boasting felt desperate. Neither Sekhmet nor Atlas had participated in the war, yet. Both had asked, but I was waiting to be genuinely overwhelmed first. Raginor would soon be class eight, and then I’d actually need their help. Sekhmet would probably be the more valuable of the two. I was working on creating bodies worthy of Atlas’ angels, but they were merely colossi. Very experienced colossi, but colossi all the same. As a god, Sekhmet was incomparably stronger.

 

Perhaps I’d enlist other megaliths as well. If I could get to class eight I would be able to welcome all of the fallen gods into my service. With all of them available, Raginor wouldn’t stand a chance. The Sun had set itself up as the only god, but it had never really felt the wrath of a pantheon before. Atlas provided the memories necessary to understand that the wars fought between gods previous to my existence were all fought by proxy. A god lost when their worshippers were annihilated, not when their identity was consumed. The spawn may have beaten back dozens of pantheons and hundreds of gods, but Raginor had never fought a being on his own level.