Chapter 60: Preparation for the War

For two weeks, the city of Bastion stopped being a settlement and became a weapons factory. The Code of the Spiral was in full effect: The Machine Must Turn.

The Troglodytes were outfitted with heavy Star-Iron mauls and pickaxes. They didn’t need sharp edges; they just needed pure, concussive mass to crack golden breastplates and shatter ribs through the armor.

The Grey-Fins, under Captain Razor-Fin, received new spear-tips. The dark metal was serrated and coated in the hardened, toxic sap of the swamp trees. Razor-Fin tested his new spear by thrusting it through a solid block of granite. It pierced the stone with a satisfying CRACK.

The Kobolds were too small to wield heavy Star-Iron melee weapons effectively. Instead, Moss-Eye and the tinkers designed armor-piercing bolts for their heavy crossbows, and reinforced their traps with Star-Iron tripwires that a Paladin’s blade couldn’t cut.

Even Iron-Scale, acting as the Inquisitor, traded his old iron dagger for a sleek, pitch-black stiletto made of the refined metal. It drank the light around it, practically invisible in the shadows.

“Let the Sun-Men wear their gold,” Iron-Scale hissed to the gathered troops in the plaza, holding his black blade high. “Gold is for buying things. Iron is for taking them!”

The roars of a thousand monsters echoed through the cavern.

Red sat in the Void, reviewing the Omni-Web’s data. The Golden Army wasn’t just marching; it was paving.

Every time Aurelius’s 16,000 Paladins crossed into a new biome, they stopped, erected massive Sun Shrines, and performed mass conversions.

The roots of the Omni-Web fed Red the seismic shudders of reality being overwritten.

Suddenly, a notification flashed across his screen.

[ INCOMING GROUP CALL: GORR (RANK 4) & THE ROTTING DRUID (RANK 4) ]

Red tapped the air to accept.

Two holographic windows popped up. Gorr looked terrible—her granite skin was cracked, and she was pacing frantically in her dark cave. The Rotting Druid looked even worse; his leaves were withered, and sap leaked from his eyes like tears.

“I take it this isn’t a social call,” Red said, leaning back in his spectral chair.

“He killed him,” the Druid gasped, his voice trembling. “The Golden King. He killed the River Pebble.”

Red frowned, remembering the wet, algae-covered Rank 2 god who had thrown a stone at Aurelius during the Conclave.

“The Pebble God contacted me three days ago,” Gorr grunted, stopping her pacing to lean close to the screen. “Begged for military aid. His river valley was right in Aurelius’s path. I couldn’t do anything. My mole-kins aren’t born to fight. Yesterday… his signal just vanished from the server list.”

“Aurelius isn’t just marching to you, Spiral,” the Druid whispered. “He’s absorbing the map. He’s using the march to conquer the buffer zones.”

Red pulled up his tactical map, sharing it with the call. A massive golden corridor had been painted across the neutral territories.

“Explain the mechanic,” Red ordered calmly. “How does he absorb a territory without breaking the Truce?”

“The Five Thousand Rule,” Gorr said bitterly. “To hold a recognized, independent Domain in the System, a God must maintain a minimum of 5,000 followers. If you drop below that, your ’Divine Claim’ shatters, and the land reverts to neutral—or can be instantly claimed by anyone who builds a shrine on it.”

“I am aware of that,” Red nodded.

“Aurelius arrives at the border,” the Druid continued, shivering. “He gives the local God two choices. Option One: Surrender voluntarily. Become his vassal. Your followers live, but you pay him 80% of your DP and Faith.”

“And Option Two?” Red asked.

“Option Two is opposition,” Gorr growled. “If you fight, he unleashes his 16,000 army. He doesn’t wipe you out completely. He butchers your followers until your population drops below 5,000. The moment your Claim shatters, he absorbs your land, spares your life to look merciful, and leaves you to rule over a pile of corpses.”

“How many did he take so far?” Gorr asked.

“Seven,” Red answered “Seven low-ranked gods bent the knee in the last two weeks. Four Wind Spirits, two Earth Elementals, and a minor Beast God. They are all his vassals now. The Pebble God refused… so Aurelius slaughtered his people down to three hundred, shattered his domain, and when the Pebble God attacked him in a frenzy, Aurelius executed him.”

Aurelius was using Red’s statue as an excuse to launch a crusade, consolidating his power in the Sector under the guise of ’avenging his honor.’

“He had 16,000 heavily armed, magically enhanced Paladins. But he lost around 3000 soldiers on the way,” Red noted. “And now he has a supply line of vassal states feeding him all the way to my swamp.”

Gorr let out a heavy sigh of grinding stone.

“Rubedo,” Gorr said, her voice unusually quiet. “I…. There is an Alliance clause. If two Gods merge their pantheons, their populations pool together to hold a Domain.”

Red raised a spectral eyebrow. “The Stone Mother is offering to become my vassal?”

“Don’t flatter yourself, Suit,” Gorr snapped, though there was desperation in her eyes. “I’m looking at survival. But the math doesn’t work. I have 3,000 Molekins. You have 1,000 swamp-dwellers. Even if we merge, we only hit 4,000. It’s not enough to trigger a Major Domain Shield to block his descent.”

Gorr looked at the other screen. “But if Moss-Brain joins us…”

“No!” The Rotting Druid recoiled, his branches shaking violently. “I have 1,800 followers! Yes, that pushes us over the 5,000 mark! But if we merge, I become a junior partner! I lose fifty years of cultivating my forest! I lose my autonomy!”

“If you don’t join, Aurelius is going to burn your forest down for kindling!” Gorr roared.

“He is coming for the Spiral, not me!” the Druid shouted back. “My forest is south of his path! If I stay out of it, he might pass me by!”

Red watched the two gods bicker. They were terrified. The Golden King had broken their spirit without even entering their biomes.

“Stop,” Red commanded. The absolute calm in his voice cut through their panic.

Both gods fell silent, looking at the Rank 3 anomaly who was somehow responsible for all of this.

“I am not asking for your followers, Gorr,” Red said, leaning his shadowy face closer to the camera. “And I don’t want your rotting forest, Druid. The 5,000 rule only matters if you intend to play defense behind a magic shield.”

Red looked at the Omni-Web data. The vanguard of the 16,000 Paladins was just a week away from the edge of Bastion’s toxic bogs.

“I don’t need a shield,” Red stated softly. “I have a swamp.”

Click.

Red ended the call, leaving the two gods staring at black screens.

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