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The combination of a tower and a ship appeared above a world that seemed to be covered in green. There were oceans also present, but most of the world was land, which in turn was covered by forests. Three enormous trees also reached up into what would be the stratosphere in other universes. All the trees looked quite different as one looked like an ancient oak, another one looked like a spruce, while the last one looked like some sort of tropical tree.

"We've arrived," Zuellni reported dutifully. "How did I do?" She asked while turning towards Karna.

“I’d say about 96%.” She replied with a small smile.

“96?! That’s terrible!” The tower spirit complained. “I definitely need upgrades. The handling of the ship is too stiff, and my sensors need an upgrade. I also need to finetune everything. I’m certain that I can get to at least 97% with just some touch-ups.”

Karna enjoyed watching the eccentric spirit that looked like a little girl act. They had been testing how well Zuellni could navigate and control the ship, and the percentage estimate was Karna giving the spirit a grade on how optimal of a route the spirit had taken to reach the destination. While Zuellni was dealing with a new ‘body’ so to speak, and even though there was room for some upgrades with the availability of better materials, the spirit was very experienced and very good at her job. That’s why Karna kept summoning the same spirit.

"Where are we exactly, pervy spirit?" Gem asked, looking at the view in her Faerie Dragon form. In reply to her words, she got a raised eyebrow from Karna and a pout from Zuellni. "Right, my mistake. Pervier spirit.” Karna kept calling her a pervy spirit after all, so she had to adjust a bit.

“You really need to learn to play better with others Gem.” Zuellni shook her head in mock exasperation. “To answer your question though, the data master provided me tells me this place is called the Drakenwald. It’s a forested world, as you can see, mostly inhabited by magical beasts. I picked it because it was a relatively distant world that allowed me to test my systems properly, and it’s also on the border of the recent Expansion. If we want to do some exploring, then we can easily do so from here. We can also return here for easy resupply, and the world has plenty of magic so we can charge up our reserves.”

“Might as well. As much as I’d like to see the looks on everyone’s faces when we show up back home, I don’t much cherish the trouble we’ll have to deal with. Might as well properly test our systems beforehand.” Karna decided.

“That includes the weapon systems, I presume?” Zuellni asked eagerly. Despite her innocent appearance, she had no compunctions about causing some mayhem.

"Especially the weapon systems," Karna confirmed, as she too was eager to see how the tower performed. "Pick an appropriate direction and enter exploration mode. Report as soon as you pick up something interesting. You know the drill. This should be a good test of your sensors as well."

It took them three days before they found something interesting. Considering the speed at which the tower moved, they had traveled a long distance, though since they didn't exactly travel in a straight line, the actual distance from known worlds was much shorter. During the three days, both Zuellni and Karna had made several improvements, both big and small to the tower's systems. Most of it was just about fine-tuning systems and formations, but there had been a couple of conflicting arrays that Karna had been forced to fix. Despite her expertise at making magical formations and arrays, even she couldn't be sure that not a single one of the over a thousand formations ever conflicted with one another, or worse, with a mechanical system. That was just one of a hundred reasons why a tower spirit was so useful. Zuellni could notice any such conflict immediately, and with much higher precision.

For the three days, Gem and Zuellni had also been bickering, even getting into small fights a couple of times. The fights were mostly comical in that it looked like a pair of baby kittens waving their paws at each other, which showed that neither of the spirits was serious. If they had really wanted to hurt each other, Gem could’ve taken any of a million effective combat forms, and Zuellni could’ve used the tower’s defensive systems against the other spirit. This was simply the way the two spirits interacted after not seeing each other for so long. Karna secretly suspected the two had missed each other, as they only got to interact when she summoned them both.

"Seems we found an excellent arena for testing," Karna stated as soon as they arrived.

The world they arrived at was just a continent-sized island floating in space, but it was currently locked in a three-way battle. The defenders of the world were fighting on the ground and with airships, while the forces of the Inferno were divided in fighting against two enemies. The third-party seemed to be made up of the odd ships that had recently arrived in this universe. None of the parties was fielding a huge amount of forces, though in the case of the Inferno that still meant hundreds of thousands of demons.

“Permission to engage?” Zuellni asked eagerly.

“Permission granted. Try to avoid the defenders of that world for now, and don’t fire on the ships unless they fire on us first. Let’s not make any enemies we don’t have to. If the ships do fire on us though, fire at will. We want to test as many systems as possible, and it would be useful to get some feedback on our defenses against mechanical threats." Karna gave permission.

“Firing the super-gravity cannon!” Zuellni announced happily.

“Wait, what?” Gem asked in shock. “You’re starting off with the main gun?!”

“Firing!” Zuellni ignored the other spirit entirely, as three large and dark globes seemed to float out from the bottom of the tower. The three dark disks lined up before energy seemed to build up between them as they condensed gravitational waves into a single stream, before launching it as a beam straight into the fighting demon army. The bright blue beam cleaved straight through most of the demonic army’s center, which was made up mostly of low and middling ranked demons.

The tower combined the best of both magic and technology, so it was unquestioningly effective. And while the tower still wasn’t at its peak magically, the systems that relied on technology and energy from the reactor were working perfectly. The gravity beam was a design that Karna had come up with long ago, combining magic and technology to produce effects that should be impossible by conventional theories of either, and despite the devastating effects, Zuellni had not used even close to the maximum power of the weapon. She’d used three of the focusing pods, and the tower actually had and could power more than twenty of them. The weapon didn’t have a high rate of fire, but it was quite effective, as even a singular pod could launch a weaker shot of the same weapon.

“First test successful. The cannon works within expected parameters, and the aim deviated only 5,73%. Calibrating. We have also successfully gained the attention of everyone involved. Deploying secondary weaponry." Zuellni dutifully made her report. At her words, hundreds of turret barbettes of various sizes were revealed all around the tower as they had been hidden earlier under armor. Each barbette was armed with four shapes, which all mechanically advanced universes would recognize as barrels of some sort of cannon. "Incoming demons, firing secondary weapons."

As soon as the words left her mouth, the barrels of those cannons seemed to point at different targets and streams of what looked like hot glowing lava at the approaching enemies. The streams moved with such speed that dodging was almost impossible for anyone under a certain rank, and were deadly enough to vaporize what they hit. The demons quickly learned that attempting to swarm and surround the new arrival was pointless as it only allowed more of the turrets to fire at the same time, and the deadly array of guns covered the entire surroundings of the vessel.

The demons quickly turned to using their magic to attack from long range, which was largely ineffectual, as the magical defenses of the tower held rather easily. The tower was also moving quickly enough that hitting it was relatively difficult despite its size. “Master, we have a couple of ships moving in to attack. I think they want to test us.” Zuellni knew that her master’s senses were actually better than hers, so her words were mostly perfunctory, and to Gem’s benefit.

"Wait until they fire on us, and if they do, return fire," Karna repeated her earlier instructions. She wasn't in the habit of sparing those that attacked her.

“Incoming fire. Deploying mirror-ring system.” Zuellni announced, and three brightly glowing rings appeared next to the ship. Just as the deadly beams of energy that were aimed at them were about to hit the tower, they all seemed to twist around and get sucked inside the glowing rings. The pair of ships kept up their ineffectual fire for a good thirty seconds without accomplishing anything. As soon as the firing stopped, a wave of energy was unleashed from the tower, shredding any nearby surviving demons.

“Reporting, the mirror-ring system is able to absorb the fire normally, and we can also unleash the stored energy as a single omnidirectional release, or as a directed attack," Zuellni reported the results of the test. The defensive system stored the energy of any mechanical attacks directed at them in a pocket dimension and launched it back at the enemy. The system had its limits of course. “Returning fire.” Several of the larger turrets redirected their fire towards the pair of ships that were torn to shreds by the unidentified energy.

“I’d say we can call that a successful test. This is why every wizard should have a tower.” Karna nodded to the proud smile of Zuellni.

“Master, this thing has very little in common with a normal wizard’s tower, and most of the systems we used are more standard on battleships in space.” Gem rained on their parade.

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Marius once again realized that while he considered himself immune to the aura of the various gods, there were still some that could cause him to tremble in their presence. Marius had been forced to wait for several hours, and while he would be somewhat annoyed at most other gods for their behavior, he recognized that this particular one had more reason than most others to keep him waiting. He seriously doubted there was any god in the Divine Planes that was as busy as this one at the moment.

“I apologize for my tardiness.” The Grand Marshal said in a polite gesture, but his voice made it clear the apology was mostly perfunctory. “Shiva stated that you have some news concerning the invaders and why the Guardian hasn’t reacted to their presence. I ask that you keep it brief.”

“Because strictly speaking, they’re not invaders.” Marius cleared his thoughts and said simply.

The titan with an enormous presence and stature rubbed his eyes a bit. “This might be a longer meeting than I thought. Or a very short one. Alright. Explain in more detail.”

“Shiva wanted to see if we could negotiate with these so-called invaders, so he sent me to make contact. I traveled to the location where the most powerful of these invaders had been located and established contact. It seems that at least some of them are more than willing to negotiate." Marius gave a truncated synopsis.

“Some of them?” The Grand Marshall noticed an important point. “So these invaders really aren’t unified just as we thought. Yet they do seem to work in some kind of concert and appeared at the same time.”

“According to the being I talked to, someone that can match even the strongest of True Gods in strength incidentally, these new arrivals had no intention of starting an invasion. In fact, they had no intention to even arrive in our universe. According to what I was able to gather, the Expansion tore them away from their original places in other universes and dumped them in ours. A large part of them hail from a sort of meeting place between universes known as the Crossroads that facilitates travel and the exchange of information.” Marius explained.

“That coincides with what little information we’ve managed to gather so far.” The Grand Marshall nodded. They had managed to acquire some captives, though not as many as they’d like as the invaders were surprisingly strong and hard to capture alive. Add to that the problem with the scourges and the Expansion, and they didn’t have as much manpower to dedicate to the task as they would’ve liked.

“Apparently reaching the Crossroads requires either a great deal of luck, power, or technology, which explains why so many of the new arrivals are so powerful. Being an immortal, or having the technological equivalent of power, is rather mundane at the Crossroads. Their average immortal is somewhat weaker than ours, but they do have many of them. They have no unified government, as the Crossroads didn’t have a real ruler. There was someone who was famed for creating the place and watching over it, but even they didn’t rule actively. They enforced a handful of rules and general order via an organization of sort of peacekeepers of all races, but all these disparate groups of new arrivals rule themselves.” Marius had engaged in long talks with his contact and managed to gather a lot of information.

“That would mean asking what they want is useless.” The Grand Marshall noted.

"Indeed. The disparate groups have disparate goals. They are sort of unified by a common sense of being thrown into our universe against their will, but beyond that, they often follow the most powerful individual around. Some worlds that had certain kinds of government before they too were caught in the Expansion still have that government, and we can expect that they likely want to keep it that way. Many want to go home. Many others want to exploit this new opportunity." Marius pondered for a moment. "At the moment, most of the groups desire information. And I believe some groups could be turned into allies if we treat them with respect."

"Yes, I suppose most of them aren't used to the idea of being ruled by the Host and the Heavenly Emperor. They probably aren't excited at the prospect of us trying to enforce that rule over them. Yet if we don't, certain parties will raise all kinds of problems." The Grand Marshall rubbed his temples. The political implications of these new arrivals were complicated, to say the least, not just because of the complicated politics and values of the arrivals but also the internal politics of the various factions in the Divine Planes. No matter what path they chose, someone would raise trouble, and they'd make enemies of someone.

“It is not my place to advise, but I would like to point out that some of the groups that have been thrown here are as powerful as the major factions in the Divine Planes. Where there are problems, there are also opportunities.” Marius provided.

“True. However, their reliability is an open question. Relying on outside help might turn out to be a foolish decision when they might decide to leave as soon as they find out a way to do so. But you’re correct. It is not for you to decide these kinds of things. Anything else to report? No? In that case, you're dismissed. I have another meeting to attend to." The Grand Marshal left the office just as quickly as he'd arrived.

Marius grimaced a bit at how unenthused the commander of the Host had seemed about allying with the new arrivals. It wasn’t that the decision was wrong per se, in fact it was quite reasonable. If only others shared the Grand Marshal’s attitude. The various factions of the Divine Planes were already considering making allies of these ‘invaders’ and thinking of ways they could be used. The more conservative parties wanted to use them to fight the scourges, while the more audacious ones considered how they could use these new allies to stab the other factions in the back without having their own hand holding the knife. And that was all predicated on the idea that the ‘invaders’ could be negotiated with.

Some of the new arrivals seemed all too happy to attack everything that they made contact with. It made sense in a weird sort of way. Many of these new groups were very warlike and had arrived at the Crossroads to find new challenges. Well, now they were surrounded by challenges on all sides. To some, there was nothing more fun than an endless war to wage against worthy enemies. There were enough of such races and groups in their own universe, and now the number of such groups had multiplied. The problem was that these new groups had been scattered all over the various planes. It seemed that the Expansion had been fairly accurate in placing the more powerful groups in the Higher and the Divine Planes, while dropping the weaker ones in the Lower and even Mortal planes, but there were exceptions. And they could move around. So far the invaders seemed to have trouble in Ascending and Descending planes, but that would last only so long.