Taking the step from Tier 5 to 6 involved shattering one’s mindscape. And just as it was less messy when an empty jug shattered rather than one full of water, things were the same when it came to mindscapes. It was better to attempt the breakthrough partially drained of mana than at full capacity. Since he would have to dump most of his mana anyway, Ragyo had seen no reason to let it go to waste, using it instead to contribute to the war effort in the form of the three elemental constructs of lightning that led the charge in front of his aerial troops.

Ragyo Kirin listened to the stream of military reports coming through his comm crystal as he descended towards his ship. They spoke of how his troops were faring against the Regiis army in the aerial battlefield as well as how the engagement above and below the water’s surface was playing out.

It seemed that the Shogunate fleet, with their two Demigods working the weather, had the upper hand in the surface battlefield and had put the Regiis warships on the backfoot. Below the surface, though, the situation was a lot worse with the Ryu-o Demigod and Isabella cancelling each other’s attempts at twisting the sea in their favour, giving the Tengu Demigod free rein to utilize the shadows at the depths to obstruct the vision of the Regiis submarines.

In the air, the Regiis fleet was besieged by the Kirin contingent as well as the Shogunate’s air corps led by the raven-winged Tengu and the feather-robed Tennin. Under this omnidirectional onslaught, they could only retreat in defeat again and again, drawing ever closer to the Marine Palace.

Landing on his ship, Ragyo walked up to his cabin. Shutting the door behind him, he sent a few last instructions to his troops – to hold their positions on the water’s surface and to only advance as Isabella’s Domain shrank (as without the assistance of a Demigod, they had no way of countering her whirlpools) and to maintain the pressure on the Regiis air force.

Temporarily transferring his commanding authority to the other Tier 5 mage, he put the comm crystal away. Putting all thoughts of the war raging outside out of his mind, he focused on his breakthrough.

The moment he promoted successfully; was the moment the war would end.

//

The range of Isabella’s Domain shrank rapidly under the pressure.

Fortunately, as it shrank, it was consolidated, growing stronger and harder to penetrate. After the warships had been pushed back nearly to the walls of the floating fort, she finally managed to counterbalance the Domains of the two other Demigods.

Issuing orders for the warships to dock at the harbours recessed into the walls, and for the submarines to moor themselves to the underwater portion of the castle, Isabella ordered all the sailors into the Palace and had them man the walls.

The all-pervasive bank of fog stopped its advance a few hundred metres from the walls of the palace; and out of it emerged the streamlined prows of the Shogunate’s warships, finally deciding to reveal themselves.

They faced each other across a narrow stretch of sea that churned violently under Isabella’s influence. The silence only broken by the sounds of explosions from the battle raging in the clouds above and the intermittent peals of thunder.

Then, without warning, a huge fireball leapt from one of the Shogunate warships, arced over the seething seawater and slammed into the wall of the Marine Palace. It burst harmlessly across the magically enhanced stone, not even leaving a scorch mark behind. But it was a trigger. Bursts of fire, beams of condensed light, and jagged streaks of lightning formed a net of death between the two forces as the mages on either side let loose and rained destruction upon the opposite side.

The Shogunate fleet tried to cross the moat and breach the walls while the Regiis forces tried to keep them at bay.

With the passage of time, the Shogunate forces were slowly getting the upper hand due to the superiority of their population. Even with the near indestructible walls to protect them, the Regiis army was falling leeward. After all, even with a rotation set up, they were losing mana much faster than they could replenish it.

It was a race against time. Would the Shogunate forces penetrate their defences faster, or would the Western Armada led by the Wind Wolf arrive first? The answer to that question would determine the victor of this battle.

Up in the air, standing aboard one of the airships alongside Deimos and Mars, Artemis sucked in a breath between her teeth. “This is really different,” she muttered absentmindedly.

Deimos grabbed her hand and squeezed it. Artemis squeezed back. She hadn’t realized that her hand was shivering. With a force of will, she suppressed the tremors and shot a grateful look at her fellow wife.

Despite her extensive experiences with combat, Artemis realized that she wasn’t prepared for war. All she had done was duke it out in an arena. There had only ever been one opponent for her to defeat. Now, arrayed in front of her were hundreds of enemies. It was overwhelming.

Enclosed within her hand, she could feel that Deimos’ dainty hand was comfortingly steady. She belatedly remembered that the girl had already fought in a war before. Although the opponents there hadn’t been human, they had been even more numerous. Deimos, she realized, might just be more qualified to participate in this war than her.

“Attention!”

Artemis’ train of though was derailed by a loud shout from Mars. Turning, she saw him at the prow of the airship, his back straight, his crimson hair plastered to his skull by the rain. Right in front him floated a bright red crystal the size of a head. A fire element mind crystal.

“Gather!”

Another shard of crystal glittered by the side of his lip, held there by a wire that looped behind his ear. It allowed him to convey his orders to the six other airships clustered close to them, each bearing a dedicated contingent of artillery mages. All of whom had begun to gather mana in their palms at his command.

“Condense!”

The temperature suddenly shot up several degrees as the fire mana gathered in the palms of the mages ignited the air and turned into large spheres of flame. The mages began condensing the spheres in stages, each reduction in diameter making the fires burn brighter and hotter. The very air began to warp and the rain turned to steam before it could even reach the cluster of ships.

Sensing the sudden spike of mana, one of the three lightning kirins changed its course and galloped straight at them, leaving persistent streamers of electricity in its wake. The fine hairs on the backs of Artemis’ arms stood erect as the air became charged with its approach.

Swinging its head mid-charge, it sent a thigh-thick beam of lightning tearing through the air at them from its horns. Already prepared for such circumstances, Artemis reached out with her mind and controlled the hundreds of her metallic feathers she had floating around their airship in a protective net. The lightning hit the net, shortly followed by a thunderous boom that set her ears ringing, but the metal screen fragmented the electricity. Thin arcs of electricity leapt from feather to floating feather until it lost its momentum thoroughly and dissipated harmlessly, leaving only the stench of ozone lingering in the air.

Artemis breathed out a sigh of relief. Although she had tested this strategy out before, even having her father-in-law pitch in with a few full powered strikes of lightning to test its limits, she was still relieved that it had worked out as intended. Her connection to the floating feathers told her that the ones directly in the path of the lightning strike had been cleanly evaporated into a mist of metal while the subsequent ones had been melted in varying degrees depending on how close to the point of impact they had been. The ones furthest away were slightly warm from the current running through them.

With a flap of her wings, she sent more of her feathers shooting outwards to replenish the network, her wings regenerating almost instantly with a surge of her mana.

Mars slammed his open palm into the crystal floating in front of him.

Ripples of heat spread out from him, turning the moisture in his hair and clothes to steam in an instant. Ring after concentric ring of runes burst out of the mind crystal that blazed like a small sun, washing out all colours in its surroundings but red.

The runes arranged themselves into a gigantic disc of blazing letters before more runes spewed out of the crystal and formed yet another, smaller disc in front of it. Then another. And another, until there were six progressively smaller discs of flaming letters forming a horizontal pyramid in front of them with the peak pointing square at the charging kirin.

“Fire!” he yelled.

With a coordinated shout, all the mages thrust their flaming palms out in perfect synchrony. The condensed spheres in their palms seemed to weaken at a single point, and like air streaming out of a punctured balloon, thick streams of fire jetted out towards the dis of runes floating in front of them.

As the beams of fire hit the first disc, they grew thicker and hotter and they bent towards the centre of the disc. Each subsequent pass through the layered runic discs amplified their might by another stage while making them converge to the centre.

After passing through the final layer, they met a single point, forming a white-hot ball of energy.

The veins on Mars’s temple throbbed and his neck corded as he clenched his teeth, straining to guide that much mana and keep it stable. Reaching his limit, he released his hold over the sphere with a primal yell and let it explode in a directed blast of incandescent heat.

In a cone in front of them, the sky burned.