A tremendously loud horn was blown from somewhere, spreading across the entire continent. It contained a strange power, for it held the same volume no matter the distance from where it was blown.

Elves, beastmen, and demons everywhere confusedly looked about, with royal mages trying to investigate the source to no avail.

However, the impact of the horn soon reached the elven doors.

In a large city, the largest of the region it was in, life had been more or less the same for hundreds of years. There was the occasional monster attack, but they were always easily repelled with minimal casualties.

However, that peace was not to last.

The watchmen on the wall and gates, usually the laziest of the lazy, were the first to feel it. A strange sensation running through their bodies, sending small shivers down their spines.

"What's going on?" The general of the guard wondered, leaning over the tall walls to have a better look. The city was surrounded by plains, making it almost impossible for attackers to hide.

His eyes shot open when he finally saw it.

Tens of thousands of humans armed to the teeth were rushing forward like a tsunami of bodies. Behind them, large beasts were carrying forward giant construction materials.

At the forefront, a hundred Holy Warriors spearheaded the attack. Eyes held with bloody determination, their expressions grim and ready for death.

At the forefront, Helen stood. Her whole body radiated golden light, and the very air seemed to shy away from her. Seeing that they had been spotted and that the invisibility spell had run out, she roared out.

"Charge! Destroy the elven scum!"

Hearing her words, the entire army charged forward. The elven guards caught completely unprepared and being completely inexperienced in the first place, panicked. Within moments, the Holy Warriors had reached the gates.

Leading at the front, Helen slashed forward with her twin swords, cutting a dozen guards in half with a single attack. She then proceeded to smash the gates that hadn't even begun closing yet into pieces.

Holy warriors surged into the city through walls and gates alike, the tall walls nothing but small bumps on the road to them. With their abilities, jumping several dozen meters in the air was as easy as breathing.

Screams of panic and pain rang out through the city as a slaughter began. After a couple of minutes, the more normal soldiers reached the gates that had been secured by Helen while the Holy Warriors took to creating panic and clearing out the walls.

With the main infantry having arrived, the Holy Warriors focused on holding and clearing out the tall walls while the soldiers slaughtered anything that moved inside the city. Their frenzy was impossible to stop, and even Sacred Light would have found herself at a loss on how to stop their madness. However, nobody needed nor wanted to stop them.

By the next hour, 90% of the city had been cleared out. Only the innermost part remained in the elven hands, holding out only thanks to magical barriers and elven adventurers.

However, after everything else was secured, the Holy Warriors moved along with Helen once more, easily smashing apart whatever defenses had been put up and quickly securing the city.

There had been no casualties on the human side at all, while the entire elven population had been slaughtered. There were still a couple of hundred elves hiding here and there, but they were no threat at all, and thus, the human army focused on their next task.

While the Holy Warriors led the various soldiers to guard several sections of the city, Helen focused on directing the regular soldiers as they carried into the city the most important parts of the operation: the War Temples.

After several hours and a couple of mistakes, the first war temple was erected. Immediately, a holy light shone out of the temple, symbolizing it's activation. An invisible dome expanded outwards from the temple, covering the entire city and beyond.

The priests that had been part of the assault closed their eyes in almost unison, relishing the feeling. The next hour was spent rooting out the various hiding elves, which had easily been discovered thanks to the holy dome.

By the end of the day, four war temples had been erected. Hundreds of regular humans and policemen were constantly trickling out of the temples and into the city proper, while the army completely left the city, only leaving behind a couple of dozen regular soldiers to do some of the heavy work that would soon be required.

As the priests cast several large invisibility spells once more, spells especially made by their Lord exactly for this purpose, the army moved to secure the surrounding countryside. Villages were occupied one after the other, with even the farms outside of the villages being destroyed, their residents turned into corpses.

Sacred Light watched all of this happening from within her divine realm. Her eyes focused on a map hologram showing gold and red colors.

With the capture of the regional capital, the entire elven structure fell apart, and with all the soldiers and mages off fighting the demons, it was all too easy taking everything over.

Four main armies had been formed, along with several dozen much smaller ones. Each of the main armies was focused on taking over a region, while the smaller armies moved to secure the countryside.

Naturally, this level of organization would never have been possible without Sacred's constant interfering and watchfulness. The moment an army seemed to stray off its course, Sacred would immediately send a message to the one in charge of it, 'gently' reminding them of their roles. Communication was also kept up between the armies thanks to Sacred, who acted as the glue holding the entire structure together.

The elven cities and villages not yet conquered had begun hearing rumors and things, but many were still skeptical on what exactly was happening, and there were very few people escaping. However, as each day passed and as village after village fell, with even two other regional capitals falling to the Golden Republic's army, people finally understood that a star of death was rising upon the world.

Helen's army had, by far, been the most accomplished of the four main armies. Thanks to Helen's strict discipline with her soldiers and genius tactics, along with her power, she was able to fell another large regional capital, securing two in total with her soldiers.

As she saw all of this, Sacred would occasionally act in secret, vaporizing a couple of troublesome cells here and there that refused to die and decided to hide, but other than that, her role was very much as a supreme general and organizer, and not as a member of the fighting force.

Sacred's eyes fell upon one of the various mirrors that she basically kept up 24/7 by now. In it, a handsome elf with a crown on his head was raging about, yelling at his subordinates.

"You incompetent fools!? What do you mean there's an enemy in our own borders??" He yelled, making the kneeling elves in front of him flinch. They were within a tent at the allied beastmen-elven camp, and thus, far too away to do anything.

The elf standing in front of him, a young-looking boy, trembled as he spoke.

"Y-your majesty, I'm just a messanger! I-I was just told to report to you about the strange force attacking our hom-"

The messenger didn't get to finish his words as the elven king's hand flashed, and the next instant, the messenger's head flew into the air, his body slowly falling backward.

Turning towards his other subordinates with eyes burning with rage, the king was about to kill them as well before a hand fell onto his shoulder.

"Karl, you're going too far." The instant the person holding his shoulder spoke those gentle words, the elven king, Karl, deflated like a balloon.

"My apologies..." He sighed, turning towards his wife, who stood behind him with a small smile on her face, even if her eyebrows were twitching.

"Nonetheless, I will still kill you all if you do not find out exactly who is attacking us. And if you reply with 'humans', I will throw you into the dungeon and torture you until you'll be nothing more than a vegetable." He said, glaring at his subordinates.

His subordinates all nodded, tears in their eyes as they quickly fled the tent. Karl sighed and turned back to his wife, shoulders slumping forward as his hand went to cover his eyes.

The elven queen quickly moved to gently hug him, not saying anything. She understood her husband the best out of everyone, and she knew that his anger was born from a sense of deep sadness.

"All those lives... Who would do this? Why?" He asked after a while. He'd seen the reports, and despite the extremely limited information they had, they weren't dumb enough to assume the residents of the territory that had been taken over by the mysterious enemies had been spared.

"I don't know..." The elven queen sighed. She too could have never imagined that such an enemy would suddenly crop up out of nowhere.

Well, it wasn't exactly out of nowhere if she thought about it. There had been countless reports about the strange migration that all the still free humans had been having. In fact, in the recent months, there had been a sharp decline of human slaves as they kept disappearing, and the slavers that went out rarely returned alive, and those that did were always empty-handed.

Sitting down onto his make-shift throne, Karl went deep in thought as he too followed the same train of thought as his wife. "Dear, why do you think the humans suddenly decided to rebel? There's no way this was a casual thing."

His queen nodded with a serious face. "Indeed. There must be something, or rather, someone, holding them all together. Humans are shallow creature, and as long as they feel safe, they'll follow even the devil."

Karl sneered slightly. While he personally wasn't fond of humans, he knew that his wife would get upset if he acted like a racist bigot.

A chill suddenly went down the spine of both Royals. Their eyes shot completely open as they stiffened in instinctive fear.

A hard voice spoke from behind them. "Indeed, humans are fickle things. However... elves are much the same, aren't you?"

The king spun around, one hand reaching for his sword and the other readying a spell, but by that time, the figure had disappeared. The next moment, he heard a familiar scream, and he swiftly turned.

A cloaked figure stood at the edge of the tent, holding his wife with a sword on her throat. Her eyes were wide open as she trembled, but she refused to cry even as the sword dug a small, red line on her throat.

"Do not move, elf king, or your wife will lose more than just her chastity." He said, and even though his face was hidden behind a black mask, Karl could feel the smirk.

Gritting his teeth, he slowly put down his weapons. "What do you want? Who are you?"

"Oh, I am but a small servant of the Great One, the Lord, and the one who will soon become the master of this world. And today, I come in the Lord's name to... ask you a small favor."

The king's eyes were hard, fury burning behind his irises, but he could do nothing more than grit out a "What?"

"You see, the Lord is quite worried you would do something... unpleasant. Thus, all I ask for in exchange for your cute little wife is... that necklace."

"What?" Karl's eyes furrowed. His necklace had been an ancient inheritance that was traditionally passed down from king to king, but it was purely ceremonial. It held no actual purpose.

"How do I know you'll let my wife go if I give you this?" Karl asked. The cloaked person sneered. "Quit yapping. If you're trying to stall for time, it's useless. I've already got my people sealing this room, so no matter what you do, nobody will come. And I can promise you under the Lord's name that I shall release your wife if you give me what I want."

Growling, Karl tore the necklace off of himself and roughly threw it at the man. Another shadowy figure appeared and captured the necklace mid-air before vanishing once more.

"Hehe... good. Don't worry, your wife will live." The man laughed. His hand reached down and roughly squeezed the poor queen's behind before abruptly retreating as the man jumped backward, quickly vanishing into the shadows as Karl rushed forward and tried to catch him.

"DAMN IT!" He roared before hurrying over to his wife, who had fallen to her butt and was trying to hold back her tears.

"I... I was so useless..." As she was finally held by the one she loved, the queen finally allowed her tears to run free as she lamented her powerlessness in the situation.

Meanwhile, Sacred's smile was so wide it threatened to split her face. Her fingers continuously tapped against her throne, impatiently waiting for her little friend to come.

Finally, a couple of minutes later, a cloaked figure appeared. "My Lord, I have gotten what you desired."

Sacred full on grinned. "Hahaha, great! Absolutely fantastic! You've done incredibly well this time, all the research you've put into this little escapade has truly borne fruit. Quickly, hand it over."

"Of course, my Lord." The man said, quickly taking a small, silver necklace with only some pearls on it. He gently threw it at his Lord even as he kept his head bowed.

"Hehe... You know, my cute little boy toy, I'll get jealous if you randomly go about grabbing some random girl's butts like that..." Sacred said in a dramatic voice even as she happily inspected the necklace.

"M-my Lord!" The man cried out in embarrassment.

"Haha, don't worry, don't worry. You're a bit too mortal for my taste anyway. If you desire so, once we win this war, you can keep that little girl for yourself. I can even re-write her memories for you."

Sacred was feeling especially generous now that she'd gotten this little toy. Truth be told, 99% of the work and research behind this little find was to be attributed to the little guy in front of her. Her little boy-toy, previous demon noble, Hagrid Manstin, a name she had given him herself after his 'rebirth'.

"Yes, thank you, my lord. I would very much like that." The man said excitedly. Sacred waved him off impolitely, "Alright, alright. Get outta here, now, I have things to do."

As Hagrid vanished back into the shadows, Sacred could barely keep the smile off her divine face. "Once a demon, always a demon. The little guy's got a good taste though, the girl's not too bad. I should probably make a body like that one day or another." She muttered to herself as her eyes roamed over the biggest find of this entire life of hers.

"The Life-Giving Necklace... Rumored to be able to bring the dead back to life. The Laws in this thing are far, far beyond anything even I could ever achieve." Sacred's eyes glazed over as she drowned herself within the incredibly mysterious workings of the necklace.

Mere mortals would never be able to see the profoundness of the tool. In fact, Sacred suspected that the entire reason the God-Tree could become a demigod was because of this cute little thing. She had no idea how it ended up in a stupid mortal's hands, but she happily took it away.

Hours later, Sacred's eyes finally turned back to normal. However, a crazed gleam still rested within them.

'This thing is far, far beyond anything I could ever dream of making. Whoever made this must be beyond even divine comprehension...'

Her chest ached with almost sexual desire at the thought of having such power. Although, it would be more appropriate to say knowledge rather than power, as that was her true desire.

She still hadn't forgotten the ambition that had appeared within her chest the day she left her first cave. To learn everything there is to learn and to find all the answers to every question.

"Mm... I'm thinking too far ahead. It wouldn't do to get overconfident so soon." Her eyes glanced with unhidden desire at the necklace, but she still stored it away before turning back to the hundreds of screens that popped up once more. With experienced ease, she got back to working on the war effort.