Even though I didn’t manage to inspire everyone in the crowd, not even my own troops, what made the situation a little better was that after this everything would end. If we won or we lost, only one would remain and the suffering that this conflict had brought would finally finish.

I expected the battle to last long, longer than any battle that I had had, but what I didn’t expect was it to almost last a month. There were moments where it seemed that they had won or lost, but as expected, with no firm alliances everyone tried not to let anyone gain an advantage.

At first, when the surprise attack started, the fight was very quickly brought to close quarters, with rushing soldiers attacking the enemy bases and just as swiftly leaving a harmed enemy. They were sure that they wouldn’t be able to defeat them in that single attack, so they cut losses. But they made a mistake.

Because they attacked all enemy encampments, there was only one which wasn’t attacked. Or that’s what they wanted the others to think, because as I later found out, the ones that had committed this attack had also attacked their own base but hadn’t attacked one of their enemies’ camps so that everyone would band against this team.

And so, we did. To be honest, I believe that all of our minds were clouded because of the recent attack so when we all saw that a single camp had been left in perfect state, we all moved in to attack them. No one else had thought of creating light, after all and they felt like it was trickery rather than strategy.

This was the one time when there was a majority attacking together a single enemy and our combined strength was overwhelming, sure, but we none of the attackers sent their full force, either because it was repairing the camps or because they didn’t want to show all their cards at once.

But still, the ones defending had to utilize their full strength to defend themselves and even, so they suffered great losses. At least they wouldn’t be targeted again soon, they thought, after the offensive against them had ended after a day because the other four armies couldn’t cooperate well.

Alas they were quickly demolished by my own army and also the army from another god that came from the other side. This was before we all understood the rules of the game better and started ruining each other’s plans. Not that it could be done in this case, because the remains were swiftly defeated within an hour.

The other armies could’ve sent soldiers to make our progress difficult, but it’d be hard to react quickly enough, and these would most likely have been defeated as well, only slowing our progress instead of stopping it and keeping the fifth faction alive.

As my soldiers saw the enemy deity fall at the enemies’ hands, they swiftly returned while keeping their eyes peeled in case any of them were attacked from behind. Luckily, that didn’t happen and so they managed to return with good news, one competitor had fallen. But I knew that the others wouldn’t be that easy, we wouldn’t band together against the strongest or weakest one, because at some point we could be that target. And if it came to the last two, we wanted to be the strongest, so we had to think of all those points at once.

Now that didn’t mean that we didn’t start battles, rather that we spent less resources in each fight and that most skirmishes started and ended in a flash. And when we started a fight, we made sure to deal some damage before retreating.

Little by little our forces were being drained as no operation was perfect. But when one of the four remaining camps was clearly stronger than the rest, it was targeted first and foremost, even without a spoken deal by the others. So, we started hiding our troops and armament and finding out who was weakest turned harder, but we still had some predictions.

Two weeks had passed, and the forces left were less than half of the original one, even without taking into consideration the fifth contender’s forces. Some had died, yes, but most had realized that this was a senseless battle and because they wouldn’t lose their lives if they left, they simply deserted. No level of religious fanaticism could overrule the fear for their own lives, at least not when they were attracted to these ideas by some remaining spies which also wanted to leave, but as a final move they still helped their own nation.

Their destiny would be decided depending on who was the last one standing, if it was an enemy, they’d either be spared or killed either way if they left or not. If their god won the battle, on the other hand, they’d most likely get punished, though most of them believed that they were losing because they saw the victims of their own side closer than the fallen enemies.

Still, our fight continued, bringing new strategies and uncovering the last few hidden cards until each one of us had less than a hundred soldiers left. It was barely enough to do an operation against someone else, but if the ones attacking got stabbed in the back by one of the other two, it was over for them.

But it had already been three weeks and I was both physically and mentally tired. The gods probably were physically tired as well, though mentally I’m not so sure because they have probably lived a lot longer than just a few weeks and as such have a tougher mentality.

I decided to make an offer to everyone else, again. Because I knew that this would overextend unless something was done, I proposed a time limit to this battle. Whoever that by the end of the week ruled the lowest part of the crater, the middle of the land we were fighting on, would be declared the winner.

Surprisingly, everyone agreed, and this would be the end of the bet the deities had amongst themselves and the end of my suffering, did I win or lose. The soldiers that were left with me were brave, loyal to their very core and also quite strong. They had survived multiple weeks of battles, after all.

The first two days of this last week there was little activity, as everyone was waiting to react on each other’s plans or making plans of their own. It only mattered who ruled the center at the end of the week, so ruling it before would bring little to no benefit.

The only positive that existed was that one could prepare defenses and traps around it to make the entrance of others more difficult. But none of them were dumb and if they saw someone else planting traps and preparing defenses they’d go to attack and at least make them stop these constructions, if not utilizing the chance to chip away at the strength of their enemies.

The third day saw more activity, with something exploding in another camp. A small fire was also created, but it was put down before the losses were too great, because a response explosion was sent back quite fast, though this one did no damage because the defenders of the attack were prepared.

The same day some of my men finished making a tunnel underneath the crater all the way to the center of it so that we could use it as a surprise attack within the last day, but also in order to check if anyone else also had the same idea, which until then nobody had.

The next day a few incursions came and went towards the center on the surface, but nobody stayed there for too long. From underground we could check for new mana signatures in case any traps were laid and only half of the trips inside did plant anything.

The fifth day the god of war and his troops mostly cleared the area of traps and then installed a small “camp” while immediately placing prefabricated walls which fixed themselves to the ground easily. His plan worked and our quick responses didn’t manage to deter him from leaving the center.

With time his grip would only get firmer, so one god went in with everything he had, hoping to claim the camp for himself as he attacked with illusions and the soldiers should be confused, but the god of war had stolen an artifact that “disabled” any magic within a few dozen meters for about two hours before it had to cool down to be used again.

Therefore, the strength of the attacking entity was severely weakened and ended up having to retreat without conquering the objective. It had also lost many troops so it was unlikely to win the competition, though there was always a chance.