The five stars high above had transformed into small suns…or in the case of the Demon God’s Divine Kingdom, a void of utter darkness. Even someone who wasn’t aware of the situation would know that a climax was well underway; something had clearly happened.

An enormous tremor struck the Heaven-cleaving Fortress, and as Aziz and Marie leapt up from the ground in shock, he could see a visible wave crest the lands of Orb. At the same time, the five stars began to grow bigger and bigger, bringing with them an impossible pressure.

The Divine Kingdoms and their owners were physically descending to Orb.

“Brace for impact!” Marie’s words, however, were drowned out by howling winds, whipped up into a frenzy by the falling Divine Kingdoms. The five stars took on a fiery hue as they plunged groundward, the target of their descent the Never-ending Ocean.

Bells began to ring, a pattern of five chimes and then silence. It was an order for the Guardians to form up, and as the caterwaul continued to spread throughout the Heaven-cleaving Fortress, Aziz found himself somewhat relieved. Clearly, the higher-ups didn’t think that the low-level infantry were of any use in a situation like this, and as he took to the skies with Marie, Aziz could see their opposite number form up on the other side of the battlefield.

Without warning, thumps so visceral that they shook his innards rattled the battlefield, and the two of them turned to look at the source. The artillery behind the Heaven-cleaving Fortress had begun to hammer down upon the demons’ fortified camp — the latter was still very in much in range of these deadly weapons — and the air above the enormous encampment began to shimmer.

The Five Lands’ War Council had decided to incapacitate the enemy, and Aziz couldn’t help but approve of their choice and timing. It was evident that the top brass didn’t want their low-level peons to fight under such a set of circumstances, and true to his suspicions, the artillery barrage began to intensify. Within minutes, the shimmering layers of energy had been broken into pieces, and the fortified encampment was now in burning ruins.

Five stars continued to descend, cutting streaks of overwhelming radiance through the sky. A huge flower of blood blossomed in the middle of the demons’ encampment seconds later, shooting up into the sky like a geyser, and Aziz found the trepidation in his heart lessen.

That sight indicated that the demons’ blood pool, the installation in which dead demons were reborn in. Of course, there were probably thousands of them in the Five Lands, and there was ample proof that the demons that charged out every day were from arriving reinforcements, but the destruction of their blood pool was still a reassuring sight to Aziz.

Furthermore, it also acted as a means to revitalise the soldiers. They might not understand what such a sight meant, but intuitively, they would know that the Five Lands had destroyed something important.

It was a victory for them, either way.

Staring at their demon counterparts, Aziz and Marie could feel the tension between both sides tighten to a fault. Under the growing might of the descending Divine Kingdoms, the possibility of a battle occurring was becoming higher and higher. The possibility of battle breaking out at the moment of impact could not be underestimated…or rather, the opening salvos of the impending battle was already taking its toll.

His heart abruptly lurched, and an awful hollowness followed. At the same time, one of the five falling stars began to dim, the brown one that represented the God of Earth. Shedding fragments of brown light, the darkening Divine Kingdom deviated from its course, plunging towards the other side of the Great Divide, towards the landbridge that connected the Five Lands to the Wildlands.

The red hue on the dimming brown star grew as it accelerated downwards.

“The Life-Carver…” Marie muttered.

As her words hung in the air, the star of brown light winked out entirely, and the awful hollowness in Aziz’s heart reached an absolute peak. Darkness rose up in his vision, and the next thing the colonel knew, he was in a dark world. A sea of people stood with him, each of them as blurry as the next, and Aziz understood where he was immediately.

After all, he’d seen this before. When Conrah, the Lifespring, passed away, he and everyone else had their minds transported here. There, high in the black void, was a crumbling mountain. Rocks continued to fall from it, creating small rocky clatters that shook his heart whenever he heard them.

Was it an instant? Or an eternity? Aziz didn’t know, but his eyes were focused on the crumbling mountain, where a huge shadow had shrouded it. Simply laying eyes on the huge silhouette was enough to make his heart palpitate, and the colonel immediately understood that the shadow wrapping around the mountain was…

The Demon God.

A brown pinprick of light began to glow in the heart of the mountain, and the shadow recoiled. Blinding brown light blasted outwards later, and with a mighty roar that shook his heart, the enormous mountain blew up.

The dark world shattered at the same time, returning Aziz to the real world, and the remnant images of the exploding mountain overlapped with the detonating star that was falling on the Wildlands.

Aziz went blind a moment later, as brown light so bright pierced through his eyeballs. A thunderclap seemed to explode out beside him as a huge gale slammed into him, sending him flying.

“Brothers, sister…I shall take my leave first,” a gravelly voice spoke in his mind. “Goodbye. And good luck.”

The absolute hollowness in the colonel’s heart vanished a second later, as did the blinding light, as if someone had wiped it cleanly out of existence. His vision returned to normal later, just in time for Aziz to see a literal burning world on the side of the Wildlands.

A gigantic flaming mountain…no, a volcano, had appeared there, spewing out huge floods of molten rock. Far above it, the four stars continued to streak across the sky, growing ever closer.

Aziz turned his eyes back to the erupting volcano far away from the Heaven-cleaving Fortress as lava flared like a funeral pyre, illuminating the God of Earth’s tombstone.