“Increase the volume of fire on the North’s fleet,” Gaius instructed. “At the same time, expand your monitoring range. That twisty little bunch of boats seems to be overdoing it for some odd reason, and I don’t like it. Kolya might be planning something devious.”

“Done.” Nexus paused. “There are some very faint presences in the upper airzone from all directions. If I’m not wrong, they are now investigating the crimson sky by trying to see the point in which the sky reverts to normal in their eyes.”

“Keep track of their progress,” Gaius replied. “In the meantime, I will give them a reason to abandon their investigation.”

His will swept out, and the symphony of distant explosions intensified. The second firing line had stirred to life, firing upon the fleet to his north. Like the previous barrage, Gaius wasn’t interested in aiming at any one target in particular; he intended to blanket the entire place with gunfire.

Without waiting for their response, he followed up by sending a huge group of spectres against the disordered fleet. Multiple presences bloomed within the north’s fleet in response, and groups of lights darted outwards to intercept the incoming spectres.

Gaius glanced at the upper airzone, before allocating a steady supply of spectres to the North’s defenders to play with. Now that their advance had been finally stalled, he was more interested in giving those fools at the upper airzone a little detour.

“I’m heading out for a moment,” said Gaius, before popping Nexus onto the floor. “Make sure that the enemy cannot advance.”

The sculpture snapped out a salute, before rolling off. “I understand.”

The world around him changed as he stood up. From afar, he could see a bunch of unfamiliar faces, who were hard at work trying to figure out what the crimson sky exactly did. It was a logical course of action, given that the advent of this new sky was accompanied with a horrific outburst of power. Left to their own devices, these fellows would probably spend a lot of time on trying to unravel this mystery, before eventually arriving at the conclusion that this sky…was actually beneficial to them.

Gaius grinned, and then disguised himself by cladding himself in a dark shadow. Reining in his presence to feel like a Demigod, he threw on a burst of speed and charged at the Demigods directly. Beams of grey light, interspersed with streaks of black, slammed into their hastily raised defences a second later.

“Enemy attack!”

“There’s only one! Get the Demigod before it gets more friends!”

All kinds of attacks swarmed him a moment later, each of them too varied for him to keep track of accurately. Beams, palms, arcs of light…all sorts of manifestations darted towards him, and Gaius let out a small smile. With a snap of his fingers, the incoming attacks directly detonated, blocked by a simple wall he’d created.

Scattering the wall a moment later, Gaius waited for the dust to settle, and then stared intently at the group of Demigods and Paragons. He could feel their minds fluctuate with surprise; they clearly hadn’t expected anyone to block that attack.

Gaius narrowed his eyes slightly, now that there was a moment of calm for him to assess his opponents and vice-versa. Those people in front of him were familiar spirits of Liamar and Thasvia, since their skin was dyed in the respective colours of their lord.

The Divine Kingdoms of the great gods were said to have many familiar spirits ranked Paragon or above. Even if he dispatched the ones here, more would take their place…according to rumour, anyway.

No. It was possible that there were only so many familiar spirits, but killing them off incessantly could very well be a problem. The ecological balance of Orb still had to be maintained; if something went wrong with Celestia, there would still be a backup. That was one of the reasons why he had no intention of killing the remaining great gods; if something went wrong, life could resume on Orb.

Before he could examine the enemy in greater detail, they turned around and fled.

“They just fled, right?” Gaius muttered. “I’m just one person, and I wasn’t looking particularly menacing, so why did they give up?”

He pondered over the issue for a moment. It was probably the shadows that were surrounding him or something. Or maybe they received some guidance from their respective masters to retreat. Whatever it was, he had fulfilled his initial objective of preventing random busybodies from examining this red sky…which would lure even more people to do that in the days to come.

Since only the likes of Paragons and Demigods were able to fly this high, this distraction would definitely take some heat of him.

After the little dots vanished from view, Gaius shook his head and returned to the Cradle of Creation, where Nexus was doing push-ups for some reason.

“That was fast,” said Nexus. “Did you kill them all?”

“They were familiar spirits,” Gaius replied. “And they fled after their opening salvo of attacks failed horribly.”

“You spared them, then,” Nexus noted. “How many more failsafes are you intending to create for Celestia and the people of Orb?”

“As many as possible…is what I would say.” Gaius shrugged. “But other than the Severing Cube and keeping Orb intact, there’s nothing much I can think about. Do you have any suggestions?”

“You’re asking me?”

“Well, you have an entire library to draw references from,” Gaius replied.

“I would have told suggestions if I had anything,” Nexus replied. “To be honest, I’m puzzled. Why do you not ask the great gods for help? They don’t have a stake in the power structures of Orb, right?”

“I’m essentially kidnapping their children and wiping their memories,” Gaius replied with a small smile. “And even if they don’t see it that way, one can’t deny that there is some risk in what I’m doing. If I screw up, Orb might just go kaput. Even if they help…”

He shook his head. “Didn’t you hear the news about how the great gods descended on the peace conference? I can tell that they’ll only lay down their arms after Celestia has been conceived. Not before.”

“The master has surpassed the tool, huh.”

“You can continue to praise me, but I’m still going to get you to oversee the defence.” Gaius yawned. “What did Isabelle cook today?”

“Some spaghetti.”

“Excellent.” Gaius yawned. “I’m going to leave this sculpture here. You should be able to dedicate some lower functions into maintaining the defences, right?”

“Shouldn’t be an issue…”