Regardless of how well prepared they were, there was very little time to overthrow Sean before the entire planet would likely be doomed. It had left only one option, to defeat Sean and overthrow him and his reign before the Earth merged with this planet. This wouldn’t be as simple as attacking him recklessly though, regardless of how strong they had gotten. Their opponent was a person who was almost definitely a higher level than they were, and there were many people who were just as high leveled if not higher leveled than most of their group. In order to emerge victorious over Sean, they would need to find him at his weakest, or when he would be least expecting an attack. Although, now would probably fit that reasoning, seeing that there was likely nobody he believed could oppose him currently.

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Nobody knew of Hadley, who had actually managed to attain quite the feats before he left to enjoy Earth before it merged and became one with this planet. He had even gone back a few times when he saw that the world was going to merge sooner than the expected year. When that happened, he had gone back and managed to reach up to mid-god in rank. Despite being a pure-blooded human, he was perhaps one of the most powerful people on the planet. He had also obtained quite a substantial number of melee combat classes, including a high level “battlemaster” class that made him one of the most powerful on the planet in regards to weapon combat. It was obtained partially through the use of his evolved unique class that enabled him to also “consume” and “gain” the classes of the prey he consumed.

His “god power” was also equally strong, an internal power that enabled him to split himself. It had the drawback that the number of splits done also weakened him by a percentage of the splits done. With the power he possessed though, he split himself in two, and then split the second him into many portions that he sent to different places on Earth to enjoy. This way, his main body was at half power, while the splits he sent to Earth were at about 1/200th of his power. It also enabled his clones to more accurately gauge their power, since the power they possessed now rivaled some of the most powerful beings in the universe, standard Earth materials wouldn’t be able to handle his full strength and could quite easily break if he exerted too much strength. There was also the advantage that when those clones were killed, and every night, they’d send their consciousness to him, enabling him to experience the fun of Earth while also growing stronger on this planet.

It was quite strange perhaps that the one who had spent the least time focusing on advancing his power, also gained the most at the fastest pace. It was also strange though, that Hadley was the one person whom nobody knew existed as far as the ascended went. This happened mostly in part because his fast advancement had made him immune to their scrying by the time they were looking for people to oppose Sean, despite the fact that he could have likely stood to stop Sean alone. Also, with his personality, he would be a person who would actually be interested in leading the human race. While he wouldn’t be the best choice, his gaming habits and recent ability to split himself gave him quite the ability to lead people. He had led multiple guilds in the games he’d played, and with even more of his consciousness, he had become incredibly proficient in leading large numbers of people.

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As Hadley was roaming around, he saw Gregory’s group from a distance, and with some of the abilities he had “consumed” from creatures, he guessed at the origin of the group. It was a group that could likely even take out the insane rule that was started here, which would bring relative peace if somebody could effectively take control after Sean’s demise. Not only was leading humanity something he was interested in, as a person who had led large groups of people in a number of guilds online, it was something he had mildly built up to.

Although Hadley’s individual strength was impressive, he wouldn’t believe that he was the strongest person there was. He had seen that Sean held great power, and would not be a person he could easily handle. He also knew that while he possessed immense personal strength, Sean had a much greater reach of total power. Hadley was a single fighter, more if he split himself, but with so many splits, he would quickly be weaker than even the standard soldiers that Sean was using in the capital. On the other hand, this group was not as large, but each of them had a massive qualitative advantage over the army that Sean owned. On top of that, he could tell that the leader was insanely strong for his level. Hadley had dipped into all the classes to some degree and had obtained a class called “Novice Jack” which presumably implied his overall skill in such a broad number of classes without having really obtained real mastery in any. It was because of this class that while he didn’t have immense combat ability for his level, he could tell the rough combat of most other people, and he knew that the group before him were of a much higher calibre than those of Sean’s army. It made him curious, and so he followed them from a distance that he figured would be relatively safe. He also did everything he could to cover his presence, even going so far as to split off a clone to follow them instead of using his real body. At the end of the day, if one of his clones died, he would take damage, but it could never be anything life-threatening. If on the other hand, his main body died, he had no idea what may actually happen. He presumed that he would eventually supplant a clone’s identity and return that way. Of course, this was just his hypothesis, and nothing was certain yet.

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Through an application of his mana, Gregory could tell that they were being followed, but he didn’t know who was following them, or what their goal was in following. He could tell that whoever it was, was doing their best to remain hidden and unseen. Only due to his incredibly high perception and high level classes could he tell that they were being followed. He could also tell that they were not preparing any kind of attack though, and were only following passively. Gregory wasn’t sure if their goal was to take advantage of a weakness in their team, or if it was just to see what they were up to. He knew though that whatever the reason, they would need to be careful for now until they found out who it was. He knew it couldn’t be any random person, as they would not be capable enough to hide from him that well. It was also unlikely that it was anybody of a lower ranking than some kind of god-rank. This meant that whoever it was could potentially be dangerous. Of course, it was just as likely that it was somebody who could help them in their fight against Sean. Considering it was impossible to pinpoint a location though, Gregory ignored this person for now. Instead, since they had made it to the city that housed Sean as the “center” of the human kingdom, they entered it using their best full human disguises. Each of them knew magic now, and they were able to use this to fully hide their non-human traits. Investigating the city, they found that the army was made almost entirely out of demi-god ranked humans, and that their commanders were all lesser-god. Gregory, using his abilities, was able to find out that the escort for Sean were also all lesser-god ranked, and that Sean himself had reached low-god as he had.

It would be required to at least somewhat fight off a portion of the military, but they also knew that with just the group they had, it would be impossible to fight as many people as were present even with their abilities. At least, not without the mass destruction of an area. Even though this was something the group wanted to avoid at first, it was different now. The enemies they had to deal with were not substantially weaker than they were, and there were quite a number of them. It would be difficult to deal with that many unless they first thinned out the group with a massive destruction spell. Gregory started this by forming a massive ball of fire and rock above the city, at a point where nobody could see it. It was being suspended with an application of telekinesis on his part, and being created with the powers of creation that he possessed. For all intents and purposes, what was being created was in fact an actual meteorite which would be propelled down through telekinesis along with natural gravity.

In order to prevent unnecessary casualties, Gregory also created a massive barrier of mana when the meteorite began dropping on the human capital. He had no doubts that the more powerful people would be able to withstand such an attack through sheer strength and endurance, but those would be only the very best, and from what he saw, only about a hundred of the troops would survive such an attack. Even then, only about 20 would still be in fighting condition after taking that attack. It would seriously improve their chances of succeeding in such an endeavor if their enemy was severely hamstrung, and they didn’t each need to deal with an entire platoon of soldiers of a level that would be resisting their strongest abilities, and the leaders of which would be almost entirely immune to their “god powers”. Now, they just had to fight with a number of people about twice as many, who they probably overwhelmed physically since they had the racial bonuses that the humans didn’t have. With everybody having at least some magic, this pronounced the difference even further, since Sean’s troops were capable of only one form of combat, not having had teachers that were experienced in melee and magic.

By the time the meteorite was known about, it was too late for anybody to escape outside of the area of effect. Sean and only two of his elite force were able to reach a secret bunker that had been built far below the castle, which kept them completely from harm. The rest of the elite force was alive as well as many of the generals, due to their abilities, but the total number of men left alive was actually only 87. The number of people left in full fighting condition only reached twelve, but almost 50 could still fight effectively if they needed to. However, Gregory was also left almost entirely unable to perform even basic combat due to mana exhaustion. It was something he hadn’t felt in a long time, but due to the amount of mana he had to use constantly to create the meteorite, and then protect the townspeople from the meteorite, he had used his entire mana pool countless times since the beginning of the creation of the meteorite. He was able to still fight with a sword and perform very short range teleports, which was still effective in holding off people who were a lower rank than him when coupled with his insane speed and higher level.

As the team reached closer to the remnants of the castle, they found that Sean was already issuing orders to those around him. Seeing this, Gregory suggested that they take two thirds of their group and attack Sean, while the rest would hold off the soldiers that remained. Gregory would work with holding off the soldiers since his mana exhaustion left him incapable of fighting on par with anybody that was roughly an equal, especially somebody like Sean who had unknown physical powers and was at least as strong as he was in level. Eric, Atlas, Katherine, Alfred, Caitlyn, Tim, and Jessica all went after Sean. This left Elise, Lily, and Gregory to go against the soldiers. The soldiers instantly began attacking to protect Sean, but Gregory, Elise, and Lily managed to quite easily hold them off with superior speed, positioning, and the ability to use magic to catch them up as well. At the same time, the other group was having trouble just hitting Sean, since he had actually trained himself quite well to handle attacks against himself. The closer it seemed they got, the more Sean was able to back off. When it finally seemed as if Sean might lose, a teleportation array went off and he vanished from their sight and sense range.