In the deepest cell in the prison that was under the Imperial Palace was what remained of those who had fled from the defeated nations. ‘What remained of them’ was the correct phrase to use, because they were in various states of dismemberment. Even the royalty had been decapitated and then drawn and quartered and now the mass of gore that sat in a morbid pile in that prison cell was being prepared for immolation. As a portal opened up and an elderly man in white clerical finery stepped through, the mass of gore was lit alight and the horrid stench of burning human flesh filled the lowest level of the prison.

“What shame you have put us through.” The Pope said while looking at the burning pile of meat and bone with a look of total disappointment. “You not only failed to do Lugus’ work, you fled from your lands without fighting to the death. Surely you and your ancestors have been cast from the light of heaven by now and wallow in the darkness of the void.”

As the Pope walked back through the portal, he sighed and thought to himself, “How am I to explain these events to the Angels of Lugus? They said they would return as soon as they could, but we need the Army of Heaven now more than ever…”

It was likely he would lose his position due to this war, but he had faith that the True Faith would persevere.

…

As the day long bombardment of the walls and gates of Sunhallow ended, the attacking forces marveled at how the walls and gates were still mostly intact. Some small breaches had been made here and there, but to try and push through them would be insanity. The walls were effectively a reinforced concrete made up of the densest stone and metal combined with the strongest reinforcing spells anyone had ever seen. The walls were able to tank fire from even mega-particle cannons or the kinetic artillery of the various land battleships.

Only by concentrating their fire on a single spot were they able to make any real damage, and even then, the damage was fairly minor at best. As the Zabi family, all as Big Zams, arranged themselves in a semi-circle and regularly blasted one of the gates with their main guns all that could be noticed that was different about the gate was that it had scorch marks. In an act of desperation, one of the Gaws was made to do the unthinkable and was packed full of high explosives and sent on a collision course with the most heavily damaged gate, only to have the explosion that resulted amount to basically no significant change to the gate.

Arkhan had had enough and ordered Anavel Gato and ten other MSGs to arm themselves with weapons he had hoped to never have to use.

…

The Metal Demons were retreating! They had clearly given up in their attempts to tear down the glorious and unbreakable walls of the greatest city in the world outside of the Theocracy. Hiroyuki laughed as the magical projections showed the forces of evil beating a hasty retreat.

“Of course, I win again! I truly am blessed by the Kami!”

After a day had passed and the invaders had supposedly long since fled, an alarm rang out. It was the air-raid alarm that indicated several large and fast-moving flying monsters were headed towards the city. As the magical projection was turned towards the area where the magical sensor grid picked up the disturbance, the sight of 10 MS-06FZ Zaku II Kais and a single RX-78GP02A Gundam Physalis were seen in their ‘real mode’ hovering in the air over fifty miles outside of the gate. All of them were carrying an upsized version of the explosive launching device that had been used in their failed attempts to damage the wall before, and thus it was assumed that an upsized version would cause no harm either.

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All eleven units took aim at the most heavily damaged gate and pulled the trigger. Simultaneously, eleven oversized explosives rocketed their way towards the gate, all reaching it at the same time.

It was at that moment two things happened.

First, a second sun shone for the briefest of moments right outside the gate and the force of the stars themselves was unleashed upon the world of Gaia for the first time. Second, the gate and wall that had withstood bombardment from kinetic projectiles, energy-based projectiles and even magic based projectiles was blown to high heaven by the force of eleven nuclear bombs going off at once in roughly the same area.

As the first few moments of the explosion passed and the magic that helped reinforce the walls and gates was strained to its breaking point, the system that controlled the distribution of magical reinforcement to various parts of the city decided that, rather than cause a system-wide catastrophic failure, the best way to prevent the loss of human life was to shield THEM instead of the walls, gate or even the structures inside the city.

And just like that, a light brighter than the sun itself bathed the entire city in a radioactive sunrise. The force of the explosion tore the gate and the wall it was attached to into shreds and the wave of pressure and heat caused the city within to be totally eviscerated and incinerated. As the terrible mushroom cloud of radioactive debris towered high into the sky and rained down an invisible poison and black rain onto the Theocracy, something primordial awoke deep beneath the city of Sunhallow. It was something that everyone in the world had forgotten about, something buried deep beneath the first city the Theocracy ever made outside of their lands. It was a being so powerful that the might of the Angels was necessary to put it down, but even then, all they were capable of doing was knocking it unconscious.

The Theocracy had forgotten the beast that they had imprisoned in the earliest days of their existence. The Imperials had no idea that they were living on top of a monster. The Alliance hadn’t the slightest inkling of what the massive atomic explosion had disturbed from slumber.

For the first time in more than seven millennia, the Five-God Dragon was waking up. Whether they were fortunate or unfortunate was surely up for debate, but those who lived miles above where it lay were all blissfully unaware of the monster that now began to slowly regain its senses. All five pairs of its eyes opened by only the smallest margins, but even then, it could see the whole of the world on the surface. It saw the Dwarves in their homes under the mountains who had built marvelous wonders of metal and stone. It saw the Elves who had become one with nature and the heights of magic they had reached. It saw the Beastmen, who had gone from being warring tribes to a unified state and had made cities that would rival both the Elves and Dwarves.

As it turned its gaze eastwards it saw far into the past and gazed upon the cruelty that humans had inflicted upon their fellow intelligent lifeforms, but as its gaze shifted into the immediate present it saw that they had become something truly wonderous. As the Five-God Dragon’s eyes opened just a slight bit more it wondered, ‘Who or what could have forced these stagnant nations to change so thoroughly?’ As it finally looked towards the dungeon that it had gifted to the diminutive being that had amused it with its foolish challenge, it saw the answer to its question.

Flying cities, flying pastures, mines that dug deep beneath the planet’s surface and a society built to give power and property to as many as possible.

A feminine voice echoed in the darkness.

“My, the world has turned. For one human to cause so much positive change. He may be what allows this world to stand against those who would claim this world as their own.”

All five heads yawned at once, and the massive creature began to stretch and flex its body, testing to see how much weaker it had gotten in the seven thousand years it had slept.

“Hmm. I may need to be in that boy’s good graces for a while. Those explosives are no joke. If I were to take even five of them as I am now I would be in a very poor spot. Still, he does look cute. Maybe he would be willing to let me live if I did him a favor?”

Miles beneath the city of Sunhallow, in the abysmal darkness, the feminine laughter of a being the size of a moderately sized Flying Island could be heard. The ground below the city of Sunhallow began to tremble as the Five-God Dragon, Asharia Ophedein Drakonis, began to push her way up through the concrete that had been used to seal her away.