The war continued, but Shang was nowhere to be seen.
The Mage Kings knew that they hadn't killed Shang, but they knew that they had permanently crippled him. They didn't know how exactly they had crippled him, but all three Mage Emperors had confirmed that the Lightning Emperor had been truthful.
Maybe it was whatever allowed him to survive until the Lightning Emperor appeared?
The warrior had managed to survive for nearly two full seconds under the assault of a Peak Mage King.
Something like that was way too powerful for someone in the Early Seventh Realm.
The Lightning Emperor had probably given the warrior something that could defend him from a Mage King, but it couldn't be that powerful.
Even if a child had a gun, it would still need to hit the attacking eagle with it.
A warrior in the Early Seventh Realm couldn't be fast enough to hit someone like a Peak Mage King.
Even more, the amount of Mana had to be limited. In two seconds, a Peak Mage King could kill a Peak Mage Emperor if they just stood still and didn't move.
This meant that the warrior must have used something that allowed him to survive for a couple of milliseconds longer.
Naturally, the warrior couldn't have killed the Mage King.
Obviously, the Mage King had died to the Lightning Emperor's lightning.
But he still managed to survive against a Peak Mage King for a while.
Had the Lightning Manor developed some kind of secret technique that could exchange health for defense?
They weren't sure, but that also wasn't as important.
The important thing was that the menace most likely wouldn't appear for the foreseeable future.
Nevertheless, the Empires were still careful.
In the beginning, they avoided using Early and Mid Mage Lords, but after a century, they used a couple of them.
Shang didn't appear.
So, they used a couple more after another century.
And then, something strange happened.
The Lightning Manor started to build an Empire-wide Magic Circle.
Naturally, the other Mage Emperors demanded an explanation since this could violate the rules of the war.
Yet, the Lightning Emperor remained vague, but he assured them that this wouldn't impact the battles at all and that it wouldn't even touch or interact with the barriers, flags, soldiers, or the battlefield.
After a couple of years, the Magic Circle had been finished and activated.
It consisted of many smaller Magic Circles that were scattered across the Empire.
The other Empires had no idea what the Magic Circles did.
When the Emperors took a look at it, they also couldn't tell. It was written in a completely different form of Magic, which they confirmed to be the Lightning Emperor's personal Magic.
If someone this powerful had enough time, they could completely redesign the way they interacted with the Concepts and the world.
This allowed someone to streamline the processes of how Magic worked towards their personal battle style.
This could be compared to Shang creating his own Mana Pathways instead of using the ones that had been built by the world during his breakthrough.
The Emperors knew that they would need a long time to understand the Magic Circles, and without knowing if it was even worth it or not, they didn't waste their time on it.
With time, they would find out what the Magic Circle did anyway.
A century later, the Catastrophe King appeared on the frontlines of the Lightning Manor for the first time.
The Catastrophe King, Kiran, had been fully committed to getting rid of the Abominations inside the Lightning Manor, which was why he hadn't been part of the war before.
The fact that the Catastrophe King had appeared on the frontlines meant that the Lightning Manor was desperate.
The other Empires continued pressuring the Lightning Manor, but they didn't go all-out.
With the Catastrophe King here, the Lightning Manor would lose many of their towns and cities, destroying their infrastructure and making it more difficult for Mage Lords to appear.
After all, the Abominations wouldn't just stop appearing.
The resistance the Lightning Manor put up had also increased by a lot, and the other Empires knew that they had to take things slow.
The Lightning Manor was obviously overextending and fighting in an unsustainable way. As long as they waited, the Lightning Manor would eventually run out of steam.
Another century passed.
The Lightning Manor was still resisting.
500 years passed.
The Lightning Emperor changed his huge Magic Circle, and the other Emperors still had no idea what it did.
Another 500 years passed.
The Empires had become suspicious.
How was the Lightning Manor still resisting this much?!
The Abominations should have caused devastating damage to them!
The other Empires were already starting to have difficulties with the Abominations.
By now, one Mage King of every Empire was on constant duty to supervise the Empire for the Abomination Lords. As soon as one of them appeared, the Mage King immediately needed to summon portals to kill them.
They couldn't even waste a single second.
Then, another two Mage Kings per Empire were busy supervising the lands for Ancestral Abominations and Archabominations.
This meant that three Mage Kings of each Empire were constantly busy because of the Abominations.
That was nearly half of all Mage Kings of the Land and Sky Empire and the Twilight Dusk Empire.
Additionally, they also needed to keep several Peak Mage Lords ready.
However, there was one thing that gave them hope.
If they already felt this horrible, how horrible did the Lightning Manor feel?
Both sides were still experiencing heavy casualties, but the Lightning Manor still managed to hold out, and their defense didn't weaken.
After a couple of thousand years of war, the four Empires were not what they used to be anymore.
The Lightning Manor only had five Mage Kings left.
The Twilight Dusk Family also had five.
The Land and Sky Empire had six.
But the Judgment Palace was hit the hardest. Gregorio had killed two of their Mage Kings back then, and they had lost two more during the war.
From 14 Mage Kings, they fell to ten.
Before the war, the Lightning Manor had about 7,000 Mage Lords.
Now, they were down to 5,000.
The other three Empires experienced similar losses.
Even more, the brutal losses in the Ancestral Mage battlefields made it more difficult for new Mage Lords to appear.
And things only got worse since now the Abominations also started to destroy more and more.
The speed of new Mage Lords appearing had slowed down while the rate at which they were killed increased tremendously.
By now, almost no one was thinking about Shang anymore.
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