"Mages!" Othrien's voice rang as a silvery diagram blossomed above him, lines flaring brighter the more mana he fed through his staff. "We must block this attack at all cost. This is why our forces failed last time!"

If I stop this strike, will the system count it as direct intervention in the mortal realm?

The Mother wasn't mortal. It wielded divine power without restraint, its presence must've been against the laws... If I only raised a shield, if I only intercepted what it cast, surely that wouldn't count as breaking the rules. I wouldn't be killing. I wouldn't be harming anyone. I would only be protecting my Velmoryn.

I reached for the barrier, shaping the first lines of power.

But just as I channeled my divine energy, a red notification window flashed before me.

[Warning]

Direct use of divine power against another deity's apostle may permit that god to descend.

The moment I read the text, I froze. A shimmer of red was already beginning to bleed into the mortal realm when I pulled my power back, cutting the spell short. My gaze swept the nest, then the cavern tunnels, searching for any sign that a god might force its way through.

[Warning: Creation consumed 5 Divinity Points!]

I felt relief. The notification meant I had stopped myself in time, otherwise the spell would have taken way more than 5 Divinity Points.

So the system doesn't want me to be defeated… or at least doesn't want that god to descend. Otherwise, why warn me at all?

Whatever the reason, it had spared me from a disaster. I would have to tread more carefully. The rules set upon the mortal realm were real, and pushing them carried consequences I wasn't ready to bear. A god's descent, even a weak one, would shatter everything I had begun to build.

With my divine power gone, the burden fell fully on the mages. Their mana rose as they cast spells one after another, diagrams flashing above their heads. Barriers layered into a dome of light and shifting color. One wall hissed with fire, embers streaming across its surface; another glowed a menacing red; a third crackled as ice thickened into jagged sheets… Each mage was straining, pouring out everything they had under the Vaels' orders.

"Use the artifact!" Akrion shouted at the girl standing beside him. She flinched at the force of his voice, fingers trembling as they closed around the amulet at her throat.

"That won't be enough!" Eralon hissed, his pale skin now painted crimson. His lips curled as his eyes landed on a Velmoryn mage. "Here, take this ring and channel your mana into it!"

He bit savagely into his own finger, tearing it away with a spray of blood. A ring came free with it, wrenched straight from the bone. He spat it across the space toward a nearby mage. The man caught it by reflex, stumbling back a step as the bloodied metal felt warm against his palm.

The ring was made from black steel, its surface scarred with thin runes. At the top, a yellow gem pulsed faintly, its glow already drowned by the red stain that spread across it.

The mage looked at Akrion, hesitation clear in his eyes. Only when his Vael gave a short nod did he act, yanking the ring free from the bloody scrap of flesh and flinging the severed piece aside, the sound of wet impact lost beneath the chaos of the cavern.

"Stop wasting time and channel your mana into it," Eralon yelled, his voice warped by pain. Yet his left hand never wavered, still pressing mana into the glowing rune carved across his arm.

The mage's glare lingered on him for a moment, but obedience won out. He forced the ring onto his finger and began to channel.

Above the Mother, one of the diagrams finished forming. Divine energy lingered on its edges, ready to erupt.

The swarm of darkness creatures continued to push forward, utterly undeterred. They tore through the spider mutants without pause. Fangs split carapaces, claws raked through limbs. When the mutants spat volleys of toxic saliva, the creatures dodged in coordinated bursts, slipping between the arcs of venom with uncanny swiftness. And when a strike could not be avoided, one of them simply barreled forward into the blast, its body fading as it absorbed the hit while the rest charged past unharmed. Their assault was not reckless - it was organized, ruthless, and without hesitation.

Then the Mother struck.

The completed diagram pulsed once and erupted, a column of blinding light spearing upward to the cavern's ceiling. But the impact never came. The beam fractured and bent, reflecting back down in a dome of radiance that swept across the nest.

The first barrier broke instantly. Aria's scarlet dome shattered like glass, her magic unmade in a single breath. This was no simple mana wave; divine power burned through every defense laid by mortal hands.

My focus, however, was elsewhere.

The mage with the ring convulsed. His body jerked violently, back arching as though struck by an unseen hammer. He slammed against the ground, limbs thrashing uncontrollably, eyes rolling into the whites. Foam sprayed from his mouth with each ragged breath until the sound of choking drowned out his scream.

And in my realm, red notification windows flashed one after another.

[Warning: God of Night and Moons is attempting to breach your Domain!]

Find this and other great novels on the author's preferred platform. Support original creators! [Warning: God of Night and Moons is attempting to absorb the soul of a Velmoryn!] [Warning: Your Authority (incomplete) is resisting the invasion!]

The flood of messages battered against me as the mage's chest convulsed once, then fell still. The ring on his finger pulsed black, a shimmer that spread outward in jagged waves. Shadows poured from it like smoke, rushing across the cavern until they struck the column of light the Mother had unleashed.

The cavern split in two. On one side, brilliance so sharp it burned the eyes. On the other, an abyss. Darkness swallowed the walls, drank the light from mana orbs until even their glow went silent. The division cut straight through the battlefield, and every soul inside it knew immediately which side carried more weight.

The raw force of a god pressed against a proxy's borrowed light.

For a moment, the two powers held each other in silence, the clash without sound yet suffocating in its pressure. Then the balance shifted. The darkness edged forward, slow at first, then faster, eating into the light until it completely collapsed. Spider mutants caught inside it thrashed once before dissolving entirely, their cries cut short as if erased. The creatures of darkness surged instead, their limbs snapping with renewed vigor, their charge quickening as though the shadow itself was urging them onward.

I pushed my senses into the void, searching. The ring had vanished within it, its aura drowned beneath the invading god's power.

I must find it and stop this bastard…

I dared not force my own strength against it - the risk was too great. The last thing I wanted was for another god to descend fully into my forest.

While I strained against the obscuring dark, another notification window appeared. Not red this time. Blue.

[Result!]

The @!#!$!$! of the God of Night and Moons was not sufficient to breach your Domain. Their attempt to absorb the soul failed!

Due to the incomplete state of your Authority, no penalty has been applied against the God of Night and Moons.

For directly invading another god's territory and violating the divine contract with a mortal, the God of Night and Moons has been penalized: their divine power may not enter the mortal realm for 360 days.

The darkness collapsed as if someone had let go of a curtain. Where shadow and the darkness creatures had been, nothing remained - no writhing shapes, no claws, only the cavern floor.

Eralon folded to his knees. Sweat slicked his hair; his face was dark red from the blood that had started to dry now that he was not bleeding from his eyes anymore. He turned toward the fallen mage, mouth slightly open, confusion freezing his features. The mage's body was gone. Only clothes and that black, gothic ring lay where he had fallen.

"How…" Eralon breathed, voice raw and small.

No one answered. The Velmoryn stood mute, slow in their movements, the shock eating at their capacity to act.

None of them had been harmed by the darkness - I had felt that the instant the ring awakened. The reach of the god had bent around them, as if deliberately avoiding the mortals who had not accepted his mark. Perhaps it was to deny me the chance to retaliate; perhaps it was fear of the punishment that would come from striking those who had never offered consent.

The nest, however, remained dangerous. Two green diagrams still hovered above the Mother. The work was far from done.

"Avenor?!" Aria's shout sliced the quiet as Avenor vanished, leaving nothing but a ripple in the air.

He alone had been completely untouched by the clash of divine powers. Unaffected by both light and void, he reappeared a moment later, eyes narrowed at the creature in the center of the nest.

"Verde," his voice reached me, lacking the usual curse. "I'll strike that thing directly. If it fires another attack on that scale, we won't survive."

It was the first time Avenor had spoken to me without venom. No curses, no blame, only a plain admission of what needed to be done. The absence of accusation caught me off guard. For once he did not fault me for not protecting them.

That shift in tone forced me to reconsider my actions. It became clear to me that Avenor was improving. Not just physically, but suddenly his personality seemed more mature.

It made me realize my simplicity.

I could not rely solely on the raw force of divine power, waiting for the system's warnings to limit me. There were other ways to shape the battlefield, subtler means to guide my believers, tools beyond direct intervention that the system could not so easily forbid.

"Let your faith be proven in blood and steel." I made my voice reach every single Velmoryn, even the ones who didn't bear my mark. "Unleash the flame of your devotion, and I shall remember your name. Rise, my children… charge forth, for upon this field rests the fate of the Velmoryn race."

[Warning: Forcefully using incomplete Authority consumed 9 Divinity Points!]

The Velmoryn froze. Their eyes darted from one face to another, searching for confirmation if the same words might have reached their ears.

"Wha…" Akrion began, but a surge of mana tore his voice away.

Aria had unleashed everything, her mouth showing a bright, excited smile. Her hair, silver under normal light, burned crimson beneath the torrent of mana streaming from her body.

Two small diagrams flared around her ankles, and the ground shattered under her feet as she launched forward. One leap was all it took to close the gap to a towering green creature that, just like the rest of the swarm, was barreling toward the Mother. Its path aligned with Avenor's, who was already closing in from another angle.

Scarlet energy wrapped the spider mutant's entire body, halting its charge mid-stride. The monster turned and twisted against it, shrieking. Its limbs thrashed sluggishly inside the spell's grip as it tried to get close to Aria, yet no matter how hard it tried, it was unable to overpower the crimson aura surrounding its entire figure.

Realizing it could not reach Aria, its abdomen swelled grotesquely, a foul stench pouring from its gaping jaws as green saliva bubbled at its throat.

But then a shadow crossed above it.

"AAARRHHH!" Dariel's roar ripped through the cavern, raw and bestial, moments before he dropped down with claws bared. He crashed into the creature, his hands ripping apart the soft tissue around its eyes.

The Velmoryn followed. Every one of them. Even Akrion charged forward, the restraint in his posture gone.

"Verde, thank you," Avenor's voice reached me as his figure blurred again, his blink carrying him deep into the nest, straight to the Mother, where thousands of eggs clung to the walls around her swollen form.

The twin blades in Avenor's hands caught the diagrams' sickly light, their edges reflecting the green sigils spiraling above the creature. The Mother had a tree fused through its entire body, roots and branches punching from ribs and bark braided into bone.

It turned its head toward Avenor with the slow, obscene tilt. All eight eyes opened at once, each one a wet, glassy bead shimmering cold green light. The jaws parted, green saliva threaded between rows of needle-like teeth.

"KILL… ALL… ELVES…"

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