It was noon of the fifth day of the war, and something inside John told him that it was going to be the last. Maybe it was the fact that they were more or less just walking after Romulus as he smashed through every line of defence without a care in the world.

The battle at Warsaw had seen most of the army of the Blood concentrated. According to the information John had gathered since, that had been about 20% of their estimated strength. If that was true, then the total amount of manpower the Blood had had in this war reached around 10’000.

Out of interest, John had run some estimated numbers in his head, about every 150th person in Europe was part of the Abyss (it was actually lower than that, but for the sake of mathematics this was what he ran with). Europe had a population of about 700 Million in total, that made for ~4,7 Million Abyss Walkers. About 1 out of every 100 of those then was actually capable of using their powers effectively in a fight, so that cut down the baseline of available troops to 47’000. That was for all of Europe.

That number was then further broken down into average fighters (level 20-50, about 42000 of them, or ~99%), the elites (level 50-200, about 4960 or ~1%) and the true monsters, which John described as Primarch level, (level 200+, about 40 or ~0,01%).

‘Lydia once said that there were less than a thousand individuals of Eliza’s powerlevel on the planet, but with my math, that does still seem like a pretty high estimate, there should be like 100 to 200 globally tops,’ John thought. ‘Mhm, maybe I need to add the angle of longevity to that? The stronger people in the Abyss get, the higher their age expectancy. Also, I am using official figures, not including people who only live in the Abyss or the fantastical races.’

But even if he assumed that the Abyss-only denizens added enough people to the second step of the count to push the total number up to fifty-thousand (which was probably below the actual number but not by enough to make the thought process unreasonable), that still meant that the Blood had a whole fifth of the military of Europe under control. That was pretty crazy, as in crazy high.

Just because 50’000 people COULD fight didn’t mean they all WOULD. If given the choice, many people actually wouldn’t be up for the draft. John knew for a fact that it wasn’t exactly a choice in the empire, where nobles got their ruling privileges in return of maintaining a standing force (in this case themselves), but even they had gotten together a force of only 2’500.

This was, in large part, because the empire followed a ‘quality over quantity approach’ where they had an actual fighting force that was comprised solely of the elite members while the rest of the army was, essentially, only there for occupation duty.

But back to how stupid 10’000 were. The answer was mighty stupid, because there were only two ways to achieve that number. Either they were forcing EVERYONE in their territory into their army OR they were propping their numbers up by using items. The answer was probably a mixture of both, which led to a weak, undisciplined and untrained force. Which easily explained why John had had such an easy time beating up a few dozen of them on his own.

They sucked. They were relying on mass tactics and giant war machinery. Good tactic for bullying weaker opponents, but when up against Romulus, it was weird. This whole thing made John question what the leaders of the Blood had been thinking when they started this war. ‘Probably the same thing as Adolf Hitler when he kept threatening war on everyone and then it escalated into World War 2,’ John concluded that train of thought on his ride to Moscow.

When he said ride, he, for once, was not talking about taking a train or another real world vehicle. No, he was on the back of something that was best described as a land dragon. It was a long-limbed beast the size of a very big horse, with scales the colour of dark wine and a thin tail that it used to steer as it ran over the frozen landscape of eastern Europe. He was inside a cove on its back, together with Aclysia, Lydia, Rave and Eliza. Momo had opted out to fly instead while Metra decided to grab herself another magical steed (another oversized lizard, but more like a raptor) and rode that on her own.

They were all riding after the man running faster than any of them could hope to. Only keeping a tempo at which they could keep up because he didn’t want to get out of the range of the two Fateweavers he had brought with him, Romulus was at the head of the procession.

Those Fateweavers were the reason why they were using this method of transportation. They could create new barriers seamlessly, making it so that nobody normal ever saw them and thus protecting them from Gaia throwing a fit. On top of that, they dialled the time flowing on the inside to something crazy, so although they were travelling for hours, they arrived after only minutes had passed in the real world.

Same was true for the battles, as they now had a monopoly on strong Fateweavers, with both the Supreme and the two High Fateweavers the Blood had on their side killed and captured, respectively. Meanwhile, they themselves had two, three if one counted Magoi, who had only woken up for about 10 minutes since the fight of Warsaw and then went straight to sleep again.

Whenever they entered a city barrier, they cranked up the time dilation, defeated everyone inside and then moved on. Defeat mostly came in the shape of the defenders raising the white flag immediately.

With Romulus at the helm, this whole thing had turned into an unlosable battle, which only made John nervous. Not only did he maintain a reasonable amount of paranoia about this sense of safety, he also had to face a certain question once again.

He was supposed to reach this level of power one day?

“Impressive, isn’t he?” Rodaclam, the actual owner of the steed they were currently riding, asked John. If one was invited by the right-hand man of the leader of the magical world to share a vehicle, one didn’t refuse. “I have known him for… 5000 years now, I think, and I only get older while he just decides how he wants to look.”

“Must be pretty sobering,” John carefully said.

“It is indeed, although his longevity comes with its own set of drawbacks,” Rodaclam said and sighed; “Although I can understand a lot of those problems myself, I am not the youngest after all.”

“Like what?” John wondered, he was likely to be affected by similar problems and thus wanted to know what eternity had in store for him. The prospect of being hundreds or thousands of years old seemed weird to his 18-year old self, but that was the reality he was living in.

If no one killed him before he became truly untouchable.

“Well, the obvious things, seeing those weaker than you wither and die while you barely age is a start,” Rodaclam said and pointed at Rave; “Eventually she will look like 40 while you seem 20, then her body will be 80 while yours will be 21.”

“But I am gonna be the biggest GMILF ever,” Rave said and kept holding his hand; “Also, I am gonna cling onto life for three eternities and a half. Ya think I am just going to let John have all the fun?”

Rodaclam chuckled, “You seem to have pep, I like that, but it won’t change the reality of the situation that you will die before him.”

That was a rather grave message but most likely true. Of all the girls in his harem, who would stay with him forever? Eliza, most likely, with her regenerative capabilities and that thing inside her; the only thing that would separate them is her permanent death, which was hard to bring about in the first place. His elementals, without a doubt. Aclysia, she was bound to him. He wasn’t quite sure how aging worked for Momo once she severed that connection. Metra seemed to be immortal, but she was also ‘only’ 4000 years old.

“But your spouse and friends dying before you isn’t the worst,” Rodaclam continued in a grave voice. “It is the children that will really hurt.”

The realization made the hair in John’s neck fizzy with angst. The idea of out-living his own kids was already bad to him in theory, how bad would it be once he actually had any? To see someone be born from the product of his and one of his girls’ love only to see them die before him.

“Romulus had four children in the time I knew him,” Rodaclam continued, “two pairs of twins, ironically, from Sol and Luna. Demi-gods they may have been, strong they may have been, but they weren’t immortal. One fell in battle, the other three died over the course of history. The day the last one died was the day he decided to build Pompeii. He has sworn to not put any more children into this world before he has corrected the way it works.”

John could only imagine the pain the emperor must have felt, but that put a more important question into the front of his mind. Was Romulus right in wanting to end Gaia’s isolation of the Abyss from reality? It was one he hadn’t spent a lot of time on until now, but the more he looked at the things the Abyss could accomplish, the more urgent it became. The ensuing chaos would kill millions, most likely. Would the gain be worth it?

He decided to push the question off until he had heard about Gaia from Romulus himself.

“Seems like I will need to find a way to make you ageless or something,” John said to Rave. “I am not going to just let you go on without me; life would be boring without you.”

“Well, if someone can figure it out, it would be you, brainiac,” Rave said and gave him a quick kiss; “Not all that interested in immortality right now, but I won’t complain if ya throw it my way anyway.”

Lydia stayed silent and just sipped on some tea that had been brought to her. She made a slightly displeased face, threw a glance towards Aclysia, but continued to be quiet. It seemed she was busy chewing on a lot of different information that was new to her, most of all the human god and the idea that Gaia might be one.

“I have a question for you, if I may,” John said. Rodaclam gestured him to proceed, so he went ahead and asked, “What do you intend to do regarding Eliza?”

“We are going to let her go,” the answer was incredibly straightforward.

“Wait, what?!” Eliza cried out; “I thought the plan was to wait until I got a grip on things.”

“You seem to be getting along fine, and Romulus is a giant with a heart made from something squishy,” Rodaclam shrugged; “He is also a naïve romantic, even if you seldom see that side of him because he puts himself far beneath a whole list of other things. He thinks you seem to have a good enough grip on it already, although he insists on having eyes on you to report back to us if you become unstable.”

That sounded fine, although John had to wonder if he wanted to take Eliza and go already. There was something to be said about not wanting to be murdered by her genocidal body-mate. “Is there maybe an option to stay here for a while?” he therefore presented.

“Just until we are pussy-tight-gripping certain that I am as stable as an insane fucking maniac can be?” Eliza added to that; she must have been sharing a similar fear.

“I am not against it, although I would make you work for your stay,” Rodaclam shrugged; “You should bring it up with Romulus after the peace conference, if you feel it is necessary.” That sounded just fine, although the fact that he said ‘peace conference’ instead of ‘the final battle’ spoke volumes about the empires certainty of its victory.

A few minutes of silence ensued.

“Are you aware that your name is Malcador backwards by the way?” John suddenly stirred the conversation into joking waters. Rolling her eyes, his girlfriend immediately dropped out of the dialogue; she knew where that name was from.

“Considering I was the one who wrote that into the story, I am very much aware, yes,” Rodaclam answered.

“Wait… you were part of the people that made 40k?” John suddenly was infinitely more interested in the man, and his interest had been high to start with.

“I wasn’t just part, I made the whole thing up and then had others be part of it. Call it a hobby of mine that got rather popular in the real world,” the crystalized man said; “Guess who the God-Emperor of Mankind is based on.”

John had met his hero.