"The Emperors have come to an agreement about the war."
A powerful Peak Mage Lord hovered in front of over 100,000 people.
Surprisingly, these 100,000 people were not Mages but warriors!
There were about 90,000 True Path Stage warriors, 9,000 Impose Stage warriors, and about 1,000 World Connection Stage warriors.
It had been over 400 years since Shang had arrived in the Lightning Manor originally. With the Lightning Manor's wealth and experience, it wasn't very difficult to cultivate an army of powerful warriors.
The person standing in front of the warriors was one of the Thunders of the Research Department, and he was responsible for all the warriors.
When the warriors heard that the Emperors had finally come to an agreement, excitement and ambition appeared in their eyes.
They had been waiting nearly 50 years for this!
Around 50 years ago, the world had been shaken.
The Empress of Death had assassinated Queen Primordium, and the Lightning Emperor had invaded the Judgment Palace Empire because of that.
Two additional Mage Kings and even the Emperor of Life had died, making this the most significant event in the last 300,000 years.
All the Emperors had gathered and had come to a decision on how to handle this situation.
In the end, they decided that peaceful coexistence was no longer easy to maintain.
People were angry at the Empress of Death, but they were even angrier at the Lightning Emperor.
So, the Emperors had decided that war was back on the menu.
However, since Mage Emperors and Mage Kings were too powerful, they were forbidden from getting involved in the war.
50 years ago, a huge chunk of the world had been eradicated by a battle between two Emperors.
This had been a catastrophe and tragedy, and the world shouldn't go through something like that again.
Because of that, the Emperors sat together for nearly 50 years, ironing out all the details of how the war would be fought.
And now, they had finally come to an agreement.
All the Emperors had agreed to the rules they had created, making it impossible to back out.
If someone decided to break the rules, the other Emperors would either hand out unreasonably heavy sanctions or even unite against that Emperor.
Naturally, the agreement had been enforced by the most powerful magical contract ever created.
Maybe, there was a way for some Emperors to somehow dispel the magical contract in their mind, but that was to be expected. After all, the Emperors were extremely experienced.
But the contract wasn't supposed to be eternal anyway.
All the Emperors expected that every other Emperor would immediately start searching for a way to dispel the effects of the contract from their minds, but the public didn't know that.
To the public, the Emperors had agreed to the contract and would keep their word.
So, what were the effects of the contract?
If an Emperor gave any order that could be considered skirting or warping the rules, that Emperor would fall into a coma for 5,000 years.
This restriction meant that the Emperors had to fully commit to the rules. They couldn't even think about ordering anything that could even slightly be considered against the rules.
But if one of the Emperors managed to get rid of the contract, they could warp the rules.
They could give some orders that might not be perfectly in line with the rules but also didn't break them.
That was a huge advantage.
The first Emperor that would manage to break the contract in their mind would get the ability to give dirty orders, grabbing a huge chunk of territory and wealth before the others followed.
Due to this, the power of the Emperors was also relevant to the conflict.
However, the contract was still very powerful, and it would take a long time until the first Emperor managed to get rid of it.
One rule in the contract was that the war should mainly focus on people below the Seventh Realm. People of the Seventh Realm were allowed to participate, but it should be a rarity.
Obviously, this was very open to interpretation.
With the contract, over 95% of the war had to be fought by troops below the Seventh Realm.
But without the restriction, an Emperor could argue that 51% would be considered the majority.
This was the power of breaking the contract first.
Naturally, there were many more rules, but for now, these weren't important.
What was important was one thing.
In front of the warriors stood one figure in white robes.
It was Shang.
The war was about to start, and according to the Lightning Emperor's plan, Shang would take a very public and noticeable role in the war.
The way the rules had been formulated favored the Empire with warriors in them.
The exact way how would be revealed later.
"Here are the official rules for the war," the Thunder told the warriors as he summoned several small booklets.
The warriors read through the booklets, and their eyes began to shine.
They could have such a huge impact?!
Some of the smarter warriors also realized that these rules favored an Empire with non-Mages.
Did the Emperors not realize this?
Or did they simply not care?
Well, the truth was both, actually.
Even if there were many non-Mages in the Sixth Realm, how powerful could they be?
They had no foundation, and the Mages would just trample all over them.
And even if they had a comparable power, how many of them could there possibly be?
There were millions of Ancestral Mages and hundreds of millions of Archmages.
Also, as soon as the contracts were broken, everyone below the Mage Lord Realm would stop mattering anyway.
At that point, only the Mage Lords would be important.
During the designing of the Spell that enforced the contract, all the Mage Emperors added small things that would allow them to break it faster and make it more difficult for others to break it.
All of them were confident in breaking the contract first.
"The war will start tomorrow," the Thunder spoke to everyone. "I'm going to assign you to different areas based on the distribution of the Zones."
Zones?
Well, if one looked at the map of the Lightning Manor and its surrounding Empires now, one would notice that the Lightning Empire had been split into many small and big Zones.
For example, the northeastern corner of the Lightning Empire, right at the coast and at the border of the Twilight Dusk Empire, had a square-shaped Zone about 500,000 kilometers long and wide.
That Zone was marked with a big six.
That meant that only people inside the Sixth Realm could fight in there to conquer or defend territory.
Every Emperor had split their Empire into different Zones before the war started, and every Empire knew about the Zones of every other Empire.
Naturally, the Empires were forced to declare Zones based on the focus of the war.
This meant that the Empires couldn't just fill all their Zones with Mage Lords or unimportant High Mages.
There had to be a certain ratio of different levels.
About 50% of the area bordering other Empires was declared to be for people in the Sixth Realm.
About 30% were for people in the Fifth Realm.
About 15% were for people in the Fourth Realm.
And 5% were for people in the Seventh Realm.
Every century, the Emperors could redistribute their Zones, but they had to adhere to this ratio of Zones.
That was until they broke the contract in their mind.
A moment later, the Thunder assigned all the warriors to their relevant Zones based on the plans of the Lightning Manor.
Including Shang.
