Damien proceeded to lay out his plan before all these eyes.
He'd done a whole lot of pondering on this one. It was a plan he'd carefully formulated so that there would be no mistakes in the operation to rescue Dante.
Wars took a long time.
Damien had participated in many over his lifetime, and even the shortest ones raged on for several years before finally calming down.
In a certain sense, the war between Void Palace, the Divine Order, and the Straea Clan had been going on for a very long time too.
However, it was less of a war and more of a one-sided beatdown.
But Void Palace was not going to take it anymore.
And rather than letting this war become another one that lasted for years and years and cost more than anyone could imagine, Damien wanted to end it as fast as possible.
The complete extermination of the two influences that inhibited his path was his goal.
And the current Void Palace was more than just ready to help him accomplish it.
See, the barrier around the palace was never taken down.
The protections Damien put in place came with a function to alter the time flow.
When Damien asked his mother if she could look after the palace while he was gone, he wasn't just asking her to do the dirty work that he didn't want to.
He was asking her to train the palace members in his place and continue on the set trajectory they'd been following.
Claire understood her son's intent, especially when he gave her control over the mechanism that affected the palace's internal time flow.
Thus, in the two months that had passed in the True Void Universe since Damien left to explore the otherworld…
Claire may or may not have been a little bold with it.
Serena was also a Goddess who controlled Time, wasn't she?
Damien's barrier was amazing. To be able to turn every day into a year was something most couldn't dream of.
However, with Serena's expertise that focused specifically on time, that effect could be enhanced manifold.
As such, the barrier now had an even more wondrous capability.
And in the two months that Damien had been gone…
For the majority of the palace, almost 200 years had gone by.
Other than the areas that had their own unique time flows, like the Young Lord's residence, the entire palace was placed in a startling dilation that nobody else in the Heavenly World could ever dream of.
The results of that?
Naturally, the people of the palace had grown into monsters.
All those who hadn't been able to ascend to Divinity were taken straight there. Even the most common maids of the palace were now Demigods.
As for Gods…well, the barrier between regular Divinity and Godhood was far greater than any barrier a practitioner would experience before that level, so one couldn't expect a huge number of Gods to appear just because some time passed.
There were thousands of high-rank Demigods among the palace's warriors, though, and it wasn't as if nobody ascended to Godhood.
There were a few select individuals, people who were Elders or high-level members of the palace beforehand, who managed to gain the opportunity of a lifetime during these 200 years.
5 of them, to be exact.
The Void Palace Damien returned to had not 11 Swords like the one he'd left, but 16.
It was perfect.
"We're waging war on two fronts, so we'll have to be relatively careful with our movements. Here's the overarching plan…"
Damien had already assessed the palace's current strength before coming here. He knew exactly what to do with his people, and he knew exactly how to strike his enemies.
"We'll obviously hit the Divine Order first..."
Damien couldn't conserve his forces or split them when he was facing them.
The weaker of the two. They definitely had strength hidden that the palace's information network couldn't see, but Damien was confident that they couldn't stand against the current palace.
Plus…
"...but that's only a front."
The main enemy was the Straea Clan.
Damien couldn't conserve his forces or split them when he was facing them.
"We need to drop their guards, so we'll start a few skirmishes here and there with the Divine Order to make them doubt our overall strength."
"The core of this plan is elsewhere."
There were a few favors that needed to be called in.
But before that, Damien gave the necessary exposition for those who needed it.
He told them about Dante's imprisonment, then went on to speak about what he'd learned about the Sacred Abyss Universe and the Straea Clan's connection to the Foreign Races.
After that, he expanded a little more on the few connections he'd made since coming to this world.
Since everyone had the necessary foreknowledge for the coming conversation, Damien was finally able to get into the guts of the plan he'd concocted.
There was a lot of preparation to be done.
Some of it was in matters the people here couldn't even fathom, but since their Young Lord was speaking so confidently, they had no choice but to believe his words.
This was too serious of a matter for jokes and exaggeration, after all.
It took Damien over an hour to get through it all, and by the end, everyone in the hall was left speechless.
The thoroughness of this plan, the fact that it didn't even leave a single crack for the enemy to escape through…
It was quite a monstrous display of scheming.
And that's what they thought without knowing everything.
There was a certain fact Damien kept to himself.
His own power level.
He was confident in his plan mainly because of how much of it relied on his own participation.
He trusted his abilities more than anything else. The problem was, he couldn't let others have the same feeling right now.
He couldn't let them get overconfident because they were following someone powerful.
That was a fatal flaw that caused many an influence to fall during Damien's days in Grand Heavens Boundary.
Nevertheless, the emergency meeting soon came to an end.
The confusion that everyone entered the hall with was gone, replaced with a sense of anticipation and seriousness.
Damien gave them a month to prepare everything they needed.
It was only a month because there were things that needed to be done before the war could begin.
As the meeting hall cleared out, Damien stayed back with his mother, aunts, and uncles for some extra conversation.
He told them a more in-depth version of what he told everyone else, and more than that, he stayed back just to chat with them.
They were his family, after all. What was the point if he only ever talked to them about serious matters?
By the time that conversation ended, a few more hours had passed, and by the time Damien returned to his residence, it was already nighttime.
He'd spent the rest of the day finding the two fastest messengers the palace had to offer.
And the two in question had just set off for their own unique destinations.
Everything was moving according to plan.
The only real question was whether or not all this planning was really enough.
