Fortunately, the mages seemed to consider Asgard's buildings more important. The moment they landed, they began placing shields over the floating islands and Asgard Palace. The Ancient One was not overly aggressive either; she merely held the first line of defense, driving back every fleet charging toward Asgard Palace.
Though they had not inflicted any real losses on the Three Great Empires, the mages' defenses allowed the Asgardians to attack to their hearts' content again. The situation thus returned to how it had begun, and the Three Great Empires' casualties started climbing rapidly once more.
This tug-of-war went on for at least four or five rounds, lasting nearly three full days. The Three Great Empires had not even touched a hair of Asgard Palace, yet the interstellar public opinion situation had already spiraled out of control.
The main forces of the Three Great Empires had all mobilized. After three days, not only had they failed to reach the enemy's home base, but they had lost tens of billions of troops. Asgard's death toll had only barely reached three digits, and most of the fallen had entered the Hall of Valor.
The Three Great Empires' strategic objective of attacking the Nine Realms had essentially been declared a failure. But now, the problem was that they could not leave even if they wanted to.
Odin seemed to have used certain properties of the World Tree to completely seal off the dimensions of the Nine Realms. Not only were jump engines unusable, but dimensional cutting devices were utterly ineffective as well. The Three Great Empires' main forces were now trapped.
To make matters worse, Jarvis was still stirring things up on the Interstellar Internet, posing as an insider and spreading the news online. Quite a few advanced civilizations decided to gamble, heading into