Unlike before, Heart of Darkness and Guardian of Stars, representing the Conservatives and Reformists respectively, openly joined the camps of the First Prince and Ninth Prince. No longer content with their previous covert struggle, they seemed intent on using this opportunity to settle the matter once and for all.
Gray Mist, the strongest of the three guardians, chose to return to the Imperial Mausoleum and remain there in seclusion, seemingly unwilling to involve himself in the conflict of ideals between the other two guardians.
With the Royal Guardians taking the lead in forming opposing camps, the Gloria Empire now showed clear signs of division.
Anvis did not care about Lanno's little schemes.
After all, a large portion of Lanno's camp's strength was actually connected to him.
After Gray Mist was gone, Anvis had taken over most of the legacy he left behind ahead of schedule. This included the part involving cooperation with Lanno, while Lanno's current high-rank Prophet power still depended on him.
Anvis had even secretly provided Lanno, through the Black Ring Merchant Guild's channels, with the Third Generation Demonic Construct Army and Demonic Knight Captains his subordinates had developed some time ago, which were not yet available for sale.
They were more refined products of the Perfect Blood project, equipped with an optimized Hive Mind system. They included multiple troop types, each with individual strength reaching Sixth Rank, led by Demonic Knight Captains whose individual strength could reach Seventh Rank, capable of unleashing legion skills with an extremely high synchronization rate.
Spreading a magic map across the Cedar Wood tea table before him, Anvis added markings representing hidden forces to the various regions of the map based on information Lanno had provided.
The map depicted the entire territory of the Gloria Empire, divided into different colors according to