Dragon Mountain Empire Imperial Palace.
The weather was dreadful. Peals of thunder exploded directly overhead, making the entire imperial capital tremble. It was as if countless giants had used hollowed-out mountains as vessels to scoop vast quantities of seawater from an endless ocean and hurl it down from the sky. The torrential rain became a thick curtain of water, turning this cloud-choked night completely into a murky world where one could not see their hand before their face.
Dozens of magic towers rising into the clouds, both within and beyond Dragon Mountain Imperial Capital, shone with dazzling radiance amid the thunder and lightning. At the summit of every tower was a multifaceted prismatic magic crystal more than ten meters in diameter. In the pitch-black night, these crystals released an unbearable brilliance, stubbornly tearing through the storm clouds, the darkness, and the curtain of rain, casting the entire Dragon Mountain Imperial Capital beneath a faint glow.
Neat formations of a thousand Dragon Mountain Imperial Guards marched in orderly steps through streets and alleys on patrol. They were the Dragon Mountain Empire's force displayed openly to the world. Every guard unit was led by a middle-level god, with ten lower-level gods serving as centurion commanders, while every single ordinary guard was a formidable demigod.
There were a full hundred such thousand-man night patrols throughout Dragon Mountain Imperial Capital. Such defensive strength was enough to make every empire in the surface world pale with shame and terror. Before this damned all-out war had erupted, a single such thousand-man unit could have casually annihilated all secular forces on an entire continent.
Beyond these openly stationed guards, countless dark creatures prowled the night of Dragon Mountain Imperial Capital, hunting and carrying out brutal slaughter. Demons from the Demon Abyss, evil ghosts from the Evil Ghost