Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!
The magic-guided shells from outside Water-Drawing City finally struck Lolth's descended form under Kaierben and the others' despairing gazes, erupting in violent explosions and rumbling.
As the smoke and dust slowly drifted away, they saw the spider's two pairs of chelicerae raised protectively before Lolth's humanoid torso. Yet no shells had actually landed on her; just as before, they had been stopped by an invisible wall.
As both a legend and the Goddess of Magic's chosen, Kaierben was the first to spot the anomaly. He suddenly shouted, reinvigorated:
"No! It's a [Regional Divine Power Shield]! Quick! Have the griffin riders send word—tell our allies outside the city to keep up the suppressive fire!
"Water-Drawing City Legion! Haul the Ascore Cannons out of the military warehouses! Cover the refugees' retreat!"
Only now did Kaierben understand what mistake he had made.
The terrifying power Lolth displayed when she descended like a god, along with her absolute command over the battlefield, had already reached the level of a true deity. Only a god within their own Divine Kingdom could achieve such a degree of power!
Kaierben had been fortunate enough to witness something similar within the Goddess of Magic's Divine Kingdom.
No one could defeat a god under such circumstances.
Thus, under Lolth's subtle guidance, everyone had fallen into that hopeless belief—that they simply could not resist.
But the rules of the world had already been changed sixty years ago during the Saints' Calamity. Before the three Tablets of Fate were returned, the gods could only ever walk the mortal world in the bodies of Saints!
Even if Lolth had used the Abyssal Weave to erode and overwrite part of the underlying laws of the Prime Material Plane, she was still merely borrowing the Weave's power to imitate the