The moment Kaelus gave the command, the Dominion of Nexus mobilized with a speed and efficiency that made the movements of mortal armies look like a snail's crawl. The Genesis Project was not a matter of mortal labor, of men with shovels and oxen with plows. It was a matter of divine will, executed by beings of mythic power.
The first to arrive in the desolate, untamed expanse of the Whispering Wastes was Gravity.
She floated in the sky, thousands of feet above the jagged, chaotic landscape. Before her, a magical projection of Kaelus's grand design hovered in the air—a topographical map of the new nation of Aethelgard, complete with its designated mountain ranges, river valleys, and vast central plain.
To a mortal, the task of reshaping a territory the size of a kingdom would be the work of millennia. To Gravity, it was a day's work.
"Let us begin with the foundation," she murmured to herself, a look of intense, artistic focus on her face. She held her Orb of Starlight, its cosmic energy swirling in tune with her will.
She focused on a vast, rocky plateau that was, according to the plans, to become the "Azure Shield Mountains," a protective barrier on the new nation's northern border.
[Grand Manipulation: Tectonic Uplift].
She did not fire a beam or cast a spell. She simply reached out with her will and took hold of the tectonic plate deep beneath the earth's crust. With a deep, groaning rumble that was felt for hundreds of miles, the ground began to rise. It was not a violent earthquake. It was a slow, controlled, majestic ascent. The plateau buckled, folded, and climbed towards the sky, the rock groaning under the immense, controlled pressure.
Over the course of an hour, a new mountain range was born. Peaks that had not existed at dawn now scraped the clouds, their forms elegant and aesthetically pleasing, just as Kaelus's designs had dictated.
Observers in the watchtowers on the Baharuth Empire's border stared in slack-jawed, terrified silence. They were not witnessing an earthquake. They were witnessing a deliberate, controlled act of creation. The reports they sent back to Emperor Jircniv were so hysterical they were initially dismissed as madness.
Next, Gravity turned her attention to the new nation's water source. According to the plans, a great river, the 'Argent Stream', was to flow from the new mountains, through the central plain, and out to the sea.
She traced a line in the air with her finger, following the path on the map.
[Grand Manipulation: Erosional Carving].
Along the path she had traced, the ground began to sink. Rock and soil were not blasted away; they were gently but inexorably pushed aside by localized gravitational forces, forming a perfect, deep, and winding riverbed. She then focused on the snowcaps of her newly created mountains, applying a subtle pressure and a whisper of thermal energy. The ancient ice began to melt, not into a flood, but into a steady, controlled flow. Water, clear and pure, began to trickle, then flow, then rush down the mountainside, finding the new channel she had carved for it. A river was born.
While Gravity was playing the role of a goddess of creation, Boom and Blast, leading the newly forged legion of a thousand Praetorian Golems, were acting as gods of destruction.
They marched through the Wastes in a perfect, implacable line, a moving wall of obsidian and adamantine. Their mission was simple: sterilization.
They encountered a nest of Wyverns in a deep canyon. Blast simply raised his Sonic Lance and fired a single, wide-beam pulse. The resulting sonic wave shattered the canyon walls and turned every Wyvern in the vicinity into a fine red mist. The canyon was then renamed "The Silent Chasm."
They found a den of ancient Basilisks, whose petrifying gaze had been the stuff of legend. The Praetorian Golems, being constructs, were immune. They waded into the den and systematically crushed every Basilisk under their massive, unfeeling feet.
Boom's greatest challenge came in the form of a "Roc," a monstrous, city-sized bird of prey that had nested on the highest peak of the old mountains. It saw the approaching army and swooped down, its talons ready to snatch up golems like toys.
"FINALLY, A REAL FIGHT!" Boom roared in delight. He didn't wait for it to descend. He bent his powerful legs and leaped. He shot into the sky like a cannonball, his new shield, the [Aegis of the Unbroken Star], held before him. He met the Roc in mid-air with a cataclysmic crash. The shield absorbed the entirety of the Roc's monstrous momentum. The red runes on its surface glowed with a blinding intensity.
"MY TURN!" Boom bellowed, and unleashed the stored energy. A wave of pure, explosive force erupted from the shield, point-blank into the Roc's chest. The legendary beast, which could have carried off an elephant, was blown backwards, its chest cavity vaporized, its massive body falling lifelessly from the sky to crash into the mountainside, triggering an avalanche that buried it forever.
The sterilization was brutal, total, and terrifyingly efficient. The Whispering Wastes, once a land teeming with mythic and dangerous creatures, was being systematically scrubbed clean.
After the sculptors and the exterminators came the gardener.
Flora arrived to find a land of newly formed mountains, freshly carved riverbeds, and silent, empty plains. The soil was barren, sterile.
"A blank canvas!" she chirped with delight.
She did not plant seeds one by one. She held the [Seed of the World Tree] she had been given, now a pulsating, vibrant artifact of immense life-force, and raised it to the sky. She poured her own energy into it, and the seed released a massive, visible wave of emerald-green life-energy that washed over the entire landscape.
Where the wave passed, the barren soil instantly became rich and dark. Grass, lush and impossibly green, sprouted and grew to a perfect, uniform height in a matter of minutes. In the designated forest areas, saplings of a hundred different, specially-designed tree species pushed up from the ground, growing at a rate that was visible to the naked eye. Within a day, what had been a barren plain was now a verdant, rolling grassland, and the foundations of a great, perfect forest were in place. She had terraformed an entire nation in a single day.
The reports of these events, confirmed by the Empire's most powerful scrying mages, were laid on Emperor Jircniv's desk. The young, cynical Emperor stared at them, his usual calculating expression replaced by one of pure, unadulterated awe.
"They are not building a nation," he whispered to Fluder, who was looking at the reports with the feverish excitement of a scholar who has just discovered a new form of physics. "They are painting a masterpiece on the face of the world. An Archmage who moves mountains, a warrior who slays a Roc with a single blow, a druid who can create a forest in a day..."
Jircniv looked at the final report, the one detailing the "invitation" that was being sent out via The Web to all corners of the continent, an invitation to a new life in a paradise called Aethelgard.
He finally understood Kaelus's true power. It wasn't his personal strength or the might of his guardians. It was his ability to inspire this level of creation, this scale of coordinated, world-shaping work.
"We cannot compete with this," Jircniv said, a note of finality in his voice. "How can you fight an enemy whose very act of building their empire is more beautiful and inspiring than your own entire history?"
He looked at his chief of staff. "Send a message to Queen Lilliana," he commanded. "The Baharuth Empire wishes to offer its... assistance. We will provide, free of charge, a thousand of our finest architects and engineers to assist the dwarves in the construction of Aethelgard's capital. It will be a gift. A sign of our eternal friendship with the Dominion of Nexus."
Fluder looked at his Emperor. "A gift, Your Majesty?"
"Yes," Jircniv said, a strange, almost serene look on his face. "When you cannot stop the tide, you do not build a wall. You learn to surf. We will not be the rivals of this new nation. We will be its greatest, most helpful, and most indispensable ally. We will help them build their paradise, and in doing so, we will secure our own survival in its shadow."
The Emperor had fully and completely capitulated, not to a threat of war, but to a display of creation so magnificent it had broken his ambition. The Genesis Project was already a resounding success, and they hadn't even laid the first stone of the first city.