They had not nearly enough, if you asked the armies clashing in Opuwa, which would have appreciated reinforcements to make the result certain. As it was, fans of air superiority correctly predicted the ambushers would dominate the battlefield when the Brave Cumulus and its fighter girls cleaned up all the destroyers and one-man craft, but dinosaur enthusiasts predicted a thrilling sequence wherein a triceratops leapt and speared the motherplane on its horns, which of course happened. The contest of individual heroism went to Slaughter Pandora over Slay Every Dragon before the coordination of the Knights, Paladins, and less obviously disciplined classes of Holy Legend Army overcame the winners of that contest.

The outcome remained unclear to the participants on the ground, whereas any fliers with a head for numbers saw the Holy Commandment Leveling Paradise Dragons encircle pockets of their enemies and button them up all across the field as dinosaurs fell faster and faster into double extinction. At last, when the victorious warriors found no more foes to kill, they roared their approval of how everything turned out.

“Yeah!” some shouted, others “Huzzah,” and still others tried a less conventional sort of cry. “More like Spurious Galaxy!” sounded good to True Beryllia till she said it, and no one later succeeded in extracting an admission that she did. Heartful Azalea proposed a sacrifice to the invented gods of Opuwa as an excuse for a party, whereupon Luau Lua informed her they had a perfectly good fake superstition already, thank you very much, and hauled out a tape player from the wreckage of the Brave Cumulus.

“You can do that later,” Quircy Rau told her from a heroic perch atop that same wreckage. “Right now, Universe Testament! I'm going make use of this victory to trash somebody today. That's a Quircy promise, which is better than anything you'll get from an Eclipse. The next time you do your elemental thingy, make it Flood!”

The host paused only to bury its dead before it realized how unnecessary that was, wondered where the idiots who got themselves killed respawned, and headed for Universe Testament without trepidation, for no force existed in Opuwa capable of hindering it. The soldiers reached their destination without incident and entered.

A featureless plain! Nothing there but what you brought with you! The night sky strewn with countless stars like jewels spilling out of a giant sack during a getaway! Nobody to talk to! No fun-hating tourist should miss the Universe Testament experience.

“Hi!” Quircy Rau yelled up as loud as her lungs let her. “Hiiiiiii!”

“Hail!” Metatron uttered in a voice that set the very soul of those who heard it to trembling in fear of the final judgment.

“Do you have a gift shop!” Gaelvry bellowed brideishly, and Fusberta echoed that cry. Nothing worked to grab the attention of those whatever-they-weres off having wars of interstellar significance in the unreachable vacuum. The army, denied a battle or even a response, shrank away and raided Climax Net for basketballs and basketball-related sporting goods instead.

“. . . And then they called us idiots for missing the fight. Well, General Anstralia said she found our punctuality delightful, but I didn't need a codebook to figure out her hidden meaning.” Kindo finished his report on his post-death experience and sat down.

“Thank you. I'll put somebody to work on the ramifications of our dead officers respawning in the Barracks instead of the garden. We don't have a ministry for that. Um. Exploring! You're out of a job, aren't you? Start exploring ideas.”

“I refuse,” Otsk V. Zops stated, but Clint of Spinach City cleaned his glasses and immediately went to work at a writing desk fashioned from the finest dungeon redwood, which had been harvested with an ax that had never known daylight. Metatron had picked Dungeon Express Re:Development to host the next council meeting to his own woe, for everyone except him relaxed on a range of furniture of superb craftsmanship designed to accommodate the short, the tall, the fat, and the skinny, but not the winged.

“Sit down, Viceroy. You make me nervous.”

“Hold, Quircy Rau. He cannot.” Turpin gestured at the high and broad backs on all the chairs. “That is obvious, but what is obscure to me is this title of viceroy, never before granted to my knowledge. Who, then, is the king?”

“It's me! I'm the roy!” No matter what style of self-pointing she adopted, she could persuade no one to acknowledge her as queen on the spot. “Never mind. Turpin doesn't want anybody to be a viceroy except him. Spoilsport.”

“That was not at all the thrust of my words.”

“Sure, sure. Hey, Planning. What would you say are the great threats facing my empire? I already have my own answer. We can compare.”

Zimley Boe began to rise to speak before she decided sitting felt better. “Two things, Quirce. We beat up Furious Galaxy and Convergence/Divergence. We're the strongest, yay us, but they know that and might team up against us. Second is that people are getting bored with raiding Climax Net. You only need so many basketballs. I overheard a Rare wonder when Cadmos was coming back, and he seriously sounded wistful.”

“I had the same two things! We've gotten so good at ruling, Zims.” Quircy Rau and Zimley Boe waved at each other across the room for a moment before the weighty business of governance pressed their arms down. “Adigail Zem used to tell me that if your dog's bored, throw something. I was never sure if she meant for the dog or at it. I could have asked, but I feared the answer. But we're going to do that now, metaphorically. Declare an exploration expo where people present their plans to reach other games like T**** o* C********. That still exists, right?”

Most of the council members shrugged, but Asmodeus moved the conversation forward. “And if none accomplish that feat beyond feats?”

“Then we do our own diplomacy and ask FG, C/D, and all their little friends if they want to come show off their ideas for us to admire. Somebody besides me, make the announcements. I'm too comfortable.” The sentiment proved to be universal in the set of non-Angel bigwigs, and therefore Metatron left to issue some orders.