Sovereign of the Ashes

Eluvira’s departure could be seen as an act of self-preservation.

She had no desire to get tangled in whatever chaos might soon erupt in Faeloria.

The Purgatory demons had stirred up plenty during the Avatar Crisis, and no one could say for sure whether the Justice League deities would regroup and retaliate.

In contrast, the end of the Avatar Crisis came as a blessing to the billions of ordinary beings and lesser creatures living across Faeloria.

With the deities returning to their divine nations, large-scale conflicts that might affect the lives of common folk were expected to dwindle.

As a large world with a highly developed system of faith, Faeloria had always been efficient at cultivating and maintaining its believers.

During peaceful times, wars between nations on the main continent were rare, largely because protecting the population was a shared priority.

But during the Avatar Crisis, when the gods were too busy with their own struggles, tragedy spread across the land like wildfire.

By rough estimates, each cycle of the Avatar Crisis typically wiped out ten to twenty percent of Faeloria’s total living population.

Although only fifty gods had fallen this time, the resulting casualties among the lesser beings of Faeloria were catastrophic. Hundreds of millions were killed or wounded in the chaos.

Yet, the resilience of Faeloria’s lesser races and their ability to reproduce remained astonishing.

In less than two thousand years, the population would likely return to its former numbers.

Those who had lost their faith would find something new to believe in.

And the gods who had returned to their divine nations would once again begin tending to the territories within their spheres of influence.

In short, chaos would not define Faeloria forever. Order would eventually return.

***

Not long after the Goddess of Magic left, the Spider Queen got in touch with Sein again.

Truth be told, she had contacted him quite a bit over the past century.

Sure enough, just as Sein had suspected, the Spider Queen had been planning something huge.

When she heard about the weak deities Sein had hunted down, she was rather impressed.

However, her ambitions were on an entirely different level.

She had no interest in those so-called weak deities.

According to the Astral Realm’s power system, they barely qualified as Rank Four.

While they did have some hunting value, it was nowhere near enough to justify the time and effort the Spider Queen had invested in this world.

Besides, with the Avatar Crisis nearing its end, crossing over to this world now would almost certainly provoke a strong retaliation from Faeloria’s native gods.

Her current target was an intermediate deity from the Wings of Nature known as the Moonlit Cat Goddess.

Among the intermediate deities of her faction, she was considered one of the bigger troublemakers—far more aggressive than the God of Oak and the others. Her number of followers was also impressively high.

By the Astral Realm’s standard, the Moonlit Cat Goddess—Nocthera—was likely in the late stages of Rank Five.

For deities of that caliber, even Rank Six beings would have a hard time bringing them down.

On top of that, Nocthera was not one to fight to the death. If she could not win, she would run. Even before she became a deity, she had excelled in stealth and evasion.

Since her ascension, she had survived countless battles—and each time, she managed to escape.

Her cunning had always been a source of frustration for Faeloria’s greater deities.

In truth, it was clear Spider Queen’s sights were set on more than just taking down an intermediate god.

Even though Nocthera’s divine relic had decent value, it was not enough to meet the Spider Queen’s expectations.

Her ambitions were far larger than that.

Instead of settling for a one-time gain, Lorthisra had made up her mind.

After long contemplation and some advice from her adoptive father, she had decided to establish herself in Faeloria and milk it for all it was worth.

For an outsider like her, sticking around in Faeloria came with major risks.

If she got too deeply entangled in this world and her main body ended up trapped, even she would be in real trouble.

Faeloria’s closed-off nature made it incredibly difficult for even peak Rank Six beings to escape once they were drawn in.

And with tensions rising between the Magus Civilization and the Gallant Federation... her adoptive father could not possibly traverse unimaginable distances across time and space just to come drag her out of this world.

The Spider Queen’s real plan was to devour the Moonlit Cat Goddess and use her identity to establish a divine clone in Faeloria.

However, turning Nocthera into her divine clone was no simple task.

First, she would have to capture the goddess alive.

Killing a late-stage Rank Five deity like the Moonlit Cat Goddess was difficult enough; capturing her alive was a whole different level of challenge.

Then again, the higher the risk, the greater the reward.

If Spider Queen succeeded, she would gain not just a powerful Rank Five divine clone, but also a ready-made foothold in Faeloria by gathering divine power under the guise of the Moonlit Cat Goddess.

Faeloria’s ability to sustain thousands of deities meant its vast lands were overflowing with resources, and its believers were of relatively high quality.

Spreading faith here would be far more efficient than her current, covert efforts back in the Magus World.

Besides, she had not given up on her long-term ambitions for this world.

There was one thing, however, that Lorthisra had completely overlooked until her adoptive father pointed it out.

Faeloria’s closed-off nature was extreme—ridiculously so.

Even her adoptive father, Nergal, had rarely seen anything like it.

Since this was her first time dealing with a plane like this, Lorthisra had made several critical misjudgments.

For example, the planar nodes she had instructed Sein to mark when she first sent him into Faeloria ultimately served little purpose.

Due to the nature of the plane, a few scattered planar nodes were nowhere near enough for the Magus Civilization to send an invasion force through time and space to break into Faeloria.

If Lorthisra wanted to make that possible, she would need to acquire many more planar nodes—or even target more critical regions, like the eye or the lung of the plane.

That kind of effort could not be accomplished through Sein alone; that would be simply unrealistic.

If she could devour the Moonlit Cat Goddess and take her place, Lorthisra could rely on the native goddess’ status and power to quietly carry out those tasks herself.

On top of that, the Purgatory demons could be of great help as well.

After all, the Purgatory built by the demons was, in its own way, a part of Faeloria too.

The law nodes within that realm were also highly valuable to the Spider Queen.