Sovereign of the Ashes

After successfully upgrading his magic rod, Sein did not rest on his laurels. He took a short break, then dove straight into the next round of experiments with Leena.

This time, he was going to improve the Demon Eye Mask.

Laid out on his experimental table was a beautiful lavender divine relic that once belonged to the Goddess of Music.

Beside it sat the Octave Box—an extremely rare octagonal divine artifact of sonido attribute.

The Demon Eye Mask had incorporated some of Sein’s sonido elemental knowledge, which should have given it a good level of compatibility with the Goddess of Music’s divine relic and the Octave Box.

However, his grasp of sonido element was not nearly as solid as his understanding of pyro and lumen. Because of that, he had never managed to draw out the full potential of the Goddess of Music’s divine relic.

Both the divine relic and the Octave Box contained sonido complex elemental laws—powers that were not easy to master.

The same applied to the drop of divine blood essence gifted to him by the Succubus Queen, which contained the bewitchment law.

Delving into unfamiliar laws was time-consuming and exhausting.

So, by the time another two years had passed and Eugene had come to inform him that the war was about to begin, Sein’s Demon Eye Mask was still nowhere near its ideal state.

Instead, a few of his other magic experiments had taken off during that time.

***

Eugene’s target was a foreign world known as Bouldrak World.

It was an undiscovered and largely unknown low-level plane located on the edges of the Magus Alliance’s sphere of influence.

Due to its distance from the alliance, opening an interplanar passage to facilitate the conquest would not be easy.

Eugene also did not have the resources to purchase a space fortress, so this made launching a campaign against that plane especially difficult.

Still, Eugene had made thorough preparations.

There was no room for error; they must win no matter what.

With the half-beastmen’s limited resources, they could not afford to wage another war.

Not even the other beast gods in Beastmen World would offer Eugene a second chance.

If this campaign failed, Eugene would likely choose death to atone for failing the billions of half-beastmen who had placed their hopes on it.

“I heard that every newly ascended god in Beastmen World has to offer a low-level enslaved plane as tribute to the planar will. We had a similar practice in the early days of Magus World. Back then, you could not establish a divine tower or knightly order without first winning an interplanar war. But that rule was revised tens of thousands of years ago,” said a demigod-level mage in a red robe as he walked up beside Sein.

He continued, “These days, the Magus Civilization does not really care. As long as they can pay off the loan, any Rank Four or higher mage or knight is free to build their own divine tower or knightly order.”

This mage was Hillard, a Pyromancer like Sein.

Hillard had arrived in No Man’s Land about six months ago.

He was also journeying through Beastmen World when he caught wind of the half-beastmen’s plan to launch a campaign against a foreign plane. Given his decent strength, he accepted Eugene’s invitation without much hesitation.

Hillard was over five thousand years old. As someone older than Sein, he was much more knowledgeable.

What he shared were bits of old Magus World history that Sein had never really encountered before.

He had no idea that, in the past, founding a divine tower or knightly order required winning an interplanar war first.

Hillard was not the only demigod-level powerhouse from Magus World to show up. Besides himself and Sein, there were five other demigod-level knights who had arrived in No Man’s Land.

As for Rank Three and below mages and knights, there were even more.

In just two short years, the total number of Magus World mages and knights gathered here had already exceeded five thousand.

By comparison, when the Divine Tower of Verdant Spring launched its first interplanar war, it had not even registered that many mages.

The arrival of so many knights and mages brought a huge boost to morale.

If the target had been just a microplane, this force would probably have been more than enough.

However, the world they were invading was a genuine low-level plane!

Among the low-level planes in the Astral Realm, Bouldrak World ranked near the top in terms of resource abundance and power.

This was a formidable low-level world that had three microplanes under its control.

The strongest powerhouse in this world, the Bouldrak King, was said to be a Rank Five being.

Eugene’s decision to go after such a world was honestly a bold gamble, but he had no other options.

Bouldrak World was the only viable target Eugene had managed to locate.

On top of that, the oppression and exclusion the half-beastmen faced in Beastmen World left it with no room for hesitation.

It needed to offer something significant to gain favor with the planar will and appease the beast gods.

No path to success was ever easy.

And Eugene had chosen one of the hardest possible roads for his people’s rise.

Only by pushing through the obstacle in front of them could the half-beastmen hope to gain a real opportunity for development.

The one piece of good news during this period was that Eugene had discovered a way to temporarily block the planar will of the Bouldrak World.

This allowed them to construct a teleportation gate to the world before the native forces could react!

That one advantage helped compensate for the half-beastmen’s lack of a space fortress.

Normally, when the Magus Civilization launched an interplanar war, they would use a space fortress cannon to blast through a plane’s outer barrier, then follow up with a full invasion.

The half-beastman legion’s surprise attack using a teleportation gate reminded Sein a lot of how the Divine Tower of Verdant Spring had first infiltrated the Verdant Wilderness World years ago.

Could it be that Eugene had done something to the planar nodes of the Bouldrak World in advance, just like Lorianne had done back then?

Sein had no idea how this hunched old half-beastman had pulled it off.

“Master Sein, as a friend to our half-beastman clan, I hope you can assist us in the conquest of the three microplanes surrounding Bouldrak World first,” Eugene said as he approached Sein.