Sovereign of the Ashes

The appearance of the golden hand was beyond anything Sein could grasp.

Just how powerful would an existence have to be to conjure a hand of this size from pure energy?

The moment it appeared in the sky, it flooded the world below with unimaginable power!

What stunned Sein even more was that the golden hand had appeared right above his head.

In the midst of chanting his forbidden spell, Sein found himself watching the entire display of this terrifying force unfold overhead.

Honestly, if Sein had not already been someone used to witnessing the craziest things, just the sight of that golden hand might have rattled him so badly that he would have lost focus and suffered an elemental backlash on the spot.

The golden hand was aimed directly at the battlefield where Tourmaline was, just ahead of Sein.

The black Phantom Crows swarming around Tourmaline let out sharp, ear-piercing screeches as the overwhelming pressure of that colossal hand crashed down on them.

And then, they were squeezed into bloody balls and unceremoniously tossed aside.

After sweeping away Tourmaline’s opponents, the golden hand did not pause. It pressed forward.

By now, the Rank Six Phantom Crow King had already forced a claw and most of its head through the black vortex.

The king’s once-excited expression froze in an instant as it felt the crushing pressure radiating from the golden hand.

Its red, beady eyes, which just moments ago had gleamed with hunger and bloodlust, were now wide with shock and panic.

Its massive body, which had been straining forward, suddenly jolted backward.

One wing clung desperately to the edge of the space-time passage as it frantically tried to pull its enormous body and tail back.

From a distance, the once-dreaded Phantom Crow King now looked almost like a flustered old rooster, flapping to escape but unable to leave.

It wanted to explain to the owner of the golden hand that it itself had used the wrong door, but the other party was not about to give it a chance.

And since the Phantom Crow King seemed so eager to retreat, the owner of the golden hand was more than happy to “help”.

Under the Phantom Crow King’s terrified gaze, the massive golden hand slammed straight into its face!

The body wedged in the passage due to the powerful force of space-time, was cleanly dislodged under the sheer might of absolute power.

The Phantom Crow King felt its supposedly invincible steel beak shatter.

That same beak, which had once pierced the skulls of countless Rank Four and Rank Five creatures, drinking down their blood and brains, was reduced in an instant to a pile of shattered fragments.

And it was not just its beak, its massive body was smashed inward, caved in under the brutal impact.

The wings and claws it had forced through into Bouldrak World were obliterated, reduced to nothing but bloody foam.

Just before it was completely swatted back into the space-time passage and out of Bouldrak World, the Phantom Crow King heard a single word clearly—“Scram!”

And so, out of sheer respect, it fled the world.

It did not even spare a glance for the two Rank Five Phantom Crows or the nearly one million-strong army it left behind.

In the face of such overwhelming power, the Phantom Crow King felt the looming shadow of death.

The opponent’s strength was so immense, so far beyond anything the Phantom Crow King had ever known, that the very idea of resistance never even crossed its mind.

This was, in fact, the Phantom Crow King’s first encounter with an overlord-level being—and that was precisely why its retreat looked so pitiful.

In truth, it had no real need to be this terrified.

Just as Rank Four and above beings struggled to enter a microplane, a Rank Seven or higher overlord would find it almost impossible to squeeze into a low-level plane with such restrictive laws.

Forcing their way in would certainly shatter the fragile plane itself, and even the one forcing entry would suffer the consequences of its collapse.

Though badly wounded, the Phantom Crow King was still capable of fighting.

In the end, it had been frightened away rather than really smacked away by Kampas, the God of Beastmen.

After the Phantom Crow King vanished, the black vortex dissolved at a speed visible to the naked eye.

Countless Phantom Crows across the battlefield wanted to follow their king in escape, but the oppressive, suffocating aura left behind by the golden hand kept most of them frozen in place.

They were too afraid to even move.

At that moment, the Bouldrak King’s heart sank into despair.

After severely injuring a Rank Five Phantom Crow and swatting the Rank Six Phantom Crow King out of this world, the massive golden hand slowly began to withdraw.

Standing directly beneath it, Sein continued chanting his forbidden spell, occasionally glancing up at the sky from the corner of his eye.

While everyone was shaken by the sheer, terrifying power of the golden hand, only a few, including Sein, noticed something else: the arm descending from Bouldrak Plane’s sky was covered in wounds.

These were not injuries inflicted by the Phantom Crow King. It was because Bouldrak World, as a low-level plane, simply could not bear the true presence of such a being.

The wounds on the golden arm were the result of the world’s own planar laws pushing back against it.

Not only that, the normally solid planar barrier overhead now looked cracked like shattered glass.

This damage to the very fabric of the planar rules would not heal anytime soon.

In fact, the harm caused by this single appearance had done more damage to Bouldrak Plane’s core than all the destruction the half-beastman legions had inflicted over the years of war!

Of course, this blow had come at a cost to the owner of the golden hand as well.

***

Taking advantage of the overwhelming shock caused by the golden hand’s appearance, Sein sped up his spellcasting.

The crushing presence of the overlord, combined with the retreat of the Rank Six Phantom Crow King, had shattered the invaders’ will to fight.

Although Bouldrak Plane’s space-time passage had been destroyed, the passages to the other two microplanes still stood.

The smarter Phantom Crows, especially the Rank Three and demigod-level ones, were now scrambling frantically toward them.

The pressure around Sein suddenly lifted.

The half-beastmen who had been shielding him roared in excitement and surged forward, no matter how battered or exhausted they were.

As they charged, they kept chanting, “Kampas, Kampas, Kampas!”

Meanwhile, Leena and Yuri did not join the rush to strike down the fleeing crows.

They remained at Sein’s side, standing guard until his forbidden spell could be fully unleashed.

Even though the golden hand had slowly withdrawn from this low-level plane, the weight of its power and the ripple of its influence across the battlefield had not faded.

“Destroy all resistance in this world!”

A majestic voice thundered from the skies.

High above, a massive “hole” gaped open, left behind by the golden hand as it departed.

“Kampas!”

An even louder roar echoed from the breach.

And then, in an overwhelming tide, the majestic armies of beastmen and beastman gods surged forth.