Sovereign of the Ashes

Sein already had a plan for how to make contact with the Magus Civilization’s legions.

Directly rushing into their camp was definitely out of the question.

Although they were on the same plane, Sein was still deep inside the Gallant Federation’s territory.

The moment he revealed his identity, he risked concentrated fire from the federation’s legions behind him.

Relying solely on the Faceless Mask to conceal his presence would not guarantee full anonymity.

On a chaotic battlefield like this, he would inevitably need to raise a magic shield or use other spells.

Once he did that, he would be exposed!

Apart from that, proving his identity to the Magus Civilization’s legions was another problem entirely.

On a frontline this chaotic, defecting did not guarantee that the Magus Civilization would trust him.

Lately, the Magus Civilization had uncovered numerous traitors who defected to the Gallant Federation.

Among them were not just members of medium and large-sized worlds in the Magus Alliance, but even native Magus World knights and mages of Rank Four and above had switched sides!

Some already had a price in mind, and whether they were willing to betray their home plane depended entirely on whether the offer matched it.

These Rank Four or above knights and mages betraying Magus Worlds were worse than even the black mages and black knights of Blackhaven in the Western Archipelago.

In fact, they were the Magus Civilization’s top targets for purging.

Sein definitely did not wish to be mistaken for such a traitor because of his infiltration mission inside the federation’s territory.

Gwyneira did not question Sein’s request, but Gwyndira kept giving him suspicious glances. She had never stopped suspecting him.

Since her older sister and the Huusians had sheltered him for so long, bringing him across half of the federation’s space to this frontline, any exposure would also implicate them.

Hence, Gwyndira made an effort to keep an eye on his every action. She needed to know what he was really up to.

Could he truly be just another alien creature mistakenly hunted down by the Gallant Federation?

Sein noticed her suspicious gaze, but he did not care.

At Rank Three, Gwyndira was barely worth his notice.

To achieve his goals, Sein would need to deal directly with their father, the Huusian King.

But before that, he had to establish contact with Magus World itself.

Since arriving on the Black Tide Plane, he still had no clear idea which factions of Magus World, or which divine towers and knightly orders, were deployed here and in the surrounding star domains.

***

With Gwyneira’s help, Sein quickly joined the Huusian legion and stepped onto Black Tide Plane’s battlefield.

Because of the Huusians’ diverse makeup and the fact that nearly their entire tribe had been brought here, the Gallant Federation had not been able to register every low-level warrior individually before the war.

Sein’s current status was that of a Huusian foot soldier, with a life level lower than Rank One.

Even so, the federation had forcibly implanted a small metal object that resembled a button into his forearm before the fighting began.

So this is the Gallant Federation’s method of keeping low-level creatures in check, Sein thought as he looked at the metal button beneath his skin.

Although it was tiny, this little piece of metal held deadly power. The federation could remotely activate it, turning it into a timed explosive when necessary.

But in practice, they rarely did so. More often, it was used as a deterrent and a reminder of who held the leash.

It was like how knights and mages of the Magus Civilization could order their soul slaves to self-destruct on the battlefield, but such commands were seldom given.

After all, the living had more value than corpses.

If the federation only wanted disposable explosives, it would not need to cultivate so many vassal races and coerce other civilizations.

They could simply mass-produce suicide drones. And in fact, such weapons did exist on the battlefield.

From Sein’s position among the Huusian ranks, the view ahead was a sea of metallic forts and weapons. Torrents of energy beams crashed against the Magus Civilization like tidal waves.

Towering robots and hulking mobile suits loomed across the federation’s frontlines, while hundreds of thousands of spacecraft and drones roared overhead.

This was only one corner of Black Tide Plane’s battlefield.

The federation’s total deployment here on this single low-level world likely numbered in the millions.

When Gwyneira and most Huusian soldiers first joined the war, they were stunned.

The sheer scale of it dwarfed any interstellar skirmish they had ever fought before.

To them, this was war on a level they could scarcely imagine.

But Sein was unfazed. Long before this, he had broken through enemy lines alongside Skyhold and others in battles far grander than this one.

And after traveling so far across the Astral Realm, he had witnessed countless spectacles of war.

As a result, he was more composed and ready than many Rank Four and even Rank Five beings.

The Faceless Mask’s impressive data-gathering abilities guided Sein toward one of the more intense sectors of the battlefield.

He did not immediately remove the metal button implanted in his arm by the federation, choosing instead to leave it where it was.

If the mask could hide him from advanced detection systems, then how could this tiny metal object possibly expose him?

At this point in the battle on the Black Tide Plane, the Magus Civilization was pressing the offensive while the Gallant Federation fought to hold their defenses.

Since Sein could not risk drawing too much attention, it took him three full days to reach the vicinity of a breach in the federation’s fortifications at the front.

In truth, if he had thrown everything into a desperate escape here, he might have had a chance to slip away in the chaos.

He could already sense the fluctuations of at least two Rank Four beings nearby, yet the Faceless Mask’s powerful concealment kept him hidden.

Even so, he resisted the urge to flee.

Before the breach, a horde of green-skinned humanoids, each about five meters tall, were relentlessly charging the federation’s lines.

Sein guessed they were enslaved creatures, raised specifically by a Magus divine tower or a knightly order for war.

He knew that most giants from Titan World stood at least ten meters tall, so at best, these green-skinned brutes were “mini-giants”.

Wielding stone hammers and massive spiked clubs, they relied on their thick, leathery skin to withstand the federation’s heavy fire.

Unfortunately, most of them were reduced to mangled heaps before they could even touch the fort walls.

The thick, metallic stench of blood hung heavy in the air.

Sein finally realized where the green blood on Gwyneira had come from.

Even so, some of the giants managed to smash through the federation’s defenses, leaving damaged walls and heaps of rubble in their wake.

One in particular caught Sein’s eye. It was a Rank Three green giant with darker skin than the rest, towering over twenty meters tall.

At least a thousand smaller giants swarmed around it as it charged straight toward Sein’s position.

After sizing the creature up for a moment, Sein reached into his robe and pulled out a soft mass of condensed sand elemental.