Sovereign of the Ashes

“Orric isn’t alone this time. Aside from the two hundred thousand royal guards he took from the forces stationed around Blue Star, I heard that once he reached the Shadowbat Civilization’s frontlines, he also rallied several Aquarian troops who refused to obey the new Ocean King—including a few Rank Four beings,” Karazo reported to Sein.

The Klytheran powerhouses were the most up-to-date on the battles raging around the Shadowbat Civilization.

Sein had been busy with experiments lately. He was completely absorbed in the new truths he had gained from his exchange with Master Gilbert.

As a result, he had left all intelligence gathering to Karazo and the others.

“Oh?” Sein responded.

The two hundred thousand royal guards Karazo mentioned were the elite troops Orric had personally brought along when he first left Aquaria to support Blue Star.

Later, when Orric accepted the Magus Civilization’s invitation to visit their star domain, these royal guards did not return home.

They stayed on Blue Star instead, likely as a precaution against any retaliation from the Klytherans.

The very troops originally stationed to guard against the Klytherans had now unexpectedly become one of Orric’s last remaining trump cards.

These guards had served under Orric for many years. Their loyalty to him never wavered, and they continued to recognize only his right to the Ocean King’s throne.

When Orven seized control of Aquaria and usurped the title of Ocean King, these royal guards resented his coup.

But without a higher-ranking commander to lead them, all they could do was quietly resist. They refused to acknowledge their new king, but they also did not openly rebel.

Then again, Orven himself seemed to have forgotten their existence.

With Aquaria’s abundant manpower and resources, raising armies in the hundreds of thousands, or even in the millions, was hardly a challenge, let alone a mere two hundred thousand.

Orric’s return finally gave this abandoned force a new reason to stand firm.

They immediately pledged themselves to Orric as the rightful heir and swore to take back what belonged to their king.

As Karazo reported, the few Aquarian troops who defected at the Shadowbat Civilization’s frontline were rare exceptions.

To secure his throne, Orven had once unleashed a wave of slaughter across Aquaria, ruthlessly purging anyone who opposed him, including a Rank Five powerhouse.

While his iron-fisted approach did solidify his authority, it also fueled the resentment of a small group.

So when Orric suddenly appeared on the Shadowbat Civilization’s frontline with his two hundred thousand royal guards, one Rank Four powerhouse from Aquaria immediately rallied his remaining forces and defected to Orric’s side.

Not all of his forces followed him because most lower-ranking Aquarian troops did not care which brother was the rightful king.

They refused to defect—not out of loyalty, but because doing so would put their families in danger.

Their life levels were simply too low to expect them to think about lofty civilizational ideals.

Most Aquarian troops were concerned only with protecting their own families.

Their families still lived on Aquaria, so switching allegiances was not a decision they could make lightly.

Orric showed surprising magnanimity toward these troops.

Since that Rank Four powerhouse defected to him, Orric spared the other Aquarian troops on the battlefield.

To Orric, whether they were loyal to him or his younger brother, they were still Aquaria’s soldiers at the end of the day.

This war was born from the conflict between him and Orven.

And once he reclaimed control of Aquaria, all of these soldiers would become his subjects anyway.

Hearing this, Sein realized for the first time that Orric was far more capable than he had ever imagined.

“Maybe we have all underestimated him. It seems like he isn’t just all brawn and no brains,” Sein commented.

Karazo nodded in agreement.

Sein suddenly remembered asking Orric, years ago, what he thought of Arid Expanse World.

Orric’s answer back then had been: Probably a dump for birds to crap on!

Thinking back on it now, Sein could not help but chuckle.

“We should probably hurry up and finish our preparations to support the Shadowbat Civilization. I wonder how Grandmaster Feylis is doing with mobilizing the legions,” he said.

***

Without a word from Grandmaster Feylis, Sein naturally did not dare act on his own.

Lately, he had only instructed Karazo and the Klytheran Legion to scout the battlefronts surrounding the Shadowbat Civilization more frequently.

Meanwhile, the Huusian Legion led by their king, along with Sein’s own Ashen Army, had begun establishing bases throughout the regions around Blue Star.

With the Blue Star natives and the Klytherans now part of the Magus Alliance, several long-distance teleportation arrays were being constructed one after another.

As more structures bearing the distinctive style of the Magus Civilization appeared across their plane, many Blue Star natives and Klytherans watched with wide-eyed curiosity.

Though temporarily free from combat directives, Sein was far from idle.

He had recently developed a new type of single-use magic bombs.

Its underlying principle came from Gilbert’s extensive research into inert crystals.

Since inert crystals held immense reserves of dormant energy that were notoriously difficult to activate... what would happen if one forced all that energy to erupt at once using a special ignition method?

Based on his experiments, Sein found that the destructive power of these single-use magic bombs depended on the purity, quantity, and density of the inert crystals used.

With ordinary Gray Quartz, even with amplification through magic arrays, achieving Rank Two or Rank Three destructive output was already considered remarkable.

But when Sein began experimenting with extremely rare, high-purity premium Gray Quartz... the projected results genuinely thrilled him!

“The destructive power of inert-crystal magic bombs is three to five times that of ordinary energy crystals of the same rank. And if we refine the finest essences mined around Blue Star, pure enough to mesmerize even Rank Five Klytherans, into magic bombs... wouldn’t that be the equivalent of a Rank Five creature self-destructing at point-blank range?” Sein mumbled to himself, stunned by his own results.

The numbers were so outrageous that even he could not tell whether the cause lay in the innate properties of the inert crystals or in the unusually strong synergy between his alchemy methods and Gilbert’s research.

Before he could fully digest his latest findings, someone suddenly arrived with shocking news.

Master Gilbert and his team had discovered the ruins of a civilization in the deep oceans of Blue Star, near the planet’s core!

“Ruins? What civilization’s ruins?” Sein exclaimed in disbelief.