Sovereign of the Ashes

The void surrounding Blue Star was the same region where Sein had first drifted when he arrived in this star domain.

Dominated by scattered demiplanes and broken planes of lumen and pyro attributes, the entire starfield felt lifeless, devoid of any sentient presence.

Within that void, the Magus Civilization had indeed discovered several veins of inert crystal ore.

However, the scale of these deposits fell far short of what was found around Blue Star itself.

Even so, the reserves were still considerable, especially given that such rare resources were almost nonexistent elsewhere.

Compared to the inert crystal deposits in the lifeless void, what truly caught Sein’s attention was another piece of news brought back by Gilbert and the others. Alongside those resource veins, they had uncovered several ruins of ancient civilizations.

The region around Blue Star clearly concealed profound secrets.

More importantly, once ruins belonging to a top-tier civilization were discovered, it was rarely an isolated find. Careful exploration of the surrounding area would almost always lead to a second ruin, then a third, and eventually many more.

Given the immense territorial reach of such advanced civilizations, these ruins were likely scattered far beyond Blue Star.

Marvelous Plane where Sein was stationed, the Shadowbat Civilization overseen by Gregory, and even the star domains bordering Arid Expanse World... All of them potentially concealed remnants of top-tier civilizations!

The Magus Civilization itself was a perfect example of just how vast the influence of a top-tier civilization could be.

Even after tens of millions of years—or perhaps far longer—of cosmic erosion, certain high-level and well-preserved civilizational ruins had managed to survive to the present day.

According to recent intelligence received by Sein, the Magus Civilization’s specialized exploration teams had apparently uncovered fragmented information tied to the hostile Eiyurant Papillon Civilization among these ruins.

The fact that this once-glorious, technologically advanced civilization now existed only as ancient ruins scattered throughout the void suggested that it must have once faced a rival civilization equal to it in power.

Otherwise, how could a civilization of that caliber simply vanish?

Sein knew very little about the Eiyurant Papillon Civilization’s rival.

All he knew was that it was likely a cultivation-based civilization. Even its name remained unknown to him.

Perhaps the exploration teams had yet to uncover the truth. Or perhaps they had, but deemed it unnecessary to share such sensitive information with a Rank Five mage stationed on the frontlines.

At present, intelligence concerning the ruins of top-tier civilizations like the Eiyurant Papillon was known only to a small circle of powerhouses in this frontier star domain, aside from the exploration teams themselves.

Within this star domain, only Sein, Gregory, and White Stella were privy to such knowledge.

The other Rank Four knights and mages dispatched to this region knew nothing of these matters.

The scale of the discovered civilization ruins varied widely.

It was not necessarily true that ruins left behind by top-tier civilizations contained truly precious treasures.

Take the Eiyurant Papillon Civilization, for example. It was a technological civilization, yet the two minor ruins discovered by the Magus World exploration teams were nothing more than former residential areas of the Eiyurant Papillon Folk.

Aside from some ancient civilian technological artifacts, they held very few high-grade treasures of real practical value to the Magus Civilization.

That was simply the reality of ruin exploration. Expecting instant riches was nothing more than wishful thinking.

Still, the Eiyurant Papillon Civilization had once been a true top-tier power. If its strategic military resource sites could be uncovered in the course of further exploration, the gains would almost certainly be tremendous.

On the other hand, if one endured great hardship excavating a ruin only to discover that its former civilization had merely been a low-level or microplane... that would be frustrating.

Sein was unsure whether the successive discoveries of Eiyurant Papillon Civilization’s ruins, along with the intelligence concerning their prehistoric rival civilization, would affect the Magus Civilization’s upcoming strategic decisions in this star domain.

What he did know was that the next piece of intelligence he received confirmed that Grandmaster Feylis was personally leading a massive force toward the Shadowbat Civilization.

Meanwhile, the Chaos Sea appeared to have been entrusted to Kuggo and several other Rank Six powerhouses of the Magus Civilization.

Sein also did not know whether the Magus Civilization had dispatched additional Rank Six powerhouses beyond Feylis to this frontier star domain.

***

Before Feylis and the others arrived, Sein received yet another message.

This one was bad news.

After the Magus Civilization secured overwhelming advantages on both the Netherworld Star Domain battlefield and the Grand Eye Demon World battlefield, the Gallant Federation finally made a major move after centuries of silence.

A medium-sized star domain known as Saitos had originally been under the Gallant Federation’s control.

However, after the Clash of Civilizations erupted, the Magus Civilization seized the initiative on that battlefield and swiftly occupied the entire star domain.

Subsequent reinforcements then transformed Saitos into yet another major frontline between the Magus Civilization and the Gallant Federation in this civilizational war.

Near the Saitos Star Domain, the Magus Civilization deployed the main battle legions of its two large world civilizations—the Norman Federation and the Amethyst World.

Beyond that, an overlord-level powerhouse personally led at least a hundred million troops into the fray.

In terms of scale, the battlefield near the Saitos Star Domain ranked second only to the Netherworld Star Domain battlefield among the primary theaters of war between top-tier civilizations.

Although both were medium-sized star domains, the intensity and magnitude of the conflict near Saitos far surpassed the fighting around the Shadowbat Civilization.

It was on this main battlefield that the Gallant Federation, after suffering heavy losses in the early stages of the war, finally unveiled its ultimate secret weapon in the Clash of Civilizations—the Infinity Light.

This was the Gallant Federation’s true doomsday weapon, unquestionably its most terrifying one!

What exactly formed the core mechanism behind the release of the Infinity Light remained unknown.

At the very least, the Magus Civilization had yet to uncover its secrets, while the Gallant Federation’s information lockdown proved flawless.

In the end, the battlefield bore witness to a colossal torrent of blinding white energy that engulfed the entire Saitos Star Domain.

In that single instant, countless Magus Civilization combat units were reduced to nothing but particles!

Before the might of a top-tier civilization, individual strength proved utterly insignificant.

The Saitos Star Domain had been home to countless Rank Four, Rank Five, and even Rank Six powerhouses, and the Magus Civilization had deployed more than a thousand space fortresses there.

Yet none of that mattered.

The entire Saitos Star Domain was annihilated. Every plane and every fragment of rock was erased into nothingness.

There were also rumors that the Magus Civilization lost an overlord-level being when the Gallant Federation unleashed the Infinity Light.

However, no one knew which overlord had fallen.

The Magus Civilization likely feared that news of such a catastrophic loss would spark panic or unrest, and so the information was tightly controlled and never broadly disseminated.

Only the name Infinity Light gradually spread among the upper echelons of the Magus Civilization, eventually reaching powerhouses like Sein.

Among the limited battle footage transmitted back from the Saitos Star Domain, one extremely brief video clip left a deep impression on the Magus Civilization’s high command.

At the edge of the starry expanse, a streak of white light appeared.

In the next instant, everything was swallowed by absolute darkness.

The footage ended there, leaving behind only an overwhelming sense of oppression and dread that fueled endless speculation.