Sovereign of the Ashes

The thunderous roar of the Rank Five Molten Steel T-Rex shook the skies above Nocchi.

With the colossal metal beast looming nearly a kilometer long, the billowing black smoke in the distance, and endless explosions lighting up the horizon, Nocchi had become a scene from the apocalypse.

The Gallant Federation’s support fleets had at least achieved part of their mission. Nearly a third of Nocchi’s stockpiled resources had already gone up in flames.

The federation would rather destroy the supplies themselves than let Magus World lay hands on them.

Fortunately, the Magus World Army had Welks with them. Without the peak Rank Five mechanic, the Gallant Federation would have destroyed far more than just one-third of Nocchi’s reserves. They might even have forced the entire planet into self-destruction.

Welks had prevented the federation from attempting that, and soon after, more Magus World’s legions arrived, pressing the support fleet until it finally withdrew.

With Nocchi lost, the Gallant Federation was left with no choice but to abandon the Transversa Star Domain altogether.

How could their frontline legions hope to hold out after losing their supply transit hubs in the rear to the enemy?

Several intact federal legions had already begun to withdraw in an orderly fashion from the star domain. But the Magus World Army had no intention of letting them escape so easily!

A few federal legions might manage to slip past the army or shake off pursuit, but due to dwindling supplies and the lack of reinforcements, most would inevitably be crushed by the Magus Civilization’s legions!

This was the nature of war—victors showed no mercy to the defeated.

Just as Magus World’s knights and mages had fought to their last breaths when trapped inside the federation’s strongholds, now it was the Gallant Federation’s turn to bleed out to the very end.

The support fleets sent to Nocchi had achieved part of their objective, but they had failed their mission.

In the aftermath, Clint and his comrades uncovered a cache of high-grade supplies in the very area the federation had fought so fiercely to destroy.

Twenty-seven Star Cores!

These so-called Star Cores were the hearts of planes.

Usually, only complete planes could give birth to such a heart.

The chances of a demiplane producing a Planar Heart were less than ten percent. For a broken plane, the odds were even slimmer—under one percent.

Even though these Star Cores all came from low-level and microplanes, their value still rivaled divine relics.

Discovering twenty-seven of them was an absolute windfall!

“I knew there was a reason the federal fleets were assaulting this sector so aggressively!” Bondi exclaimed. “Thank God I held the line! Even the space fortress nearly got wrecked! At least our biggest haul did not go up in smoke!”

The Rank Four knight trembled with excitement. Half his arm had been blown off by a federal warship, yet his spirits were sky-high.

When the twenty-seven Star Cores were revealed inside an incredibly sturdy metal container, Bondi’s face was practically glowing.

“Star Cores are top-tier resources that only the Gallant Federation would develop and use. Normally, Magus World would never destroy and extract a Planar Heart.”

Upon seeing the twenty-seven Star Cores, each a dazzling gem with its own unique color, Sein could not help but marvel.

A Star Core was the very source of a plane’s origin energy. Once it was destroyed or removed, the plane would begin a countdown to death. Its laws would collapse, its inhabitants would suffer, and its resources would wither away.

Magus World commanded hundreds of thousands of enslaved and allied planes, yet even so, extracting a plane’s heart was almost unheard of.

It was done only when the plane was already damaged beyond repair, or when Magus World had resolved to destroy it completely.

Rather than extracting an allied plane’s value in one go, the Magus Civilization preferred sustainable development.

Some foreign deities within allied planes, blinded by their hunger for wealth, would overexploit their homes and bleed them dry.

In such cases, Magus World would intervene. If they truly needed funds, they could always turn to the Magus Civilization for loans first.

Overexploiting one’s homeplane was simply unforgivable.

Although it was difficult to judge Magus World as wholly good or bad. At the very least, it cared more about its homeplane than some greedy extraplanar gods.

The Gallant Federation, by contrast, had never cared about the fate of a plane. That was one of the main points Magus World always brought up when condemning the federation.

The Gallant Federation’s advanced science and technology allowed them to keep colonizing even after a plane had died.

With protective shielding and advanced biotechnologies, they could shape one life planet after another.

In that sense, the fate of any complete plane was not something they were expected to care about.

Star Cores were the vital energy sources for the federation to build interstellar fortresses that could rival the might of Rank Four combatants or higher, as well as top-tier spacecraft.

These twenty-seven Star Cores were almost certainly looted from planes the Gallant Federation had occupied during its invasions of the Magus Alliance’s territory.

In fact, the Transversa Star Domain itself had once belonged to the Magus Civilization. In a way, Magus World was simply reclaiming lost ground.

It was rumored that the Magus World Army had already breached the federation’s borders on certain fronts, though the details of those battles remained unclear.

As for the original owners of these twenty-seven Star Cores, their fate was no longer relevant to Sein and his group. Most likely, those native inhabitants had long since been wiped out.

Caught between two top-tier civilizations, their plight could only be called tragic.

These Star Cores were now the private spoils of Sein, Clint, and their others.

They were the ones who had conquered Nocchi, and all other reserve supplies on this supply transit planet rightfully belonged to them as well.

This was a true feast. Judging by the haul on Nocchi, these Magus World powerhouses had profited even more than they had on Black Tide Plane.

Bondi and the other knights of the Jehannah, who had always been broke, were understandably ecstatic at the sight of so many Star Cores.

But when even Welks, a peak Rank Five mage, looked visibly shaken with delight, it spoke volumes about just how valuable these cores truly were.

While Star Cores and divine relics held comparable levels of energy, the value of a Planar Heart far surpassed any divine relic on the Magus Civilization’s trading markets!

Those harvested from low-level planes and infused with the distinct power of their laws, in particular, could fetch the price of two or three Rank Four divine relics.

The ones infused with exceptionally potent origin laws could even be exchanged for the divine relics of a Rank Five being!

It was no wonder the Gallant Federation had sent reinforcements to Nocchi, even though they were already losing the war in the Transversa Star Domain.

Their objective, as Bondi pointed out, was surely these very Star Cores.