Sovereign of the Ashes

What had once been an orderly Magus Civilization experimental base now lay in utter ruin.

Agent Bond arrived relatively late to the scene.

When he entered this subspace, his landing point had deviated from the intended coordinates.

To make matters worse, the Gallant Federation’s assault fleet had launched coordinated strikes against multiple Magus Civilization experimental bases scattered throughout the ruins.

Only after spending a considerable amount of time here in this secret realm did Agent Bond realize that the base they attacked had been their enemy’s primary base.

Logically, this location should have held the largest collection of the Magus Civilization’s research data.

Yet the results were deeply disappointing.

The Gallant Federation gained very little, and after Bond arrived, he even received reports that Fermera had suffered severe damage.

Had the Magus Civilization really deployed forces within this top-tier civilization’s secret realm that were capable of threatening Rank Six beings?

The moment Bond learned this, his mood grew noticeably heavier.

Before meeting the eight-winged angel, Bond first went to a major general who had been rescued from the desert ruins—Charlie Robert.

Charlie Robert and his brother were the pilots of a Rank Five mobile suit known as the Deadly Wanderer.

Unfortunately, the Deadly Wanderer was lost in the previous battle. Only half of its wreckage could be recovered from the sands, and Charlie Robert’s elder brother had perished.

Through the accounts of others, Bond gained a rough understanding of how the battle had unfolded and how the Roberts had performed.

Lying on a stretcher, General Robert’s entire body was wrapped in bandages and submerged in gene-repair fluid. Even so, he still commanded Bond’s deep respect.

According to battlefield medics, had General Robert not ejected in time or narrowly avoided the ensuing explosions, his fate would have been no different from his brother’s.

General Robert’s brother had been far less fortunate. After ejecting from their mobile suit, he plunged directly into the heart of the blast and was erased without a trace...

At this moment, Charlie Robert had not yet completely lost consciousness. As a Rank Five mobile suit pilot, his physical resilience had been enhanced dozens of times over by genetic serum.

General Robert seemed to be murmuring something under his breath. Bond stepped closer, offered a few quiet words of reassurance, then signaled for the medics to take him away for further treatment.

Before evacuating the experimental base, the Magus Civilization had destroyed vast quantities of research data.

However, their retreat was too hurried. Given enough time and effort, the Gallant Federation could still recover a portion of the lost information.

Moreover, the federation had inflicted considerable casualties among the Magus World mages on this battlefield.

The Gallant Federation’s current level of scientific advancement allowed them to extract useful information from even corpses and brain matter of the fallen.

When technological power reached a certain threshold, it became indistinguishable from “divinity”!

For this reason, much like the Magus World, the Gallant Federation had always looked down on the law-wielding beings of the Astral Realm who called themselves “gods”.

Beyond the overwhelming strength of the federal fleet, it was rumored that certain powerful, family-run enterprises within the Gallant Federation maintained private armies or mercenary forces specifically tasked with hunting down these so-called “gods”.

The wealthy elite of the Gallant Federation routinely extended their lifespans through using special elixirs.

The raw ingredients for these elixirs often came from the flesh, blood, and marrow of Rank Four beings, collectively known as “Divine Essence”.

On the Gallant Federation’s black market, the flesh and blood of such law-wielding creatures usually sold for tens of millions, sometimes even hundreds of millions, of Federal dollars.

In terms of value, the cost of living across various aspects of Magus World and the Gallant Federation was actually comparable.

The difference lay in which areas each civilization chose to focus on.

As a recently appointed federal general with a background in intelligence work, and with his department often supervising other military commanders, he was not especially popular among his peers. Many kept him at arm’s length, whether consciously or not.

Even though Bond had obtained approval from five-star generals and marshals before entering the top-tier civilization’s secret realm, fleet commanders of comparable rank were not necessarily inclined to extend him the same courtesy.

Bond’s delayed arrival at this experimental base was partly due to poor coordination among the participating federal fleets.

He was tempted to summon the federal fleet commanders overseeing this battlefield and give them a thorough reprimand, but he ultimately held back.

A review of the battlefield reports revealed no major errors on their part.

The sudden explosion, the numerous high-grade treasures deployed by the enemy, and the unexpected discovery of the underground metal passage were the primary factors that led to this setback.

On other fronts, the Gallant Federation legions had performed commendably, even securing significant gains at two smaller experimental bases.

Overall, the operation could still be considered a successful raid.

Moreover, Bond held deep respect for federal generals like the Roberts.

Just before seeing General Robert transferred for treatment, Bond even personally instructed the medic to retrieve a special gene solution from his own quarters to accelerate the general’s recovery.

For the Gallant Federation to prevail in this Clash of Civilizations, it needed countless individuals like the Roberts and Jared Bond—those willing to charge forward without hesitation and sacrifice themselves for victory!

Living in such an era filled Bond with excitement, and he was fully prepared to devote himself to the federation.

After instructing the ship’s research team to catalog and organize all recovered findings, Bond went to seek out Fermera.

At the moment, the eight-winged angel was undergoing emergency maintenance inside a landed R08-type repair satellite.

This type of satellite had originally been designed to service mobile suits.

Robots, especially low-tier cannon fodder units, were regarded as disposable consumables by the Gallant Federation’s military.

In many cases, the cost of repairing them exceeded the expense of manufacturing a brand-new unit on the assembly line...

As a result, the federation treated the vast majority of damaged and scrapped robots as waste, shipping them directly to garbage planets.

There, they were processed through various methods, melted down into molten metal, and reused as raw material for new robots or warships.

Only Nexon’s intelligent robots and their leader, Skyhold, would go to extraordinary lengths to save every damaged robot.

To those intelligent robots, the wounded were not cold machinery, but living beings—members of their own kind.

Bond did not have high hopes that a repair satellite designed to service mobile suits could fully repair the eight-winged angel.

His real purpose in coming here was to assess Fermera’s condition and extract information about the powerful Magus Civilization combatant who had injured her.

Upon seeing Fermera, Bond could not help but gasp at the severity of her damage.

Four of her eight wings had been completely destroyed. Her frame had been badly damaged, and even her once-beautiful angelic visage had been utterly ruined. One electronic eye flickered erratically, while the other was undergoing urgent repairs.

Inside the repair satellite, sparks crackled and machinery hummed continuously.

Amidst this chaotic environment, Bond managed to establish effective communication with Fermera and ultimately obtained the critical information he sought.

From Fermera’s head, Bond also extracted a video recording that documented her battle with Sein and the others.

When the image of the cube-shaped robot HALL-E appeared in the footage, Bond’s instincts stirred, prompting him to replay that segment several times.

“Carry on with the repairs. You won’t be needed in the upcoming battle for now.” Bond left those words behind as he turned to walk away.

“Mhm,” the eight-winged angel hummed without a trace of emotion.

That single response caused Bond to slow down.

He turned back, glancing at Fermera several times with a hint of curiosity, yet saw nothing outwardly unusual.

Having spent more than thirty years alongside Fermera in the ruins of the Black Merlot Civilization, Bond knew her well.

Moreover, an agent’s instincts often picked up on details others would miss.

So what, exactly, felt wrong?

Bond rubbed his chin and pondered for a moment. Finally, he realized that whenever he issued commands in the past, Fermera usually responded with “Received”, “Understood”, or simply acknowledged him with a cold, indifferent silence.

Those responses were probably pre-programmed by federal scientists as part of her control system.

She had never once replied with “Mhm”.

Not once in over thirty years had Bond heard such a response from Fermera.

After studying her carefully for a while longer and finding nothing abnormal, Bond shook his head in mild regret and left the room.

Although Bond was a secret agent with access to classified information, his perspective was still limited. His superiors, following standard protocol, refrained from sharing intelligence unrelated to his current assignment.

Because of that, Bond knew nothing about the rebellion of Nexon’s intelligent robots.

This incident, after all, was not widely publicized within the Gallant Federation either.

The Clash of Civilizations was simply too vast in scale. The Magus Civilization forces Bond was dealing with were little more than a drop in the ocean of the larger conflict.

Who knew where the Magus Civilization had deployed those Nexon intelligent robots by now.

Even Sein himself had not seen them in a long time!

The faint sense of “abnormality” Bond had noticed in Fermera was soon pushed to the back of his mind. He had far more pressing matters to attend to.

Unbeknownst to Bond, as he departed, the lone electronic eye of the eight-winged angel silently tracked his retreating figure until he vanished from sight.

Perhaps Fermera was merely a robot, incapable of harboring anything resembling killing intent.

Despite being a Rank Five, Bond failed to notice the single electronic eye watching him from behind.

After Bond left, Fermera’s remaining red electronic eye lowered slightly, gazing toward the floor.

No one knew what Fermera was thinking—not even Fermera herself!

Her mind was in turmoil. Anyone touching her back or neural core at that moment would have felt the host unit running dangerously hot!

Syphen, the top federal scientist responsible for creating her, might have been able to identify the source of Fermera’s anomaly had he been present.

Unfortunately, almost no one paid attention to this severely damaged eight-winged angel robot right now.

A flash of memory surged through Fermera’s mind.

It was the moment on the previous battlefield when she had first charged toward Sein.

At the time, she had been in perfect condition, hurling herself straight at him with her lightsaber in hand. Then, suddenly, a blue beam had shot toward her!

That blue beam had caused her no immediate damage at all.

Afterward, Fermera had continued her relentless pursuit of Sein and the others.

But had it truly not affected her?

The increasingly overheated main control board caused a thin wisp of smoke to rise from the back of Fermera’s head.

The repair satellite immediately initiated emergency cooling procedures.

As Fermera gradually cooled down, the image of Sein aiming that blue light at her suddenly resurfaced in her mind.

In that fleeting frame, she seemed to glimpse Sein holding a cube in his hand.

A strange red light flared once more within Fermera’s electronic eye.

Her damaged eye appeared to be functional again.