Sovereign of the Ashes

Bond and his team entered the space-time tunnel through a Black Merlot Civilization ruin on the outskirts of the subspace.

When they emerged, however, they found themselves in the heart of the subspace—the Steel Ruins.

Their arrival point lay in an extremely remote underground corner on the outer edge of the Steel Ruins.

By coincidence, they had landed amidst the wreckage of a biological warship.

The door within the biological warship that Sein and his group had previously been unable to explore was actually a portal.

The Magus Civilization developed long-range teleportation arrays, the Gallant Federation pioneered wormhole technology, and tens of millions of years ago, the Black Merlot Civilization had created space-time tunnels.

It was through such technology that the Black Merlot Civilization had once been able to redeploy its legions of war beasts rapidly to any battlefield during wartime.

The biological warship Bond and his team had arrived at was not the one Sein’s group had explored earlier.

However, Bond and his special operations unit soon uncovered communication and coordination protocols linking the Black Merlot Civilization’s biological warships to one another.

Bond himself played a central role in this discovery. This highly capable federal agent seemed to have absorbed an astonishing amount of the Black Merlot Civilization’s legacy.

Even biological warships that had been “dead” for tens of millions of years could be partially reactivated through his methods.

By stimulating the residual life potential within the wreckage, Bond managed to restore several portals that had long been assumed to be completely defunct.

Although their functionality was limited, and each portal could only transport a small number of personnel at a time, it was more than sufficient for a special operations team.

Within the vast Steel Ruins, Bond managed to establish contact with a total of two hundred Black Merlot Civilization biological warships.

This alone was enough to show that even after the outcome of the ancient civilizational war had been decided, the remnants of the defeated Black Merlot Civilization had still caused considerable trouble for the Eiyurant Papillon Civilization.

Their final, desperate charge, powerful enough to leave such devastation within the core secret realm of the Eiyurant Papillon Civilization, was truly a rare and extreme event.

Of course, these two hundred Black Merlot Civilization biological warships were long dead, beyond any possibility of revival.

Bond was only able to locate them; not all of their portals could be forcibly reactivated.

After a careful assessment, only around fifty warships’ portals could still be reactivated.

“Spread out our agents and search every sector of these ruins,” Bond ordered.

Bond commanded a total of one thousand agents. Among them, only five were genetically enhanced super soldiers like himself, possessing combat capabilities of Rank Four and above.

The rest of the agents generally ranged between Rank Two and Rank Three in power.

Federal personnel relied heavily on advanced technological weaponry, and the battlefield performance of agents far exceeded that of most privates. As a result, these agents’ actual combat effectiveness was significantly higher than their official ranks.

In addition to these agents, nearly twenty thousand angel robots had also been teleported in.

By distributing these units among each squad, Bond ensured that both combat power and reconnaissance capabilities remained strong across the force.

Bond’s command style was calm and methodical.

Under his orders, the Gallant Federation’s assault force quickly fanned out and began operations.

Fermera remained at Bond’s side the entire time.

Only Bond possessed the authority to command such a powerful combat unit.

So far, Fermera was not the only Rank Six presence representing the Gallant Federation in this subspace.

Aside from Seiron, the peak Rank Six powerhouse from Arid Expanse World, the federation had recently deployed multiple powerful fleets to this place.

Naturally, the Magus Civilization was no different.

Beyond Feylis, who was already designated a high-level threat, several Rank Six knights from Magus World and Rank Six alliance beings had also arrived at nearby battlefields.

The violent energy fluctuations Sein and the others had sensed earlier were caused by Feylis’ forces breaking through the Gallant Federation’s special fleet blockade around Yellow Sand Base II after shifting the battlefield into subspace.

Master Howard and the others were successfully rescued, and the Magus Civilization’s initial discoveries at this top-tier ancient civilization site were also secured as a result.

From them, Feylis learned that her grand apprentice was not among the rescued and had instead followed an ancient robot deeper into the ruins.

Though confident in her grand apprentice’s abilities based on his past performance, Feylis could not help but still worry.

After undergoing emergency repairs following severe damage, Fermera’s current combat strength hovered between late Rank Five and early Rank Six.

She was no longer as powerful as she had been at her peak, but she remained a force to be reckoned with.

With the Gallant Federation military unable to rapidly deploy additional Rank Six robots to this frontline battlefield, Fermera remained Bond’s best support.

Not long after Bond dispatched his special operations teams, reports began to come in.

“Boss, we’ve discovered traces left by Magus Civilization lifeforms!” one squad reported.

Soon after, Bond arrived through a portal, materializing near the scout team’s position.

This Black Merlot Civilization biological warship was the same vessel that Sein and his group had briefly explored earlier.

Aside from the obvious signs of excavation and resource extraction in the surrounding area, the federal scouts also used microelement detectors to precisely determine how many law-wielding beings had previously lingered at the site.

According to federal scientists, law-wielding lifeforms were sources of radiation. The immense energy contained within their bodies meant that even brief stays inevitably left detectable traces in the surrounding space.

Because of this theory, Bond’s teams were equipped with a wide array of special instruments developed by the federation’s military research facilities.

Before long, Bond and his team confirmed that the group previously detected near this biological warship was indeed Sein’s party, long listed as missing.

“We can track them down by the trail they left behind,” a Rank Four agent suggested.

Just as Bond was about to nod in agreement, another discovery was reported from a second squad stationed near the warship!

“Boss, we have picked up a new light pattern here. Do you recognize it?” came the voice over the communication channel.

On the shared feed, the team revealed a series of strange, blood-red runic markings within the warship.

These were distinctive symbols of the Black Merlot Civilization.

After being reactivated by Bond and his team, the runes drew upon the warship’s final remnants of biological energy, forming a light map!

However, this diagram did not point toward the core region of the Eiyurant Papillon Civilization.

In truth, the remnants of the Black Merlot Civilization that once invaded this subspace had never reached its deepest core.

The more than two hundred biological warships scattered throughout the Steel Ruins had crashed primarily in the outer and middle zones of this region.

What the crimson diagram actually indicated was the crash site of an overlord-class combat entity from the Black Merlot Civilization.

It appeared to be their final command center of the Black Merlot Civilization’s surviving forces from that era.