Sovereign of the Ashes

Chapter 1800: The Might of a Merged Fortress

Terrifying crimson pillars of molten flame tore across the main battlefield of Cadillac, carving out a seemingly endless chasm thousands of meters deep.

Countless Gallant Federation combat units and metal forts were destroyed.

Under the elemental pressure unleashed by the forbidden spell, even several giant mobile suits and low-altitude fleet formations suffered heavy damage.

The Gallant Federation had failed to stop Sein from unleashing the forbidden spell.

Sein had named it Scarlet Flame Pillar, and it was especially devastating against the federation’s tightly packed metal defenses.

At the same time, it was also one of the newest spell models Sein had developed over the past two centuries.

After so many clashes with the Gallant Federation, Sein had already begun researching and developing forbidden spells designed specifically to counter the federation’s style of warfare.

The same spell might not have produced such striking results against the legions of other worlds.

But against the Gallant Federation’s static defenses—bunkers, forts, and other entrenched metal strongholds—it could achieve results far beyond expectations!

The appearance of the forbidden spell heralded the Magus Civilization’s full-scale offensive against Cadillac.

Yes, Sein had arrived like a storm!

With only three years granted by Feylis to complete the occupation, he had no time to waste on a slow war of attrition.

When Sein arrived at the blockhouse at the heart of Cadillac, where Gregory had suffered defeat years earlier, he did not continue casting forbidden spells or summon Fermera into battle.

Instead, he called forth three heavy-duty space fortresses from the rear.

The Ashen Fortress, Flame Demon Fortress, and Steel Heart Fortress appeared high above the battlefield, forming a triangular formation over the heart of this demiplane.

The sheer size of those heavy-duty fortresses cast a vast shadow across the battlefield.

The Magic Cube in Sein’s hand now radiated a brilliant blue-violet glow.

As the Magic Cube activated and specific magical energy arrays within the three fortresses lit up, the colossal structures—each more than twenty thousand meters in diameter—began to merge.

An even more colossal monstrosity appeared before the eyes of millions of lesser beings from both sides.

The fusion of the three space fortresses changed their combined mass and gravitational pull, causing subtle disturbances across the central battlefield of the demiplane.

A demiplane’s self-regulating capacity was nowhere near comparable to that of a complete world with complete laws.

Under the fortress’ immense gravitational force, massive chunks of rock and metallic debris were actually pulled up from the ground.

But what truly drew the attention of every combatant was the unprecedentedly massive cannon barrel slowly extending from the center of the newly merged fortress.

“The main cannon of a heavy-duty space fortress can, in theory, threaten or even seriously wound a Rank Five creature. Grandmaster Feylis’ custom space fortress from Sky City might even be able to threaten a Rank Six being. Now that our three space fortresses have merged, with the Magic Cube further enhancing their power through the laws, who knows how powerful the final blast will be?” Sein wondered aloud.

He watched as deep purple light gradually gathered at the cannon barrel of the merged space fortress, unable to hide his admiration.

“I suppose there’s no better target to test it on than this blockhouse, since it’s stationary.”

This time, the Gallant Federation legions on Cadillac did not launch another assault on the Magus Civilization forces.

Half a year earlier, when they had charged at Sein during the casting of his forbidden spell, they had gained nothing but heavy losses.

One giant mobile suit had been destroyed outright by Fermera.

On the other battlefields, two of the federation’s Rank Four units had also been wiped out by the Magus Civilization.

So long as they remained inside their fortifications, they were difficult to deal with. But if they dared to come out and fight in the open, the Magus Civilization legions had no reason to fear them.

Moreover, aside from their giant mobile suits, most of the Gallant Federation’s law-wielding forces were only dangerous because of their collective strength.

Because of that, these combat legions were actually more vulnerable to harassment from the Magus Civilization’s lower-tier troops.

An entire federal war fleet might only be equivalent to a single Rank Four being in the Astral Realm, but not every ship in that fleet was a high-level combat unit. It inevitably included large numbers of Rank One and Rank Two vessels.

If lower-tier knights and mages of the Magus Civilization carried out their missions well enough, they could effectively cripple the Gallant Federation’s high-level fleets.

Throughout the Clash of Civilizations, Magus World’s propaganda had highlighted many examples of low-level beings destroying the Gallant Federation’s high-tier combat units.

One of the most famous examples involved a demigod-level mage named Khaliev. His most remarkable feat was infiltrating the capital ship of a Rank Six federal war fleet and sabotaging its command systems, plunging the entire fleet into chaos.

In the end, the Magus Civilization wiped out that entire Rank Six fleet.

In a way, it was a classic example of an insignificant combatant changing the course of a larger war.

A demigod-level mage bringing down an entire Rank Six Federation fleet by himself, huh?

Sein had heard of Khaliev before. The young mage was very well known. By now, he might even have advanced to Rank Four.

During the Clash of Civilizations, his astonishing achievements had earned him special attention and protection from Magus World as one of its carefully nurtured prodigies.

And Khaliev was not the only one. During the war between the Magus Civilization and the Gallant Federation, many similarly exceptional talents had risen to prominence.

Sein’s own accomplishments on the subspace battlefield, as well as his success in subverting and bringing back Nexon’s intelligent robots from deep within federation territory, were certainly impressive.

But compared to those truly extraordinary talents, there were likely some whose brilliance surpassed even his.

The terrifying main cannon blast unleashed by the merged fortress instantly destroyed nearly one-third of the armored defenses protecting the federation’s blockhouse.

Once those hardened metal barriers were stripped away, the vulnerable core inside was laid bare before the Magus Civilization legions.

Federal soldiers generally lacked strong individual combat ability, and special super soldiers like Bond were rare even within the Gallant Federation.

Once those soldiers lost the protection of fortress walls and battleship firepower, even the enslaved creature legions from the microplanes dared to howl and surge forward, hurling themselves into a savage fight against the federal soldiers.

For many of those starving enslaved creatures, any flesh they encountered was food.

At the same time, the allied legions commanded by the foreign deities were drawn by the enormous wealth and resources represented by the Gallant Federation’s military forces.

For many foreign deities, joining the Clash of Civilizations was not simply a matter of yielding to Magus World’s pressure.

They had also come in hopes of reaping enormous rewards from the war, using the magicoins they earned and the resources seized from the federation to create new opportunities for the growth of their homeplanes.

The Clash of Civilizations was, in essence, a massive reshuffling of power within the Magus Alliance.

Countless planar worlds would be destroyed in that upheaval, while the luckier civilizations might seize this unprecedented war as a chance to secure the foundation for their own rise.