Sovereign of the Ashes

Sein stored away the head of the Burning Flame Unit.

Rebuilding her body later would surely cost a fortune.

He also returned Yuri to her spatial living device. She was still unconscious and showed no signs of waking.

After calling Fermera over, Sein gently caressed her face.

Her once beautiful features were now almost half-destroyed, replaced by a large charred patch with internal mechanisms and metal wiring exposed.

Faint sparks flickered across her body, accompanied by soft crackling sounds.

As Fermera moved closer, Sein could already sense through the Magic Cube embedded in her chest that her combat strength had dropped to less than ten percent of its original level.

Her weapon, propulsion, reconnaissance, and power systems had all suffered severe damage.

A specialized stream of law energy continued to flow from the Magic Cube into her body.

Even so, despite the cube’s remarkable repair capabilities, her restoration had barely reached 0.1% after all this time.

Clearly, relying on the Magic Cube alone to restore her quickly was not realistic.

After all, it had already consumed a massive amount of energy during the earlier battle.

The best option would be for Sein to carry out repairs himself.

But under the current circumstances, it was more important for him and Tourmaline to recover first before attempting any major work on Fermera.

“Can you still fly? Let us find somewhere else to rest,” Sein asked.

Fermera gave a soft hum of affirmation. Only three of the metal wings on her back remained, and they were uneven, making her flight unsteady.

Sein and his companions set off toward the distant starfield.

After about two days of travel, Sein spotted a small demiplane and signaled for Tourmaline and Fermera to move closer.

It was a geo-attribute demiplane dominated by wind, sand, and scattered rocks. The ground was a dull gray, and the sky a hazy gray.

Before entering it, Sein had not seen any sign of an ocean.

Tourmaline clearly did not like the environment here, but she did not complain at all.

At the base of a mountain on the demiplane, Fermera used the last grenade loaded in her right shoulder to blast open a spacious cavern.

Sein spent his last remaining mana to quickly set up several stabilization and concealment magic arrays around them.

After taking a look, Tourmaline shifted into her dragon turtle form and moved in, gathering nearby rocks to reinforce the cavern walls.

Judging by their conditions, she was the one in the best shape.

Her scales were scarred, and her shell was covered in scratches, but she could still move around with ease.

Every now and then, she would frown and rest briefly. Obviously, her internal injuries had yet to heal fully.

“Let’s stay here for now. We need to recover as quickly as possible. I still have one and a half Golden Silver Potions left. We can combine them with other restorative potions,” Sein said.

He originally had two Golden Silver Potions, but they had already used up half during the earlier battle.

Made primarily from Sacred Fruit, Golden Apple, and many rare ingredients, the potion had incredibly potent healing effects. It was strong enough to provide immediate recovery even in the middle of combat.

Sein was not the only one contributing. Tourmaline pulled out a violet-golden gourd from her storage, poured out three pills, and looked up at him.

The pills were clearly of high grade.

Unfortunately, as an apothecary from Magus World, Sein’s knowledge of the Immortal Realm’s pills was limited.

After taking a quick sniff of the pills, which carried a faint, refreshing scent, he swallowed them along with the Golden Silver Potion.

***

Sein’s condition finally stabilized after he consumed half a vial of Golden Silver Potion, various restorative potions, and about ten of Tourmaline’s pills.

Without noticing it, two months had passed, and he had recovered to roughly Rank Four strength.

Even so, traces of space-time corrosion still lingered in his body, not yet fully purged.

To return to peak condition, he would need more time to recover.

This was the nature of law-wielding beings—their vitality made them incredibly hard to kill. But when they were injured, especially this badly, recovery always took time.

At least Sein and Tourmaline had top-tier potions and pills to rely on. If they had been poor, wandering foreign deities, even hiding on their home plane for a thousand or two thousand years might not have been enough to fully recover.

Two months later, several interstellar ships appeared near the demiplane they were on.

These vessels were clearly heading toward the exact coordinates where Sein and the others had first appeared.

It was obvious that the abnormal space-time fluctuations from two months ago had drawn attention from nearby forces.

Right now, Sein’s priority was to figure out where they were, how far they were from the Magus Civilization, and whether they were still within the bounds of the civilizational battlefield.

Location-tracking spells were usually unreliable.

With no way to contact the Divine Tower of Ashes back in Magus World, the most straightforward option was to find intelligent life and gather information about the surrounding star domain.

“I don’t sense any Rank Four and above beings among those ships. Maybe we can approach them,” Sein said to Tourmaline and Fermera.

Tourmaline nodded, while Fermera quietly rose to her feet.

Law-wielding beings were minorities in the Astral Realm.

After all, “deities” were rare to come by.

Only in large-scale conflicts like the Clash of Civilizations between Magus World and the Gallant Federation did such beings appear in significant numbers, along with the even rarer overlord-level powerhouses.

***

The Aribbean Star Pirates operated across the Seville Asteroid Belt, the Randuin Plane, and the surroundings of the Vermi Star Domain.

It was a small group with fewer than twenty thousand members, led by its strongest member, a one-eyed demigod.

Aribbean earned the nickname “One-Eyed Dragon” not because of any special bloodline, but simply because he had lost one of his eyes and was half-blind.

According to his own stories, that eye had been gouged out by a wandering Rank Four being.

The fact that he had survived such an encounter became his greatest boast.

After all, not every demigod could walk away from a god.

That reputation alone was enough to give him a certain standing in the nearby star domains.

For nearly seven hundred years, Aribbean had lived boldly, chasing profit wherever it appeared.

So when news of unusual space-time fluctuations reached him, his instincts kicked in. Sensing an opportunity, he led his crew straight to this region.

But before he could even start dreaming of riches, a massive dragon’s head suddenly appeared outside his ship.

The sheer pressure of her life force and draconic aura immediately sent a chill straight down his spine.

“A god-level powerhouse?!” he exclaimed in shock.