Sovereign of the Ashes

The Black Fortress City...

Thick columns of pitch-black smoke billowed from every corner of the city, rising to merge with the dark clouds above.

This was a city plagued by severe pollution.

However, for the lowly beings at the bottom of society, life was still manageable.

Thanks to the divine shield granted by the great God of Black Mist, these weak yet devout subjects were protected from the pollution drifting through the skies.

Many city dwellers had once visited the countryside. It was certainly greener than the city, but the pollution there was no less severe. Even the water was no longer safe to drink.

There were far fewer temples and clerics there as well. Without the divine grace of the God of Black Mist, life naturally became much harder.

As a result, more and more people chose to move into the cities.

They did so both to be closer to divine grace and to enjoy a better quality of life.

The Black Fortress City was located on Twilight Plane, which lay at the outermost edge of the Kales Star Domain.

More than two-thirds of the plane worshipped the God of Black Mist, while the rest followed the God of Twilight.

Since settlements across the plane were centered around cities, nearly every city’s inhabitants worshipped the same deity.

Because of this, the plane rarely saw intense clashes of faith or conflicts between believers.

Even if a dispute broke out between followers of the God of Black Mist and the God of Twilight, clerics from their respective temples, or even divine emissaries, would quickly step in to mediate and resolve the conflict.

In short, this was a peaceful world that had not witnessed a major war in over ten thousand years.

Everyone lived in peace and contentment, believing that after death, they would enter the divine realm of the god they worshipped and find eternal rest.

Pique was an ordinary young man from the Black Fortress City. He was twenty years old and a devout follower of the God of Black Mist.

His father, mother, and younger sister were also subjects of the great God of Black Mist.

Four years ago, after coming of age, Pique landed a job at Hales Industries with the help of a cleric from the Temple of the God of Black Mist.

He was very satisfied with his job. The decent salary allowed him to live a stable life in the city, and just last month, he had even found himself a girlfriend.

The girl worked at the factory next to Pique’s. She earned slightly less than he did, but she was also a devout follower of the God of Black Mist.

When Pique was younger and had only just started working, he had once been curious about what exactly he was making.

He had also wondered how the value of his work was converted into his salary.

Unable to figure it out on his own, Pique went to seek guidance from Uncle Polik, the cleric he respected most.

“It is all a blessing from God!” That was the answer he received.

From that moment on, Pique felt as if he had found clarity. He never troubled himself with such questions again.

Every day, he worked diligently in the workshop, hammering away at the cylindrical metal before him alongside his coworkers. They followed a fixed pattern and rhythm, repeating the same motions without pause.

This was Pique’s only task. He had heard that some other workers were assigned specifically to sorting and washing though.

Before work, they would gather together to give thanks for God’s blessings.

After work, they would meet up again and enjoy a delicious meal.

Pique felt very happy. In many ways, he was a true reflection of the vast majority of ordinary beings in the Black Fortress City, or rather, across the entire Twilight Plane.

With perfect timing, Pique caught the last train.

To him, the train was a truly “menacing” metal behemoth—entirely pitch-black, with a cold metallic sheen.

Thick columns of acrid black smoke continuously billowed from the smokestack at the front.

The length of these trains varied. Some were only a few dozen meters long, while others stretched over a kilometer, made up of interconnected carriages that sped through the Black Fortress City and even between cities.

When Pique was a child, he had once traveled with his family to visit relatives in several other cities surrounding the Black Fortress City.

Back then, they had taken trains just like this one. But now that he was an adult with a job, Pique rarely had the free time to go out and explore.

He had once asked his parents where these trains came from.

The answer he received was that they, too, were blessings from God.

When everything could be explained through God, everything seemed to make perfect sense.

At least, Pique had never doubted it.

Choo, choo!

As the black iron train rumbled along, steam-powered streetlamps lit up at regular intervals on both sides of the tracks.

Simply by counting those lamps, Pique could roughly tell when it was time to get off without even checking the time.

When he arrived at his workplace, there was already a commotion outside the factory.

This commotion had been going on for quite some time.

It seemed to have started three months ago.

Pique asked his girlfriend, Mary, and she said things were much the same on her side.

The main reason seemed to be that many of the factory’s middle and upper management had gone missing.

The Federation humans who came to do business in the Kales Star Domain all held high-ranking positions in the factories.

Even an ordinary federal technician was qualified to take on a middle-management role.

Those people had already fled after catching wind that war was approaching.

The God of Black Mist could not step in and stop them, so he could only ask them to return with a federal fleet to support the Kales Star Domain.

Naturally, many of these businessmen were reluctant to abandon their businesses here.

So, if they could help, they certainly would.

Whether they could actually make a difference, however, remained to be seen.

Although the factory was still somewhat chaotic, the clerics guided the workers—including Pique—back into the workshop one after another to resume operations.

The dominant species of the Kales Star Domain—the race Pique belonged to—was humanoid in shape, but their appearance differed greatly from both Federation humans and the humans of Magus World.

Their heads were square, their arms were much longer and slimmer than their thighs, and their fingers were divided into six segments.

Given such vast differences in appearance, Federation humans usually would never choose the native species of the Kales Star Domain as spouses or partners.

However, Jeda, a mid-level manager at the factory whom Pique knew, happened to be a half-breed born between a Federation human and a native of Twilight Plane.

The two of them were even good friends, and Jeda had promised to promote Pique in the near future.

But Jeda had also vanished a few months ago.

Before leaving, he had even left Pique with a vague parting remark—“Take care of yourself!”

Pique’s workday stretched from morning deep into the night.

A fifteen-hour workday was nothing the lifeforms of the Kales Star Domain could not handle, given their constitution and daily habits.

Ever wondered why Federation humans liked setting up factories in the Kales Star Domain?

In the highly intelligent and advanced society of the Gallant Federation, “labor” was actually the greatest expense for every enterprise.

They had to purchase insurance for every employee, provide various benefits, and strictly comply with the maximum working hours stipulated by federal laws.

By comparison, the native lifeforms of these remote alien star domains were exactly the kind of “ideal workers” every Federation capitalist dreamed of.

They required no benefits, and the labor costs borne by these enterprises were practically nonexistent.

As long as their faith and the deities they worshipped could be controlled, these native lifeforms were nothing short of an inexhaustible supply of “enslaved creatures” for Federation enterprises!

Although most of the Federation enterprises in the Kales Star Domain were second and third-rate factories, some of them did manufacture military products.

Take Anche, the branch president of Thomas Industries, for example. His company even had ties to the God of Black Mist, and his main responsibility in this star domain was manufacturing components for the Gallant Federation’s third-generation drones.

As the war with the Magus Civilization raged on, the federation’s society had increasingly shifted its focus toward the military-industrial sector.

At the beginning of the Clash of Civilizations, the military industry had accounted for only about 31% of the federation’s total GDP.

Later, that number rose to 40%... then 50%... then 60%...

Now, it had reached 73%!

And there were signs it would continue to climb!

The entire federation society was now running on military manufacturing. It was the only way to meet the demands of the war effort on the frontlines against the Magus Civilization!

After a full day’s work, Pique rubbed his shoulders, trying to ease some of the fatigue.

Today happened to be payday, and the ten or so black coins he received immediately lifted his spirits.

These black coins were beautifully crafted. The front bore a special symbol representing the Kales Star Domain, while the back was engraved with an image of the God of Black Mist’s temple.

Feeling a little more cheerful, Pique thought about spending one of the coins to buy a bouquet of Rainbow Flowers for his girlfriend.

Rainbow Flowers were not native to this world. Pique had never seen them growing in the wild.

They shimmered constantly with a faint fluorescent glow and were very popular among the females of this world. They truly were beautiful.

At the junction between the two factories, Pique waited for his girlfriend.

When Mary saw the bouquet in Pique’s hand, her face lit up with delight, and she ran toward him.

But as she got closer, Pique noticed her expression suddenly change. The joy on her face vanished, replaced by sheer terror.

Confused, Pique followed Mary’s gaze and turned to look at the sky behind him.

Against the backdrop of thick black smoke and towering chimneys, a pitch-black silhouette was descending upon the sky of this world!

It was a sight far beyond the understanding of ordinary beings. After all, the vast majority of them would never leave their homeplane in their entire lives.

Countless glowing black figures rose from every direction in the Black Fortress City, and similar figures soon appeared in the distant sky beyond.

Those figures were the revered divine emissaries of the Black Mist Temple. They possessed all kinds of incredible abilities and were worshipped by the creatures of this world as God’s messengers.

However, as that pitch-black silhouette drew closer and closer to the skies of this world, the figures that had risen to meet it began falling one after another.

They dropped from the sky like dumplings tossed into a pot.

It was as if a shower of black meteors had descended upon the world!

Faced with the unknown terror and the sight of divine emissaries falling from the sky, more and more creatures of Twilight Plane scattered in panic.

Pique clutched his girlfriend’s hand tightly.

The bouquet of Rainbow Flowers had fallen to the ground at some point.

Together, they looked up at the sky in fear.

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