Sovereign of the Ashes-Chapter 1372: Temporary Withdrawal

The Azure Flame turned out to be surprisingly far more devastating against the Gallant Federation’s mobile suits and warship fleet than any of the specialized flames Sein had collected, like Death Flame, Annihilating Flame, Void Flame, and the rest[1].

This proved that within the Astral Realm, there was no such thing as the strongest flame; only the one best suited to the situation.

Everything came down to the user’s skill and ability to adapt.

Wreathed in azure flames, Sein found himself holding a real advantage against the federation’s colossal mobile suit.

His combat form was much smaller than the towering enemy, which gave him far greater speed and agility.

Even so, the mobile suit’s arsenal of high-tech weaponry and its impressive close-quarters combat skills made it a terrifying opponent that was easily comparable to a Rank Five being.

Fortunately, as a body-tempering mage, Sein had solid hand-to-hand combat skills, and the countless magic items he had prepared in advance helped him handle most crises that arose in battle.

Although Rank Four intelligent robots like Thunderflame were in poor condition, they fought even more fiercely than Sein, showing no fear of death.

In truth, death was a foreign concept to them. As long as their heads, or more accurately their central databases, remained intact, they could, in theory, be “repaired”.

But in practice, repairing high-tier robots was another matter entirely.

Even with Nexon’s stockpiles and production capabilities, the rare materials required to fully restore Rank Four and higher robots were scarce and hard to come by.

And each time they sustained heavy damage, their combat effectiveness dropped sharply.

Robots did not grow stronger through battle, nor did they evolve naturally. Their path to advancement was fundamentally different from the mainstream evolutionary routes of the Astral Realm.

To become stronger, they needed external upgrades and reinforcements.

Titanfang and Skyhold could fight on par with Rank Six beings, not because they were born with special “talents”; robots had no such thing.

They were strong because they were the very first advanced intelligent robots ever built and awakened to self-awareness.

Afterward, they received constant upgrades from Michaelis Bell, the chief scientist of the Nexon Star Domain.

Michaelis had studied the notes of Pavlov, the “legendary scientist” of Federation history, and had once been a classmate of three other scientists who later went on to become leaders in their respective fields.

His name might not be widely known across the Gallant Federation, but among its intellectual elite, he stood at the very top.

Creating Rank Six intelligent robots was not even the limit of his ambition.

What Michaelis Bell had truly been chasing all these years was a breakthrough. He wanted to create robots with combat strength on par with an overlord-level being or beyond.

Only then could he stand shoulder to shoulder with his former classmates.

***

The fierce battle dragged on for nearly a month.

The R7 Fleet, dispatched by the Gallant Federation to subdue Nexon, was eventually forced to withdraw from the mechanical planet.

Nexon’s massive robot legion was the key factor that drove the R7 Fleet to retreat.

On top of that, the relentless, fearless assaults of the Rank Four and higher intelligent robots were more than the fleet could handle.

It was not that Lambros was incompetent. The problem was that the intel he had received was completely different from the reality on the ground.

If the federation truly wanted to crush Nexon’s rebels, more fleets would have to be called in.

After a month of fighting, General Lambros finally understood what was happening here.

The robots that had awakened to self-awareness and independent thought were now rising to overthrow centuries of enslavement under the Gallant Federation.

As soon as he pieced this together, Lambros transmitted the news up the chain of command.

At the same time, he ordered his remaining forces to lock down Nexon and its surrounding space while they waited for reinforcements.

The federation had not given up. Their retreat was only temporary, and they would be back with greater strength and in far larger numbers.

When the battle was finally over, Sein paused to take stock of his spoils.

One major prize was a captured mobile suit, with power on par with a Rank Five lifeform. Just acquiring it was enough to ease some of the heavy tension weighing on him.

Meanwhile, Nexon’s intelligent robots showed little interest in looting.

The battlefield was strewn with crashed federal warships and ruined forts.

By all logic, these should have been treasure troves, full of the rare components the robots could use for repairs and upgrades.

Yet instead of rushing to scavenge, they supported one another, gathered the remains of fallen comrades, and searched for the central databases hidden in each robot’s body.

In their language, these data cores were called “black boxes”.

As long as a black box was not completely destroyed, there was still a chance the robot it belonged to could be “revived”.

Even the intelligent robots themselves struggled to explain the difference between their kind and ordinary robots.

Robots like Thunderflame believed that as long as they could recover a fallen comrade’s head or black box, there was hope of bringing them back in the repair facilities.

Conversely, if they were just ordinary robots, then no matter how many times they were repaired, they would stay ordinary and never gain self-awareness.

So how did robots gain intelligence and self-awareness in the first place? That remained a mystery even now.

Most likely, only when Sein made his way to the BHR678 Space Station and met its chief scientist, Michaelis Bell, would he start to uncover even a hint of the truth.

And BHR678 was already marked as Sein’s next destination. Given what he knew about the Gallant Federation and the massive war brewing between two top-tier civilizations, time was running out.

At that moment, Yuri, piloting the Burning Flame Unit, was helping Sein cut down and sort through the massive wreckage of the colossal mobile suit lying before them.

The suit was so enormous that even Sein’s generous spatial storage gear struggled to fit it all in, forcing them to dismantle it into pieces.

Strictly speaking, the mobile suit had been brought down by the combined efforts of Sein, Thunderflame, and the other intelligent robots.

But the deciding blow, and most of the heavy lifting, came from Sein himself, after he had activated his lawful body.

The mobile suit’s chest bore a melted hole where Sein had burned through the thick armor with his Azure Flame, breaching the cockpit. The two federal pilots inside were incapacitated, leaving the colossal weapon powerless on the battlefield.

This battle made it clear there was a huge gap between mobile suits built by technology to imitate Rank Five combat power and true Rank Five lifeforms.

At the very least, a true Rank Five being that had grown through self-evolution would not have been taken down by Sein so quickly.

While Yuri busied herself with hauling the wreckage and components of the fallen mobile suit, Sein allowed himself a brief pause.

His eyes narrowed as he looked over the two unconscious federal pilots before him, or more like his “prisoners”, or perhaps more fittingly, his “trophies”.

If time had allowed, he would not have hesitated to dissect them right then and there.

1. Translator’s Note: Yes, this is the first time we’re seeing these flames, so Sein had gathered them off-screen. ☜