If not for his connection to Feylis, there was no way Sein would have received that dragon scale from Mel.

He found himself quite curious about the violet-haired Rank Four Dragon Warlock.

Perhaps it was because he carried the dragon blood blessing bestowed on him by Tourmaline, but he had always felt a natural fondness for dragonkin.

As for how Mel felt about him, Sein was not entirely sure.

Judging by how calmly she had plucked a scale from her own shoulder and handed it to him, she probably did not dislike him, right?

***

The Warrendall Star Domain was only one of the many star domains where Sein had carried out missions in recent years. He had traveled to quite a few places by now.

Even so, Warrendall was still the farthest battlefield he had ever reached.

It was also near that battlefield that Sein received news about Nexon’s intelligent robots.

Several thousand years had passed since the Clash of Civilizations began. Aside from making contact with Skyhold and Aetherend before the war, Sein had not had any further dealings with those intelligent robots after the conflict broke out.

As it turned out, that group of intelligent robots had been stationed in another medium-sized star domain war zone on the outskirts of the Warrendall battlefield.

The Magus Civilization had treated them fairly well.

Before the war, Skyhold had made it clear that they did not wish to engage the Gallant Federation’s legions directly. As a result, the Magus Civilization mostly assigned them missions against the federation’s subordinate vassal legions instead.

In recent years, the Nexon intelligent robots had performed quite well.

They had repeatedly completed the combat missions assigned to them by the Magus Alliance, and throughout the war, they had shown an exceptionally fearless and relentless fighting spirit.

Still, their reluctance to confront the Gallant Federation’s main legions head-on left a small stain on their records, as it suggested they still retained a trace of loyalty to the federation.

But the Nexon robots themselves clearly did not care about that. They continued to do as they pleased.

The Magus Civilization, for its part, had shown a fair degree of tolerance and had not expressed the slightest dissatisfaction toward them.

Because of time constraints, Sein was unable to visit them in person and catch up.

In the end, he could only ask the Dragon Warlock clan to deliver a batch of Energy Amethysts to those Nexon intelligent robots on his behalf.

This Clash of Civilizations was bound to last for a long time yet. As long as the war continued, they were sure to meet again.

***

Before anyone realized it, the war between the Magus Civilization and the Gallant Federation had entered its fourth millennium.

Just as that fourth millennium began, a series of major upheavals broke out across the frontlines.

The first came when the Magus Civilization once again destroyed one of the federation’s overlord-class giant mobile suits.

This time, it was truly destroyed, not merely heavily damaged. That meant the Gallant Federation had lost yet another overlord-class combat unit.

While this greatly improved the Magus Civilization’s prospects on the frontlines, it also sent shockwaves through the strategic balance of the entire overlord-tier battlefield and its surrounding war zones, affecting tens of millions, perhaps even hundreds of millions, of troops on both sides.

However, not long after this good news arrived, two pieces of bad news followed in succession.

The first was that the federation’s ultimate apocalyptic weapon, the Infinity Light, which had remained dormant for many years, had finally fired again on the Civilization Battlefield.

But this time, its long-range strike was not aimed at the Magus Civilization’s overlords active on the front lines. For some strange reason, it targeted a star domain in the federation’s own rear!

Once the aftermath of that Infinity Light’s strike became clear, the Magus Civilization’s frontline forces noticeably shifted into a more defensive posture, which suggested that the federation had likely achieved some long-anticipated strategic objective.

Who exactly had the Gallant Federation targeted?

For it to affect the Magus Civilization’s frontline deployments and even its later war plans, the significance of that strike was clearly extraordinary!

The other piece of bad news was that the Amenkha Empire had arrived...

It had not launched an expedition against the Magus Civilization itself. Its true target was the Grand Cosmic World, located beyond the outer borders of the star domains controlled by the Magus Civilization.

The Grand Cosmic World lay even farther from the Magus Civilization’s home world than either the Challenger Civilization or the Steel Fortress Worlds.

Strictly speaking, that region did not even fall within the Magus Civilization’s publicly acknowledged sphere of influence. Even at past Magus Alliance Conferences, powerful representatives from the Grand Cosmic World had only rarely appeared.

In fact, the Grand Cosmic World had not even officially joined the Magus Alliance!

Even so, it was an undeniable fact that the Grand Cosmic World maintained many ties with the Magus Civilization and was deeply entangled with it through shared interests.

Otherwise, the Amenkha Empire would never have deployed troops there, nor would the Magus Civilization have reacted so strongly to an attack on the Grand Cosmic World.

The Magus Civilization did maintain a direct military presence in that star domain. Because it had long remained wary of the Amenkha Empire, the number of troops stationed there had always been considerable.

For now, there were no signs that the Grand Cosmic World was on the verge of falling. But one thing was certain: war had already broken out there, and the Magus Civilization had already clashed with the Amenkha Empire.

Were they really going to fight on two fronts?

Many of the Magus Civilization’s high-ranking officials could not help but feel a deep sense of concern as they sensed the pressure coming from the Amenkha Empire.

Because of this, the Magus Civilization’s leadership had recently focused much of its attention on strengthening cooperative ties with the Luminara Civilization, drawing the Immortal Realm Civilization into this civilizational alliance, and bringing more planar civilizations into the Magus Alliance.

Many of the Magus World’s top powerhouses believed the Amenkha Empire would not launch a full-scale assault directly against the Magus Civilization’s borders all at once. That belief gave the Magus Civilization at least some room to breathe and more time to prepare.

Even so, no one could say with complete certainty that the Amenkha Empire would not strike directly.

At the border between the Magus Civilization and the Gallant Federation lay the Morpheus Asteroid Belt.

It was just an unremarkable asteroid belt. Since the surrounding region lacked any special resources or real strategic value, neither civilization had paid much attention to it at first.

But from this day forward, the name of this asteroid belt was destined to be etched into the history of the Clash of Civilizations between the Magus Civilization and the Gallant Federation!

For the Amenkha Empire, the forces deployed to the Morpheus Asteroid Belt were merely part of a probing offensive carried out in coordination with the Gallant Federation, involving only a limited number of combat legions.

At present, the total number of Amenkha Empire troops gathered near the Morpheus Asteroid Belt was only a little over ten million.

Although their numbers were still increasing, the overall scale of the force remained limited.

Neither the Amenkha Empire nor the Gallant Federation could afford the enormous troop commitments required for such long-range teleportation.

Moreover, even while coordinating with the Amenkha Empire, the Gallant Federation had to stay wary of the possibility that its so-called partner might betray it!

After all, the federation and the Amenkha Empire had never been true allies to begin with.

A pitch-black spatial vortex appeared directly above the Morpheus Asteroid Belt.

As it emerged, the surrounding space began to grow unstable.

A woman in a black dress and high heels slowly stepped out of the vortex.

Against the dazzling backdrop of the starry sky, her dim, hazy eyes exerted a terrifying pull like a black hole, causing even the surrounding starlight to noticeably dim.

“Oh my, I may have some ties to the Magus Civilization, but now that the Pharaohs’ Temple Council has made its decision, I can hardly go easy on them.”

Covering her mouth as she let out a soft laugh, the woman in black continued, “Judging by the agreed timing, the other pharaohs should already be making their moves by now.