When Welks arrived, Sein was fighting a colossal mobile suit with combat power on par with a Rank Five being, all while fending off swarms of lower-tier legions. .

There had been two such mobile suits, with several federal vessels focusing their fire on him. But the arrival of the Huusians and other Magus World powerhouses eased much of the pressure.

Clint, the peak Rank Five knight rampaging through the Gallant Federation fleets, truly lived up to his reputation as the former top combatant of the Black Tide Plane.

His relentless charges left countless razor-sharp spikes in his wake, falling like a deadly storm that plunged the federal fleet into chaos.

To be fair, the federal fleet did possess powerful destroyers capable of threatening Clint.

The Gallant Federation had also set up special weapons designed specifically to counter beings of Rank Four and above on the Black Tide Plane.

Among them were the colossal mobile suits, deployed from the start to support fleet barrages and serve as the federations primary close-combat assets against Magus Worlds powerhouses.

Yet in the current chaos and betrayal, all those carefully laid strategies and plans had become meaningless.

The Gallant Federations legions were routed more quickly than anyone expected.

Two or three other Rank Four alien entitiesmercenaries the federation had recruited for the Black Tide Plane campaigntook one look at the situation and began thinking about slipping away.

They had no desire to side with the Magus Civilization, nor did they plan to betray the Gallant Federation. They only wanted to live.

Driven by pure survival instinct, these Rank Fours fled without hesitation once they saw the tide of war had irreversibly turned.

In contrast, the Gallant Federations fleets and combat legions tried to hold their positions for as long as they could, proving to be a tough nut for the Magus Civilization to crack in the short term.

Retreat did not mean surrender.

No matter how Magus World slandered or belittled the Gallant Federation, one thing could not be denied: the creatures of this technological civilization might be physically frail, but they had backbone.

To this day, the number of federal legions that had deserted the battlefield could be counted on one hand.

Magus Worlds standard response to such federal legions was to crush them!

***

The pain radiating from his shoulder made Seins lips twitch beneath the Faceless Mask.

The firepower of the federal legions was no joke. The longer he clashed with them, the more Sein came to respect the sheer strength of their forces.

His shoulder had been pierced by the nuclear projectile of the massive mobile suit before him.

On top of that, his abdomen and back bore wounds of varying severity, Most were inflicted by long-range strikes from the surrounding federal fleets.

The mobile suit before Sein was relatively slender. Against its reddish-brown metal shell, the vortex core at the center of its body stood out sharply.

It was from that vortex that the nuclear projectile which tore through Seins shoulder had been fired.

And, as expected from a Gallant Federations construct, the mobile suits primary weapon was anything but ordinary.

Rather than relying on common technologies like electromagnetic guns, it wielded a massive silver sword.

The faint patterns rippling along the blades surface marked it not as a divine artifact of a cultivation civilization, but as a cutting-edge weapon of a technological one.

The blade could even split apart to unleash devastating energy beams when needed.

The Gallant Federation had designed these colossal mobile suits specifically to compensate for their fleets shortcomings in close-quarters combat.

On his own, Sein would have struggled to bring this one down. But with Welks arrival came much-needed relief.

After observing the mobile suits combat style, Sein quickly moved to join the assault.

As a peak Rank Five mage, Welks had the raw power to suppress the federal mobile suit outright.

With Sein pressing the attack alongside him, their opponent quickly began to falter.

Seins remarkable performance in battle owed as much to his mastery of elemental magic as it did to the Faceless Mask and his body tempering.

Ashen Flame, with the Decomposing Azure Flame as its core, flared from his hand.

Recalling Master Gregorys combat style, Sein spread the flame across his body and charged toward the mobile suit.

He drove his massive rod forward with crushing force, piercing it deep into the mobile suit at lightning speed.

But the cockpit was not in the mobile suits abdomen as he had expected.

The Gallant Federation was not foolish enough to put every cockpit in the same place, just waiting for Magus World powerhouses to exploit the weakness.

It was not in the head either.

The suit, though battered and half-kneeling, still held its ground with stubborn defiance.

Could it be there? Through the Faceless Mask, Sein locked onto a point on the suits left leg.

Elemental energy surged into his hand once more, and a blazing beam shot out from the tip of his rod.

***

BOOM!

The towering federal mobile suit finally collapsed.

It was not the first Rank Four or higher federal combatant to fall on Black Tide Plane.

Before this, several destroyers capable of threatening beings at Rank Four or above had already come crashing from the skies.

The Magus Civilization legions did not chase down the fleeing Rank Four creatures.

Desertion in the heat of battle was not unheard of within the Magus Alliance either.

Unable to withstand the federations overwhelming bombardment along the frontlines, some foreign allied deities had also deserted the battlefield.

Of course, the Magus Civilization had its own procedures for dealing with such deserters.

The Magus Alliance would not tolerate betrayal!

Before entering battle, many Magus Alliance combatants at Rank Four or higher received generous magicoinsoften more than two million.

The stronger they were, the more they were paid upfront. It was, after all, the price of staking their lives.

Since they had accepted payment, they were bound to fulfill their duty. The Magus Civilization had always lived by the principle of equivalent exchange.

For those foreign allied deities who deserted in battle, the Magus World knights and mages would find time to deal with them later.

Since they had sold their lives to the Magus Alliance only to run at the last minute, they were as good as wasted assets and had to be reclaimed as such.

At the very least, their remains could be repurposed to contribute in another way to the Clash of Civilizations.

This was the Magus Civilizations way of doing things. One could imagine the Gallant Federation was not all that different.

As for the opposing Rank Fours who deserted, Magus World saw no need to pursue them. They believed the Gallant Federation would deal with them.

The Magus Civilizations focus now was on crushing the remaining federal legions on Black Tide Plane and in the Transversa Star Domain to secure its dominance in this region

The battle on Black Tide Plane was still raging, but Sein had no intention of staying any longer.

While Welks was busy examining his newest trophy with keen interest, Sein had little interest in it. He already had one tucked away in his spatial storage.

We have to leave now. Onward to Nocchi! Sein declared to Clint and the others on the battlefield.