First Clash

On the planet Deria, an unnamed subcontinent in the planet's northern hemisphere, the warship of the Ōtsutsuki Clan landed from space.

This obviously didn't escape the attention of Automatons, but they didn't have enough firepower to shoot down the behemoth of the ship from the skies.

In a moment when the ship landed down, hundreds of Puppets started swarming out from the warship and heading towards the outskirts of the subcontinent to erect the fortifications against the Automatons.

Most of these Puppets had very low combat prowess; they were not comparable to even the weakest of weakest F-Grade Automaton, though they were still considered pretty powerful among the mortals.

Still, their sole purpose was the construction of buildings and other things that the Ōtsutsuki Clan needed.

Naturally, the Ōtsutsuki Clan had some powerful Puppets that were refined by them, but those were placed on the important locations within the territory of the Ōtsutsuki Clan.

"Build the Arrays as soon as possible. For now, we need to planet the God Tree on the planet."

Yakou, Kirihara and two werewolves acted fast and the moment they exited the ship, they headed toward the center of the subcontinent to plant the God Tree. The moment the God Tree was planted and grew, they would have secured a stable foothold on the planet Deria.

The standard process of planting the God Tree was using the juvenile Ten-Tails, which was right now sleeping on Yakou's shoulders.

The Ten-Tails would produce the God Tree Seed and depending on the conditions and environment, the God Tree would grow and blossom.

With the innate control over the God Tree that every member of the Main Family of the Ōtsutsuki Clan had, they would obtain some sort of pseudo-domain.

For the Divine Lineage Ōtsutsukis, they could exert even more powerful control over the God Tree and bring out even more power from the fabled treasure of the Ōtsutsuki Clan.

After flying for several hundreds of kilometers, they finally found a place that contained a Dragon Vein, which was essentially Nature Energy Leyline that were spreading through the entire Planet.

"Come on."

Yakou woke up the Ten-Tails, which opened its eye and jumped down from his shoulders, quickly running towards the Dragon Vein that was located several hundred meters away from them.

When the Ten-Tails arrived at the location, in a split of second, it enlarged itself several tens of times, reaching staggering heights of more than fifty meters and used its enormous tails to dig a hole in the ground, penetrating deep into the crust of the planet.

It swiftly located the Leyline and using its tails, it penetrated the Leylines and created a cocoon around itself and the Nature Energy Leyline.

"It entered the germination period pretty fast."

Kirihara commented as Yakou nodded and brought up several things from his Dimensional Space. It were several crystals that were filled with Nature Energy as he threw them to the germinating God Tree, together with corpses of a few Tier 1 and Tier 2 beings.

His fianceé followed suit and even Muzaka and Juraki did the same thing, as they had corpses of a few enemies they killed and used them as fertilizer for the God Tree.

"Now we need to wait... if my predictions are correct, the God Tree would be fully grown within five years. For now, we need to focus on defending this place and the entirety of the subcontinent."

Yakou nodded as Kirihara brought out her Shakujō, which was a ringed staff and several times tapped on earth, instantly creating some kind of stealth array to hide the presence of the germinating God Tree.

"With this, it would take a few good years for the Automatons to find the God Tree..."

There was still a possibility that the Automatons won't find out about the existence of the God Tree, but that was not possible because it was the standard strategy of the Ōtsutsuki Clan.

To plant the God Tree to gain a foothold.

Because the Automatons were all connected with each other through their network, they could instantly exchange information.

There was a low chance of them not knowing the typical strategy of the Ōtsutsuki Clan.

They hoped that with the array hiding the existence of the God Tree, it would take some time for the Automatons to find the location of the God Tree and concentrate their attacks on that place.

***

Several days later, the Ōtsutsuki Expedition encountered the first wave of the Automatons, reached the shores of the subcontinent, and started scouting the area.

Obviously, the Automatons were aware of the danger of the Ōtsutsuki Clan taking root in this place, so they acted carefully when dealing with the Celestials.

Yakou and Kirihara remained in the close vicinity of the God Tree sapling because they could send anywhere their Shadow Clones in case they needed to repel the enemy. With their clones spread around the island, there was no need for two werewolves to do anything.

For the past few days, the two werewolves spent training their martial arts, or Yakou sparred with the Werewolf Heir.

Compared to the werewolves with their literarily tyrannical fleshy body and knowledge of the martial arts, when it came to direct confrontation, he always lost.

When it came to body cultivation, the ability of the Ōtsutsuki Clan was relatively low because they lacked proper scripture.

Compared to the Celestial Chakra Manual, which was created by Lord Shibai, they didn't have any body technique that would refine and temper their bodies and they could depend only on auxiliary methods.

Still, the spars with Muzaka proved to be helpful because when it came to martial arts and hand-to-hand combat, Muzaka was able to fight several of his Shadow Clones simultaneously.

This was fully exploited by Yakou, who was sending one clone after another after the Werewolf Heir to increase his capabilities in hand-to-hand combat. Even though Yakou was preferably a swordmaster, one never knew when he would need some martial arts in his arsenal.

This time Yakou was sparring against Muzaka with his true body and he was not using any martial arts; instead, he was holding his katana and attacking agast the silver-furred werewolf who was coated in Aura.

Aura was a supernatural phenomenon in which the potent, internal energy that appears comes from the soul and is manifested as a powerful force on the outside of their bodies.

Most auras are dormant or very weak and cannot be perceived by the average person.

Aura manipulation and perception are abilities that can be unlocked through various means, whether strenuous training, technological enhancements, or in the case of some beings like species of the Evernight High Council, naturally...

The true nature of Aura is the fact that it's fundamentally linked to the soul, and thus it could manifest around anything containing a soul, organic or inorganic.