Sovereign of the Ashes

After receiving an answer from the young Rank One mage in front of him, Sein turned to the two female knights standing behind him.

Having spent hundreds of years traveling within the Ylli Knight Alliance, along with the time he had taken to rest following the Wild Gorilla World War, Sein realized it had been quite a while since he had put his muscles to work.

Reina and Natalya, having known him for so long, understood the meaning behind Sein’s questioning glance without the need for words.

The Divine Tower of Dark Flame’s specialty pyro elemental resources were undeniably hard for Sein to resist acquiring.

Moreover, the foreign plane this divine tower was attacking happened to be a low-level world abundant in rare magic metals.

For an alchemist, the value of special magic metals was self-evident.

Just the mention of “Mecran Dark Metal” was enough to spark Sein’s desire to step onto the battlefield of this low-level plane.

The two female knights responded to Sein’s silent inquiry with determined gazes, their eyes conveying the answer clearly.

“Alright. Prepare a five-year contract for the three of us to participate in the war,” Sein said, turning back to the young mage.

“Happy to be of service!” the young mage at the front desk replied eagerly.

The addition of three Rank Two combatants was a considerable boost for the divine tower’s forces.

More importantly, as the one who facilitated their enlistment, this young mage would earn a portion of the rewards offered by the Divine Tower of Dark Flame.

No wonder he was so pleased.

Despite its aged and somewhat run-down appearance, the Divine Tower of Dark Flame had stood strong for over twenty thousand years.

Its facilities and resources were remarkably complete but there was an undeniable air of neglect and desolation that pervaded the entire tower.

After purchasing a selection of pyro elemental magic materials from the resource hall and acquiring various supplies they might need for the upcoming battle, Sein led Reina and Natalya to the Divine Tower of Dark Flame’s interplanar teleportation array.

***

Light flickered as Sein stepped out of the spatial distortion caused by the teleportation array. He found himself facing the hollowed-out interior of a massive mountain wall.

They had arrived in the Gumo Plane.

Looking beyond the mountain wall, a vast expanse of black smoke stretched across the horizon, and the air was thick with the acrid stench of sulfur.

A faint but ever-present sense of planar suppression and repulsion hung in the air, a reminder that the Gumo Plane was hostile to these invaders from the Magus World.

This hollowed-out mountain wall appeared to be one of the temporary camps established by the Divine Tower of Dark Flame.

Aside from the large interplanar teleportation array, Sein also saw knights, mages, and various enslaved creatures he could not identify, all moving busily within and outside the camp.

The Divine Tower of Dark Flame, with its over twenty thousand-year history, had conquered more than one interplanar plane.

Although this low-level interplanar war had reached a temporary stalemate, Sein knew that with the tower master’s immense strength, the Divine Tower of Dark Flame could easily muster a substantial force of enslaved cannon fodder from other planes.

Low-level enslaved creatures were easy to conscript—they could be drafted randomly from the enslaved planes.

But high-level combatants, particularly those of Rank One and above, were rarer and harder to recruit.

In wars like this, which determined the fate of entire worlds, the power of Rank Four and above creatures was beyond question.

However, the true effort to conquer and occupy the Gumo Plane fell to ranked knights and full-fledged mages, who formed the Divine Tower of Dark Flame’s main fighting force.

As an outsider, Sein was not privy to the exact number of mages registered with the divine tower or the number of hired knights and mages participating in this campaign.

Nevertheless, he could see the number of Rank One and above combatants present in this grotto alone exceeded a thousand.

Several magic towers, each about ten meters tall, stood at the edges of the camp, providing defensive capabilities and creating a protective mana light web around the area.

Before Sein, Reina, and Natalya had a chance to take in the full novelty of this planar battlefield, a Rank Two mage from the Divine Tower of Dark Flame came over to meet them.

Since all three of them were Rank Two combatants, the divine tower had sent a Rank Two mage to brief them on their combat assignments.

Sein, however, had already gained a solid understanding of the war situation in the Gumo Plane after signing their five-year contract, thanks to the mages stationed at the Divine Tower of Dark Flame back in the Magus World.

The Rank Two mage now in front of them simply clarified certain details, offering a more focused overview of the battlefield situation around this grotto base.

“In the Silas Mountain Range, there are a total of three combat camps, and the one we are in now is the largest,” the Rank Two mage, who seemed rather weak and injured, began explaining to Sein and his companions.

“The allied forces of Gumo Plane’s native creatures currently pose no real threat to this place. At most, there will be small, scattered units infiltrating the area, but they are generally not very dangerous.

“The main battlefield between our Divine Tower of Dark Flame and those native creatures is located in the Akre Plains, beyond the Silas Range. It’s a vast, boundless expanse of black soil, rich with specialty metal resources beneath the surface.

“That’s where our Divine Tower of Dark Flame’s nearly two-million-strong army is engaged in battle against Gumo Plane’s over five-million-strong mixed legions.”

Despite the impressive figure, Sein understood that the divine tower’s two-million-strong force was not composed entirely of knights and mages.

He estimated that over ninety percent of the divine tower’s forces consisted of enslaved creatures.

If the total number of participating knights and mages reached even two hundred thousand, it would already be remarkable.

Among these, knights clearly outnumbered mages by a significant margin.

Even within this main base, Sein observed a striking ratio of knights to mages—nearly 7:1.

This disproportionate figure suggested either that the interplanar war had drawn a large number of knights from the Ylli Knight Alliance or that the Divine Tower of Dark Flame had relatively few registered mages.

Two million versus five million was indeed consistent with the Magus Civilization’s tradition of using the few to triumph over the many.

Given the superior combat strength of the Magus World’s legions, these numbers were not surprising.

Moreover, the five-million-strong mixed legions of Gumo Plane’s native creatures were no match for the Magus World’s forces on an individual level.

Even the Magus World’s vicious and battle-hardened cannon fodder was far superior to these native legions.

The real challenge lay in the native creatures’ advantage as local combatants. No matter how many troops they lost, they could easily mobilize and replenish their ranks.

From what Sein had gathered, the three major native races of Gumo Plane could easily muster millions of reserve troops.

The Guran Lizardmen and Moknu, having already suffered significant losses, might find it difficult to contribute further.

However, the Goul Groundworms that lived deep underground remained a formidable threat.

Having entered the war much later, the Goul Groundworms had a much larger population base.

Based on Sein’s knowledge, these groundworms reproduced both sexually and asexually, with the latter achieved through splitting their bodies, enabling rapid population growth.

This extraordinary resilience made the Goul Groundworms the most difficult opponent for the Divine Tower of Dark Flame to contend with.