Sovereign of the Ashes

“Do you think that child will be able to achieve his dream in the future?” Sein suddenly asked Bousse, who was standing beside him, as they watched the magic carpet depart.

Bousse had overheard the boy and Sein’s exchange earlier but this question caught him off guard. He hesitated, unsure how to respond.

As Bousse watched the flying carpet disappear into the distance, his thoughts drifted back over a hundred years.

He had once been the same age as the boy when he got tested for his magic aptitude and sent away from his parents to a big city to pursue education as a mage.

The vast distances that required airships to traverse had been an unthinkable journey for a child.

The relentless, grueling academy tasks and the weight of survival had severed the young initiates from their old lives and families almost entirely.

Bousse remembered his own journey through the empire’s public magic academy as a young boy. It was not until he advanced to an intermediate magic initiate in his thirties that he finally found time to return home after completing a distant academy quest.

By then, his parents were already in their fifties, looking completely different in his childhood memory.

His younger siblings, nieces, and nephews had grown into strangers. The familial bonds they once shared had faded after decades of separation.

For mages devoted to the pursuit of truth, the so-called “familial bonds” were often not deeply etched in their hearts.

During that brief visit, he left his family a considerable sum of money and two low-grade magic trinkets before departing again.

The second time Bousse returned home, he was in his nineties.

By then, he was uncertain if he could advance to Rank One and found himself reflecting on his life.

Beyond the pursuit of magical truths, there seemed little that truly tethered him to the world.

Returning to his family felt less like a homecoming and more like a last refuge—a place to go when nowhere else seemed to call.

On that second visit, Bousse brought spellbooks, money, and magic items for the family’s descendants, hoping to give them a better life.

Perhaps, if someone in the family showed an aptitude for magic, they would have a better starting point than he had to explore the mysteries of truths.

By the time he returned, his parents had already passed, and his siblings were gone as well.

As a senior magic initiate, Bousse was able to prolong his life through elemental knowledge and the surrounding environment, extending it by two or three decades.

Commoners, especially those from the lower classes, were not afforded such luxuries.

Once one stepped into the world of magic, it inevitably marked a departure from the mundane.

For Bousse, his parents’ faces had long faded from memory.

In response to Sein’s earlier question, Bousse could only let out a long, weary sigh.

The pursuit of truth was indeed an arduous and lonely one.

***

After bribing Bousse with magicoins, Sein traveled through twenty-one human cities under the guidance of the chubby mage, recruiting over seven hundred eligible initiates.

Of these, two hundred lower-quality initiates were ultimately left to Bousse, while the remaining five hundred or so were to be taken back to the Divine Tower of Dark Flame by Sein himself.

Initially, Bousse was extremely hesitant about this operation.

After accompanying Sein through seven cities and collecting two hundred initiates, the chubby man began showing signs of backing out.

However, when Sein raised the bribe from thirty magicoins to a hundred, Bousse’s resolve crumbled.

His eyes practically turned into the shape of magicoins, wide and round.

With these one hundred magicoins, he could immediately pay off most of the loan he owed to the public magic academy.

If he were not in a hurry to settle the debt entirely, he could begin constructing the private laboratory that he had always dreamed of.

Building a personal laboratory was not cheap.

Even the most basic, functional setup required at least several hundred magicoins, not counting the cost of elemental pools, which were prohibitively expensive!

For Sein, however, such challenges had never been a concern.

After his promotion to Rank One, he had ample resources, partly due to his earnings from the regional academy war and partly because of his access to Lorianne’s laboratory in the divine tower.

The quality of her experimental equipment surpassed even those of demigod-level mages.

Bousse’s money-grubbing nature, combined with his name and rotund appearance, stirred a sense of nostalgia in Sein.

With another five hundred initiates secured, Sein told Bousse that their partnership was far from over.

As long as Bousse continued to supply him with initiates, he would ensure that the chubby man was well compensated.

For Bousse, this arrangement was a lucrative dream.

Even if he risked his life in interplanar wars, he would not make as much money as he could from just two trips of initiate smuggling.

“I’m only in charge of twenty-one cities. If you need more, I’d look into the villages and towns around these cities,” Bousse offered.

“What about the other cities?” Sein asked casually.

The Alveroth Empire was vast, and even a small portion of its southern region could supply enough initiates to fulfill the Divine Tower of Dark Flame’s needs.

“All the other cities have mages in charge, and some aren’t even from my academy. If I happen to run into them, there’s a good chance I’d be exposed...” Bousse admitted with a troubled look.

“If that’s the case, why not bring them into the fold instead?” Sein suggested with a smile.

“The number of initiates I need is far more than you alone can provide,” he added.

Sein’s smile caused Bousse’s hair to stand on end.

To be honest, Bousse had never considered involving others in this operation, fearing the risk of tarnishing his reputation—or worse, facing severe punishment from the public academy.

Pulling more mages into this circle of illicit profit?

The mere thought made Bousse shudder.

Unlike Bousse’s visible apprehension, Sein was already running calculations in his mind.

If one Bousse had helped him secure seven hundred magic initiates, recruiting five or six more mages from the imperial academies could potentially supply all the initiates needed to fill Divine Tower of Dark Flame’s current enrollment gaps.

More importantly, this arrangement had the potential to be sustainable.

The divine tower academy accepted new initiates once every decade.

If their operation remained undetected, it could continue for the long term.

Unsettled by Sein’s demeanor, Bousse could not help but mumble, “Your suggestion sounds like the whispers of a devil.”

“What’s so special about devils?” Sein replied with a casual shrug. “I’ve studied them. They’re just peculiar creatures made of flesh, blood, and energy forms. The only unique thing about them is their methods of using energy and focus.”[1]

Then, with a reassuring pat on Bousse’s shoulder, he added, “Do a good job, and I might even share a specimen of devil limb tissue from my collection with you.”

Sein remained oblivious to the fact that, in Bousse’s eyes, his image had shifted into something else.

Bousse gulped nervously but wisely chose to remain silent.

1. Please take note that there is a term change for ”Demon” and ”Devil”. For more information, please visit the footnote of Chapter 910. ☜