Sovereign of the Ashes

The divine towers and knightly orders each had their designated areas to investigate.

Due to its proximity to five neighboring divine towers, the Divine Tower of Dark Flame frequently crossed paths with other teams during investigations.

For this mission, the Divine Tower of Astral Sun deployed Adrian and Janice—Sein’s “old friends”.

In addition to Adrian and Janice, many Rank Three grand mages from other divine towers were familiar faces to Sein.

Over the years, Sein’s frequent visits to neighboring divine towers to gather magic ingredients, along with the reciprocal visits from their Rank Three grand mages to the Divine Tower of Dark Flame, had built a level of mutual familiarity.

In the past decade, much of the hostility and ostracism once directed toward the Divine Tower of Dark Flame had faded.

Battles had given way to friendly spars among peers, fostering mutual respect over time.

While antagonism persisted among the initiates and lower-ranking mages, the Rank Three grand mages had developed an indescribable camaraderie.

In some ways, the relationships among the six divine towers seemed notably improved compared to a century ago.

Sein also observed that none of the other five divine towers had dispatched any demigod-level mages for this mission.

The highest-ranking participants were only ordinary Rank Three grand mages.

The teams sent by the other divine towers far outnumbered the group from the Divine Tower of Dark Flame.

The biggest group was from the Divine Tower of Astral Sun, which had dispatched over three hundred full-fledged mages.

In contrast, Sein’s team consisted of fewer than one hundred mages.

When Sein arrived, Janice, who still harbored a grudge against him, merely let out a soft grunt instead of greeting him.

Adrian, on the other hand, greeted him with a polite nod.

Sein spent a few years exploring Adrian’s pyro-elemental fusion mystery and could not help but acknowledge its profound depth.

Unfortunately, their paths in magic were fundamentally different.

While Sein could glean some insights and draw inspiration from Adrian’s work, he could only research it on a superficial level.

He could not possibly abandon his own path and immerse himself in the truth pursued by others.

The path each Rank Three grand mage chose in their quest to ascend to the rank of a demigod was unique and rarely replicable.

Both Sein and Adrian shared a deep passion for unraveling advanced mysteries of truth, their aspirations firmly set on achieving demigod status and beyond.

After a brief exchange with the teams from neighboring divine towers, Sein instructed the mages under his command to press on with him.

The dozens of mages accompanying him were all elite members of the Divine Tower of Dark Flame Academy, each seasoned by extensive combat experience.

Sein suspected that the major divine towers and knightly orders had deliberately refrained from deploying their full forces for this mission out of caution.

They likely feared that the reported spatial fluctuation might turn out to be nothing more than a minor anomaly, rather than a real space-time rift.

Such a scenario would leave the Ylli Knight Alliance embarrassed for overreacting and mobilizing excessive resources for something so trivial.

Instead, they chose to wait for confirmation from the Ylli Knight Alliance and the Magus Civilization regarding the existence of a true space-time rift before deploying their full force.

For now, Sein and those under his command were nothing more than scouts.

***

Sein and his group continued their journey northwest from the Divine Tower of Dark Flame’s base, eventually arriving at the entrance to a trench known as “Malthor”.

The Magus World, renowned for its unparalleled richness, was not only vast and thriving on the surface but also boasted an equally expansive underground realm.

The Darwell Region[1], where Sein had spent his initiate days, represented just a fraction of the Magus World’s immense underground world.

However, the surface world was far more conducive to life and civilization.

After building the glorious Magus Civilization on the surface, the knights and mages of the Magus World had turned their ambitions toward the even more magnificent Astral Realm.

As a result, the vast underground expanse of the Magus World had seen limited development by the major divine towers and knightly orders over the centuries.

Of course, this underdevelopment was also likely influenced by the laws established by the guardians, divine towers, and knightly orders.

Despite the Magus World’s immense wealth, 95% of the resources consumed by the Magus Civilization over the past several hundred thousand years had been plundered from foreign planes.

As for the resources within the Magus World itself, apart from a small portion that was actively mined and utilized, the vast majority remained untouched—buried deep beneath the surface in the form of raw minerals.

The resources of the Magus World were the greatest legacy the Magus Civilization had left for future generations.

Not only was the Magus World’s energy concentration remarkably high, but even its elemental particles were abnormally active.

This phenomenon could not be explained solely by Magus World’s status as a top-tier plane.

It was possible that numerous energy crystal mines scattered throughout the world had remained untapped for so long that their energies had seeped out, enriching the environment.

While the knights and mages of the Magus World rarely utilized the underground resources of their homeplane, the cold and dark underground world served as a sanctuary for magic beasts and demihuman species.

Systematic studies estimated that approximately 87.89% of the Magus World’s demihuman populations resided underground.

The so-called demihuman species included not only the cavemen or underdwarves that Sein had encountered during his initiate days but also certain groups carrying ancient bloodlines.

The diversity of demihuman creatures in the Magus World was second only to that of the sea races, encompassing a remarkably broad spectrum of beings.

Despite being humans, the knights and mages of the Magus Civilization had agreed to preserve these demihuman populations.

This was to protect the biodiversity of their homeplane, ensuring that these native creatures were not entirely driven to extinction by the more competitive and dominant human race.

Sein had read in the divine tower library that, in the distant past, some demihuman races had achieved significant civilizational advancements.

Unfortunately, the passage of time and historical accounts written by human knights and mages had rendered much of that ancient history vague or entirely lost.

To fully uncover the contributions of demihuman civilizations, Sein would need to visit Sky City—the sacred land for Magus World spellcasters and the repository of the most comprehensive records of civilization’s history.

One thing Sein was certain of was that, while demihumans were not as dominant as the sea races, the most exceptional individuals among them could reach Rank Four or even higher.

Sein had gleaned this insight during a brief expedition into a certain region of the underground world back when he was still a Rank One mage.

1. Translator’s Note: Darwell Region has only been mentioned once before, in Chapter 395. It’s the region where Mystralora City once stood. ☜