Sovereign of the Ashes

While Sein was immersed in his experimental research, he had not forgotten about Flynn, Ronaldo, and others.

Even though they had only provided limited help during the melee in the San Jose Kingdom, they had still been there for him.

After spending so much time together, Sein had come to see them as his juniors.

Ronaldo, who had been gravely injured, was ultimately saved by Sein, thanks to the Goddess of Waters.

If Sein had not discovered a space pendant packed with hydro elemental materials among her remains, he never would have been able to concoct such a variety of high-grade, precious potions to heal Ronaldo.

After much thought, Sein finally decided to pass on some of the alchemy knowledge he had mastered to Flynn.

During the two hundred busy, research-filled years following the melee in the San Jose Kingdom, Sein occasionally shared stories of the outside world with Flynn and the other two during his breaks.

He especially liked to talk about the Magus World.

Without realizing it, Sein had now spent nearly half of his life so far in Faeloria.

Ronaldo and the two were always captivated whenever Sein talked about the knight profession of the Magus World.

When he described the wonders of Sky City, Flynn’s eyes lit up with pure longing.

Noticing Flynn’s growing interest in alchemy, Sein told him about the Magus World’s space fortresses, prism forts, airships, and other large-scale war platforms.

The idea of a space fortress—something as massive as a small continent—was beyond their ability to grasp.

They simply could not imagine how such a gigantic metallic object could fly or what fueled it.

Could something like that really possess combat power comparable to a god?

Since they had never seen anything like it, the little ones could only picture it as a floating city, pieced together from scraps of limited knowledge and imagination.

“A floating city...” Flynn’s eyes gleamed as if he were catching a glimpse of a golden era that belonged to Faeloria’s Arcanists.

Seeing their reactions, Sein smiled and said, “All right, your next task is to keep working toward Rank Three.”

He gave his robe a light shake and turned toward his laboratory. “It’s time for me to get back to my experiments.”

Flynn and the others watched him go, their eyes full of admiration.

In their hearts, they felt that even if they spent their entire lives chasing after him, it would still be nearly impossible to catch up with Master Sein’s footsteps.

***

While Sein was still buried in his experiments, the Goddess of Magic, who had already paid her “down payment” in advance, came to visit as expected.

It was around 227 years after the end of the melee in the San Jose Kingdom.

The Avatar Crisis, which had dragged on for over six centuries, was finally nearing its end.

With the suppression of divine power lifted, the deities had begun to slowly regain their strength.

Even the divine relics in Sein’s laboratory had started to glow again.

Once the crisis fully passed and the law-based restrictions were gone for good, those relics would shine once more with the brilliance they had at their peak.

Around the same time, the Spider Queen, who had not contacted Sein in ages, finally reached out again.

Eluvira, of course, did not come to Purgatory in person.

As a greater deity who remained independent of Faeloria’s major factions, she was not the type to casually throw herself into danger.

Instead, a divine clone of hers, around Rank Four in power, appeared just outside Sein’s castle.

To Sein, the fact that Eluvira could manifest a Rank Four clone again was a clear sign that the Avatar Crisis really was nearing its end.

Eluvira herself was a Rank Six being with extraordinary talent in elemental energy manipulation.

Her approach to magic aligned perfectly with the Magus World’s core values: creativity, innovation, and self-guided exploration.

The fusion of elemental energy and divine power known as the “Weave” was not something an average deity could have created.

To Sein, it felt like the product of Eluvira’s own research, merging her divine domain and tailored to fit Faeloria’s unique conditions.

Frankly, if he had not spent the last few centuries dissecting corpses of deities and analyzing divine laws, he might never have grasped that truth.

As for the native Arcanists he had been nurturing—like Flynn—though they had started building their own spell models, they still relied on the Weave.

Because, in the end, the Weave was just that convenient!

Under the influence of this reality, Sein’s original attitude of rejecting and looking down on the Weave had started to shift.

Of course, it had its downsides.

If the Goddess of Magic ever fell, every elemental user in Faeloria who relied on the Weave to cast magic would be doomed.

Only those like Flynn, who had studied and built up their understanding of elemental theory through self-learning, would be able to keep using magic.

Placing one’s power entirely in the hands of a deity was irrational and risky in the first place.

Eluvira, the Goddess of Magic, had come this time for scholarly discussions with Sein.

That alone was a huge honor. In the Magus World, no one would believe a Rank Six being would even bother to discuss the mysteries of truth with someone at Rank Three.

Faeloria really was a world that broke common sense.

Sein had plenty of knowledge to share. Even without revealing the more advanced magical truths he kept to himself, just the basic theories developed in the Magus World were enough to impress the Goddess of Magic.

What struck her most was Sein’s view that a true seeker of truth should not limit themselves to elemental energies alone.

Crafting magic artifacts, studying the passive evolution of lifeforms, exploring the realm of occult arts—all of these could be considered paths toward true knowledge.

“To master all those fields you spoke of... would that not make one a true ‘god’?” Eluvira chuckled softly, her hand covering her mouth.

From her words alone, it was clear that Eluvira did not truly see herself as a “goddess”.

“God” was just a convenient label to develop faith.

Deep down, she did not believe in the existence of deities; she saw herself as simply a lifeform that had evolved to a higher state.

Most other deities in Faeloria, by contrast, had become drunk on the worship of their followers.

Over time, they lost themselves, truly believing they were omniscient and omnipotent.

This was one of the reasons Eluvira had always kept her distance from any factions.

“You are right. Maybe the mages of our Magus World really are chasing the extreme—trying to explore every wonder in the Astral Realm, seeking to become all-knowing, all-powerful...” Sein said, his tone thoughtful.

He paused, then added, “Maybe that is the mission of our civilization.”