Sovereign of the Ashes

“I thought you...” Leena said, her voice trembling.

The Dark Reaper, who had killed countless in Blackhaven, showed her vulnerable side only when she was with Sein.

Sein had not been able to contact Leena while he was trapped in Faeloria. They had never gone this long without contacting each other.

Leena, more well-read than Sein in certain subjects, had studied occult arts and astrology.

She had tried to divine his whereabouts but found nothing. She had no idea where he was or even if he was still alive.

Her grasp of astrology was still shallow, and there were no low-ranking mages in Blackhaven skilled in the field.

At one point, she had been so desperate that she had almost marched to Eastern Stargazing Heights to kidnap a Rank Three astrologer for a proper reading.

But two hundred years ago, war broke out again between the Black Tower of Cinderbones and several neighboring towers, putting that plan on indefinite hold.

Now, seeing Sein again, the storm of emotions in Leena’s heart was impossible to put into words.

“Too much has happened over the past few centuries. I’ll fill you in later,” Sein told her with a gentle smile.

Due to the distortion of time within the space-time passage, their sense of how long they had been apart did not quite match.

Leena nodded, but before she could say more, a violent tremor shook the cavern, followed by a crushing wave of elemental pressure from the surface above.

Having battled deities before, Sein instantly recognized the source—a Rank Four being had arrived, and they were here with hostile intentions!

Leena gasped. “Is that the Black Tower Master of Bone? Why would he attack in person?”

As the apprentice of a black tower master and someone who had spent years clashing with the Black Tower of Bone, she was more than familiar with that oppressive aura.

He had only reached Rank Four a few thousand years ago and was still less experienced than the Tower Master of Cinderbones, but that did not make him any less dangerous.

By Faeloria’s standards, he would be considered a lesser deity.

His confidence in his strength was exactly why he had been unhappy with how resources around Blackhaven’s outskirts had been divided for the past ten thousand years.

A massive suction force came from above the catacomb chasm.

Sein, Leena, and the other mages struggled to stay grounded as the death and necromantic energy saturating the cavern surged upward.

Countless undead creatures began to wither as the power within their bodies was rapidly drained.

Even the skeletal beast beneath Leena’s feet let out a silent roar before it, too, lost all vitality—reduced to pure necromantic energy that was sucked away by the force above.

It was a good thing Sein had not released Lou, the half-undead girl, out of her spatial living device. With her constitution, she would have been in serious danger.

Did the Black Tower Master of Bone really have the nerve to unleash his full Rank Four power in the Magus World?

It was not long before Sein, Leena, and many of the nearby mages were pulled out of the catacomb chasm through a deep vertical shaft.

Sein managed to hold onto Leena and barely stayed steady in the air, resisting the pull of the Rank Four mage’s spell.

The other black mages below Rank Three were not nearly as lucky. They were swept up like leaves in a storm, dragged along by the vortex of death energy.

This sprawling network of mines, connected to the catacomb chasm, had over three thousand black magic initiates hidden within its depths. There were fewer fully initiated black mages, but they still numbered in the hundreds.

In Blackhaven, no one really cared about where an initiate came from. In fact, the bar to entry was so low that even an initial focus level below ten was not an issue.

As long as one could survive in the black magic academy, they were good enough to be called a black magic initiate.

As a result, enrollment was never a concern here.

If they needed more initiates, they would simply raid a nearby human settlement and drag back a fresh batch.

Any extras could always be used as test subjects.

Blackhaven was the gathering place for some of the evilest and most unruly individuals in the Magus World, which made it nearly impossible for even the guardians to keep a tight leash on it.

It was not that they did not want to control Blackhaven. They just could not.

There were too many crimes in the world. Who could realistically catch every criminal?

So instead, they decided to isolate all the black mages and black knights in one place to minimize damage to the rest of the Magus World.

Even if Blackhaven were wiped out entirely, as long as the ugliness in human nature remained, new black knights and black mages would just rise up again.

The truth was that Blackhaven had become the perfect breeding ground for black mages and black knights to flourish like nowhere else.

The horrors buried in this region went far beyond what most divine tower mages and knights could even imagine.

The number of black towers in Blackhaven had always been capped at around two hundred.

It was probably not just because the region lacked resources. The upper echelons of the Magus Civilization clearly enforced some kind of limit.

Even the number of soul towers and grand knightly orders in Blackhaven had never gone beyond two.

Maybe there were rising stars with the potential to become overlords or overmages, but they were just never allowed to cross that threshold.

Now back on the surface, Sein finally saw with his own eyes just how ugly Blackhaven could get.

Thousands of black magic initiates were gathered in the open-air basin.

Half of them came from the Black Tower of Cinderbones. The rest were from the other black towers currently waging war against it.

But it did not matter where they came from—they were all being ripped apart by the Rank Four black mage’s spell.

Thick streams of blood and flesh were fused to become grotesque monsters, while their bones were turned into a marching army of skeletons.

This Rank Four black mage clearly had the power to back up his arrogance. That level of control was not something just anyone could manage.

The only ones in this area who had not yet fallen victim to his spell were the full-fledged black mages.

The ones from the Black Tower of Bone were already trembling. Those from other black towers were turning pale with fear too.

“Join the Black Tower of Bone, and I’ll let you live,” the Rank Four black mage said as he extended a withered finger from within the sleeve of his robe.

He pointed at the crowd of several hundred full-fledged mages standing before him.

A Rank Three black mage from the Black Tower of Cinderbones replied shakily, “Esteemed Tower Master of Bone... our souls are bound to a stone stele in the Black Tower of Cinderbones. We can’t betray our tower master...”

Before he could finish his sentence, his words were drowned out by his own screams.

The Rank Four black mage’s overwhelming power shattered the Rank Three mage’s elemental shield.

Just like the other initiates, his flesh was ripped away from his bones.

That Rank Three black mage had been one of the two Rank Three black mages assigned to this mine by the Black Tower of Cinderbones.

The other overseer of this area was Leena, now standing behind Sein.