Sovereign of the Ashes

Tourmaline had no idea that her best friend had been kidnapped by her brother.

Sein and Black Oblivion were headed to Reyno Star City, located outside Magus World, and they kept the trip relatively low-key.

Black Oblivion did not dare tell anyone around him, while Sein was focused on quickly selling off a batch of materials and divine artifacts to improve his cash flow.

Technically, Sein could have just sold the divine artifacts, divine corpses, or artifact-grade materials in his possession directly to the Capiche Business Alliance.

However, doing that would not have been nearly as profitable as selling them in Reyno Star City.

Selling in Reyno meant cutting out the middlemen, and with how tight money had been for Sein in recent years, even a difference of tens of thousands of magicoins was worth the extra effort.

Building and maintaining a divine tower was far more complicated than it seemed.

No wonder so many knights and mages in Magus World chose not to establish divine towers or knight orders even after reaching Rank Four.

When the large artificial lake was beginning to take shape, Tourmaline finally snapped out of her digging frenzy.

While shaking off the dark soil from between her claws, she realized something: she could no longer sense Sein's presence.

Thanks to the dragon blood blessing she had bestowed upon him, Tourmaline could usually vaguely sense Sein's presence, as long as he remained within Magus World.

But now, his aura had completely disappeared.

There was only one explanation: Sein had left Magus World.

"Miss Lorianne, do you know where Sein went?" Tourmaline asked, tilting her dragon head as she looked at Sein's mentor, who had just arrived at the Divine Tower of Ashes.

"No idea. I'm looking for him too," Lorianne replied, blinking in return.

She had come to deliver seeds to Sein.

The unique soil makeup of Ashenreach made it hard to grow staple grain crops, which in turn slowed the population growth here compared to other regions.

That said, vegetation coverage in Ashenreach was not particularly low.

It just did not produce much grain. Instead, the region was rich in magic plants and dense forests.

The seeds Lorianne brought included both common crops for the lower-class human settlers in Ashenreach and special tree species intended for cultivation around the Divine Tower of Ashes.

Some of these specially cultivated tree types could even increase the local concentration of pyro element.

Lorianne had spent years developing them.

She even included a batch of Viridescent Seeds, which could grow into plant giants that could double as guardians when planted around the Divine Tower of Ashes.

***

When Tourmaline and Lorianne were staring at each other, Sein had already arrived at Reyno Star City.

Reyno Star City was not far from the Magus World—it was a massive star city built just outside Magus Plane.

From an astronomical perspective, if Magus World could be considered the primary star, then Reyno Star City would be a satellite orbiting it.

That said, this satellite was far larger than the others in the area.

The starport Sein had visited on Lorianne's behalf before was barely a tenth the size of the star city now looming before him.

For reference, a standard starport could dock at least ten space fortresses at once.

If Reyno Star City operated at full capacity, it could probably anchor several hundred.

And a single space fortress could be as large as a small continent, with an average diameter of over ten thousand meters.

So the fact that Reyno could accommodate hundreds of them spoke volumes about its massive scale.

It was essentially a metallic plane suspended in the void of space.

Even more impressive, Reyno Star City was theoretically capable of moving and even engaging in combat.

Originally, Magus World's starports had been designed as transportation platforms.

During the Neisse Star Domain War, several of them were deployed to the frontlines to maintain a steady energy supply for the space fortresses.

Right now, Reyno Star City was not even operating at full capacity.

But even from Sein's vantage point, there were already over two hundred space fortresses docked.

It was not hard to imagine that in its prime, the number of space fortresses this place could accommodate would far exceed anyone's expectations!

This was, without a doubt, the "Top War Platform" of Magus World—at least in terms of size, it lived up to that title.

Black Oblivion had clearly come to Reyno Star City before. While Sein was still stunned by the sheer scale of it all, Black Oblivion had already started leading him deeper into the starport.

Sein quickly noticed that many of the space fortresses docked outside the city did not belong to Magus World's knights or mages.

Their designs were more traditional and would have been considered outdated by modern standards.

From the perspective of a Rank Four or higher mage or knight in the Magus World, these older ships would probably not hold much appeal.

Moreover, many of them had been modified. Quite a few were brightly colored or had unique stylings.

Sein even spotted one entirely covered in vegetation, which was surprisingly eye-catching.

These vessels clearly belonged to members of the Magus Alliance from beyond Magus World.

To use these space fortresses, those foreign deities not only had to pay steep prices to buy them from Magus World, but they also had to hire mages from Magus World to operate and maintain them.

There had always been a saying within the Magus Alliance: only deities who possessed their own space fortresses could truly ascend to the upper echelons of the alliance.

The late Hephaes clearly fell far short of that standard.

Just by looking at the dense clusters of space fortresses docked outside Reyno Star City, it was clear that the Magus Alliance had no shortage of wealthy elites.

Sein's gaze soon shifted from the space fortresses toward the tightly packed rows of shops and storefronts lining the inner city.

Reyno Star City was far more than a simple commercial starport—it was a massive money-squandering den.

Within his line of sight, Sein even saw a group of scantily clad female extraplanar beings standing in front of a lavishly decorated building, trying to attract patrons.

Beside him, Black Oblivion's breathing grew noticeably heavier. Still, he managed to keep himself in check and continued leading Sein further into the starport.

"The really good places are all at the core of this starport," Black Oblivion said over his shoulder.

"What is going on over there?" Sein asked, pointing toward a darker part of the starport's western zone.

What he did not expect to see was an undead chimera beast, several hundred meters long, being led by a strange, bamboo-shaped foreign deity. A soul chain was looped around the beast's neck like a leash.

This undead chimera beast was no ordinary monster. With the Faceless Mask on, Sein could tell it was capable of unleashing the power of a Rank Four creature, at least for a short time.

In Magus World, necromancers and black mages were most skilled at creating synthetic chimera beasts.

The way that the undead chimera beast was being kept under control... looked unmistakably like the work of Blackhaven's black mages.

"Oh, there are many grand mages from Blackhaven here. The area you're looking at is the famous 'Blackhaven Commercial District' within Reyno Star City. Not just any black mage is allowed to open a shop or run a business here," Black Oblivion explained.

"We tend to stay away from it to avoid trouble, but it's a favorite among the foreign gods," he added.

Sein, newly advanced to Rank Four, still had a limited grasp of many affairs in Magus World.

He had known that black mages were heavily marginalized by the native powerhouses, but he had not expected them to maintain such a solid foothold in a place like Reyno Star City.

In fact, some Rank Four and above black mages and black knights from Blackhaven were regularly hired as mercenaries by foreign gods.

As long as the client could pay the fee, these black mages and black knights would take on any job.