Sovereign of the Ashes

In addition to Marie, now serving as dean, Sein had recently appointed another Rank Three grand mage as vice dean.

The individual in question was Pekerman, a Rank Three Mechanic who had joined the Divine Tower of Ashes following the White Sand World War.

He was a traveling mage, and joining the Divine Tower of Ashes was just a temporary stop on his journey.

When Sein proposed that he collaborate with Peyton to study the silver mecha housed within the divine tower, the brown-mustached mechanic agreed to extend his contract as vice dean from fifty years to two hundred.

Along with finalizing both appointments, Sein also reviewed the development projects in Ashenreach over the past few decades.

Thanks to Aurelia's generous allocation of magicoins, seven floating ports were now under construction in Ashenreach.

The total number of floating ports was already approaching that of the Viridescent Land.

And judging by Aurelia's plans, she was far from finished.

Meanwhile, the Divine Tower of Ashes had also placed an order with the Magus Alliance for approximately two hundred airships during this period.

Realistically, Ashenreach did not require anywhere near that many airships.

However, Aurelia had secretly established a communication channel between Ashenreach and Blackhaven, and many of those airships were now engaged in interregional trade.

Her success in this area was closely tied to the achievements of the Dark Elf Queen, who had been consolidating power underground in recent years.

Backed by the divine authority of the Spider Queen, the Dark Elf Queen had subdued most of the dark creatures in the regions surrounding the Divine Tower of Ashes.

A stable, orderly system for the underground world was now beginning to take shape.

Initiates at Sein's academy were no longer limited to completing tasks in the western magic beast forest or around Ashenreach, they could also venture into the underground space to broaden their horizons.

In fact, more and more initiates were starting to explore the deeper underground.

That was because that place was far easier to access than the magic beast forest to the west of the Divine Tower of Ashes.

On top of that, the rewards for completing underground quests were significantly more lucrative than surface missions.

At present, the total number of magic initiates at the Divine Tower of Ashes had stabilized at around four thousand for now.

It was an number for the tower's current stage of development.

Technically, Sein could recruit even more initiates, but doing so would draw unnecessary attention and also strain the tower's teaching capacity.

Four thousand was enough to keep all of the tower's academic mages fully engaged.

Once the Regional Inter-Divine Tower Academy War began, about three thousand of those four thousand initiates would likely be qualified to participate in the trial.

For a newly established divine tower, that was already quite an impressive achievement.

***

In addition to these positive developments, Sein had also faced his share of challenges recently.

Ashenreach had long been a chaotic region, having nurtured a dense concentration of dark forces over the ages.

Lorthisra's authority could influence certain dark creatures in the region and even pressure the more powerful black mages, particularly those with secret ties to the Western Archipelago, into showing some restraint.

However, low-level black mages, or those who had never set foot in the Western Archipelago, were not swayed by her reputation. Many of them likely had not even heard of her.

Over the past thirty years, the Divine Tower of Ashes had suffered twenty-seven black mage attacks.

That was almost one attack per year—an astonishingly high rate.

These black mages, who had lived in Ashenreach for generations, clearly viewed the Divine Tower of Ashes's emergence as a threat.

Fortunately, most Rank Three black mages, and even a few peak Rank Twos, had held back, deterred by certain rumors circulating from Blackhaven.

Without that deterrence, this group of ruthless black mages might very well have banded together to drive the Divine Tower of Ashes out of the region!

Black mages might not have been able to take on a divine tower head-on, but they could wear one down over time through raids, harassment, defamation, and an endless barrage of petty aggression.

And as a Rank Four mage, Sein could not directly intervene in the Magus World.

It was only now that he truly understood why so many mages loathed black mages.

They always broke the rules, while most in Magus World, including Sein, preferred to work within them.

One of the casualties in a recent black mage hunting operation in Ashenreach was a Rank One knight from House Grantt—Sein's great-grandnephew, someone who shared his bloodline to a certain extent.

It was the third fatal incident since the Divine Tower of Ashes had been established. Most of the other encounters had resulted only in injuries.

House Grantt shared aligned interests with Sein, so they had contributed the most to maintaining peace in the region.

Sein had never actually met that family member.

He was reportedly an ambitious young man who had only just broken through during Sein's campaign in White Sand World.

The fall of the knight from House Grantt enraged Sein. He immediately ordered Marie to summon all nearby knights and mages on behalf of the Divine Tower of Ashes, initiating a coordinated crackdown on black mage activity throughout Ashenreach.

Thanks to Aurelia's economic initiatives over the past few years, especially the opening of the Verdant Wave Canal, the overall population of Ashenreach had been steadily growing.

Many knights and mages passing through the region were willing to temporarily take on contracts from the divine tower to deal with the black mages, who already had a terrible reputation throughout Magus World.

In fact, quite a few had come specifically for this reason.

The number of black mages in Ashenreach was second only to Blackhaven.

The black mage problem in Ashenreach, rooted in deep historical factors, was not something that could be solved overnight.

Many knights and mages who had gotten into trouble elsewhere, or could no longer make a living in more regulated territories, often ended up in one of two places: Blackhaven or Ashenreach.

That had become the norm.

Due to certain political and strategic realities, Sein could not simply wipe out every black mage in Ashenreach.

But this time, he was truly pissed.

He had come to understand how naive and unrealistic it would be to present an absolute resolution on the black mage issue at the upcoming Magus Alliance Conference.

"Maybe I should reframe the proposal to something like offering black mages a chance at reform instead?" Sein mused.

He did not believe all black mages were inherently evil.

Some, like Leena and Morsidor, had been driven to that path by circumstances beyond their control.

As if that were not enough, another source of frustration had emerged for Sein: two teleportation array nodes he had quietly built for smuggling initiates had been dismantled.

He still did not know who was responsible, but it was most likely the work of Magus Alliance enforcers.

Fortunately, the ones behind it had probably not linked the activity back to the Divine Tower of Ashes just yet.

Thanks to contingency plans Sein had put in place, and given Ashenreach's already messy reputation, it was likely the blame would fall on the black mages operating in the area.

Now, what Sein needed was clear.

He had to take decisive action and launch a major crackdown on the increasingly brazen activities of the black mages in Ashenreach!