Sovereign of the Ashes

As the battle concluded, Leena rushed to Sein’s side.

The Iron-Backed Black Ape had succumbed to their attacks.

The sporadic twitching of its limbs was nothing more than the last reactions of its dying neurons.

Leena, also detecting the activities to the west, turned to look in that direction alongside Sein.

“Should we check it out?” she asked.

Over the past three years, Sein and Leena had gone through a great deal.

Their experiences ranged from fierce battles to internal conflicts among knights and mages of the same rank, as well as the witnessing of rare phenomena within the secret realm.

Their journey to the Knight Continent was intended to hone their skills and broaden their knowledge.

Thus, when Sein detected a peculiar elemental disturbance in the western jungle, his first instinct was to explore further.

Driven by a thirst for the unknown, curiosity was a wellspring of growth for mages in the Magus World.

“Let’s take care of this black ape first, then we’ll check it out,” Sein suggested with a nod to Leena.

Together, the two mages quickly processed the massive Iron-Backed Black Ape into valuable magical components.

This Rank One creature was likely more valuable than the Noctowl Stag Sein had previously hunted with Guinness and others.

Its larger size and greater yield of materials was one of the many advantages.

After extracting the crystal core from the Iron-Backed Black Ape, Sein was astonished to find the creature’s heart still beating.

“This heart is an exceptional material for synthesizing undead chimeras, particularly prized by the black mages of Blackhaven. It could fetch between two hundred to three hundred thousand units of souls there,” Leena remarked.

Blackhaven suffered from a notable scarcity of tangible resources, energy crystals and magicoins were seldom circulated there.

As a result, souls became the primary medium of exchange.

The souls Leena referred to were specifically those harvested from lower-tier beings below Rank One.

In the Astral Realm, souls also served as a common currency.

Some powerful black mages, capable of trading with distant otherworldly beings through magic, mostly used souls in these transactions.

These black mages predominantly sourced their souls from ordinary humans in the Magus World.

As a top-tier plane, even the lowest-ranking human civilians in the Magus World provided souls of a quality far surpassing those of the weaker beings from middle and low-level planes.

Thus, the souls from the Magus World were highly sought after in the market.

Upon arriving in the Western Archipelago, Sein observed frequent outbreaks of intense kingdom wars on the islands bordering Blackhaven. It seemed likely that black mages were secretly harvesting souls there.

Sein had gained a comprehensive understanding of Astral Realm’s economics during his studies at the divine tower.

Naturally, he was well aware that energy crystals, souls, and the cores of higher-level beings were the most essential mediums of exchange here.

Beyond these, neither rare metals nor unique ingredients were as universally employed as those three mediums.

After examining the pulsating heart for a few moments, Sein handed it to Leena, who was standing before him.

Leena had already made significant strides in synthesizing undead chimeras, while Sein was still a novice in this area.

Thus, it was undoubtedly the wisest decision to entrust such a high-end material to Leena, since Sein could practice with lower-grade materials.

Beyond the precious ape’s heart, Sein had also given Leena half of the deceased Rank Two mage’s corpse, as well as the remains of three Rank One knights and Rank One mages.

Only under Leena’s skilled hands would the value of these materials be maximized.

Recently, however, Sein had felt a twinge of frustration. Although Leena had not been dabbling in necromancy and summoning arts as long as he had, she had surpassed him by successfully summoning a mummy as powerful as a Rank One being.

Of course, Sein excelled in other areas.

He was superior to Leena in alchemy, and apothecary, as well as pyro and lumen magic. Additionally, his deeper understanding of soul magic marked another area where he surpassed her.

Together, the couple complemented each other perfectly, each excelling in different domains yet sharing overlapping expertise.

Sein and Leena managed to swiftly complete the processing of the Iron-Backed Black Ape’s remains.

Thanks to Sein’s space conch, they could store all the massive dismembered parts of the carcass—an advantage that other knights and mages of the same rank did not have.

Knights and mages in the trial zone found their spatial storage equipment quickly filled up and were forced to frequently discard lower-value resources.

Unlike them, Sein could pack away everything without concern.

After efficiently processing the ape’s remains, Sein and Leena set off toward the west, flying side by side.

***

Before Sein and Leena, a towering green elemental gate stood, reaching ten meters in height and spanning five meters in width.

It had materialized out of the blue as if emerging straight from the ground.

Sein and Leena were not the first to arrive. By the time they reached the gate, about a dozen knights and mages had already gathered around it.

Among the crowd, Sein noticed a creature with a blue fishtail and a crab.

Though similar in appearance to a mermaid, the fishtailed creature was actually a “sharkfolk”.

During his travels along the southern coast, Sein had come across the “Half-Sharkfolks”—hybrids of humans and lesser sharkfolks.

The blue-tailed sharkfolk before him, however, was clearly from a more noble lineage.

This marked Sein’s first encounter with aquatic races within the Knight Continent’s trial zone.

The moment Sein and Leena arrived, they immediately drew the attention of the gathered knights and mages.

Having freshly emerged from a battle, their unsettled powers radiated an intense elemental aura, broadcasting to all their formidable presence.

That caused the blue-tailed sharkfolk and crab to shift uneasily outside the elemental gate.

After another glance at the elemental gate before them, the two aquatic beings chose to depart silently.

Their departure stirred no reaction among those gathered around the elemental gate.

As the dominant races in the Magus World, both knights and mages harbored an innate aversion to aquatic races, viewing them as foreign and alien.

Despite this cold reception, no overt hostility was displayed toward these aquatic beings.

Having joined the Magus Alliance, the aquatic races were recognized members of the Magus World and thus deserved a basic level of respect.

The gate before them was not opened yet, so Sein and Leena waited patiently along with the other knights and mages.

While waiting, Sein and Leena activated their Aura Restraint spells, suppressing their previously intense and conspicuous auras.

This shift did not go unnoticed; rather than reducing the scrutiny from the surrounding knights and mages, it intensified their fears instead!

Leena had learned the Aura Restraint spell from Sein.

This ability, inspired by Tourmaline’s unique aura restraint technique, effectively concealed their auras, rendering their true strength almost imperceptible to the untrained eye.

As they waited, the crowd continued to grow with the arrival of more knights and mages.

Among the newcomers, Sein recognized a familiar face.

“Hey, Angreas!” he called out to the Rank One Kermoine Serpent Warlock who had just arrived.