Sovereign of the Ashes

Farke was a Rank One mage from the Divine Tower of Ashes.

He hailed from the Alveroth Empire—not as some unfortunate child abducted by black mages, but as an exchange student sent to the Divine Tower of Ashes since his initiate days.

Still, his background was far from privileged. He was the son of commoners from the Magic Empire, admitted into one of the empire’s public magic academies only because his magical aptitude met the requirements.

Children from noble families typically attended private academies or prestigious divine tower academies.

Only those without status or connections, like Farke, were sent to public academies.

Farke happened to enroll at the right time. Just a year later, a policy change sent him to the Divine Tower of Ashes as an exchange student.

Once there, Farke threw himself into his studies. His consistent performance and diligence paid off. After competing in the Regional Inter-Divine Tower Academy War and ranking 16th in his tower, he successfully advanced to Rank One.

Upon becoming a full-fledged mage, Farke signed a long-term contract with the Divine Tower of Ashes. This was an inevitable step for most mages trained there.

The tower offered countless resources and opportunities to initiates of humble origins, but those gifts came with obligations.

The principle of equivalent exchange had been drilled into them since their very first lesson.

Farke held no resentment toward the Divine Tower of Ashes. If anything, he was deeply grateful, like most freshly advanced full-fledged mages from the tower.

He even moved his family from the distant Alveroth Empire to settle in Ashenreach.

And so, a small magic family took root there, with a Rank One mage as its pillar.

Farke was just one among many full-fledged mages serving under the Divine Tower of Ashes.

Since Sein had founded it, the atmosphere among spellcasters in Ashenreach and its surrounding regions had transformed beyond recognition compared to a thousand years ago.

The laws of divine towers and knightly orders of Magus World had become deeply woven into everyday life.

Divine towers stood across every corner of the world, some even hidden deep underground, beneath the oceans, atop frozen mountains, or in the middle of deserts.

While their role in suppressing planar nodes was well known, the higher echelons of the Magus Civilization likely had another goal in mind.

They wished to use these divine towers to civilize the wild lands and usher every creature of Magus World into a golden age of magic.

In the sky, thunderous artillery fire and bursts of elemental energy lit up the dim plane.

Clad in a black robe, Farke darted out of a battered bunker and flew toward a nearby slanted tower.

That tower had not always leaned.

But after enduring repeated bombardments from the Gallant Federation’s fleet, it had been blasted off balance and became permanently tilted.

A thin yellow radiation barrier shimmered faintly around it.

No one knew how much longer the tower would hold, just as Farke had no idea how much longer he would.

The war in Radbow World was Farke’s first real interplanar conflict.

Back in his academy days at the Divine Tower, he had heard his seniors boast about their experiences fighting in Pyreling World.

He had often imagined what an interplanar war might be like, but he never expected the real thing to be this tough.

When the Divine Tower of Ashes Army first arrived in Radbow World, their advance had been unstoppable under their tower master’s command.

Within just three years, they had wiped out most of the resistance.

At the time, Farke thought interplanar war was not such a big deal.

Although there had been casualties in the tower, he had come out unscathed.

Shielded by knights and waves of enslaved creatures, he did not even get a scratch on him.

When the campaign ended, he was even rewarded handsomely in magicoins and managed to collect several valuable Eye Demon specimens.

Farke thought his luck would last forever, but reality proved him wrong.

Now, as he entered the leaning tower, a series of rough, wheezing coughs echoed from the control room on the second floor.

The control room used to be on the seventh floor, but that had been reduced to rubble. Only the bottom three floors of the tower still functioned; the rest had been destroyed... Most of the magic arrays and devices above the third floor had also stopped working.

Like many mages from humble backgrounds, Farke had studied a bit of everything, especially alchemy and array arts.

He had never been able to afford the luxury of buying finished goods, so he learned to make his own.

Unfortunately, Farke had no way to repair the shaky magic tower. It was not due to lack of skill or knowledge; he simply did not have the materials needed to rebuild it...

“Master Nimitz, I’ll take over for you. You should head back to the bunker and rest for five hundred sandglasses,” Farke said softly.

The coughing he had heard earlier came from Nimitz, who was huddled in a corner of the control room.

He was nearly seven hundred years old, with white hair and a beard.

Among Rank One mages, Master Nimitz was considered old.[1]

He was said to have come from the Byrne Empire, having joined the Divine Tower of Ashes for its generous terms.

In his younger days, Nimitz had traveled far and wide across the Magus World.

After arriving on the Radbow World battlefield, Farke had grown close to him through frequent collaborations. He always enjoyed listening to the old mage share tales of his journeys through Magus World and the member planes of the Magus Alliance.

Farke himself was only a little over a hundred and fifty years old and had yet to leave the Divine Tower of Ashes for his own travels.

Before being sent to the Radbow World front, the only foreign plane he had visited was the White Sand World, where he had spent three years on rotational garrison duty shortly after advancing to Rank One.

The energy crystals produced there were truly remarkable... For many mages from smaller towers, such foreign garrison assignments were considered a privilege.

“Master Nimitz, you should purge the radiation particles in your body. I still have a few Woodleaf Grass left,” Farke said as he stepped into the dim control room.

Nimitz was frail, not just from old age but from years of accumulated battle wounds.

Most magic towers in Radbow World ran on radiation energy. Younger mages like Farke could handle the exposure, but for someone like Nimitz, even the faint traces of radiation that seeped into his body took a toll.

Master Nimitz opened his weary eyes. His clouded gaze lingered on Farke for a long while before he murmured at last, “Ah, Farke. You’re here.”

1. Translator’s Note: Fun fact—Nimitz is actually the name of a spatial passage in Ylli Knight Alliance, introduced in Chapter 548. At first, I thought this might be the mage who established it. Considering he’s only 700 years old at this point in the story, my theory seems to be wrong. ☜