Sovereign of the Ashes
Chapter 1114: Beastmen World

Chapter 1114: Beastmen World

Unlike the lonely, drifting experience Sein had gone through in Faeloria, his travels through the Magus World brought him a sense of warmth and fulfillment.

Along the way, he shared stories of what he had seen and learned in Faeloria with the two girls.

As a fellow mage, Leena was genuinely interested. She listened closely, nodding often as he spoke.

Even though she had not begun studying the power of laws yet, Sein’s experiences still offered her valuable perspective.

Tourmaline, on the other hand, was mostly just listening for the fun of it.

The power of laws and elemental theories did not interest her at all. She was not even particularly curious about the many deities or the Avatar Crisis that had shaken Faeloria.

Instead, she spent most of her time happily playing with Lou, the half-undead girl Sein had released from her spatial living device.

Though Lou’s intelligence had improved significantly in recent years, she remained unusually clingy toward Sein.

Her half-flesh, half-undead constitution piqued Leena’s curiosity.

Leena’s understanding of necromantic and umbra magic far surpassed Sein’s—especially when it came to foundational elemental theory.

Sein had only received his more advanced knowledge on the subject thanks to the Spider Queen.

He and Leena often discussed their findings, and those exchanges brought them both fresh insight and helped them grow.

While the two mages were focused on research during their travels, Tourmaline and Lou became fast friends.

One day, as the two were playing together, Tourmaline suddenly asked, “Hey, why do you call Sein ‘big brother’?”

“Because... he’s my big brother,” Lou replied softly.

“And what are you supposed to call me, then?” Tourmaline asked, tilting her head.

After thinking for a moment, Lou said, “Big Sister...?”

Her answer made Tourmaline’s big round eyes light up.

As the youngest in her family, Tourmaline had always been the one calling others “big brother” or “big sister”. No one had ever called her that before.

Lou’s simple response made something swell in Tourmaline’s little chest.

Noticing that Lou’s strength was no higher than Rank Two, Tourmaline pumped her fist and declared, “I’ll protect you from now on!”

Even in her human form with twin hair buns, Tourmaline stood barely half as tall as Lou.

The sight of her saying that to a teenage girl made for a rather amusing scene, but Lou nodded enthusiastically.

Clearly, height and appearance did not matter. Tourmaline was absolutely qualified to be someone’s “big sister”.

Aside from Lou, Sein also let Yuri and Azelia out for some fresh air.

Most of Yuri’s mecha had been destroyed back in Faeloria.

Now that they were back in the Magus World, it was time for Sein to get something proper for his best fighter and subordinate.

For Yuri, her top pick was without a doubt the silver mecha tucked away in the Divine Tower of Verdant Spring.

It had sustained only minor damage and could still perform at the level of a Rank Four combat unit.

Granted, Yuri could barely operate a Rank One construct at the moment, but that did not stop her from testing out the higher-tier model in advance.

Sein was already thinking about what kind of price he would need to pay to get that mecha from his mentor.

Naturally, he would not dream of asking Lorianne for it for free, just because she was his mentor.

Luckily, Sein had made some serious gains in Faeloria—divine relics, corpses of deities, and rare materials. Surely, some of them would be enough to catch Lorianne’s interest.

But since the silver mecha was still in the Divine Tower of Verdant Spring, Sein would have to find something else for Yuri in the meantime.

The Western Archipelago was more economically prosperous than the Pyro Secret Society.

It also seemed to have frequent trade relations with the Marmett Union Alliance and Steel City.

In fact, those two had been the main forces involved in the destruction of the Neisse Civilization.

Even though a lot of time had passed since then, the local market still carried many goods from that civilization.

With Sein’s deep pockets and generous spending spree, over a dozen mecha units were quickly purchased and delivered into his hands right here in the Western Archipelago.

Most of them were leftover models from the Neisse Civilization, so Yuri had no trouble piloting them.

A few others were special custom units that Sein had ordered directly from Steel City.

Due to time constraints and the fact that Sein could not personally visit Steel City to inspect the models, the quality of the custom mecha units he ordered was clearly far below the ones he had built for Yuri back in Sky City.

Still, according to feedback from Steel City’s mechanics and the heavy industry factory that handled the orders, the average combat power of these units, each purchased for tens of thousands of magicoins, exceeded Rank One.

The best-performing model, a brown unit named “Praelior”, had even been personally evaluated by one of the major factories in the Steel City. They claimed it possessed combat power equivalent to a Rank Three being.

In other words, they were implying that the jaw-dropping price tag of almost 70,000 magicoins was a bargain.

Having interned in Sky City before, Sein was not about to believe these mechanics from Steel City.

The actual cost of upgrading the Burning Flame Unit back then had been even lower than this, and yet its performance was in a completely different league.

The so-called “Praelior” mecha did not even come close to half the Burning Flame’s output.

Of course, at that time, he had Old Man Peyton’s help. The Burning Flame Unit had been upgraded at cost in Sky City, with barely any markup for labor.

Now, buying ready-made units through outsourced channels in Steel City was only natural for the mechanics to factor in a profit.

Nevertheless, Steel City’s engineers and their factories had a pretty decent reputation. Their pricing had always been relatively fair.

If Sein had gone through the Capiche Business Alliance instead, he might have gotten units with slightly better performance, but it would have cost him several times more.

When piloting the Burning Flame Unit, Yuri could fight on the level of a demigod.

But with a mid-tier unit like Praelior, her combat strength would only be somewhere around mid to late stage of Rank Three.

Clearly, buying something off the shelf was not going to cut it. If Sein wanted to bring out Yuri’s full potential, he would have to commission a custom build.

As they continued traveling south through the Western Archipelago, Sein came across the Order of Mayne—a knightly order that housed a teleportation array connected directly to Beastmen World.

Beastmen World was one of the large-sized planes under the Magus Alliance’s control, and not every divine tower or knightly order was qualified to maintain long-term access to worlds of that scale.

Sein had been curious about Beastmen World for a long time. So when he and Leena stumbled across this opportunity, they exchanged a quick glance and made the decision to visit without much hesitation.

However, teleporting to Beastmen World came at a steep cost, especially for Sein, a demigod-level mage. His fare alone came to a thousand magicoins.

That was not even the most expensive part—the real problem was Tourmaline.

He had already forked over nearly ten thousand magicoins by the time she stepped onto the array.

Yet, the person in charge of operating the array was still shaking his head.

The number of energy crystals required to transport her displayed through the deep crimson elemental feedback from the array was absolutely astronomical.

Even with all that money Sein took out, it was not enough.

Looking crestfallen, Tourmaline turned to him and asked if he could just pack her into a spatial living device instead.

Unfortunately, with Sein’s current level of alchemy, he still could not craft a storage device capable of holding a Rank Four being.

And given Tourmaline’s true mass, even an ordinary spatial device probably would not be able to hold her at all.

With a rising headache, Sein turned to the operator and asked, “Do you have any resource-to-magicoins exchange service here?”

Despite his considerable wealth, he had already spent most of his ready cash outfitting Yuri and shopping his way through the Western Archipelago with Leena.

He had pretty much burned through all of the salary he earned during his tenure as a dean at the Divine Tower of Dark Flame Academy.

The operator at the Order of Mayne could tell right away that this demigod-level mage and his companions were far from ordinary, especially the girl with the twin arm ribbons.

He could not help but wonder how someone of her size could push the teleportation array past its standard load limit.

Wiping the cold sweat from his forehead, the man replied, “I’ll need to check with the higher-ups on this.”