Chapter 1334: Exchange Initiate Program

After ending his talk with Lorthisra, Sein tidied up the laboratory and went back to his research.

Before long, at least to Sein, word came that the captured Rank Four Ivory Bone had been brought back.

The Magus Alliance was fair in such matters. Even Noctus, the Rank Five being who caught Ivory Bone, was generous.

Sein and the others ended up redeeming Ivory Bone for less than two million magicoins, a price far below the worth of a Rank Four creature, especially one still alive.

Since Sein was too busy to deal with this matter right away, he asked Angreas to handle it.

What fate awaited Ivory Bone back in that den of snakes was none of Sein’s concern.

All he cared about was the origin flame, the other body parts, and rare high-grade materials that would soon be his.

With that news, Sein reconsidered the mission Mayne had proposed.

This so-called high-risk, high-reward secret mission was his decision alone. He neither asked for advice nor sought anyone’s opinion.

The path was his to choose, and where it led in the future would also be up to him.

He was not about to run to Lorianne like a child to ask if he should accept it.

What would she even say?

***

That day, after finishing an experiment, Sein did something unusual. He set aside his endless research plans and wandered around the Divine Tower of Ashes.

The tower, divided into upper, middle, and lower sections, only allowed initiates and registered mages into the surface and certain parts of the underground levels.

The lowest level was reserved mainly for Sein’s experiments.

As dean, Marie had access to every level and even kept a laboratory down there.

But being a Dendromancer, she had little interest in the intensely pyro elemental-rich environment at the bottom.

Most of the time, Marie preferred to stay in her residence or office on the top floor.

Another recruitment season had arrived, and the Divine Tower of Ashes was once again alive with activity.

The recently concluded Pyreling World War not only brought registered mages a fortune, but also boosted the overall reputation of the divine tower.

These days, the Divine Tower of Ashes was linked to quite a number of foreign planes, including White Sand World and Pyreling World.

Sein’s divine tower had also established stable teleportation arrays connected to Pyreling World’s vassal planes.

Although those resource-poor, low-level planes and microplanes held little appeal for Rank Four spellcasters like him, many knights and mages with little experience in interplanar wars or travel saw them as exciting new worlds to explore.

The rich resources of these connected planes had also drawn knights and mages from beyond Ashenreach to the Divine Tower of Ashes.

Just as Sein once traveled through Magus World, many traveling Rank One and Rank Two knights and mages stopped by Ashenreach during their journeys.

The number of initiates at the Divine Tower of Ashes had also been steadily climbing over the years.

Under its name, Sein had funded four medium-sized public magic academies and nine smaller ones within the Alveroth Empire.

In truth, public academies were struggling, despite receiving funding from the imperial treasury.

Although the empire’s “magic for all” policy came with astronomical yearly costs in magicoins, the amount each institution actually received was meager once distributed.

It was no wonder these public academies were so strict with their graduates, with indentured servitude-style contracts becoming the norm.

Training initiates had always been a money-losing business. Without the Magus Alliance pouring large sums into magic education each year, many divine towers would have trouble keeping their doors open.

Sein invested over a million magicoins in the Alveroth Empire. In return, he secured a ten-year exchange initiate program with the empire’s public academies.

With that, he could finally rid himself of the Alveroth Empire’s inspection team breathing down his neck.

A large part of his divine tower’s initiates come from the Alveroth Empire. Most of them were children abducted by black mages and brought to Ashenreach.

Given the vast distance between the two regions, most would never be able to return home unless they managed to become full-fledged mages.

Thanks to the divine tower’s long-term exchange programs with several academies in the Alveroth Empire now, initiates who had been away from home for years now had a chance to visit their families.

Naturally, the competition for those exchange program slots each year was fierce!

The young initiates were giving it everything they had, and this had fostered a healthy, competitive atmosphere.

In fact, even before this, the Divine Tower of Ashes had already built a fiercely competitive environment for its initiates through strict academy rules, making it more intense here than in most other divine towers.

Many initiates from elsewhere, especially newcomers, would probably have a hard time adapting to the high-pressure learning atmosphere.

Even with all that academic pressure, both Sein and Marie were still popular and respected among the initiates.

The harsh environment in the Divine Tower of Ashes reminded these young mages that the world was far from the safe and idyllic place they might imagine.

The tower offered them a chance to learn, backed by generous welfare policies, and for that, they should be grateful.

The delegation that had gone to the Alveroth Empire to discuss the exchange initiate program had been led personally by Marie.

The female dean’s warm and gentle manner won her the favor not only of initiates but also of most full-fledged mages in the tower.

As for the public academies in the Alveroth Empire, they had not only received sponsorships ranging from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of magicoins but also gained a long-term collaboration with the “renowned” Divine Tower of Ashes Academy.

There was no reason to refuse such an opportunity.

Some even promoted their collaboration with the Divine Tower of Ashes as a selling point, enticing initiates with the promise of a chance to study at a divine tower.

As a result, there was a noticeable improvement in the development of those public academies compared to the past!

Looking at the bustling, crowded divine tower, Sein could not help but marvel at how far it had come in just a few years.

At the same time, he felt a twinge of pain. Sustaining this growth had taken no small effort. He had run numerous gray-market ventures in Ashenreach and fought in several interplanar wars that brought in enormous profits.

Most newly appointed divine tower masters could not possibly match Sein’s resources.

Of course, he was not doing this out of charity.

While training more skilled initiates and mages for the Magus Civilization, he was also reaping immense personal gains.

An interplanar war could never be fought by a single Rank Four being alone.

The Divine Tower of Ashes now had over a thousand registered mages, and in the future, that number could reach tens of thousands or even more!

While these low-ranking mages kept learning and pushing forward, Sein could not afford to stand still either.

With his mind now clear, he finally had his answer to the secret mission Mayne had proposed.