Sovereign of the Ashes

Chapter 141: Public Courses

It had been more than half a year since Sein left the Lysian Alliance. Now that he had successfully enrolled into the Divine Tower of Verdant Spring, he felt a sense of duty to provide an update to Earl Grantt.

Although Sein never explicitly expressed it, Earl Grantt held significant importance in his life as his sole remaining blood relative.

To send his update to the Lysian Alliance, Sein considered two options.

The first was to issue an academy quest to hire initiates from the Divine Tower of Verdant Spring, tasking them with traveling to the Grantt Territory and delivering his letter.

The second option was to use the academy’s advanced magic messenger service.

The first option was a cheaper choice. It could appeal to intermediate and junior initiates seeking a longer journey to expand their horizons while earning a decent commission.

Unfortunately, it came with the drawback of being time-consuming.

Sein, as a senior initiate, had taken half a year to reach the Divine Tower of Verdant Spring. This meant the lower ranking initiates could take up to a year to deliver his letter.

The second option promised a significantly faster delivery. With the flying speed of a magic messenger, Sein’s letter could be delivered in just approximately a month.

However, it came at a significant cost—one advanced energy crystal or one magicoin per letter.

After careful consideration, Sein chose to use the magic messenger.

Through this incident, Sein discovered the value of a magicoin was equivalent to an advanced energy crystal in the Divine Tower of Verdant Spring.

Sein recalled exchanging a few basic healing potions for one magicoin during the mini trade fair near Berthold City. That was truly a profitable transaction.

Sein handed over a concise letter to an initiate on duty in the quest hall.

While many magical initiates in the Divine Tower of Verdant Spring were considered “exceptional prodigies”, not all of them were as financially well-off as Sein, possessing an abundance of magicoins and energy crystals.

Knowledge acquisition always came at a price, especially through the expensive courses taught by full-fledged mages.

Even those initiates with strong family backgrounds struggled to cover all their expenses at the academy.

As a result, initiates were seen working in various areas within the academy. With the exception of the central teaching hall, which were predominantly managed by full-fledged mages, they could be found working in the library, academy building, quest hall, training area, plantation, and other facilities.

Their responsibilities ranged from simple tasks like maintaining the divine tower academy’s cleanliness to more complex roles like assisting full-fledged mages in sustaining the academy’s daily operations.

Certain roles demanded specific qualities and skills, such as serving as an assistant to full-fledged mages or engaging in specialized tasks within areas like the magic beast breeding zone or the plantation.

While outsiders might perceive the initiate of the Divine Tower of Verdant Spring as a prestigious and honorable status, a closer inspection revealed a less pleasant reality.

Initiates in the divine towers often led more hectic lives compared to those in ordinary mage councils.

However, their busy schedules attested to their greater diligence.

The divine tower academies imparted not only knowledge but also delivered more profound and far-reaching lessons to their initiates.

***

Once the public courses commenced, Sein temporarily set aside the research he had been working on.

Instead, he became a regular attendee of the major public classes, often carrying a blank magic notebook wherever he went.

The public classes at the Divine Tower of Verdant Spring primarily catered to intermediate, junior, and fresh magic initiates.

These courses, aimed at guiding novice spellcasters into the realms of the elements, were made entirely free.

As a senior initiate, Sein undeniably stood out in these classes which were predominantly designed for lower-ranking initiates.

Many of the lower-ranking initiates at the Divine Tower of Verdant Spring were curious about the origin of this unusual senior initiate and how he ended up attending these basic courses.

Sein, however, remained unperturbed by the curious glances.

Although he had acquired a fair amount of basic knowledge during his time at the Black Magic Academy, the knowledge was imparted by black mages.

The teaching capabilities of the carefully selected full-fledged mages at the Divine Tower of Verdant Spring were naturally incomparable to those of the black mages with a twisted nature.

Moreover, the Divine Tower of Verdant Spring’s comprehensive coverage of basic knowledge surpassed the small Black Magic Academy in Mystralora City.

For instance, the “Basics of the Lumen Element” and “Fundamental Knowledge on the Otherworldly Planes” that Sein had been attending lately were not offered at the Black Magic Academy.

Observing the young initiates eagerly absorbing knowledge in the divine tower, Sein could not help but feel a twinge of jealousy.

When he was their age, he was either nervously attending Master Collance’s anatomy class while fearing he would end up as a specimen on another initiate’s experiment table, or working on mandatory academy quests alone in the dark, oppressive underground space.

The Black Magic Academy offered no leniency. There was no such thing as being assigned easier quests simply because one was a low-ranking initiate.

By the age of these younger initiates, Sein had already killed more than a dozen underground demihumans seeking to harm him.

While Sein attended the courses offered at the Divine Tower of Verdant Spring, he observed a significant departure from his experiences at the Black Magic Academy.

This was an observation he made during the Extraplanar Creature Anatomy class—a rather niche subject.

Despite being a free public course, it attracted only a small number of initiates. Only a little over twenty individuals, including Sein, attended this class.

Compared to courses like the “Basics of the Pyro Element” and the “Basics of the Hydro Element”, which drew crowds of one to two hundred initiates, the attendance for the Extraplanar Creature Anatomy class was notably meager.

In the classroom, a full-fledged mage named Lance conducted a dissection lesson for the small group of initiates before him.

Unlike Master Collance, who preferred using human corpses for dissection, Lance used the bodies of extraplanar humanoid creatures.

The subtle scent of blood in the air was extremely unsettling, which explained the reason behind the low attendance of junior initiates in this class.

Nevertheless, there was a considerable number of intermediate initiates, making up over sixty percent of the twenty or so individuals in the classroom. Surprisingly, there was another senior initiate, aside from Sein, attending the class.