The Lord of Ashes

Chiba Coral Island.

This is a small island located in the east-central part of the Western Islands.

The area of ​​the entire island is only one-fifth of the area of ​​Green Source Land.

There are three human kingdoms on this island.

According to the division of power territory, Chiba Coral Island belongs to the nearby Star Sword Knight Hall.

Under the water well teleportation formation of the giant mermaid Shirahoshi, Thane passed through the Water Wave Gate and arrived at the outer waters of Qianba Coral Island.

This information was collected one after another after Sain landed on the island.

Chiba Coral Island does not belong to the Black Territory, it is just close to the Black Territory, so the overall security is pretty good.

There is a knight's palace covering it, and the group of black magicians and black knights in the north don't dare to show off too much.

However, after all, it is a border area close to the Black Prison.

Chiba Coral Island and the hundreds of islands surrounding it have been infiltrated by the Black Domain for tens of thousands of years.

The overall folk customs in the nearby area are quite tough.

On average, a war of varying sizes breaks out among the three human kingdoms on the island every five years.

Whenever war breaks out, it is a time of chaos and darkness.

Black magicians often come from the north to collect the dead souls and corpses produced in the war.

For those black magicians, this is the resource they use for practice.

Including the black knights from the black domain, they often visit here. They take a lot of miscellaneous things, and sometimes they simply act as robbers and plunder a lot.

There are also some black knight attendants below the first level who have slightly changed their identities and joined these national wars as mercenaries, making the war more intense and cruel.

Doesn’t the Star Sword Knight Hall care?

Sometimes they manage it, but because they are at the forefront of the border with the Black Territory, it is difficult for this knight's palace to control everything even if it wants to.

The closer you get to the Black Territory, the more chaotic it becomes. This is the general trend.

It's definitely not something that one or two level four or five creatures can reverse.

However, the chaos in the north-central part of the Western Islands is limited to this.

The black knights and black magicians who came across the border were almost all existences below the second level. There were very few great magicians who had reached the third level and came to do evil.

As for black magicians and black knights above level four, at least in the past 20,000 years, I have never heard of any of them who dared to cross the border and give it a try.

The strength of the local strong men in the Western Islands is not weak!

It can even be said that among the number of creatures above level 4, the knights and magicians born in the Western Islands are even more powerful than those above level 4 in the Black Territory.

As for why not just erase the special area of ​​the Black Domain?

There are many reasons - there are historical reasons, there are also the layout of the high-level wizard civilization, and of course, the strength of the Black Domain itself is not weak.

Although there are not many black magicians and black knights between the fourth and sixth levels in the Black Domain, there are also stalwart beings who have reached the level of True Spirit Master.

If they want to wipe out the Black Territory with pure brute force, the price the wizard civilization will pay for this will probably be three times more than the Neisser Star Territory War!

And there is no absolute whiteness in this world.

Driving all the vicious people in the wizarding world into the Black Realm is also a more rational and cost-effective decision.

Of course, there are some reasons that Thain doesn't know about.

That is, in the history of the development of wizard civilization, the Black Domain has also made some indelible contributions to wizard civilization.

Just because of publicity reasons and confidentiality factors, these things are not widely publicized within the wizarding civilization.

In short, there must be a reason why anything can exist in the wizarding world for hundreds of thousands of years, or even longer.

Sometimes what you see on the surface is not necessarily the reality.

Qianba Coral Island is an ordinary island that is not well-known in the Western Archipelago, but the area of ​​​​this island is not small for a first-level magician like Thain.

There is no explanation about Qianba Coral Island in the magic notes left by the previous mentor Moses.

For this reason, Thane probably was mostly protecting his hometown because of Moses.

After all, black magician is not a respectable profession, and Chiba Coral Island does not belong to the black domain in a strict sense.

It is impossible for Moses to make no enemies in the dark realm.

If Moses' enemies knew about his hometown, it would be nothing if a first-level black magician came over and slaughtered a small human city.

This situation is very common in Chiba Coral Island and its surrounding islands.

The local knights and magicians in the Western Islands can't control it at all.

This is also the sorrow of the weak.

After arriving at Chiba Coral Island, Thain dressed himself up as a ranger, with a black iron sword slung around his waist, looking for traces of Gazes City.

Because from Tourmaline, a special breathing method and muscle control ability were studied, coupled with the breath-containing magic that Thain had previously mastered.

At this time, after he calmed down his aura, he dressed up as a knight-errant, which actually looked more like the real thing!

A physique of over 200 points is enough for Thain to rely on his flesh and blood body to compete with those knights who have just broken through the first level.

Apart from not mastering the relevant fighting spirit power, there is almost no difference between Thane and those physically strong knights.

A national war is currently breaking out on Chiba Coral Island. This is a medium-sized conflict, and all three human nations on the island have already participated.

The total number of people involved in the war has exceeded two million.

There are ruins and wreckage everywhere, and there are not many crops in the fields. Instead, there are mostly hungry people and dead bodies.

At this time, the weather in Chiba Coral Island was still in midsummer. Under the influence of high temperature, plagues appeared one after another in various places in the three human kingdoms in Chiba Coral Island.

War, famine, plague...

It is hard to imagine that such a tragic scene could happen in the home plane of the wizarding civilization that has shocked hundreds of millions of surrounding tribes and commanded countless alien planes.

The situation of Chiba Coral Island is not unique in the north-central region of the Western Islands.

The situation here is pretty good.

If you go further north and reach the Black Territory, there is the real hell and wasteland.

As a knight ranger, I walked on Chiba Coral Island for two months.

After being involved in two local wars during this period, Thain finally found traces of Gazes City.

…

This is the Teutonic Kingdom northeast of Chiba Coral Island.

Thain, who was riding on a warhorse covered with light chain armor, arrived in front of a stone city with a height of more than 20 meters.

This stone city is the hometown of Setho's mentor, Gazes City.

More than a hundred years ago, the city of Gazes was still part of the hinterland of the Teutonic Kingdom.

Although commerce is not very developed here, agriculture is developing well.

Many places outside the city are suitable for growing buckwheat, a specialty grain native to the Western Islands.

However, since more than a hundred years ago, the Teutonic Kingdom lost the war and lost a large number of its lands, making it the weakest kingdom on the Qianba Coral Island.

At that time, Gazes City was forced to transform from a hinterland city of the Teutonic Kingdom into a frontline city on the front line of the war.

Affected by the war, not only did the humans on Chiba Coral Island suffer numerous casualties, but famine also broke out here.

Fortunately, the plague has not appeared here yet.

The bloodstains on the stone wall in front of them that have not yet dried up indicate that a war just broke out here not long ago.