There was a saying: the greater the expectation, the greater the disappointment.
It was not just the vacant Plane Nodes in the surrounding area. Under the guidance of the Demigod-level Magician Shubert, Saine inspected seventeen Plane Nodes across the southern Ebarute Empire.
Not a single one fully satisfied Saine.
Either the intensity of its fire elemental laws was too low to meet Saine's standards.
Or its law intensity was too high—so high that the surroundings had become a sea of fire and a region of dead volcanoes. Building a Holy Tower in such a place would likely make it difficult even for Floating Ships carrying apprentices to enter.
There were other issues as well, such as the elemental composition within a Plane Node being incompatible with Saine.
Or there was one Plane Node that essentially met Saine's bottom line in the broader sense, but it had a problem: two Holy Towers established by Level-6 Magicians stood nearby.
With two Level-6 Holy Towers around creating a siphoning effect, carving out a place for himself in such a resource environment could hardly be summed up with a single word like "difficult."
At Saine's request, Shubert continued leading him northward into the central and northern regions of the Ebarute Empire.
Choosing a Plane Node was not so easy. If one could find a suitable Holy Tower site after spending merely a dozen years, or a few decades, that would truly be seeing ghosts.
Moreover, during his inspection of the Ebarute Empire, Saine had also gained a fairly thorough understanding of this top Wizard World power's policies for directing resources toward newly promoted Magicians above Level 4.
Setting aside those flashy but impractical preferential policies, the resource support the Ebarute Empire could offer a newly promoted Holy Tower Master like Saine was rather limited.