Azan Ruby City-State was a city-state of immense renown during the Dark Age. It was not famed for formidable military strength, but for wealth that was known throughout the Western Continent. Black Flame Wine, an exquisite liquor brewed by the Azan Ruby Family through a secret method, was the Azan Ruby City-State's greatest source of income.
Drinking Black Flame Wine regularly could make a warrior's body tougher and a mage's spirit more refined.
Whether for warriors or mages, Black Flame Wine possessed extraordinarily powerful supplementary effects. Thus, in the later years of the Dark Age, the Azan Ruby City-State forged firm alliances with several city-states of exceptional military might.
Then came the Church's assault. The Order of Penitent Knights, the Order of Judgment Knights, and the Order of Guardian Knights surged in like a tide, joined by the brutal attacks of one peerless Church powerhouse after another. The Azan Ruby City-State and its allies were either destroyed or forced to submit beneath the Church's iron power.
The Azan Ruby Family chose destruction. They destroyed the brewing formula, killed all their enemies themselves, and all the Church obtained were three hundred thousand barrels of Black Flame Wine from the enormous wine cellars beneath the city-state.
For more than a thousand years of the Revival Age, Black Flame Wine had been a peerless delicacy reserved for the Church's highest-ranking core figures. But after more than a millennium had passed, it was said that even the Church had little left. Now, aside from the three Great Pontiffs, who could occasionally enjoy a taste, even the grand elders of the holy halls could not hope to drink a single cup.
The Black Flame Wine circulating on the market was mostly unearthed by adventurers from ruins scattered across the land. Tempered by the passage of