Chapter Summaries

Lundell learned that Terry Vicon-Abel had betrayed the Secret Keepers and killed the sentinels, and Su Wen agreed to help her take revenge. As Su Wen and Jiang Menghan studied an account of the Eternal Night Kingdom, they discussed how its strange reality challenged humanity’s scientific understanding.

• Lundell identified Terry Vicon-Abel as a traitor who had killed the sentinels and said she had once judged him unfit to be a Secret Keeper.
• Su Wen told Lundell to pursue revenge, and she asked him to help her; he agreed because Terry had obstructed their exploration.
• Su Wen read Ignaz Jeremiah’s account describing the Eternal Night Kingdom as a world beneath a canopy of stellar dust, where he believed he had found a rare Eden.
• Jiang Menghan questioned the account’s interpretation of the heavens, and Su Wen explained how historical ideas about aether and the universe had been challenged.
• Jiang Menghan recalled the Michelson–Morley experiment’s rejection of aether and observed that everything had changed again in their world.

Su Wen and Jiang Menghan discussed the limits of their time and the nature of psionics before a triggered Corpse Tide struck the library. Su Wen split the group’s search, sending himself and Klosan north while Lundell and Jiang Menghan headed toward the Black Tide outbreak point in northeastern Signo Province.

• Jiang Menghan reasoned that psionics carried religious connotations, and Su Wen praised her deduction.
• Klosan found no records about Black Tide-mutated lifeforms in the library, then the building trembled as a Corpse Tide began.
• Lundell sensed that the tremor came from the surface, and Shelly recognized it as a Corpse Tide like the disaster that had destroyed much of the city.
• Su Wen identified the event as a Trigger Effect, explaining that Flesh Aggregate had been planted as a watchdog to set off the tide when a resistance group threatened to rescue survivors.
• Su Wen proposed creating an illusion to mislead the enemy and concluded that sentry survivors might still exist.
• Su Wen sent himself and Klosan north toward the royal capital, while Lundell and Jiang Menghan went to the outbreak point in northeastern Signo Province; he told Jiang Menghan to contact him through Dawn if trouble arose.

Su Wen led Shelly, Lundell, and Klosan out of the library and prepared to confront the approaching Corpse Tide. He used Modular Assembly to build the Steam Heavy Truck 'Steel Roar,' then drove the group away from Return Port toward the threat.

• Shelly insisted on joining Su Wen despite having just completed the contract ritual of 'Never Revived.'
• Su Wen obtained the Travel Card 'Eternal Night Kingdom - Eden in Dream' and learned from Klosan that the Corpse Tide would reach Return Port in four hours.
• Su Wen reasoned that the enemy had set up multiple triggers and promised Lundell that she could deal with Terry Vicon-Abel herself.
• Su Wen used Modular Assembly to construct the armored Steam Heavy Truck 'Steel Roar' from the ruins.
• Klosan took the front passenger seat, Shelly sat in the back, and Su Wen drove the group away from Return Port.

Su Wen, Shelly, and Klosan traveled through the ruined wilderness beyond Return Port in Signo Province while Klosan collected specimens and discussed genetic research. A Corpse Tide surrounded the lowlands, and as the group watched from high ground, a colossal frost-wreathed dragon appeared overhead.

• Shelly recalled how the Black Tide had transformed Return Port in Signo Province from a flower-filled landscape into a wasteland, and Klosan gave her a calming lozenge.
• As the heavy truck crossed the wilderness, Klosan stopped to collect animal remains and described how their adaptations to darkness might enable Genetic Ascension.
• Su Wen and Klosan discussed her infiltration of the Starfall Transport Research Institute while the truck continued through the misty wilderness.
• A massive Corpse Tide emerged across the lowlands, and Su Wen drove the heavy truck to safety on higher ground.
• Klosan analyzed the infected with her Life Signal Detector as the Corpse Tide flooded the wilderness.
• Shelly looked up and saw a giant dragon wreathed in frost blotting out the sky.

Su Wen used the Dragon Bone Research Notes to summon the Frost Flying Dragon, which froze the Corpse Tide and its two watchers. The chapter ended with Su Wen noticing an unexpected gain amid the frozen battlefield.

• Su Wen reassured Shelly that the Frost Flying Dragon was their ally, and the Dragon Bone Research Notes revealed a new side event and reusable research traits.
• Marion and Whitney watched the Corpse Tide close in on Su Wen's truck, unaware that the Frost Flying Dragon circled overhead.
• The Frost Flying Dragon unleashed a spiritual shockwave and freezing breath, turning the Corpse Tide into ice sculptures.
• Shelly watched in awe while Klosan recorded the dragon's power and speculated about its Word Spirit and possible human applications.
• Su Wen noticed an unexpected gain as the frost also encased Marion and Whitney in ice.

Su Wen learned that the Dormant Sect had helped cause the Black Tide Crisis and planned to seek survivors as he traveled toward the royal capital. The chapter ended with a priest at Signo Third Church forcing a mother to choose which of her children would be sacrificed to Slumber.

• Su Wen drove through the frozen horde and found Marion-Kafalle, while the other captured cultist had escaped.
• Klosan interrogated Marion-Kafalle and learned that Dormant Sect members had infiltrated the Eternal Night Kingdom and contacted Sentinel Guard traitor Terry Vicon.
• Su Wen concluded that the cultists had likely left survivors in the royal capital and nearby suburbs, and Klosan called the area a fenced-in hunting ground.
• Shelly smashed Marion-Kafalle's frozen body with her Steam Greatsword, grieving the disaster that had taken her family and others.
• Su Wen's group drove toward the royal capital, while a priest at Signo Third Church ordered a mother to choose one child to receive Slumber's blessing.

Su Wen infiltrated a church held by the Dormant Sect and put its cultists and captive survivors to sleep with a Mist Card. He took the Evil God Statue’s crown for the next stage of his plan and prepared to use self-destruct robots to mislead the cultists about his location.

• Klosan explained that the Dormant Sect was using a desecrated church to imprison survivors, while Su Wen described the cultists’ fear and ignorance as a weakness.
• Su Wen drove Klosan and Shelly to the ruined outskirts of the Eternal Night Kingdom’s capital, where they planned to enter a church and turn it into an altar.
• Su Wen used the Mist Card “Great Sleeper’s Babbling” to put the church’s believers and captives into a deep sleep.
• Su Wen entered the Dormant Sect’s church and took the crown from the Evil God Statue, saying it would serve as their pass for what came next.
• Su Wen told Klosan they needed a delayed detonation to mislead the cultists and considered using his self-destruct robots against the sleeping believers.

Su Wen, Klosan, and Shelly reached the hidden Virus Research Institute in the Eternal Night Kingdom’s ruined capital and eliminated its guards. Klosan accessed the laboratory database, bringing them closer to discovering the cause of the kingdom’s virus outbreak.

• Klosan killed a Dormant Sect shadow assassin who tried to attack Shelly, and Su Wen explained that the death would support his disguise plan.
• Su Wen followed clues to an abandoned bar and used his ability to disable the mechanical interlock hiding the institute entrance.
• Su Wen, Klosan, and Shelly entered the laboratory and defeated its guards, while Shelly avenged her compatriots by killing a manager involved in the virus experiments.
• Klosan connected her terminal to the laboratory database and prepared to investigate the virus’s origins.

Klosan discovered that the virus ravaging the Eternal Night Kingdom resembled ancient Arctic variants and suspected the American Federation was involved in a broader conspiracy. Su Wen injected himself with the virus to provide Klosan with antibody data, and his abilities adapted to the contamination as Klosan rushed to test him.

• Klosan analyzed the virus and found that its ORF1A sequence resembled low-activity variants from ancestral viruses thawed from Arctic glaciers.
• Klosan warned Su Wen that she needed considerable time to create an inhibitor and suspected the American Federation’s conspiracy was connected to Loweisen’s death.
• Su Wen asked Klosan to make an inhibitor within two days and offered to provide antibodies by injecting himself with the original viral solution.
• The system weakened and reversed the contamination, recorded Su Wen’s adaptation, and awarded him the achievement With Myself as the Sword, Cleaving Open Eternal Night.
• Klosan cut open Su Wen’s injection site, drained the remaining venom, and connected a Life Signal Detector while preparing to test his blood.

Su Wen survived injecting himself with the original strain virus and obtained a Mist Card through the Time Travel Game. While Klosan studied his antibodies and Shelly helped in the laboratory, Su Wen prepared to leave the next eighteen hours to Lundell and Jiang Menghan.

• Su Wen injected himself with the original strain virus, and the Life Signal monitor showed his condition gradually stabilizing.
• The Time Travel Game awarded Su Wen the Mist Card 'ORF1A Virus Sequence Directed Modification' and revealed that it belonged to the 'Slumber' deck.
• Klosan gave Su Wen immunity-enhancing medicine, confirmed his survival, and began researching recombinant antibodies from his blood.
• Su Wen refused Klosan's request for a more intrusive examination, then gave her a sterile blood sample to study.
• Shelly assisted Klosan in the laboratory, and Klosan praised her potential as a medical worker.
• Su Wen's mission temporarily ended, and he waited for Lundell and Jiang Menghan to take over for the next eighteen hours.

Jiang Menghan and Lundell followed traces left by surviving sentinels into a snowbound tower complex, where Black Tide-corrupted engineering robots attacked them. They used their abilities to evade and misdirect the robots while three injured people hid nearby.

• Jiang Menghan and Lundell arrived at the tower complex and used Lundell’s Ash: Traceback trait to follow the escaped sentinels’ traces.
• Lundell explained the Great Library’s sentinel oath and discussed the traitor Terry Vicon and the possibility that Stephen Hawking had departed.
• A corrupted engineering robot attacked Jiang Menghan, whose pocket watch activated Artemis: Mirror Shift and moved her clear of its hammer.
• Lundell identified the robots’ clumsy movements as a weakness while three injured people hid inside a tower and wondered if Terry Vicon had caught up with them.
• Lundell asked Jiang Menghan to create an optical illusion, and Jiang placed mirror points as Lundell sped through the steel structures to lead the robots astray.

Lundell and Jiang Menghan destroyed the corrupted engineering robots and recovered their cores before following ash traces to a ruined tower. There, Lundell contacted a hidden survivor using a secret directive, opening the way to learn more about the Black Tide Disaster.

• Lundell followed Jiang Menghan's calculations to collapse the steel framework and crush the engineering robots.
• Lundell helped recover eleven engineering cores for Su Wen, who discussed future research and cooperation with her.
• Lundell and Jiang Menghan followed the strongest ash traces southwest to a ruined tower.
• Lundell found a concealed cabinet door and identified herself to the person hiding behind it with a secret request from Toro Vick.

Ash Lundell reached the surviving Cruisers in the hidden room, treated their injuries, and learned what happened during the Eternal Night Kingdom disaster. Jiang Menghan then asked Misha to lead her to the Other Shore Gate so she could investigate its traversal phenomenon.

• Lundell opened the hidden room and introduced herself as Ash, an independent special-operations sentinel, while the survivors gave their codenames as L, R, and K.
• Lundell gave K an expensive restoration injection in exchange for information, then revealed that she recognized K as Misha-Colaire from a Great Library gathering.
• Lundell explained that the Great Library had presumed the Cruisers dead, paid their families pensions, and required the survivors to keep silent about Subject Legend Rhine.
• Misha told Lundell that she and her squad had entered the Eternal Night Kingdom, where the Other Shore Gate lay in nearby ruins, and suspected Terry Vicon and the Dormant Sect had known about it.
• Jiang Menghan asked Misha to take her to the gate and described a physics experiment to approximate the wave function crossing its particle-potential barrier.

Su Wen and Jiang Menghan devised a scientific experiment to reproduce the conditions needed to cross the Border Gate, using the blizzard, Dark Matter, and Contamination Cores. The sentinels began building the amplification field, leaving the experiment not yet completed.

• Su Wen and Jiang Menghan explained how activated Dark Matter, Psionic energy, and a non-Euclidean sacrificial formation could model a wormhole and help cross the Border Gate.
• The Dawn System awarded Su Wen the [Companion] achievement, depicting Jiang Menghan studying the blizzard as a pioneer in scientifically analyzing the Gate of the Gods.
• Jiang Menghan determined that the blizzard stabilized space enough for the gravitational vortex effect and told Lundell that some Contamination Cores would be used as consumables.
• Misha confirmed that snowfall had accompanied the sentinels' arrival and ordered her team to place Contamination Cores in the newly installed Spiritual Energy amplifiers.
• Lundell watched as Jiang Menghan and Su Wen's design took shape, while Misha credited Nosis and her Precision Operation trait for the team's work.

Jiang Menghan and Lundell activated the spatial amplification field, revealing a rift through which Black Tide contamination flowed into Eternal Night Kingdom. Jiang Menghan concluded that disrupting the blizzard by rewriting the ley-line environment could destabilize the rift and help stop Terry Vicon's ritual.

• Nosis praised Jiang Menghan for accomplishing nearly all the work on the spatial amplification field.
• Jiang Menghan sensed the spatial feedback peak and told Lundell to ignite the field.
• Lundell used her cryogenic Spiritual Energy Trait to activate the amplifier, which opened a rift between the worlds.
• The rift drew in snow before repelling it, revealing black sludge from the Lost Sea flowing through a transparent membrane.
• Jiang Menghan told Su Wen what she had seen and proposed rewriting the Planet Tower Snow Mountain's ley-line environment to stop the blizzard and destabilize the rift.

Su Wen and the iceberg girl let Misha, Nosis, and L mourn the sentinels buried in the mountain range before Su Wen chose to save civilization by sacrificing its historic monuments. He activated the Metis Stardust Glimmering Ray, and a vast stellar torrent descended upon the snow-covered mountains of the Eternal Night Kingdom.

• Su Wen obtained the Black Tide Between Doors Mist Card and reassured the iceberg girl that he had already arranged a way to solve their problem.
• The iceberg girl gave Misha, Nosis, L, and the others forty minutes to say farewell to their fallen comrades.
• Misha swore she would never forget the sentinels or forgive Terry Vicon, while L and Nosis remembered their comrades' final wishes.
• As the group drove away, Su Wen decided to save civilization at the cost of its memorials and earned the achievement Civilization's First Law—Survival.
• Su Wen used the Metis Stardust Glimmering Ray Journey Card, summoning a vast torrent of stardust that fell upon the Eternal Night Kingdom's mountains.

Su Wen’s immense spiritual energy manipulation resolved the Black Tide and transformed the night sky over the Eternal Night Kingdom into a river of stars. After sharing the sight with Shelly, he fell asleep from exhaustion, leaving her to watch the stars beside him.

• Su Wen’s Metis Stardust Glimmering Ray flattened the snow mountains and left a vast river of stars across the Eternal Night sky.
• People throughout the Eternal Night Kingdom and beyond saw the starry spectacle, while the Frost Flying Dragon, the old king, and others watched from afar.
• Jiang Menghan told Su Wen the Black Tide had been resolved, and Su Wen shared wine and cola with Klosan and Shelly as they watched the sky.
• Su Wen declared that he would rewrite the world’s fate, then collapsed into sleep from spiritual energy backlash and exhaustion.
• Shelly covered Su Wen with a blanket and sat by the window, thanking Rhine as she gazed at the stars.

After rewriting the Eternal Night Kingdom’s fate, Su Wen fell asleep while Lundell’s group escaped through the Old Town and planned to rendezvous at the royal capital. Jiang Menghan suspected Branlyte’s Lantern might exist there only as a Border Relic shaped by observation, and Dormant Sect cultists arrived as Lundell prepared to confront them.

• Su Wen collapsed from exhaustion after changing the Eternal Night Kingdom’s timeline, while Jiang Menghan continued exploring in a dream.
• Lundell led Misha and the injured Enros toward an abandoned underground pipeline, using the Old Town’s surviving infected to keep the Dormant Sect and Terry Vicon off guard.
• Jiang Menghan sensed that Branlyte’s Lantern was probably not in the snowy mountain tower complex and considered whether it might lack a real physical existence under the Heisenberg uncertainty principle.
• After the sentinels rested, Misha led them into the pipeline while Lundell stayed behind, intending to collect some interest from Terry Vicon’s forces.
• Thirty-five minutes and forty-seven seconds later, Dormant Sect cultists arrived at the other end of the Old Town ruins.

Lundell ambushed the Dormant Sect cultists tracking the fugitives and slaughtered them while Jiang Menghan prepared a plan in an underground tunnel. The group found old transport robots that Nosis could repair, and Jiang Menghan asked Lundell to retrieve Abyss Order relics for her amplifier before their journey to the royal capital.

• Priest Cain led Dormant Sect cultists to the Old Town, where Lundell killed him and burned the surrounding followers.
• Lundell used John Claverhouse's Incinerating Flame Sword of Death to confuse and hunt down the encircling cultists.
• Jiang Menghan, Misha, and the others found abandoned transport robots in an underground tunnel and identified them as potential helpers for their operation.
• Jiang Menghan told Misha to have Nosis use Precision Operation to repair the robots and explained that they would create noise to interfere with the cultists.
• Jiang Menghan asked Lundell to retrieve Abyss Order relics, explaining that her Miniaturized Spiritual Energy Field Amplifier needed only a little source essence as a trigger.

Lundell’s group infiltrated the inner district of the Eternal Night Kingdom’s ruined royal capital and learned that the cultists were using infected people as biological components for autonomous machinery. They prepared to destroy the city’s Steam Core while Klosan developed an antibody treatment and Rhine slept, leaving the timing of the operation undecided.

• Lundell led her group through a hidden gate into the royal capital’s inner district, where steam trains carried mutants through the ruins.
• Lundell, Jiang Menghan, and Klosan concluded that the cultists had used infected people as biological subunits beneath a control core.
• Klosan said Rhine’s contribution had advanced her antibody research and advised the group to hide for ten hours while he recovered.
• Misha’s intelligence revealed that the cultists held rituals at the Chapel, Observatory, and Great Library and controlled the city through steam power.
• Jiang Menghan changed the group’s target to the royal city’s Steam Core and ordered Nosis to activate prepared robots after Rhine woke.