Chapter Summaries

Marco Gage fled after finding his name on an execution notice, while the Academic Federation’s new students heard a distorted account of Colin’s exam scandal and appointment as a mentor. Colin then pressed Professor Hector for a full accounting of the money behind the scheme, leaving the investigation unresolved.

• Marco Gage joined a mercenary caravan to Dragon's View City, where he spotted an execution notice listing him as a criminal and panicked.
• When the mercenaries asked his name, Marco called himself “Hungry Wolf” and hid his fear from them.
• At the apprentice cafeteria, Cours told Finn and Ilana that Milos had switched Colin’s perfect exam paper, Marco had confessed, and Professor Hector had brought Colin back as a mentor.
• Ilana cautioned Finn not to mistake the Academic Federation’s fairness for equality, while Cours announced that Colin would soon move into the Tower of the Great Sage.
• Barrett realized that his traveling companion Mr. Colin was the Imperial Prince and that his failed interview had resulted from a switched paper.
• Leon questioned Professor Hector about Milos’s crime, then demanded to know where the three million gold coins had gone and whose hands they had passed through.

Leon pressed Professor Hector Rayne about the missing three million gold coins, then negotiated for access to the void by promising Hector that his research would eventually benefit the Academic Federation. In the Meditation Room, Ariste Thorne learned of the bargain and ordered Skain to discover Leon’s desires while concealing the Thorne Society.

• Leon asked Hector for the names of the students compensated for the stolen gold, but Hector said only the Sage Council might know.
• Leon shifted the discussion to void access, and Hector agreed to fight the people above him for a share of its resources.
• Leon declined personal attendants and said he could trust his own people, including Sarah.
• Skain reported Leon and Hector’s conversation to Ariste, who judged Leon sharper than expected but assumed his motives were simple.
• Ariste ordered Skain to approach Leon as Hector’s apprentice, learn his preferences, and keep the Thorne Society and Ariste’s involvement secret.

Leon arrived at the Academic Federation as Prince Roxsey Colin and explored its towers before settling into a lavish private suite. After receiving his formal appointment as a mentor, he planned to teach the Federation’s students and investigate its Virtual Realm.

• Corgi guided Leon, Sarah, and Taff through the Tower of the Great Sage and across Scholar Plaza to Leon’s residence.
• Leon gave Corgi a high-grade magic crystal as thanks, then explored the suite’s magical furnishings and began reading about the Federation’s rune magic.
• Sarah checked the suite for hidden Magic Arrays while Leon said he intended to teach students and study the Virtual Realm.
• An owl delivered Leon’s formal appointment as a mentor, listing his laboratory, lecture hall, research funding, and other resources.
• Leon considered what unconventional first lesson he would give the Federation’s students.

Barrett and the other students gathered for Colin’s first public lecture, where Leon, posing as Colin, welcomed the overflowing crowd and began a lesson called “Science.” He introduced light and used a prism to suggest that it could be dissected, leaving the students poised to see what his lesson would reveal.

• Barrett regretted missing an earlier chance to speak with Colin, struggled through Basic Magic Theory, and learned that his wealthy roommate had come to the Academic Federation after his family’s New World business was destroyed.
• Cours told Ilana and Finn that Colin would teach a public lecture worth four credits, and Barrett rushed to register after overhearing the news.
• More than a thousand students and graduates crowded into the lecture hall, where Ilana, Cours, Finn, Barrett, and the disguised Skain awaited Colin.
• Leon told the Assistant Instructor to leave the doors open, saying that every soul pursuing knowledge mattered more than the classroom’s dignity.
• Leon began Colin’s lesson on science by placing a prism on the podium, shining light through it, and asking the students to consider how light could be dissected.

Leon demonstrated how ordinary tools could manipulate light and challenged the Academic Federation’s students to question established ideas, offering a credit for answers to three seemingly absurd questions. His lecture stirred debate across the school, while Ilana remained troubled by his message that there were other paths to becoming a legend.

• Leon split white light through a prism, demonstrated refraction and pinhole imaging, and argued that mortal strength could achieve what extraordinary power could.
• Leon assigned the questions of why the sky was green, why water was ice, and why steel was soft, offering one credit for each answer that satisfied him.
• Skain reported the lecture to Professor Ariste, who dismissed Leon’s lesson and gave simple explanations for the three questions, but Skain left feeling doubtful.
• Preparatory Students debated the questions in their dormitories, while Barrett wrote a six-thousand-word paper arguing that steel was soft.
• Ilana wrote a cautious answer distinguishing the sky, water, and steel from their possible states, then lay awake thinking about Leon’s words on becoming a legend.

Leon used player feedback to review his students’ assignments, secured a laboratory and research funding for his new Magitech Science project, then taught a lesson on acoustics. He left the chapter having invited Ilana to become the first assistant in his laboratory, to the envy of her classmates.

• Leon had You You upload more than a thousand assignments to Calamity Online, where players supplied grading comments that helped him select Ilana as a promising apprentice.
• Leon toured a newly renovated laboratory with Corgi, accepted Professor Hector’s offer to keep its puppet components, and asked Corgi to apply for research funding under the topic “Magitech Science.”
• Leon taught his second science class, introducing the apprentices to sound as energy transmitted through a medium and demonstrating basic acoustics.
• Leon’s assistants returned the assignments, and Ilana received 99 points while Cours and Skain each received 60.
• Leon invited Ilana to become the first assistant in his laboratory, delighting Finn and leaving Cours jealous and bitter.

Ilana joined Leon’s laboratory and discovered a notebook by the former owner, James Wally, whose abandoned research proposed measuring magical output. Leon made her responsible for continuing the work, establishing Quantifiable Magic Theory as the laboratory’s first research project.

• Ilana met her fellow apprentices, explained that she was not an Imperial noble, and shared that she had earned ninety-nine points on Colin’s assignment by questioning its assumptions.
• Leon welcomed the apprentices to his laboratory and assigned Ilana to catalog the previous owner’s discarded materials while the others repaired and organized equipment.
• Over the following days, Leon taught science and mathematics to students and Assistant Instructors, while his experience and source power rapidly increased his Experience Points.
• Ilana found James Wally’s notebook among the discarded drafts and suggested that his research into measuring magical power could be advanced using the science Leon taught.
• Leon praised Ilana, asked her to organize and continue James Wally’s research, and declared Quantifiable Magic Theory the laboratory’s first research project.

Over two months, Leon’s science lectures inspired the apprentices to invent a reflective observation device, and he gave Ilana a book on higher algebra to help her advance her research. Ilana asked where Leon’s knowledge came from, and he answered that he stood on the shoulders of giants.

• Finn told Cours that Ilana had been spending her days in Colin’s laboratory, and Cours insinuated that Colin had ulterior motives.
• Skain overheard them and dismissed Cours’s suspicions, realizing he had instinctively defended Colin.
• Ilana proposed using curved and flat mirrors to inspect inscriptions inside a tiny gear, and Jamie, Ram, and the other apprentices built a working reflective observation device.
• Leon praised the apprentices and launched a telescope research project, while Ilana continued studying James Wally’s notebook and hit a difficult mathematical problem.
• Leon gave Ilana Higher Algebra and asked her to teach the other apprentices after mastering it.
• Ilana asked where Leon’s knowledge came from, and he said he stood on the shoulders of giants.

Leon received virtual realm 440 from Professor Hecator and learned the secret principles governing research in virtual realms. He then sought a craftsman to build a balloon-like vehicle, leaving Alberto to begin work on the unusual design.

• Professor Hecator gave Leon the sealed scroll for virtual realm 440, explained how observation and material exchanges affected its stability, and revealed the research site was Colin Tower.
• Leon asked to borrow Hecator’s flying carriage for transportation, and Hecator reluctantly agreed.
• Leon visited Alberto’s Workshop to find a craftsman for a vehicle that would prove mortal strength could accomplish what extraordinary power could.
• Alberto recognized Leon’s design as a sealed canvas bag suspended above a basket with a brazier beneath it, but accepted the eight-gold-coin commission and promised it within twenty days if possible.

Leon began his first exploration of Void Realm 440 and discovered a pastoral world whose tentacle-like inhabitants worshipped a Giant Stone. After suspecting the farmers had been placed there, he ordered his team to use the Origin Force gathered on the stone to grant them a bountiful harvest.

• Leon arrived at Colin Tower, where Assistant Instructors prepared to help him investigate Void Realm 440, previously abandoned after Professor Caince suffered a Research Accident.
• Leon and his team activated a Magic Array, opened a stable rift, and viewed a pastoral landscape from the top of a Giant Stone.
• Miller explained that Void Realm viewpoints and time flow could change between openings, and that part of Caince's soul might still be trapped beyond the rift.
• Farmers gathered to worship the Giant Stone, and Leon recognized them as Solipsi while questioning why a farming civilization seemed poorly suited to agriculture.
• Leon suspected the Solipsi had been placed in the fields, learned that their prayers gathered usable power on the stone, and ordered the team to grant them a bountiful harvest.

Leon used You You and the Faith Power in Void Realm 440 to secretly enrich the Solipsi people's barren land, but the Void Realm's image soon vanished after its Source Power was exhausted. News of the apparent failure spread through the Tower of the Great Sage, where Ilana defended Leon against Cours's accusations.

• Leon persuaded Miller and the other Assistant Instructors to support an ambitious experiment, then used You You's power to improve the Solipsi people's soil.
• The Void Realm's image shook and disappeared, and Leon told the shaken researchers to keep observing because the channel remained intact.
• News that Leon had exhausted Void Realm 440's Source Power spread through the Tower of the Great Sage and prompted criticism of him and concern for Professor Hector.
• Cours mocked Leon's research in the library, and Ilana rebuked him for making baseless accusations and criticizing Leon behind his back.
• Ilana reminded Cours that Leon had opposed Professor Hector's cruel treatment of students, then gathered her books and left.

Leon’s Void Realm 440 experiment unexpectedly reopened the channel with greater energy and revealed that the Solipsi people had advanced into a steampunk society that worshiped the giant stone. Seeing that they had depicted him as a god, Leon ordered Miller to intensify their interference and tell the Solipsi people his surname.

• Leon defended his experiment to Professor Hector, who proposed sharing the project’s resources and rewards, but Leon rebuked him and refused the offer.
• Miller burst into Hector’s office to report that Void Realm 440 had reopened on its own with more abundant energy than before.
• Leon returned to Colin Tower and saw that the Solipsi world had advanced into an industrial age, where people offered coins at the giant stone’s altar and prayed for wealth.
• Leon noticed murals depicting the Mage Tower’s researchers as gods and learned from You You that Faith Power could not be drawn from the distant universe.
• Leon told Miller to increase their interference in the Solipsi world and ordered him to tell its people his surname.

Leon used the Void Realm to contact the Solipsi Pope, grant him magic, and steer the Solipsi toward a new religious and political order built around Colin. After the connection broke, Leon’s team celebrated their discovery and prepared a paper that would promote his Magitech Science Laboratory.

• The Solipsi Pope heard Leon’s voice through the Sacred Stone, confessed his greed, and agreed to write a pledge into the New Covenant in exchange for divine power.
• Leon directed Miller to teach the Pope Source Power magic, and the Pope used his new abilities to found the Holy Light Society and rally the Solipsi.
• The Holy Light Society overthrew the old Priests, established a new order centered on Colin, and created the Shadow Association to investigate the whispers from beyond.
• Leon accelerated time in the Void Realm, and three years of Solipsi history passed while only three days elapsed on the Os Continent.
• The Void Realm connection failed again, but Miller urged Leon to publish their findings, and Leon assigned him the paper while asking him to list the Magitech Science Laboratory as a collaborating institution.

Colin’s paper on Void Realm 440 stunned the Academic Federation’s scholars and overturned the academy’s view of him. As Hector and Ariste reconsidered their judgments and Ariste began monitoring Colin more closely, Cours’s attempt to reconcile with Ilana failed, leaving him shocked to learn that Colin had publicly taught the calculus he thought was Ilana’s special knowledge.

• Hector read Colin’s paper in the Sage Herald, recognized its groundbreaking theories about guiding civilization and gathering Source Power, and resolved to apologize to Colin.
• Professor Hobo praised Colin’s research and asked Hector to introduce them, while Hector admitted inwardly that he had underestimated the prince.
• Ariste read Colin’s paper, ordered a mentor to test its methods in Void Realm 178, and demanded that Skain report every detail about Colin as he considered making contact with him.
• Colin’s paper spread through the academy, improving his reputation while Cours became consumed by regret over mocking him and losing Ilana’s attention.
• Cours confronted Ilana with roses and apologized, but she left without responding; afterward, he learned from other apprentices that Colin had taught calculus publicly.

Colin’s Void Realm Interference Theory made him a celebrated scholar, drawing crowds to his laboratory and science classes. His lessons inspired two apprentices to devise a suffocation-based explosive spell, and Leon recognized their talent and decided to recruit them.

• Mages and apprentices across the Academic Federation flocked to Colin’s laboratory and packed his science classes after his theory gained attention.
• Leon taught that scientific understanding could improve magic, and Skain and Professor Hector began reconsidering their assumptions as they listened.
• Leon assigned students to use scientific principles to improve familiar spells, prompting Bane and Hard to explore how fire consumed air.
• Bane and Hard submitted an idea for a modified fire spell that could use up the air in a confined space and suffocate stronger enemies.
• Leon praised the apprentices’ ingenuity, set their assignment aside, and planned to recruit them into his laboratory while You You questioned the risks of teaching them.

Colin’s Magitech Science Laboratory recruited apprentices whose unconventional assignments inspired new research projects, and its growing team embraced a more collaborative scientific culture. The chapter ended with Ophelia Castellion arriving in the Northern Wasteland to meet Leon, whom she greeted as His Highness Colin.

• Players praised the apprentices’ inventive assignments, while cafeteria gossip revealed that apprentices who scored highly could join Colin’s laboratory.
• Corgi told Bane and Hard that Colin had accepted their idea for a suffocating flame attack, named it the Thermobaric Explosive Flame Bullet, and granted their project funding.
• Bane and Hard began planning experiments to measure how room size and other conditions affected the spell’s mana use and suffocating effect.
• Ram and Jamie discussed the laboratory’s expanding departments and research groups, while Ilana asked how to find extrema for a function of a function.
• Ophelia Castellion met Leon in Professor Hector’s office and greeted him as His Highness Colin.

Leon accepted Ophelia Castellion as his apprentice and brought her to the laboratory, where she quickly won over the other apprentices. Ilana then asked Leon how to find extrema of a function of functions, and he named the field of study functional analysis.

• Ophelia reunited with Leon at the Mage Tower, and Leon read Duke Andre Castellion’s letter requesting that he teach her magic.
• Leon agreed to take Ophelia as an apprentice and led her to the laboratory, hoping she would stay there rather than follow him to the Campbell Principality.
• Ophelia introduced herself warmly to the laboratory apprentices, easing their awe of her noble family and earning their welcome.
• Ophelia told Leon that her embroidered talisman depicted a guardian dragon, which he recognized as Taff rather than the Castellion crest.
• Ilana showed Leon her calculations and asked how to find extrema of a function of functions; Leon praised the question and called the subject “functionals.”

Leon explained functionals and the Variational Method to Ilana, encouraging her to derive the Pathfinding Optimization Equation herself, while Ophelia awkwardly challenged her and then fled after Ilana suggested they work together. In Void Realm 178, Mentor Merk identified a dying scavenger as the ideal subject for replicating Colin’s experiment and ordered his researchers to contact and empower him.

• Leon taught Ilana how functionals seek an optimal path and introduced the Variational Method, urging her to discover the Pathfinding Optimization Equation herself.
• Ophelia approached Ilana and declared that she would not lose to her, but Ilana’s friendly offer to do their best together flustered Ophelia into retreating.
• Jamie and Ram watched the exchange and concluded that Ilana had somehow prevailed over Ophelia.
• Merk’s researchers reported that their attempts to replicate the Void Realm 440 experiment had produced no results, while Void Realm 178’s channel and resources continued to decline.
• Merk spotted a dying scavenger reaching out in the wasteland, chose him as a divine emissary, and ordered his assistants to tell him Merk’s name, heal him, and grant him power.

Merk’s experiment in Void Realm 178 empowered Kyle, who built the Ark of Salvation into a brutal theocracy before the Wastelander Alliance defeated it and the gray people turned toward materialism. As the realm’s civilization diverged from Merk’s world, its image faded and Merk shut down the Magic Array, realizing he had failed Professor Ariste’s task.

• Merk revived the dying scavenger Kyle, made him his first apostle, and taught him to wield source power.
• Kyle healed his younger brother, then hunted scavengers for vengeful spirit charcoal and gathered followers to overthrow Iron Hand.
• Kyle founded the Ark of Salvation, expanded it through conquest, and imposed harsh religious rule across the wasteland.
• The Ark’s Ruins Shepherds exploited believers, prompting a former follower to unite tribes into the Wastelander Alliance.
• The Alliance defeated the Ark, killed its divine emissary, and led the gray people to reject gods and develop technology using the power of sunlight.
• As Void Realm 178 grew distant from Merk’s influence, he ordered the Magic Array shut down and despaired over failing Professor Ariste’s task.

The Sage Council debated Colin Tower’s Void Realm research and restricted radical intervention to Colin Tower until it produced further results. Meanwhile, Ilana developed a new approach to the principle of least action, and Leon left her to tutor Ophelia before answering Professor Hector’s urgent summons.

• Great Sage Adoluch heard the sages’ arguments over Colin Tower’s intervention strategy and recognized its results while withholding broader approval until they could be reproduced.
• After learning that Instructor Merck had turned Void Realm 178 into a barren wasteland, Adoluch ordered other Mage Towers to avoid radical Void Realm research and limited the strategy to Colin Tower.
• Ilana used Leon’s lessons on mechanics and energy to express the principle of least action through an integral, and Leon praised her insight.
• Leon explained to Ophelia that magical power might be understood as a kind of force or action, while Ilana became more convinced that he already knew the answers.
• When Assistant Instructor Corgi summoned Leon to Professor Hector’s office, Leon assigned Ilana to tutor Ophelia, and Ophelia agreed to study with her.