Chapter Summaries

The Church’s reinforcements stalled the Empire’s advance, while Brutus Rodriguez prepared a forbidden spell to break the deadlock and help establish the Mage Association. Brutus unleashed the Life Forbidden Zone across the battlefield, weakening friend and foe alike, and Mage Lyman used the opening to attack the Church’s clergy with Shadowwood Mycelium.

• The Church sent the Angel Attendant Legion, the Oath of Faith, and two hundred thousand reinforcements, prompting a counterattack against the Empire.
• Klar and the nobles faced the Emperor’s demand to conquer the Carlos Kingdom before the Divine Grace Festival despite the war’s stalemate.
• Brutus Rodriguez told the mages that he would cast Forbidden Magic and enlisted their mana to prepare the spell.
• Brutus spread the Life Forbidden Zone across the battlefield and royal city, draining the strength and vitality of all living beings within its reach.
• Brutus urged Mage Lyman to act, and Lyman sent Shadowwood Mycelium into the weakened Church clergy, disrupting their prayers and corroding their hearts.

The Empire defeated the Church’s forces and laid siege to Carlos Royal City, where King Kaan Diaz refused to surrender as shortages and unrest mounted. With the city’s divine barrier gone, the Imperial army launched its final assault.

• The Life Forbidden Zone weakened the Church’s legions, and Kiartiel ordered a retreat as the Imperial army pursued them.
• King Kaan Diaz rejected Ekdal’s pleas to flee, while Commander Klar surrounded Carlos Royal City and ordered fortifications built.
• The Empire blockaded the city, and hundreds of thousands of retreating soldiers strained its food supplies, sparking disorder and clashes among its occupants.
• Imperial envoys repeatedly urged King Kaan Diaz to surrender and accept Count Olsen as king, but he refused.
• The Empire attacked noble territories beyond the city to pressure the King, while the city’s soldiers and nobles grew fearful and divided.
• The divine barrier protecting Carlos Royal City vanished, and the Imperial army launched its final assault.

Ryan realized the Empire’s victories over the Church came from the rise of a new era and its transformed civilization, not merely military strength. As the Empire prepared to execute King Kaan Diaz and crown Count Olsen, Ryan feared Olsen’s new rule would destabilize the Northlands and secretly asked Count Clayton to have him killed if the Church did not.

• Ryan concluded that the Florian Empire’s social and civilizational transformation after the War of the Deities Across Planes had enabled it to overcome the Church of Dawn.
• Ryan decided the Empire’s conquest of the Carlos Kingdom would expose its new era to the South, and he anticipated that King Kaan Diaz’s execution would mark the turning point.
• On the eve of the Divine Grace Festival, Ryan told Dean Ross that King Olsen would become his certain enemy because he would draw his royal family and loyal forces from the Sera Kingdom.
• Ryan had Dean Ross seal a letter asking Count Clayton to arrange Olsen’s death if the Church failed to kill him.
• The Divine Grace Festival arrived under bright sunlight after a tense night for Ryan.

On Divine Grace Festival, Grand Duke Mayers and Count Olsen executed Kaan Diaz and crowned Olsen King of the Carlos Kingdom. The Church of Dawn’s Divine Punishment then struck Olsen, and Grand Duke Mayers saved him by replacing his heart with a cloth doll.

• Grand Duke Mayers rejected the nobles’ hopes that Emperor Florian would withdraw his order, and Count Olsen challenged Kaan Diaz’s claim to the throne.
• Grand Duke Mayers sentenced Kaan Diaz to death, and the guillotine killed him before the gathered nobles.
• Grand Duke Mayers crowned Count Olsen, whose fire consumed Kaan Diaz’s corpse as the Carlos nobles reluctantly swore loyalty to their new King.
• As Divine Punishment descended from the Church of Dawn, Grand Duke Mayers used the nightmare power of a dead god to shield Olsen.
• Grand Duke Mayers replaced Olsen’s heart with a cloth doll and threw the original heart beyond the barrier, causing Divine Punishment to dissipate as Olsen collapsed.

After King Olsen declared war on the Church of Dawn, Viscount Jokic killed himself rather than recognize the new king, and nobles across the Carlos Kingdom began resisting Olsen. The Florian Empire faced growing disorder and an approaching Church army while its nobles focused on dividing the conquered kingdom’s spoils, though a letter from the Northlands troubled Count Clayton.

• King Olsen ordered the Carlos nobles to raise armies against the Church of Dawn, with the Florian Empire’s assistance.
• Viscount Raffi Jokic asked his son Khloysos what the family should do, and Khloysos warned that either war would make the family decline.
• Raffi Jokic killed himself after declaring that he would not acknowledge King Olsen, and Khloysos inherited the title and organized resistance.
• Nobles throughout the Carlos Kingdom rejected Olsen’s orders, while the king raged and the Empire prepared to send an army under its agreement with him.
• Count Stirling and Count Clayton discussed the Empire’s political struggle and the wealth nobles expected from the conquest, but a letter from the Northlands left Clayton troubled.

Count Clayton considered the political consequences of King Olsen's survival while the Empire's nobles and other factions divided Carlos Kingdom's spoils. By April, new attacks from the Sea Demons and the Church of Dawn plunged the kingdom into renewed chaos, where Ryan faced the next war.

• Count Clayton and Count Stirling reasoned that King Olsen could use the four great Carlos nobles of Sera Kingdom to wage war against Sera Kingdom, drawing the Empire into conflict with the Church of Dawn.
• Mage Lyman became a Legend, while Elector Volvo allied with the Wandering Nobles to secure them land and political influence.
• King Olsen claimed authority over the Carlos bloodline and called on the four great nobles of Sera Kingdom to swear loyalty, as factions in the Empire competed for Carlos Kingdom's territory.
• By the end of March, more than thirty Wandering Nobles had regained land and titles, while Imperial military nobles took control of Carlos Kingdom and prepared for war.
• In April, the Sea Demons launched a war of revenge against the Florian Empire as five armies of the Church of Dawn attacked Imperial forces in Carlos Kingdom.
• Ryan found Carlos Kingdom in chaos as its nobles abandoned their division of the spoils to face the new attacks.

Ryan learned how the Church of Dawn and the Carlos blood nobles became enemies amid the Empire’s struggle with the Church, then led the Stag Legion south to aid the Carlos royal family. The chapter ended with Ryan and Kemon charging into the expelled Dawn clergy’s procession and beginning a massacre.

• The Carlos blood nobles expelled most Church of Dawn clergy from the Sera Kingdom, and the Pope declared the Carlos Kingdom illegitimate and its royal family traitors.
• King Sela sent Crown Prince Otto McReynolds and Dawn believers to fight the Carlos nobles, while Emperor Florian ordered Ryan to aid Grand Duke Carlos.
• Ryan marched with the Stag Legion, met Kemon Gerald, and brought him along to experience a real war.
• Ryan’s army spotted the procession of expelled Dawn clergy in the southern plains, and Ryan ordered a charge.
• Ryan killed a Holy Light Knight, and Kemon joined the attack after being drenched in blood.

Ryan orchestrated the expulsion and slaughter of the Church of Dawn’s clergy to seize their wealth, while the Church’s remaining believers attacked the Carlos bloodline. When Knight Lewis’s forces breached Grand Duke Carlos’s castle, Ryan turned on Roland and ordered the Stag Legion to attack.

• Ryan’s Stag Legion ambushed the Church convoy leaving the Sera Kingdom, killed its clergy, and seized its wealth.
• Ryan gave Kemon Gerald gemstones and sent King Sela his share of the plunder, while the remaining Church clergy rallied under Knight Lewis at Unicorn Fortress.
• After the Carlos nobles pledged loyalty to King Olsen Carlos and lost their army, Knight Lewis led the believers in burning Carlos bloodline nobles and attacking Grand Duke Carlos’s castle.
• Ryan reached the Sera Kingdom and told Roland that he would attack once the believers breached the castle.
• Knight Lewis’s army shattered the castle’s defenses and overwhelmed Ian Carlos, and Ryan punched Roland away before ordering the Stag Legion to attack.

Baron Ryan’s actions left the Carlos bloodline nearly destroyed, driving Count Clayton to reconsider his alliance with King Olsen and contemplate replacing him. Meanwhile, Ryan questioned the Church’s silence as Mage Lyman pursued glory in the war, and Archbishop Doiel vowed to use the conflict to rise within the Church.

• Baron Ryan claimed he had avenged Grand Duke Carlos, seized the Carlos family’s wealth, and returned to the Empire after being driven from Sera territory.
• King Olsen accused Ryan of causing the deaths of his relatives, but Imperial nobles rejected his claims as unsupported and defended Ryan’s actions against the Church.
• Count Clayton concluded that Ryan had likely acted deliberately and began considering killing Olsen and installing another ruler, while Count Stirling warned him not to let Olsen draw them into a wartime trap.
• Ryan received news from the South and wondered why the Church had made no move after more than ten days, while Mage Lyman hoped victory would earn him Divine Essence and further status.
• Archbishop Doiel blamed the Church’s failure on incompetent leaders and vowed to use the war to earn red robes.

The Church of Dawn routed the Empire’s forces across five fronts with Holy Judgment, while Mage Lyman’s powerful attack failed to stop the Church army. In Carlos Royal City, the nobles learned of the Church’s sacrifice of its soldiers and turned to Ryan Clayton as a possible source of victory.

• Archbishop Doiel barred Kiartiel and the Temple Knight Legion from joining the war, declaring it the Lord of Dawn’s judgment against the Empire.
• The Church’s soldiers overwhelmed the Imperial vanguard with strength granted by Morning Radiance, and Mage Lyman attacked them with Shadowwood Mycelium.
• Pastor Malm cleansed the mycelium, while Doiel’s Holy Judgment transformed the Church’s soldiers into relentless fighters and revived those Lyman had struck down.
• The Church army routed the Imperial forces, Mage Lyman was gravely wounded, and Count Clayton ordered a retreat rather than risk the Blaze Dragon Knight Army.
• In Carlos Royal City, the nobles realized that Holy Judgment burned the soldiers’ lifespans, and King Olsen suggested Ryan Clayton might help them win.

The Church of Dawn’s doomed army attacked the Imperial forces at the Carlos Royal City, and the Lord of Dawn answered Archbishop Doiel’s prayers with Divine Punishment that erased the city. The surviving nobles fled and feared that the deity’s destruction meant the Lord of Dawn had awakened, but none knew for certain.

• Klar ordered the Imperial army to dig trenches and defend the Carlos Royal City while Archbishop Doiel led the Church’s believers in an assault.
• After three days of fighting, the Church’s soldiers began dying in great numbers, and the Imperial forces were driven back behind the city’s defenses.
• Pastor Malm and the clergy prayed over the battlefield, and ninety-nine angels descended as the dead believers’ spirits were gathered into the light.
• Archbishop Doiel prayed for Divine Punishment, and the Lord of Dawn answered by summoning a vast vortex over the Carlos Royal City.
• Stuart, Count Clayton, Elector Floyd, and Grand Duke Mayers broke the city’s divine barrier, but Divine Punishment struck before everyone could escape and obliterated the city.
• Count Clayton asked whether the Lord of Dawn had awakened, and Floyd, Grand Duke Mayers, and Brutus admitted that they did not know.

After Divine Punishment destroyed Carlos Royal City, fear of the Lord of Dawn’s awakening pushed the Empire and southern nobles toward retreat and the Church of Light toward rapid expansion. Ryan advised Columbus III to present the conflict as a war between Light and Dawn and keep fighting, then led his army south as the Empire remained uncertain.

• Archbishop Doiel praised the Lord of Dawn after Divine Punishment annihilated Carlos Royal City, and nobles across the Empire feared that the god had awakened.
• Columbus III ordered Churches of Light built across the Empire, while Ryan struggled to fulfill the Church’s large book order and recruited adventurers to gather birch bark.
• King Olsen recalled his armies as nobles abandoned him, while Imperial forces debated retreating from the southern war.
• Ryan returned to the Imperial Capital and told Columbus III that Archbishop Adriana could not confirm the Lord of Dawn’s awakening.
• Ryan urged Columbus III to project confidence in the God of Light, continue the war, win the southern nobles’ support, and replace King Olsen as the Empire’s representative in Carlos.
• Ryan left the palace and led his army south, hoping victory would overcome the Emperor’s hesitation.

Ryan persuaded the Florian nobles that the Empire had to fight the Church of Dawn, then set out with five thousand extraordinary cavalry and a legendary Blaze Dragon. He exploited the divided southern armies and entered the rebel lands, where his overwhelming force cowed the Carlos forces and local nobles.

• Ryan told the nobles and soldiers that Carlos Royal City’s destruction did not prove the Florian Empire was heretical, and argued that the Empire needed a victory against the Church of Dawn.
• Ryan defied Grand Duke Mayers’s accusation of heresy, declared that he would begin the war, and left the nobles to choose whether to follow him.
• Ryan asked Count Clayton for three thousand Blaze Dragon Knights and a legend, then assembled five thousand cavalry for the campaign.
• Ryan ordered Griff to scout while he planned to strike the Church’s scattered forces before they could assemble, finding a route through the chaotic rebel lands south of the Carlos Kingdom.
• Ryan’s cavalry appeared on the battlefield, prompting the Carlos Royal Family’s army to retreat; he warned Ekdal that Carlos bloodlines had no place under the Empire’s banners and forced local nobles to tolerate his march.

Ryan led the Imperial cavalry in a surprise attack on the Iron Eagle Kingdom’s army and later routed another noble coalition, capturing several nobles for ransom. He continued toward the army’s next target while Gunnar Håkon blamed his defeat on the unexpected cavalry attack.

• Gunnar Håkon panicked when Ryan’s cavalry appeared behind the Iron Eagle Kingdom’s hundred-thousand-strong army and ordered his troops to form a defense.
• Ryan charged through the disorganized army, and Brandt’s cavalrymen threw spears that broke open the formations protecting the command center.
• The Blood Hawk guided Ryan onward, while Griff killed a messenger carrying Gunnar Håkon’s accusation to the southern armies.
• Ryan’s cavalry surprised a noble coalition during breakfast, routed its five thousand troops, and captured three Barons and two Viscounts.
• Ryan demanded ransom from the captured nobles, set payment amounts, and left for the Empire with the prisoners.

Ryan's Extraordinary Legion crushed the Lorraine Kingdom's army and captured Prince Maxwell, then forced him to sign a surrender contract that kept the kingdom out of the coming war. Ryan refused to return to the Empire, explaining that the Legion still had to defeat the Church of Dawn's forces and that their exposure was meant to draw out another Archbishop Doiel.

• Ryan's Extraordinary Legion defeated four noble armies in three days, while the nobles suspected betrayal and struggled to explain the Legion's sudden attacks.
• Ryan defeated the Lorraine Kingdom's army of one hundred and fifty thousand, captured Maxwell Lorraine, and left the kingdom's remaining soldiers too frightened to attack.
• Ryan threatened Maxwell and negotiated a surrender contract demanding reparations while exempting the Lorraine Kingdom from the coming large-scale war.
• Maxwell signed the contract, then returned home with his defeated forces as Ryan and Katz Clayton discussed the Legion's next move.
• Ryan told Katz Clayton that the Legion had to defeat the Church of Dawn's army of believers and had exposed itself to draw out a second Archbishop Doiel.

Archbishop Doiel sought to use the war against Carlos to gain power on Holy Mountain, while Ryan struggled to decide how to eliminate King Olsen. When a ten-thousand-strong Church cavalry force pursued Ryan, Griff infiltrated its ranks and attacked Archbishop Elliot.

• Archbishop Doiel planned to kill Cardinal Archbishop Ta Walter and claim a vacant seat for his faction.
• Ryan worried that Emperor Florian would not act against King Olsen and resolved to keep pursuing him before his crimes were exposed.
• Ryan learned that Archbishop Elliot was leading ten thousand Holy Light Knights against his cavalry, so he sent men through a planar gate for supplies and advanced toward the enemy.
• Griff struggled to track the Church army as its priests, knights, and flying beasts searched for him, but he spotted Archbishop Elliot's carriage.
• Griff used Blood Hawks and Giant Hawks to throw the Church cavalry into chaos, slipped close to Elliot under an invisibility cloak, and attacked him with the Blood Eagle Feather.

Ryan lured the pursuing Holy Light Knights into a trap, where Brandt and the Stag Legion ambushed their rear before Ryan’s Blaze Dragon Knights met the survivors in a brutal charge. The battle left both armies locked in combat, with Ryan fighting on the front line.

• Griff escaped by Blood Hawk after killing Archbishop Elliot, and the Holy Light Knights pursued him in fury.
• Ryan hid two thousand Stag Legion retainers while leading the Blaze Dragon Knights into view, drawing the Church cavalry away from them.
• Brandt’s soldiers disguised themselves as Count Edwyn’s army and struck the trailing Holy Light Knights with spears and heavy armor.
• Ryan circled the pursuers until their formation stretched out, then turned the Blaze Dragon Knights around to face the slowed cavalry.
• The Holy Light Knights charged Ryan’s force, and both armies collided in a fierce battle of knights and cavalry.
• Ryan struck a Sanctuary Knight and urged the Blaze Dragon Knights onward, recalling Count Clayton’s order that all three thousand could be lost.

Basil and Kael fought the Church of Dawn’s Holy Light Knights in a brutal battle that lasted from noon into the night. As the exhausted forces continued fighting, Brandt’s roar announced a new charge.

• Basil killed two Holy Light Knights and sacrificed himself to kill Barry with a bowstring, but another knight cut Barry’s throat first.
• Kael found Basil dying and, enraged, seized an enemy’s sword and drove his own blade through the attacker.
• A mortally wounded Holy Light Knight called Nicholson to strike Kael, and Nicholson’s attack left Kael badly injured before a Blaze Dragon Knight wounded Nicholson.
• Langley sacrificed himself to block a fatal strike aimed at Nicholson, but two Blaze Dragon Knights killed Nicholson from opposite sides.
• The knights fought on through dusk and into the night as their armor and weapons broke and their strength waned.
• Brandt roared for a charge as the battle continued beneath the moonlight.

Ryan’s army massacred the Holy Light Knights, then withdrew while the South’s nobles spread news of his victory. Ryan refused to return home and instead planned another battle, while Archbishop Doiel maneuvered to have the King of Carlos killed.

• Brandt and Egil led the Stag Legion retainers against the priests, and Ryan’s forces finished the battle with more than two thousand dead and hundreds seriously wounded.
• Ryan sent the fallen Stag Legion retainers and Blaze Dragon Knights through the Planar Gate, then moved his surviving army to a valley to rest.
• Count Toya found Archbishop Doiel’s headless corpse among the dead and fled, while nobles across the South learned that Ryan had destroyed a force of ten thousand Holy Light Knights.
• Ryan told Katz Clayton that the legion would remain in the South to win another battle against Church believers and restore the Empire’s confidence.
• Griff located a Church army of one hundred thousand believers led by Theodore, while Archbishop Doiel persuaded Cardinal Archbishop Ta Walter to target King Olsen Carlos.

Ryan led the Blaze Dragon Knights in a charge against the one hundred thousand Dawn Believers, provoking the Church clergy into using Divine Judgment and trapping their own followers in battle. He escaped the encirclement with help from the Stag Legion and planned to wear down the believers from outside.

• Ryan ordered the Blaze Dragon Knights to attack the Dawn Believers, and Blaze Dragon Christman scorched their ranks with Dragon Breath.
• Ryan summoned a colossal flaming Dragon from the Blaze Dragon Knights' power and led them through the believers, forcing Archbishop Catherina to invoke the Divine Judgment Spell.
• The Divine Judgment empowered the believers, and Ryan ordered his knights to break out through the ground devastated by Dragon Breath.
• Archbishop Catherina cast Judgment's Prison to slow Ryan's escape, but the Stag Legion arrived and used mounted archery to obstruct the pursuing believers.
• Ryan escaped the encirclement and planned to kill the remaining Dawn Believers by attacking them piecemeal.