Chapter Summaries

Ryan visited Count Ferguson in Hot Spring Province to secure resources for the continuing war in Northwind Province. He persuaded Ferguson that control of the province’s productive capacity could give the count leverage over the Hot Spring Marquis, and the two reached a preliminary understanding.

• Ryan traveled to Hot Spring Province with Brandt and fifty attendants while leaving most of his forces in Frozen Earth Territory because Avril was pregnant.
• Ryan saw the province’s blood-tainted springs and war-damaged farmland before arriving at Count Ferguson’s castle.
• Ryan told Ferguson he needed resources for Northwind Province and argued that wealth and logistics had been decisive in the Empire’s recent victories.
• Ryan suggested Ferguson could challenge the Hot Spring Marquis by controlling the province’s production and supplying its necessities.
• Ferguson became interested in Ryan’s proposal, and they formed a preliminary friendship.

Ryan secured Count Ferguson’s agreement to send Northwind Province’s wasteland-farming experts to Hot Spring Province in exchange for its unused war resources. He then met the Hot Spring Marquis, who desperately needed recruits to rebuild the Magic Armor Knight Legion, and rejected the idea of trading away Frozen Earth Territory’s population before proposing that the Marquis’s approach was too slow.

• Ryan warned Count Ferguson that Hot Spring Province’s poor reclamation efforts threatened its harvest and offered Northwind’s agricultural experts in return for unused war resources.
• Count Ferguson accepted Ryan’s proposal, and Ryan left the next morning for the Hot Spring Marquis’s territory after assuring the Count he would not offer the Marquis the same deal.
• Ryan inspected the depleted Magic Armor Knight Legion and recognized that the Marquis lacked the men needed to rebuild it after the war and mass conscription.
• The Hot Spring Marquis praised Ryan’s achievements and focused on the population of Frozen Earth Territory, hoping to secure recruits for his legion.
• Ryan refused to trade away his population, including the enslaved people of Nidhogg World, and told the Marquis that restoring Hot Spring Province’s population that way would be too slow.

Ryan rejected the Hot Spring Marquis’s offer to buy slaves and proposed recruiting adventurers from Zero Crossing City to restore the Demon Armor Knights much faster. He demonstrated how the Marquis could attract knights with rewards and marriage ties, leaving the Marquis to consider Ryan’s method of manipulating human loyalty.

• The Hot Spring Marquis offered Ryan ten Gold Coins for each adult male slave, but Ryan refused and argued that the province could not wait decades for its population and knights to recover.
• Ryan proposed bringing adventurers from Zero Crossing City to Hot Spring Province, claiming the Demon Armor Knight Legion could be restored in three years instead of thirty.
• Ryan challenged the Marquis’s assumption that visiting knights would remain loyal to other nobles and asked for the maids before offering them as rewards to a castle guard who defeated a young Imperial House member.
• Ryan offered the guard armor, a sword, horses, land, a new identity, and a marriage into House Cylence; the guard, Ashton, knelt and said he wanted the rewards.
• Ryan asked Ashton about his family and village, revealing how few knights remained, and the Hot Spring Marquis recognized the plan as Ryan’s method for recruiting them.

Ryan and the Hot Spring Marquis negotiated a partnership built around recruiting knights and trading Northwind’s equipment and Frozen Earth’s warhorses, while Ryan gained political leverage over the Marquis. After leaving the castle, Ryan suspected its Divine Essence had been used to probe him, while the Marquis’s search left him baffled by Ryan’s nature and divine blessing.

• Torey Columbus won his duel with Ashton, who survived and became the Hot Spring Marquis’s sword-bearing knight.
• Ryan and the Hot Spring Marquis discussed the province’s missing knights and how to recruit them without provoking the nobles, with Ryan outlining a way to disguise them as adventurers.
• Ryan offered Northwind’s weapons and craftsmen, Frozen Earth’s warhorses, and access to Northwind Avenue in exchange for the Marquis’s wealth and cooperation.
• Ryan recognized that their competing interests made the Marquis a useful ally and gave Ryan leverage within their political faction.
• Ryan left the castle and suspected it contained Divine Essence used to capture the thoughts of visitors.
• The Hot Spring Marquis searched for insight into Ryan but found only contradictions between Ryan’s apparent heresy and his blessing from the Lord of Dawn.

Ryan sought more war resources from Grand Duke Russell for Northwind Province, but Russell proposed exchanging them for Northwind’s metal weapons and armor. Russell then revealed that he wanted the province’s mineral resources to prepare for the Black Swan Assassins’ return, leaving Ryan relieved that the Grand Duke’s plans were not as alarming as he had feared.

• Ryan explained Northwind Province’s depleted military strength and asked Grand Duke Russell for additional resources to fight the Werewolves.
• Russell said he could exchange hard-to-preserve war supplies for Northwind’s metal military equipment, but Ryan avoided agreeing to the proposal.
• Ryan argued that the Northlands nobles should discuss how to allocate the Empire’s war resources, and Russell asked whether he had already persuaded other great nobles.
• Russell asked whether Ryan belonged to the Wings of Light and discussed the organization’s role in protecting nobles from the Black Swan Assassins.
• Russell said the Black Swan Assassins would return as the Church of Dawn’s power rose and linked their return to Emperor Columbus III’s death and the Lord of Dawn’s potential awakening.
• Russell said he wanted Northwind’s mineral resources to prepare against the Black Swan Assassins and win over the Imperial Nobles, and Ryan smiled in relief.

Ryan understood Grand Duke Russell’s hidden plans for Wings of Light and offered to supply it with weapons through a separate transaction. After the nobles agreed on Northwind Province’s war resources, Anselmo told Ryan that Ophelia, The Eternal One of the Void, had become an Imperial Legendary Mage retainer and could help transport the supplies.

• Ryan recognized that Grand Duke Russell wanted him to support Wings of Light’s secret armed force and offered weapons forged from Northwind Province’s iron ore.
• Ryan and Russell agreed to keep the weapons deal separate from the public dispute over the Empire’s war resources.
• Russell convened Hot Spring Province’s nobles, who agreed on a satisfactory allocation and identified Hildegard Enrique as the official who would sign it.
• Anselmo asked Ryan how he planned to move the supplies and explained that Imperial Space Mages had opened void passages to transport resources during the war.
• Anselmo revealed that Ophelia, The Eternal One of the Void, had replaced the fallen Legendary Mage Lan as an Imperial retainer and could be invited to help Ryan.
• Ryan considered asking Ophelia to transport the supplies but made no decision.

Ryan met Ophelia and confirmed that the Legendary Mage could transport supplies through space, then traveled to Twilight Province to secure Hildegard Enrique’s approval. He stayed behind after learning that Hildegard had secretly hoarded Magic Crystal Cannons, leaving Ryan curious about the Imperial House member and considering how to acquire some cannons.

• Ophelia told Ryan he could not build an Empire-wide spatial road, but agreed to transport Northwind Province’s supplies through the void.
• Ophelia opened a spatial passage that carried Ryan and his soldiers from Hot Spring Province to Twilight Fortress in Twilight Province.
• Ryan received Hildegard Enrique’s approval through another Imperial House member, then stayed in Twilight Fortress to investigate Hildegard.
• Ryan’s Shadow Vanguards broke into Hildegard’s carriage and discovered gleaming Magic Crystal Cannons hidden inside.
• Ryan wondered why Hildegard had hoarded the cannons and considered taking a few back for himself.

Ryan helped Count Gardner expose Hilde’s hidden Magic Crystal Cannons, leading Emperor Columbus IV to order Hilde back to the Imperial Capital. Hilde was then killed by Black Swan Assassins, and Ryan suspected the prince had arranged his own death and may have controlled part of the Church of Dawn’s forces.

• Ryan confronted Count Gardner about hinting at Hilde’s cannons, then bargained for fifty of them in exchange for helping secure the weapons for the emperor.
• Ryan acted quickly, and Columbus IV ordered Hilde to return to the Imperial Capital under the pretext of granting him a comfortable retirement.
• Hilde left Twilight Province, revealed that he wanted to support Columbus IV’s reign, and encountered Ryan’s convoy on the road.
• Ryan sensed extraordinary power within Hildegard Enrique, then learned that Black Swan Assassins had killed the prince in Calais Province.
• Grand Duke Russell told Ryan that the Church of Dawn’s assassins had killed Hilde, that Hilde had led the Enric faction, and that conflict in the South might soon resume.
• Ryan questioned whether Hilde had arranged his own death and wondered whether the prince had controlled part of the Church of Dawn’s forces.

Ryan reflected on Hilde’s death and strengthened his plans for the Northlands, while Emperor Volvo Columbus faced pressure from the Imperial House and nobles to retaliate against the Church of Dawn. The chapter left the Empire preparing a targeted revenge campaign, with nobles demanding the deaths of Pope Solarian and three cardinals.

• Ryan concluded that Hilde’s death had united the Imperial House against the Church of Dawn and chose to set aside his anger over the Magic Crystal Cannon.
• Ryan bought slaves from Hot Spring Province, gained Spirituality, and told Brandt to lead the army east and strengthen the Northern Military Council.
• Volvo Columbus gathered the Imperial House, promised vengeance for Columbus III and Hilde, and declared the Black Swan Assassin a heretical organization the Empire could hunt.
• Volvo told the Imperial House that the Empire lacked grounds to accuse the Church of Dawn directly over Columbus III’s death and would need to consult the nobles before pursuing revenge.
• The nobles agreed that revenge must be decisive but rejected a large-scale war, demanding the deaths of Pope Solarian and three cardinals.

The Empire prepared revenge against the Church of Dawn, sending noble cavalry south while assembling a small extraordinary force under Floyd Columbus. On Holy Mountain, Pope Solarian demanded to know which Church member had killed Hildegard Enrique.

• The nobles agreed to target Pope Solarian and four Cardinal Archbishops, and Count Clayton proposed Aatrox as their extraordinary force’s leader.
• Emperor Volvo ordered Grand Duke Fleming’s army and Brutus’s mages south, tasked Grand Duke Russell’s followers with hunting the Black Swan Assassin, and appointed Floyd to lead the revenge alongside Aatrox.
• Nobles gathered a cavalry force led by Legendary Hermione Mayers, while Ryan offered weapons and equipment instead of a knight.
• Floyd led a force of twenty-three Legendaries and Saint Realm experts toward Nantes Kingdom, planning to wait for the cavalry to draw the Church’s leaders out.
• Pope Solarian told the clergy that the Empire’s revenge was inevitable and demanded to know who had killed Hildegard Enrique.

After Hilde’s assassination united the Empire against the Church of Dawn, the Church recruited Iron Eagle Kingdom nobles and empowered Rudy Goffman with an angel’s power to challenge the Empire. As duel challenges reached Hermione Mayers’s southbound cavalry, she dismissed them as political theater and forwarded the news to the Empire.

• Solarian questioned the Supreme Cathedral’s clergy about who ordered Hilde’s death, while the Church and Empire prepared for a tense confrontation without admitting they had violated the Treaty of Nantes Kingdom.
• Bishop Santos recruited Viscount Goffman to the Church of Dawn’s cause and gave him a crystal cross called Angel’s Earthly Judgment.
• Viscount Goffman used the cross to summon an angel into Rudy, empowering his son to fight the Empire in Dawn’s name.
• Viscount Goffman planned to send Rudy to the Nantes Kingdom to duel an Imperial noble, while Rudy vowed to fight for the Lord.
• The Nantes King passed the duel challenges to Hermione Mayers’s cavalry, and Hermione mocked them as political gestures before the knights sent the news to the Empire.

Sura Isaacson traveled to the Iron Eagle Kingdom and persuaded Duke Costa to help the Empire target the Goffman family. The bargain was followed by coordinated attacks that gravely wounded the Viscount Goffman and left Rudy Goffman coughing blood.

• Nobles in the Imperial Capital dismissed the Church of Dawn’s duel challenges as the Empire’s political struggle with Dawn continued.
• Sura Isaacson arrived at Duke Costa’s court and explained his family ties to the Costa family and his travels across the Empire.
• Sura offered Duke Costa access to Imperial trade and proposed marriages between their families in exchange for attacking Viscount Goffman and Rudy Goffman.
• Duke Costa agreed to help and accepted the Life Potion Sura had brought.
• That night, the Viscount Goffman was gravely wounded and Rudy Goffman collapsed coughing blood as attacks also devastated other noble territories.

Ryan learned that the Orcs had fled south because a world-ending calamity was advancing from the depths of the Northlands, and he began considering how to investigate it. The chapter left the nature of the disaster unknown and suggested it would eventually threaten humanity as well.

• Across the southern lands, Imperial nobles and Church of Dawn agents fought brutal hunts as the Empire’s cavalry enjoyed the hospitality of the Nantes Kingdom.
• Ryan assessed how the nobles’ revenge campaign was drawing southern kingdoms into alliances, while he regretted being excluded from those ties.
• Ryan and Ross discussed their inability to understand the Dwarven Magic Crystal Cannons and considered experimenting with enchanted fuel.
• After repelling an Orc offensive at the Northern Great Wall Fortress, Ryan blessed Werewolves and asked Werewolf Monarch Aton why the Orcs had migrated south.
• Aton told Ryan that an oracle described a world-ending calamity advancing south from the depths of the Northlands, forcing the Orc tribes to flee and unite against humanity.
• Ryan wondered whether to send people north to investigate the disaster.

Ryan postponed opening a new Planar Gate because his territory and political affairs already demanded his attention. In the Northlands, Brenner witnessed a dead deity’s fall awaken hordes of Snow Trolls, revealing a growing calamity that would eventually threaten the south.

• Ryan weighed using his authority over the Spirituality Panel to anchor another Otherworldly Plane, but decided to wait until Brandt returned and his territory had more manpower.
• A violent blizzard shattered a mountain in the Northlands while Brenner calmly ate beside his magical fire and tent.
• Brenner froze the blizzard and saw a deity die, its Divine Essence descending over the frozen land.
• The deity’s fall awakened thousands of blue-furred Snow Trolls, which devoured snow and began advancing south through the storm.
• Brenner sensed that the trolls had been manufactured using forces linked to the Giants and concluded that they were part of a plan to accelerate the Northlands and destroy the Pan-Plane.

Brandt resisted the Spirit of the Stag’s pressure to claim a worldly Legendary Boon, choosing instead to follow Ryan’s path toward spiritual power. He led the Stag Legion into the Corland Kingdom and confronted its army over orders blocking their advance and the kingdom’s failure to supply allied forces.

• After six battles, Brandt repeatedly wounded himself to suppress the Spirit of the Stag’s urge to enter the Legendary realm by the old path.
• Brandt declared that Ryan would replace Aixnier’s will as the goal he followed and ordered the Stag Legion into the Corland Kingdom.
• Corland soldiers tried to stop the legion, but Brandt asserted the Northern Military Council’s wartime authority and demanded to know who had issued their orders.
• A noble officer revealed that the order had come from the royal palace after the king and Grand Duke Gailan discussed it.
• Brandt accused the Corland Kingdom of withholding supplies from the Gerald Legion and the Andara Kingdom Legion and demanded an explanation from the king and Grand Duke Gailan.

Brandt led the Stag Legion into the Corland Kingdom to confront its leaders over their halted war supplies and possible withdrawal from the Northern Military Council. After declaring Ryan’s authority to assume command and promising the Northern Orc War would end in two months, Brandt hunted down a Legendary abyssal monster and brought its corpse to Corland Royal City.

• Brandt entered Corland Royal City with a hundred Knight Retainers while the rest of the Stag Legion marched south.
• Brandt told the King of Corland and Grand Duke Gailan that Corland had broken its agreement by withholding supplies from the Northern Border War.
• Brandt invoked the Northern Military Council agreement and announced that he would assume command of Corland’s army and the council’s forces in Ryan’s name.
• Brandt warned that Corland could refuse his demand but would face the military consequences, and he called for Garlic Gailan to explain the missing supplies to Ryan in Zero Crossing City.
• Brandt and the Stag Legion hunted a ten-eyed Golden Mane Lion with the aid of Dawn Believers, then brought its Legendary corpse to the Morning Radiance Cathedral for purification.

The King and Grand Duke Gailan clashed over Corland’s ties to Ryan and the Northern Military Council, while Sven used divine power from the Sunbird to purify Abyssal corruption and empower Knight Augus. The chapter ended with Gailan seeking Sven’s help against the Abyss and Brandt insisting that only Ryan could save Corland.

• Cleric Sven and more than a hundred clergy purified the Golden Mane Lion’s corpse with holy radiance after Brandt killed it.
• The King overruled Grand Duke Gailan’s opposition to ties with the Northlands, planned trade with the Empire, and ordered Garick Gailan to report to the Northern Military Council’s military court.
• Grand Duke Gailan saw the holy light over Corland Cathedral and decided to enlist the Dawn Believers to strengthen his authority.
• Sven revealed that the Sunbird had granted the purifying power, then transferred its divine grace to Augus, who became the first Dawn Knight and a legend.
• Gailan promised that the nobles would cooperate against the Abyss, but Sven said the Pope would not send troops to the South.
• Brandt watched Gailan’s guards outside the cathedral and resolved that only Ryan could help Corland, and only Ryan was allowed to do so.

Garick Gailan was sent from Corland to Zero Crossing City as the King and Grand Duke Gailan struggled over control of the kingdom's army, while Ryan consolidated power for the Northern Military Council. After summoning Garick to Rhino Horn Mountain, Ryan revealed the Church of Dawn's losses and threatened that Grand Duke Gailan might be killed unless Garick persuaded him to become an ally.

• Grand Duke Gailan told Garick that the King would send him to Zero Crossing City, warned that Ryan aimed to gather power across Corland, and ordered him to leave for Andara after arriving.
• Garick was dispatched from Corland, and Brandt temporarily took command of the Kingdom Army while Domenico Corland claimed authority over its forces and officers.
• Garick reached Zero Crossing City in two days and recognized that the Northern Military Council's crest had weakened nobles' control over travel through their territories.
• Ryan summoned Garick to Rhino Horn Mountain, questioned Corland's earlier betrayal, and promised that the war would end soon and the kingdom would have an abundant harvest.
• Ryan told Garick that the Church of Dawn had suffered major losses in the southern conflict and threatened to consider killing Grand Duke Gailan unless Garick changed his father's stance.

Ryan threatened Garick over Corland’s betrayal and sent him to fight at Northern Great Wall Fortress. Meanwhile, Brandt took command of Andara’s armies and prepared an offensive intended to carry him into legend, while Ryan arranged for the Werewolves to drive up to five hundred thousand orcs into the battlefield.

• Ryan threatened Garick, then had Brunamigis escort him to Northern Great Wall Fortress, where Garick fought orcs for three days as punishment.
• Brandt arrived in Andara Kingdom and used his authority as Northern Military Chairman to take command of its armies, while Farrell and Grand Duke Leta retained control of their Extraordinary Legions.
• After two days, Brandt had taken command of more than one hundred thousand Andara troops and announced an all-out offensive in one week.
• Ulf told Aton that Ryan wanted the Werewolves to drive no more than five hundred thousand surplus orcs to the Andara battlefield and suspend their military activities for a month.
• Ryan continued preparing for Brandt’s battlefield ascension, which Ulf believed would reveal a new path to legend.

Brandt led the Stag Legion against more than four hundred thousand Northern Orcs, wielding the Spirit of the Stag’s final blessing to drive through their army. After the stag’s spirit dissolved into crimson rain, Brandt reached Legend and received the Legendary Boon Spirituality Embodiment from Ryan.

• Garick arrived at the battlefield, but Brandt told him he would not command the Corland Kingdom Army as the Spirit of the Stag’s will would lead every soldier.
• Brandt invoked the Spirit of the Stag’s Divine Blessing and ordered the Stag Legion and the allied forces to charge the Northern Orcs.
• The stag’s blessing gave the human soldiers extraordinary strength and healing, allowing them to slaughter Orcs and the Stag Legion to pierce through the vast army.
• Brandt turned the Stag Legion around and charged again as the Spirit of the Stag reached its end and shattered into crimson motes.
• The crimson rain elevated Brandt’s flesh and soul, opened the path to Legend, and Ryan bestowed the Legendary Boon Spirituality Embodiment upon him.