Chapter Summaries

Angel used his interest in Twisted Seeds to secure a visit to Boiling Gentleman's territory, hoping to reach the ruins' exit, while Minavaro described Cross Station's work. From Minavaro's account, Angel realized that the ruins might be within the Nightmare Realm and that Heart's Descent could refer to its projection into reality.

• Angel judged that his request to watch Boiling Gentleman create a Twisted Seed offended no one and would let him visit the Misty Candle Corridor after the dinner party.
• Minavaro reported on Cross Station, and Angel learned that it contained a passageway to the Nightmare Realm but focused mainly on projection work.
• Minavaro said Akana's Strange Palace was nearly ready to project near the Fallen Cemetery, while Akana's Shadow would not descend with it.
• Nuka explained that Akana's Shadow preferred the Distant World, prompting Angel to suspect that Heart's Desire existed in the Nightmare Realm and was the original.
• Angel concluded that Heart's Descent might be the projection of Heart's Desire into reality and that the ruins themselves could lie within the Nightmare Realm.

At Nuka’s dinner, Angel learned that Spotty Dog had followed him to Duoling Garden and refused Nuka’s request to send Shava’s subordinates to guard Arcana Strange Palace. Nuka then asked Angel to attend Heart’s Desire’s monthly moon-sacrifice banquets and offer guidance on Xinna’s descent, leaving Angel’s involvement undecided.

• Minavaro reported that Spotty Dog had stowed away from the Nightmare Realm and appeared to have come directly to Duoling Garden for Angel.
• Angel gave no explanation for Spotty Dog’s arrival and said he had no suggestions about Heart’s Desire’s construction.
• Nuka asked Angel to provide subordinates to guard Arcana Strange Palace, but Angel refused.
• Nuka invited Angel to attend Heart’s Desire’s monthly banquets and guide the work on Xinna’s descent.
• Angel gave Nuka no firm answer, saying they would see when the time came.

At the banquet, Nuka tried to win Shava’s favor by accommodating Angel and presenting him with rare mushrooms. Angel learned that several of Nuka’s cultivated mushrooms could benefit the Nightmare Domain and Savage Cave, leaving him with valuable specimens to pass on after he departed.

• Nuka took Angel’s response as a sign that Shava might still attend the banquet and agreed to wait before discussing plans.
• Nuka answered Angel’s questions and arranged for Message Mushrooms to be brought to him, but Angel showed that he already had one.
• Seeing mushrooms attached to Angel’s bracelet and heel, Nuka presented him with more than twenty varieties of mushroom juveniles.
• Nuka narrowed the display to five prized mushrooms, and the Book of Madness explained that the Proliferation Mushroom could stabilize space in a demi-plane.
• Angel learned that Subgate Mushrooms could provide low-cost, fixed spatial travel and considered giving them to Savage Cave.
• Angel learned that an All-Purpose Mushroom could grow into a structure or other form according to its cultivator’s intentions.

After dinner, Angel learned that Spotty Dog was the foremost weapon of Minister Dim and weighed whether to keep it or return it before Dim arrived. Angel decided to heed Nuka’s warning, but planned to wait until he had left Duoling Garden before letting Spotty Dog go.

• Davaxia, the black-and-white maids, and Minavaro left the banquet, leaving Angel, Boiling Gentleman, Nuka, and Misty Gold in the hall.
• Angel prepared to leave with Boiling Gentleman to see the Twisted Seed, but Nuka asked whether he planned to take Spotty Dog with him.
• Nuka revealed that Spotty Dog was the foremost weapon of Minister Dim and warned that Dim might soon arrive through Cross Station if Spotty Dog was not returned.
• Angel weighed his desire to keep Spotty Dog against the risk of meeting Dim and his inability to protect the puppy.
• Angel decided to return Spotty Dog, but planned to wait until he had left Duoling Garden so it could shield him from Nuka’s oppressive presence.

Angel and Boiling Gentleman reached the castle tower’s chimney, where Mad revealed that Illusion Performance was cultivated from spores and explained the obsession driving his research. Mad believed fulfilling the obsession might reveal his creator’s identity and give him a chance to kill him.

• Angel and Boiling Gentleman left the hall while Misty Gold sang, and Angel suggested she might be confessing to herself.
• At the tower’s chimney, Angel and Boiling Gentleman saw a fog of Living Threads approaching, which Boiling Gentleman identified as Illusion Performance spores.
• Mad appeared through the chimney and gave Angel a juvenile Illusion Performance mushroom, explaining how it could be cultivated.
• Mad said he kept researching Illusion Performance because he sensed his original body carried his creator’s lingering obsession with cultivating mushrooms that enabled a perfect performance.
• Mad said he hoped fulfilling the obsession would reveal his creator’s identity and let him kill him.

Angel and the Boiling Gentleman escaped Duoling Garden through a chimney that led to Rose Castle in the Rose District. Angel learned that the Rose Baron’s projected territory was guarded by powerful creatures while the Baron remained in the Nightmare Realm.

• Mad explained that the Illusion Performance spores were preparing to leave Duoling Garden and spread their faith, but feared approaching while Angel was nearby.
• Angel moved away, allowing the spores to swarm into the chimney, then he and the Boiling Gentleman used it to leave Duoling Garden.
• The Boiling Gentleman showed Angel the mushroom entrance to Duoling Garden, which stood amid bones and corpses beneath the Rose Baron’s castle.
• Angel followed the Boiling Gentleman through Rose Castle and encountered strange creatures that guarded the projected castle.
• The Boiling Gentleman told Angel they were in the Rose District, a territory ruled by the Rose Baron, who had remained in the Nightmare Realm.

Angel and Boiling Gentleman crossed Rainbow Bridge into Rainbow Mountain, where Angel saw the dangers and strange connections between regions of Heart’s Desire. The chapter left them at a magic-patterned platform that Angel recognized as a short-range teleportation array with a familiar design.

• Angel recognized the swarms in the abandoned Rose District as Kalong Dripworms and worried about the devastation they could cause outside the Nightmare Realm.
• Boiling Gentleman explained that the terrifying Demonic Beasts in the Rose District were ordinary projections compared with creatures closer to the Nightmare Realm’s core.
• At Rainbow Bridge, a stone stele asked Angel three questions but let him pass because he was Lord Shava.
• Angel discovered that Rainbow Bridge connected the Rose District to Rainbow Mountain, another region reached through a special medium.
• Angel and Boiling Gentleman passed through an orchard of illusion-laced fruit trees and reached a teleportation platform at the mountain’s base.
• Angel recognized the platform’s intricate magic patterns as a short-range teleportation array and found their design familiar.

Angel and Boiling Gentleman traveled to Rainbow Mountain’s summit and entered the Misty Candle Corridor, where Angel saw Nightmare Light shrouding Heart’s Desire Royal City and learned that it had drawn Lord Nuka to choose the place for Heart’s Descent. Inside the corridor, Boiling Gentleman destroyed a hostile skeletal leopard and revealed that its Demonic Beasts had been captured from the void and modified.

• Boiling Gentleman used Rainbow Mountain’s teleportation array to take Angel to the summit, where Angel noticed red light over Heart’s Desire Royal City.
• Boiling Gentleman explained that Lord Nuka had chosen Heart’s Desire as the site of Heart’s Descent after discovering seeds of Nightmare Light.
• Boiling Gentleman led Angel past Davaxia’s house and revealed the hidden entrance to the Misty Candle Corridor.
• Spotty Dog confronted a skeletal leopard that lunged at Angel, and Boiling Gentleman destroyed it with a snap of his fingers.
• Boiling Gentleman said the corridor’s Demonic Beasts had been captured from the void and modified.

Boiling Gentleman explained how power furnaces supplied energy directly to living creatures, sparking Angel’s interest in their potential use for wizard cultivation. While guiding Angel through Misty Candle Corridor to his modification laboratory, he revealed that a nearby corridor led to the exit of Heart's Desire, and Angel asked to see the Twisted Seed progenitor there.

• Boiling Gentleman explained the power furnaces in his modified Demonic Beasts and described how their energy entered living bodies directly.
• Angel considered whether wizards could use power furnaces to improve their energy use and cultivation.
• Boiling Gentleman led Angel through Misty Candle Corridor, where Angel observed modified Demonic Beasts and other dangers.
• Boiling Gentleman showed Angel the entrance to his modification laboratory and pointed out a nearby Twisted Seed progenitor that controlled nightmare creatures in Black Dream Tunnel.
• Angel realized the corridor led to the exit of Heart's Desire and asked Boiling Gentleman to let him inspect the Twisted Seed progenitor.

Angel entered the modification laboratory with Boiling Gentleman and encountered a mature-stage Twisted Seed that attacked Spotty Dog. He then examined the bubbling green solvent in the power furnace’s smelting pool, where Boiling Gentleman was about to reveal the furnace’s secret.

• Angel followed Boiling Gentleman into the spacious, machinery-filled modification laboratory.
• Spotty Dog played with a Twisted Seed’s tentacles until Boiling Gentleman identified it as the specimen from Cage No. 3 and returned it to its place.
• Boiling Gentleman explained that the caged Twisted Seed had grown rapidly from the perfect mother body, while the declining mother body produced slower-growing offspring.
• Angel chose to inspect the power furnace before seeing the Twisted Seed’s mother body.
• Angel studied the bubbling green solvent in the smelting pool but could not identify it, while Boiling Gentleman prepared to explain the power furnace.

Angel watched Boiling Gentleman reveal the Chaos Source and rapidly refine a metal sphere to contain it. He was left eager to understand how Boiling Gentleman had completed the work so quickly.

• The solvent in the smelting pool bubbled as Boiling Gentleman approached, and Angel waited to see what would emerge.
• A glowing Chaos Source rose from the pool, and Boiling Gentleman said its energy persisted as long as slaughter and nightmares continued.
• Boiling Gentleman threw metal materials into the pool and quickly produced a hollow, gear-covered sphere to serve as the Chaos Source's vessel.
• Angel was stunned by how fast Boiling Gentleman had refined the sphere and asked how he had done it.
• Boiling Gentleman asked whether Lord Shava was interested in refining, then briefly explained his process.

Angel struggled to understand how the Light Solvent could smelt materials, set their form, and adapt to Boiling Gentleman's refining habits. He agreed to leave Spotty Dog with Boiling Gentleman so that he could request a new Light Solvent from Minister Dim for Angel to experiment with on a future visit, then watched the Chaos Source enter the completed metal sphere.

• Angel concluded that Boiling Gentleman's interference helped guide the refining, while the Light Solvent handled the smelting, shaping, and familiar details of making a Power Furnace.
• Boiling Gentleman explained that the Light Solvent in his smelting pool had developed a shared nature with his thoughts and could not accommodate Angel's.
• Boiling Gentleman offered to return Spotty Dog to Minister Dim and request a new primordial Light Solvent for Angel to study when he next arrived.
• Angel agreed to leave Spotty Dog with Boiling Gentleman, though he had not decided whether he would return to Heart's Desire.
• The Chaos Source entered the opened metal sphere, whose conduits let its light shine through and whose shape matched the sphere inside the Bone Leopard.

Angel inspected Boiling Gentleman's newly completed power furnace, then followed him into a void-side hunting facility after the net appeared to catch new prey. They reached the transport chamber, but the supposed captured creature was nowhere to be seen.

• Boiling Gentleman showed Angel the completed power furnace, and Angel judged it perfect.
• Spotty Dog barked toward a corridor as Boiling Gentleman sensed that the hunting net had caught new prey.
• Angel followed Boiling Gentleman through an iron door and along a path suspended in the void toward an azure-lit dome.
• Boiling Gentleman explained that his nets captured void creatures and transported them into the dome for modification with power furnaces.
• Angel and Boiling Gentleman found the transport conduit empty, with no creature visible in the unusually calm void.

Angel discovered a giant Void Traveler imprisoned in a golden birdcage and learned that the creatures in the transparent tube were its kin. The Void Traveler communicated with Angel through spiritual power and demanded that he release them.

• The Boiling Gentleman explained that he had captured a group of weak, invisible void creatures and planned to take them to Cross Station as furnace laborers.
• The Boiling Gentleman pointed Angel toward a black cloth covering a cylindrical cage before leaving the Dome to fetch a servant.
• Angel uncovered an ornate golden birdcage and sensed a huge Snot Monster inside with his spiritual power.
• Angel recognized the creature as a Void Traveler and reconsidered whether Void Travelers served the Nightmare Realm creatures.
• The imprisoned Void Traveler sent Angel an angry spiritual message demanding that he release its kin.

Angel questioned the captured Void Traveler and learned that its companions had come to rescue it, but it refused to explain further. He then examined the Boiling Gentleman’s power furnace and confirmed that it contained Chaos Source whose madness had been reduced, though not eliminated.

• Angel questioned the captured Void Traveler, which demanded that he release its imprisoned companions but refused to answer his questions.
• Angel inferred that the other Void Travelers had entered the ruins to rescue their captured kin and wondered whether the prisoner held an important position among them.
• Angel stopped questioning the Void Traveler and turned his attention to the silver workbench and the power furnace left on it.
• Angel inspected the power furnace and found that its gears and pipes regulated energy while carrying Chaos Source inside the metal sphere.
• Angel sensed that the sphere weakened the Chaos Source’s madness but still allowed some of its fiendish aura to leak through the pipes.

Angel discovered that Spotty Dog was deeply interested in the captured Void Traveler, though it refused to explain why. Spotty Dog finally revealed why it had come by fixing its attention on strange lights gathering beyond the dome, which vanished as if preparing something more ominous.

• Angel worried that the power furnace might gradually alter the modified Demonic Beast's personality and decided to wait for Boiling Gentleman before studying it further.
• Angel tried to ask Spotty Dog why it had sneaked out, but Spotty Dog gave him meaningless barks and ignored his mental message.
• Spotty Dog reacted with intense excitement when Angel asked whether it wanted the Void Traveler in Zhen's Birdcage.
• Angel offered to hint to Boiling Gentleman that Spotty Dog wanted the Void Traveler if Spotty Dog explained its interest, but Spotty Dog gave another perfunctory response.
• Angel asked again why Spotty Dog had come, and Spotty Dog focused on points of light appearing beyond the dome.
• The points of light multiplied across the void, then vanished, seeming to herald something more terrifying.

Angel watched a colossal Liani Demon Whale approach the dome before the Boiling Gentleman drove it away. The Boiling Gentleman introduced his armored servant Mystic Mech Valen to Angel, who remained disguised as Shava.

• A gigantic Demonic Beast appeared beyond the dome, and the Void Traveler identified it as a Liani Demon Whale.
• The Boiling Gentleman returned with Mystic Mech Valen and greeted the whale, whose head withdrew when the dome's light flared.
• Angel remarked that the whale seemed to covet the Boiling Gentleman's base, and the Boiling Gentleman explained that it often visited and that Nightmare Light was the main material in Chaos Source power furnaces.
• The Boiling Gentleman said Lord Nuka had taken the available Nightmare Light, preventing him from modifying a furnace for the whale.
• The Boiling Gentleman introduced Mystic Mech Valen, who knelt and saluted Angel.

Angel observed Boiling Gentleman install a power furnace in Mystic Mech Valen, learning how the machinery worked and realizing that the furnace affected its intelligence and gave Boiling Gentleman a way to control it. The installation awakened Mystic Mech Valen, whose red light unleashed violent malicious thoughts and a sudden beam of energy.

• Angel learned from Boiling Gentleman that the power furnace could affect a modified being's intelligence and required familiarity with Nightmare Light.
• Boiling Gentleman opened Mystic Mech Valen's steel body, and Angel studied its mechanical structure and asked questions about the modification.
• Angel realized the power furnace's conduits and gears distributed and controlled Chaos Source energy, while Boiling Gentleman had deliberately left a shutoff valve as a means of control.
• Boiling Gentleman installed the power furnace, and Mystic Mech Valen awakened with glowing red eyes and frenzied thoughts of slaughter and blood.
• Mystic Mech Valen threw back its head and fired a beam of red light from its mouth.

After Mystic Mech Valen became a dangerous war machine, Boiling Gentleman took Angel to the Black Dream Space to test the machine’s power against a nightmare creature. The chapter ended as a gigantic one-eyed troll appeared in the arena to face Mystic Mech Valen.

• A red chaos beam ricocheted around the laboratory until Spotty Dog swallowed it whole.
• Boiling Gentleman praised Mystic Mech Valen’s transformation and proposed testing its power by having it slaughter nightmare creatures.
• Angel agreed to join Boiling Gentleman in the Black Dream Space to observe the test.
• Boiling Gentleman transported Angel to a dark world with a glowing arena and explained that he had created it as a world of nightmare creatures.
• Boiling Gentleman summoned a gigantic one-eyed troll opposite Mystic Mech Valen, and the troll roared as their battle loomed.

Angel watched Mystic Mech Valen fight increasingly powerful nightmare creatures as Boiling Gentleman tested the Power Furnace. After Valen’s killing instinct awakened during a prolonged battle, its Chaos Source began cycling indefinitely as long as slaughter continued, and the chapter ended with Valen sustaining its peak combat state while killing human wizard simulations.

• Mystic Mech Valen effortlessly killed a one-eyed troll and then crushed a wasp swordsman, but neither battle awakened its thirst for slaughter.
• Boiling Gentleman sent nearly twenty varied gargoyles against Mystic Mech Valen, forcing it into a prolonged fight that nearly exhausted its Chaos Source.
• As Mystic Mech Valen neared collapse, its thirst for slaughter awakened, restoring the red steam and activating the heat-start stage of the Chaos Source cycle.
• Mystic Mech Valen counterattacked and destroyed the gargoyles as its Chaos Source recovered during the continuing slaughter.
• Boiling Gentleman summoned virtual human wizards, and Mystic Mech Valen’s stronger killing intent let it maintain peak power throughout their slaughter.