Chapter Summaries

Angel, Dox, and Abruie entered Princess Town through the Hunter’s Cabins, where Angel discovered a surveillance array that tracked visitors who used their own magic. They met Old Potter at his tavern, where he recognized Abruie and learned that she had arrived with the Formal Wizards Dox and Lord Pat.

• Angel disguised Abruie with a Transformation Technique, then traced the energy flowing through the Hunter’s Cabins.
• Angel discovered that the cabins’ array could track anyone who used their own magic, while a Magic Crystal kept visitors’ signatures hidden.
• Angel, Dox, and Abruie entered Princess Town and evaded the watchers by acting like ordinary visitors before heading to Old Potter’s tavern.
• Old Potter recognized Savage Cave’s secret signal and took the trio to a secured room, explaining that he had been investigating Princess Town’s trouble through Motiya’s guards.
• Abruie revealed her identity to Old Potter, who was relieved she had survived the hunt and was startled to learn that Dox and Lord Pat had accompanied her.

Angel learned that royal knights might soon remove prisoners, possibly including Lady Mero, from Princess Town and decided to investigate Princess Castle. After testing Old Potter’s loyalty, Angel gave him a Dream Wilderness login device so he could report the suspected Guman Kingdom scheme to Savage Cave, then set out to rescue Lady Mero.

• Old Potter told Angel that royal knights were expected to escort prisoners from Princess Town, and the captives might include Lady Mero.
• Angel and the Crown Parrot speculated that the Guman King might be using captured transcendents for a sinister purpose, and Angel told Old Potter to report the suspicions to Savage Cave.
• Angel decided to investigate Princess Castle and rescue Lady Mero, while Dox insisted on accompanying him to observe.
• Angel used Nightmare Illusion power to test Old Potter and learned that he remained loyal to Savage Cave, though he had concealed his ambition to advance by gathering resources in the Guman Kingdom.
• Angel gave Old Potter a Dream Wilderness login device and sent him to contact Granny and pass information to Lord Rhein.
• After Old Potter entered Dream Wilderness, Angel left the secret chamber to deal with the captured guide.

Angel and Dox left the tavern and discussed Abruie’s unusually knowledgeable Crown Parrot before heading toward Princess Castle. They entered Phantom Beast Forest to begin their separate missions, with Angel going to rescue someone from the dungeon and Dox heading toward the princess’s side.

• Angel watched Crown Parrot overwhelm Dox in a verbal fight, then left the tavern with him.
• Dox pointed out that Abruie’s Crown Parrot was unusually intelligent, sharp-tongued, and knowledgeable about the Wizarding World, and Angel agreed it likely had a famous former master.
• Dox recognized Angel as the Music Box Sorcerer, praised his music box, and Angel offered to make him another when Dox brought Little Jin.
• Angel and Dox reached Princess Castle and chose to enter through Phantom Beast Forest rather than the amusement park to avoid meeting the princess.
• Angel used his enchantment skills to bypass the magical patterns, and he and Dox entered the forest before splitting up: Angel went to rescue someone from the dungeon, while Dox headed toward the princess’s side.

Angel used Nightmare Illusion to make a guard lead him to the underground prison, where he discovered prisoners being tortured and guards extorting supernatural captives. He reached the deeper cells and found that his fabricated rumor about the guards profiting from prisoners was true.

• Dox demonstrated concealment that Angel identified as a Gloom Demon's ability, then Angel used Nightmare Illusion to conceal himself as he entered Phantom Beast Forest.
• Angel manipulated a princess's guard into inspecting the prison and followed him and Little Tom to a fortified black building far from Princess Castle.
• Angel entered the prison unnoticed, passed a gargoyle guard, and saw cruel, childlike torture devices on the second floor.
• Angel walked down to the underground cells and found ordinary prisoners badly tortured, then saw a fat guard threatening supernatural captives and demanding their belongings.

Angel used Nightmare Illusion to make the fat guard leave the second floor, then secretly made his way down to the fourth floor to find Lady Mero. He bypassed the fourth floor’s guards and magical mechanism and finally spotted her among the prisoners.

• Angel recognized cross insignias on imprisoned wandering wizards, and Dox said the Cross Organization could rescue them after he finished watching a show.
• Angel used Nightmare Illusion to stop the fat guard from harming a young apprentice and learned that Lady Mero was on the fourth floor.
• Angel passed a cold, aloof girl in a second-floor cell, then hurried through the third floor without being detected.
• Angel reached the fourth floor, used Ermi’s shadow to slip past a Flame Gargoyle and a Dark Gargoyle, and disabled the tunnel mechanism with a playing card.
• Angel entered the fourth-floor prison and spotted Lady Mero among its few occupied cells.

Angel entered the Princess Castle prison and rescued Lady Mero, who asked him to save the gifted ones she had recruited. They found Sibyl on the second floor, and Angel freed her, leaving them to continue searching for the others.

• Angel revealed his identity to Lady Mero and told her he had come at Abruie and Old Potter's request to take her away and rescue the gifted ones.
• Angel and Mero left her cell under a concealment illusion, passed the prison guards, and searched the third floor without finding any gifted ones.
• On the second floor, Angel learned from Dox that Dox had knocked out the fat guard after catching him extorting a wandering apprentice.
• Mero found Sibyl in a cell and introduced her to Angel as one of the gifted ones she had recruited and a former etiquette student.
• Angel opened Sibyl's cell, and Sibyl bowed to him after learning he was a formal wizard.

Angel and Lady Mero found Amisha gravely injured in a cell, and Dox identified the Imperial Princess as responsible for the torture. Angel began treating Amisha with a Sunlight Garden hide scroll, which could cleanse the filth in her body and heal her failing organs without lasting harm.

• Angel used a thread of pressure to stop a sly gifted individual from trying to curry favor with him, and Lady Mero warned the group to respect formal wizards.
• Lady Mero led Angel and the others into a corridor where they saw several prisoners brutally injured, then found Amisha near death in her cell.
• Angel concealed Amisha from the other gifted individuals while Lady Mero examined her and discovered that filth inside her body was causing severe internal injuries.
• Angel sensed a familiar presence and revealed the red-haired Dox, who said the Imperial Princess had tortured women throughout the castle.
• After Dox admitted he could not save Amisha, Angel unfolded a Sunlight Garden hide scroll to cleanse and heal her injuries.

Angel used the Sunlight Garden hide scroll to heal Amisha and cleanse the Gifted in the prison, then urged them to persevere on the path to becoming wizards. Amisha and Sibyl showed their resolve, and Dox reconsidered his judgment before learning Angel had inscribed the scroll himself.

• Angel activated Sunlight Garden, healing Amisha and cleansing the impurities and hidden injuries of Mero and the other Gifted.
• Mero explained that Angel had saved Amisha, and Angel reassured her after Sunlight Garden's treatment caused her to fart.
• Dox called the use of the valuable hide scroll wasteful, but Angel said he had used it to protect Amisha's future potential.
• Amisha vowed to repay Angel and become a wizard, while Angel warned the Gifted that reaching the wizard path required difficult choices and perseverance.
• Sibyl supported Angel and stood her ground against Dox, who then acknowledged Amisha and Sibyl as promising prospects.
• After Amisha recovered, Angel put away the scroll and revealed that he had inscribed Sunlight Garden as a lifestyle magic-pattern hide scroll, prompting Dox to declare that he wanted to be Angel's friend.

Angel and Lady Mero searched the prison for the missing gifted ones, Gelos and Blaze, and learned the princess had taken them to Princess Castle. Angel decided to go there to find them, planning to ask Dox about the castle first.

• After Amisha recovered enough to walk, Angel and the others resumed their search while Dox went to inspect the lower prison levels.
• Angel and Lady Mero found the final corridor empty of Gelos and Blaze, then questioned the rescued prisoners about where the two had been taken.
• Lady Mero recalled Gelos and Blaze’s appearances, and Angel used an illusion to create projections that helped identify them.
• Angel learned from a wandering apprentice that the princess had taken Gelos the previous night and ordered Blaze taken as well after he insulted her.
• Angel decided to go to Princess Castle to find Gelos and Blaze, and opened the Mind Tether to ask Dox about it.

Angel learned from Dox that Gelos and Blaze were in the Princess’s room, then helped Little Tom escape a gargoyle and uncovered that he had killed the captain for revenge. Angel spared Little Tom and sent him to Old Potter for a talent assessment, leaving Mero to investigate his background and consider him among the Talented individuals.

• Dox told Angel that Gelos and Blaze were in the Princess’s room and warned that the Princess’s methods could leave them badly injured.
• Angel and the others reached the first floor, where a gargoyle was hunting Little Tom, and Angel destroyed the gargoyle with his Phantom Limbs.
• Little Tom told Angel he had killed the captain by stabbing him from behind to avenge a blood feud.
• Angel spared Little Tom but refused to take him as a servant, then healed his wounds and told him to find Old Potter.
• Angel asked Mero to assess Little Tom’s talent and investigate his background, adding him to consideration for the group of Talented individuals if all was in order.

Angel led Madam Mero, Sibyl, Amisha, and the others into Princess Castle, where they discovered the princess’s brutal treatment of servants and learned that she used Human Roulette to choose food. With the princess and her protector Gray Crow occupied on the first floor, Angel planned to rescue Gelos and Blaze from the princess’s room.

• Angel warned Madam Mero’s group about the violence inside the castle, but Madam Mero chose to stay with him so they could bring Gelos and Blaze back.
• Angel used his illusion to lead the group past guards and into Princess Castle, where they saw scarred maids carrying a severed foot and a maid wheeling a corpse.
• Angel secretly followed the corpse and discovered that a chef chopped it up to feed the beasts in the Phantom Beast Forest.
• Angel explained that the princess’s Human Roulette selected people to be killed as food, and the group realized the princess was dining nearby.
• Angel spotted Gray Crow, the wizard protecting the princess, and decided to use the moment to rescue Gelos and Blaze from the princess’s room.

Angel led the Gifted through the Princess’s castle, where they discovered a gallery of paintings made from infant skin and a corridor displaying preserved human heads. They reached the trap-filled stairs to the third floor, where the Princess’s room awaited.

• Angel led the group through a corridor of paintings, and Madame Mero revealed that every picture was made from the skin of infants’ backs.
• Angel spoke with Dox through the Mind Tether about the gallery and the strange art he had mentioned, then led the group up the stairs to the second floor.
• The group entered the specimen corridor and found walls covered with preserved heads arranged by age and color, leaving several Gifted sick or terrified.
• Madame Mero urged the group onward, and Angel’s illusion helped steady their emotions as they passed through the corridor.
• Angel found that the stairs to the third floor were rigged with traps and identified a hopping route that avoided them.

Angel made the Gifted memorize and cross a magically trapped staircase, then led them into the third floor’s Rainbow Illusion House. Mero encountered an illusion of her grandmother before Angel pulled her into a safe transfer room and explained that it led to the next room.

• Angel revealed safe footholds on the staircase and gave the Gifted three minutes to memorize them before erasing the hints.
• Amisha crossed the eighteen steps first by following the rhythm of a nursery rhyme, and the other Gifted reached the third floor safely.
• Angel opened a Spatial Gate and brought Mero and himself directly upstairs after the Gifted had crossed the stairs.
• Angel led Mero and the Gifted through the fairy-tale doors into a room filled with rainbow mist.
• Mero entered an illusion of her grandmother’s cottage, but Angel pulled her into a glass transfer room before she could reach her grandmother.
• Angel told Mero that the glass room was the only place in the Rainbow Illusion House free from illusions and a transfer station to the next room.

Angel and Madam Mero reached the room where the missing Gelos and Blaze were held, leaving the other gifted ones trapped in an illusion. They found the two men alive but bound in an elaborate, humiliating pose, while Angel brought the door spirit Shlaikem under his control.

• Angel told Madam Mero that Gelos and Blaze were alive inside the room and kept the other gifted ones in the illusion so they would not see what awaited them.
• Angel and Madam Mero climbed the crystal staircase, where the python spirit Shlaikem attacked them from the door.
• Angel blew away Shlaikem’s poison, forced hard Magic Bread into its mouth, and made it surrender and open the door.
• Angel and Madam Mero heard Blaze boast that he was the Dark Demon King while Gelos questioned his claims and his supposed sealed power.
• Angel and Madam Mero entered and found Gelos and Blaze naked, suspended, and tied into an elaborate, indecent pose.

Angel and Madam Mero entered the Princess’s room and found Blaze and Gelos trapped in an elaborate, snake-filled mechanism; Shlaikem explained how to free them while secretly withholding that the room’s magic array would activate if they tried to leave. As Angel questioned Shlaikem about the Princess and Gray Crow, Sibyl appeared at the doorway and was shocked to see Blaze and Gelos.

• Angel watched Blaze and Gelos rotate above the room as pink blind snakes fell onto them, while Madam Mero asked Shlaikem how to rescue them safely.
• Shlaikem described the room’s mechanisms, and Angel confirmed its instructions so Madam Mero could dismantle them and free the two men.
• Angel recognized that Shlaikem had concealed the room’s magic array and questioned it about the Princess, Gray Crow, and Gray Crow’s identity and abilities.
• Sibyl arrived at the open doorway, saw Blaze and Gelos bound and naked above her, and lowered her head in embarrassment.

Angel helped the gifted ones recover from the Rainbow House’s illusions and learned that Sibyl could see the illusion nodes. As the Imperial Daughter approached, Angel prepared to evacuate the group and tested whether Shlaikem truly intended to abandon her.

• Angel played along with Blaze’s claim that the Young Demon king was a phantom, then concealed Blaze and Gelos in white mist and soothed Sibyl with a Nightmare Illusion.
• Sibyl told Angel how she escaped the Red Coral Church by following areas where the rainbow mist was thinner, and Angel realized she could sometimes see illusion nodes.
• Lady Mero dismantled the mechanism, freed Blaze and Gelos, and went downstairs to find the other gifted ones while Angel kept the two men hidden until they could dress.
• Angel revealed that the Imperial Daughter had reached the second floor but was delayed by an obstacle, and warned Blaze and Gelos to dress quickly.
• Angel questioned Shlaikem about whether he would leave with him, then explained that Gray Crow had been delaying the Imperial Daughter instead of breaking through the obstacle.
• Lady Mero returned with the remaining gifted ones as Angel looked toward the doorway.

Angel rescued Mero and the Talented from the Princess’s room, exposed Shlaikem’s deception, and escaped after disabling the room’s magic energy array. The Princess returned to find her pet and canvas gone, then Shlaikem exploded when she tried to seize it.

• Shlaikem tried to persuade Angel to attack the Princess so its equal contract would end, but Angel realized it was manipulating him.
• Angel had Mero fit a carved disc into the doorway, deceiving the powerful magic energy array and exposing its hidden patterns.
• Angel gave Shlaikem a potion, opened the Void Illusion Gate, and led Mero and the Talented out of Princess Castle.
• The Princess arrived and discovered her pet and canvas were missing, while Gray Crow examined Angel’s disc and recognized the intruder as a magic-pattern master.
• The Princess questioned Shlaikem and reached for it, triggering an explosion that blasted it apart and released dark green mist.

Angel and the rescued gifted individuals escaped Princess Castle, but the princess’s furious aura and the guards’ search suggested the trouble was not over. On the tower, Dox challenged Amisha’s hatred of the princess and suggested Angel could take revenge for Savage Cave.

• Angel told Mero that the ripples from their escape were far from settled, while guards began searching the streets after Dox freed the prisoners.
• Princess Castle released a powerful, angry aura, and Angel hinted that the potion he had given Shlaikem had taken effect.
• Mero and Angel found Blaze and Gelos hiding in the shadows in bizarre outfits made from items in the princess’s wardrobe.
• Dox arrived and called attention to Amisha’s tears; when Amisha claimed they were from joy, he pointed out the hatred in her eyes.
• Mero defended Amisha as a gifted individual from Savage Cave, and Dox suggested that Angel could eliminate the princess in retaliation.

Angel brushed off Dox’s attempt to provoke him into killing the Princess, then led the group back to Old Potter’s tavern while concealing Blaze and Gelos with an illusion. He left the Princess’s fate uncertain, and Blaze fainted after hopping all the way back in his iron coffin.

• Dox urged Angel to kill the Princess, but Angel claimed he had already given her a gift that could make her suffer worse than death.
• Dox refused Angel’s repeated suggestions to sneak back into Princess Castle, while Angel stayed behind with Lady Mero to visit Old Potter.
• Angel watched Blaze hop in his iron coffin and used an illusion to hide Blaze and Gelos from others as they traveled.
• Dox followed Angel rather than returning to Sandworm Market, hoping to improve their relationship and still determined to confront the Crown Parrot.
• Blaze fainted outside Old Potter’s tavern, and Angel directed Sibyl to help Gelos carry him inside.

Angel kept the Talented Ones hidden at the tavern while Dox explained that he would follow immediate opportunities rather than commit to the Guman Kingdom’s upheaval. Dox assessed the Savage Cave group and waited for the Crown Parrot, while Little Tom revealed that Old Potter had gone back to sleep before hearing Angel’s message.

• Angel used an illusion around the tavern to keep the guards from noticing the Talented Ones, then tried to learn how deeply Dox planned to get involved in the Guman Kingdom.
• Dox said wandering wizards followed immediate benefits and might leave at any time, then assessed the Talented Ones, calling Gelos and Blaze interesting while criticizing most of the others.
• Abruie told Dox that the Crown Parrot had flown off to sleep somewhere quiet and had not returned, so Dox decided to wait until daylight.
• Madam Mero brought Abruie and Little Tom to the hall, and Little Tom told Angel that Old Potter had briefly asked about Angel before returning to bed without hearing the full message.