Chapter Summaries

Saga endured Gregory’s attempt to break his mind and sacrifice the city’s residents, then used his protective ring to strike back. As Gregory survived and Saga’s torment returned, Saga transformed into the Molten Lord and attacked him, but Gregory remained unfazed.

• Gregory kicked Saga while his hooded followers seized fleeing residents and threw them into the spreading fires as living sacrifices.
• The cries of the victims tormented Saga, while a mysterious female voice briefly gave him clarity; Gregory prepared to carve runes into him with a stone dagger.
• Saga activated his alchemical ring and released lightning that severed Gregory’s hand and shattered the dagger, triggering the Mother Goddess’s punishment against Gregory.
• Saga rose despite the continuing mental assault and transformed into the towering Molten Lord, gathering the city’s flames around himself.
• Saga shaped a burning sword and pierced Gregory, carbonizing him, but Gregory smiled calmly.

Saga tried to kill Gregory, but the Demon Monk’s ritual transformed Opfer into a hellish city and turned its flames into ghostfire monsters. Richard reached his position with the Train Cannon and opened William II’s letter, which ordered him to bombard Opfer without restraint.

• Saga drove his Flame Greatsword through Gregory, then blasted him with Solar Flare Burst when Gregory’s blackened wound began pulling him in.
• Gregory revived and revealed that the sacrifices in Opfer had empowered the Earth Mother’s ritual, transforming Saga’s flames and spreading ghostfire through the city.
• William II sent Richard to Opfer with six Train Cannon guns, while the army suspected Richard of sympathizing with the Save-the-Nation Alliance.
• At the designated position, Richard opened William II’s letter and read the order to bombard Opfer and destroy both the cultists and the Mage Guild.

Opfer succumbed to the Mother Goddess’s influence as the Imperial Army prepared to destroy the city. Richard’s unit fired its first barrage of alchemical shells toward Opfer, with Richard guiding their shots from more than eighty kilometers away.

• The Mother Goddess’s call transformed Opfer’s cultists and citizens, and her power began dragging the city into her domain.
• The Imperial Army surrounded Opfer, cut off the Oder River, and destroyed villages along the way.
• Richard sensed the corruption spreading from Opfer and ordered Franz to prepare the Train Cannons for their first barrage.
• Richard consecrated all six guns with Guided Shot, and the artillery crews fired their alchemical shells toward Opfer.

Richard’s forces bombarded Opfer after the Emperor’s Wrath shells erased the city’s supernatural corruption, while Gregory and Saga were left gravely altered. Richard then learned from William II’s letter that the Empire had agreed to a secret ceasefire and that William planned to ban magic and divine arts, leaving Richard as the realm’s sole Spellcaster.

• The six Emperor’s Wrath shells erased Opfer’s black mist and abnormalities, forcing Saga and Gregory out of their transformed forms and leaving them barely alive.
• Richard’s artillery, gunboats, airships, and Anti-Magic Devices bombarded Opfer for three hours, flattening the city.
• Richard sensed that no obvious contamination remained and read William II’s letter while the troops prepared to move the Train Cannons.
• William II revealed that the Empire had reached a secret ceasefire with the Republic of Valois and that his rule would contract to roughly the size of the Marlin Kingdom.
• William II declared his intention to ban magic and divine arts in his territory, allowing only anti-magic technology and naming Richard as its sole Spellcaster.

Richard and Franz discussed whether naivety could make someone a good ruler or general, while Richard reflected on the Emperor’s nature and Rorschach’s way of treating allies and enemies. The First Flame went out and released Netherflame that devastated the Tower of First Flame, while another eruption began beneath Opfer.

• Richard burned the Emperor’s letter and asked Franz whether a naive person could be a good ruler or general.
• Franz described the ruthless lessons taught at military academy and compared Rorschach’s kindness to his own people with his cruelty toward enemies.
• Richard explained that leaders needed both the strength to defeat enemies and the resources to reward their allies.
• The First Flame at the Tower of First Flame went out, turned ash-white, and released black liquid that rotted Spellcasters and opened a well into the abyss.
• Netherflame flooded the tower and spread through the tundra, twisting creatures into monsters and leaving another wound in the world.
• Furious roars rose from beneath Opfer, the former central city of the Empire.

Gregory survived the bombardment and prepared to sacrifice himself as the Mother Goddess's contamination surged again. Richard and three Archmages launched four special shells at Opfer to slow the spread, then moved to evacuate the Imperial Army and confront the contamination.

• Gregory regained human form, reassembled himself, and decided to sacrifice himself to Mother Earth.
• The Mage Guild reported that the Tower of First Flame and Opfer had gone offline, and Kouber, Rorschach, and Feuerbach took charge of the crisis.
• Richard detected the contamination spreading again and ordered his troops to stop relocating the artillery and prepare the remaining four shells.
• Kouber and Feuerbach launched the first two shells, while Rorschach accelerated the last two toward Opfer using lightning rails.
• Rorschach and Feuerbach headed to the front to address the contamination as Richard and another Archmage organized the Imperial Army's withdrawal.

Rorschach and Feuerbach entered the collapsing ruins of Opfer to stop the Mother Goddess’s incursion, while Richard and Kober organized a civilian evacuation. Inside the distorted city, they found a monster emerging from a shattered egg, and Rorschach prepared to fight it.

• Richard used his rank to reach the command post and ordered Army Mages to organize an evacuation, while Rorschach rushed to Kober and Feuerbach.
• Kober explained that an egg had manifested in Opfer but that an earlier attack had interrupted its arrival; Rorschach assigned Kober and Richard to help evacuate civilians.
• Rorschach and Feuerbach planned to purify the corrupted area, suppress the breach with Anti-Magic Devices, and first stop Opfer from falling into the Mother Goddess’s domain.
• Rorschach entered the disaster zone with Feuerbach as a soul fragment went to the Boundary Land to create an avatar for his Super Art spell.
• They found a grotesque creature crawling from a shattered egg at the center of each illusion, and Rorschach dry-heaved before preparing to fight.

Gregory, transformed into a monster by the Mother Goddess, attacked Rorschach and Feuerbach, but their defenses resisted its mental corruption. Feuerbach discovered that a Reverse Ray could undo Gregory’s incomplete metamorphosis, and Rorschach prepared to make him human again.

• Gregory revealed that the cocoon was meant to complete his transformation and blamed Rorschach and Feuerbach for interrupting it.
• Rorschach tested Gregory’s defenses, while Feuerbach warned him to guard his mind against the monster’s invasive speech.
• Gregory summoned a swarm of wingless monsters and tried to overwhelm the Archmages with their cries and mental attacks.
• Gregory saw that Feuerbach’s and Rorschach’s magical domains resisted the Mother Goddess’s corruption.
• Feuerbach struck Gregory with a Reverse Ray, causing part of his transformed body to revert and collapse.
• Rorschach recognized Gregory as the monk who had appeared in Oword and began preparing a stronger Reverse Ray to turn him human again.

Rorschach and Feuerbach defeated Gregory, but the Mother Goddess’s power continued to spread and threaten the Real Realm. They left to find survivors and investigate, while the Tower of First Flame was revealed to have become a breeding ground for the Mother Goddess’s monsters.

• Rorschach and Feuerbach destroyed Gregory after Rorschach’s beams stripped away the monster’s human features and regeneration.
• Feuerbach warned that Gregory’s sacrifice had worsened the breach in reality and that the Mother Goddess might have contaminated places beyond Oword.
• Rorschach and Feuerbach decided to find the Tower of First Flame’s director and any survivors before the duplicate arrived, and Rorschach captured a monster for study.
• They discovered that the Tower of First Flame had vanished and that its contaminated fire seed was nurturing giant eggs on the northern tundra.
• The first monsters emerged from the eggs, and the winged leader’s beat sent them spreading across the ice field.

The Mages and a dwarven airship fleet fought the Ground Flies spreading corruption around the Tower of First Flame, using Stellar Magic and electricity to hold them back. Rorschach’s Anti-Magic Devices then weakened the corruption and caused the monsters to collapse, though the source continued producing new threats.

• Ground Flies overwhelmed the Mages at the Tower of First Flame, resisting low- and mid-tier magic and spreading corruption through bites and spores.
• The chief of the Tower of Time gathered Spellcasters to cast Stellar Magic, freezing and badly damaging many Ground Flies without destroying them.
• A dwarven airship fleet arrived through a Sky Ladder System portal and used High Voltage Current to stun the monsters, including their winged leader.
• The ring tier opened again, and rocket-like vehicles carrying Rorschach’s Anti-Magic Devices landed near the source of corruption.
• The Anti-Magic Devices weakened the spores and early-stage corruption, and the electrically stunned Ground Flies collapsed as the Mother Goddess’s power receded.

The Tower of Time and the Dwarf Confederation contained the rift at the former Tower of First Flame site while investigating contamination underground. At Opfer, Rorschach demonstrated the Mage Guild’s destructive power to foreign leaders and urged nations to unite against the Mother Goddess, leaving them stunned and demanding answers.

• The dwarf army helped suppress the rift near the former Tower of First Flame, and the Tower of Time chief ordered quarantine measures and an underground survey for contamination.
• Feuerbach brought foreign ministers and heads of state to Opfer to show them the shattered city and explain the threat posed by the Mother Goddess.
• Rorschach detonated a duplicate using the Microscopic Decomposition Technique, creating a vast explosion that engulfed the monsters fleeing Opfer.
• Rorschach shielded the observers from the blast’s radiation and explained that the explosion was only the first stage of clearing the contamination.
• Rorschach disclosed the destruction of the Tower of First Flame and called on nations and organizations to unite against the Mother Goddess’s threat.

After Rorschach’s explosion quieted the rift, the mages stabilized Opfer’s collapsing reality and sealed away a contaminated fragment of the Material World. The Senate then confronted the possibility that ancient seals might also be failing as the Mother Goddess’s cult spread across the Empire and its monster armies advanced.

• The Tower of Arcane Arts used Magic Weavers and String Magic to stabilize the shattered space around Opfer, while Master Felbaha gathered its contamination for smelting.
• Feuerbach completed a secret art, and the Senate separated and sealed the contaminated planar fragment after three days of spellcasting.
• The head of the Tower of Darkness questioned whether ancient planar seals were failing and whether past purifications had truly removed contamination.
• The Senate resolved to add three Sky Ladder Systems to connect more regions with the outside world.
• The Mother Goddess Cult spread through the Empire’s heartland, recruiting wounded soldiers and assembling monster armies under Gregory’s preparations.
• The cult’s armies advanced with Ground Flies, undead infantry, scouts, and immense flesh masses that served as supplies and siege weapons.

The Allied Army confronted expanding Corrupted Legions as signal interference and dangerous aerial enemies complicated its operations. Rorschach tested a new chain-spell bomb to destroy a city-sized Fleshball Legion, while another, roaming Legion revealed itself across forests and mountains.

• Andre explained that airships would relay signals for construct regiments and needed escorts against the Corrupted Legion's aerial units.
• After two construct squads were destroyed, the Allied Army adopted a regiment-level tactic using artillery, flanking maneuvers, Chain Lightning, and Explosive Fireballs.
• A plague spread through a city and created a vast Fleshball Legion that consumed the city and filled the area with poisonous fog.
• Rorschach sent thirty-six new Spell Chain bombs through a portal, and their explosions carbonized the monsters and destroyed the city.
• Engineers debated why the bombs were weaker than expected, while another Corrupted Legion emerged after spreading through forests and mountains.

The Corrupted Legion spread across the Empire, overwhelming isolated settlements and forcing the Alliance and Imperial forces to adapt their purification tactics. After the Long Day weakened the monsters, Feuerbach warned that the Empire and Alliance lacked the rapid-response systems needed to protect rural communities, while the Senators debated further support and containment.

• A Sky Knight and three constructs cleared Contamination Zone Three, but Tanya lost contact with Squad Four and set out to investigate.
• The Corrupted Legion overwhelmed the first wave of constructs with corrosive monsters, and the battle line stabilized only after the second wave switched to lightning spells.
• The Long Day weakened the Corrupted Legion and slowed its regeneration, allowing Alliance and Imperial forces to regain control.
• Feuerbach reported that the Legion contained at least sixty-seven monster varieties and exploited isolated villages with no effective warning or defense systems.
• Rorschach condemned the Senators for letting the Legion expand during cruel experiments, while Feuerbach called for more support to curb the contamination.
• The Istarani representative proposed secretly supporting the Empire's plan to abandon eastern lands and seal controlled areas with Anti-Magic Devices.

Captain Cohen announced the returning soldiers and new restrictions on magic to a small town, where an Anti-Magic Device was installed at the former Mage Tower. At the Imperial Palace, the Baron explained his Stagnation Theory to William II and offered him a remedy for migraines.

• Captain Cohen welcomed the soldiers home, promised a small tax reduction, and warned the residents to report cults and abnormal events.
• An engineer oversaw the installation of an Anti-Magic Device at the town's former Mage Tower.
• The Empire began deploying Anti-Magic Devices to restrict magic around the Marlin Kingdom and the Imperial Capital.
• William II received the Baron, who used sheets of paper and buttons to explain how the devices could create Dead Magic Zones.
• The Baron noticed William II rubbing his temple and offered him an old prescription for migraines.

William II assessed the Anti-Magic Device project and heard a proposal for supplies and funding from Baditz de Griffwal, leader of the Reason Above All society. He accepted the society’s offer and wondered whether the Mage Guild was secretly helping his plans.

• William II had the Baron escorted out, then asked the technical officer whether the Baron’s proposal for the Anti-Magic Devices could be realized.
• The technical officer confirmed the proposal and said the research institute could carry it out, then raised Spellcasters’ concerns about the Empire’s treatment of them.
• William II ordered the technical officer to explain that the devices would protect the Empire’s Core Zone and said Mages who wanted to leave would not be forced to stay.
• Baditz de Griffwal introduced himself as the founder of the Reason Above All society and offered the Empire Transmutation Dust, raw materials, Steam Engines, and donations at cost price.
• William II pointed out that the society’s goods came from Mages, and Baditz said middlemen would conceal the transactions and bring the supplies into the Empire.
• William II thanked Baditz, invited him to the evening banquet, and wondered whether the Mage Guild was secretly supporting his plans.

Emperor William II weighed the Empire’s alliances, internal threats, and plans for its Spellcasters while watching the Mage-made Sky Ladder pass overhead. He considered assigning Richard to oversee a region for Mages as Richard sent Franz back to Rorschach.

• William II granted Baditz an honorary Imperial barony and discussed with his courtier how the Mage Guild and foreign interests might be using Baditz’s society.
• William II watched a Sky Ladder pass across the moon and reflected on the Mages’ plans to travel to the Astral Realm.
• William II reviewed the Empire’s strained relations with the rebels, southern states, and Valois, and worried about the reliability of the Anti-Magic Devices.
• William II considered setting aside a region beyond the Dead Magic Zone for Spellcasters and thought of Richard as someone who could keep them in line.
• Richard sent Franz back to Rorschach in his own name.

Richard visited Bayern’s transformed Special Zone and reunited with Franz, Rorschach, Bart, and Amelia. The gathering ended with Libus arriving blindfolded, prompting Richard to question whether her arrival was part of a prisoner exchange.

• Richard and Franz traveled through the industrialized Kempston Special Zone and reunited with Franz’s family.
• Rorschach explained that Magic Weavers had changed the region’s magical environment and increased its magical concentration.
• Bart and Amelia arrived from Würzburg, where Amelia asked Richard to address her as Senator.
• Rorschach brought in Libus, who was blindfolded, and Richard greeted her.
• Richard asked whether their reunion was a prisoner exchange, but Rorschach denied it and claimed Franz was worth less than a Grand Duke’s Daughter.

Richard challenged Bart and Rorschach’s invitation to join the Alliance, questioning whether its revolution could improve life for everyone without repeating the Empire’s bloodshed. Rorschach revealed that the Alliance would coexist with the Empire and explained that the Senate had united against an apocalyptic threat, leaving Richard questioning what their efforts could mean.

• Richard argued that the Alliance was a noble-led rebel force whose war could not justify further suffering, and Bart urged him to join as its commander.
• Libus challenged Bart’s claim that the Alliance represented “we,” and Rorschach asked Richard whether doubts about its aims kept him from joining.
• Richard questioned whether the Special Zone’s prosperity could be extended to everyone and said revolutions often demanded great sacrifice while delivering little.
• Rorschach took Richard to the Lanster Space Center and said the Alliance would coexist with the Empire because the Senate wanted an Empire that could never produce another Emperor.
• Rorschach explained that the Senate had learned the Earth Mother Goddess was a primordial being whose full awakening would end the world, and Richard asked what meaning remained in their actions.

Rorschach explained the Senate’s plans for surviving the Mother Goddess’s revival and urged Richard to help the Empire protect its people. After Richard returned to the Empire, Rorschach turned to the launch of the Kepler, a starship intended to observe the Archetype Layer and search the Astral Realm.

• Rorschach told Richard that the Senate was divided between evacuating the Prime Material Plane and defending it, and explained why both the Alliance and the Empire needed to prepare.
• Rorschach urged Richard to pursue change in the Empire and give its people a chance to survive the coming apocalypse.
• Richard took Libus's family and returned to his unit's garrison, while Bart boasted that he would defeat Richard and restore his Army Mage status.
• Rorschach and his allies handled their many projects, including spring plowing, opening a route to the Gas-Phase Plane, and addressing a heavily contaminated zone in the Empire's central region.
• Rorschach launched the Kepler, whose systems were designed to study the Tree of Truth and search for unknown planes and routes to the Beyond the Beyond.