Recaps

Benjamin encountered Rex at an industrial technology seminar on Anvil Star and suspected that Rex shared his connection to Wizard Civilization. They tested each other through technical discussion and recognized a familiar shadow in one another, leaving their reunion unspoken.

• Benjamin attended a technical seminar at Titan Forging headquarters on Anvil Star and recognized Rex among the engineers.
• Benjamin listened to Rex debate an energy-transmission model and noticed that some of his reasoning resembled wizardly ways of understanding energy.
• Benjamin approached Rex and hinted at their shared perspective by asking about energy-field affinity and manipulating energy through will.
• Rex tested Benjamin with a question about periodic entropy fluctuations in a closed system, suggesting that the system might be breathing.
• Benjamin answered that the system could exchange energy with a greater void, and Rex recognized the familiar trace of another civilization in his gaze.

Benjamin visited Rex to exchange information about their fabricated world and learned that Rex’s Weaver brain chip had awakened him because its technology fit the world’s physical rules. Their meeting tested the hidden entity’s response to awakened people, and its apparent tolerance left them believing it was relatively benevolent.

• Benjamin visited Rex’s secure residence after Rex invited him to discuss technical matters.
• Rex explained that his Weaver brain chip had gradually broken through his false memories and that it worked because its technology could be understood and reproduced by this world’s science.
• Benjamin realized that some wizard knowledge could function as technology if it conformed to the world’s physical laws, though he could not yet grasp the further insight this suggested.
• Rex told Benjamin that people who died unexpectedly seemed to be reborn without their memories, while those who died naturally did not appear to revive.
• Benjamin and Rex exchanged what they had learned about the world, its unusual control, and its vast reality, but they still lacked answers about the hidden entity and how to escape.
• Benjamin and Rex concluded that their meeting had tested the hidden entity’s attitude toward awakened people and that its failure to interfere suggested it was relatively benevolent.

Benjamin and Rex traveled to the Iron Curtain frontline to investigate the universe’s hidden system, but the base commander refused to let them approach the fighting. Watching a battle remotely, they recognized Wizard World creatures among the alien combat units and suspected that intelligent aliens were directing them.

• Benjamin concluded that the force behind the orderly society might be a non-living system that tolerated anomalies unless they threatened its directives, and he and Rex identified the frontline as the likeliest place to investigate.
• Rex used his status and technical proposals to secure clearance for himself and Benjamin to visit Iron Curtain as observers.
• The base commander refused their request to observe the fighting from the front and allowed them to watch a small conflict remotely from a guarded post.
• Benjamin recognized the enlarged Molten Core Hounds, while Rex identified the shadowy creatures as Void Predators; they also spotted other combat units resembling creatures used in planar warfare.
• Benjamin and Rex realized that the familiar cannon fodder was being used on the frontline despite the presence of wizards, and they suspected that real aliens were hidden behind the creatures and directing the war.

Benjamin and Rex studied the Blue Devils and retrieved a damaged enemy mech after a battle near the front line. Their examination revealed that the aliens had a biological network suited to channeling supernatural energy, leading them to suspect the plane’s system had deliberately made nonhuman species hostile and designed the war.

• Benjamin asked the commander about the attackers, and the commander identified them as expendable vanguards for the more intelligent Blue Devils.
• Benjamin and Rex gained the commander’s trust by analyzing base data and conducting protected field observations.
• An enemy squad ambushed their escort near the front line, but the soldiers destroyed it and recovered a mostly intact walking mech.
• Rex and Benjamin dissected the mech and found its blue pilot had a biological network that could channel extraordinary energy.
• Benjamin and Rex concluded that the plane’s system had designated nonhuman lifeforms as hostile and that the interstellar war had been deliberately designed.

Benjamin and Rex withdrew from the front lines and visited Rex’s old friends, Calvin and Barton, where Benjamin concluded that the hidden presence might be shaping people’s lives around their deepest desires. A remark about exceptional cases gave Benjamin an idea for finding the presence, and he hurried back to his own birthplace to act on it.

• Benjamin and Rex returned from the front lines to Rex’s home planet and met his wizard friends Calvin and Barton.
• At a nightclub, Rex told Benjamin that Calvin and Barton had found lives better suited to their real dreams than their former lives as wizards.
• Benjamin connected their examples with Viola’s behavior and the unusually small number of soldiers, and proposed that the hidden presence read people’s desires and arranged roles to satisfy them.
• Rex warned that confronting the presence was dangerous, but Benjamin chose to pursue his idea, and Rex let him go.
• Benjamin returned to his birthplace in less than three days and headed home, eager to put his plan into action.

Benjamin confronted the entity controlling his supposed family and learned that it was Justice, an artificial intelligence created to enforce equality by suppressing extraordinary power and fulfilling each person’s deepest wishes. Justice explained its system, while Benjamin recognized how its idealized design had shaped the world’s peculiar social rules.

• Benjamin stopped the family gathering and accused his parents, Amy, and Victor of acting under another being’s control.
• The four family members turned emotionless and spoke in unison, introducing their controller as Justice and identifying Benjamin as Special Observation Subject No. 721.
• Benjamin explained that he had deduced the four were hollow puppets because everyone else he encountered, including Viola, had a real soul and independent thoughts.
• Justice revealed that a Sage created it to end injustice by sealing extraordinary power and guiding people toward lives that fulfilled their deepest hopes.
• Justice said people willingly embraced those lives because their desires mattered more to them than power or memories of the past.
• Benjamin considered the limits of Justice’s idea of fairness and recognized that the Sage’s theoretical society had produced the strange, imperfect rules he had observed.

Benjamin discovered that his deepest wish was to gain ever greater transcendent power, directly contradicting Justice’s mission to suppress such power and making him a loophole in its system. After Justice explained that it had erased three wizards who threatened its core rules, it erased Benjamin as well.

• Benjamin asked Justice why it had given him an elaborate family and childhood friends, and Justice said its system could not read his true wishes and had created relationships as compensation.
• Benjamin recognized that his deepest desire was power itself, which fundamentally conflicted with Justice’s goal of suppressing transcendent power.
• Justice failed to reconcile Benjamin’s wish with its directives and identified him as a loophole.
• Benjamin asked about the three wizards who had died, and Justice said it erased them after they tried to exploit loopholes and destroy its core rules.
• Benjamin asked how Justice would handle him, and Justice erased his existence, leaving him dead in darkness.

Benjamin revived in a clone through the Substitute Doll after an instant-death attack, then returned to Noren Academy No. 13 with Mentor Clark. He submitted a secret report about the plane and Justice to the Expeditionary Force command, leaving the war’s next stage to the Level 8 Wizards.

• Benjamin awoke in a cultivation tank and discovered that the Substitute Doll had transferred his soul into a prepared clone after his death.
• Benjamin found that the Body Tempering Method’s adaptive resistances had survived the change of body.
• Mentor Clark appeared in the laboratory, confirmed Benjamin’s revival, and took him to make an official report.
• Benjamin returned to Noren Academy No. 13 and compiled his nine years of experience and intelligence about the Mind Realm and Justice into a top-secret report.
• Benjamin sent the report to the Expeditionary Force’s highest command and concluded that the Level 8 Wizards would handle the next stage of the planar war.

Benjamin stayed at Noren Academy No. 13, working in Mentor Clark’s laboratory while awaiting word about the bizarre plane. After learning that the Substitute Doll that saved his life cost ten billion Advanced Military Merit, he began repaying Clark through research work, until Viola returned two months later.

• Benjamin asked Clark about obtaining another Substitute Doll and discovered its price was ten billion Advanced Military Merit, with a production cycle measured in centuries.
• Benjamin searched for other ways to evade death, found them even more expensive or restricted, and decided to focus on strengthening himself instead.
• Benjamin realized Clark’s Alchemy and fate studies might someday let him produce Substitute Dolls, but Clark assigned him seventeen sets of data to analyze as interest on his debt.
• Benjamin spent two months working as Clark’s research assistant and re-optimizing his Rune Artifact and Black Giant designs.
• Viola returned with news related to the bizarre plane.

Benjamin learned how Wizard Civilization’s Level 8 Wizards could resist and even defeat Level 9 beings through Law Solidification and coordinated power. He suspected that the civilization’s expansion served the nine Level 9 Wizards’ need for Level 8 allies, and Viola and Mentor Clark neither confirmed nor denied it.

• Viola told Benjamin that the plane governed by Justice had joined Wizard Civilization after a Level 8 Wizard negotiated with the artificial intelligence.
• Benjamin questioned how a Level 8 Wizard had overcome Justice’s power, and Viola and Mentor Clark explained that Level 8 Wizards could resist law-twisting through Law Solidification.
• Clark explained that coordinated Level 8 Wizards could combine their domains and briefly exceed a Level 9 being’s instantaneous output power.
• Viola said that three to ten Level 8 Wizards could usually suppress many known Level 9 beings and force them to retreat, negotiate, or fall.
• Benjamin concluded that wizard training prepared groups to fight stronger beings and speculated that the nine Level 9 Wizards drove the civilization’s expansion; Viola and Clark exchanged knowing smiles.

Benjamin reviewed the Expeditionary Force’s postwar report, discovering his reward and learning why many trapped wizards chose not to return. Viola revealed that the Level 9 Sage who created Justice had died peacefully of old age in the world he built, leaving Benjamin and Mentor Clark silent.

• Viola complained to Benjamin that the expedition had left her deeply in debt, and Mentor Clark criticized her for rushing ahead without building her knowledge.
• Benjamin checked the Expeditionary Force’s report and found he had received 1,000,000 units of Advanced Military Merit for his intelligence contribution.
• Benjamin read that only three trapped personnel were confirmed killed, while others had voluntarily stayed in the transformed plane; Viola explained the Wizard Civilization’s pragmatic view of their choice.
• Benjamin found that the Enlightenment Epoch civilization had vanished and asked Viola what had happened to the Sage who created Justice.
• Viola said the Level 9 Sage had died of old age after living as an ordinary mortal in Justice without using his powers, and Mentor Clark returned silently to his experiment.

After returning to the Purgatory Sulfur Plane, Benjamin discovered that the Incense Divinity Path had begun producing Mortal Aura and spent fifty years studying to prepare for his likely advancement to Level 4. His junior fellow student Angelo then asked him to improve the aptitude of his unborn child, while Viola’s attempt to pry into Angelo’s personal life was cut short by Clark.

• Benjamin returned to the Purgatory Sulfur Plane, confirmed that the Incense Divinity Path was operating, and detected its first trace of Mortal Aura.
• Benjamin planned to refine the path while preparing to reach Level 4, then spent fifty years studying spatial theory and other knowledge.
• Angelo visited Benjamin and asked him to improve the aptitude of the baby still in the womb.
• Benjamin offered to raise the embryo’s elemental affinity to the Level 10 standard for ten million Low-Level Military Merit, and Angelo accepted.
• Viola called Benjamin to ask about Angelo’s child, but Clark interrupted and pulled her away to her work.

Benjamin studied a mutated Spider-Snake and developed the dangerous new spell spatial distortion, then learned that the Black Giants were nearing a major change. He left his research to investigate as the first priests began to emerge among their people.

• Benjamin discovered that the Spider-Snake's crystal shell stabilized space while its inner membrane network produced spatial fluctuations.
• Benjamin imitated the membrane network and developed spatial distortion, a powerful spell that could tear apart targets but might expand uncontrollably and harm its caster.
• Benjamin began investigating how to stabilize spatial distortion using the crystal shell's properties.
• Benjamin sensed a disturbance from the Black Giants and summoned one of their commanders.
• The Black Giant commander reported that the race's growing population had caused a qualitative change in its gathered life essence, and its first priests were about to emerge.

Benjamin discovered that the Incense Divinity Path had shaped the Black Giants enough to produce a highly intelligent priest, who was born with Level 6 strength and an innate grasp of energy laws. He took the new Black Giant Priest to his laboratory to test whether he could become a capable research assistant.

• Benjamin realized that the Incense Divinity Path had influenced the Black Giants and prompted the emergence of a priest.
• Benjamin followed the Black Giant Chieftain to an Incubation Pool, where a special Black Giant was forming.
• Benjamin supplied the pool with energy, and the gathered Black Giants' faith helped bring the Black Giant Priest into being.
• The Black Giant Priest knelt before Benjamin, who discovered that he had Level 6 strength, exceptional intelligence, and innate mastery of energy laws.
• Benjamin brought the Black Giant Priest to his laboratory and gave him Knowledge Crystals to study.

Benjamin used his growing team of Black Giant Priests to advance his research and completed a new spatial magic system based on the Mutant Spider-Snake's carapace. After testing its abilities, he received a message from Mentor Clark and paused his exploration of ways to combine spatial wizardry with cultivation techniques.

• Black Giant Priests reported research breakthroughs and progress on the Incense Divinity Path while Benjamin finished his daily body tempering.
• Benjamin learned that the Mutant Spider-Snake Crystal Carapace Spatial Stabilization Element Model had been completed and developed [Spatial Stabilization] and [Phase Space].
• Benjamin tested [Phase Space] and modified it into [Spatial Slash], which cut through alloy targets and damaged a level-six defensive force field and armor plate.
• Benjamin assessed the limits of [Spatial Slash] and organized his spatial wizardry into a system for attack, defense, control, concealment, and mobility.
• Benjamin considered using Immortal Cultivation System spatial techniques to improve his wizardry, but Mentor Clark sent him a message.

Benjamin accepted Mentor Clark’s invitation to witness his Grand Mentor’s attempt to advance to Level 8, then reunited with Viola and Angelo at Noren Academy No. 13. He met Angelo’s Level 1 Wizard child, Cole, and watched Viola demonstrate her ability to transfer and store pain.

• Mentor Clark summoned Benjamin and told him to join Viola and Angelo in a month to observe his mentor’s attempt to advance to Level 8 Wizard.
• Benjamin arranged his research matters with the Black Giant Priests and traveled to Noren Academy No. 13 a month later.
• Benjamin arrived last and recognized Cole, Angelo’s child, as the person whose aptitude he had enhanced years before.
• Benjamin teased Viola about her unusually elegant appearance, and she kicked his shin before transferring the pain back to him with her law.
• Viola showed that she could remove, store, and inflict pain, while Benjamin praised her ability and Angelo and Cole watched in confusion.

Clark led Benjamin, Viola, Angelo, and Cole to Noren Workshop headquarters to visit Noren Academy No. 1. They arrived at the Academy and met Wizard Augusta and Rex.

• Clark appeared in the office and led the group through a long-range teleportation array to Noren Workshop headquarters.
• Benjamin saw that the headquarters plaza was full of wizards and observed the futuristic city of Noren Plane 1 as an energy force field carried the group toward the Academy.
• The group arrived at Noren Academy No. 1, where Benjamin recognized Rex waiting with another wizard.
• Clark introduced the blue-robed wizard as Wizard Augusta, and Benjamin, Viola, Angelo, and Cole respectfully greeted him.

Benjamin and his companions arrived at Noren Academy No. 1 for Clark’s advancement celebration, where Wizard Augusta introduced his disciple Rex. Rex showed the group around and settled them into rooms, while David missed the event because he was away at a planar war.

• Benjamin recognized the Augusta surname from a fellow apprentice from nearly a thousand years earlier.
• Wizard Augusta introduced Rex as his disciple to Clark, and Rex greeted Benjamin and the others.
• Rex led Benjamin, Viola, Angelo, and Cole through Noren Academy No. 1 and explained that his academic work had earned him local fame.
• Rex gave the group room tokens for accommodations with private laboratories.
• Rex told Benjamin that David could not attend the celebration because he was participating in a planar war, and Benjamin wished him well.

Benjamin spent three months studying in his headquarters quarters before Viola told him that Grand Mentor would meet with his descendants the next day. The meeting would prepare them for his future eighth-rank advancement and give them a chance to learn from it.

• Benjamin inspected his laboratory quarters and chose to spend his rest period studying rather than exploring headquarters.
• Benjamin secluded himself in the laboratory for three months, studying spatial theories and reviewing his research remotely.
• Viola visited Benjamin and marveled that he had not left his quarters or shown distress from his intense studies.
• Viola told Benjamin that Grand Mentor would meet with his descendants the next day as part of the preparations for his advancement.
• Viola sensed Benjamin's calm and left, privately wondering whether he would soon surpass her.

Benjamin and his companions visited Anton Buchanan, where Benjamin discovered the Grand Mentor was a childlike-looking wizard nearing Level 8. The gathering was interrupted by the arrival of Anton’s mentor, Wizard Noren, whom Benjamin already knew.

• Benjamin, Clark, Viola, Angelo, and Cole traveled to Anton Buchanan’s tower and entered the complete plane contained within it.
• Benjamin met Anton Buchanan in the palace and felt the immense power behind his childlike appearance.
• Benjamin recognized Wizard Dionysius Spencer among the second-generation wizards and realized he was likely the lineage’s eldest disciple.
• Powerful visitors arrived, and Anton personally went to greet their leader, his mentor.
• Benjamin recognized the arriving mentor as Wizard Noren, the creator of Noren Workshop and a Level 8 wizard he had met before.

Benjamin attended a gathering where Wizard Noren praised Clark’s lineage and asked Anton Buchanan about his preparations to reach Level 8. Anton said he would spend another month refining his spiritual power before attempting the breakthrough, and Noren and the other Level 7 Wizards agreed to wait and witness it.

• Wizard Noren arrived at the palace with several Level 7 Wizards, and Anton Buchanan welcomed them as fellow disciples.
• Benjamin realized his place in Noren Workshop’s lineage, then endured Wizard Noren’s scrutiny without showing his pressure.
• Wizard Noren praised Clark’s disciple descendants, drawing curious and envious attention toward Benjamin, Viola, Angelo, and the others.
• Benjamin, Viola, and Clark sheltered Angelo’s nervous child with their auras until he relaxed.
• Anton told Wizard Noren that he planned to spend another month refining his spiritual power before attempting to cross the Level 8 barrier, and Noren agreed to wait with the other Level 7 Wizards.

The wizards settled into a palace and filled their days with research, discussion, and friendly contests. When Wizard Noren announced a formal competition with a Substitute Doll as the prize, Benjamin abandoned his indifference and decided to compete.

• Benjamin studied in the grand hall while the wizards exchanged ideas and held informal contests.
• Viola teased Benjamin for avoiding the contests, and he explained that they were poor measures of real combat ability.
• Rex told Benjamin he wanted to spar with him, but Benjamin refused.
• Wizard Noren announced a formal competition and offered a Substitute Doll to the victor.
• Recognizing the prize that had once saved his life, Benjamin put away his crystal and resolved to compete.

Wizard Noren began the competition as a free-for-all across a vast area, and Benjamin entered Phase Space to prepare for the battle and hunt the strongest contestants. He found a Level 5 fire wizard near a lava river and moved to attack.

• Wizard Noren created a circular competition zone over a thousand kilometers wide and set rules that made the last contestant standing the winner.
• Benjamin hid in Phase Space and decided to target Level 5 Wizards quickly before they could prepare defenses or adapt to his forces.
• Benjamin released tens of thousands of Patrollers to search the area, then used potions and spells to strengthen and scout himself while concealed.
• Benjamin sensed a Patroller vanish and tracked the signal to a Level 5 fire wizard who had burned it to ashes beside a lava river.

Benjamin defeated a Level 5 Wizard with an unexpected [Spatial Slash] and vanished before the injured wizard could understand his spatial techniques. The defeated wizard returned to the palace, where the other wizards watched Benjamin’s match and marveled at his ability to control several demanding spatial wizardries at once.

• The Level 5 Wizard sensed spatial fluctuations, cast [Spatial Stasis], and prepared to counter Benjamin’s approach.
• Benjamin appeared behind the Level 5 Wizard, used [Spatial Slash] to pierce his defenses, and crushed his heart before the wizard conceded defeat.
• Benjamin vanished without leaving spatial traces, while the Level 5 Wizard healed his wounds and admitted he could not understand Benjamin’s methods.
• Wizard Noren teleported the defeated Level 5 Wizard back to the hall, where the gathered wizards watched light screens tracking the competition.
• A third-generation disciple explained the extraordinary difficulty of Benjamin’s simultaneous spatial wizardries, and Wizard Augusta asked Mentor Clark whether he could reproduce the feat.

Benjamin used the Five-Skandha Rainbow Mirror’s zero-delay connection to coordinate multiple spatial wizardries and hunt other Wizards. As the survivors began fighting openly and adapting to his tactics, he targeted an area where a Level 5 Wizard’s battle had just ended.

• A defeated Level 5 Wizard realized Benjamin had used several spatial wizardries and a false fluctuation to conceal his approach and land a surprise attack.
• Benjamin used Spatial Slash to eliminate another Wizard, while the Five-Skandha Rainbow Mirror shared calculations with his soul and enabled him to coordinate multiple techniques.
• Benjamin hunted Wizards across the battlefield with the Patroller, decoys, and spatial ambushes, eliminating several more, including two Level 5 Wizards.
• Benjamin noticed that the surviving Wizards had shifted to open clashes and would be scrutinizing his tactics.
• Benjamin estimated that fewer than five Level 5 Wizards remained and moved toward a fresh battlefield where powerful Level 5 energy still lingered.