Recaps

Benjamin and Blake fled toward camp after their battle, while Illusion returned to the Tower of Silence treatment area. Illusion told Dark Crow that a Level 5 Wizard had defeated him, leading them to recognize that Benjamin might qualify to become a true-name wizard.

• Benjamin urged Blake to leave before the Level 6 Wizard recovered, and they hurried toward camp using concealment and Void-Step.
• Illusion emerged from a nutrient chamber in the Tower of Silence treatment area, alarming the injured wizards until Dark Crow signaled that he was an ally.
• Dark Crow examined the treatment records and asked Illusion whether he had fought a Level 7 Wizard.
• Illusion revealed that a Level 5 Wizard had defeated him, and Dark Crow realized he meant the rumored wizard who had dealt with the Hand of Annihilation.
• Illusion said the Level 5 Wizard had defeated two titled wizards and might deserve a true name, while Dark Crow reflected on the changing generation of wizards.

After learning Benjamin had defeated two titled Level 6 Wizards, the Tower of Silence spread warnings about him among its lower-level ranks. Back at camp, Benjamin learned that the Workshop had located both sides’ trump cards but could not destroy them, and entered a command meeting with Viola and Mentor Clark to see why.

• Illusion and Dark Crow discussed how missing Noren Workshop Wizards were locating the enemy’s hidden trump cards, and Illusion left to add Benjamin’s mental-force signature to the enemy database.
• Wounded Level 5 Wizards overheard that Benjamin had defeated two titled Level 6 Wizards, and the news spread through the Tower of Silence camp.
• Benjamin returned to camp with Blake and went to meet Viola, who told him Blake had reported his encounter with a Level 6 Wizard.
• Viola told Benjamin that two Level 7 Soul School Wizards had located both the Chaos Cult’s and the Tower of Silence’s trump cards, but that the Workshop could not stop them.
• Mentor Clark invited Benjamin and Viola into the command room after the Level 7 Wizards finished their meeting.

Clark revealed the Tower of Silence’s trump card: a sphere containing nearly two trillion tons of antimatter, held within a magnetic confinement layer. Benjamin realized that if it went out of control, it could vaporize both sides’ armies and camps.

• Clark praised Benjamin for defeating Illusion, and Viola explained that Illusion could use Fantasy Law to seize a Plane Origin and conquer weaker civilizations with extraordinary speed.
• Clark told Viola she would receive extra guidance after the war, then explained that the Workshop’s own trump card had likely been discovered by the enemy.
• Benjamin recognized that the Workshop’s trump card was meant to give its Level 8 Wizards an advantage in the final confrontation.
• Clark showed Benjamin and Viola reconnaissance footage of the Tower of Silence’s hidden magic formation, maintained by Level 7 and Level 6 Wizards around a vast sphere of light.
• Clark revealed that the sphere contained nearly two trillion tons of antimatter, and Benjamin understood that its release could annihilate both armies.

Benjamin learned that Noren Workshop’s plane-wide transmutation array could counter either the Tower of Silence’s antimatter stockpile or the Chaos Cult’s emotional energy, but not both at once. After both sides recalled their forces and prepared their trump cards, Dionysius Spencer ordered the final battle to begin.

• Clark showed Benjamin the Tower of Silence’s two-trillion-ton antimatter weapon and the Chaos Cult’s vast reserve of destructive emotional energy.
• Dionysius Spencer and Clark revealed that Noren Workshop had completed a Super-Wide Area Transmutation Array that could handle one enemy trump card at a time.
• Benjamin learned that the earlier reconnaissance battles had been allowed to continue to conceal the array, and Viola urged the Workshop to strike before the enemy stockpiled more energy.
• Dionysius ordered all Workshop Wizards to return to camp and prepare for battle, and both sides withdrew their forces from the battlefield.
• After confirming that both armies and their trump cards were ready, Dionysius Spencer ordered the final battle to begin.

Dionysius Spencer activated the Super-Wide Area Transmutation Array and used it to attack the Coalition camp, but the Tower of Silence launched an antimatter sphere at Noren Workshop. The antimatter detonated into a chain of catastrophic explosions, leaving Dionysius’s camp fighting to survive.

• Dionysius ordered the wizards to activate the Super-Wide Area Transmutation Array, and Alchemy specialists reshaped the earth to assault the Coalition camp.
• The Tower of Silence released its antimatter sphere toward Noren Workshop, and Dionysius ordered the Alchemist Corps to begin its contingency plan.
• The Alchemists cleared a vacuum corridor and tried to infiltrate the sphere’s magnetic confinement layer, but the Tower of Silence teleported rock into the antimatter and triggered annihilation.
• The initial blast shattered the confinement layer, scattering antimatter fragments that ignited across the battlefield in a cascade of explosions.
• Dionysius ordered the Noren Workshop camp to defend as the transmutation array formed layers of rock shields and redirected explosive energy toward unoccupied regions.

The Tower of Silence’s antimatter attack and the Chaos Cult’s hidden weapon both failed to decide the battle when a vast spiritual power revealed that another Level 8 Wizard had emerged. Saladin recognized that the Coalition had lost, though the new combatant’s identity remained unknown.

• The Tower of Silence’s chained antimatter explosions overwhelmed the Transmutation Array’s defenses while Dionysus watched and the Chaos Cult prepared to act.
• The Chaos Cult revealed its concealed cavern and launched energy made from the death wails of more than a dozen planes toward one of the four suns.
• The death-energy torrent stopped in midair, and the antimatter explosions froze across the battlefield at the same time.
• A spiritual fluctuation swept over the plane, overwhelming lower-level wizards and revealing power that had reached Level 8.
• Saladin declared that the Coalition had lost after realizing the opposing side had created another Level 8 combatant.

Two days before the reconnaissance war, Clark led Benjamin and Viola to a colossal underground Spirit Awakening array and revealed Noren Workshop’s true plan: use the Super-Wide Area Transmutation Array to nourish the battlefield plane and bring it to life. Benjamin and Viola raised concerns about the plane’s unstable structure and the time required, but Clark said he would handle the transmutation and assigned them to activate the awakening array.

• Clark took Benjamin and Viola down a hidden lift into a vast cavern containing a magic array more than a thousand kilometers wide.
• Benjamin and Viola recognized the array as an immense version of Starfall’s Spirit Awakening Technique.
• Clark explained that Noren Workshop had concealed the array beneath the apparent decoy camp, while the Super-Wide Area Transmutation Array would provide the matter and energy needed to awaken the plane.
• Benjamin and Viola questioned whether the stitched-together plane could form a soul and whether the process could finish in time.
• Clark said he would oversee the transmutation and told Benjamin and Viola to activate the Spirit Awakening array.

Clark used the Spirit Awakening Array and the Shadow Plane lord’s spirituality to create a complete soul for the Animated Plane, then entered it and became its core consciousness. With the plane’s authority, he froze the destructive forces threatening the battlefield, leaving Benjamin and Viola to realize he had gained power much like Viola had on the Frostfire Plane.

• Clark, Benjamin, and Viola activated the Spirit Awakening Array and formed a soul shell around the newborn plane’s fractured spirituality.
• Clark revealed the Shadow Plane lord’s remaining instinctive spirituality and used it to fuse the fragments into a complete but hollow soul.
• Clark teleported into the hollow soul and spread his mental power through it while Benjamin and Viola helped establish their connection.
• Clark became the Animated Plane’s core consciousness and showed Benjamin and Viola the battlefield through the plane’s perception.
• Clark used the plane’s power to freeze the Chaos Cult’s death energy and the antimatter tide, while Benjamin recognized the resemblance to Viola’s earlier power leap.

Clark stabilized his connection to the plane soul and took control of the plane, turning its energy against the Level 8 Wizards of the Chaos Cult and Tower of Silence. Anton Buchanan’s temporal selves delayed their opponents long enough for Noren Workshop to seize the advantage.

• Benjamin and Viola monitored Clark and the magic array as Clark quietly connected with the plane soul.
• Clark moved the frozen death energy and antimatter toward the four Level 8 Wizards fighting near the Plane Barrier.
• Noren and Anton Buchanan blocked Silence when he tried to descend, and Anton summoned his past, present, and future selves to hold off the enemy.
• Clark completed his control of the plane and reshaped the death energy and antimatter into giant elemental shells aimed at the Cult Leader and Silence.
• While the Cult Leader and Silence dealt with the shells, Anton Buchanan attacked the Cult Leader and Noren pressed Silence, reversing the battle’s momentum.

Silence persuaded the Cult Leader to concede after Clark’s Living Plane began draining the battlefield’s elemental energy and preparing another attack. Noren Workshop won the battle, while Clark returned from the plane’s core with a clear path to future advancement but no plans to advance yet.

• Silence explained that Clark’s Living Plane was draining the surrounding elements and asked whether the Cult Leader would risk waiting for Clark’s power to end.
• The Cult Leader conceded, and Felix confirmed that Noren Workshop would receive the Chaos Cult’s and Tower of Silence’s search regions, with their personnel and assets required to evacuate within a year.
• Noren Workshop celebrated the victory while the Coalition camp fell silent.
• Clark left the plane’s core, causing the gathered plane spiritualities and souls to collapse as the magic array went dark.
• Viola asked why Clark had not advanced, and Clark told her he had understood the path to Levels 7 and 8 but would first continue improving his system.

After the war ended, Benjamin returned to the Purgatory Sulfur Plane and assessed the losses among his Black Giants. He examined his own growth and realized that improving his combat abilities and studying Mount Magma’s Level 7 breakthrough would require him to focus on learning.

• Benjamin, Viola, and Clark left the collapsing battlefield plane and returned to a safe plane belonging to Noren Workshop.
• Benjamin learned that only a little over ten thousand Black Giants survived, Rock Hammer had died, and Mount Magma had advanced to Level 7; he ordered the survivors to train the next generation.
• Benjamin examined himself and found that his body and spiritual power had reached the Level 6 standard, while his Spiritual Power cultivation was advancing rapidly.
• Benjamin began revising the God of Light Transformation and his other combat techniques, but found his knowledge too limited to solve their problems.
• Benjamin deleted his proposed solutions and decided to devote himself to studying until he could understand Mount Magma’s transformation and improve the Black Giant species.

The Tower of Silence and the Chaos Cult frantically evacuated their territories after receiving a one-year deadline to migrate. Silence chose the dangerous frontier, while Illusion agreed to travel to the First Tower and try to reach Level 7; the Cult Leader ordered his followers to strip their abandoned planes bare so Noren Workshop would inherit nothing.

• Illusion used his [Fantasy] law to accelerate resource extraction and transport, leaving him mentally exhausted despite restoring his appearance.
• Dark Crow told Illusion that Silence had chosen to migrate toward the front lines and wanted him to pursue Level 7 research at a laboratory built by the First Tower.
• Illusion admitted he doubted he could reach Level 7 but agreed to go to the First Tower and continue developing his strength.
• The Cult Leader ordered the Chaos Cult to prioritize relocating educated populations and to extract resources from non-core planes without regard for the damage.
• The Chaos Cult shattered some small planes and stripped the abandoned territories, intending to leave Noren Workshop only desolate wasteland.

After a year of studying in seclusion, Benjamin received a mission to help take over the Els Plane, formerly ruled by the Chaos Cult. He found its people conditioned to worship wizards as holy beings, and the chapter left him and David beginning a difficult transition to Noren Workshop rule.

• Benjamin received an emergency mission to assist with the takeover of the resource-depleted Els Plane and teleported there with other wizards.
• Benjamin and his colleagues found tens of thousands of civilians kneeling to welcome them as Holy Apostles, while the governor explained he had been ordered to lead the gathering.
• Benjamin recognized that the Chaos Cult's feudal theocracy had taught the population to regard wizards as gods, making the shift to the Workshop's system likely to take decades.
• Benjamin reunited with David, who had advanced to Level 5 during the war, and learned that their takeover mission would involve years of work with little reward.
• David ordered the governor to send the people home and told him that everything would remain unchanged until further orders, and the crowd dispersed without resistance.

Benjamin and David began surveying a plane ruled by the Chaos Cult, where the population was controlled through arrays designed to drive reproduction and obedience. After discovering that these systems covered the plane, they agreed to guide the residents in tearing down their cities and rebuilding them themselves, beginning a change that could take decades.

• David warned the wizards to establish authority over the civilians before introducing Noren Workshop's customs, and the team divided up its survey work.
• David told Benjamin that Rex had been killed by a Level 5 Chaos Cult wizard and that the surviving allies had advanced to Level 5 without gaining the knowledge to match.
• David acknowledged Benjamin's victories over four Level 6 wizards, while explaining that talent mattered less at higher levels and that he felt stuck at Level 5.
• Benjamin surveyed the city and surrounding province, discovered arrays that compelled reproduction and obedience, and shared his findings with the other wizards.
• The wizards agreed to replace the plane's cities, and Benjamin accepted David's proposal to have residents tear down and rebuild them with the wizards providing guidance and aid.

Twenty-seven years after the Chaos Cult’s defeat, Benjamin continued studying while helping oversee the reconstruction and transformation of the plane. David returned from surveying nearby planes, and the chapter ended with him leaving as Benjamin resumed his work.

• David reported that the Chaos Cult had stripped nearby resource planes of valuable resources and Plane Origin before abandoning them.
• Benjamin understood that the Workshop’s request to catalog the planes was connected to Starfall’s confidential Spirit Awakening Technique, which could make abandoned planes valuable again.
• Benjamin showed David records of the plane’s aptitude Detection Array and ecological transformation, and described plans for education, healthcare, and eventual aptitude modification.
• David thanked Benjamin for remaining behind to monitor the plane and said another group of wizards might take over in a few years.
• David left to submit his report, and Benjamin returned to studying the Memory Crystals.

After returning to the Purgatory Sulfur Plane from a fifty-year mission, Benjamin reviewed his operations and chose Biological Modification as his next research focus. He ordered plans to upgrade the Nests and Patrollers.

• Benjamin returned to the Purgatory Sulfur Plane and reflected on his wizard studies and future plans.
• Black Giant Priests reported that the Incense Divinity Path was producing more Power of Incense but had high conversion losses, while the Black Giant Legion had grown beyond ten billion.
• Benjamin ordered the Black Giant Legion to keep growing, with weaker individuals assigned to logistics, and reviewed the plane's operations.
• Mount Magma gave Benjamin reanalysis data on biological tissues, including his body structure, which prompted Benjamin to consider Biological Modification.
• Benjamin decided to study Level 5 theories of Biological Modification and ordered upgrade plans for the Nests and Patrollers.

Benjamin oversaw the optimization and successful testing of the Incense Divinity Path, gaining greater mastery of the Spirit Energy Law. He then reviewed research on the Sickle-Skull Race to prepare to modify the Nest, choosing it as his first target.

• Benjamin directed the Black Giant Priests through fifty days of adjustments to the Incense Divinity Path and its energy transmission systems.
• Benjamin tested the cross-space transmission channel and found that efficiency, stability, and response speed had improved.
• Benjamin discovered that his mastery of the Spirit Energy Law had risen from twenty percent to nearly thirty percent, though he remained far from advancing to Level 6.
• Benjamin visited the biological laboratory, where Strategist presented organized research data on every variant of the Sickle-Skull Race.
• Benjamin decided to use the Sickle-Skull Race's broodmother traits to modify the Nest and headed to his workbench.

Benjamin studied the time-related records he had brought back from the Samsara Plane and developed a larger time-pheromone sensory organ from the Sickle-Skull Race. He brought the organ to the long-idle Nest and began preparing to modify it.

• Benjamin tested time acceleration and stasis while studying the records from the Samsara Plane.
• Benjamin reviewed the Sickle-Skull Race research and connected its traits to temporal laws.
• The Black Giant Priest contacted Benjamin, and he received the cultivated time-pheromone sensory organ.
• Benjamin decided the organ would serve as the Nest's new core.
• Benjamin went to the Nest's control console and began the modifications.

Benjamin completed the Nest’s transformation and tested its enhanced aquatic combat, adaptive defenses, and time-reversal healing. With fewer than fifty years before conscription, he began studying Fate Law to build a numerology subsystem for the Incense Divinity Path and improve his reconnaissance and information processing.

• Benjamin removed the Nest’s factory functions and equipped it with stronger water-based combat, time manipulation, adaptive evolution, and an energy receiver linked to the Purgatory Sulfur Plane.
• Benjamin tested the Nest’s attacks, defenses, and time reversal, confirming that it could recover from severe damage and briefly hold back a weaker sixth-rank wizard.
• Benjamin decided not to spend the remaining time upgrading the Patrollers and identified reconnaissance and information processing as his own key weaknesses.
• Benjamin chose to add numerology to the Incense Divinity Path and bought a Star Ring Federation Fate Law textbook for 120,000 Advanced Military Merit.
• Benjamin studied the textbook for a year, gained only a basic understanding, and concluded that even limited Fate Law knowledge could improve his Causal Shadow Tracing Technique and God of Light Transformation.

Forty years later, Benjamin tried to steer his next forced conscription toward an information-related battlefield by leaving traces on the Magic Network. Mentor Clark told him to join an Elite Combat Unit recruitment in five years for a plane suited to his current studies, leaving Benjamin thrilled at the prospect.

• Benjamin used the Magic Network to create traces of his interest in information, hoping Felix would assign him to a suitable plane during his next conscription.
• Benjamin reflected on decades of studying fate and destiny without crossing the threshold into the Fate School, while applying its information-processing methods to improve his alchemy.
• Clark contacted Benjamin and said he should go early for his next conscription because a friend's unusual plane seemed well suited to him.
• Clark told Benjamin that the friend would recruit Elite Combat Units in five years and that Benjamin could accept the summons to go there.
• Benjamin thanked Clark, then sprang into the air and struggled to contain his excitement after the communication ended.

Benjamin prepared the Purgatory Sulfur Plane’s Fate subsystem for an approaching war, checking construction progress and gathering materials that could affect information. He left the project with five years to finish the subsystem and prepare for battle.

• Benjamin inspected the Black Giants’ construction work and learned that the Fate subsystem’s main structure was eighty percent complete, with preliminary construction expected to take about three years.
• Benjamin ordered the Black Giant Priest to accelerate construction and finish the subsystem, including activation tests and adjustments, within five years.
• Benjamin searched his warehouses for materials related to information and transferred his Incense Divine Power reserves into his Internal Grotto-Heaven.
• Benjamin recorded plans for using Mortal Dust Poison, Sha Qi, Mortal Aura, and other dangerous materials in the preparations.
• Benjamin returned toward the laboratory, concluding that he needed to calibrate the Fate System before going to war.

Benjamin completed testing the Fate System, which processed belief information to predict fate and analyze combat with high accuracy. He then received a high-risk summons to fight pure information-state lifeforms in the Information Plane.

• Benjamin activated the Fate System and confirmed it greatly increased his information-processing speed and expanded his fate perception across the Purgatory Sulfur Plane.
• Benjamin tested the system’s short-term predictions when it warned a Black Giant to move away just before a volcanic boulder struck.
• Benjamin evaded attacks from five Black Giant Priests, and the tests confirmed the Fate System operated normally with 99.98% prediction accuracy.
• Benjamin found that setting up the Fate System had raised his control over the Spirit Energy Law from 30% to 33%.
• Benjamin accepted a new Elite Combat Unit summons and learned that the Information Plane mission involved pure information-state lifeforms and had caused no deaths.

Benjamin arrived at a Ship Plane where elite wizards were preparing to investigate a strangely perfect, lifeless white sphere. After Ashen Heart Martin revealed that entering the plane caused wizards’ thoughts and abilities to become trapped in Silence, Benjamin recognized the danger and faced the coming expedition with wary interest.

• Benjamin arrived at the Ship Plane and saw a vast white sphere beyond a rift in the sky, while powerful wizards gathered for the planar war.
• Benjamin checked that the Fate System and its cross-planar connection were functioning through his Internal Grotto-Heaven.
• Ashen Heart Martin arrived and warned the assembled wizards that the white plane was especially dangerous to data and information-processing abilities.
• Martin showed footage of an earlier expedition in which several Level 7 and Rank 6 wizards collapsed after entering the plane.
• Benjamin examined a Silenced wizard and discovered that her body and thoughts still functioned, but every output was rendered ineffective before it could leave her Spirit Sea.

Benjamin studied the intelligence about the Information Plane, where creatures of light disrupted spells by manipulating information and resisted conventional analysis. After identifying elemental attacks and stronger information manipulation as possible counters, he considered testing his own abilities while the wizard legion delayed its assault.

• Ashen Heart Martin explained that the Information Plane's attack affected wizards according to how much information they carried, and that Level 8 Wizards could not measure its danger because they were immune to it.
• Benjamin watched footage showing creatures of light evade capture by dissipating, destroy low-level wizards' spells through information interference, and corrupt a Fate Wizard's attempt to alter their fate.
• Ashen Heart Martin sent the wizards detailed intelligence and ordered them to find a way to break the deadlock while the legion postponed its attack.
• Benjamin spent two hours studying the reports and learned that complex spells and direct control of the four elements could still damage the creatures of light.
• Benjamin concluded that stronger information manipulation could counter the creatures and considered using the Fate System for protection while attacking with the four elements.

Benjamin tested the Information Plane by sending ten Black Giant Priests through its barrier while using the Fate System to shield and monitor them. The first priest survived the Information Turbulence, but Benjamin could not reconcile its effects with the Silence suffered by the wizards, and the ten priests continued into the plane.

• Benjamin connected ten Black Giant Priests to the Fate System and sent them toward the Information Plane as other wizards launched their own probes.
• The lead priest passed through the plane’s barrier and was overwhelmed by Information Turbulence.
• Benjamin used the Fate System to process the turbulence, restoring the priest’s consciousness and confirming that the attack did not detect Benjamin’s remote contribution as part of its target.
• Benjamin analyzed the attack and concluded that its effects did not explain how the wizards remained mentally active while unable to produce any output.
• Benjamin ordered the other nine priests into the Information Plane, where all ten spread out and advanced into the white expanse.