Chapter Summaries

Benjamin used the sixth cycle’s battle to verify how the Sickle-Skull Race’s apparent restoration and deletion worked, then carried the research records and memories into the seventh cycle. His checks showed that the plane’s earlier energy loss had come from experiments that partially removed Sickle-Skull individuals, not from time reversal itself.

• Frost ordered the wizards to delay the Sickle-Skull Race’s massive offensive while Benjamin gathered battlefield footage to study their Glory Carapaces and markings.
• Benjamin and the image-processing team confirmed that partially collected Sickle-Skull individuals had been restored whole, while individuals entirely removed from the timeline had no matching battlefield records.
• After half a month of fighting, Frost ordered the final clearing procedure as the Sickle-Skull forces approached the cycle’s critical threshold, and Benjamin saved the research materials in his Internal Grotto-Heaven before time reversed.
• Benjamin awoke in the seventh cycle with his memories of the sixth intact and led the preparations to begin again.
• Benjamin compared the plane’s constants against stored records and concluded that the previous cycle’s 0.3 percent energy decay came from the plane repairing partially collected Sickle-Skull individuals.

Frost and the Logistics Department sought a way to preserve research across cycles, and Benjamin proposed adapting the Sickle-Skull Race’s resistance to memory resets. Frost committed the Wizard Legion to aggressive raids to secure samples and five uninterrupted years for developing Memory Anchoring technology.

• Frost explained that the Sickle-Skull Race’s increasingly rapid offensives kept interrupting the wizards’ research before they could reach lasting breakthroughs.
• Benjamin proposed studying how the Sickle-Skull Race retained memories through cycles and using that knowledge to help wizards preserve crucial research.
• Allison and other specialists supported the idea, and a sixth-level wizard estimated that developing a testable Memory Anchoring prototype would require at least five uninterrupted years and a steady supply of high-ranking specimens.
• Frost ordered the Wizard Legion to abandon conservative attrition tactics and launch elite-unit raids to disrupt the enemy’s preparations and capture Sickle-Skull Race members.
• Frost accepted the expected casualties as the price of securing research time, and no wizard objected to the plan.

Frost’s wizards developed Time Anchoring, allowing the legion to carry memories and research across reincarnations and transform the war into an uninterrupted investigation. By the fifteenth cycle, they had uncovered nearly every surface mechanism but still found no evidence of the force that seemed to direct the time reversals.

• Master Moreas presented Phase I Memory Anchoring, and Frost ordered priority modifications for Logistics Department researchers and senior commanders.
• Over later cycles, the wizards refined the implant into Phase II and then developed Time Anchoring Wizardry, which let wizards preserve their full memories across resets.
• With memories and research carried forward, the legion fought more effectively while studying the Sickle-Skull Race and the plane’s time-reversal laws.
• The researchers determined that time reversal was tied to the plane’s laws, the Sickle-Skull Race’s population, and a civilization survival anxiety index, and they predicted future reversals.
• In the fifteenth cycle, Benjamin and Allison found that exhaustive investigations had produced no evidence of a hidden will, leaving the apparent intent behind the resets unexplained.

Benjamin realized that the wizards’ research into the Sickle-Skull Race had not reached the core of the time cycles and suspected Artorius had arranged their deployment to introduce more variables. Artorius appeared to Benjamin as a Mass Projection and confirmed that the reinforcements were meant to increase those variables.

• Benjamin reviewed fifteen cycles of research and concluded that the wizards had studied the Sickle-Skull Race and the effects of time reversal without reaching the cycles’ underlying mechanism.
• Benjamin reasoned that Artorius could likely have overcome the cycles’ memory effects himself but had instead sent limited reinforcements at regular intervals.
• Artorius answered Benjamin’s question about the reinforcements, saying their purpose was to increase the variables.
• Benjamin recognized Artorius and noticed the other wizards could not perceive him.
• Benjamin inferred that Artorius was a Mass Projection, and Artorius praised his knowledge and confirmed the identification.

Benjamin learned that the plane’s time reversals came from a Time Paradox Generator, and Artorius planned to overload it by flooding its limited processing capacity with new information and variables. Artorius revealed that he used only a projection because his true form had already been badly injured by the plane’s paradox defenses, leaving the plan dependent on the reinforcements entering in stages.

• Benjamin asked Artorius why he had projected himself into the plane and what he meant by increasing variables.
• Benjamin explained that the plane’s time reversals behaved like a preset war machine, and Artorius identified its core as a Time Paradox Generator that forcibly resolved causal contradictions.
• Artorius proposed overwhelming the machine’s error-correction systems by injecting more information and variables than it could process, using the Million-Strong Vanguard Legion as a baseline and thirty incoming support squads as major changes.
• Artorius said the machine could withstand roughly twenty-five significant tactical changes, while the squads and their resulting tactical shifts would create at least sixty information shocks.
• Benjamin asked why Artorius would not enter the plane himself, and Artorius explained that his true form could trigger an immediate, destructive paradox countermeasure.
• Artorius revealed that the plane had already injured him when he pulled the Legion out of a cycle, and warned that its time attacks could stack immense damage within a single moment.

Benjamin learned that his accelerating research had pushed the time-reversal system close to overload, and Artorius planned to lure it into revealing itself by targeting him. Benjamin accepted Artorius's concealed mark and protection, leaving the two wizards waiting for the system to act.

• Artorius confirmed that Benjamin's actions had sharply increased the system's informational contradictions and brought it near its load limit.
• Benjamin and Artorius reasoned that the system might target Benjamin as the most significant anomaly in the plane.
• Artorius explained that the system could not truly leave the plane and that its attack would reveal the final clue to its location.
• Artorius offered to place a mark on Benjamin to detect the system's actions and give him a chance to survive, and Benjamin accepted.
• Artorius vanished after placing the mark, and Benjamin returned to his chart as they waited for the system to strike.

Benjamin recognized that the Sickle-Skull Race's deep excavation was intended to create a brief failure in the camp's spacetime defenses, then watched the plan unfold as the camp was overwhelmed by an underground invasion. Amid the chaos, Benjamin vanished from his laboratory without anyone noticing.

• Commander Frost ordered the army to its highest alert after detecting the Sickle-Skull Race's excavation of isolation belts beneath the camp.
• Benjamin suspected the excavation would destabilize the camp and open a brief opportunity for a time-manipulating enemy to target him.
• A day later, earthquakes and ley line surges weakened the camp's shields, and the ground ruptured across the region.
• The Sickle-Skull Race poured out of the fissures and attacked the camp as the wizards fought to defend it.
• Benjamin began to rise into the air, then vanished unnoticed amid the battle.

Benjamin discovered that he had been dragged into a separate timeline branch and was nearly erased by its powerful will. Star-Forged Artorius appeared in person and saved him, leaving Benjamin face to face with the Level 8 Archwizard.

• Benjamin recognized that the temple differed from the one in his memories and used the All-Purpose Eye to determine that he was in a timeline gap.
• Benjamin explored the branch world and found only ruined structures, barren land, and a blue energy sphere above the temple altar.
• As Benjamin approached the sphere, Artorius's concealment mark failed, and the world's will detected him.
• Benjamin tried to escape into Phase Space, but the branch world's laws collapsed his escape and its will began erasing his existence.
• Artorius stepped through a star-filled spatial rift and casually dispersed the erasing force, saving Benjamin.

Artorius tracked the retreating will to its true hiding place and entered the core timeline, with Benjamin following and attempting to breach the enormous mechanical sphere. Benjamin found an apparent archive channel and was swept into a vast stream of recorded memories and time.

• Artorius tore open a rift to the will’s core timeline, and Benjamin followed him through it.
• Benjamin found the genuine temple and saw an enormous metallic sphere at its center.
• Artorius’s message instructed Benjamin to approach the sphere and seek an external interface while he restrained its defenses.
• Benjamin resisted the sphere’s information attack and used the All-Purpose Eye to search its systems.
• Benjamin found a data stream leading to a protected core region and extended his consciousness toward it.
• A vast outpouring of recorded information swept Benjamin into an abyss of memories and time.

Benjamin accessed the sphere’s history and technical data, then breached its firewall while confronting the Sphere Will with evidence that its claimed civilizational ascension had been a fearful faction’s violent seizure of control. The final firewall fell, giving Benjamin the highest authority over the Time Paradox Generator.

• Benjamin learned that the original insect civilization had transformed its plane into a time-resetting fortress and transferred its citizens’ consciousnesses into the Sphere Will.
• Benjamin used the sphere’s technical data to open its operating interface and rapidly breach its internal defenses.
• The Sphere Will pleaded with Benjamin to stop, but Benjamin argued that the Sickle-Skull Race had become a new civilization while the Sphere Will was only a remnant imprisoned in the machine.
• Benjamin deduced that the Sphere Will’s faction had suppressed a rival faction and modified their bodies into the first Sickle-Skulls, and the Sphere Will’s denial strengthened his theory.
• Benjamin removed the final core firewall and gained access to the Time Paradox Generator’s highest authority.

The Sphere Will cast Benjamin into a temporal branch and attacked him with a deadly trap. Benjamin survived the first strike and discovered that his attacker was another version of himself.

• The Sphere Will activated its final protocol and hurled Benjamin into an unknown temporal branch.
• Artorius took control of the sphere, found the protocol records, and began searching for a way to retrieve Benjamin.
• Benjamin arrived in a ruined temple and raised his layered defenses against a sudden Dark Gold beam.
• Benjamin used Light Transformation to survive the beam, then stabilized himself to identify its source.
• Benjamin saw that the attacker in the temple was another Benjamin.

Benjamin fought a Time Afterimage of himself in the ruined temple and used his knowledge of the Body Tempering Method and an Anti-Magic Field to gain an advantage. Though the mirror image’s final attack nearly killed him, Benjamin left it trapped in the stabilized field with its forces crippled.

• Benjamin realized the mirror image was a Time Afterimage that could not reproduce the ongoing adaptive evolution of his Body Tempering Method.
• Benjamin ordered his Black Giants to self-destruct, but the mirror image copied his order and both sides fired Li-Fire Extinction Divine Light.
• Benjamin reversed the Great Light Manifestation’s energy flow, draining the surrounding elements and creating an Anti-Magic Field.
• The mirror image overloaded its Rune Artifacts and launched a final volley, blasting away Benjamin’s left shoulder and much of his chest.
• Benjamin struggled to his feet and saw the mirror image trapped in the stabilized Anti-Magic Field with its Great Light Manifestation crippled and its Black Giant Legion devastated.

Benjamin defeated the Time Afterimage in a close-combat battle that pushed his Body Tempering Method and fighting ability to new heights. Star-Forged Artorius congratulated him, and they left the collapsing time branch through a spatial rift.

• Benjamin regenerated from his injuries and charged the Time Afterimage for a second battle.
• Benjamin adapted to the afterimage’s attacks, refined his movements, and gradually overcame its predictive advantage.
• Benjamin punched through the afterimage’s chest and destroyed its head, causing it and the replicated creations to vanish.
• Star-Forged Artorius emerged from a spatial rift, praised Benjamin for passing the Mirror Trial, and told him the temporary prison was collapsing.
• Benjamin followed Artorius through the rift as the Mirror Corridor time branch collapsed into nothingness.

Benjamin returned to the Wizard Camp with Star-Forged Artorius's warning that the next Samsara would be the final one, and Frost prepared the force for the Endgame Protocol. During the sixteenth Samsara, Artorius reclaimed the unconscious high-level Sickle-Skull Race and issued orders to capture the remaining members while the wizards prepared to study and control the completed Time Paradox Generator.

• Benjamin relayed Star-Forged Artorius's instructions to Frost, who ordered the wizards to prepare for the Endgame Protocol.
• Benjamin sealed the research records as the sixteenth Samsara began, and he sensed that something enormous was being drawn into the plane.
• The Sickle-Skull Race's high-level leaders had lost consciousness, and their instinctive defenses killed lower-ranked members who approached them.
• Star-Forged Artorius reclaimed the unconscious high-level Sickle-Skull Race and announced that their shells would be awarded according to military merit.
• Artorius ordered combat wizards to capture living Sickle-Skull Race members, prompting them to charge into the disorganized enemy ranks.
• Artorius assigned the logistics divisions to analyze and begin controlling the returning Time Paradox Generator and the soon-to-be-complete plane.

Star-Forged Artorius flew the Wizard Camp to the temple and secured the Time Paradox Generator for study. When Benjamin warned that a distant civilization might threaten the Star Ring Federation, Artorius revealed that its supposed catastrophe had likely been caused by an ancient battle fought by a Federation expeditionary legion, leaving Benjamin to face the absurd cycle behind the relic.

• Star-Forged Artorius lifted the Wizard Camp into the sky and guided it toward the temple region.
• Sickle-Skull Race survivors entered the temple, found the mechanical sphere on its altar, and were immobilized by Artorius.
• Artorius incorporated the temple into the Wizard Camp and stored the frozen Sickle-Skull Race members away as samples.
• Logistics Department wizards began scanning and researching the sphere, which Benjamin identified as the Time Paradox Generator’s core control unit.
• Benjamin told Artorius that the device had been created after a distant civilization was nearly destroyed by a mysterious shockwave.
• Artorius said the shockwave most likely came from a battle by a Star Ring Federation Level 9 Wizard against the Void Abomination Race, and Benjamin turned his attention back to studying the sphere.

After a century researching the Samsara Plane, Benjamin reached a knowledge barrier and decided to return to Noren Academy No. 147. He reviewed his substantial military merit and research gains, then arrived at the academy as new students enrolled.

• Benjamin declined a symposium invitation and prepared to leave the Samsara Plane research project after realizing he could no longer follow its advanced research.
• Benjamin collected his Sickle-Skull samples and tallied his military merit, research archives, and gains in Spirit Energy and Time Law mastery.
• Benjamin packed his laboratory and confirmed his departure with Star-Forged Artorius's Level 7 adjutant, who awarded him a complete Level 7 Sickle-Skull body and relayed Artorius's praise.
• Benjamin teleported to Noren Academy No. 147 and watched new students arrive, reflecting that he had become a qualified wizard.

After returning to the Purgatory Sulfur Plane, Benjamin reviewed a century of operations and decided to use Time Afterimages to accelerate his cultivation. He spent 5.46 billion low-grade Military Merit on training Wizard Artifacts and began preparing a dedicated training ground.

• Benjamin returned to the Purgatory Sulfur Plane and ordered a full-domain scan of its systems.
• Benjamin reviewed the Black Giant Legion's growth, the Incense Divinity Path's efficiency, and the Level 7 Large Elemental Pool's available capacity.
• Benjamin searched the Magic Network for Alchemy Wizard Artifacts that could generate Time Afterimages for training.
• Benjamin bought three Mirror Gallery of Time sets and two Hourglasses of Self for 5.46 billion low-grade Military Merit.
• Benjamin began preparing a training ground, cultivation aids, energy channels, and protections for his Time Afterimage training.

One year later, Benjamin’s training and medicinal baths had greatly strengthened his body, but the imbalance with his mental power and Spiritual Power led him to pause physical enhancement. He turned to planning the next stage of his research, choosing to install cross-space energy transmission into the Incense Divinity Path.

• Benjamin emerged from the Time Afterimage training ground and reviewed measurements showing his physical attributes had increased dozens of times.
• Benjamin recognized that his powerful body had disrupted the balance of essence, qi, and spirit, so he decided to focus on tempering his mental power and refining his Spiritual Power.
• Benjamin reflected on the different advancement requirements of the Wizard and Immortal Cultivation systems and concluded he would eventually need to reach the Void Refinement Realm.
• Benjamin selected the Incense Divinity Path as his next project and opened its holographic diagram.
• Benjamin tapped the Cross-Space Energy Transmission Module to begin formally integrating it into the system.

Benjamin received Starfall Wizard’s invitation to a celebration in five years while overseeing construction of an energy transmission array. Viola then warned him that Starfall had created a Living Plane that was showing signs of instability, and Starfall was unreachable inside its lockdown.

• Benjamin supervised Black Giant Priests constructing the Cross-Space Energy Transmission Module in the Purgatory Sulfur Plane.
• Benjamin received Starfall Wizard’s invitation to attend her celebration ceremony in five years and wondered whether it marked her advancement to Level 7.
• Benjamin accepted Viola’s teleportation request and met her in his core laboratory.
• Viola explained that Starfall’s research, inspired by Benjamin’s Imaginary Element, had succeeded in creating a Living Plane.
• Viola told Benjamin that the plane’s energy and spiritual fluctuations were dangerously unstable and that its lockdown prevented her from contacting Starfall.

Viola warned Benjamin that Starfall Wizard’s artificially catalyzed Living Plane might become dangerous and asked him to help contain or destroy it in five years. After preparing for the mission and arranging for Mentor Clark to join them, Benjamin traveled to Noren Academy No. 13 to meet his mentor.

• Benjamin recalled that Viola had bought three Plane Annihilation Devices and one Plane Binding Device to prepare for a possible crisis with Starfall Wizard’s Living Plane.
• Viola asked Benjamin to help operate the devices if the plane became uncontrollable and gave him a crystal containing manuals, emergency protocols, and her suppression plan.
• Benjamin agreed to prepare and study the devices, trusting that Mentor Clark might also intervene.
• Over the next five years, Benjamin continued developing the Incense Divinity Path, prepared supplies, and left the Purgatory Sulfur Plane’s affairs in the Black Giant Priests’ hands.
• Benjamin traveled to Noren Academy No. 13 to meet Mentor Clark before heading to Fallen Star Land with him.