Chapter Summaries

Lu Yuan stayed in Oak Forest City for two days under Klaus’s orders and received Oak Forest Potions for Bronze City. In private, he examined the growing entity on his leg and learned it was a Drowner that had found a path to advance.

• Isabella told Lu Yuan that Klaus had ordered her to keep him in Oak Forest City for two days, and he agreed to stay.
• Isabella showed Lu Yuan three carriages of Oak Forest Potions prepared for Bronze City and gave him several high-end bottles.
• Isabella toured the city’s fields with Lu Yuan and assigned two armored knights to watch him for the next two days.
• Boer confirmed that Klaus had instructed the branch to keep Lu Yuan from returning immediately, while Boer and Dunn left him to rest.
• Lu Yuan used the Worm of Knowledge to inspect the pale face on his left leg and saw that its black aura had spread farther.
• The text identified the entity as a growing, parasitizing Drowner that seemed to have found a path to advance.

Lu Yuan suppressed the growing Drowner with Authority but could not learn what path it had found, while Klaus faced worsening attacks beneath Bronze City. After confirming that Forest Seed creatures survived without copper and could grow stronger by consuming it, the Great Ascendant offered limited help, and Klaus decided the Night Watchers had to strike underground before the creatures grew further.

• Lu Yuan used Authority to frighten the Drowner into retreating, then left it alone because forcibly removing it could harm the Key and the Worm of Knowledge.
• Lu Yuan watched the peaceful streets of Oak Forest City and thought he had to wait two days.
• Klaus reviewed reports of changing Ghoul attacks, rising casualties, and shortages of Fourth Order fighters as Bronze City's defenders struggled to hold the Collapse Pits.
• The Great Ascendant concluded that Forest Seed creatures fed on copper, survived for more than ten days after being severed, and could become a grave threat if they took root beneath the city.
• The Great Ascendant told Klaus the Ascension Society would not commit its copper-filled Born to battle, but offered his personal help, research support, and aboveground manpower.
• Klaus decided the defenders had to force a path underground and attack before the Forest Seed creatures could grow stronger.

Klaus unveiled weapons and preparations for a second offensive against the Forest Seeds, while Lu Yuan used his stay in Oak Forest City to study its medicinal ingredients and practice potion-making. The chapter left Klaus sensing movement deep underground and Lu Yuan learning from Ibeya and Ibel in the potion room.

• Klaus showed the Great Ascendant Alchemy Cannons, Mithril, Furnace Fire Sprayers, and Copper Bait Minefield, then began choosing manpower for the second offensive.
• The Great Ascendant agreed that everyone would gather that night, and Klaus felt a heavy tremor from deep underground.
• Lu Yuan accepted that he could not leave Oak Forest City and decided to use the time to advance his Pharmacognosy and Pharmacology by making potions.
• Isabella directed Lu Yuan to the potion room, where he met the sisters Ibeya and Ibel.
• Ibeya introduced Oak Forest City's medicinal ingredients, while Lu Yuan studied them and demonstrated his practiced processing skills.

Lu Yuan spent the day learning to make potions in Oak Forest City before meeting Haimeng at the market. Haimeng warned him that their former destination was dangerous and offered a lead that might help Lu Yuan advance his Ancient Music Theory.

• Otto collected Oak Wood Bark Recovery Potions and explained that Oak Forest Tower concealed and nourished the city while the Earl's knights shared its defenses.
• Lu Yuan practiced identifying medicinal materials and making potions with Ibeya and Ibel, raising his Pharmacognosy and Pharmacology skills.
• Boer found Lu Yuan and led him, Dunn, and other Night Watchers to the market and then toward a tavern.
• Lu Yuan recognized Haimeng playing music in the market, and Haimeng warned him that the place they had come from was dangerous.
• Haimeng showed Lu Yuan a book about Ancient Music Theory and said he knew of someone who understood it, so Lu Yuan invited him and his companions to the tavern.

Lu Yuan joined Boer, Haimeng, and the Night Watchers at a tavern in Oak Forest City, where Haimeng gave him a book on Ancient Music Theory. Back at his lodging, Lu Yuan began reading and learned that ancient music could approach Eerie beings and great beasts without signaling hostility.

• Lu Yuan and the Night Watchers visited a tavern, where Haimeng explained the Oak Dance and its origins as a war dance and form of training.
• Haimeng gave Lu Yuan a book on Ancient Music Theory and described a knowledgeable teacher in Distant City who might help him study it.
• Lu Yuan left the tavern while Boer took Dunn and several brothers to explore more of the city, then returned alone to his lodging.
• Lu Yuan opened the book and read that ancient people discovered Eerie beings and great beasts communicated through sounds and bodily vibrations, and that music could approach them peacefully.

Lu Yuan studied Ancient Music Theory and tested Plant Companion Music on two potted plants, making them tremble before he stopped. He planned to return to Bronze City the next day, while four Fourth Orders and their forces assembled around its Collapse Pit.

• Lu Yuan read that Ancient Music Theory depended on rare, specific melodies and that Plant Companion Music could communicate with plants and help them grow.
• Lu Yuan adapted Plant Companion Music for the Sandworm Bone Flute and played it to two potted plants, whose leaves trembled as if they were angry.
• Lu Yuan stopped playing, saw his Ancient Music Theory rise from 5.9 to 6.0, and decided to study the piece more carefully later.
• Lu Yuan noted that the Communication Crystal had remained silent and decided to return to Bronze City the next day.
• At Old Council Square, the Night Watchers, Holy Armor Army, and Iron Guard Battalion gathered around the Main Collapse Pit with weapons and supplies.
• The Great Ascendant, Leike, Attendant, and a hooded Fourth Order stood at the front as Agnes waited behind them.

Klaus's forces began a heavily armed advance into the Collapse Pit, burning through the Forest Seed-contaminated Ghouls and clearing the Bronze Pillar. Deep in a vast hollow, a powerful, mouthless Ghoul emerged and destroyed the first Alchemy Cannon, then charged toward the next.

• Klaus ordered the cleansing operation to begin, and Leike, the Great Ascendant, the Attendant, and the Hooded Night Watcher descended into the Collapse Pit.
• Agnes purified the Carrion Fungus as the Holy Armor Army assembled Alchemy Cannons and attacked the Ghoul hordes with Alchemy Flame, Furnace Fire, Mithril, and Leike's Swarm Insects.
• The team cleared the Ghouls from the Bronze Pillar without damaging it, then continued deeper as more Ghouls poured from tunnels and cracks.
• The team reached a vast hollow where Ghouls endlessly emerged from holes in the walls, and the Great Ascendant ordered the larger openings sealed.
• A nearly skinned, mouthless Ghoul burst from the corpse pile, shattered the foremost Alchemy Cannon, and lunged toward the second one.

A powerful contaminated being attacked the Night Watchers and emerged again during their battle against the Ghoul tide. The Attendant and Great Ascendant failed to stop it, and both suffered severe damage as the chapter ended.

• The being destroyed a cannon, killed two Night Watchers, and began contaminating their corpses before vanishing into the Ghoul tide.
• Leike ordered the group to kill the Ghouls and search for the being, while the others used their powers to fight back the growing horde.
• The being ambushed the Attendant from beneath a pile of corpses, and the Attendant’s attempt to seize it exposed him to its contamination.
• The Great Ascendant struck the being from behind, but its Flesh absorbed his attack and corroded his Mechanical Right Fist, forcing him to detach it.
• The Attendant admitted that the being was extremely contaminated and that he could not stop it.

Lu Yuan left Oak Forest City with Boer and the Night Watchers, carrying three wagons of Oak Forest Potion toward Bronze City. In The Abyss, Leike and the others decided to keep fighting the polluted creature and planned a ranged assault to clear the Ghouls hiding it.

• The Attendant struggled to suppress the pollution, while the group realized the mouthless creature was still concealed among the Corpse Tide.
• Lu Yuan packed up and left Oak Forest City with Boer and the Night Watchers after the city ended its surveillance.
• Otto gave Lu Yuan herbs and asked him to pass his regards to Klaus, while Isabella and Ibeya supplied support for his return to Bronze City.
• Lu Yuan departed with three wagons of Oak Forest Potion, uncertain what awaited him in Bronze City after three days on the road.
• Leike rejected retreat because the polluted creature could reach the city through the Pipe Network Layer, and the Great Ascendant agreed to keep fighting.
• Leike ordered the group to avoid close combat, assign ranged attacks against the creature, and have the Hooded Night Watcher and Great Ascendant kill the Ghouls.

Leike and the defenders coordinated their assault against the Ghouls, but the blood-colored creature survived their strongest attacks and revealed a vast, shifting mass of flesh. Its Contamination shattered Agnes’s Holy Light barrier, and the fallen firebreak let the Ghouls surge toward the group again.

• Leike ordered the Night Watchers to bombard the Ghoul openings, the Iron Guard Battalion to contain them with fire, and Agnes to support the defense with prayer.
• Agnes and two nuns summoned a Little Sun of Holy Light that slowed the Ghouls, while Leike’s Swarm Insects spread across the defenders as a brief protective warning.
• The Hooded Night Watcher and the attendant attacked the Ghouls as the Alchemy Cannons collapsed several openings and the Iron Guard Battalion built a firebreak.
• The Great Ascendant trapped the blood-colored figure with Swarm Insects and pierced it with a silver-white beam, while the attendant shredded it with Purple Light.
• The creature’s fragments fused into an enormous mass of flesh, which released a Contamination shock wave that broke Agnes’s barrier and extinguished the firebreak.

The Great Ascendant and his allies wounded a mass of flesh beneath Bronze City, but an ancient heartbeat let it escape and forced them to retreat. On the road to Bronze City, Lu Yuan encountered a powerful Unknown Existence in the fog, which said something was about to awaken.

• The Great Ascendant and the Attendant attacked the mass of flesh with Alchemy Flame and purple light, but it recovered and corroded the Great Ascendant's armor.
• The Great Ascendant, the Attendant, the Hooded Night Watcher, and Leike attacked the weakened mass, but two ancient heartbeats disrupted them and the mass escaped into the deeper passage.
• Leike ordered everyone to retreat when the ancient heartbeat sounded again.
• Lu Yuan and the Night Watchers traveled toward Bronze City, where dense fog and a strong Source of Pollution forced them to stop and gather together.
• An Unknown Existence watched Lu Yuan and spoke to him through fragmented thoughts, recognizing a familiar scent and saying it was going to see something that was about to awaken.

Lu Yuan returned to Bronze City amid signs of an escalating crisis and learned that a second underground assault had failed to defeat a dangerous unknown being. He joined the team preparing for a third descent as Klaus briefed the city’s strongest available fighters on the threat.

• A presence in the fog passed Lu Yuan and erased the others’ memories of it, but his Hidden Witness ability preserved his own; he sensed the Drowner in his leg and suppressed it with Authority.
• Lu Yuan returned to Bronze City and found the city under martial law, with smoke above the walls and Night Watchers rushing supplies and weapons through the Branch.
• Klaus told Lu Yuan that the second underground assault had been forced to withdraw after encountering an unknown special individual, which they had only managed to wound.
• Lu Yuan insisted on joining the third descent, and Klaus agreed to add him to the team led by Archbishop Adrian, with the Blue Knight, the Attendant, Margaret, and others.
• Klaus gathered the team and described the creature encountered in the Second Large Cavity, explaining that it could extract Flesh, contaminate its surroundings and corpses, and had cost them two Alchemy Cannons and several lives.

Klaus organized a third descent into the underground to hunt a dangerous special individual, investigate what lay sealed beneath Bronze City, and reduce the Ghoul population. Lu Yuan prepared Ghoul Brain Cores to conceal himself and gathered with the team, which equipped itself with a Mithril-lined containment box before setting out.

• Klaus outlined three goals: capture and kill the special individual, determine how many special individuals existed, and investigate the seal while reducing the Ghoul population.
• Klaus chose a seven-person team for the descent, including himself, the Great Ascendant, Adrian, Blue Knight, the attendant, Margaret, and Lu Yuan, while assigning Leike to watch the surface defenses.
• Lu Yuan returned to his quarters and carved Eerie Inscriptions into seventeen Great Ghoul Brain Cores so their aura could help him blend in underground.
• Lu Yuan considered whether the Drowner on his left leg might react to the underground's Eerie auras, then packed the Brain Cores and joined the waiting team.
• Arthur showed the team a Mithril-lined alloy box designed to suppress and contain the special individual, and warned them to abandon Bronze City if it could not hold the creature.

As Arthur’s group prepared to enter the Main Collapse Pit, they were called to Old Council Square when the pit expanded and Ghouls surged upward. The group drove back the counterattack, but a huge, fungus-covered creature began climbing out of the depths.

• Blue Knight took the box, and Klaus explained the Ghost-Suppressing Bell and Holy Radiance Amulets before the group prepared to set out.
• Klaus received word that the Main Collapse Pit had doubled in size, destroyed the Copper Protective Barriers, and unleashed a Ghoul attack on the Night Watchers.
• Klaus led the group to Old Council Square, where the seven fighters attacked the Ghouls and helped the Night Watchers hold the breach.
• The Attendant, Adrian, Margaret, and the Great Ascendant slaughtered Ghouls and Great Ghouls while Blue Knight watched the depths and Lu Yuan stayed behind them.
• A powerful roar came from underground, and a gigantic claw covered in woody fibers and Carrion Fungus emerged from the Collapse Pit and struck at the Great Ascendant.

Lu Yuan and the others destroyed a giant Chimera that emerged from the Collapse Pit, but the Gray-White Text warned of an extremely powerful source of pollution. A special Great Ghoul attacked the Attendant, fought off the Blue Knight, and escaped back into the pit.

• Adrian bound the giant Chimera with Holy Light chains while the Blue Knight severed its limbs and the Attendant cut down the Ghouls spilling from its body.
• Klaus sliced the smaller Chimeras that formed from the remains, trapping them in Green Crystal and destroying them.
• Lu Yuan spotted a warning about an extremely powerful source of pollution and alerted Klaus that the special individual might be hiding in the Corpse Tide.
• A blood-covered Great Ghoul burst from the corpses and attacked the Attendant, but his Purple Light net blocked it while the Great Ascendant and Blue Knight moved to intercept.
• The special Great Ghoul evaded the Blue Knight's attacks by turning into Blood Mist and escaped down through the Collapse Pit.

After the group defeated the Ghoul attack on Bronze City, Klaus led the Fourth Orders into the Collapse Pit to pursue the intelligent Red Shadow. The Red Shadow lured them through a route controlled by Ghouls, while Klaus and Great Ascendant secretly prepared escape measures and Lu Yuan watched for a chance to examine the creature.

• Klaus concluded that an intelligent Fourth Order Eerie creature had ambushed them and ordered the group to descend into the Collapse Pit.
• Klaus, Great Ascendant, Adrian, Blue Knight, the Attendant, Margaret, and Lu Yuan jumped into the pit and found the Red Shadow waiting at a passage below.
• Klaus decided to follow the Red Shadow, which led them deeper while Carrion Fungus and Great Ghouls cleared only its chosen path.
• Lu Yuan noticed the Red Shadow was herding the group past side passages packed with Ghouls, while Klaus and Great Ascendant left signs to prepare for retreat.
• Lu Yuan carried Ghoul Brain Cores to mask himself, confirmed he could summon two Key Fragments, and hoped to observe the Red Shadow once Klaus and the others fought it.

Lu Yuan and the others followed the Red Shadow deep beneath Bronze City, where Forest Seeds sealed their way back and trapped them beside a newly excavated Bronze Pillar. The Red Shadow began speaking, threatening the humans and demanding vengeance for its lord.

• The Red Shadow led Lu Yuan's team past Bronze Pillars being corroded by Forest Seeds, and Klaus decided they should continue into the trap rather than risk the creatures reaching Bronze City.
• Klaus sent another phantom into the soil as the group descended more than a thousand meters, while Lu Yuan sensed that a new fragment lay in or near a freshly excavated Bronze Pillar.
• Forest Seeds burst from the ground behind the group and sealed their retreat, trapping them in a cavern with several other passages.
• The Red Shadow touched the Bronze Pillar and spread roots across its inscriptions as Margaret, Attendant, Great Ascendant, and Klaus prepared to fight.
• The Red Shadow spoke for the first time, telling the humans they would die and repay its lord's suffering.

Lu Yuan’s team fought a special Ghoul that could speak and seemed to be a Taboo entity, while Klaus and the Blue Knight kept it from reaching the Bronze Pillar. Lu Yuan’s text revealed its limited energy as a weakness, but the battle remained underway as the Ghoul unleashed a relentless assault.

• Klaus used the Ghost-Suppressing Bell to stun the Ghoul, then struck its wrist with his Bone Sword while the Bronze Pillar’s pressure affected the team unevenly.
• Lu Yuan’s text identified the creature as an atavistic Ghoul with the Taboo label and limited energy, so he urged the team to keep killing it and moved toward the Bronze Pillar under cover.
• The Blue Knight charged into the Ghoul’s Blood Mist and joined Klaus, whose attack covered the creature in Green Crystals at the cost of one Afterimage.
• The Blue Knight blocked the Ghoul’s attacks and intercepted its burst of blood, while the Great Ascendant lost a corroded breastplate and revealed Flesh beneath his armor.
• The Ghoul launched a torrential series of blows at the Blue Knight, who held her ground and repeatedly met its fists with her Rapier.

Lu Yuan obtained the third Bronze City fragment after witnessing a vision of an ancient battle against Ghoul-like creatures. Two new Special Individuals then attacked, and Adrian’s Blessings empowered the others as they fought to hold them back.

• Blue Knight, Klaus, and Great Ascendant overwhelmed the Special Ghoul, while Lu Yuan touched the Bronze Pillar and saw a vision of soldiers defending a city wall from Ghoul-like creatures.
• Lu Yuan received the Bronze City fragment, bringing the count to 3/5, just as two Special Individuals emerged and Attendant’s Purple Light net began to fail.
• Attendant’s barrier shattered under the stronger Special Individual’s attack, and Lu Yuan fled toward Adrian and Margaret.
• Adrian blessed the group, and Lu Yuan used guard and Time Bestower to raise his Sanity and accelerate Blue Knight and Klaus.
• Blue Knight severed a Special Individual’s arms while Klaus charged the other, as Great Ascendant and Attendant supported them; another high-risk pollution warning appeared.

Lu Yuan and his allies fought several special Ghouls underground, but the creatures retreated as a huge heartbeat stirred the horde. With Lu Yuan’s Time Bestower effect gone, the real hunt began, while Great Ghouls started invading Bronze City aboveground.

• Lu Yuan used Time Bestower to protect Adrian, but his blessing was withdrawn and his Sanity surged beyond its limit.
• Margaret confronted a parasitized Ghoul while Adrian’s Holy Light withered its attacking roots.
• A special Ghoul attacked the Great Ascendant, and another fought Klaus as the Blue Knight broke free and moved to help him.
• The special Ghouls escaped into the darkness, and the surrounding Ghouls surged forward after a huge heartbeat sounded.
• Lu Yuan’s Time Bestower effect faded as Great Ghouls invaded Bronze City, and Leike rushed toward a collapse wrapped in Swarm Insects.