Chapter Summaries

As Bronze City’s many Collapse Pits unleashed waves of Ghouls, Leike fought a massive Chimera while the Guardian remained trapped in a struggle with the Person on the Wall. Meanwhile, Selina and Tower of Erudition Mentors subdued the Night Watchers guarding a passage and hurried toward the Copper Wall.

• Ghouls poured from new Collapse Pits across Bronze City, forcing the Night Watchers, Holy Armor Army, and Nuns to defend the breaches.
• Leike used his Swarm Insects to hold back the Ghouls at the Collapse Pit near the Inner City wall, but a huge Chimera emerged and forced him to risk his life.
• The Guardian refused to intervene as the Person on the Wall urged him to watch, and he resolved to bind the Person to himself while sending for Arthur and Hilde.
• Selina led Tower of Erudition Mentors through the Pipe Network Layer, evading the Night Watcher outposts and reaching the guards near the Eerie Inscription.
• Selina’s group used the twisted Flesh in their boxes to disable the four guards, then headed toward the Copper Wall before the next shift change.

Leike and a Hooded Night Watcher fought to hold the Inner City Collapse Pit as the Inscription weakened and four enormous Chimeras emerged. They destroyed the Chimeras and contained the Ghouls for the moment, but a powerful contamination aura then rushed out from the depths of the collapse.

• The Inscription's pressure weakened, freeing the Great Ghouls as Leike's Swarm Insects began tearing apart the first Chimera from within.
• Leike's dwindling insect swarm fought the remaining Chimeras and Ghouls while scattered gunshots from the Outer City signaled that residents were under attack.
• A Hooded Night Watcher arrived and used his Flesh-mutation ability to make the second Chimera's own body bite itself apart.
• Leike and the Hooded Night Watcher killed the second and third Chimeras together, then the Hooded Night Watcher destroyed the fourth alone.
• Leike's Insect Tide surrounded the Collapse Pit and held back the emerging Ghouls, but a powerful contamination aura surged from the depths to the edge of the swarm.

The Hooded Night Watcher and Leike fought a powerful Special Individual that emerged from the Collapse Pit, but managed only to drive it back into the depths. With both defenders badly injured and the Inner City wall inscription extinguished, the immediate area was stable, though the silence from the Outer City left the wider crisis uncertain.

• A blood-colored Special Individual burst from the Collapse Pit and targeted the Hooded Night Watcher, whose attacks could not overcome its rapid healing and severe contamination.
• Leike sacrificed most of his Swarm Insects to restrain the Special Individual, suffering dangerous backlash as the bugs died.
• The Hooded Night Watcher used his own Flesh to make a toothed blood ball, forced it into the creature, and attacked while the Inner City wall inscription briefly immobilized it.
• The Special Individual escaped into the Collapse Pit despite its injuries, and the inscription on the Inner City wall went dark.
• The Hooded Night Watcher drank a potion and stood guard beside the crippled Leike as the area fell temporarily quiet and gunfire from the Outer City ceased.

As the Great Ghouls grew stronger after a massive heartbeat, Klaus decided the group would continue deeper into the Underground Abyss despite the danger. Lu Yuan realized something was catalyzing the creatures’ advancement, while Klaus argued they needed to discover what was sealed below before Bronze City’s seal collapsed.

• The Great Ghouls’ strength and pollution increased, and Lu Yuan detected that they were being catalyzed and advanced, with no weaknesses appearing in his scans.
• The Attendant questioned whether the group should keep descending, citing the strengthened Ghouls, the unaccounted-for special individuals, and Lu Yuan’s presence.
• Klaus decided to continue, explaining that Bronze City might not give them another chance and that his marks on the special individuals could guide them deeper.
• Klaus said they lacked proof that the sealed presence was a Taboo Entity and insisted they needed to see it or find evidence before deciding how to defend Bronze City or report to The Center.
• The Blue Knight, the Attendant, Adrian, the Great Ascendant, Margaret, and Lu Yuan aligned with Klaus’s decision and advanced into the passage.

Lu Yuan and Klaus led their team deeper into Bronze City, following the trail toward the remaining Key Fragments while pollution and the Drowner's fear intensified. They broke through a living flesh wall and found the core of Bronze Sin, where a massive figure stirred in the darkness and noticed them.

• The Drowner warned Lu Yuan of something below, and Lu Yuan suppressed its reaction with the Authority in his left eye.
• The Blue Knight and Margaret led the team through waves of Great Ghouls while Klaus followed a green trail from his Bone Ring.
• As the team descended, the heartbeat and pollution grew stronger, and the Drowner became intensely afraid of what lay below.
• The team found a flesh wall blocking the passage, and Margaret and the Blue Knight cut and smashed a path through it with Adrian's Holy Light supporting them.
• Beyond the wall, the team saw Bronze Pillars and a massive figure rising and falling in the darkness, and it noticed them.

Selina and the mentors reached the Copper Wall and used Flesh to provoke the Eerie Inscriptions, which revealed a Seven-Eyed Crown trapped inside. The Person on the Wall appeared and ordered them to stop, leaving the Crown sealed as Selina’s group withdrew.

• Selina led the mentors through the inscription-covered passage, using Gray Mist to protect them from its pull.
• At the Copper Wall, Selina and the mentors placed their Flesh and chanted, causing the inscriptions to spread and form a massive eye.
• The Copper Wall cracked open with golden light, revealing a Seven-Eyed Crown whose seven eyes watched Selina’s group.
• The Person on the Wall left the Tower of Erudition and appeared beside Selina, urgently ordering her to retrieve all the Flesh.
• Selina had the mentors pack away the Flesh, making the inscriptions slow and the Crown retreat into the Copper Wall.
• The Person on the Wall withdrew toward the Tower of Erudition, and Selina led the mentors away.

Selina escaped the Copper Wall with the instructors as the Person on the Wall returned to the Guardian and struck a temporary deal with him. In the Underground Abyss, Lu Yuan’s group faced a huge mutated Taboo creature blocking their path deeper inside.

• Selina led the instructors away from the unconscious Night Watchers and into the Pipe Network Layer.
• The Person on the Wall told the Guardian it had searched for a being of its origin beneath the city’s seal, but had withdrawn when it found the being conscious.
• The Person on the Wall proposed that it and the Guardian refrain from attacking each other during the coming battle, and the Guardian accepted the contract.
• Lu Yuan’s group detected a mutated Taboo creature whose weakness was severing its connection to Her, then watched it charge at them.
• Klaus told the group to move forward, and the Blue Knight prepared to attack by drawing her Rapier and forming armor from pale blue threads.

Lu Yuan searched the Bronze Pillars for the fourth Fragment while Margaret, the Blue Knight, Klaus, and the Great Ascendant fought the Colossus. The Colossus’s flesh membrane blocked or blunted their attacks, and its wounds healed rapidly as it remained connected to the living ground.

• Lu Yuan sensed that the fourth Fragment was nearby, asked Klaus to buy him time, and began searching the Bronze Pillars while the Attendant shielded him with Purple Light.
• Margaret discovered that her Water Control could not penetrate the Colossus’s flesh membrane and realized that its legs joined the living Flesh beneath them, allowing it to recover from injuries.
• The Blue Knight’s Rapier was repelled by the Colossus’s membrane, while Adrian’s Holy Light weakened and failed to reach Lu Yuan.
• Klaus and the Great Ascendant joined the fight, but the Colossus quickly healed Klaus’s cut and stopped the Great Ascendant’s beam from piercing its body.
• The Blue Knight cut the Colossus’s calf with her strongest strike, but the wound began closing, while Margaret attacked its back with Water Needles and prepared more Water Blades to restrain it.

Klaus and Lu Yuan left the battlefield to descend deeper into the hollow, where the fourth fragment seemed to lie. They arrived in an unfamiliar, Flesh-lined passage while the others remained to hold off the regenerating Colossus.

• Blue Knight, the Attendant, Margaret, and the Great Ascendant severed the Colossus, but it regenerated completely by drawing on the surrounding Flesh.
• Lu Yuan searched all seven Bronze Pillars and found no fragment, though the thread in his consciousness still pointed beneath the hollow.
• Lu Yuan spotted Klaus's missing afterimage moving into the darkness and realized Klaus planned to descend using it as an Anchor Point.
• Klaus told the others to hold off the Colossus, and Lu Yuan insisted on going with him.
• Klaus grabbed Lu Yuan and used his ability to reach the afterimage's location, leaving them in a deeper, unfamiliar part of the hollow.
• Blue Knight looked back and found that Klaus and Lu Yuan had vanished from the battlefield.

Blue Knight and the others struggled to hold back the Colossus as the Copper Pillars’ pressure crippled most of the group. Adrian extinguished his Holy Light and revealed a second faith, unleashing violet-black Flame that burned through the Flesh.

• Blue Knight, Margaret, Attendant, and Great Ascendant kept the Colossus occupied while Klaus disappeared, and the creature swelled and roared.
• The Copper Pillars ignited, overwhelming the group with pressure that weakened their attacks and defenses while Blue Knight continued fighting.
• Blue Knight wounded the Colossus’s knee and kept it from reaching Attendant as the pillar pressure rose and fell.
• Adrian closed his Scripture and ended the Holy Light, then revealed violet-black Flame and a single black wing.
• Great Ascendant realized Adrian believed in a Fallen Angel, and Adrian’s Flame rapidly burned and carbonized the Flesh beneath him.

Adrian’s purple-black flames broke through the Colossus’s defenses, allowing the Blue Knight and the Great Ascendant to wound it as its healing fell behind the fire. Meanwhile, Klaus led Lu Yuan through the living passages to the true Abyss, where they reached the source of the powerful pollution and the thread pointing toward the fourth Fragment.

• Adrian burned through the Colossus’s flesh membrane, and the Blue Knight and the Great Ascendant struck through the opening.
• The purple-black flames overwhelmed the Colossus’s healing as the Blue Knight restrained it and Margaret shielded her from flying flesh.
• Klaus led Lu Yuan through a pulsing flesh passage, following a green line from his Bone Ring toward the Abyss.
• Lu Yuan sensed that the fourth Fragment lay ahead and above them beyond the passage.
• Klaus and Lu Yuan reached the vast Abyss, where the Bronze Pillars responded to the heartbeat of the sealed source of pollution.
• Klaus followed the faint green thread down the cliff and stepped into the Abyss.

Lu Yuan and Klaus descended into the abyss beneath Bronze City, where they found a vast, reviving mass of Flesh bound to the Bronze Pillars. Lu Yuan recovered the fourth fragment and saw a vision of a Crown being sealed in a Copper Wall, but the Flesh erupted in anger, forcing Klaus to prepare their escape.

• Klaus grabbed Lu Yuan and leaped with him into the abyss, where they landed on a platform above the pulsing mass of Flesh.
• Lu Yuan saw that the Bronze Pillars bound the Flesh and identified it as a reviving severed limb from an existence above the Starry Sky.
• Lu Yuan found the fourth fragment embedded in the cliff wall and touched it, receiving a vision of a tall figure giving a Golden Crown to a smaller figure who sealed it in a Copper Wall.
• Lu Yuan activated the fragment, increasing Bronze City's progress to four of five, while Klaus finished examining the abyss and ordered him to leave.
• The Flesh surged toward them as its heartbeat quickened, and Klaus covered himself in Bone Armor and told Lu Yuan to grab him.

Lu Yuan and Klaus escaped the pursuing flesh only to find the Colossus rapidly regenerating and the hollow sealing shut around their group. With the others trapped and Klaus unable to teleport, Adrian crushed a sacred feather and summoned a gigantic golden eye whose light halted the flesh and extinguished the Bronze Pillars’ oppressive force.

• Klaus pulled Lu Yuan out of the passage as dark red flesh chased them into the hollow.
• The Colossus regenerated faster than Adrian’s flames could burn it, while flesh surged through the hollow and sealed every exit.
• Adrian spread his feathers into a rain of fire to hold back the flesh, but the feathers burned away as Klaus’s Bone Ring failed to teleport the group.
• Adrian crushed a pure white feather and prayed to the Angel, causing a gigantic golden eye to open above them.
• The golden eye’s light extinguished the Bronze Pillars’ force and drained the surrounding flesh of its color and vitality.

Adrian’s golden eye freed the group from the Flesh-filled hollow, and they escaped to find Bronze City under siege and its defenses failing. Lu Yuan recognized a memory-altering mist spreading through the square and warned Klaus, while the connection to the fifth Fragment abruptly vanished.

• Adrian summoned a golden eye that destroyed the Flesh’s hold on the hollow, allowing Klaus, the Blue Knight, and the others to escape through the opened passage.
• Klaus brought Lu Yuan and Adrian to the surface, where Glock reported widespread collapses, Ghoul incursions, Leike’s serious injury, and the failure of the Inner City Wall’s Inscription.
• Lu Yuan recognized the white mist as the presence that had previously rewritten his companions’ memories, and realized he could no longer sense the fifth Fragment.
• Lu Yuan warned Klaus that something might be hiding in the mist, and Klaus ordered everyone to return to the Branch together.
• Two red lights shot up from the direction of the city wall as the group headed toward the Branch.

After returning from the Abyss, Lu Yuan and the Night Watchers faced a crisis as threats spread through the city and its defenses began to fail. Klaus dispatched the strongest fighters to contain them, while Lu Yuan went to check on Leike, who warned that another powerful Special Individual had appeared.

• Red signal flares alerted Klaus and the others to danger outside the city, and they returned to the Night Watcher Branch with the exhausted Adrian.
• Night Watchers reported that Selina Winter had stirred the Eerie area behind Copper Wall, most outer sentry posts had fallen, and something dark red was growing inside the city wall.
• Klaus sent Blue Knight, Margaret, and Attendant to fight the spreading Ghouls, assigned Great Ascendant to delay the damage to the wall, and ordered the Hidden Sentries to protect residents.
• Klaus told Lu Yuan to check on Leike and the changed Seed in District C, while Lu Yuan found that his connection to the fifth fragment remained dormant.
• Lu Yuan and Jurgen visited the recovering Leike, who revealed that another powerful Special Individual had appeared aboveground and that a Fourth Order Night Watcher had helped him survive.

Lu Yuan discovered that Hope had grown into a golden tree whose light restored sanity and might point toward a way to change Bronze City’s fate, while the Drowner began showing signs of consciousness. Meanwhile, Klaus met with the Guardian at the Tower of Erudition and prepared to discuss matters Lu Yuan could not hear.

• Lu Yuan found no way to help Leike and left Jurgen to keep him company before heading to District C to inspect the Seed.
• Lu Yuan entered Room 7 and found Hope transformed into a person-tall golden tree that restored sanity and was eroding the room’s isolation inscriptions.
• Lu Yuan saw that Bronze City Status had risen to 44.2/51 and read that Hope showed a direction to Twist fate, though he could not determine how to use it.
• The Worm of Knowledge basked in Hope’s light and gained Forbidden Studies knowledge, while the Drowner felt joy and showed signs of consciousness.
• Lu Yuan told the Night Watcher to admit no one into Room 7 except Klaus, then Klaus entered the Main Tower and told the Guardian that some things Lu Yuan could not hear.

Klaus told the Guardian that a conscious mass of Flesh lay beneath the Abyss and that Selina Winter had tampered with the Copper Wall for the Person on the Wall. As Bronze City was ordered to hold out against the spreading breaches, Klaus received a potion and learned that allies he had contacted were on their way.

• Klaus reported the Flesh beneath the Abyss and accused Selina Winter and the Tower of Erudition of acting for the Person on the Wall.
• The Guardian said he could act again, promised to handle the Person on the Wall, and urged Klaus to leave if necessary after Klaus revealed he had found a road to the Fifth Order.
• The Person on the Wall admitted that it had ordered Selina to tamper with the seal but claimed it had stopped the attempt.
• Arthur and Hilde gave Klaus simultaneous decrees from The Center and the Tower of Erudition Headquarters forbidding evacuation and ordering Bronze City to hold out.
• Pathfinders delivered an emergency message saying breaches had appeared in the Withered Land and the north, while Klaus's contacts were already heading to Bronze City.
• Klaus received a glass tube of faintly glowing potion and a note saying it could be given to him or the Guardian, and that Bronze City must not fall.

Klaus revealed the Empire's order to defend Bronze City and prepared to coordinate its defense, but a seal in the Pipe Network Layer failed before he could act. As the Eerie Inscriptions overwhelmed the Copper Wall, a massive Crown emerged, its first six eyes opening.

• Klaus kept the Empire's potion and read Lu Yuan's warning that the Seed needed care and protection.
• Klaus told Bronze City's assembled nobles that an imperial decree forbade evacuation and demanded they defend the city; Earl Helmut agreed to follow his arrangements.
• A Night Watcher reported that the seal behind the Copper Wall had failed, and Klaus rushed to the site.
• Twenty minutes earlier, a Night Watcher Captain ordered his squad to retreat, use Mithril against the spreading inscriptions, and damage the surrounding passage.
• The Eerie Inscriptions disrupted the Copper Wall's seal, and a massive golden Crown forced its way through the cracks.
• The Crown's first six eyes opened while its central eye remained shut.

The Blue Knight rescued the corrupted Third Order Captain from the Pipe Network Layer, where rotating inscriptions were spreading through the tunnels, then returned to investigate the source. Meanwhile, Klaus and Lu Yuan left the Branch and entered an Outer City blanketed by worsening fog and pollution.

• The Blue Knight found corrupted Night Watchers in the Pipe Network Layer, restrained their pollution, and sent Margaret to retreat with them while she went deeper alone.
• The Blue Knight followed the spreading inscriptions past the Night Watchers’ blasted fortifications and found the Third Order Captain badly corrupted and muttering about a light below.
• The Blue Knight cut the twisting flesh from the Captain’s arms, knocked him unconscious, and carried him back to Margaret and the others as the inscriptions surged after her.
• The Blue Knight told Margaret she would return to investigate the source of the inscriptions, then sealed herself in threads and headed back into the darkness.
• Klaus led Lu Yuan toward the Pipe Network Layer as dense white fog covered the Outer City and Lu Yuan’s warnings detected rising pollution and a powerful Source of Pollution.

Lu Yuan and Klaus encountered the Mist Traveler in the fog before finding the Blue Knight’s wounded Night Watchers and spreading Rotating Inscriptions in the Pipe Network Layer. When Klaus could not approach the inscriptions, Lu Yuan proved immune and prepared to descend, protected by Klaus’s afterimage.

• Lu Yuan followed Klaus through fog that weakened the connection between the Fragments, and Klaus killed a Great Ghoul in an alley.
• A pair of pale eyes appeared in the fog, watched Klaus and Lu Yuan, then moved toward the Inner City; Lu Yuan recognized the presence as the Mist Traveler.
• Klaus found Margaret and the injured Night Watchers near the Pipe Network Layer entrance, where Margaret said the Blue Knight had gone deeper alone.
• Klaus touched the spreading Rotating Inscriptions, which contaminated his power and forced him to sever the affected part of his Bone Armor.
• Lu Yuan touched the inscriptions without being contaminated and decided to go down after the Blue Knight; Klaus gave him a Marching Lamp and an afterimage that could block one attack.