Recaps

Charles encountered a grotesque monster made of an oversized man's head and a long, many-fingered arm emerging from a fireplace. He fled through the castle, restrained the creature with webs, and began testing spells to kill it.

• Charles saw a pale forearm with ten fingers and three eyes in its palm emerge from the fireplace.
• The arm lunged at Charles, revealing a huge, bloodied head with writhing tentacles and a feeler in its mouth.
• Charles cast Serpentine Glide and outran the pursuing monster through the castle corridors.
• Charles hit the monster with three Web Bombs, entangling its arm and head.
• Charles struck the monster with Bone Needle Bee, then cast Ice Spike Spell and Pus-Blood Bomb to test their effects.

After killing a monstrous head, Charles explored the manor and found no way back to reality, then set off for the city, believing its buildings might offer a route home. He reached the city gate and hesitated before entering, only to hear strange laughter approaching from behind.

• Charles killed the monstrous head with repeated attacks and felt his mental and magic power begin to recover and grow.
• Charles searched the ashes, fireplace, manor, and castle but found no passage back to reality, and he avoided a strange tree with writhing branches.
• Charles left the manor and headed toward the city, deciding its many buildings might provide shadows needed to return to the Wizard World.
• Charles avoided a massive breach in the city wall and walked for over an hour to find the city gate.
• Charles stopped before the open gate, lit by blood-red flames, and heard strange laughter from behind him.

Charles survived the Shadow Nightmare Realm’s eerie wind by sheltering in a city gate watchman’s room, though it left three needle marks on his eyelid. He continued searching the deserted town for a passage back to the Wizard World and watched a monster attack a man who shouted in the street.

• Charles fled the dangerous wind into a small room in the city gate tunnel, where a whisper about sewing eyelids left him with three needle-prick marks on his right eyelid.
• After the wind and strange laughter faded, Charles left the room and searched the town’s buildings for a passage to the Wizard World.
• Charles spotted a terrified middle-aged man shouting for help in the street and feared the noise would draw a monster.
• A twisted creature made of broken dishes and intestine-like tendrils burst from a building and wrapped itself around the middle-aged man, cutting into his flesh.

Charles searched the Shadow Nightmare Realm for a way back to the Wizard World while avoiding monsters and the effects of assimilation. He found a viable passage beneath a fallen bell tower, but a nearby monster spotted him just as he began casting a spell.

• A mass of intestines killed a middle-aged man, copied his last words, and was snatched away by a flying creature, leaving Charles to search for an escape.
• Charles found a narrow passage formed by a stair railing's shadow, but it was too fragmented to cross and vanished before he could use it.
• After spending more than a day in the Shadow Nightmare Realm, Charles noticed that the monsters seemed less frightening as the realm began assimilating him.
• A colossal pterosaur-like monster flew over the city as a three-headed giant charged through the streets and hurled building debris at it.
• The giant toppled a bell tower, revealing a broad shadow passage back to the Wizard World, and Charles rushed toward it.
• A twisted monster escaped the giant's destruction, spotted Charles, and prompted him to begin casting a spell.

Charles fought and killed a Man-Headed Dog while escaping the Shadow Nightmare Realm, then returned to the real world through the clock tower passage. He discovered that the Shadow Nightmare Realm was available for proxy representation and confirmed the request.

• Charles used moths, red-eyed rats, and defensive spells to distract and evade the Man-Headed Dog as he ran toward the clock tower passage.
• Charles trapped the Man-Headed Dog beneath collapsing timber, set the pile alight with Foxfire Spell, and killed the monster.
• Charles reached the passage and forced his way out of the Shadow Nightmare Realm, then vomited beneath the clock tower as his surroundings returned to normal.
• Charles noticed gray smoke and faint whispers rising from his body and feared the Shadow Nightmare Realm was assimilating him.
• Charles found a request to represent the Shadow Nightmare Realm Mall in the Wu Duo Duo Mall and confirmed it.

Charles returned from the Shadow Nightmare Realm and traded his account of the experience to Loran for three zero-ring spells and a box of magical eyeballs. After leaving Loran’s laboratory, he encountered Quake, who eagerly asked about his disappearance.

• Charles returned to the manor and told Loran he had been trapped in the Shadow Nightmare Realm.
• Loran offered Charles three zero-ring spells in exchange for a detailed account, and he described his journey and the giant battling a pterosaur-like monster.
• Loran checked Charles for lingering effects and kept him in the laboratory for two days while teaching him Surveillance Mark, Crow Divination, and Wailing Bottle.
• Loran gave Charles the promised cultivation resources, which turned out to be a box of magical eyeballs.
• Charles ran into Quake and told him he had escaped from the Shadow Nightmare Realm, exciting Quake’s curiosity.

After returning from the Shadow Nightmare Realm, Charles explained his experiences to Quake and Jody in exchange for recovery supplies and a wizard artifact. Jody and Charles agreed to patrol together, and Charles tested the Lightfoot Boots she gave him.

• Charles returned to his room, realized a shadow by the bed had carried him into the Shadow Nightmare Realm, and moved to a room away from the light.
• Quake brought Charles healing and recovery potions in exchange for hearing about his experiences, and Charles recounted most of what had happened.
• Jody gave Charles wizard artifact boots with the Lightfoot spell and asked him to share every detail of his experiences.
• Charles told Jody his full account, and she proposed that they team up for patrol; Charles agreed.
• Charles put on the boots and tested Lightfoot, finding that it made him feel lighter and would increase his speed.

Charles discovered that Wuduo could send him between the Shadow Nightmare Realm and the Wizard World, and he spotted a dangerous giant tree in the shadow realm. After ordering the ordinary tree corresponding to it cut down, he joined Jody’s patrol and wondered whether the shadow realm’s monsters were also projections of the Wizard World.

• Charles learned the Rat Domestication spell and reflected on how killing Shadow Nightmare Realm monsters had increased his magic power and mental power.
• Charles entered the Shadow Nightmare Realm through Wuduo, saw that the giant tree had grown to nearly forty meters, and found an entrance back to the Wizard World.
• After Charles returned, the giant tree’s branches and leaves burst into his room searching for him, while Wuduo showed a two-day countdown before his next visit.
• Charles considered using the Shadow Nightmare Realm to accelerate his cultivation, then resumed meditating with eyeballs.
• Three days later, Charles ordered an attendant to cut down the ordinary tree corresponding to the giant tree before joining Jody’s patrol.
• As Charles and Jody approached the city, Charles noticed similarities between its buildings and the Shadow Nightmare Realm and wondered whether its monsters were projections too.

Charles patrolled the city with Jody, then secretly returned to the Shadow Nightmare Realm to investigate the felled tree. He found a monstrous sapling growing from its stump, cut it down, and felt himself improve after killing it.

• Charles and Jody patrolled the city, inspected the clock tower passage, and found nothing unusual.
• After finishing five days on standby, Charles returned to the manor and later left secretly to enter the Shadow Nightmare Realm.
• Charles went to the manor in the Shadow Nightmare Realm and found that the felled tree was gone, leaving a huge stump.
• Charles discovered a person-sized sapling with tentacles growing from the stump and realized it had become a monster.
• Charles cut the sapling in half, and after it stopped moving, he felt the familiar improvement from killing a monster.

Charles entered the ruined city to hunt monsters, but a house’s doorframe attacked him after his mental scan failed to detect it. He discovered that Shadow-Stealing Spell weakened the immobile monster, destroyed it, and increased his mental power and magic.

• Charles left the tree stump alive to see whether it would grow another sapling, then found no new monsters in the manor castle.
• Charles crossed the city wall and saw that the Angry Giant’s rampage had left nearly half the city in ruins.
• Charles opened a seemingly safe house and narrowly escaped when its tooth-lined doorframe snapped at him and sent tentacles after him.
• Charles tested spells on the immobile doorframe monster, finding that Shadow-Stealing Spell drained it while his other attacks had limited effects.
• Charles repeatedly cast Shadow-Stealing Spell until the monster’s teeth and tongue fell off and its doorframe crumbled to ashes, increasing his mental power and magic.

Charles burned a house to expose a huge, agile tentacled monster, then hid in a ruined building and used a Wailing Bottle to lure out a smaller monster. He trapped and killed the smaller creature with Web Bombs and Shadow-Stealing Spells.

• Charles set a wooden house ablaze, but a van-sized monster made of feelers burst out and slipped into a nearby house.
• Charles retreated into a half-collapsed building and prepared an ambush near an open market district.
• Charles cast a Wailing Bottle to attract monsters, and a long-tailed feline creature crawled out of the rubble.
• The creature pierced the Wailing Bottle with its tail, while Charles trapped it with successive Web Bombs.
• Charles weakened the trapped creature with Shadow-Stealing Spells until it died.

Charles encountered a powerful flying monster in the Shadow Nightmare Realm and escaped back to the Wizard World. To conceal his trips between the worlds, he arranged to raise rats outside the manor.

• Charles used a Wailing Bottle to lure a livid facial-skin monster, whose scream shattered the bottle and disrupted the surrounding ruins.
• Charles fled to the Wizard World before the monster attacked again, then saw that Wuduo Mall had listed a garbled merchant named Echo Mask.
• Charles decided to use rat domestication as an excuse to live outside the manor and hide his trips to the Shadow Nightmare Realm.
• Charles arranged for wizard apprentices to find rats and a residence, hired farmers to help, and began planning to use the rats for experiments and spell testing.

Charles trained young rats at his farm and used captured rats to scout houses in the Shadow Nightmare Realm. As the ruined city began restoring itself and more monsters gained places to hide, he explored cautiously and stayed alert for a terrifying warhorse monster.

• Charles gave a farmer gold coins for his children and fed the rats he had bred at his farm.
• Charles used Rat Speech and Rat Domestication to train the young rats to obey him and considered modifying their bloodlines later.
• Charles entered the Shadow Nightmare Realm with a cage of captured rats to use them as bait while checking houses for monsters.
• Charles noticed the ruined city was gradually restoring itself, creating more places for both him and monsters to hide.
• Charles recalled that a deformed warhorse monster had nearly paralyzed him with fear, and he used its hoofbeats to evade it or return to the Wizard World.

Charles investigated a vast white palace in the Shadow Nightmare Realm, cautiously sending rats inside while examining its pillar engravings. He discovered that the palace’s art celebrated a powerful being through music made from human suffering, and the inscriptions warned that flesh and blood would become poetry when the curtain fell.

• Charles found a huge white palace that had no counterpart in the Wizard World and used three rats to test whether it was dangerous.
• Charles sent the rats through a side passage and watched them explore the palace while he inspected the outer pillars.
• Charles pieced together the engravings’ story of a band whose instruments became increasingly horrific as it sought to please a powerful deity.
• Charles read the inscriptions: “You may bask in the eternal glory of art” and “The price is that when the curtain falls, flesh and blood shall become poetry.”

Charles entered the white palace to escape the strange wind and followed invisible footprints through a ghostly banquet hall into a theater filled with monstrous seats. He reached the stage and discovered its curtain was stitched from human skin.

• Charles recorded the palace’s unfamiliar runes but could not memorize them, then entered the white palace as the strange wind approached.
• The palace door closed behind Charles, and candles lit a banquet hall filled with unseen guests and strange sounds.
• Charles followed a pair of invisible footprints through the banquet hall and into a dark theater.
• Charles discovered that the theater’s seats had sharp-toothed mouths and that the stage curtain was made of human skin.

Charles killed the theater-seat monsters with Acid Missiles until music from the stage immobilized him and gradually increased his mental power. After the performance ended, the seats applauded with their teeth and tentacles as unseen gazes fixed on him, and Charles praised the music before disappearing with a shadow.

• Charles killed several toothed theater seats by casting Acid Missiles into their mouths and onto their bodies, gaining mental power and mana.
• Music began playing onstage and held Charles in place while his mental power slowly increased.
• After the final note, the seats snapped their jaws and clapped with tentacles as Charles sensed gazes from the center of the stage.
• Charles praised the performance aloud, and the gathered gazes dispersed.
• Charles vanished along with a shadow.

After escaping the White Palace, Charles gained spiritual power from the Star-Eclipse Symphony Society’s False God Fugue and focused on cultivating. He became a first-class wizard apprentice, surprising Jody, and then encountered Quake, Sal, and Golder, who somehow knew about his breakthrough.

• Charles returned from the White Palace with blood at his eyes and ears, and Wuduo notified him that he had attracted the Star-Eclipse Symphony Society’s attention, received its ticket, and gained spiritual power from its music.
• Charles killed a group of Goblins on his way back to the manor, then stayed inside for several days to meditate and cultivate.
• Charles ate magic-filled eyeballs while practicing the Gloomy Eye Meditation Technique and broke through to become a first-class wizard apprentice.
• Jody ran into Charles after meditating, recognized his breakthrough, congratulated him awkwardly, and left in embarrassment.
• Charles encountered Quake, Sal, Golder, and several others at the manor and asked how they knew he had become a first-class wizard apprentice.

After Charles became a first-rank wizard apprentice, Loran showed him a dissected Quasit and explained how wizards summoned demons for experiments. Impressed by Charles's progress and demon bloodline, Loran offered to recommend him as her master's student, and Charles accepted without hesitation.

• Charles hurried to Loran's laboratory, where he helped her dissect a powerful, unconscious monster.
• Loran identified the creature as a Quasit and explained that she had summoned it using a sorcery rune array.
• Loran told Charles that Quasits were weak demons and described the ranks of demons above them.
• Charles said he wanted to study Abyssal demons and strengthen his own faint demon bloodline.
• Loran praised Charles for advancing before Jody and asked whether he would become her master's student, and Charles immediately agreed.

Loran accepted Charles as her junior brother and began teaching him Abyssal Grimoire Studies and Flesh Witchcraft. Charles studied the Bottomless Abyss and quickly learned much of the commonly used Abyssal Language and writing.

• Charles agreed to study under Loran, who told him her teacher, Anderson, was a third-ring Grand Wizard and promised to introduce them after Charles became a wizard.
• Loran warned Charles not to rely on talent alone, then assigned him books on Abyssal Grimoire Studies and told him to help in her laboratory after meditation.
• Loran explained that Abyssal Summoning Witchcraft would be part of Charles’s studies, but cautioned him that demons were intelligent and cunning.
• Charles read about the Abyss’s many worlds, demons, runes, contracts, and methods for communicating with and deceiving demons.
• Charles used the advantage of his Succubus Bloodline to learn Abyssal runes and language quickly, mastering most commonly used forms.

Charles assisted Loran in studying a summoned imp and watched her brew a Demon Bloodline Potion from its blood. Loran explained that many Isata wizards and apprentices begin demon bloodline modification with an imp bloodline because it has the highest success rate.

• Charles asked Loran why she had summoned so few corporeal demons, and she explained that demons often took sacrifices without agreeing to be summoned.
• Loran tested an imprisoned imp while it tried to tempt Charles into releasing it and later begged them not to dissect it.
• Loran ordered the imp to draw its own blood, and Charles brought the sample to her.
• Loran and Charles made a Demon Bloodline Potion from the imp's blood, which could give an ordinary mortal an imp bloodline.
• Loran told Charles that imp bloodlines were the most common first step in demon bloodline modification because they had the highest success rate.

Charles learned how demon bloodlines could be strengthened while risking corruption, and discovered that Loran’s Imp could provide only a few more useful blood extractions. After passing Loran’s test, he received spells for learning to summon and contract demons.

• Loran explained that demon bloodlines could evolve through purifying and fusing with other demon bloodlines, but their chaotic nature could also affect those who acquired them.
• Loran told Charles that her wizard artifact had extracted bloodline-bearing blood from the Imp and that it could endure at most two more extractions; Charles saw how exhausted it had become.
• After Charles completed the day’s experiment, he told Loran he had finished the books, and she tested his knowledge before approving his progress.
• Loran gave Charles scrolls for Summon Demon Worm, Summon Imp, and Demon Companion, and instructed him to begin practicing with Demon Worms.
• Charles studied the spells’ differences: Demon Worms were summoned as true bodies, while Imps and other demons answered as projections through contracts.

Charles learned Summon Demon Worm and Summon Imp under Loran’s guidance. After testing a Demon Worm, he began summoning Imps and signed contracts with thirty demons.

• Charles bought Loran’s insights and mastered the three summoning spells in about half a month.
• Charles summoned a Demon Worm by sacrificing a Goblin, and Loran explained that its mixed bloodline made it unsuitable for bloodline potions.
• Loran crushed the Demon Worm and told Charles that its remains could serve as a sacrifice for Summon Imp, while warning him not to summon too many in one day.
• Charles entered the summoning space and offered demons a contract in exchange for portions of the Goblin’s soul.
• Charles used the soul power of ten Goblins to sign contracts with thirty demons, though he could not know which ones would answer future summons.

Charles practiced Summon Imp under Loran’s guidance and received a crystal ball as her final gift. He returned to his residence and began planning his studies and experiments, leaving for his farm to train his rats and consider how to control them before modifying them.

• Charles summoned a Quasit projection, then dismissed it without sending it into combat.
• Loran praised Charles’s witchcraft and instructed him to sign more demon contracts, build relationships with the demons, and summon physical demons only when he could control them.
• Loran gave Charles an apprentice-level crystal ball, explaining that future lessons would require an equal exchange.
• Charles planned to meditate, study his spells, gather soul power from Goblins, and experiment with modifying rats.
• Charles trained his rats with Rat Speech and Rat Training, then decided he might need an enslavement spell before modifying them.

Charles raided a Goblin settlement to gather the soul power he needed, summoning three demons and using spells to throw the Goblins into disarray. The demons charged into the settlement, and one Quasit began slaughtering the Goblins.

• Charles scouted a settlement of over a hundred Goblins and decided to attack after his crystal ball had nearly filled with gathered soul power.
• Charles summoned two Quasits and a Mezzoloth, then ordered them to kill every Goblin in the settlement.
• The three demons charged from separate directions while Charles cast several Moth Swarm Veils to confuse the Goblins.
• A Quasit cast Stinking Cloud on the densest group of Goblins, leaving them retching.
• A Quasit rushed into the settlement and slit a Goblin's throat with a swipe of its claws.

Charles and three demons slaughtered the Goblins in a settlement, with Charles killing those who tried to flee. After the raid ended with no Goblins escaping, Charles collected their soul power and found his crystal ball full.

• Two Quasits and a Mezzoloth rampaged through the Goblin settlement, killing Goblins and spreading Stinking Cloud.
• Charles used Bone Needle Bee to kill Goblins while the demons drew the settlement's attention.
• A Quasit turned back to continue fighting after spotting Charles outside the settlement.
• Charles killed the Goblins who charged or fled through the settlement's passage.
• Charles rode into the settlement, collected the Goblins' soul power, and found his crystal ball full.