Recaps

Omniscient Carbuncle explained how origin powerhouses conceal their anchors and revealed that the Shadow Nightmare Realm was hidden between the past and future after its creator’s enemies destroyed it. As the realm drew closer to the present, Charles offered Charles origin power in exchange for the Book of Causal Paths.

• Omniscient Carbuncle explained that origin powerhouses hid their anchors and erased records of themselves to prevent enemies from tracking them.
• Omniscient Carbuncle described how gods depended on faith and could lose their power if their followers’ faith changed or disappeared.
• Omniscient Carbuncle revealed that the creator of the Shadow Nightmare Realm had hidden it between the past and future after enemies attacked and destroyed the world while trying to destroy his anchor.
• Omniscient Carbuncle explained that the Shadow Nightmare Realm was drawing closer to the present and would be destroyed when it returned.
• Charles said he needed to exist in the present to become an origin powerhouse, then offered Charles origin power for the Book of Causal Paths.

Charles questioned the Omniscient Carbuncle about its knowledge of the Book of Causal Paths and learned its account of Alasta’s transformation into the book. The Carbuncle warned that the book was narrowing Charles’s future to consume him, then offered enough source power to help him ascend and asked whether he remembered a beam of light.

• Charles challenged the Omniscient Carbuncle’s knowledge of the Book of Causal Paths and asked why it wanted the book.
• The Omniscient Carbuncle claimed the book could turn its knowledge into power and warned that the book was using Charles and leading him toward destruction.
• Charles revealed that Alasta had tried to weave a perfect future for his ascension, reversed his failed ritual, and was transformed into the Book of Causal Paths.
• The Omniscient Carbuncle told Charles that the book was narrowing his future and would consume him once his path became singular, likely after he gathered enough source power.
• The Omniscient Carbuncle offered to provide Charles with enough source power to ascend and asked whether he remembered a beam of light.

Charles learned that the beam of light in Bansler was origin power and considered whether to retrieve it, while remaining wary of the Book of Causal Paths and the Omniscient Carbuncle. The Omniscient Carbuncle advised him to hide his anchor rather than leave it in the Wizard World, but Charles was left asking where to hide it.

• The Book of Causal Paths told Charles that the beam of light in ruined Bansler was origin power Alasta had gathered.
• The Omniscient Carbuncle accused the Book of Causal Paths of concealing the origin power and warned that it planned to devour Charles and use his body to claim it.
• Charles refused to hand over the Book of Causal Paths until he could verify the Omniscient Carbuncle's claims by absorbing the origin power.
• The Omniscient Carbuncle explained that the Wizard World’s depleted origin power and hostile Wizard Kings made it a poor place for Charles to ascend.
• The Omniscient Carbuncle argued that even the Wizard World could not guarantee an anchor’s safety and advised Charles to hide his anchor.
• Charles asked the Omniscient Carbuncle where he should hide it.

Charles and Omniscient Carbuncle Charles discussed hiding Charles’s anchor and pursuing ascension in the Shadow Nightmare Realm, then negotiated over the Book of Causal Paths. They left the conversation agreeing that cooperation was necessary, though Charles’s willingness to surrender the book remained unresolved.

• Omniscient Carbuncle Charles proposed hiding Charles’s anchor in the Shadow Nightmare Realm, where even Origin powerhouses could not find it.
• Omniscient Carbuncle Charles explained that the realm’s Origin power could support Charles’s ascension and that his own power kept the realm from slipping into the present.
• Charles proposed receiving Omniscient Carbuncle Charles’s Origin power first and handing over the Book of Causal Paths after becoming a Seven Ring Wizard King, but Charles refused.
• Charles and Omniscient Carbuncle Charles agreed they needed to cooperate to protect the Shadow Nightmare Realm and their respective interests.
• Omniscient Carbuncle Charles said he had to devour the Book of Causal Paths to become whole and ascend, while Charles warned that neither of them would accept waiting thousands of years to grow stronger.
• Charles urged Omniscient Carbuncle Charles to cooperate with him, leaving their agreement over the Book of Causal Paths unsettled.

Charles left the Shadow Nightmare Realm after Omniscient Carbuncle Charles warned that the Book of Causal Paths could create dangers when Charles sought an origin source. Back in the Wizard World, Charles concealed part of his meeting from the Book and considered how to pursue advancement without becoming dependent on its causal power.

• Omniscient Carbuncle Charles warned Charles that the Book of Causal Paths might weave obstacles around his attempt to obtain an origin source, but admitted he could not protect him.
• Charles returned to the Wizard World, where the Book of Causal Paths asked about the strange plane it had been unable to sense.
• Charles recounted his experiences in the Shadow Nightmare Realm but withheld part of the conversation, and the Book speculated that the plane's inhabitants could not access its origin power or escape it.
• Charles suspected that both Omniscient Carbuncle Charles and the Book were hiding dangerous secrets, and considered advancing within the Shadow Nightmare Realm to learn more.
• Charles asked the Book to spend its causal power securing an origin source or an escape from a sixth-rank powerhouse, but the Book warned that doing so would drain its reserves and proposed accumulating power for one or two thousand years.
• Charles doubted he had that much time and decided he could not afford to trust anyone.

Charles learned that the Book of Causal Paths was accelerating the convergence of his future, then entered Alasta’s plane to investigate its dangers and the book’s behavior. When the Book tried to stop him with a spatial explosion, Charles shrugged it off and crossed the void to Bansler, where the city was rebuilding itself.

• Charles visited Sixth Ring Wizard Sages and explored the Shadow Nightmare Realm, growing stronger by killing Rank Six monsters.
• The Omniscient Carbuncle told Charles that his future was becoming singular and warned that the Shadow Nightmare Realm would return to the gap between past and future.
• Charles left the dissipating Shadow Nightmare Realm and opened a portal to Alasta’s plane to investigate the realm and gather origin power.
• The Book of Causal Paths warned Charles that the plane could affect him and drain its power, then accused him of forgetting their alliance as its pages faded.
• Charles questioned whether the Book had deceived him, survived its attempt to stop him with a spatial explosion, and crossed the void to Bansler, where the city was rebuilding.

Charles exhausted the Book of Causal Paths’ causal power and left it behind in Bansler after learning that it had deceived him about the plane’s origin power. He departed as the city resumed its slow march toward destruction, bidding goodbye to Alasta.

• Charles ignored the Causal Walkers who attacked him and entered the tower where he had first found the Book of Causal Paths.
• The Book of Causal Paths confessed that it had hidden the plane’s origin power and urged Charles to leave with it.
• Charles removed the book from his body and placed it back where he had found it, exhausting its power as Bansler’s past briefly returned.
• Charles absorbed knowledge from the city, fortified the tower with wizarding arrays, and sealed the powerless book inside.
• As time began moving forward again and Bansler continued toward destruction, Charles opened an interplanar portal and said goodbye to Alasta.

Charles returned to his Abyss World and absorbed the portion of origin power Alasta had prepared, greatly strengthening himself and Scorchflame. He emerged with stable, formidable power but remained uncertain where to ascend, since the Wizard World would not allow him to follow Pushton so soon.

• Charles considered whether his evil-god identity would hinder his ascension and weighed the dangers of ascending in the Wizard World or the Abyss.
• Charles returned to his Abyss World and began absorbing the origin power Alasta had prepared for his own ascension.
• As Charles absorbed the power, his soul, magic, and body grew stronger, while Scorchflame gained enough power to advance into a sixth-tier drake.
• Charles finished absorbing the origin power and emerged from his wizard tower with solid strength that he felt could rival Pushton.
• Charles judged that he could now battle some Wizard Kings but could not ascend in the Wizard World so soon after Pushton's ascension.

Charles chose the Shadow Nightmare Realm as the place to ascend to the Seventh Rank, trusting Omniscient Carbuncle Charles’s promise that he could advance safely there. His gamble succeeded, and as he absorbed the realm’s source power to condense a true source body, the Shadow Nightmare Realm returned to the gap between the past and future.

• Charles returned to the Shadow Nightmare Realm and confirmed that Omniscient Carbuncle Charles had found Alasta’s source power but would not receive the Book of Causal Paths before Charles’s ascension.
• Omniscient Carbuncle Charles warned Charles that killing him would leave the realm exposed to reality and put Charles’s anchor in danger, then explained the risks of Seventh Rank ascension.
• Charles decided that the Shadow Nightmare Realm offered the best chance of success and ignited his source power outside the realm.
• Charles’s source power ascended successfully, and he began absorbing the Shadow Nightmare Realm’s vast source power.
• Charles sensed Omniscient Carbuncle Charles guiding the Shadow Nightmare Realm back into the gap between the past and future as Charles continued condensing his true source body.

Charles ascended to become a Wizard King in the Shadow Nightmare Realm, astonishing the Wizard Kings because its origin power had long seemed impossible to access. They identified him as the likely new Wizard King and waited for him to emerge and condense his true body.

• The Wizard Kings sensed a new Wizard King ascending in the Shadow Nightmare Realm and debated how anyone could draw upon its inaccessible origin power.
• A Wizard King explained that the Shadow Nightmare Realm had vanished after its original main world was destroyed and later reappeared beneath the Wizard World.
• Pushton suspected Charles was the one ascending because he had recently investigated the Shadow Nightmare Realm, but he could not explain how Charles had gathered enough origin power.
• The Wizard Kings identified Charles of Isata as the likely new Wizard King and asked Pushton whether he had given Charles origin power.
• Pushton said he had given Charles only a small wisp of flame origin power, and the Wizard Kings agreed that Charles must have found another way to gather what he needed.
• The Wizard Kings watched the Shadow Nightmare Realm disappear and decided to wait for Charles to emerge after condensing his true body.

Charles completed his ascension to Seventh Ring Wizard King and began condensing his true form as monsters swarmed him in the Shadow Nightmare Realm. As the realm traveled through a gap between past and future, he witnessed the Wizard World’s history and future, then saw his own soul enter his body.

• Charles completed his ascension, and the aura of his origin drew countless Shadow Nightmare monsters toward him.
• Omniscient Carbuncle Charles observed the gathering monsters and said they would likely die at Charles’s hands.
• Monsters attacked Charles in waves, but he killed those that came within range and absorbed their power to condense his true form.
• Charles sensed the Shadow Nightmare Realm moving through a gap in time and saw the Wizard World, other planes, and lives being born and destroyed across past and future.
• Charles observed Omniscient Carbuncle Charles’s vast reserve of origin power and considered whether he might someday move the Shadow Nightmare Realm through time himself.
• Charles found the moment he had transmigrated into his body and wondered whether Omniscient Carbuncle Charles had known about his arrival all along.

After ascending to origin, Charles learned how anchor points enabled resurrection and discovered that the Shadow Nightmare Realm’s origin power let him gather his true body quickly. He reached the plane’s limit, then ordered Omniscient Carbuncle Charles to return the realm to reality as he prepared to leave and grow stronger.

• Charles understood that his anchor point was a thread of origin power that could help rebuild his true body after death, though resurrection would take far longer outside the plane where he ascended.
• While gathering origin power, Charles used Xia Yu to inspect the universe’s past and watched events involving Chromatic Dragon Mother Tiamat, drawing the attention of powerful beings.
• After several decades, Charles completed his true body and realized he could grow no further within the plane and would need to draw power from the universe.
• Charles descended in an incarnation to meet Omniscient Carbuncle Charles, who asked for the Book of Causal Paths so he could become an origin powerhouse.
• Charles refused to give Omniscient Carbuncle Charles the book yet and ordered him to return the Shadow Nightmare Realm to reality so Charles’s true body could leave.
• Omniscient Carbuncle Charles offered to provide places where Charles could gather origin power, and Charles asked him to name them.

Charles learned where to find more Origin power and promised to consider giving Omniscient Carbuncle Charles the Book of Causal Paths after absorbing it. Back in the Wizard World, Anderson suspected Charles had caused the Shadow Nightmare Realm’s early return and prepared himself to hear what his student had done.

• Omniscient Carbuncle Charles showed Charles several locations containing Origin power and explained that he wanted to remain in his world rather than leave it.
• Charles promised to consider giving Omniscient Carbuncle Charles the Book of Causal Paths once he had absorbed the Origin power from those locations.
• Charles left the Shadow Nightmare Realm and returned to the Wizard World after several decades away.
• Anderson learned from Noah that the Shadow Nightmare Realm would return early and that the Wizard Throne was convening a meeting.
• As Wizard Sages increasingly sought Anderson’s favor, he guessed Charles had done something momentous in the Shadow Nightmare Realm and mentally prepared himself for the news.

The Wizard Kings watched Charles emerge from the Shadow Nightmare Realm as a newly ascended Seven-Ring Wizard King. Charles explained to Pushton how he had found the source power for his ascension, then faced questions about why he chose the Shadow Nightmare Realm.

• The Thousand-Faced Wizard King and the other Wizard Kings speculated that Charles had ascended within the Shadow Nightmare Realm.
• Charles’s enormous true body emerged from the Shadow Nightmare Realm, and the Wizard Kings recognized him as a Seven-Ring Wizard King.
• Pushton recalled the hardships and near-death experiences behind his own ascension and wondered how Charles had advanced so quickly.
• Pushton greeted Charles and asked how he had gathered enough source power for ascension.
• Charles explained that he had found the source power left behind by a failed ascension and claimed luck had only slightly aided his efforts.
• Pushton asked why Charles had chosen the Shadow Nightmare Realm and how he had entered it.

Charles explained how he became a Wizard King in the Shadow Nightmare Realm and accepted the Wizard Throne’s invitation to join its court. At the Wizard Throne meeting, his long-awaited arrival revealed him as the Fear Wizard King.

• Charles told Pushton that he had chosen to ascend in the Shadow Nightmare Realm rather than risk waiting for an opportunity in the Wizard World.
• Pushton invited Charles to become the newest Wizard King in the Wizard King's Court, and Charles accepted.
• Anderson attended the Wizard Throne meeting as Wizard Sages greeted him, while Charles’s absence worried the attendees.
• The First Flame Wizard King entered the Wizard Throne, and the Wizard Sages rose to welcome him.
• A new Wizard Throne appeared, and the Thousand-Faced Wizard King announced the arrival of the Fear Wizard King, whom Anderson recognized as Charles.

Charles's projection appeared on the Wizard Throne as the newly ascended Fear Wizard King, shocking the Wizard Sages who remembered him as a sixth-circle wizard. The chapter ended with Anderson still struggling to believe his student had become a Wizard King, while other Sages wondered whether Charles might help them ascend one day.

• Charles's projection descended upon the Wizard Throne, and the Wizard Sages learned that he had become the Fear Wizard King.
• Anderson recalled Charles's rapid rises in power and felt terrified by the distance between Charles's progress and his own.
• Archibald realized White Mountain Boros Academy still had enmity with Charles, but Charles decided he had no interest in taking revenge on him.
• The Wizard Sages envied Anderson for having a seventh-circle Wizard King as his student, while Webster regretted not taking Charles as his own student.
• Anderson questioned whether he was dreaming, and Noah resolved to cultivate diligently in hopes that Charles would help him ascend.

After the Wizard Throne meeting, Charles left incarnations in the Wizard World and the Abyss while his true body surveyed the enormous Abyss and the worlds beyond. He traveled to Alasta and sent an incarnation into the plane.

• The twenty-one Wizard Kings redistributed interests in the Wizard World, and Charles left an incarnation there to protect Isata.
• Charles sent another incarnation toward the Abyss to carry his authority, while his true body approached the Bottomless Abyss and resisted its invitation to stay.
• Charles effortlessly destroyed a void storm and compressed an elemental plane into origin power as he traveled through the void.
• Charles observed the Celestial Realm and its gods, who noticed the newly ascended seventh-rank origin powerhouse.
• Charles looked toward Alasta, appeared beside the plane, and sent an incarnation inside.

Charles returned to Bansler and questioned the Book of Causal Paths, learning that even Sources could eventually perish and that the mysterious being in the crack between past and future wanted to consume the book. The book warned Charles that the being might be far more dangerous than he believed, leaving him uncertain whether to trust either of them.

• Charles returned to Bansler, sensed the power of time in its renewed destruction, and found the Book of Causal Paths still intact in the tower.
• Charles asked the Book of Causal Paths, which also called itself Alasta, for its true story and learned it had long sensed a watcher following it.
• The Book of Causal Paths explained that Sources were not immortal and warned Charles that the watcher sought to consume it to ascend into a Source.
• Charles admitted he did not trust the watcher, and the book urged him not to hand it over, claiming the watcher had many enemies.
• The Book of Causal Paths challenged Charles’s assumptions about the watcher’s origins and power, asking how he could be sure it was weaker than a Source.

Charles left his avatar behind and traveled through the universe to gather more Origin power, beginning at the Fire Pole. After rapidly strengthening himself there, he withdrew under threat from the fire elemental Origins and headed for the Wind Pole.

• Charles decided not to give the Book of Causal Paths to Omniscient Carbuncle and left his avatar behind as his true body departed to seek more Origin power.
• Charles traveled through the void to a region filled with Fire Elemental Planes and drained Origin power from several of them.
• Charles reached the Fire Pole and used Omniscient Carbuncle's method to gather Fire Origin much faster, greatly increasing his power.
• The fire elemental Origins noticed Charles's rapid growth and warned that they would kill him if he returned.
• Charles ignored the warning and left for the Wind Pole.

Charles questioned the Omniscient Carbuncle’s origins as he gathered primordial power and considered leaving an anchor in the Abyss. When Demogorgon arrived to invite him to join the Bottomless Abyss, Charles asked why he had been chosen.

• Charles found that powerful beings showed no hatred toward the Omniscient Carbuncle, strengthening his suspicion that the Carbuncle came from the future.
• Charles considered leaving an anchor in the Abyss, though doing so would limit his freedom.
• Demogorgon crossed the Styx into Charles’s Abyss World and observed the trade routes leading to the Sun Furnace.
• Charles sensed Demogorgon’s primordial power, recognized him as the Prince of Demons, and met with him.
• Demogorgon invited Charles to join the Bottomless Abyss, and Charles asked why he wanted him to join.

Demogorgon warned Charles that the Abyss had sensed a universe-threatening danger in him, possibly connected to combining the Book of Causal Paths with the Omniscient Carbuncle. He demanded that Charles either join the Bottomless Abyss and leave an anchor there or face a hunt for his Origin true body.

• Demogorgon explained that the Abyss had invited Charles because it sensed dangerous experiments associated with him and his rapidly growing Origin power.
• Demogorgon described the Bottomless Abyss as a force that devoured worlds but also digested dangers created by experiments and the pursuit of power.
• Charles recalled that experiments had destroyed the world containing the Book of Causal Paths and the Shadow Nightmare Realm.
• Demogorgon said the Abyss had detected a danger in Charles that could destroy the multiverse, and Charles suspected it involved combining the Book of Causal Paths with the Omniscient Carbuncle.
• Demogorgon gave Charles a choice: join the Bottomless Abyss and leave an anchor there, or be hunted by Demogorgon in the universe.

Charles questioned Demogorgon about how the multiverse handled hidden threats and learned how its major realms and the Blood War had emerged to preserve balance. The chapter left Charles asking whether the Bottomless Abyss had swallowed him as a threat.

• Demogorgon told Charles that if an unknown danger threatened the multiverse and its source could not be found or destroyed, the primordial powerhouses would join forces with the Celestial Realm, Purgatory, and the four poles to destroy every world.
• Demogorgon explained that the Bottomless Abyss and Purgatory opposed each other by nature, with the Nine Hells restraining the Abyss, and described how the four elemental poles and the gods had arisen.
• Demogorgon recounted how gods created the first demons in the lower layers, how demons attacked the upper planes, and how the gods and multiverse created Purgatory, whose divine servants eventually became devils and enemies of demons.
• Demogorgon said the Bottomless Abyss had swallowed most later-born disasters to maintain multiversal balance, and Charles asked if it had swallowed him too.

Charles learned that his ascension within the Shadow Nightmare Realm had drawn the attention of multiversal powerhouses, who feared it was the source of an approaching catastrophe. He concluded that the fusion of the Book of Causal Paths and the Omniscient Carbuncle might create a time-traveling catastrophe capable of killing origin powerhouses before their ascension.

• Demogorgon warned Charles that continuing certain experiments would cause a new catastrophe and offered him the choice of death or joining the Bottomless Abyss.
• Charles agreed to join the Bottomless Abyss after absorbing enough origin power, and Demogorgon told him to avoid returning to the plane where his anchor lay.
• Demogorgon explained that the Shadow Nightmare Realm had repeatedly appeared beneath primary worlds, growing larger after each world was destroyed, and that powerhouses now linked Charles's presence there to a growing danger.
• Charles realized other powerhouses had spared him because killing him might trigger an unknown catastrophe, while his anchor in the Shadow Nightmare Realm allowed him to revive.
• Demogorgon said no one could change time and that the head within the Shadow Nightmare Realm could only observe it; Charles suspected the Book of Causal Paths and the Omniscient Carbuncle could create a catastrophe capable of killing origin powerhouses in the past.

Charles suspected that Omniscient Carbuncle and the Book of Causal Paths concealed their true origins and intentions, while Demogorgon warned him to stay away from the Shadow Nightmare Realm. Charles gathered the Wizard Kings to discuss the realm’s threat to the multiverse and the Wizard World.

• Charles considered whether Omniscient Carbuncle had come from the future and questioned how the Book of Causal Paths knew about immortality.
• Demogorgon warned Charles not to return near his anchor point and left through the Styx.
• Charles told Pushton that Demogorgon had warned of danger in the Shadow Nightmare Realm and invited him to join the Bottomless Abyss.
• Charles and Pushton summoned all twenty-one Wizard Kings to deliberate about the threat.
• Charles told the Wizard Kings that the Shadow Nightmare Realm might harbor a danger capable of destroying the multiverse.

Charles told the Wizard Kings that Demogorgon feared a danger connected to the Omniscient Carbuncle and its ability to wield the Shadow Nightmare Realm and travel through time. He left them considering whether the Carbuncle threatened the multiverse itself or the Origin powerhouses who ruled it, and what might happen if it gained the power to manipulate time.

• Charles explained that killing him would not keep him from returning to his anchor point in the Shadow Nightmare Realm, which was why Demogorgon had tried to recruit him instead.
• Charles identified the Omniscient Carbuncle as a possible source of the danger and suggested that its disappearances might be time travel.
• The Wizard Kings discussed their failed attempts to locate or trace the Shadow Nightmare Realm, while the Fifth Wizard King asked Charles what harm the Carbuncle could cause.
• Charles proposed that the Carbuncle might travel back in time to kill Origin powerhouses before they ascended, leaving the Wizard Kings silent.
• Charles reasoned that Demogorgon might fear a threat to powerful rulers rather than the multiverse, and wondered how the multiverse would change if the Carbuncle gained control over time.