Chapter Summaries

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.

Charles considered whether the Omniscient Carbuncle and the Book of Causal Paths had secretly colluded, while the Wizard Kings agreed he should leave the Shadow Nightmare Realm for the Abyss. After consuming more Origin power, Charles confronted the Book of Causal Paths and demanded to know why it had deceived him.

• The Fifth Wizard King argued that if someone could alter the past, events in the present would already be part of their plan, leading Charles to question the Omniscient Carbuncle and the Book of Causal Paths.
• Charles suspected the Omniscient Carbuncle and the Book of Causal Paths might have communicated or planned to fuse, perhaps needing his cooperation or his ascension to Origin.
• The Thousand-Faced Wizard King urged Fear Wizard King to move his anchor from the Shadow Nightmare Realm to the Abyss, and Charles agreed to go.
• After the Wizard Kings' discussion, Charles devoured another source of Origin power and sent his avatar to Bansler to ask the Book of Causal Paths why it had deceived him.

Charles questioned the Book of Causal Paths about its knowledge of immortality and whether it had conspired with the Omniscient Carbuncle. Though the Book explained that Charles’s future kept changing and his decision to imprison it was a new branch, Charles remained distrustful and ended the chapter weighing the dangers of destroying them or moving his anchor to the Bottomless Abyss.

• Charles confronted the Book of Causal Paths about its past communication with the Omniscient Carbuncle and how it learned of immortality.
• The Book of Causal Paths said it had glimpsed Charles becoming immortal in one of his many possible futures through their former bond.
• Charles reasoned that the Book could have foreseen his decision to imprison it, but the Book claimed that decision arose as a new branch after Charles communicated with the Omniscient Carbuncle.
• Charles considered destroying the Book and the Omniscient Carbuncle, but worried that doing so would expose the Shadow Nightmare Realm to the present era.
• Charles weighed moving his anchor to the Bottomless Abyss and doubted that Demogorgon would leave him safe there.

Charles prepared for his incarnation to survive, then attacked Omniscient Carbuncle in the Shadow Nightmare Realm. As the realm transformed and plunged through time, Charles discovered it was the severed head of an immensely powerful being and witnessed the origins of the multiverse’s great powers.

• Charles left resurrection anchors in the void and stored source power with his incarnation in the God of Fear’s divine kingdom.
• Charles sent his incarnation into the Shadow Nightmare Realm and observed how his plunder of its source power had slowed the realm’s recovery.
• Charles attacked Omniscient Carbuncle, whose body was crushed beneath the laws of the Shadow Nightmare Realm.
• The Shadow Nightmare Realm transformed into an enormous head and leaped through time, revealing itself as the severed head of a powerful being.
• Charles witnessed the formation of the Celestial Realm, the elemental poles, the Bottomless Abyss, and the Nine Hells, along with Demogorgon’s rise and Asmodeus’s vast true body.

Charles witnessed the multiverse’s past and future through the time-leaping Shadow Nightmare Realm, then found himself observing Ultimus, the Omniscient One, in the distant future. Ultimus sensed Charles’s presence, but Charles could not respond, and the story left him watching as Ultimus acknowledged that he could not know the future.

• Charles watched the gods and elemental sovereigns wage an ancient war that reshaped the Four Elemental Seas into the Four Elemental Extremes.
• Charles saw the Abyss, the Nine Hells, and the Elemental Extremes expand, while the Wizard World rose and was eventually shattered by origin-level powerhouses.
• Charles witnessed the Celestial Realm fall into civil war and break apart, with its remnants joining other fragments in enormous planes at the edge of the universe.
• Charles’s incarnation traveled into the distant future inside the Shadow Nightmare Realm, which had begun to resemble the head of a colossal being.
• Charles recognized that the head belonged to the being who created the Omniscient Carbuncle and saw Ultimus become an origin powerhouse in a dying multiverse.
• Ultimus sensed Charles within his mind and asked who he was, but Charles could not answer; Ultimus explained that he knew the multiverse’s past but not its future.

Charles absorbed Ultimus's knowledge while Ultimus studied Charles's aura and tried to create an organ that could perceive the future. As the ritual neared completion, Ultimus reached into his own head toward Charles.

• Charles learned nearly all of Ultimus's knowledge as Ultimus studied the aura Charles brought from the River of Time.
• Charles witnessed a future in which the multiverse neared extinction and Ultimus gathered the universe's source power.
• Ultimus began creating an organ to experience time and glimpse the future, seeking to overcome his inability to enter the River of Time.
• Ultimus formed a vast array of source runes and reached into his own head toward Charles.