Chapter Summaries

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.

Charles collected the Goblin remains for demon sacrifices, renewed his contracts, and paid the final costs for the demons who fought. When the Quasit failed to claim its payment, Charles realized it had died and thought of Delis, the Lesser Demon old Charles had summoned.

• Charles dismissed the three demon projections and used Essence Extraction to gather essence from the Goblin corpses.
• Charles returned to his farm, checked his demon-contract rune array, and signed over a hundred contracts with demons.
• Charles offered soul power and Goblin essence as the final payment for the demons who had fought.
• Two demons accepted their sacrifices, but the Quasit did not appear, so Charles kept its payment.
• Charles concluded the Quasit had died and thought of Delis, the Lesser Demon old Charles had summoned.

Charles modified the summoning array and used Goblin flesh essence and soul power to try to summon Delis. The chapter shifted to Delis in the Abyss, where the starving Lesser Succubus waited for food.

• Charles replaced runes he could not understand with protective Abyssal runes and prepared the summoning array.
• Charles activated the array with magic power, sending the scent of the sacrifice into the Abyss.
• Delis remained hidden in her cave, wary of demons that might kill her for her bloodline or capture her.
• Delis, driven by hunger, ate powdered stone and cried out for someone to let her take a bite.

Delis sent a demon-hide scroll into the void, then responded when Charles summoned her again. Hungry for the soul power he offered, she agreed to negotiate a contract with him, and the chapter ended as she challenged only a few of its harsh clauses.

• Delis inscribed a demon-hide scroll with runes and magic circles and sent it into the void.
• Charles summoned Delis, who recognized him as the mortal from the ship and began consuming the soul power and refined blood offered at the altar.
• Charles said he would cancel the summoning unless Delis agreed to sign a wizard's contract with him.
• Delis agreed to consider a contract, and Charles presented her with a prepared version that she could not edit directly.
• Delis objected to several clauses, and Charles realized her demands were more favorable to him than he had expected.

Charles finalized a contract with Delis, summoned her with soul power, and later dismissed her after an intimate encounter. He bought another diluted Succubus Bloodline from Wu Duo Duo Mall, and the resulting transformation began while he remained conscious.

• Charles negotiated and signed a contract with Delis, leaving both their soul imprints on it.
• Charles sacrificed soul power to summon Delis, whose projection appeared in his cabin and consumed the offering.
• Charles and Delis became intimate, and afterward Charles found the diluted Succubus Bloodline listed in Delis's shop.
• Charles dismissed Delis and purchased the bloodline just before her projection vanished.
• Charles felt the bloodline transform his body, grew stronger, and coughed up a small mouthful of tainted blood.

After integrating the Succubus Bloodline, Charles became a Great Knight and found that his physical strength and magical perception had improved. He continued training and experimenting in Loran’s laboratory, where he prepared a rat and a Demon Worm for an experiment.

• Charles integrated the Succubus Bloodline, then advanced to Great Knight while practicing the Knight Breathing Technique.
• Charles cleaned himself up, meditated, and found that his perception of magic power had grown sharper.
• Charles settled into a routine of helping at Loran’s laboratory, patrolling with Jody, and hunting monsters in the Shadow Nightmare Realm.
• Charles traded Goblins to Loran for the zero-ring witchcraft Apprentice Biological Enslavement and tested it on a rat.
• Charles numbed the enslaved rat, summoned a cat-sized Demon Worm, dissected it, and used Essence Extraction to turn its remains into a bottle of viscous liquid.