Recaps

Jia Xiu watched President Le Mei announce a mandatory inspection system using Non-Devil Certificates, but representatives resisted its costs and requirements until an advisor killed a Demon posing as a speaker. The meeting ended with inspections ordered for everyone present, and Jia Xiu was about to ask Dean Nico something as they were escorted out.

• President Le Mei announced that the Caster Association had discovered a way to identify Devil Race infiltrators and would require weekly Non-Devil Certificates for people with access to classified information.
• Representatives objected to repeated inspections and to nobles being singled out as key targets, while Jia Xiu watched the meeting descend into disorder.
• An Association advisor fired lightning at a speaker, whose body turned to pus after being carbonized and revealed him to be a Demon.
• Margaret asked Jia Xiu who had fired the lightning and whether the advisor had tested the speaker first, and Jia Xiu said he did not know.
• President Le Mei ordered inspections for all attendees and promised detailed regulations in three days, then the meeting ended in panic.
• The secretary and Dean Nico arrived to escort Jia Xiu and Margaret, and Jia Xiu called out to ask Dean Nico something.

Jia Xiu searched for Ambassador Thorin so he could learn about the Dwarf Alliance’s spell-casting device project, and President Nico brought him to the Dwarf office. Thorin recognized Jia Xiu as an Iris and challenged him to a fight, leaving Jia Xiu stunned as the Dwarves prepared to act.

• Jia Xiu and his companions searched the testing queues for Ambassador Thorin, hoping to discuss the Dwarf Alliance’s research project.
• President Nico explained that the Dwarves were resting in their office and took Jia Xiu there, while Jia Xiu described his hopes for making magic widely accessible.
• President Nico suggested Jia Xiu pursue a new graduation thesis on magic devices and revealed that several academicians and researchers wanted to attend his defense.
• President Nico reunited warmly with Ambassador Thorin, and Jia Xiu asked to learn about the device that could cast multiple spells.
• Ambassador Thorin questioned whether Jia Xiu was Devil Race, then called out his Iris heritage and challenged him to a fight as the Dwarves reached for weapons.

Jia Xiu faced the Dwarves’ demand for a drinking contest before they would consider helping with his research request. After his inherited Vampire traits left him immune to alcohol, he defeated Ambassador Thorin and won his cooperation, though the research sample turned out to be unusually large.

• Ambassador Thorin demanded that Jia Xiu prove himself by drinking a dwarf under the table, and Jia Xiu left to consider how to handle the contest.
• Jia Xiu asked the prayer group for advice and discovered through Elizabeth’s inherited traits that he was immune to drunkenness.
• Jia Xiu returned to the Dwarf Alliance office and outdrank Ambassador Thorin, who collapsed before the watching dwarves.
• After a restorative spell woke him, Ambassador Thorin accepted Jia Xiu as his good brother and agreed to help him access the research project.
• Ambassador Thorin offered Jia Xiu research reports under a magical confidentiality contract but said the sample was too large to borrow easily.

Jia Xiu examined the Dwarves’ Stone Giant research and realized its modular design shared key principles with Paula’s magical microcontroller, though it relied on rune spells and had grown enormous in pursuit of ninth-circle casting. Despite Stone Giant’s poor performance, Jia Xiu saw potential in the project and asked the Dwarves to help develop it after their Devil Race investigation.

• Ambassador Thorin found the Stone Giant reports and let Jia Xiu copy them after Jia Xiu swore secrecy by the God of Fine Wine.
• Jia Xiu discovered that Stone Giant was a massive magical device with modular components for input, storage, spellcasting, and control.
• Thorin explained that the Dwarves had expanded the design from a portable device for low-circle spells to one intended to cast ninth-circle spells.
• Jia Xiu recognized that Stone Giant and Paula’s microcontroller shared the same basic purpose, but Stone Giant’s rune-based system required far larger components.
• Thorin admitted Stone Giant had only managed strenuous seventh-circle casting and performed worse than a mage, but Jia Xiu argued it could improve as it developed.

Jia Xiu struggled to make progress on his research, but Margaret found a suspicious spell that might explain how the Dream Demon killed the Flame Demon. Meanwhile, Thomas blamed Jia Xiu for overshadowing him and began plotting to send him to his death.

• Jia Xiu studied mana-string papers and learned from Margaret that the field was crowded with padded research by noble scholars.
• Jia Xiu and the others pursued separate projects, while he took a break to watch students sit finals near a Devil Race inspection station.
• Jia Xiu noticed Thomas watching him after Thomas passed inspection, but he did not recognize him until later and soon forgot about the encounter.
• Margaret told Jia Xiu she had found a suspicious spell that might have caused the Flame Demon’s slow death, and Jia Xiu hurried back to the Mage Tower.
• Thomas believed Jia Xiu had gained more from the Devil Race than he had and decided he had a perfect opportunity to send Jia Xiu to his death.

Thomas used his connection to a Devil's body in Gawad to search for evidence he could use to frame Jia Xiu as the inventor of the Devil Race detection method. At a ruined manor cemetery, he discovered playing cards that suggested an unexpectedly intense battle had taken place there.

• Thomas recalled his father's death and resolved to defeat his rivals, then decided to make the Devil Race believe Jia Xiu had invented the detection method.
• Thomas assembled a misleading report linking Jia Xiu's background, achievements, travels, and associates to the Devil Race detection operations.
• Thomas sought stronger evidence in Gawad by linking his senses to a Devil's body searching the ruined city.
• Thomas directed the Devil's body to investigate a devastated manor and sensed that a fierce battle had occurred at its cemetery.
• Thomas found playing cards scattered in the snow and wondered whether they were the kind that had spread from Aurelius's Mage Tower.

Thomas found evidence in Gawad that Jia Xiu and his team had visited, concluded Jia Xiu might have helped develop the Devil Race detection method, and prepared to inform the Devil Race so they would target him. Meanwhile, Jia Xiu and Margaret analyzed a Flame Demon's return spell and discovered that its third failed check forcibly returned the Devil, leaving them to investigate how to exploit the flaw.

• Thomas found playing cards unique to Margaret's Laboratory in Gawad and concluded that Jia Xiu and his team had been there.
• Thomas convinced himself Jia Xiu's role in developing the Devil Race detection method was either a threat or an opportunity, then prepared a ritual to send his evidence to the Devil Race.
• Margaret showed Jia Xiu a brief magical flicker in the Flame Demon's brain recording and asked him to identify its function.
• Jia Xiu used the Rune Eye to read the spell's code and identified it as a procedure tied to the Planar Law Library that returned dead Devil Race members to their original plane.
• Jia Xiu explained that the procedure checked the Devil's death and consciousness, then forcibly returned it after three conflicting checks, prompting Margaret to question how anyone could kill a Devil on another plane.

Jia Xiu and Margaret worked out how to interrupt a demon’s planar retrieval after death by combining Elizabeth’s illusion with a mistimed Healing Spell, then tested their method on a captured Ice Demon. The experiment appeared successful, but Ram noticed the demon beginning to rot before they could confirm the result.

• Jia Xiu explained that demons were retrieved by their native planes through a simple sequence of checks, and Margaret realized that an illusion could create a conflict in those checks.
• Jia Xiu said the illusion needed to delay retrieval while he used a Healing Spell to trick the planar detection into thinking the demon could still heal itself.
• Margaret told Jia Xiu that demon spies had been captured at the school, and they received Principal Nico’s permission to experiment on one.
• Jia Xiu, Elizabeth, and Margaret tested the method on an Ice Demon while Ram watched, and the demon remained in place past the expected retrieval time.
• Jia Xiu waited ten more minutes to check for unexpected effects, but Ram then warned that the Ice Demon looked as if it was beginning to rot.

After the Ice Demon died and returned to Hell despite Jia Xiu’s plan, he concluded that the planar spell also judged Devils’ bodies, not just their brains. Dean Nico supplied thirty Devil Race test subjects and helped identify part of the spell’s runes, leading Jia Xiu to realize their healing had to match a Devil’s natural regeneration; he asked to study the tentacle monsters’ healing research.

• The Ice Demon disintegrated before Jia Xiu and his companions could complete their experiment, and Jia Xiu preserved its neural structures for analysis.
• After repeatedly reviewing the failed experiment, Jia Xiu suspected that an unresolved planar effect on the body had triggered the Ice Demon’s return to Hell.
• Dean Nico visited the laboratory, heard Jia Xiu’s plan to study the bodily effect, and revealed that he had requisitioned thirty Devil Race members from the Ukmak Empire.
• Dean Nico joined the research, arranged a security guard, and later reconstructed runes that Jia Xiu recognized as part of the planar spell library.
• Jia Xiu realized the body verification required healing that matched a Devil’s natural self-healing in strength, speed, and sequence, and asked to inspect the tentacle monsters’ healing research.

Thomas recruited the racetrack owner and other Devil contractors to mark Jia Xiu for a Hell assassin, while Jia Xiu and his companions searched the tentacle monsters’ books for a healing spell. The chapter left them facing a difficult set of partial differential equations as the Pegasus exhibition match approached.

• Thomas met the racetrack owner, a Devil contractor, and asked him to help kill Jia Xiu.
• Thomas explained that they would use a ring to mark Jia Xiu from afar and showed a box that could restrain the primordial Blood Clan in Aurelius’s Mage Tower.
• The racetrack owner proposed using Pegasus High School’s exhibition match in a week as cover for their operation.
• Jia Xiu, Nico, Margaret, and the others searched the tentacle monsters’ inheritance for healing material while Nico mentioned the upcoming exhibition match.
• Mia found a spell titled “Demon Race Self-Healing Simulation Spell,” and Jia Xiu discovered that understanding it required simulating complex changes with partial differential equations.

Jia Xiu studied the Tentacle Monsters’ equations for demonic self-healing and explained how they had used a biological computer to calculate the process. Mia recognized the mathematical method and offered to organize the work, while Headmaster Nico proposed recruiting prophecy students through a credit-earning winter camp.

• Jia Xiu realized the Tentacle Monsters had used partial differential equations to model demonic self-healing, but he could not calculate the needed numerical solutions himself.
• Jia Xiu wrote the equations on the blackboard, and Mia quickly understood their structure and identified the difficulty of finding analytical solutions.
• Jia Xiu explained that the Tentacle Monsters had connected many of themselves into an array computer, using stored elements to represent zeroes and ones.
• Headmaster Nico said they should verify whether the method worked, and Jia Xiu asked how they could perform the calculations for a test demon.
• Mia offered to decompose the problem and said her prophecy-magic classmates could help with the remaining calculations.
• Headmaster Nico proposed approving a computational winter camp for prophecy students so they could earn credits by helping the laboratory.

Jane signed up for Aurelius's Mage Tower's first Computational Enhancement Winter Camp to earn six credits and improve her chances of graduating early. After studying unfamiliar reference materials and attempting a partial differential equations exam, she learned she had probably qualified, while the camp's purpose remained unclear.

• Jane chose the six-credit Computational Enhancement Winter Camp over a relaxing vacation and traveled to Aurelius's Mage Tower to take its entrance exam.
• Examiner Mia gave Jane reference materials on partial differential equations and a problem to solve, while Mentor Piyede also took the exam.
• Jane struggled through the unfamiliar materials and worked on the problem until Jia Xiu collected the papers at closing time.
• Jia Xiu told Jane her work was not bad and that she could probably join the camp, which had no limit on participants who could learn the basics and compute.
• Jane left planning to get Smart Drugs and wondering why she could not remember what Jia Xiu looked like.

Jian joined Mia’s winter camp on partial differential equations, where students, professors, and researchers learned and competed in a ranked calculation challenge. After Jian reached eleventh place just before the day’s session ended, she and other participants asked to take problems home and keep working.

• Jian arrived at Aurelius's Mage Tower and found more than a hundred students, professors, and researchers gathered for the winter camp.
• Mia introduced the intensive study schedule and Jia Xiu’s ranked ladder, which awarded points, tiers, badges, Mage Tower portraits, and paper acknowledgment rankings.
• The participants enthusiastically accepted the ranking system and began studying partial differential equations before starting the calculation challenge.
• Jian climbed to eleventh place and worked toward the top ten, but the session ended before she could overtake tenth place.
• Jian asked Mia if she could take problems home, and many other participants immediately asked to do the same.

Jia Xiu worried that the winter camp researchers were harming themselves with alchemical potions, but Jian believed their work was important enough to justify the risk. After discovering that the academy’s Calculation Glasses used mechanical computation, Jia Xiu visited their Dwarf maker and proposed expanding their capabilities.

• Jia Xiu checked the winter camp rankings, saw that researchers and Jian were rapidly solving problems with remarkable accuracy, and worried about their potion-fueled work habits.
• Jia Xiu asked Ram and Margaret about alchemical potions, then warned Jian about possible lasting effects; Jian said she wanted to contribute to what she believed was a major project.
• Jia Xiu noticed Jian’s enchanted Calculation Glasses and learned from her that the academy’s Magitech Department made them.
• Jia Xiu asked Mia and Ram about the glasses, then followed Ram to meet the Dwarf instructor who crafted them.
• Jia Xiu learned that the glasses performed calculations through mechanical structures and asked whether they could handle operations beyond basic arithmetic, prompting the Dwarf to exclaim that someone finally understood him.

Jia Xiu visited Dain Warhammer’s vast workshop and learned how Dwarven calculators developed from a simple adder into highly precise calculating glasses. After Jia Xiu showed Dain Newton’s method for calculating square roots, Dain asked whether he knew any better algorithms.

• Dain Warhammer led Jia Xiu and Ram into his private studio and showed them his inventions and automated workshop.
• Dain demonstrated a prototype adder and explained how lookup tables and stored results made multiplication faster.
• Dain showed Jia Xiu the tiny gears inside calculating glasses and let him try the precision workbench, which proved too sensitive for Jia Xiu to use.
• Dain explained his plan to calculate square roots through binary search, and Jia Xiu introduced Newton’s method as a faster alternative.
• Dain praised Newton’s algorithm and asked Jia Xiu whether he knew any better methods, prompting Jia Xiu to mention Taylor.

Jia Xiu taught Master Dain Taylor Series Expansion so they could design calculators to support future battles against the Devil Race. Dain proposed building one golem-powered machine that could select algorithms and calculate results, then sent Jia Xiu away with several existing calculators as he began gathering Dwarves for the project.

• Jia Xiu explained Taylor Series Expansion to Master Dain and showed how it could turn functions into polynomials that machines could calculate.
• Master Dain asked Jia Xiu to explain the mathematical prerequisites, and the two spent several hours discussing them.
• Master Dain proposed one golem-powered machine that could interpret an input function, select the necessary components, and calculate a result.
• Master Dain showed Jia Xiu the workshop's golem-operated machinery and said he would gather his companions and clan members to build the computational machine.
• Master Dain gave Jia Xiu several existing calculators as thanks and urged him to leave while he prepared to start the project.

Jia Xiu returned to Aurelius's Mage Tower with calculators from Master Dain and learned that Mia had taken the winter camp’s day off to bet on pegasus races. He practiced healing magic on a Lust Demon test subject, which suddenly sensed another Devil nearby.

• Jia Xiu and Ram carried Master Dain’s handmade calculators back to the Mage Tower after spending the night discussing advanced mathematics.
• Jia Xiu found Bubu reading a Knight novel, and Bubu decided to write a story of its own about Jia Xiu.
• Bubu told Jia Xiu that Mia had left preliminary research results in the laboratory and taken the day off to bet on horse races, so the winter camp was closed for the day.
• Jia Xiu visited the restrained Lust Demon and repeatedly severed and healed its arm to practice simulating Devil Race self-healing.
• The Lust Demon questioned Jia Xiu about the Devils’ invasions, then sensed that another Devil had arrived nearby.

Elizabeth smelled a Devil in Aurelius's Mage Tower and tried to warn Jia Xiu, while Jia Xiu faced a trapped Lust Demon. Thomas and a force of Devils attacked Jia Xiu but met the tower's golems and a mysterious spell that froze the battle, leaving Jia Xiu's fate uncertain.

• Elizabeth sensed a Devil in the Mage Tower, broke through an illusion, and sent Jia Xiu a warning through Justina's prayer.
• Jia Xiu locked himself in with the Lust Demon and taunted it as explosions and screams sounded elsewhere in the tower.
• Thomas led Devil worshippers and summoned Devils in an attack on Jia Xiu, but Jia Xiu defended himself with shields and reached the top floor's golems.
• Thomas summoned Devils from other Archdukes when the golems held the attackers back, and Devils surged through the tower.
• A powerful spell froze the fighting as Dean Nick and an unfamiliar metallic-voiced figure discussed bringing Jia Xiu over.

Jia Xiu was rescued from the Mage Tower storage room and learned he had been placed under the Caster Association’s highest-level protection program. The chapter ended with Dean Nico explaining that a spell made people forget Jia Xiu and mistake a security guard for him so Jia Xiu could continue researching safely.

• Jia Xiu contacted Justina and learned that Baimon was preparing for war while the border remained under patrol.
• A protection-program agent told Jia Xiu that Dean Nico and Master Larven had restrained Thomas, the Devil worshippers, and the Devils at the Mage Tower.
• Elizabeth opened the storage-room door, and the agent escorted Jia Xiu to the top floor, where Dean Nico and Larven Unit Sixteen were waiting.
• Jia Xiu discovered that people he met forgot his identity because a Wish Spell altered their memories and made them mistake a security guard for him.
• Dean Nico explained that the security guard had been designated as Jia Xiu’s substitute target so Jia Xiu could focus on his research.

Jia Xiu learned that the Caster Association’s protection plan was an investment loan and discovered that Thomas had exposed him to a Devil after finding playing cards from his laboratory. As Nico explained the captured attackers’ fates, Jia Xiu tried to kill Thomas with a crossbow bolt frozen in midair, leaving its fate—and Thomas’s—with the end of the Stasis Spell.

• Jia Xiu learned that four decoy shifts across two rotating teams protected him, but the Association would charge him interest if his future achievements did not justify the investment.
• Nico explained that Thomas had reported Jia Xiu to a Devil after finding the laboratory’s playing cards in Gawad and piecing together Jia Xiu’s role in the demon-identification method.
• Jia Xiu learned that Master Larven had frozen the attackers with an immensely powerful version of the basic Stasis Spell.
• Nico said the captured Devils would be sealed or used as test subjects, while the human accomplices would face punishment under Larven’s laws or be sent to the Church.
• When Nico hinted that Thomas would likely be repatriated to the Iris Kingdom, Jia Xiu fired a crossbow bolt at him, but the Stasis Spell froze it before it struck.

Jia Xiu worked with President Nico and Larven to prevent Thomas from being revived or reclaimed by Devils after the stasis spell ended. The chapter left Thomas dead with his soul lost between planes, while Larven expressed interest in attending Jia Xiu’s graduation defense and experiment.

• Jia Xiu considered the ways Thomas might be revived and asked how to keep his soul from returning.
• Larven explained that souls traveled between planes through a passage and gave Jia Xiu an incomplete spell intended to strand Thomas’s soul in the turbulent currents.
• Larven accelerated Jia Xiu so he could enter the stasis zone, and Jia Xiu measured the soul and completed the spell using his Magic Grimoire.
• Jia Xiu cast the spell on Thomas as Larven lifted the nearby stasis, and a crossbow bolt pierced Thomas’s head as a Devil came to claim his soul.
• Larven called the result interesting and told President Nico to inform him about Jia Xiu’s graduation defense and experiment.

Jia Xiu waited under pressure as the Winter Camp completed its calculations and Mia finished processing the results for the Healing Spell research. After reviewing Master Dain’s computer blueprints and sending Ram to the workshop, Jia Xiu received Mia’s bound calculations just before she fell asleep.

• Jia Xiu watched the Winter Camp finish forty-two days of calculations and gather for portraits outside Aurelius’s Mage Tower.
• Jia Xiu practiced the Healing Spell while Master Dain’s workshop completed a first draft of the computer blueprints.
• Jia Xiu approved the blueprints despite being unable to understand their details, and he let Ram go work in the workshop as an honorary Dwarf.
• Bubu told Jia Xiu that Mia had finished processing the calculations, and Jia Xiu went to see her.
• Mia handed Jia Xiu the bound results, then fell asleep after explaining she needed rest.

Jia Xiu carried out an experiment in Aurelius's Mage Tower to test whether a Devil's self-healing could be used to kill it, with dozens of powerful witnesses watching. The Lust Demon survived the process without turning to sulfur, and the Legends recognized that the experiment might provide a way to pierce the Devil Race's defenses.

• Jia Xiu prepared the experiment at Aurelius's Mage Tower while Larven gathered powerful witnesses and imposed strict secrecy measures.
• The Orc High Priestess, Drow Elf priestesses, and other guests arrived, bringing the number of Legends present to twenty-nine before the experiment began.
• Larven reassured Jia Xiu that the witnesses were there to help refine his proposal if it failed, while Nico urged him to succeed against the Vita Sage Institute.
• Jia Xiu, Margaret, and Elizabeth began the experiment by having Margaret kill the Lust Demon and Elizabeth conceal the death with an illusion.
• Jia Xiu carefully cast a healing spell based on Mia's data, and the Lust Demon's self-healing spread across her body without turning her to sulfur.
• The Lust Demon remained intact after the 197-second casting, and the 42 Legends present realized the experiment might let humanity breach the Devil Race's defenses.

Jia Xiu’s experiment appeared to kill the Lust Demon permanently, and Larven’s tests confirmed that even powerful resurrection magic could not revive it. After Larven announced that they had mastered a way to kill Devils outside Hell, Jia Xiu explained the method to the gathered legends and credited Mia and the other researchers for their work.

• Jia Xiu said the Lust Demon’s death was progressing as expected but admitted that the result still needed further verification.
• Larven burned and restored the Lust Demon’s head, tested it with damaging and healing spells, and found that successive resurrection spells could not revive it.
• Larven announced that they had mastered a method to completely kill Devils outside Hell, prompting the gathered researchers to applaud.
• Larven introduced Jia Xiu as the student who had independently completed the experiment, and Jia Xiu explained the planar law and partial differential equations behind the method.
• Jia Xiu answered questions about the calculations, credited the research team, and singled out Mia for her essential mathematical work.

Jia Xiu defended his demon-killing method before a council of legendary casters, who identified ways to improve it and agreed to launch a major research project. Dean Nico then granted Jia Xiu early graduation, a research appointment, and a vacation, while Master Larven invited him to join the project.

• Jia Xiu explained that his algorithm could work against all demonkind but required target-specific parameters, and a Druid elder suggested using tree spirits to help with its calculations.
• The Druid elder questioned Jia Xiu's experimental methods and invited him to study Healing Spells with her, while another Warlock tried to recruit him; Dean Nico and Master Larven ended the dispute.
• Master Larven called for the casters to collaborate on an efficient demon-killing method, and the Caster Association president announced a top-priority, highly secret research project.
• Dean Nico placed a wizard hat on Jia Xiu, approved his early graduation, appointed him a researcher, and granted him a vacation.
• Master Larven congratulated Jia Xiu and handed him an invitation to join the demon-killing project as its first invitee.