Chapter Summaries

Jia Xiu tried to stop the survivors from burning Becky, but found her dead along with her unborn half-Devil child. With resurrection unlikely and an Archdevil certain to seek revenge, he accepted that war was coming and turned to preparing for it.

• Jia Xiu led his group to the safe house and persuaded many survivors to leave by warning that Paula might be looting the manor, while Bubu scared off the remaining zealots.
• Jia Xiu took Becky down and confirmed she was beyond saving; Margaret said only a divine spell might resurrect her, but the Holy Light Church would refuse because it considered Becky a heretic.
• Elizabeth revealed that Becky had been pregnant with a half-Devil, whose unborn child could not be resurrected, making the Archdevil's desire for vengeance even more certain.
• Jia Xiu decided war could no longer be avoided and planned to warn the checkpoint guards and give the Caster Association his methods for identifying Devils.
• Jia Xiu set out to search the manor for traces Paula had left behind.

Jia Xiu investigated Paula’s office and discovered evidence that her Unity Society plan was meant to intensify human-Devil conflict, while scraps of a blueprint suggested she had used an assembled magic device to create her barrier. He suspected Paula had outside support and that more device components might remain nearby, and sent Elizabeth’s bats to search for them.

• Jia Xiu reported the possible Devil attack and Baimon’s threat to Justina, who declared that a holy war was beginning and planned to alert the Church and the Iris Kingdom.
• Jia Xiu urged Margaret to focus on investigating Paula, then led her and the others to Paula’s office.
• Jia Xiu found Paula’s notebook hidden in a hollowed-out book, which revealed that she had used the Unity Society to worsen tensions between humans and Devils.
• Margaret restored scraps of burned papers, and Jia Xiu recognized them as instructions and a blueprint for a modular magic device that had generated Paula’s barrier.
• Jia Xiu sent Elizabeth’s bats to search for matching device components, while Ram pointed out a suspicious brick in the wall.

Jia Xiu and his companions broke into a hidden room and found a damaged magic array that he believed could enable travel between planes using adjustable coordinates. The Sect Master declared that they had discovered all the Unity Society's secrets, while Jia Xiu began recording the array's strings.

• Ram listened to the suspicious wall, then smashed through it with his hammer instead of dismantling its mechanism.
• Jia Xiu entered the hidden room after checking for traps and found a destroyed magic array surrounded by unfamiliar quaternary strings.
• Jia Xiu recorded recurring strings and reasoned that they might represent the coordinates of a plane Paula had teleported to.
• Jia Xiu found that the suspected coordinates could be altered with magic, and concluded the array might offer a way to travel between planes under current conditions.
• Margaret questioned whether such a simple array could enable interplanar travel, and Jia Xiu admitted he did not yet know how to reproduce it.
• Jia Xiu began copying the strings into the Magic Grimoire as the Sect Master announced that all secrets of the Unity Society had been discovered.

Jia Xiu copied Paula’s planar magic array and collected six mysterious components, while Mia prepared to study the code and Jia Xiu planned research useful against the Devil Race. Back at the Iris Kingdom borderlands, he learned the kingdom was delaying its response, and Justina chose to stay and defend its civilians as Jia Xiu’s group prepared to return to Larven.

• Jia Xiu received his mission reward and copied the entire magic array into his Magic Grimoire, finding that its spell structure appeared to be no higher than fifth circle.
• Mia speculated that the array’s numbers encoded a new magical system, and she volunteered to decipher it using mathematical algorithms.
• Elizabeth returned with six small components whose crystals appeared crude, while Ram judged their mechanical structures superior to examples from Saint Dero’s magitech classes.
• Jia Xiu and his group returned to their inn in the Iris Kingdom borderlands, where Justina said the kingdom was delaying its decision about fighting the Devil Race.
• Justina resolved to stay and protect civilians if the Devils invaded, and she agreed to help Jia Xiu’s group return to Larven.

King Lumiere II learned that unrest in Gawad and the threat of Devil retaliation had prompted the Holy Light Church to send its army without seeking his approval, while Ukmak offered military assistance in a provocative letter. As the king ordered Duke Capet to defend the border, Jia Xiu claimed a textbook reward and realized the crystal component was a magic microcontroller.

• Lumiere II questioned the Church’s forceful plan to send the Holy Crusader Army and received reports that unrest had broken out in Gawad, though Becky’s pregnancy remained unconfirmed.
• Lumiere II heard that a god had supposedly appeared during the riot and considered whether the Devils would start a full-scale war.
• Ukmak’s ambassador delivered a letter offering military assistance, prompting Lumiere II to accuse his ministers of leaking information and order Duke Capet to defend the border.
• Jia Xiu stayed up organizing his Devil-detection research, gave it to Mia to prepare for submission, and claimed his Magic Grimoire reward.
• Jia Xiu compared the textbook’s diagrams with Paula’s component and recognized the device as a magic microcontroller.

In Hell, Baimon investigated the force that killed Becky’s Pit Fiend guard and began planning revenge despite lacking allies. Meanwhile, Jia Xiu studied magical microcontrollers, failed repeatedly to write a healing spell into one, and learned from Mia that the paper was finished.

• Baimon’s subordinates reported that an unknown force had killed the Pit Fiend guarding Becky with a beam of light, and Baimon ordered the guard to die in battle as punishment for its failure.
• Baimon resolved to avenge Becky and find the unknown force, then considered seeking help from someone who might not be an ally.
• Jia Xiu studied the microcontroller textbook and learned that its components could carry standardized, adjustable magic that ordinary magical devices could not match.
• Jia Xiu tried more than twenty times to write Basic Healing Spell into a crystal component, but each attempt was interrupted because he could not precisely match its mana fluctuations.
• Mia told Jia Xiu that the paper was finished, and Jia Xiu said they should find someone trustworthy to submit it to the association.

Jia Xiu and his companions gave Principal Nico their completed method for identifying the Devil Race, and Nico judged the research sound before taking them to the Caster Association headquarters. The chapter ended with Jia Xiu also being told to prepare for his graduation defense.

• Jia Xiu tested Principal Nico with the identification spell and confirmed that Nico was not Devil Race.
• Jia Xiu handed Nico the completed paper, and Nico reviewed its method and practical device design before deciding it was ready to submit.
• Nico secured the office and hurried away to contact the Caster Association president while Jia Xiu and the others waited.
• Jia Xiu submitted the research to the Sect Master, received 1,350 experience points, and argued over the evaluation of his contribution.
• Nico returned and told Jia Xiu, Mia, and Margaret to accompany him to the Association headquarters, where members would be tested before seeing them.
• Nico told Jia Xiu to prepare for his graduation defense because he no longer needed an ordinary student training plan.

Jia Xiu agreed to graduate early and remain at Saint Dero as a researcher rather than take on teaching duties. Dean Nico brought him, Margaret, Mia, and Ram to the Caster Association, where they met its president and discovered that the legendary founder Larven was present.

• Margaret feared Jia Xiu's early graduation and future success would cost her students and diminish her standing.
• Dean Nico offered Jia Xiu an early graduation and a research position at Saint Dero, and Jia Xiu accepted without teaching duties.
• Dean Nico teleported Jia Xiu's group to the Caster Association headquarters, where Jia Xiu noticed powerful magic hidden behind its plain rooms.
• President Le Mei welcomed the group and explained that the Association had reproduced Ram's detection receiver and wanted the authors to clarify its details.
• President Le Mei introduced his advisor and the Association's first president, Master Larven, whose hand was mechanical.

Jia Xiu discussed the Devil Race detection device with Larven and agreed to support the Association as it prepared to implement a continent-wide screening plan. He proposed repeated testing and temporary access runes for important institutions, leaving Le Mei impressed by how much detail he had already considered.

• Larven explained that he had tested many methods of extending his life on himself before settling on a mechanical body, then demonstrated its faulty joint.
• Jia Xiu explained that Devil Race signals could vary by type and admitted that the detection method might produce errors or omissions.
• Le Mei asked Jia Xiu to handle follow-up research as the Devil Race screening plan was rolled out, and Jia Xiu agreed.
• Le Mei and Nico argued over whether the Association or the academy would support Jia Xiu, while Margaret looked despondent about having him poached.
• Le Mei told Jia Xiu that the Association would discuss the plan with representatives from major churches and nations and keep his research anonymous.
• Jia Xiu proposed repeated screening for officials and key workers, using runes valid for twenty-four hours as permits to enter work areas.

Jia Xiu attended a Caster Association meeting and discovered that its representatives began with a chaotic exchange of insults. Their arguments revealed that the Dwarves were secretly developing magic devices that could use and change spells, and President Le Mei began announcing the meeting’s purpose.

• Jia Xiu and his companions entered the Association’s Number One Assembly Hall, where representatives watched the meeting from private boxes.
• Ambassador Thorin and Ambassador Alamil traded insults, and representatives from other delegations joined the shouting while Margaret shared gossip about human nobles.
• Alamil questioned the Dwarves’ secret weapon research, and Thorin claimed they had made progress on a device that could use any spell and change them freely.
• Jia Xiu suspected the Dwarves’ device was related to magic microcontrollers and considered asking Justina for help learning about their research.
• President Le Mei silenced the assembly and announced that she had summoned the representatives to notify them, not to discuss.

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.