Chapter Summaries

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.

Jia Xiu spent his vacation arguing with the Sect Master over research credit before Margaret organized a graduation banquet at the Mage Tower. Friends brought homemade dishes and guests arrived, where Juan teased Jia Xiu about his new Tiefling assistant and promised him an extraordinary graduation gift.

• Jia Xiu argued that killing a Lust Demon deserved a research reward, but the Sect Master refused and proposed a new research direction focused on reducing repeated calculations of Devil self-healing parameters.
• Margaret decided to hold a graduation banquet for Jia Xiu, and Mia prepared a potentially poisonous mushroom dish while Ram roasted a tyrannosaurus leg.
• Princess Emilia attended with a burnt fish dish, congratulated Jia Xiu, and asked where he planned to work; Jia Xiu said he would stay at the academy for now and might join Caster Association projects.
• Juan arrived with the Tiefling bard from Gawad, introduced her as his assistant, and hinted that their relationship might develop further.
• Juan announced that he had brought Jia Xiu an astonishing graduation gift.

Juan showed Jia Xiu and Emilia a cheap, mass-producible Phantom Projector, and they discussed investing in it and building a film business. Jia Xiu persuaded them to work fairly with its inventor and plan separate screening halls and content lines before proposing a first film about the Radiant Knight.

• Juan unveiled a crude Phantom Projector that showed a clumsy, colorful fight between two Knights.
• Juan explained that the machine cost 20 Kroner, could run for hundreds of hours, and could display different content by changing its crystal; Emilia recognized its potential as a new mass medium.
• Emilia and Gawad proposed exploiting the inventor, but Jia Xiu persuaded Juan and Emilia to negotiate a fair partnership and build a reputation for treating inventors well.
• Juan proposed adapting exciting novels, while Jia Xiu and Emilia pushed for separate all-ages and adult products and dedicated screening halls with snacks and advertisements.
• Emilia suggested historical stories for their first all-ages film, and Jia Xiu proposed a story about the demigod Radiant Knight.

Jia Xiu proposed making a Phantom about the Radiant Knight guarding the Iris Kingdom’s northern border, hoping to popularize the new entertainment and win the Holy Light Church’s approval. He planned to tell Justina and prepare the project, partly so her increased fame might bring the laboratory more magical power for its experiments and growing tree spirit.

• Senior Brother Juan panicked when Jia Xiu proposed filming the Radiant Knight, then agreed to negotiate authorization for the Phantom Projector.
• Emilia approved Jia Xiu’s plan to film the Radiant Knight guarding against the Devil Race, while privately concluding that Jia Xiu was Justina’s illegitimate son.
• Jia Xiu explained that illusion magic could edit recorded scenes, and Senior Brother Juan confirmed that the Phantom Projector’s footage could be pieced together.
• Emilia left to secure patents, and Senior Brother Juan went to negotiate authorization while Jia Xiu prepared to contact Justina.
• Jia Xiu hoped Phantom screenings would increase Justina’s fame and magical power, giving his laboratory more energy for experiments and the sapling tree spirit.

Jia Xiu trained a young tree spirit to handle calculations while reassuring Mia that it would not replace her. He then met Levis, the inventor of the Phantom Projector, who insisted on filming the Radiant Knight at the dangerous border.

• Jia Xiu gave the sapling math problems and told Mia that its computing ability would free her to focus on more important work.
• Senior Brother Juan rushed Jia Xiu to meet Levis after securing authorization for the Phantom Projector and learning that Levis wanted to film the Radiant Knight.
• Jia Xiu learned that Levis was a devout believer who used his invention to spread the Holy Light and supported villagers and children.
• Levis declared that he intended to go to the border and film the Radiant Knight despite Jia Xiu's warnings about the danger.

Levis arrived at the fortress to film Justina, the Radiant Knight, and she struggled to act naturally before him. As she inspected the walls, Devils appeared beneath a mass of dark clouds.

• Levis reached the fortress with Elizabeth's bat clone and presented royal paperwork to the guards.
• Justina anxiously asked Jia Xiu how to present herself in the Phantoms, and he told her to act naturally.
• Justina met Levis, who knelt and praised her; she forgave him and agreed to let him film her inspection.
• Levis followed Justina invisibly as she inspected the walls, making her self-conscious about every movement.
• Justina spotted dark clouds, writhing shadows, and scarlet eyes approaching the fortress as the Devils arrived.