Chapter Summaries

Frost Glaive City and the Cold Iron Legion fought off the insect tide, while Duke Edmund confronted the elite corpse of Hiro and forced his troops to retreat behind the city walls. The city’s ice veins and catapults halted the renewed assault for a moment, but the Doom Brood Hive and its endless swarm remained outside.

• Frost Glaive City activated its Ice Mist Barrier and bombarded the advancing Insect Corpses and Brood Hives with Frost Crystal Demon Explosive Bombs.
• The Cold Iron Legion destroyed a second-tier Brood Hive, but Hiro and other elite Snow Oath corpses broke through its battle line.
• Duke Edmund drew the Insect Corpses toward him with War Gravity, fought Hiro, and shattered Hiro’s corpse with a hammer blow.
• As the swarm overwhelmed the exhausted defenders, Edmund ordered a retreat and held off the Insect Corpses until the knights had entered Frost Glaive City.
• Frost Glaive City activated its Frost Vein Bunkers and catapults, stopping the insect tide temporarily while the Doom Brood Hive remained beyond the walls.

Duke Edmund endured surgery for Corpse Insects and a battle aura injury while Frostspear faced imminent defeat, until word arrived that the Dragonblood Legion would reach the city in seven days. The chapter ended with masked mages led by the self-proclaimed Supreme Mage arriving at the gates.

• Duke Edmund ordered the physicians to remove three Corpse Insects from his chest without anesthesia, and the operation revealed that his old battle aura injury had worsened.
• Edmund estimated that Frostspear could hold out for only twelve days and stopped himself from writing a retreat order to his daughter and Louis.
• A young knight delivered Lord Arthur Garen's dispatch announcing that the Dragonblood Legion would reach Frostspear within seven days.
• Edmund ordered the foundry to prepare three more batches of frost crystal shells so he could hold off the insect corpses until reinforcements arrived.
• An elderly knight reported that several dozen masked mages had reached the outer gate, led by someone calling himself the Supreme Mage.

Louis learned that the Doom Brood Hive would be destroyed in fifteen days, though the victory would come at a heavy cost, and decided to go to Frost Glaive City to help shape the battle. He ordered Silco to concentrate their remaining materials into one enormous Demon Explosive Bomb.

• Louis read intelligence that the Dragonblood Legion would reach Frost Glaive City in seven days and the Supreme Mage would join the fight against the Doom Brood Hive.
• Louis learned that multiple forces would destroy the Doom Brood Hive in fifteen days, but that victory would come at a devastating cost.
• Louis decided to travel to Frost Glaive City, hoping to help Duke Edmund and the Northern Frontier armies while earning military merit.
• Louis went to Silco's Laboratory and ordered Silco to use their remaining materials to make one exceptionally powerful Demon Explosive Bomb.
• Silco eagerly agreed to create the Ultimate Demon Explosive Bomb.

The Dragonblood Legion rapidly destroyed Brood Hive strongholds across the Northern Frontier while the Despair Witch relied on a hidden Doom Brood Hive. As Duke Edmund and his allies planned their next moves, Louis Calvin unexpectedly appeared with a flamethrower-equipped knight squad, prompting Edmund to summon him to Frost Glaive City.

• Gaius Calvin led the Dragonblood Legion through the blizzard, destroying three high-rank insect corpses and breaking through a Brood Hive’s defenses.
• The Dragonblood Legion captured more than a dozen Brood Hive strongholds in four days, while the Despair Witch lamented her setbacks and placed her hopes in the Doom Brood Hive.
• Duke Edmund, Arthur Garen, and Aurelian Sol agreed to clear peripheral Brood Hives before concentrating their forces on the Doom Brood Hive.
• Edmund recognized the Red Tide Fief banner and realized that Louis Calvin had arrived with a flamethrower-equipped knight squad.
• Edmund ordered Leno to take three scouts and summon Louis to Frost Glaive City.

Louis brought the Red Tide Knight Order to Frostspear, where Duke Edmund recognized his potential to rise among the Northern Frontier’s future leaders. After the Dragonblood Knights destroyed many Brood Hives, the Despair Witch awakened the Doom Brood Hive and began raising the dead for her final attack.

• Louis led the Red Tide Knight Order around the heaviest fighting and entered Frostspear after Duke Edmund summoned him.
• Louis watched Gaius Calvin and the Dragonblood Knights destroy a Brood Hive, then met Edmund, who urged him to help carry the Northern Frontier forward.
• Over seven days, the Dragonblood Knights destroyed thirteen medium-sized Brood Hives and two false nests while clearing a path toward the Doom Brood Hive.
• The Despair Witch activated the Doom Brood Hive, releasing new offspring and driving its enormous body to rise.
• The Dragonblood Knights sealed their armor as the hive’s curse spread, and corpses and remains began moving and piecing themselves together.

The Dragonblood Legion faced corpse-creatures that regenerated and grew stronger whenever they were attacked, forcing the knights to retreat behind Frost Glaive City’s defenses. As the Despair Witch revealed her plan to spread the resurrection plague across the Empire, Duke Edmund gathered the city’s leaders for a wartime council.

• The black fog animated battlefield corpses into monsters that repeatedly reassembled, and Gaius ordered the Dragonblood Legion to withdraw.
• The knights retreated into Frost Glaive City, whose defenses activated and whose catapults bombarded the advancing insect tide with Frost Crystal Demon Explosive Bombs, but the creatures kept regenerating.
• Duke Edmund ordered the Senior Commanders, Mage Tower representatives, Dragonblood Legion leaders, and Imperial Capital Councilors to assemble.
• The Despair Witch revealed that accumulated death energy had let her activate the resurrection plague and that she intended to spread it through the Northern Frontier and the Empire.
• Louis attended the Imperial Wartime High Council, where Duke Edmund began addressing the assembled leaders about the threat they faced.

At a war council, Aurelian explained the strongest Brood Hive’s death fog and why destroying its core was the only way to stop it. With Frost Glaive City running short on supplies and conventional assaults unable to penetrate the Hive, Duke Edmund ordered a desperate operation, and someone proposed another plan at the last moment.

• Aurelian revealed that ancient dark magic had transformed the Brood Hives and explained that the strongest Brood Hive’s death fog could rebuild corpses, spread madness, and corrode living beings and magical defenses.
• General Rudolf reported that the strongest Brood Hive was deep within Frost-Ga Mountain, that a Transcendent Knight squad had been wiped out, and that its shell had resisted their attacks.
• The quartermaster warned that Frost Glaive City had critically low supplies and food for fewer than fifteen days, prompting Duke Edmund to declare that the Hive had to be destroyed quickly.
• Duke Edmund ordered Frost Glaive City to clear an assault corridor and sent ten squads, including himself, Arthur, and Gaius, to attack the Brood Hive’s core.
• The council rejected several attack proposals, and an elderly staff officer suggested sacrificing Knights to open a path before a young voice asked to try another way.

Louis proposed using his Demon Explosive Bomb against the Doom Brood Hive, and Duke Edmund added it as a contingency to the assault plan. As Frost Glaive City opened a passage through the Insect Tide, the Dragonblood and Cold Iron Legions charged toward the Hive, accompanied by a squad carrying Louis's devices.

• Louis claimed his explosive device could damage a Brood Hive's carapace, and Duke Edmund assigned him to coordinate its use as a contingency plan.
• Duke Edmund ordered the Dragonblood Legion to target the Brood Hive's core, with the self-destruction tactic as a fallback if Louis's bomb failed.
• Gaius Calvin showed Louis a portrait of his newborn son and asked Louis to survive so the boy could call him Uncle Louis.
• Gaius rallied the Dragonblood Legion before the assault, while Arthur watched over the Knights as their commander.
• Frost Glaive City's defenses activated the Super Barrier and bombarded the Insect Tide until a passage to the Doom Brood Hive opened.
• The Dragonblood and Cold Iron Legions charged through the breach, followed by a small squad carrying unusually shaped metal devices.

The Knights fought their way through the Brood Hive as Louis launched an Ultimate Demon Explosive Bomb that blasted open its core. With the Despair Witch calling for a powerful Fusion Abomination to defend it, the Empire’s Corebreaker squads charged into the breach for the final assault.

• The Knights charged through the Brood Hive’s monsters, and Sacrificial Soldiers detonated their Demon Explosive Bombs to clear a path.
• Louis used the Primordial Meditation Art to resist the hive’s mental assault, then directed his Red Tide Demolition Squad to fire an Ultimate Demon Explosive Bomb at it.
• The bomb pierced the Brood Hive’s defenses and ignited its core, destroying its outer tissues and setting off chain explosions.
• The Despair Witch ordered the creation of the strongest Fusion Abomination to hold the core for thirteen minutes while she tried to repair the hive.
• Duke Edmund, Gaius, and Arthur led the ten Corebreaker squads through the burning breach and into the Doom Brood Hive.

Duke Edmund, Gaius, Arthur, and the knights fought through the collapsing Doom Brood Hive to reach the Despair Witch, while Aurelian joined the battle and pinned her in place. Arthur struck the Doom Heart with his light blade, causing the witch and her hive to collapse as an infant's cry echoed through the chamber.

• Duke Edmund, Gaius, Arthur, and the knights led a bloody assault through the Doom Brood Hive, losing many fighters to its monsters and shifting passageways.
• The Despair Witch ordered stitched corpse monsters to block the attackers, but Edmund held back the swarm and Gaius charged through the hive to clear a path for Arthur.
• Arthur unlocked Light-Chasing Form and reached the throne chamber, where the Despair Witch unleashed insect curses and mental attacks.
• Aurelian descended, froze the witch's teleportation, countered her spells, and opened a Spatial Breach Corridor for Arthur.
• The Despair Witch transformed into a giant insect and battled Aurelian, who created an opening for Arthur to strike the Doom Heart with his light blade.
• Arthur's blade shattered the Doom Heart, and the Despair Witch's body collapsed as an infant's cry echoed through the chamber.

Arthur and the survivors escaped as the Doom Brood Hive collapsed after its core was destroyed, though Gaius Calvin and many Knights died or were gravely wounded. The Northern Frontier’s other Brood Hives and Insect Corpses also fell silent, but the Despair Witch’s remaining will escaped inside a black insect shell.

• After Gaius Calvin collapsed from his fourth Undying Charge, a tentacle struck at him, and Arthur shielded him, losing his right arm to its toxins.
• Duke Edmund led the survivors through the collapsing hive, and the last Knight escaped as the Doom Brood Hive sank into the abyss.
• Only 42 of the 103 members of the ten core-breaking squads returned from the mission.
• The other Brood Hives across the Northern Frontier collapsed, and the Insect Corpses died after the central consciousness was extinguished.
• A black insect shell containing the Despair Witch’s last vestige of will slipped into a fissure and waited to hatch again.

After the Doom Brood Hive’s destruction, the Northern Frontier faced devastation and Duke Edmund’s health and power neared collapse. Louis prepared to return to Red Tide, while Arthur took the battered Dragonblood Legion to the Imperial Capital and promised to report Louis’s service to the emperor.

• The surviving knights found the insect swarm dead, and the war’s aftermath revealed that the Northern Frontier had lost more than four-fifths of its population and much of its land and infrastructure.
• Duke Edmund was left gravely injured, with his political support shattered and his heir still unborn, while the Dragonblood Legion suffered heavy losses and its weakened state threatened to stir conflict among the Empire’s great families.
• Arthur told Louis that Gaius would be taken to the Imperial Capital for treatment and promised to report Louis’s achievements to the emperor, adding that Louis’s eldest brother was proud of him.
• Louis met Duke Edmund on the ruined wall, where the duke urged him to return to Red Tide, help survivors settle, and take in refugees and orphans.
• Duke Edmund asked Louis to look after Emily, and Louis solemnly agreed before leaving.

Louis’s rescue knights saved survivors across the Northern Frontier while he traveled home through devastated lands, considering the challenges of rebuilding and the power struggles ahead. He returned to the intact Red Tide Fief and was welcomed by its people, Emily, and Sif.

• The Red Tide Fief Rescue Knights rescued twenty-four starving survivors from a mine in Pine Valley and escorted them south.
• Louis learned that his convoy had taken in more than three thousand refugees as it crossed the ruined Northern Frontier.
• Louis reflected on the region’s devastation, the coming redistribution of noble power, and his role in rebuilding as he traveled home.
• Louis returned to the Red Tide Fief and was greeted by crowds who praised him for protecting and saving them.
• Emily embraced Louis, and Sif joined them, both relieved that he had returned.

After returning to Red Tide City, Louis learned that the Despair Witch could awaken in ten years and that Titus Shuanglie was uniting the Northern Frontier’s Barbarians, while Magewood sent an assessment team north. Facing food shortages among fifty thousand people in the Red Tide Fief, Louis planned winter greenhouses, paid refugee labor, emergency grain purchases, and searches for hidden stores.

• Louis checked the daily intelligence system and learned that the Despair Witch had become a dormant Doom Seed, Titus Shuanglie was rebuilding the Cold Moon Tribe, and Magewood’s investigation team had departed for the Northern Frontier.
• Louis resumed his cultivation, then met with Sif and Emily, who told him they had managed the fief and that the Calvin Family had promised winter relief grain.
• Louis reviewed the food crisis with Bradley and learned that the fief’s supplies could feed fifty thousand people for only fifteen days at reduced rations.
• Louis ordered plans for geothermal greenhouses, refugee work crews, a restored work-point system, and the Red Tide Charity Farmland Law.
• Louis told Bradley to arrange emergency grain purchases through the Calvin Trading Company and privately planned to use the intelligence system to locate abandoned granaries and hidden food stores.

Louis planned emergency measures to house, heat, feed, treat, and transport the vast influx of refugees in Red Tide Fief. He ordered a public crackdown on violent troublemakers and summoned the refugee nobles to a council meeting to address their demands.

• Louis learned Red Tide Fief's population had reached 57,000 and ordered semi-subterranean communal housing, refugee construction crews, and voluntary lodging arrangements with ration rewards.
• Louis reviewed plans to expand heating, medical care, epidemic prevention, psychological support, and winter supply routes with Bradley.
• Bradley reported that clashes over food and water had injured residents, and Louis ordered public trials and severe punishments, including beheadings for major offenses.
• Bradley told Louis that refugee nobles were complaining about their treatment and disputing his control of their knights.
• Louis ordered Bradley to summon every noble taking refuge in Red Tide to the council hall in Red Tide City.

Viscount Brooke gathered displaced nobles to organize a petition challenging Louis's control over Snowpeak Commandery, pressuring Viscount Roland to submit it at the Snowpeak Conference. After Louis summoned the nobles to a council session, Brooke resolved to use the meeting to prise power from him.

• Viscount Brooke, Baron Harris, Sirius, and other nobles complained about Red Tide's restrictions and discussed demanding restored military authority and a say in supplies.
• Viscount Brooke and the other nobles pressured Viscount Roland into accepting a petition, and Roland reluctantly agreed to submit it.
• Milton informed the gathering that Louis had summoned all nobles to the council hall the next day and required them to attend.
• After the nobles left, Viscount Brooke revealed that he had manipulated Roland and the others, and vowed to challenge Louis at the council session.

At the postwar conference, Viscount Brooke presented a joint proposal seeking shared military and reconstruction authority, but Louis had him arrested and executed for conspiring against Red Tide. Bradley then exposed other nobles’ offenses, and Louis ordered Sirius Kalan dragged out as the purges continued.

• Viscount Brooke arrived at the Red Tide Lord’s Hall intending to challenge Louis’s control on behalf of a group of Snowpeak nobles.
• Louis opened the meeting by inviting proposals, but the assembled nobles hesitated until Baron Joern briefly expressed satisfaction with Red Tide’s support.
• Viscount Brooke presented a joint proposal requesting the return of military authority to noble families and a Snowpeak Council committee to share decisions on supplies and reconstruction.
• Louis asked whether Brooke had authored the proposal, then ordered his arrest as Bradley read charges that Brooke had colluded with refugee bandits and incited unrest; Brooke was dragged away and executed.
• Bradley read charges against Baron Harris and Sirius Kalan, and Louis ordered the protesting Sirius gagged and dragged from the hall.

Louis confronted the surviving nobles after purging the conspirators, then secured their cooperation by tying rewards and reconstruction support to their conduct. He left them with winter relief assignments, while the nobles accepted that survival in the Northern Frontier depended on obeying him.

• Louis warned Viscount Roland that only those who had done wrong had been taken away, then told the nobles they had to follow Red Tide's rules to survive.
• Louis listed the Northern Frontier's refugees, shortages, damaged roads, approaching winter, and lack of Knights, reminding the nobles that Red Tide had provided their protection and supplies.
• The nobles pleaded loyalty and remorse after Louis accused them of plotting against him, and Louis offered land and reconstruction support to those who helped restore order.
• Louis assigned the nobles work on refugee counts, clinics, transport routes, charcoal distribution, and snow clearance, offering priority in future budgets for their contributions.
• After Bradley spoke to him, Louis left the council and ordered the nobles to submit their group assignments to Bradley; the nobles began organizing labor and accepting their duties.

Bradley forced the nobles to sign the Snowpeak Reconstruction Pact, and the Inspection Office publicly tried and punished those responsible for unrest in Red Tide. Louis addressed the cheering crowd, and the chapter ended with Red Tide’s rule taking root as the nobles left in fear.

• Bradley presented the Snowpeak Reconstruction Pact, and Joern, Veris, and the other nobles signed it.
• The nobles learned that the Inspection Office was holding a public trial and followed a Red Tide Knight to the plaza.
• Quinn read the charges against Viscount Brooke and the other rebellion ringleaders, and Red Tide guards executed them before the crowd.
• Quinn sentenced twenty-three secondary offenders to lashes and labor, frightening other refugees who had planned to cause trouble into dispersing.
• The crowd praised Red Tide and Louis, and Louis declared that iron law would protect those who obeyed its rules.
• The nobles withdrew in fear as the people cheered, and Red Tide’s new order took root.

Duke Calvin learned that Gaius had fallen into a coma and that Louis had earned major military honors in the Northern Frontier. He devised a political scheme to secure Louis’s influence through Duke Edmund and a postwar recovery initiative, then learned that Pal had died and dismissed the loss.

• Duke Calvin read that Gaius was alive but in a deep coma after the battle against the Doom Brood Hive.
• Duke Calvin discovered that Louis had helped destroy the Brood Hive Core and become a major contributor to the Empire’s victory.
• Duke Calvin planned to use Duke Edmund’s authority and a Northern Frontier recovery proposal to win Louis rewards while hiding the Calvin Family’s influence.
• Duke Calvin wrote letters to Eleanor Calvin, Duke Edmund, and allied noble councilors to advance the plan.
• Duke Calvin read that Pal had been confirmed killed in action and showed no concern for his death.