Recaps

Kafka showed Chu Mu the Stellaron Hunters’ ship before Silver Wolf revealed that Blade had left on the main ship, which had activated its self-destruct sequence. The crew learned they would need to reach Deep Blue Star to obtain a warp-capable ship, and Kafka ordered them to set sail there.

• Kafka explained the Interastral Peace Corporation’s history and took Chu Mu to see the Stellaron Hunters’ ship.
• Silver Wolf told Kafka that Blade had taken the main ship to pursue a lead and that it had activated its self-destruct sequence.
• Chu Mu offered Kafka his condolences, but Kafka clarified that she was upset about losing her coats and said Blade could not die because of his immortality curse.
• Silver Wolf revealed that she had saved Kafka’s coats, but the auxiliary ship lacked a warp drive and would take four years to reach a warp passage.
• Silver Wolf told Kafka that the passage led directly to Deep Blue Star, where the Corporation had stationed an armed force.
• Kafka ordered the crew to head for Deep Blue Star to find a warp-capable ship.

Chu Mu explored the auxiliary ship and bonded with Silver Wolf over video games before entering cryosleep. He dreamed of a rotting giant whale crying “Betrayal,” then woke in pain as the ship approached Deep Blue Star, a planet inhabited by people who live on giant whales.

• Chu Mu explored the auxiliary ship, and Silver Wolf introduced him to video games designed for blind players.
• Silver Wolf played games with Chu Mu, who quickly mastered the controls and even beat her in some competitions.
• Silver Wolf reassured Chu Mu that his sight could be restored with advanced technology and helped him enter a Cryo Pod.
• Chu Mu dreamed of a vast, rotting whale whose body radiated the word “Betrayal” as he saw himself reflected in its eye.
• Chu Mu woke in severe pain, and Kafka and Silver Wolf checked on him while he recovered.
• Kafka told Chu Mu they were nearing Deep Blue Star, where people lived on the backs of gigantic whales.

After waking from a four-year hibernation, Chu Mu grappled with the time separating him from his loved ones on Belobog before traveling with Kafka and Silver Wolf to Deep Blue Star. There, they discovered a military lockdown and came under attack, leaving their escape uncertain.

• Chu Mu worried that years of interstellar travel would leave his friends and family on Belobog aged or gone, and Kafka comforted him by promising their journeys might one day meet again.
• Silver Wolf warped the ship to Deep Blue Star, where Kafka described the orbital spaceport and its capital, Skorint, also known as the City of Bones.
• Chu Mu connected the planet to the deep-sea vision in his dream and urged Kafka to leave because he believed something there had targeted him.
• Kafka, Silver Wolf, and Chu Mu saw armed ships, ground-facing space weapons, and Trailblaze Department soldiers surrounding the spaceport as they waited to dock.
• An inspection ship stopped short, and Silver Wolf abruptly dove the ship to evade an enormous beam that struck where they had been.

Kafka, Silver Wolf, and Chu Mu fled the battle raging among the Corporation’s ships and landed in a garbage city on Deep Blue Star after their ship began losing power. They met the city’s inhabitants, whose leader mistook Kafka for the ship’s commander and took an interest in Chu Mu.

• Kafka and Silver Wolf saw the Corporation’s ships attack one another, destroying the Spaceport and Warp Tunnel as newly formed black holes pulled nearby ships in.
• Chu Mu suspected that betrayal had spread across Deep Blue Star, while Silver Wolf guided their ship through the atmosphere and scanned the planet below.
• Silver Wolf discovered a settlement built on floating garbage where information had led them to expect a Whale City, then proposed landing because their ship was losing power.
• Kafka and Chu Mu agreed, and Silver Wolf landed the ship in the garbage city with help from its control tower.
• Kafka stepped out into the city’s oppressive heat, and an old man in a white shirt assumed she was the ship’s leader and showed particular interest in Chu Mu’s covered eyes.

Kafka, Silver Wolf, and Chu Mu learned about the planet’s hostile situation after landing, including a forbidden cult, the Deep-Sea Revenants, and the people’s hatred of giant whales. Silver Wolf revealed that expanding black holes would swallow the planet within a year, leaving Chu Mu silent as the group faced the crisis.

• Kafka used a Synesthesia Beacon so Chu Mu could understand the old man, who warned them that black cloth signified a forbidden cult and urged them not to go outside at night.
• The old man grew furious when Kafka asked about the whales, then accidentally revealed the name Deep-Sea Revenants before leaving armed guards behind.
• Back aboard the ship, Kafka worried that Chu Mu showed no discomfort in the heat and said he needed a full medical checkup.
• Silver Wolf told Kafka and Chu Mu that the space battle had ended and explained that the Interastral Peace Corporation’s recovery effort could take centuries.
• Silver Wolf revealed that expanding black holes would swallow the planet within a year, and Chu Mu fell silent.

Silver Wolf and Kafka planned to repair the ship within a year, while Kafka took Chu Mu shopping in Garbage City. There, Arlan was beaten by street children who smashed the jar of fresh water he was carrying, and an unseen person criticized his hesitation in a fight.

• Silver Wolf proposed waiting for falling ship parts, repairing the ship, and traveling to a Warp Tunnel fifty light-years away.
• Kafka insisted that Chu Mu accompany her shopping, and he agreed to return before dark because he remembered the warning about Deep-Sea Revenants.
• Street children taunted Arlan for believing a young woman from the sky would return, then attacked him and demanded what he carried.
• A bully kicked Arlan, shattering his clay jar of fresh water, and the children licked up the spilled water before leaving.
• As Arlan watched the children disappear into an alley, someone behind him said that his greatest weakness was hesitating during a fight.

Chu Mu befriended Arlan and learned the history of Deep Blue Star, from its pact with the Giant Whales to the Corporation’s exploitation and the whales’ sudden betrayal. Arlan warned Chu Mu and Kafka that, with no offerings outside their spaceship, they would become the night’s offerings.

• Chu Mu challenged Arlan’s belief that his bullies were merely unfortunate and offered to become his friend.
• Arlan told Chu Mu he was searching for a pink-haired girl who had promised to return, then agreed to guide Chu Mu and Kafka.
• Arlan warned Chu Mu that speaking openly about his blindness was unsafe, and Chu Mu asked him about the taboo.
• Arlan explained that humanity had once made a pact with the Giant Whales, but the Corporation’s resource hunt led to war and the near destruction of the whales.
• Arlan recounted how a black sun appeared ten years earlier and the Giant Whales abandoned humanity, beginning the betrayal era and leaving natives like him to live in Garbage City.
• Arlan urgently told Chu Mu and Kafka to leave because the absence of offerings outside their spaceship meant they would be the offerings.

Arlan told Chu Mu how the Black Sun Cult’s blind followers became undead who returned from the deep sea to steal dew, and how Governor Luwan made residents supply them. With their ship’s propulsion system dead and no way to get official dew collectors, Chu Mu, Silver Wolf, and Kafka prepared to face the undead.

• Arlan explained that the Black Sun Cult spread through Garbage City and its followers gouged out their eyes during an eclipse.
• Governor Luwan banned the cult and sent the blind believers away aboard a derelict ship.
• Six months later, residents began seeing the ship and then a procession of more than a thousand blindfolded believers stealing dew.
• After a household that refused to offer dew vanished, residents began supplying the undead, while Luwan enforced inspections and a curfew.
• Arlan warned Chu Mu that outsiders could not get approved dew collectors and needed to escape before dark.
• Silver Wolf told Chu Mu that the ship could not fly, then proposed using Kafka’s heavy machine gun to fight the undead.

Silver Wolf prepared to test whether Garbage City's supposed undead could withstand her heavy machine gun, while Kafka and Chu Mu questioned Arlan's account and said goodbye to him. After night fell and the ship docked, Arlan waited anxiously in his shack, hoping Chu Mu's group would not start a fight with the undead.

• Silver Wolf brought out a heavy machine gun despite Arlan warning her that the undead could not be killed.
• Chu Mu and Kafka questioned whether the dew-collecting beings were truly undead, and Kafka warned Arlan that rumors of immortality would attract powerful people.
• Chu Mu and Kafka gave Arlan two bottles of water before he left, and Kafka asked Chu Mu whether she seemed sincere with him.
• Silver Wolf called Chu Mu her best gaming partner when Kafka asked what he was to her.
• After night fell, the ship docked and the undead began collecting dew around Garbage City.
• Arlan stayed awake in his shack, listening for a gunshot and worrying that Chu Mu's group might be fighting the undead.

Chu Mu tracked the people disguising themselves as ghosts and confronted Governor Luwan, who explained why he had concealed the truth from Deep Blue’s citizens. Luwan began testing Chu Mu’s understanding of leadership, leaving the nature of his larger scheme unrevealed.

• Kafka and Silver Wolf discussed Chu Mu’s balance between the Hunt and Abundance and considered seeking the Aeon of Equilibrium’s help.
• Chu Mu used his sound-based perception to follow the people collecting dew in ghost disguises to the Governor’s Mansion and then to the port.
• Chu Mu confronted Luwan in his office, and Luwan admitted he followed the path of Erudition but lacked combat talent.
• Luwan asked whether those in power should tell the public the truth, and Chu Mu said they could tell it but should not tell everything.
• Luwan praised Chu Mu’s grasp of leadership and said that governing larger groups required plotting and deception as well as concealing the truth.

Luwan explained how he used the Deep-Sea Revenants to collect and redistribute dew, then revealed that his son had founded the Black Sun Cult and gone mad. Chu Mu declined to expose Luwan and left the Governor’s Mansion, hearing the young man’s delirious prophecy as he departed.

• Luwan told Chu Mu that the Governor’s Mansion secretly collected dew through the Deep-Sea Revenants and used fear to prevent theft while distributing water fairly.
• Luwan took Chu Mu to see his bound son, who had lost his eyes and once helped his father before falling under the Black Sun’s influence.
• Luwan explained that his son had secretly built the Black Sun Cult, and that Luwan had sent its believers away by ship while sparing his own child.
• Luwan asked Chu Mu whether he would reveal the truth, but Chu Mu said he had no right to condemn him or involve himself in local politics.
• Chu Mu left the Governor’s Mansion after hearing Luwan’s son mutter about the Black Sun, a Divine Son, and betrayal.

Chu Mu returned to the spaceship with the truth about Luwan’s actions, then learned more about Garbage City from Arlan. Arlan led Chu Mu, Kafka, and Silver Wolf to a dealer who sold salvaged wreckage and illegally resold freshwater, leaving them to investigate a suspicious but well-connected merchant.

• Chu Mu told Kafka and Silver Wolf that Luwan had caused the events to save people, while keeping Luwan’s son a secret.
• Arlan visited the spaceship, and Chu Mu told him they had encountered undead at the Governor’s Mansion and received shelter from Luwan.
• Arlan explained how Luwan and his scholar father had helped turn a refugee settlement into Garbage City, whose crowded growth left it with a maze of narrow roads.
• Arlan offered to take Chu Mu and the others to a shop that bought salvaged wreckage, and Silver Wolf joined to help find parts for the spaceship.
• Arlan led the group through the city’s alleys and revealed that the shop owner illegally resold freshwater, monopolized salvaged wreckage, and evaded the Governor’s Mansion through powerful connections.

Chu Mu reunited with Sampo at a water shop on the Corporation’s Spaceport, where Sampo explained how he had been stranded there four years earlier. Sampo told Chu Mu how the Underworld had changed since its passage was sealed, leaving Chu Mu with news of Natasha, Seele, and the people they had left behind.

• Chu Mu arrived at Sampo’s shop, and Sampo broke a jar and rushed to greet him as “Big Bro.”
• Sampo said he had been transported to the Corporation’s Spaceport by a damaged device he found in the Great Dump, then beaten and exiled there.
• Silver Wolf questioned Sampo’s account, while Chu Mu and Kafka offered a possible explanation; Kafka left with Silver Wolf and Arlan so Chu Mu and Sampo could talk.
• Sampo described how Wildfire, led by Oleg, and Svarog’s robot settlement had risen to power in the Underworld after it was sealed off.
• Sampo told Chu Mu that Natasha kept her clinic open with medicinal herbs, Seele had joined Wildfire and received a scythe from him, and he still helped Natasha obtain medicine.

Chu Mu learned that the Old Director had died after keeping the Orphanage open for him, and he quietly mourned the woman who had welcomed him as a child. Afterward, he and Sampo arranged to gather spaceship wreckage, and Kafka agreed to let Sampo join them off-planet.

• Sampo told Chu Mu that the Old Director had died after an injury and illness, and that Big Sis had moved the Clinic into the Orphanage to honor her last wish of keeping a home for Chu Mu.
• Chu Mu remembered the Old Director’s kindness and the day she had welcomed him into the Orphanage.
• When Kafka and Silver Wolf returned, Chu Mu told them he had agreed with Sampo to collect nearby spaceship wreckage for useful parts.
• Sampo admitted that he wanted the wreckage to assemble a spaceship and asked to leave the planet with them, while Silver Wolf warned that he seemed dangerous.
• Kafka accepted Sampo’s proposal and asked him to gather the parts as soon as possible.

After Kafka and Silver Wolf questioned whether they should abandon Sampo, Chu Mu insisted they honor their contract, though he kept his suspicions about Sampo to himself. Kafka then comforted Chu Mu when he asked where people went after death, and he reflected that he had found a family.

• Kafka, Silver Wolf, and Chu Mu returned to their ship after settling their partnership with Sampo, while Arlan stayed behind to watch the shop.
• Kafka and Silver Wolf discussed Sampo's suspicious arrival and proposed leaving him behind, but Chu Mu said they should honor their contract.
• Chu Mu suspected Sampo was connected to Aha but chose to keep working with him, and Silver Wolf agreed to watch him rather than use a heavy machine gun.
• Kafka noticed Chu Mu was troubled and asked what was wrong.
• Chu Mu asked where people went after death, and Kafka comforted him by explaining that memories kept loved ones close.
• Chu Mu hugged Kafka and thought that he had a family now.

Luwan’s effort to control the spacecraft wreckage failed as Sampo secretly bought it all for his partnership with Chu Mu. While inspecting Sampo’s haul, Silver Wolf found an escape pod and explained how its hibernation and key-based opening worked, leaving Chu Mu wondering whether his own egg-shaped pod had truly been an escape pod.

• Luwan discovered that Sampo had outbid the Governor’s Mansion and bought all the spacecraft wreckage from the salvagers.
• Chu Mu and Silver Wolf visited Sampo’s ship to inspect his collected wreckage while Kafka stayed aboard their spacecraft.
• Silver Wolf identified a five-meter-tall conical piece of wreckage as an escape pod, and Sampo worried that someone inside might have starved.
• Chu Mu asked Silver Wolf about escape pod designs and reflected on his own past as a researcher found inside an egg-shaped pod.
• Silver Wolf explained that the pod contained a hibernation device and could only be opened by someone carrying its key.

Chu Mu and Silver Wolf opened the escape pod and found Asta, a wealthy young girl from a prominent Interastral Peace Corporation family. After bringing her back to the ship, Kafka learned about Asta and urged Chu Mu to win her over, leaving him reluctant to get involved.

• Chu Mu proposed using the escape pod's important occupant as bait, and Silver Wolf cracked its access key.
• Silver Wolf sent Sampo to inspect the opened pod, where Asta stunned him with a stun gun.
• Chu Mu persuaded Asta to leave the pod, and Silver Wolf carried her back to the ship while Sampo remained unconscious.
• Kafka befriended Asta and learned about her family, wealth, and Corporation connections.
• Kafka asked Chu Mu to use his sincerity to win Asta over, but he said they had nothing in common and asked her not to make him do it.

Chu Mu rejected Asta’s attempts to bridge the gap between their different upbringings, while Asta agreed to help Kafka’s crew leave the planet if they could not repair their ship. Arlan then reported that Sampo had been arrested and the ship impounded, prompting Kafka to go investigate.

• Chu Mu told Kafka that he and Asta came from different worlds and stopped trying to befriend her.
• Asta agreed to take Kafka and the others off the planet if they could not repair their ship, and signed a contract.
• Asta apologized to Chu Mu for shocking Sampo, but Chu Mu told her she would eventually return to her own world.
• Arlan arrived and reported that Sampo had been arrested and the ship impounded.
• Chu Mu explained that Sampo had been stunned by an electric shock, and Kafka went to investigate while Silver Wolf stayed behind.

Chu Mu and Luwan agreed to cooperate on salvaging spaceship wrecks, signing a contract that Luwan hoped would help revive Deep Blue Star's civilization. Outside the Governor's Mansion, Chu Mu noticed Sampo's apparent memory loss and watched Asta struggle to understand why her repeated apologies bothered him.

• Chu Mu and Luwan agreed that Chu Mu's group would take wreckage needed to repair their ship while Luwan's salvage fleet delivered the rest to Sampo.
• Kafka signed the contract as Chu Mu's guardian, and Luwan celebrated their agreement as a possible starting point for Deep Blue Star's revival.
• Chu Mu privately worried that the planet might be swallowed by a black hole within a year, but wished Luwan and his civilization success.
• Sampo told Chu Mu he could not remember meeting Asta or how he had reached the Governor's Mansion, prompting Chu Mu to wonder whether Sampo's memory loss was genuine or an act.
• Asta thanked Chu Mu for helping her, and Chu Mu reflected that her upbringing had made her repeated apologies seem insincere to people with different experiences.

Chu Mu and Asta watched Deep Blue Star’s total eclipse as Asta described her failed efforts to help the natives and Chu Mu condemned the IPC’s restrictions. When the Red Sun vanished, Deep-Sea Revenants appeared, while Luwan’s Eyeless Youth declared that the Divine Kingdom had descended.

• Asta told Chu Mu that the IPC had blocked her plans to provide Deep Blue Star with desalination equipment, power plants, and an information network.
• Chu Mu argued that the IPC’s charity was hypocritical because it restricted the natives’ civilization, and Asta fell silent.
• Asta watched the Black Sun cover the Red Sun, reaching totality as the land grew dark.
• A harbor whistle sounded, and people cried out that the Deep-Sea Revenants had arrived; Asta announced that the Red Sun was gone.
• Before the eclipse, Luwan visited his Eyeless Youth, who suddenly declared that the Divine Kingdom had descended and that he was being called to the Land of Bones.

A giant sea serpent carrying a rusted ship filled with undead cultists attacked Garbage City, and the cultists abducted Luwan’s son. Chu Mu, Silver Wolf, and Asta confronted the undead while Kafka tried to communicate with the serpent.

• Sampo spotted a giant sea serpent and a rusted ship packed with eyeless Black Sun Cultists approaching the harbor as the Moment of the Eclipse arrived.
• The serpent split Garbage City apart and carried the cultists to the Governor’s Mansion, where they forced their way inside to seize Luwan’s son.
• Luwan tried to hold back the cultists, but they took his son, who briefly begged his father to save him before being carried away.
• Luwan attacked the undead with a curved sword, but their worm-filled bodies kept moving even after being cut apart.
• Silver Wolf fired her heavy machine gun at the undead while Chu Mu and Asta watched, and Chu Mu realized the old report of an undead ship beneath the sea had been true.
• Silver Wolf said Kafka was trying to communicate with the serpent and learn why the cultists were pretending to be an Undead Calamity.

Silver Wolf, Kafka, Chu Mu, and Asta investigated the Swarm aboard the great ship, and Chu Mu connected the creature’s words to his Path of the Eyeless and Deep Blue Star. With Garbage City in chaos beneath the Black Sun, the group decided to travel to Skorint.

• Silver Wolf’s gunfire shredded the Black Sun Cultists, but the worms inside them formed an enormous Worm Ball.
• Kafka failed to control the giant serpent and reported that something aboard the ship had taken over its mind; she had heard it repeat “Unseeing, bones, Crown.”
• Chu Mu connected those words to his Path of the Eyeless, the Crown, and Skorint, and suspected that Aha had guided him to Deep Blue Star to obstruct his Path.
• Kafka noted that Garbage City had fallen into disorder and that the group needed to leave, while Silver Wolf joked that trouble proved they were protagonists.
• Asta proposed traveling to Skorint, and Chu Mu calculated that the journey would take about a month by Sampo’s Steamship.
• Kafka agreed they should leave as soon as possible, since the Black Sun’s dim light and spreading despair threatened the settlements.

Chu Mu learned that Luwan had abandoned his post as Governor to search for his son, and the ship departed the doomed Garbage City for Skorint. As Chu Mu connected the Black Sun Cult’s rituals to his own coronation and blindness, he suspected its followers had been imitating his past, and continued toward the capital to uncover the truth.

• Luwan told Chu Mu he was leaving to find his child, and Chu Mu let him board Sampo’s ship.
• Sampo found Chu Mu after Luwan had gone and learned that the former Governor had quit; the ship then sailed away from Garbage City.
• Chu Mu connected Luwan’s son’s vision and the Black Sun Cult’s practices to his own coronation, blindness, and Path, and suspected the cult had imitated his past.
• Chu Mu continued toward Skorint, where he expected the mystery of the coronation to become clear.
• The chapter described the steamship’s fuel and boiler arrangements, noting that the Interastral Peace Corporation had not surveyed the planet’s deep-sea resources.

As the red sun vanished and Deep Blue Star turned cold, Chu Mu learned from Luwan how the City of Bones was formed and uncovered the mystery surrounding the planet’s ancestors. Asta then proposed that the red sun had collapsed into a black hole rather than been devoured by the Black Sun.

• After Luwan fell ill from the sudden cold, Chu Mu visited him and asked why Skorint was called the City of Bones.
• Luwan explained that the Giant Whale Leader had created Deep Blue Star’s only land from his bones, and that the Interastral Peace Corporation later occupied it and built Skorint over buried ruins.
• Luwan told Chu Mu that the planet’s ancestors had been blind, and that his child had tried to prove this before becoming blind as well.
• After leaving Luwan’s cabin, Chu Mu met Asta, who said the red sun had not disappeared but had collapsed into a black hole.

Chu Mu and Asta discussed the vanished Red Sun and concluded that Skorint might hold the answers, while Chu Mu saw the sun drawing closer inside his fabricated space. As the Bosang traveled through increasingly desperate settlements, Luwan’s old junior helped its crew and sent the ship on with a new propulsion system.

• Asta theorized that the Red Sun still existed but could no longer be observed, and Chu Mu said they would seek the truth at Skorint.
• Chu Mu entered his fabricated space and saw the crimson sun closer than before, strengthening his suspicion that it was the vanished Red Sun.
• The Bosang passed the Nation of a Thousand Ships as residents fled toward larger city-states, then rescued one survivor from a nearby settlement devastated by internal strife.
• The Bosang found a third settlement under lockdown and saw smoke, while its boiler problems and worsening weather left the crew increasingly worried.
• The Bosang reached a settlement of fifty thousand people, where its female governor learned that Luwan might be dead and ordered a new propulsion system for the ship.
• Luwan hid from his old junior as the Bosang departed, remembering their shared years as scholars and their promise to meet again after civilization had been revived.