Chapter Summaries

After awakening as Wilt Mirage, one of Amon’s avatars, Xu Zhe faced more than a hundred other avatars outside an ancient ruin and tried to survive their memory search. The sarira killed the gathered avatars and entered Wilt, whose attempt to call on the Key of Light drew the attention of the Great Circle of Inevitability.

• Xu Zhe awoke in Wilt Mirage’s body, recovered his memories, and learned that Wilt had died exploring an ancient ruin.
• Wilt found a golden-swastika sarira, then left the ruins and faced more than a hundred of Amon’s avatars.
• Wilt gave the sarira to a demigod avatar, who demanded to search Wilt’s memories; when the avatar tried to do so, he exploded.
• The sarira rose into the air and its golden light killed every Amon avatar before it entered Wilt’s body.
• Wilt suffered grievous wounds beneath the watching stars and recited the Key of Light’s Honorific Name to heal himself.
• A pillar of light descended onto Wilt, revealing the Great Circle of Inevitability.

Wilt entered the Key of Light and survived an attempt by the Circle of Inevitability to corrupt him, gaining a boon that made him a Sequence 9 Dancer while already a Sequence 8 Marauder. After Amon’s avatar sent him away by giving him Amon’s Honorific Name, Wilt arrived at the Corpse Cathedral, where Adam and Amon were waiting.

• Wilt entered the Key of Light, where the sarira suppressed the Circle of Inevitability’s corruption and he gained the Eternal Aeon Pathway’s Sequence 9 Dancer boon.
• Wilt woke among Amon’s avatars, and No. 037 revealed that Wilt had destroyed many avatars near the Rorsted Archipelago.
• Wilt probed No. 037 about what he knew, then recited Amon’s Honorific Name when the avatar offered it as a way to send him to the original body.
• Wilt traveled through the Spirit World and appeared inside the Corpse Cathedral, confused that Amon’s Honorific Name had brought him to Adam’s domain.
• Wilt recognized King of Angel-Adam and King of Angel-Amon, who stood before him in the cathedral.

Wilt explained how he had been contaminated by the Key of Light and the Circle of Inevitability, then learned that the Circle’s Boon was still changing him and could turn him into a puppet. Adam offered a plan to slow the contamination and buy time.

• Amon revealed that he had brought Adam to assess Wilt after spending powerful avatars to cut off the contamination spreading from him.
• Wilt recounted finding a golden bead in the Rorsted Archipelago ruins, receiving the Key of Light’s information, and witnessing the Circle of Inevitability’s power reach him from the starry sky.
• Wilt said the Key of Light’s controller, Holy Monk, sealed some of the Circle’s contamination, though its residual power made him a Sequence 9 Dancer.
• Amon explained that a Boon was a pathway bestowed by a Great Old One, and Wilt described the Dancer’s abilities.
• Adam used the Blasphemy Slate to examine Wilt and determined that the Circle’s Boon carried a Sequence One power that could keep advancing and eventually make Wilt its puppet.
• Adam told Wilt he had a plan to slow the contamination and buy him time.

Adam explained that Wilt could slow the Circle of Inevitability’s corruption by using fate-related authority, then gave him a Monster Pathway Potion that let him become a Sequence 9. Adam revealed that Wilt and Amon’s fates were bound together and asked Wilt to pay for his help with information about the Western Continent and the Great Old Ones.

• Adam told Wilt that advancing in the Monster Pathway could strengthen the Key of Light’s seal and eventually let him absorb the Circle of Inevitability’s corruption.
• Amon explained that Wilt could keep his Marauder foundation and become a Beyonder of three Pathways, while Adam supplied a Sequence 9 Monster Potion.
• Wilt drank the Potion, suffered severe ravings and injuries, and was healed by a brilliant light and a soothing mental force.
• Wilt successfully became a Sequence 9 of the Wheel of Fortune Pathway: Monster, and Adam said his first advancement had been the most dangerous.
• Adam explained that Wilt’s corruption could cause Catastrophes if he died and that Wilt’s fate was bound to Amon’s, so they would both be affected by what happened to him.
• Adam said his help came at a price: Wilt had to provide information about the Western Continent and the Great Old Ones.

Wilt accepted work from Adam to gather information about the Western Continent and the Circle of Inevitability, receiving powerful items from Adam and Amon with dangerous limits. After leaving the Corpse Cathedral as Amon's avatar Number 041 and advancing to Sequence 7 Cryptologist, he opened a door into a room where Tris had just killed a man, and Tris attacked him.

• Adam recruited Wilt to learn about the Western Continent and report the Circle of Inevitability's Sequence abilities, making him an external member of the Twilight Hermit Order.
• Adam gave Wilt a Spectator Pathway mask, while Amon modified a monocle into a Marauder Pathway item and named Wilt avatar Number 041, warning him not to use either item for more than ten seconds.
• Wilt told Adam the Honorific Names of the Key of Light and the Circle of Inevitability, and Amon rewarded him by advancing him to Sequence 7 Cryptologist.
• Adam and Amon discussed Wilt's unexplained condition after Wilt left the Corpse Cathedral, and Amon returned to the Forsaken Land of the Gods.
• Wilt emerged in an unknown room and saw Tris slit a man's throat; Tris turned and charged at Wilt with his dagger.

Wilt fought Tris aboard the Alfalfa, using a Sealed Artifact and a revolver to survive their exchange. After the ship crashed into port, Wilt recognized Tris as the instigator behind the killings and warned him that the police were coming.

• Tris charged Wilt, who used Mental Interference to dodge before striking him with the Sealed Artifact's Mind Breath.
• Tris feigned weakness, then threw a dagger and drew a revolver, but the Alfalfa crashed into port and the impact disarmed him.
• Wilt grabbed the revolver and fired at Tris, but Tris dodged the shot.
• Wilt recognized Tris as an Aurora Order member who had incited the Alfalfa's passengers to kill one another.
• Tris refused Wilt's offer to make peace, so Wilt shot through the window and told him the police would soon arrive.

Wilt let Tris escape, then used his Amon avatar’s identity to frighten Ince Zangwill into passing him by. Ince escaped through the Spirit World and realized the Quill of Alzuhod had orchestrated the encounter.

• Wilt convinced Tris to leave by claiming he knew Sharon, then returned Tris’s dagger while keeping his revolver.
• After Tris jumped into the sea, Wilt left the revolver behind for the official Beyonders to use to track him and erased his own traces.
• Wilt went to Tingen City and considered swindling people to earn money and digest his Potion.
• Wilt encountered Ince Zangwill and put on a monocle, making Ince believe he was facing Amon.
• Ince walked past Wilt without incident, escaped through the Spirit World, and accused the Quill of Alzuhod of arranging the encounter.

Ince Zangwill stopped the Quill of Alzuhod from writing him into danger, while Wilt used an Amon avatar’s supposed presence to scare him off. After receiving an assessment task from the Twilight Hermit Order, Wilt planned to exploit Lanevus’s scam to make money and inflame Tingen’s political conflict, then considered using Dancer Pathway abilities to digest the Monster Potion.

• Ince Zangwill found that the Quill of Alzuhod had written several versions of an encounter with an Amon avatar, then added that the avatar would leave him alone and might even help his plan.
• Wilt removed his monocle after Ince Zangwill left, rested at an inn, and received a letter assigning him an external membership assessment in Tingen City.
• Wilt listed digesting his Potions and making money as priorities, then decided to use Lanevus’s scam to swindle nobles and deepen the divide between Tingen City’s Conservative Party and New Party.
• Wilt considered recruiting Avatar No. 037 to help with the scam and noted that Sharon’s presence would help drive the two parties apart.
• Wilt rejected imitating Ademisaul to digest the Monster Potion and decided to use Dancer Pathway abilities instead.

Wilt contacted Avatar 037 to propose using Lanevus’s scam as the basis for a much larger fraud targeting Tingen City’s nobles. They negotiated over the proceeds, and Wilt suggested betraying their partners so he could keep his share while the Aurora Order took the blame.

• Wilt considered using his Dance of Attraction ability to act as a Monster, but postponed testing it to prepare for the Lanevus matter.
• Wilt used a monocle to contact Avatar 037 and proposed a partnership that could earn them hundreds of thousands of pounds.
• Wilt explained Lanevus’s iron-mine scam and described a revised story involving a gold mine, an impoverished noble, and the Rorsted Archipelago governor’s office.
• Avatar 037 agreed to participate but demanded seventy percent, then negotiated for sixty percent because the plan required deception and coordination with another avatar.
• Wilt suggested tricking the other collaborators into doing the work and framing the Aurora Order and Demoness Sect, leaving the real Swindler hidden.

Wilt learned two Western Continent holy monk cultivation methods through the Key of Light and discovered he could partially awaken its arhat Merit Avatars with a sarira. He then used the sarira to restore ghosts’ awareness and began testing his powers in Tingen’s cemetery, where a ghostly girl led the gravekeeper to realize she matched a child’s gravestone photograph.

• Wilt entered the Key of Light and learned the Scripture of Deliverance from Misfortune and the Merit Sarira Condensation Method.
• Wilt used his sarira on Buddha, bodhisattva, and Wisdom King statues without success, then established a faint connection with an arhat Merit Avatar before stopping because of the strain.
• Wilt practiced the Scripture of Deliverance from Misfortune and discovered he could summon the sarira at will.
• Wilt attracted more than a dozen wandering ghosts in a Tingen cemetery and used the sarira to restore their awareness, promising to guide them into reincarnation after digesting his Potion.
• A ghost appeared to the gravekeeper as a lost little girl and asked him to help find her parents.
• The gravekeeper noticed a gravestone photograph of a child identical to the girl and froze as she asked why he had stopped helping her.

Wilt used a gravekeeper’s terror to test whether his Potion had been digested, then sent the souls inside him into reincarnation with the Sarira. Over the following days, he caused more supernatural incidents to digest his Monster Potion and returned to the Khoy River to continue.

• A little girl dragged the gravekeeper deeper into the cemetery, where Wilt appeared as a terrifying cloaked figure and gave him a ten-pound note.
• The gravekeeper accepted the note and fled to Evernight Church, where Dunn and the Nighthawks discovered it was white paper marked with a bloody handprint.
• Wilt released the souls within him and used the Sarira and the Scripture of Deliverance from Misfortune to send them into reincarnation.
• Wilt caused supernatural incidents around Tingen City over the next few days, steadily digesting his Monster Potion.
• Wilt returned to the banks of the Khoy River to continue digesting his Potion.

Wilt discovered that the resentful spirit he had confined in the Khoy River had become an evil spirit just as it attacked Selena Wood, Melissa Moretti, and Elizabeth. After Wilt helped repel its vines, Selena’s amulet struck the spirit and transformed it into a more dangerous, dark-marked creature.

• Wilt found the resentful spirit missing from the Khoy River and met Selena, Elizabeth, and Melissa Moretti, Klein’s younger sister, while they investigated the water monster.
• Selena told Wilt that students had been dragged underwater by vines and that the Church of Evernight had dismissed their reports as hallucinations.
• The spirit attacked Selena with vines, and Wilt and her friends struggled to pull her from the river.
• Wilt shot the spirit’s vines and cut the ones around Selena, then urged the three girls to flee.
• Selena threw her amulet at the spirit as it emerged from the water, and the amulet transformed it into a dark-marked creature with black thorny vines.

Wilt fought an evil spirit that attacked Melissa, Selena, and Elizabeth, and the Church of Evernight's Nighthawks arrived to defeat it. As Wilt helped the injured women, he recognized the elderly Nighthawk who warned him not to remove the briars without first giving the victims potions.

• Wilt shot the evil spirit and tried to help Melissa and her friends escape, but its shriek left all three girls badly injured.
• The evil spirit pierced Selena and Elizabeth with its briars and drained their blood and energy, while Wilt used Steal to rescue Melissa and free the two women.
• Wilt protected Melissa with an amulet barrier and changed his plan when he spotted three Nighthawks approaching.
• The Nighthawks immobilized and attacked the evil spirit, then defeated it as Melissa thanked Wilt for saving her.
• An elderly Nighthawk warned Wilt not to remove the briars without treating Selena and Elizabeth first, and Wilt recognized him.

Wilt and Melissa met the Nighthawks after Old Neil saved them, and they discovered Melissa was Klein Moretti’s sister. Klein returned from patrol just as Melissa appeared, leaving him shocked to see her at Blackthorn Security Company.

• Wilt told Old Neil how the river monster had attacked and said Selena’s amulet came from an occult teacher named Vincent.
• Old Neil examined Melissa’s amulet and recognized it as the one Klein had made for his sister.
• Melissa confirmed her name was Melissa Moretti and said her brother was Klein Moretti.
• Old Neil reported the connection to Dunn, who told him not to reveal that Klein had become a Beyonder.
• Leonard told Rozanne that Klein had nearly been killed by an evil spirit, and Klein then saw Melissa and asked why she was there.

Wilt said goodbye to Melissa and Klein after the Nighthawks rescued them, then received forged documents from an Amon avatar that made him the supposed impoverished noble Wilt Mirage. Avatar 037 told him the dangerous scam was meant to help him digest the Swindler Potion, leaving Wilt angry but facing a chance to gain money and a noble title.

• Melissa remained upset with Klein for hiding his dangerous work, while Wilt prepared to leave the Church of Evernight.
• Leonard questioned Wilt's ability to fight an evil spirit, and Wilt attributed it to expensive bullets from the Rorsted Archipelago.
• Klein gave Wilt an amulet and heard Wilt warn that someone was manipulating his discordant fate through coincidences.
• Wilt returned to the inn and found detailed forged documents about a gold mine and an impoverished noble named Wilt Mirage.
• Wilt used a monocle to contact Avatar 037, who explained that the noble identity came from an Amon avatar and that putting Wilt at the center of the scam would help him digest the Swindler Potion.

Wilt visited Lanevus at the Lanevus Steel Company and confronted him with documents exposing his fraudulent mine scheme. After revealing that Lanevus had been chosen as a Divine Descent Vessel, Wilt let him flee, hoping fear would make him cooperate; Wilt then invoked Ince Zangwill and the Quill of Alzuhod.

• Wilt arrived at the Lanevus Steel Company disguised with a monocle and a Manipulator Beyonder item, claiming he wanted to invest.
• Wilt used Psychological Invisibility to keep Lanevus calm while he read documents exposing the fraud.
• Wilt identified Lanevus as a Sequence 8 Swindler and used Mind Breath to defeat him when he tried to attack.
• Wilt said two Sequence 3 Saints were behind the plan and recognized Lanevus's attempt to bargain for leverage.
• Wilt accidentally revealed that Lanevus was a Divine Descent Vessel, then removed the ring and offered to let Lanevus escape Tingen City.
• Lanevus fled in panic, and Wilt muttered the names Ince Zangwill and the Quill of Alzuhod.

Ince Zangwill wrote events that drove Lanevus back to Tingen City and into cooperation with Amon’s avatar. Lanevus learned that the True Creator had marked him as a potential Divine Descent Vessel and asked Wilt to help him escape his fate.

• Ince Zangwill wrote that Madam D had rescued Lanevus and returned him to Tingen City under the True Creator’s command.
• Lanevus abandoned his escape plans and agreed to Wilt’s proposal to help swindle the nobles.
• Lanevus told Wilt about his encounters and asked what the Divine Descent Vessel was.
• Wilt explained that the True Creator had focused on Lanevus after he met Sirius Arapis, making him a candidate for the vessel.
• Wilt warned Lanevus that an Angel-level figure had arranged his misfortunes, and Lanevus stopped asking who it was.
• Lanevus agreed to help Wilt carry out the plan if Wilt’s two Saints would help him escape his fate as a Divine Descent Vessel.

Wilt tested Lanevus with a fraud plan and recruited him to infiltrate the Hermits of Fate. After Madam D followed Wilt on the True Creator’s oracle, Wilt tried to convince her to help with Lanevus’s plan in Tingen City.

• Wilt told Lanevus that completing the fraud plan would earn him help escaping his difficulties, but required him to infiltrate the Hermits of Fate.
• Lanevus explained that he had found both his badge and Potion formula on a corpse, and Wilt instructed him to begin the fraud plan.
• Wilt encountered Madam D, who said the True Creator had shown her an image of Wilt and prompted her to follow him.
• Wilt reasoned that their goals in Tingen City aligned and invited Madam D to help advance Lanevus and prepare for the True Creator’s descent.

Wilt recruited Madam D into the gold-mine swindle, then attracted the Hidden Sage while performing a ritual and received knowledge of Life Alchemy. After escaping a powerful creature, he emerged beside an unconscious woman and recognized Trissy.

• Wilt told Madam D about the plan to swindle nobles and agreed to give her seventy thousand pounds for her help.
• Madam D revealed she was a Blessed of the True Creator and said Wilt could contact her through Lanevus.
• While performing the Dance of Attraction, Wilt drew the Hidden Sage, who infused him with knowledge of Life Alchemy before the Sarira stabilized him.
• A powerful octopus-bodied skeleton attacked Wilt, who escaped with Dream Traversal after his golden bullets failed to stop it.
• Wilt emerged beside an unconscious woman and recognized the other woman nearby as Trissy.

Wilt stumbled upon Trissy’s ritual to curse Joyce and fought her after she recognized him as Vincent. As Wilt tried to explain himself and account for her missing revolver, the Beyonder creature that had pursued him appeared in the warehouse and attacked them both.

• Trissy prepared to use Joyce’s abducted fiancée, Anna, as a sacrifice when Wilt arrived at the warehouse, and she attacked him in anger over the Vincent who had betrayed her.
• Wilt stole Trissy’s Black Flame ability and fought her as she used wand substitutes, invisibility, and a mirror to evade his attacks.
• Trissy demanded to know how Wilt had seen through her invisibility and stolen her ability, and Wilt claimed the Demoness Sect knew her because she was important to it.
• Trissy agreed to believe Wilt if he returned her revolver, but he began to explain that it was unavailable before transparent tentacles attacked them.
• The octopus-bodied, skeletal Beyonder creature appeared in the warehouse with a scythe, leaving Wilt and Trissy to dodge its attack.