Chapter Summaries

The Grand Foundry Master recounted how his brother’s inventions and the settlers’ efforts built the Graycast Corridor, then explained to Gray the sacrifices required to lead it. He brought Gray and the players into a vast underground machine hall and introduced a towering machine as the real “Grand Foundry Master.”

• The Grand Foundry Master told Nuowa and the others how his younger brother’s inventions helped the settlers establish the Great Labyrinth City and develop it into the Graycast Corridor.
• Nuowa praised the Grand Foundry Master’s engraving talent, while [Do Some Farm Work] realized that he was an array master and that his profession conflicted with Rein’s plans.
• The Grand Foundry Master told Gray that leading the Graycast Corridor required readiness to sacrifice everything, and Gray firmly refused to change his mind.
• The Grand Foundry Master opened a hidden marble door and led Gray and the players into a vast underground hall filled with moving brass machinery.
• The gray-robed elder stopped beside a towering central machine and told Gray to meet the real “Grand Foundry Master.”

Gray learned that Balund had never been the Grand Foundry Master and that the title had belonged to his younger brother Aiboke, now housed in a mechanical coffin. Balund revealed a second coffin made for Gray and explained how Aiboke’s prosthetic research had helped the Graycast Corridor survive, ending with the question that began Aiboke’s search for a new path to High Tier.

• Balund told Gray that he had never been the Grand Foundry Master and introduced the mechanical coffin as Aiboke.
• Aiboke’s machine examined Gray, and Balund said it approved of him as a possible successor.
• Gray asked whether succeeding the Grand Foundry Master meant becoming like the figure in the coffin, and Balund revealed a second, more magnificent coffin built for Gray.
• Balund explained that Aiboke had pioneered prosthetic replacements, tested them on himself, and become the Graycast Corridor’s Grand Foundry Master.
• Balund described the threat posed by the Demonic Tide and the failing High Tier protector, then recalled Aiboke asking how a machine could simulate a person’s thoughts and soul.

Balund explained how he and Aiboke built a machine that could simulate a person’s mind and soul, with Aiboke becoming the Grand Foundry Master inside it. He warned Gray that the world was changing and the Graycast Corridor needed a successor, but said neither he nor Aiboke could take on the new machine.

• Balund told Gray that he had helped Aiboke become integrated with a machine designed to simulate human judgment and personality.
• Gray asked whether Aiboke was inside the machine and whether he was still alive; Balund said he did not know.
• Balund revealed that the Eternal Domain’s Twin Kings were reviving and that their undying legions would threaten the Graycast Corridor.
• Balund said Aiboke’s abilities were declining, so he and Aiboke had prepared a new machine and the handover of the Grand Foundry Master’s position.
• Balund told Gray that he lacked the talent for machinery and that Aiboke could not endure the process a second time.

Gray weighed whether to accept the mission to become the Grand Foundry Master, knowing it would mean his death, until Nora interrupted to volunteer in his place. Balund revealed that Nora had always been intended to replace him, while Gray would succeed Aiboke.

• Balund gave Gray the choice to accept the Grand Foundry Master mission or return to his old life, and promised to respect his decision.
• Gray struggled to decide as Nora silently watched, understanding that accepting the role meant death and separation.
• Just as Gray began to accept, Nora interrupted and argued that she was a better candidate to become the Grand Foundry Master.
• Balund told Nora that she had been meant to replace him, while Gray was meant to replace his brother Aiboke.

Gray uncovered Balund’s plan to separate the Grand Foundry Master’s public authority from the hidden power inside the metal coffin, and agreed to take the position but refused to make Nora his successor. Balund offered to transfer his power to Nora so she could live for centuries, but she insisted she could handle the role herself, and she and Gray ended the chapter arguing over their abilities.

• Gray realized that the election candidates’ companions had been chosen as proxies to exercise the Grand Foundry Master’s authority while the true master remained hidden beneath the city.
• Gray understood Balund’s pain at being unable to know whether Aiboke, the person closest to him, was alive or dead inside the metal coffin.
• Gray accepted the responsibility of becoming Grand Foundry Master but asked Balund to choose someone other than Nora as his successor.
• Balund told Nora that her Psionic Energy aptitude was sufficient and offered to transfer his power to her, which could extend her lifespan beyond two hundred years.
• Nora refused the offer and said she believed she could handle the role, prompting her and Gray to argue about their respective skills.

Ed interrupted the Graycast Corridor’s Grand Foundry Master succession as Gray and Nora argued over who would enter the life-threatening machine. He declared that he would take charge of the handover and keep everyone alive.

• Gray and Nora argued over who would enter the metal coffin, while Balund expected the survivor to inherit his power and become his successor.
• A spatial rift opened, showering Gray, Nora, and Balund with popcorn as a giant bee and Ed appeared.
• Balund realized Ed was the Son of God and suspected Nuowa, Liya, and the wall’s concealed psionic circuit had helped him bypass the screening formation.
• Ed challenged the succession’s life-or-death proceedings and insisted that a proper handover should include a friendly introduction and discussion of the Graycast Corridor’s history.
• Balund accused Ed of breaking his promise not to interfere in the succession, but Ed said the election was already over and declared he would manage the handover.
• Ed told Balund that he could keep everyone alive, which was what a truly perfect conclusion meant.

Ed convinced Balund to give him a chance to save the people of the Graycast Corridor by sharing a memory that revealed his extraordinary perspective. Balund lifted the Great Library’s lockdown to admit Ed’s guest while Ed prepared for the plan and sent Muller to fetch Hall.

• Balund asked Ed to prove he could save everyone, while Aiboke prepared to seal the underground space and surround it with guards.
• Ed shared a memory of a vast God's-eye view, and Balund inferred who Ed was before agreeing to give him a chance.
• Balund instructed Aiboke to let Ed’s guest enter the Great Library, keeping the level-one alert in place.
• Ed said he needed to make preparations, called Muller, and ordered him to bring Hall from the High-Quality Charcoal Processing Plant.
• Muller left for Valhalla’s outskirts as Balund observed the study beyond the spatial rift.

Balund learned that Ed did not intend to take over the Graycast Corridor, but planned to entrust it to a Machine Spirit. Ed revealed that he would awaken the Machine Spirit of the Great Labyrinth City, leaving Balund to consider whether the city could nurture one.

• Balund saw the nonhuman beings gathered with Ed and realized the Second Holy See was not the purely human faction he had assumed.
• A heavily modified clone resembling Ed arrived, and Ed told Balund to put him into the metal coffin to resolve the problem.
• Balund refused, believing Ed meant to become Grand Foundry Master and take control of the Graycast Corridor.
• Ed explained that he wanted the Machine Spirit to become the new Grand Foundry Master and protect the Corridor’s people.
• Ed said he planned to awaken the Great Labyrinth City’s Machine Spirit, describing the city’s eighty years of growth into a vast underground mechanical network.

Ed gained Balund’s approval to activate a Machine Spirit in Great Labyrinth City and began preparing the required components. Hall secretly hoped his escaped clone would have time to establish a new Hall Lineage, while Ed forced him to bite an empty clone and tried to cover his eyes with vines.

• Balund considered the risks of giving Great Labyrinth City a personality, then approved Ed’s plan.
• Ed asked Balund to explain the requirements for activating a Machine Spirit, and Balund listed Second Holy See components, Blood Corpses linked by plant tissue, and a powerful psionic impact.
• Ed rejected using Hall as the Machine Spirit’s core because Hall’s vitality might let him take control, and Hall worried Ed had discovered the clone that escaped to the Demon Realm.
• Ed revealed that his own empty clone could serve as a Blood Corpse and creation, then ordered Hall to bite it.
• Hall asked to meet the clone’s eyes instead, but Ed pushed him through the spatial rift and covered his eyes with vines.

Ed infected his avatar with Hall’s blood poison and transformed it into a hybrid of plant tissue, machinery, and psionic energy. He placed it inside the opened Mind Coffin, where it began assimilating the coffin’s mechanisms and spreading into the Great Labyrinth City as an unprecedented machine spirit approached awakening.

• Hall successfully infected Ed’s avatar with blood poison after several bites.
• Ed transformed the avatar into a rapidly mutating mass of plant tissue and reassembled mechanical parts, then told Balund to open the Mind Coffin.
• Balund and Aiboke opened the coffin’s eight layers, revealing its cramped inner chamber designed to seal a Grand Foundry Master candidate.
• Ed’s transformed avatar leapt into the chamber and began merging with its mechanisms and psionic circuits.
• The avatar’s plant tissue and blood poison spread through the mechanical structure, invading the Great Labyrinth City as a new machine spirit neared awakening.

Ed and Hall awakened Great Labyrinth City's Machine Spirit, and Grand Foundry Master Balund and Nuowa tested its awareness and abilities. Great Labyrinth City remembered its creation beginning eighty years earlier and said it could grow stronger with a stable supply of Psionic Energy.

• Ed spread his plant tissue through Great Labyrinth City, then forced Hall to release a Psionic Energy blast.
• The blast awakened a soul within Great Labyrinth City, whose machines began moving and spoke for the first time.
• Balund asked the Machine Spirit whether it could hear him and identify itself and him.
• Great Labyrinth City identified itself and Balund, then said its earliest memory was the activation of the first ore-transporting machine eighty years earlier.
• Nuowa questioned Great Labyrinth City about its reasoning, judgment, duty to protect Graycast Corridor, and strength.
• Great Labyrinth City said it needed time and examples to handle complex problems, would protect Graycast Corridor, and had strength between High Tier Low Grade and mid grade.

Balund made the Great Labyrinth City the Graycast Corridor’s new Grand Foundry Master, using a sealed avatar of Hall as its Psionic Energy source. He gave the Machine Spirit three principles to follow, then asked Gray Gris to serve as Grand Foundry Master in public.

• Balund asked whether the Great Labyrinth City could accept his Psionic Energy inheritance, but Nuowa stopped him and brought Hall’s avatars to the group.
• Balund, Nuowa, and the Great Labyrinth City agreed to seal Hall’s avatar in a coffin made from the Mind Coffin and use him as a steady Psionic Energy source.
• The Great Labyrinth City sealed Hall’s struggling avatar inside the coffin and reported that it felt better with the new energy supply.
• Balund appointed the Great Labyrinth City Grand Foundry Master and instructed it to prioritize humanity, the Graycast Corridor, and its own survival in that order.
• Balund asked Gray Gris to serve as Grand Foundry Master in public.

Gray accepted the task of serving as Grand Foundry Master for at least ten years while the Graycast Corridor adjusted to the Machine Spirit, and Balund retired. Ed offered Balund hope that Aiboke might still be alive, then entered the vines enclosing the first-generation Mind Coffin to speak with him alone.

• Balund told Gray and Nora that Gray would need to remain Grand Foundry Master for at least ten years before revealing the truth about the Great Labyrinth City or stepping down.
• Gray and Nora promised to fulfill their mission, and Balund removed his robe and announced his retirement.
• Balund prepared to press a button on the first-generation Mind Coffin, but Ed questioned whether Aiboke was truly dead.
• Ed told Balund that Aiboke might survive if Ed opened the coffin, and Balund offered to serve Ed in any personal capacity if his brother could be saved.
• Ed wrapped the first-generation Mind Coffin in vines and entered them before they closed, asking to speak with Aiboke alone.

After Ed disappeared into the vines to begin reconstructing Aiboke’s human body, Balund released the Soul Returners from their silence and asked them to keep the day’s events secret for ten years. While they waited, the players discussed psionics with Balund and [Do Some Farm Work] suggested he join the Second Holy See; the chapter ended with Ed beginning his difficult work on Aiboke.

• Ed vanished from the underground space, leaving Balund to release the Soul Returners from their silence and ask them to conceal what happened for ten years.
• [Do Some Farm Work] suggested that Balund join the newly established Second Holy See, and Balund said he might consider it depending on Aiboke’s fate.
• [Vanilla Ice Cream Scoop] asked Balund for advice about controlling psionic energy after her brother requested the question.
• The two Short-Eared Elves took Marquis Kebola to Corridor Guard headquarters, where his capture promised a prisoner exchange and a bounty for them.
• Ed merged with the vines, confirmed that Aiboke understood his plan, and began analyzing the metal cube to reconstruct Aiboke’s human body.

Ed discovered that Aiboke’s soul had fragmented across the Mind Coffin’s psionic circuits and began reassembling it, explaining that Aiboke would return as a half-plant, half-machine person at Middle Tier. Aiboke agreed after learning his authority over machinery would likely pass mainly to Great Labyrinth City, and Ed’s procedure revealed what was inside the opened mass of vines.

• Ed realized Aiboke’s soul had attached to the Mind Coffin and shattered into three thousand pieces within its psionic circuits.
• Ed told Aiboke he would reshape his soul, leaving him a half-plant, half-machine person whose tier would fall to Middle Tier.
• Aiboke asked whether someone else could inherit his authority, and Ed explained that Great Labyrinth City would likely receive most of the authority over machinery.
• Aiboke accepted the procedure, and Ed reassured him that his success rate was one hundred percent.
• Balund remotely taught [Chocolate Ice Cream Scoop] a formula for releasing psionic energy as [Vanilla Ice Cream Scoop] relayed the lesson.
• Powerful psionic fluctuations spread, and the enormous ball of vines opened to reveal what was inside.

Ed restored Aiboke in a new body, allowing him and Balund to reunite after decades apart. Balund accepted the invitation to join the Second Holy See, and Ed appointed him and Aiboke as mentors.

• Ed brought Balund to meet Aiboke, whose new body he had built from Aiboke's memories, and explained that Aiboke's abilities had returned to just below high tier.
• Aiboke greeted Balund and described his memories of the decades spent in the Mind Coffin as dreamlike.
• The Soul Returners, elves, Ed, and Balund applauded as the brothers reunited.
• Balund agreed to join the Second Holy See, asking to return to Graycast Corridor if it came under attack.
• Ed appointed Balund as the Second Holy See's Psionic Energy Path Mentor and Aiboke as its Mechanical Path Mentor.

Ed finished preparing Balund and Aiboke to join the Second Holy See, giving them a modified Mind Coffin for their journey through the Wilderness of Chaos. After Ed left, Nuowa promised the Soul Returners he would visit within three months, giving them time to repay their loan.

• Ed explained that the modified Mind Coffin could serve as a mobile fortress and let Aiboke merge with it for a short time to gain high tier low grade power.
• Aiboke tested the machine by fitting his joints into it and transforming it into metal armor, then asked to use it to travel with Balund to the Second Holy See.
• Ed told the brothers that he would be in the Holy City after the end of July, year 909 of the Royal Calendar, and they agreed to make their own travel plans.
• Nuowa formally asked to visit Ed at the Second Holy See, and Ed welcomed him and Liya.
• [Vanilla Ice Cream Scoop] reminded Nuowa and Liya about the Soul Returners' loan, and Nuowa said he would visit within three months so they could repay him.
• Balund and Aiboke left the Great Library in disguise, while the Soul Returners took King of Fall Resistance, I Guess, to Martial Uncle Gray's repair shop to remove its Blood Corpse ammunition packs.

Gray Gris began his tenure as Grand Foundry Master by ordering a crackdown on underground gambling, while the failed candidate Suolaer Aoermo faced the shadowy figures who had backed him. The Short-Eared Elves left the Great Labyrinth City to investigate trouble at their old grave, and Suolaer accepted one last chance from his patrons.

• The Soul Returners arrived in the Great Labyrinth City, where some chose to vacation, work, or settle, while Ed let them decide their own paths.
• Gray Gris signed Order No. 00001, sending the Corridor Guard to raid underground casinos identified by the Short-Eared Elves, though the illicit money had disappeared.
• Balund and Aiboke said goodbye to Nuowa and Liya as the brothers began their first vacation in eighty years and the elves left to check on their island.
• Suolaer Aoermo explained that he had been watched during the Grand Foundry Master handover and admitted to the figure in the shadows that he had failed.
• The shadowy figure gave Suolaer a sealed test tube of potion and told him the lords would forgive his incompetence only once.

[Do Some Farm Work] exploited a tavern’s free-refill offer by repeatedly drinking its painful motor oil special after turning off pain perception. Meanwhile, Gray’s martial uncle’s shop filled with people congratulating him on Gray’s election, and former gift money returned to the elderly man.

• [Do Some Farm Work] found a tavern offering free refills to anyone who downed its strong motor oil special in one gulp.
• [Do Some Farm Work] endured the liquor’s painful effects, then had Light Blue turn off his pain perception so he could keep drinking.
• [Do Some Farm Work] posted the tavern’s location in the mission group chat, drawing Soul Returners toward the free drinks.
• Gray’s martial uncle’s shop filled with Gray and Nora’s friends and relatives, who congratulated the elderly man and returned the gift money he had recently repaid.
• [Vanilla Ice Cream Scoop] removed the King of Fall Resistance, I Guess’s Blood Corpse ammunition pack, while Xiaodeng recruited [Chocolate Ice Cream Scoop] to help with work.

While dismantling ammunition packs, [Vanilla Ice Cream Scoop] questioned why NPCs such as Ed, Seraphina, Willow, and Duma seemed to know things players had taught them. [Chocolate Ice Cream Scoop] explained that NPCs could learn from and imitate players, then suggested asking people with official access for more information.

• [Vanilla Ice Cream Scoop] told [Chocolate Ice Cream Scoop] that Ed had known about dumplings and their figurative meaning in the Great Labyrinth City.
• [Chocolate Ice Cream Scoop] said Seraphina had learned about finance from players and Willow had become interested in magic from 'Har*y Potter.'
• [Chocolate Ice Cream Scoop] recounted that Duma had started saying either 'I don't understand' or 'Want Want dumplings' when talking with [Zhongde].
• [Vanilla Ice Cream Scoop] concluded that the NPCs were more natural and distinct than ordinary AI, and [Chocolate Ice Cream Scoop] admitted he did not know why.
• [Chocolate Ice Cream Scoop] told [Vanilla Ice Cream Scoop] to ask [Dawn Ah], [Backstabbing Expert], and [Evergreen Tree], whom he said were actual official personnel.