Chapter Summaries

Alice and Leo encountered Abigail, who killed three Heluoluo Academy apprentices, before Adelaide and six Black Skull Academy apprentices ambushed them. Alice was trapped by Adelaide while Leo was cornered by the other six.

• Abigail killed three Heluoluo Academy apprentices by hurling them high into the air, then told Alice that the top apprentices from the other academies had appeared.
• Alice left with Leo and denied his hostile feelings toward Abigail, warning him that he was too weak to challenge Abigail.
• Adelaide and six Black Skull Academy apprentices surrounded Alice and Leo, and Alice identified Adelaide as Black Skull Academy's top apprentice.
• The Black Skull apprentices attacked, but Alice used Thousand-Kill Ice Seal to disrupt them and tried to flee with Leo.
• Adelaide blocked Alice with stone giants while Leo escaped with Thunder Flash, but six Black Skull apprentices trapped him behind a barrage of fireballs.

Leo used shadow ambushes and his exceptional body-refinement defenses to kill six Black Skull wizard apprentices, then disappeared before more wizards could arrive. Alice and Adelaide were still locked in a fierce battle, with neither gaining a decisive advantage.

• Leo used illusions and shadow jumps to ambush and kill Jialuolin and Keniyasi, then killed Xinima with his greatsword.
• Leo broke through Lamanlade’s rock defense and killed him, surviving burst fireballs from the two remaining apprentices.
• Leo endured a direct burst fireball and killed the last Black Skull apprentice before healing himself and vanishing into the shadows.
• Alice attacked Adelaide with ice spells while his seven stone golems blocked her attacks and let him counterattack.
• The battle between Alice and Adelaide drew elemental power and stirred fierce winds across the area.

Leo launched a surprise attack on Adelaide, whose layered defenses had withstood Alice’s assault, and used a shattered energy crystal to break through his remaining barrier. Adelaide’s wizard artifacts activated, including a teleportation array, as Leo drove himself to unleash another attack.

• Leo assessed Adelaide’s Stone Golems, protective barriers, and wizard artifacts, then prepared his lightning-enchanted greatsword as a secret trump card.
• Alice destroyed Stone Golems and kept Adelaide occupied while Leo emerged from the shadow behind him.
• Leo’s Thunder Plow Sweep shattered Adelaide’s first protective barrier, but the second stopped his greatsword.
• Leo shattered the energy crystal in his sword’s hilt and used the resulting power to cut through Adelaide’s second barrier.
• Adelaide’s wizard robe activated its protections, and his ring shattered as a teleportation array began to activate.
• Leo roared and forced more strength into his body and sword as he tried to finish Adelaide before he could escape.

Leo killed Adelaide with Thunder Plow Sweep, revealing the terrifying attack power he could unleash by consuming an energy crystal. After Alice acknowledged his strength, they tried to flee the battlefield but found themselves surrounded by more than two hundred apprentices from Soul Death Knell Wizard Academy, and Alice claimed she could wipe them out.

• Leo used Thunder Plow Sweep to kill Adelaide and destroy the remaining Stone Golems, exhausting the energy crystal that powered his attack.
• Leo collected Adelaide's academy badge and wizard ring, and Alice told him she had underestimated him and believed he would become an excellent wizard.
• Leo and Alice left the battlefield, but more than two hundred wizard apprentices surrounded them and tracked their attempts to change direction.
• Leo and Alice replenished their mana with Black Pearl Potions, and Alice identified the encircling apprentices as members of Soul Death Knell Wizard Academy.
• Alice told Leo to protect her because she had a way to wipe out the surrounding apprentices.

Leo prepared to defend Alice while two hundred apprentices from the Dead Poets Society Guild surrounded them in a coordinated formation. After Leo refused their offer to join them, they launched a massive attack that left him unable to fight back, while Alice continued casting her spell.

• Leo strengthened his body, readied his greatsword, and took a position in front of Alice as she began chanting.
• Leo assessed the encirclement and realized the apprentices’ ten staggered rings left no safe route through their formation.
• The Dead Poets Society Guild invited Leo to join them, but he refused because he could not abandon Alice.
• The guild leader ordered the two hundred apprentices to attack, and they sealed off the ground and sky as elemental forces surged around Leo and Alice.
• The apprentices’ opening attack disoriented Leo and shook his grip on his sword as a terrifying spell pressed down on him and Alice.

Alice used Great Space Teleportation Witchcraft to summon a vast horde of Fire Elemental Spirits, breaking the attack by Soul Death Knell Academy and saving Leo. After Alice recovered in a cave, Leo found a weapon of mass destruction in Adelaide’s wizard ring, prompting painful memories of Earth and hope that more things survived its destruction.

• Alice opened a spatial rift and unleashed countless Fire Elemental Spirits, which shattered Soul Death Knell Academy’s formation and killed many apprentices.
• The surviving Soul Death Knell apprentices retreated, and Alice passed out after exhausting her mana and mental power.
• Leo caught Alice and brought her to a clean cave, where she woke three days later.
• Leo showed Alice the wizard rings he had collected, then discovered a weapon of mass destruction in Adelaide’s ring.
• Leo wondered how the bomb had survived Earth’s destruction and relived memories of his life there.

After witnessing a devastating large-scale combination witchcraft attack, Leo decided to stop hunting apprentices and investigate a new path inspired by his homeland. Alice agreed to stay with him and protect him while he tested his ideas.

• Leo excitedly studied the weapon of mass destruction and filled a notebook with ideas about a path his homeland had left for him.
• Alice recovered and joined Leo at the cave, where they sensed large-scale witchcraft on a distant mountain and watched the battle through her Ice Mirror.
• Lightning, torrential rain, freezing snow, and shaped ice attacks destroyed the mountain and killed many of the Wizard Apprentices inside.
• Alice identified the battle as an attack by Heluoluo Wizard Academy on Big Ben Wizard Academy and explained the role of large-scale combination witchcraft in expeditions.
• Leo decided to stay in the cave to conduct experiments instead of hunting apprentices, and Alice agreed to remain with him.

Leo settled in a hidden cave with Alice and began studying the atomic bomb, hoping to combine mastery of atomic energy with radiation-driven body refinement. He discovered that radiation caused harmful cellular changes and continued his experiments despite limited equipment and little progress.

• Leo gave up hunting other Wizard Apprentices and made a hidden cliffside cave his base, while he and Alice set up separate laboratories.
• Leo dismantled the atomic bomb, recorded its construction, and removed its 70 kilograms of uranium-235 despite having only protective barriers against radiation.
• After brief exposure to the uranium, Leo developed tiny cancerous growths that his body quickly expelled, showing him that nuclear radiation could not be safely used to refine himself without controlling cellular evolution.
• Leo stored the uranium in a prepared container and began planning experiments to study fission and control radiation-induced cellular changes.
• As the experiments yielded little progress with his primitive laboratory, Leo spent his days filling notebooks and occasionally talking with Alice about the Wizard World and her travels.

Leo discovered that his shadow absorbed uranium-235 and, after years of tracking his bodily data with Benji’s help, found signs that this process accelerated his evolution. He left the discovery as a tentative hypothesis and focused on verifying it, while Benji deferred explaining his world’s supreme god until Leo reached level one.

• Leo tested whether his shadow would absorb 0.1 milligrams of uranium-235, and it swallowed the material without any immediately observable change.
• After three days of monitoring, Leo merged with his shadow and observed that it reduced radiation-related harm in his body by 50%, but he still found no change in the shadow itself.
• Benji revealed he had been following Leo’s work and agreed to help measure changes in Leo’s body.
• Over the next three years, Leo increased the uranium-235 dose to 10 grams and found that his shadow still appeared unchanged.
• Leo compared years of bodily measurements and found several rates of change above normal, leading him to suspect that merging with the shadow after it absorbed nuclear material accelerated his evolution.
• Benji said even his world’s supreme god had a fixed Shadow Talent, and promised to explain more once Leo reached level one.

With the tournament nearing its end, Leo prepared a modified atomic bomb as a last-resort weapon while Alice strengthened their cave defenses. When thousands of Wizard Apprentices surrounded their hideout and provoked Alice, she and Leo went out to fight.

• Leo and Alice realized that nine years of the tournament had passed and prepared for its final year in hiding.
• After considering how to defend against a large force, Leo modified an atomic bomb with wizard runes and an energy crystal, despite Benji warning him of the consequences.
• Alice's warning array detected an approaching Wizard Apprentice, so Leo packed their belongings and prepared to flee using a teleportation array.
• Two days later, thousands of Wizard Apprentices surrounded the cave and mocked Alice for hiding with Leo.
• Furious, Alice confirmed Leo's plan would work, then charged out of the cave with Leo following her.

Leo and Alice fled a massive ambush, but their pursuers drove them into a large encirclement. Aidelin revealed that Purple Flame Academy was last in the tournament while Black Skull Academy led, leaving Leo and Alice trapped among thousands of apprentices.

• Leo and Alice escaped from the cave under a barrage of spells, with Leo’s three protective magic items destroyed during their descent.
• Alice and Leo dodged and endured the relentless attacks, but the pursuing apprentices forced Alice back toward Leo.
• The apprentices surrounded them on the ground, and Leo tore open his wounds to remove lingering elemental attacks while Alice stood beside him.
• Leo asked Alice about the apprentice mocking her, and she identified her as Aidelin, a top-tier wizard apprentice from Black Skull Academy.
• Aidelin said fewer than five thousand apprentices remained and that the surrounding crowd made up half of them.
• Alice saw that Purple Flame Academy had the fewest people present, and Aidelin declared that it ranked last while Black Skull Academy led the tournament.

Leo and Alice escaped a spell barrage from more than two thousand apprentices, and Leo’s bomb detonated in a nuclear explosion that devastated the surrounding area. As fire, shock waves, a landslide, radiation, and a fire tornado swept across the landscape, Alice demanded to know what Leo had unleashed.

• Alice realized Black Skull Academy had united the other academies against them, leaving Purple Flame Academy without its top apprentices.
• At Aidelin’s command, more than two thousand wizard apprentices attacked Leo and Alice at once.
• Alice activated a teleportation array, carrying them away as Leo’s bomb remained behind and exploded.
• Leo and Alice watched the blast engulf the gathered apprentices and flatten the land with fire and a supersonic shock wave.
• The explosion’s aftereffects triggered a landslide, spreading heat and radiation, and spawned a fire tornado that forced Leo and Alice to flee.
• Alice demanded that Leo explain what his bomb was.

Leo was interrogated by the Wizard World’s Guardian Wizards over his nuclear attack, then learned that the explosion had won him and Purple Flame Academy first place in the tournament. After Headmaster Alexander released him and gave him a mysterious, impossibly heavy reward, Leo asked who the two surviving apprentices were and whether he could claim the fallen apprentices’ wizardry rings.

• Leo and Alice were captured by ten official wizards after Leo watched the nuclear fireball rise.
• While sealed in darkness, Leo answered questions about his origins, intentions, and weapon, and the interrogators later confirmed the environment was safe.
• Headmaster Alexander revealed himself, released Leo, and told him his attack had earned him first place in the tournament and an extra reward.
• Alexander gave Leo a tiny box so heavy that it crushed his hands until Leo stored it in Shadow Space.
• Leo asked Alexander who the two apprentices who survived the explosion were and whether the fallen apprentices’ wizardry rings belonged to him.

After returning to Purple Flame Academy, Leo reunited with Gru and analyzed the nuclear explosion before opening Dean Alexander’s mysterious reward. He learned the tiny stone was a Planetary Core, which might be essential to his Shadow Talent’s advancement to Level One, and accepted that the Purple Flame Stigmata Wizard had planned for him to use it.

• Leo returned the magic-conducting rings as required, left Dean Alexander, and went back to Gru’s courtyard at Purple Flame Academy.
• Leo told Gru he had hidden during the championship, and Gru urged him to study how to advance to Level One within fifty years.
• Leo reviewed the nuclear explosion data and concluded that his modifications to the atomic bomb had increased its power.
• Leo opened the sealed box from Alexander and found a tiny black stone that triggered an uncontrollable hunger in his shadow and in himself.
• Benji identified the stone as a Planetary Core, and Leo realized the Purple Flame Stigmata Wizard may have given it to him to help his Shadow Talent advance.

Leo delayed fusing with the planet's core while he prepared to advance, spending years evolving his body and studying wizardry. After the shadow absorbed the core and transformed for a year, it fused with Leo and left him suffering severe pain throughout his body.

• Leo sold his championship spoils, gathered eight energy crystals, and asked Green Cottage and Purple Golden Flower Store to search for nuclear weapons.
• Leo told Gru he was ready to advance, and Gru arranged for powerful Fire Elemental Spirits to guard the courtyard.
• Leo absorbed nuclear material through his shadow and spent five years evolving his cells and studying wizard books while postponing his advancement.
• Leo opened the box containing the planet's core, and his shadow consumed it before spending a year transforming into countless shapes.
• Leo's shadow suddenly fused with him, and he began suffocating as pain spread through his kidneys, heart, and other internal organs.

Leo’s body underwent a chaotic transformation that left him out of control and ravenously hungry. After consuming his food and mana reserves, he swallowed an energy crystal and discovered that his evolving body could absorb its released energy.

• Leo’s body and senses went haywire, and he lost control of his consciousness before his organs and brain returned to normal.
• Leo endured ten days of constant hunger, exhausting his six months of stored food as his body digested everything and began consuming its own fat.
• Leo realized his body was evolving too quickly for his energy supply and drained his Black Pearl Potion reserves.
• Leo swallowed an energy crystal despite fearing its released energy would destroy his insides.
• Leo’s organs and cells absorbed the crystal’s energy rapidly, healing any damage and revealing what had caused his body’s transformation.

After ten years of advancement, Leo completed his transformation into a rank-one Hunter, gaining a powerful evolved shadow and abilities focused on damage reduction. Gru and Alexander confirmed his success, and Alexander prepared to report the news to the Purple Flame Stigmata Wizard.

• Leo consumed seven energy crystals before his body began a painful, rapid evolution.
• Memories of death overwhelmed Leo, but he activated the Body Refinement Wizard's First Layer Hunter Bloodline and transformed into a three-meter monster.
• Leo discovered that his evolved shadow could split into ten portions, each able to reduce damage by 50%, and considered how to use its Power of Bearing.
• Gru sensed Leo's rank-one aura and learned that his advancement had succeeded.
• Alexander arrived, confirmed Leo was stabilizing, and left to report his success to the Purple Flame Stigmata Wizard.

After advancing to level one, Leo met Benji within his sea of consciousness and pressed him for a decision about the plan. Dean Alexander then brought Leo through a teleportation array to the Purple Flame Stigmata Wizard’s fiery world, where the wizard was waiting.

• Leo assessed his improved strength and stamina and planned to advance his elemental path alongside body refinement.
• Leo confronted the chained Benji in his sea of consciousness and asked whether Benji’s main body had made its decision.
• Leo met Dean Alexander, sensed the level three wizard’s overwhelming presence, and agreed to accompany him.
• Alexander activated the academy’s teleportation array and took Leo to a fire-dominated world fragment outside the Wizard World.
• Alexander led Leo into a volcano palace and announced his arrival to the Purple Flame Stigmata Wizard, whose gaze Leo had felt since teleporting.

After advancing to a Level One Body Refinement Wizard, Leo endured the Purple Flame Stigmata Wizard’s test and learned he would serve as the anchor for an expedition into the Shadow World. He accepted the dangerous mission, was given ten years to prepare, and received a promise of a permanent share of the conquered world’s proceeds.

• The Purple Flame Stigmata Wizard subjected Leo to thirty-five times normal gravity, and Leo broke free by activating his Hunter Bloodline.
• Leo bowed to the Purple Flame Stigmata Wizard, who canceled the gravity and recognized his rare Hunter advancement.
• The Purple Flame Stigmata Wizard explained that Leo’s Shadow World taint could provide coordinates for an invasion, and Leo confirmed he understood the anchor’s 98.99% mortality rate.
• Leo agreed to infiltrate the Shadow World and open a spatial passage for the Wizard World’s forces.
• The Purple Flame Stigmata Wizard gave Leo ten years to prepare and directed him to seek support from Headmaster Alexander, while noting Benji might help with Shadow World information.
• The Purple Flame Stigmata Wizard promised Leo a permanent 1% share of the conquered world’s proceeds and handed him a wizardry ring.

Leo received supplies from the Purple Flame Stigmata Wizard and learned that Alice had advanced to First-Level Wizard nine years earlier. He then forced Benji to accept a Battle Partner Contract, freed him from his seal, and prepared to hear about Benji’s world.

• Leo thanked the Purple Flame Stigmata Wizard for supplies and asked about Alice, learning she had advanced nine years earlier.
• Leo rejected Benji’s demands for native status and a soul partnership, insisting that Benji become an ordinary battle partner.
• Benji agreed after Leo promised to protect him and his people, and Leo bound them with a Wizard’s Oath contract.
• Leo lifted the golden-chain seal on Benji and took him from his sea of consciousness into his room at Purple Flame Academy.
• Benji surveyed the Wizard World while Leo assessed his consciousness avatar and judged its combat power weaker than his own.