Book Recaps
Shade's First Rule - Summary
Shade’s First Rule Summary
Sixteen-year-old Ruwen goes to Uru’s Temple for his Ascension ceremony, where he will be granted one of six base classes (Fighter, Mage, Merchant, Worker, Order, Observer) and will, after the ceremony, revive anytime he dies. His high Intelligence makes Ascending as a Mage guaranteed. He goes to the temple alone, as his parents have been missing for a year.
The High Priest in charge of Ruwen’s Ascension believes Ruwen’s parents stole a massive shipment of precious terium and are murderers and thieves. He takes his anger out on Ruwen and instead of assigning him the Mage Class during Ascension, assigns him the Worker Class.
During Ruwen’s Ascension process he briefly meets the Goddess Uru, who asks him a few cryptic questions before throwing him off a cliff.
Ruwen wakes up from his first revival devastated at becoming Uru’s most common Class. Workers are a utility Class and his dreams of being a Mage are over. The Priestess in charge of his post-revival care, Hamma, helps Ruwen escape the temple.
Ruwen’s first quest leads him to the Worker Bliz, who convinces Ruwen he should take a Void Band. Void Bands are dimensional storage with 100% weight reduction and a flexible opening all controlled with his Energy pool. While a tremendous Inventory advantage, if Ruwen’s Energy drops to zero with the Void Band open, it kills him.
Ruwen figures out he has access to a second Class, one that he can pick himself. He immediately chooses Mage. While using his Mage magic for the first time, he causes an explosion, killing a man that had been following him.
The explosion reveals a group of assassins from the God Naktos who are trying to kill Ruwen. He flees only to get cornered by the library, where his mentor and friend, the Head Librarian Tremine, stabs Ruwen through the eye and kills him.
As Ruwen revives, the Goddess Uru speaks with him again. He learns Uru has chosen him as her Champion. This gives him the ability to choose a different second Class every time he revives but will make him the target of all the other gods.
When Ruwen revives at the temple, the Priestess Hamma helps him escape again, and they go to a nearby bar. While at the bar Kysandra joins them, a mysterious woman who fights off a Naktos assassin, allowing Ruwen to escape.
Ruwen’s flees to his room in the library where Tremine arrives and explains why he killed Ruwen earlier. Kysandra arrives as well and assures Ruwen that Hamma is safe. Ruwen learns Tremine and Kysandra have a long history, and they agree the only safe place for Ruwen is at Kysandra’s base of operations, the top floors of place called the Black Pyramid.
Ruwen goes through a Rune Gate for the first time and arrives at the Black Pyramid where he meets seventeen-year-old Sift. Sift is an expert in unarmed combat, and Kysandra assigns Sift the job of leveling Ruwen to level five. Kysandra tells Ruwen his only chance at surviving is to assign his second Class choice to Observer and use the spells and abilities of that Class to hide himself from the Naktos assassins.
Ruwen is overwhelmed by the physical combat and hampered by the debuffs to all his stats that the previous death caused. He struggles to survive in the Black Pyramid, forced to use his high Intelligence not to cast Mage spells, but to find clever ways to use his Worker and Observer capabilities to stay alive.
In the Black Pyramid, Ruwen meets Blapy, a seven-year-old girl with blond pigtails and a love of centipedes. He learns this “girl” is actually the creator of the Black Pyramid, and a being of enormous power.
Ruwen meets Sift’s parents, who agree to let Sift teach Ruwen the Bamboo Viper Clan Step forms. They also help Ruwen with a meditation issue which triggers an unexpected capability inside Ruwen. He discovers he can pull energy from his surroundings into his body, something only Cultivators should be capable of, and impossible for someone who had Ascended.
Ruwen makes it to level five and takes the Observer spells and abilities necessary to hide his identity. Sift is allowed to leave the Black Pyramid and travel with Ruwen back to his home. They meet up with Hamma and as the three of them travel to the Worker’s Lodge. On the way there, the three of them get ambushed and Sift is critically wounded.
The Second Betrayal - Summary
The Second Betrayal Summary
Sift survives his injuries and along with Ruwen and Hamma arrives at the Worker’s Lodge. Ruwen learns how to control his Void Band better and loads his inventory with all the necessities for the new Ascendant camping trip. The City Council, including Hamma’s mother, believes the time spent together seeing Deepwell’s nearest dungeon and terium mine will help ease the growing tension between the Classes.
Big D, as head of the Worker’s Lodge, organizes and leads the excursion. During the visit to the terium mine, Ruwen figures out that the Spirit he Cultivated in the Black Pyramid, and which still sits hidden inside him, is identical to the terium that is being vaporized and hardened in the mine.
While the rest of the camp sleeps, Ruwen, Sift, and Hamma, take a Rune Gate to the Black Pyramid to gain some levels. All three of them trigger quests to become Custodians for the Black Pyramid. Ruwen starts an Ink Lord quest line to restore the libraries, and Hamma becomes a Chapel Priestess. Sift becomes the Black Pyramid’s Sisen and activates the Rings, where creatures from the dungeon can spar.
Hamma, as a Chapel Priestess, gains access to a powerful Prayer Book containing ten spells, and Ruwen bonds with a tiny bookwyrm named Rami. Rami loves knowledge, has millions of books stored in her memory, and can speak with Ruwen telepathically.
Ruwen explores his Cultivation abilities using a mysterious book he found in the library. Using the breathing techniques and forms from the book, he is able to Fortify his body using the Spirit he’d gathered, greatly strengthening it.
When they all return to camp, Sift sees Lylan. Lylan, a Shade that works for Kysandra, had dated Sift when she lived in the Black Pyramid. Lylan died in the Black Pyramid before she could return to Uru’s lands and have her memories synched, so when she revived, she had no memories of Sift. Sift follows Lylan to see what she is doing near the Ascendant’s camp and doesn’t return.
That night Ruwen leaves the camp and settles near the dungeon to use some knowledge gained from his Cultivation Book. He is unable to control the gathering form and learns the terrible difference between Harvesting and Cultivation. Instead of Cultivating the surrounding energy like light and heat, he Harvests the living entities in the dungeon, destroying them all, and almost killing the dungeon keeper.
Ruwen returns to camp and finds Sift has returned as well. Sift is desperate to find Lylan, and Ruwen reveals a ring Blapy had given him containing Lylan’s memories from the Black Pyramid. Using the ring, they locate Lylan and find her speaking with the Naktos assassin that had nearly killed Ruwen and Hamma in the bar on Ruwen’s Ascension Day.
Sift, upset at the Betrayal, throws the ring with Lylan’s memories into the brush. The Naktos assassin attacks them all and Ruwen saves everyone by trapping the assassin in his Void Band, killing him. Sift, after making sure the unconscious Lylan remained alive, leaves, and Ruwen and Hamma follow their despondent friend.
That night, Ruwen, Sift, and Hamma investigate the dungeon that Ruwen destroyed. He finds the dungeon keeper, a two-inch living crystal, and promises to fix the damage he’s done. To do this, Ruwen becomes the dungeon master to help the dungeon keeper recover, and names the crystal Fractal.
Lylan arrives pushing two ambushers she discovered in front of her. Sift doesn’t trust her, but she reveals she found the ring and regained her memories. Before they can leave the dungeon, Tremaine arrives and paralyzes them all.
The Naktos Mage that had tried to kill Ruwen on his Ascension Day arrives and gives Tremine a book for finding and trapping Ruwen and his friends. Tremine places a small piece of portal chalk, used to create Rune Gates, in Ruwen’s pocket and then leaves.
The Naktos Mage performs a powerful spell and moves Ruwen and his friends into the Spirit Realm, where they will remain trapped forever.
Uru's Third Temple - Summary
Uru’s Third Temple Summary
Trapped in the Spirit Realm, Ruwen and his friends quickly learn that death doesn’t exist there, but pain still does. For the first time, Ruwen can actually see his Center and the Core that resides there. Snaking out from his Center like roots are pathways that connect to his Meridians. All twelve of them.
Rami, the bookwyrm soulbound to Ruwen, tells him anything over six connections allows you to become a god. Having all twelve means he has the potential to become the most powerful being in the Universe Rami explains the Mana people use to power their spells is just a combination of all twelve Meridian essences given to them by the gods, and that Ruwen could cast any spell if he knew the proper combinations of essence to use.
Ruwen takes advantage of not dying by experimenting with his Harvesting risk free. He starts by taking the Spirit in his Core and routing it through each Meridian, extracting its particular essence. Using a handful of essences, he creates basic fire, ice, and healing spells.
Four strangers appear, and Ruwen learns they are the four Champions Naktos had successfully placed in the Spirit Realm before Ruwen. Three of them were previous Uru Champions, and their leader, Kaylin, believes Ruwen is their path to return home. Kaylin is an Observer and Order combination and the first Champion to be trapped in the Spirit Realm. Mica is a Mage and Merchant dual Class, and lastly Una, an Observer and Fighter combination. The last Champion is Jagen, the Champion of Izac, Uru’s divine brother. Jagen loves armor and is a Fighter and Healer combination.
Rami believes there might be a way out of the Spirit Realm to the south, so they leave the dungeon. They encounter a Plague Siren, an Infernal Realm demon currently at peak Diamond level, with a full Core, and almost ready to transition out of the Gem levels and into the Divine Harvesting levels. She attacks their group and Ruwen defeats her by shoving his Core into hers, shattering her Center because it couldn’t expand to hold both Cores.
Ruwen reabsorbs his Core as well as the Plague Siren’s and they investigate her lair. Sift finds a small thumb sized turtle he names Shelly and the others find a fortune in terium coins and bags of loot. They divide everything equally, leaving three Aspects, sets of armor that protect Spirit users, as the only remaining items. Ruwen forces Sift to wear an Aspect that looks like a Falcon, and Ruwen takes the one that looks like a Scarecrow because it has a hood and completely covers his body, hiding his glowing Meridians and Core.
Ruwen uses his newly discovered essence spells to create a raft of ice, which they use to float down the coast. During the trip, Ruwen uses Rami’s ability to speed his thoughts along with the Spirit Realm's inability to die, to condense four and a half years of constant Step training into a few hours. When Ruwen emerges from Rami’s time compression, he almost mirrors Sift’s abilities, and can now fight like a Step Master.
A miscalculation causes their raft to drift into an essence storm and Ruwen absorbs the entire storm, using the fact he has access to all twelve Meridians to survive. They move inland and soon encounter a group of Cultivators, who believe Ruwen, because he wears the Scarecrow Aspect, to be responsible for killing many of their Clan members. To pass safely, they only need to see Ruwen’s Core, and test it for Infernal Realm contamination. Ruwen can’t show them his Core because it would reveal he is an Axiom, a person with all twelve Meridians connected to his Center. In addition, he absorbed the Plague Siren’s Core which was full of Infernal Realm Spirit.
Because Ruwen refuses to reveal his Core, the Cultivators give him the choice to fight for his innocence. He accepts and battles Phoenix, a powerful Diamond level Cultivator. Blapy and Sift’s parents attend the match, along with thousands of other Cultivators. Ruwen uses every trick he can think of to survive the match. As he fights Phoenix, Ruwen realizes that portions of the Bamboo Viper Step forms are hiding another form. This hidden form appears to target the Meridians of Cultivators.
Ruwen survives the match only to face the greater danger of being interrogated by Sift’s parents, Madda and Padda. They want to know how Ruwen discovered the hidden form and make him swear a soul oath to not reveal or use it until the Bamboo Viper and Shadow Clan approve it.
After finishing with Madda and Padda, Ruwen thinks the worst is over, but Blapy grabs him. When Blapy had arrived at the match, Ruwen learned she was the One True God’s Companion, and a being of unbelievable power in her own right. Something she had seen here in the Spirit Realm had forced her into a decision on his fate. Blapy asks to see his memories and Ruwen agrees, knowing he has nothing to hide.
But this trip to the Spirit Realm had revealed other secrets about Ruwen, and he didn’t have any idea how Blapy would respond to them. He had learned Uru had brought his parents here, that she had operated on him while in his mother’s womb, and that he’d been born here. After viewing his memories, Blapy wanted to know why he’d mentioned protecting the harvest when speaking with Phoenix during the fight, and why he’d chosen to wear the Scarecrow Aspect. He answered honestly and Blapy spares his life, but it feels like Blapy decides something of even greater importance as well.
Blapy had given a Wyrm Coin to everyone at the match, allowing them to speak or request anything within reason of her. Rami uses her coin, and Ruwen uses Sift’s, who said he already sees the seven-year-old far too much, to gain two books from Blapy. When combined with the books in Rami’s memory already, they provide a way for them to get home.
Using this knowledge leads them to a lake surrounded by gigantic iris plants. After a battle with a giant squid, Ruwen figures out how to utilize the petals of the iris plant as a gate portal using the portal chalk Tremine had passed him during his betrayal. Ruwen uses the gate runes that Bliz had seen when he stuck his head inside his Void Band, killing himself for the view. The portal that opens leads them into Uru’s Divine Realm.
Everyone is overwhelmed to finally be free of the Spirit Realm, but the arrival of Jagen, Izac’s Champion, in Uru’s Divine Realm triggers a violation of the Pact and Blapy, as the adjudicator for the gods, arrives. Jagen and Una are in love, and Jagen doesn’t want to return to Izac, but Blapy tells him Izac has already sensed his return and it is impossible to hide. Uru is concerned about what Jagen saw in the Spirit Realm regarding Ruwen’s Spirit use and can’t let him live. Lylan uses her Wyrm Coin, requesting Blapy to remove Jagen’s memories of the Spirit Realm, and return them when it is safe for Jagen and Una to be together. Lylan tells Jagen he will feel empty and depressed until the memories return.
Blapy takes Jagen away and Uru tasks her four Champions with defending the country against an invasion. Uru assigns Ruwen to defend the southern border along with restoring Uru’s third temple. Ruwen, unaware that Uru had a third temple, is surprised, after Uru teleports him and his friends there, that the abandoned temple lies in the same valley his parents disappeared in a year ago.
After locating the temple and the ruined city that surrounds it, Ruwen and his friends fight one of Izac’s Bone Sculptors, who uses the immense number of skeletons surrounding the city to fuel his creations. After defeating him they explore the temple and discover over seven hundred thousand people are in queue to revive, all but three of them having died over ten thousand years ago. The three recent additions are both of Ruwen’s parents, and Hamma’s father, who disappeared when she was a baby.
Ruwen learns he needs the Architect Role and the only way to get it is to die. Ruwen kills himself, and Uru meets with him as his body revives. She transfers her Architect Role to him, making her a divine apostate, and giving Ruwen the power of a god. Ruwen uses the new Role to speak with the Temple, an entity that calls himself Lir, and together they restore the temple. Bringing the temple back into operation extends Uru’s Blessing, her area of control, for hundreds of miles in every direction.
They begin the revival process of Hamma’s dad and Ruwen’s parents. Blapy arrives and asks Ruwen where he wants his new portal to Fractal, and the book ends with Bliz and Tremine on their way to meet Ruwen in his new city.
The Fourth Secret - Summary
The Fourth Secret Summary
The god Izac sends his Champion Jagen to the Infernal Realm because Izac believes the Infernal god Lalquinrial helped Jagen, along with four Champions of Uru, escape the Spirit Realm. Izac believes this because the Scarecrow Aspect was seen with Jagen and the other Champions, and the Scarecrow is one of Lalquinrial’s greatest warriors.
Ruwen discusses with Blapy the choices Fractal has to focus as a dungeon. Ruwen and Fractal decide to have the dungeon focus be Resources. This means the loot and levels will contain rare Resources, and eventually Fractal will be able to generate Essence for Cultivators. Ruwen also gives Fractal permission to expand and provides Blapy with additional space for her creatures to live. The new name of the dungeon is the Shattered Sun.
Ruwen had died to accept the Architect Role and this had reset his Root Class. With the imminent invasion, he researches different Fighter builds to see if any might help him defend the southern border. He chooses Fighter for a base Class, Commander for a Sub-Class, and Warlord for a Specialization.
The team learns that Shelly, the small turtle Sift saved from the Plague Siren’s lair, is actually an Elder Star Tortoise and can become very large. Sift gets Shelly to transform and they ride inside her shell to a nearby oil lake.
As Ruwen travels to the oil, he uses a Divine Fortification form he learned from the Cultivation book he found on his first trip to Blapy. With this advanced form he is able to increase his Fortification level throughout his whole body from Silver to Gold.
While retrieving oil, Ruwen discovers an underground Naktos temple. Naktos and the sea god Haffa, were currently marching northward, and Ruwen figures this location is an emergency fallback revival point. He destroys the underground temple and the revival baths there.
As Ruwen returns to New Eiru, he stops in the Cultivator camp that has been displaced by the invading armies. Ruwen offers them a permanent home near New Eiru in exchange for their help with the war.
Ruwen returns to the Black Pyramid and advances his Ink Lord quest by investing large sums of money into people and books. Before he can leave, Padda and Madda find Ruwen and tell him he must use a soul stone to travel to the Founders planet where he will be judged. If he fails, he will lose all his Bamboo and Viper Step knowledge.
On the Founders planet Ruwen learns he must reach the top of a mountain to pass the trial. As he starts, he meets an old man, Pine, who is looking for his grandson, and Ruwen decides to help. He also finds a young woman, named Echo, who is bound in trap. After he frees her, she writes her name in blood on his wrist, and vows to repay the debt. Eventually Ruwen reaches the peak, where he finds the old mans grandson. With great effort, Ruwen gets the boy to safety, and barely reaches the summit himself.
Ruwen meets the Shadow Step Grandmaster, Dusk, on the summit, and she agrees to train him in the Shadow Steps if he can find his soul, and complete the Master’s Trial successfully.
Ruwen returns to New Eiru as the six town elders are finishing their revival. He wants there help in organizing a defense of the southern border. They are more interested in fighting with each other than listening to Ruwen, so he kills them all using his Architect Role. After he revives them again, they listen to him.
During the time Ruwen was away, Hamma discovers the man she thought was her dad, Niall, denies having a family. Ruwen uses his access to the temple to confirm Niall is Hamma’s dad, and is confused on why the man would lie.
Ruwen learns his parents actually killed their party and stole the terium shipment, devastating him and his long-held belief of their innocence. His parents try and explain they did it under Uru’s orders as the terium is necessary for the revival of all the people queued up in the temple to be revived.
With the Elders help, Ruwen devises a plan to defend the city. On a scouting mission with his team, Ruwen discovers an underground chamber, and in the ensuing battle, cuts off the arm of an attacker with two Void Bands. He takes the Void Band and discovers a sculpture so beautiful it provides a buff just by viewing it. To his disappointment, he is unable to use his Void Band and the captured one at the same time.
As the Naktos army closes in on New Eiru, Ruwen and his team go out with part of their army to face them. During the battle, they face an elite squad of five that are all level 80+. In order to save them, Hamma uses the most powerful prayer from her Prayer Book, and turns Ruwen into a god for sixty seconds. The cost of the spell is her own life and Hamma dies as Ruwen destroys the elite squad.
As they take their army back to the city, Ruwen sees the temple disappear, as if it dropped into a hole. He learns the battle he fought was a distraction and the main enemy army had tunneled up from underground.
The enemy easily takes over New Eiru, locking Ruwen and his army outside. Worse, the temple is under attack and if it is breached, everyone in queue to revive will be lost forever. Over seven hundred thousand people, including Hamma.
Running out of time, Ruwen devises a plan to retake the city using concentrated light to cut through the gate and quickly destroy the enemy. With the help of the Cultivator leaders, they retake the city.
But even if they retake the city it won’t matter, as the temple has sunk into a two-thousand-foot water filled shaft and is under attack. Ruwen swims down to the temple and notices the creatures attacking the temple are from the Infernal Realm.
With no time to spare, Ruwen creates a gigantic fireball at the base of the temple. The resulting steam shoots the temple out of the shaft, saving it.
The concentrated light weapons devastate the invading army and they retreat, and Hamma, to Ruwen great relief, is revived.
As they recover from the battle, Ky arrives and tells them Lylan’s brother has run out of time and must be saved within the month. And that the only way into the city is to participate in the yearly Step Championship as cover.
Naktos meets with Echo, and she learns that the person she owes a blood debt too, is the same person that destroyed her father’s lucrative mining operation with Naktos. Now she is sworn to kill the person she can’t harm.
Legion's Fifth Vault - Summary
Legion's Fifth Vault Summary
Jagen, the Champion for the god Izac, is in the Infernal Realm speaking with those who might have information on how Jagen, along with four of Uru’s Champions, had escaped the Spirit Realm. While there, the Aspect of Death appears and kills everyone present except Jagen. The Aspect of Death reveals herself as Echo, the young woman Ruwen helped during the Step Trial, and the daughter of Lalquinrial, the god of the Infernal Realm.
Ruwen, in New Eiru, is rebuilding the city after the war with Naktos. He asks Niall, Hamma’s father, to be the High Priest for the temple there. Uru arrives and accepts whatever punishment Niall desires because Uru had altered Niall’s memories in the past. Miranda arrives to carry out the punishment. After speaking with Uru, Niall decides to not punish her and accepts Ruwen’s offer on the condition Hamma goes with her father to fetch her mother.
Ruwen discovers that Fractal has improved an elixir that will bring Ruwen’s transition from Gold to Jade to around four days. He also learns that Blapy, with Fractal’s help, is trying to create an inorganic solution to revival so that even without a deity, you can revive.
Ruwen uses the improved elixir and transitions from the Metal Gold to the new Gem tier Jade. The process dissolved all his skin and muscles leaving only his bones, before rebuilding his body. This gives him vastly more power and control over his body and leads to immediate gains in his Bamboo and Viper Steps.
While Ruwen was undergoing the transformation from Gold to Jade, the rest of the team stole a book needed for Ruwen’s Inklord quest line. Something happened to Sift during the heist but no one will tell Ruwen (you can read what happened in the “Extras” tab of afkauthor.com). This book allows Ruwen to complete his current quest and gain both himself and Rami upgrades.
The Scarecrow Aspect that Ruwen stole in the Spirit Realm and traveled into the Material realm wearing acts as a seed during the transition process. Instead of transitioning into Jade as expected, the Scarecrow Aspect allows him to move straight into Diamond. With Ruwen’s transition taking so long, they barely have time to reach the Step Championship tournament. Ruwen is shocked to learn that Echo is at the tournament as well and recognizes him.
Ruwen and Sift advance through the tournament and reach the quarter-finals. As a reward, the whole team is invited to a party at the city’s library. Rami begins to absorb the library's contents and Ruwen finds himself face to face with Echo.
Blapy arrives with the team she sponsored, and talks with both Ruwen and Echo. The god Izac, Uru’s brother, arrives to speak with Blapy and is introduced to both Echo and Ruwen. Ruwen is terrified he will be recognized through his disguise and remains as quiet as possible. Echo wishes to speak to Izac and the two disappear.
Rami triggers a trap in Izac’s Inklord’s office and Ruwen saves Rami from the consequences. In the process of doing this, the mental construct Overlord breaks away from Ruwen’s mind and becomes his own entity. In addition, Rami is trapped in a dimensional prison and Ruwen is forced to leave her in the library so he can escape.
When the entire team, minus Rami, reaches the underwater safehouse, Xavier, the Celestial Remnant, is furious with Ruwen for leaving Rami behind and attacks Ruwen.
Ruwen survives the attack and the next day Sift and Ruwen fight Echo in the Step Championship. They win and advance to the semi-finals where they face Blapy’s team. Since the only time they can mount the rescue of Lylan’s brother in Legion’s Fifth Vault is the day of the Championship match, Ruwen and Sift decide to purposefully not win the semi-final match. Even though they lose, Ruwen is forced to exert his new Diamond body in his match.
On the day of the Championship match, Ruwen and the team follow the plan and enter Legion’s Vault. When they reach the fifth vault to rescue Lylan’s brother and the caged Rami, they find Echo waiting for them.
Ruwen retrieves both Lylan’s brother and Rami but the team is forced to enter an arena where the only escape requires someone to step through a gate runed portal door. Ruwen decides since he has the best chance of surviving to enter one of the doors.
Hamma gives Ruwen her Wyrm coin so he can summon Blapy for help. He steps through the gate runed door and finds himself in deep space, so far from home that his link with Uru no longer exists. In addition, his Void Band’s connection no longer works either. He tries to draw some gate runes home, but none of them work.
As a last resort, he flips the Wyrm coin so Blapy can appear and tell him how to get home. But Blapy doesn’t arrive to catch the coin. The coin turns a different color as it transitions into three wishes.
Ruwen realizes if he wants to get home, he needs to figure out how to do it on his own.
The Sixth Rune - Summary
The Sixth Rune Summary
Ruwen, flung across the Universe from the portal door in Legion’s Fifth Vault, begins learning the skills needed to make his way home. In addition, being truly alone for the first time since his Ascension, he uses the isolation to practice his Spirit abilities and explore the Architect Role.
He finds a nearby planet and makes it his home while he continues to practice his Spirit spells, Architect Role, and Step training.
As he practices worldbuilding on his new planet, he comes to terms with the new entity in his head, Overlord. Overlord had sheared away from Ruwen’s brain during the literary aneurysm trap in the library of Malth and become his own person.
Overlord is overseeing the construction of a city inside Ruwen’s mind. Ruwen is shocked to discover that some of the books he’d read had become self-aware as well and manifested as beings called Narrators in his mind.
After thirteen months Ruwen’s friends arrive in Shelly, Sift’s bound Elder Star Tortoise. They begin their six-month trip back home. Shelly can create dungeons inside herself that everyone can use to train and Hamma and Lylan are approaching level sixty from the constant dungeon diving.
Ruwen teaches Sift everything he’d learned regarding the Bamboo Viper Steps, including two new forms Ruwen had created as an improvement on the Steps used to hide the Shadow Steps. Sift learns these new forms and the other secrets Ruwen had discovered very quickly.
Ruwen, still desperate to find a crack in his soul, asks Xavier to attack him with energy like he’d done in the underwater safehouse in Malth during the Step Championship. Xavier agrees and they discover that a connection forms that vastly increases Ruwen’s body Fortification and helps Xavier with his preparation to transform into an adult.
Xavier finally transforms from a Junior Celestial Remnant into an adult, but, due to his work with Ruwen, he has achieved a perfect energy state.
A fragment of Uru arrives to warn Ruwen about the current state back on Grave. Ruwen learns that in the past Uru had sacrificed her own Divine pathways to construct Ruwen’s. She now only has seven connected paths, making her very weak and easy prey for the other gods. She is going in hiding now and will use the three Champions Ruwen freed from the Spirit Realm to guard her.
Ruwen learns the divine fragment that Uru sent to warn him will now just die. Instead, he convinces the fragment to join the rest of the entities in his head. Uru is convinced this is impossible but they try, and Ruwen, along with some of the Narrators in his mind, stabilize Uru enough to live safely in his mind. This comes at the cost of a debuff that causes him constant damage along with making synching to the Temple impossible.
When they finally come within portal gate distance of the Black Pyramid, everyone goes to the Blood Gate. Hamma and Lylan go to Ruwen’s dungeon, Fractal, so they can synch with Uru and keep their nineteen months of gains.
Ruwen agrees to quickly join them after finishing his Inklord quest line and getting Rami her final transformation. He becomes an Inklord and receives fantastic armor that looks like a tiny scroll. It deploys into full armor in seconds however and provides better protection than plate.
The quest done, Ruwen returns to Sift, but instead of finding him in the Blood Gate, he is with his parents in the Black Pyramid’s kitchen. Sift’s parents discover the incredible gains Sift and Ruwen made by sparring with them. They are worried the Founders of the Bamboo Viper Clan will be upset with the knowledge Ruwen passed on to Sift.
Echo arrives to tell them all that the summons for the Step Master trial has begun and they all need to go immediately. Everyone leaves and Ruwen is the last to go.
Ruwen is devastated that his enemies will already know he is back and debates what to do. He decides the best thing is to go to the Step Master trial and somehow trap Echo there so that she can’t tell her dad, the Infernal god Lalquinrial, that Ruwen had reappeared.
Before Ruwen can leave though, Echo, taking the form of the Aspect of Death, triggers the Scarecrow Aspect to return Ruwen to the Aspect’s bind point in the Infernal Realm.
Ruwen arrives in the Infernal Realm to find an army surrounding him and that he has materialized into a trap. Simandreial, the Plague Siren he defeated in the Spirit Realm is there and directs the psychic attacks on him.
Ruwen’s incredible mental defenses not only protect him from these attacks but allow him to counterattack and kill the demons trying to enter his mind. He then figures out a way to escape the trap and proceeds to destroy the army of demons surrounding him.
Five aspects arrive and Ruwen battles them, easily defeating them. Then Laqunrial, the god of the Infernal Realm reveals himself. They discuss how strange Ruwen’s accomplishments are and how the god needs to extract Ruwen’s secrets.
Laqunrial tries a mental attack but Ruwen survives this and then counterattacks again. Ruwen leaves his mind to fight the god physically. Laqunrial knows a Step form called the Shattered Steps that are similar to the Shadow Steps of the Bamboo Viper Clan. The god tries to destroy one of Ruwen’s Meridians and Ruwen defends himself with a Shadow Step, something he vowed not to do.
Laqunrial can’t beat Ruwen physically or mentally alone so he places Ruwen in an Infernal dimensional bubble, trapping Ruwen while he goes for help.
While in this trap, Overlord enters Ruwen’s Core to find the divine fragment of Uru who had fled there as soon as they’d arrived in the Infernal Realm. When Overlord doesn’t return, Ruwen is forced to look for ways to escape.
Talking to the Narrator Kholy Ruwen creates a plan to move himself at the maximum speed of the Universe. This will cause his location to smear across the entire Universe and allow him to move to any place in the Universe he wishes. This same research killed Kholy and she believes Ruwen will die as well.
With no other options, Ruwen attempts the escape and ends up in a new Realm, with terrible damage to his spiritual network. There he finds Blapy and learns this is the third secret. The third secret is that when a god dies, their realm remains open as long as someone exists within it.
So Pen pulled all the Spirit from the Universe and placed it in his Divine Realm along with Blapy, and then died. Blapy has been in the third secret for over 10,000 years. She urges Ruwen to stay there with her and heal and eventually transition into a peak deity. This will take thousands of years however and Ruwen will lose all his friends and family back home to time.
Ruwen thinks about his life and decides even with the risk, he wants to live his life on his own terms and not give up his friends. He has Blapy transfer him to Sift’s location, which is at the Step Master trial. Ruwen’s damaged spiritual network means he can only use Mana for the foreseeable future.
Shadow's Seventh Step - Summary
Shadow's Seventh Step Summary
Ruwen leaves the Third Secret to join Sift at the Bamboo Viper Step trial to gain the title of Master. Echo is also at the trial, and she witnesses Ruwen place the Apocalypse Band, that once belonged to Pen, into Ruwen’s Void Band. The students are broken up into four groups based on their skill, starting with Rung One. Ruwen, because he is late, must join Rung Four.
The first trial mirrors one of the three obvious lessons of the Bamboo Viper Steps: you end where you begin. During this trial Ruwen speaks with Echo, planting mental seeds to alter her behavior. He also begins training Rung Four to fix the major issues in their Steps.
Ruwen is allowed to choose a relic from the Bamboo Viper vault, and he ends up with a Thieving Misfortune Golem named Tarotmethiophelius or Tarot for short. This golem provides a card-based reading and the three cards come with effects that cannot be resisted. The three cards appear on the right-hand wrist.
After the first trial the entire class is taken to a place called Savage Island. They battle other Step Clans and cross a bridge. On the way across the bridge, it begins to sink and Ruwen notices Rung One is under attack at the bridge exit and Echo appears to be leaving her Rung behind. Ruwen yells at her to do better. Ruwen uses his Diamond Fortified body to fend off the attacks from the creatures in the river and Rung Four makes it across the bridge. In addition, Echo did return to help Rung One, saving them.
The second trial highlights the Steps return all the energy they produce while executing the forms. Ruwen and Sift continue to train Rung Four, and their skills greatly increase.
The third trial takes place in a swamp. This trial teaches how the hard and soft styles of the Bamboo Viper Steps balance each other. Ruwen meets a Gloom Stalker from the Shadow Realm, a Warden named Zylkin. The Gloom Stalker can use a person’s shadow against them.
The entire class makes its way to Savage Island again to collect resources for the Step Clan. The class comes in contact with a large number of Shattered Clan and it becomes apparent that this place is a staging ground for an invasion of another planet. The army will use a massive crossing stone to move to this new planet. Rung Four’s planet is being destroyed by an army like this that is using an identical crossing stone. When Rung Four can’t break it, Ruwen does, and realizes he has unleashed an explosion so large it will destroy the entire planet. Unable to think of anything else, Ruwen uses his Void Band to capture the explosion, saving everyone.
The next trial is the beginning of the three hidden aspects of the Bamboo Viper Steps. The first one is underwater and used to demonstrate the importance of breathing. Ruwen meets underwater creatures, and he realizes many of the movements in the Viper forms came from these creatures’ natural attacks.
The second hidden aspect of the Bamboo Viper Steps centered on the force used for each step. To test this aspect the class needed to perform the Steps on top of a bamboo forest where the bamboo could only handle the correct amount of pressure before collapsing.
Ruwen and Sift continued to teach the other students in the trial using direct language, quickly improving everyone’s abilities and skills.
The last hidden pattern in the Steps centered on timing. This was tested in the middle of a canyon where a series of air bursts would arrive to hold your body in place. For the first time Ruwen experiences the Steps as they were meant to be performed, that is not mechanical movement, but with joy and connectedness.
To Ruwen’s dismay, there is a seventh trial he is completely unprepared for. The Founders beg him to not take the Seventh Step as they believe he will never survive it.
Ruwen learns the seventh trial is related to balancing his inner and outer worlds. The issue is that his responsibilities and obligations to the outside world are staggering, making him massively unbalanced. Even his epiphanies on the makeup of this trial have no impact on balancing his inner self. He eventually decides to give the mental constructs in his head free will so that they can self-actualize and hopefully add to the weight of his inner self. This works and also has the benefit of releasing Overlord and Uruziel from the place they had been trapped after fleeing Lalquinrial’s gaze when entering the Infernal Realm at the end of book six, and they return.
The other students had waited for Ruwen and now that everyone had passed the seventh trial it was time to become Masters. Before the Founders could punish Ruwen and Sift for the oaths Ruwen had broke when using the Shadow Steps in self-defense against Lalquinrial, he challenges the Founders to combat. If he won it would move him to the level of the Founders, skipping the Master level, and thereby circumventing the issues surrounding breaking the oath.
As Ruwen fights the Founders he discovers his newfound internal and external balance has allowed him to manipulate his surroundings with something he calls Harmony. Using this ability, he fights and beats the three Founders.
To finish their time in the Master’s Trial, the class returns a final time to Savage Island to gather additional resources for the Step Clan. They are all attacked there by five of the Infernal Aspects of Lalquinrial. Because of the damage Ruwen did to himself to escape the Infernal prison by Smearing himself into the Third Secret, his Core and spiritual network are too damaged to use, making him much weaker than the last time he faced the Aspects. Sift and Ruwen fight to save the lives of their classmates but fail, leaving only Nymthus of Rung Four alive.
Echo arrives in the form of her Death Aspect and upset at the death of Rung One, demands the other Aspects leave. The work Ruwen had done to change Echo’s behavior had worked, as she had grown attached to Rung One, becoming their leader.
Ruwen gives Nymthus the sculpture he had taken from Valora that was so perfect it granted a buff by just looking at it. Nymthus was connected to the others in Rung Four by a magic that transferred the power of the dead to the others. Because the others all died so fast, the magic altered, and instead of gaining the strength of seven others, Nymthus had turned into the equivalent of a Gem level fighter. She was now capable of fighting creatures like the Aspects and surviving. Echo, Nymthus, Sift, and Ruwen all take an oath to not reveal the location of this Artifact that Lalquinrial desired.
Ruwen is crushed by the failure to protect his classmates. He experiences true loss for the first time and blames himself for it happening as he left these Aspects alive in the Infernal Realm.
Returning home, Ruwen takes on the appearance of Uru’s Shadow to try and quell the simmering civil war. He meets the leader of the rebellion, a Bard named Gunder. Ruwen goes to kill the man but learns at the last moment that Gunder is one of Uru’s Hands, a person Uru had marked to help Ruwen on his path as Uru’s Champion.
The Eighth Harmony - Summary
The Eighth Harmony
Ruwen meets with Big D and discovers how the changes he made to Class choice and protecting the lands around Uru’s Third Temple had created many problems. She gives him advice on how to move forward. On his way back home he is ambushed by a group of high-level followers of Gunder, the Bard responsible for leading the unrest.
Ruwen uses his natural abilities as his Spirit-related abilities are still damaged from the Smear he’d utilized to escape the Infernal prison which took him to the Third Secret. He defeats the ambush but refrains from killing them because Rami talks him out of it. The trauma from Savage Island has pushed him toward the direction of a tyrant, immediately removing any threat to his plans or safety.
Ruwen spends time with Hamma where he learns a little about what happened when he was gone. Specifically, she became the Black Pyramid’s Chapel Priestess, learned a lot about herself, and received a necklace that contained a creature named Archie. Ruwen opens up to Hamma about his feelings surrounding the classmates that had died and this helps release some of his pent-up emotions.
The next morning Ruwen meets with Tremine which makes him very happy. Tremine also gives Ruwen advice about human nature and how to effectively lead. He finds out that his parents are off planet protecting one of Pen’s experiments.
Overlord takes on the form of Ruwen while the actual Ruwen appears in the sky as Uru’s Shadow so that everyone will think they are separate people. After Uru’s Shadow leaves they are ambushed by Gunder’s people and after a battle, Ruwen takes Gunder captive.
Ruwen talks with Gunder and learns the man is motivated by fury at the gods and how they destroy people’s lives. In the past Gunder was a famous Bard and they discuss musical theory as Ruwen knows it will help him with Harmony. He learns the incredible complexity of musical theory and considers if he will need to change his Root Class from the Fighter path to the Bards. During their talk, Rami sees some of Gunder’s memories and learns Gunder is Lylan’s distant ancestor.
The Seventh Step and the breakthrough Ruwen had there created massive changes inside his mind and he sees them for the first time. Now that the inhabitants of his mind have free will, they have become much more real and lifelike. Some of the major changes include massive structures including a glass library shaped like Rami, a temple for the religion that worshiped Ruwen, and a gigantic statue that had four different sides, each reflecting an aspect of Ruwen. Nameless expresses his desire to join with the Infernal Lord, Lalquinrial.
The Master’s trial left other impacts on Ruwen’s mind, including the result of the We Four oath. Ruwen, Sift, Nymthus, and Echo had taken the oath over the dead bodies of their classmates. The oath created a mental grove of bamboo with a clearing in the middle. This clearing contained twenty-nine statues, each an exact copy of one of their dead classmates. They surrounded a platform made of four overlapping hands. This grove was only accessible to Ruwen and not even Rami could enter.
Ruwen, Hamma, Sift, and Lylan went to Bliz’s bar, Pour Judgement, and Ruwen was bestowed the long overdue mug that the youngest Void Band user needed to drink from. He hadn’t thought the mug would be a big deal until he learned it negated all of his advantages causing alcohol to affect him like anyone else. Ruwen played Bliz in a bandball match and barely lost to the Grand Champion. The night ended with a game of Blind Bandit where Ruwen’s new mug caused him to become very drunk. During the game, Bliz removed an egg that called to Lylan and when she approached it, the egg hatched to reveal a baby hydra that melted into Lylan's body.
When meeting with Gunder, Ruwen learns about the shapes that are formed in sand by the vibrations from different harmonies, and he considers if this is a possible hidden language the universe uses. Lylan wants to meet Gunder, so Ruwen takes the man to her and they meet for the first time. Gunder is stunned by the revelation and believes Lylan is an illusion or trick.
Ruwen using his Uru’s Shadow disguise travels to Deepwell and Stone Harbor to address the unrest there that Gunder’s people are fermenting. To Ruwen’s surprise, he finds that Slib has changed completely and supports Ruwen fully, standing up to the troublemakers at a public gathering. On the whole, though, Ruwen is not able to stop the unrest and returns to New Eiru without a solution.
During Ruwen’s time on Savage Island while attending the Master’s Trial he had placed an exploding Crossing Stone in his Void Band. That explosion had continued and now threatened the entire planet of the Black Pyramid.
Ruwen gives Blapy information about Harmony in return for valuable elixirs to heal the damage caused to his spiritual pathways when he Smeared himself to escape the Infernal prison.
Because of Ruwen’s mental world the Temple, Lir, needs to upgrade his storage. They use a discovery Fractal has made to accomplish this, vastly expanding Lir’s storage and increasing his capabilities. Ruwen meets Tarot again and during the reading Tarot refers to Ruwen with new names: maker, builder of builders, and conductor of the eighth harmony.
Hamma uses the first of her three wishes from the wyrm coin to force Blapy to answer everyone’s questions. They learn that souls and aura balance each other in some way and Blapy reveals what she, Pen, and Kholy found when they explored the Darkness: a small chapel with a creature of darkness trapped inside which they called the Dark Priest.
With the memory expansion complete, Lir can make a backup of Ruwen. Before they use the last two wishes, Ruwen dies and is revived. This time he takes the Crafter for his Root Class which eventually leads to the Bard.
Blapy had tried to take advantage of Ruwen’s revival to rid herself of the explosion in the Black Pyramid, but Lalquinrial and other demons invaded the Black Pyramid and made the explosion worse while stealing items from the vaults. The Black Pyramid and the entire planet will almost certainly be destroyed now.
Hamma uses her second wish to get body Fortification elixirs for both Ruwen and Sift to aid in their advancement. She uses her last wish for the gate runes that lead to Miranda’s divine realm. This realm has a vastly different flow of time and will allow Ruwen and Sift to experience a hundred years of time in just a few hours on Grave.
In Miranda’s Divine Realm Ruwen transitions from Diamond to Angel, the first Divine tier. Sift transitions from Gold into Jade, the first Gem tier. During Ruwen’s transition Uru’s binding around his soul is destroyed, making his transition the first Divine Apostasy. His wings are primal-looking harps that resonate with the surroundings.
To everyone’s surprise, Rami has also undergone some type of change although what is not clear. Whatever it was caused her to fall unconscious the entire time Ruwen Fortified.
Entries in Ruwen’s log detailed the error that had occurred when something called the System gave Ruwen his Architect Role. Because Ruwen already had one it triggered an alternate path and leveled Ruwen’s Architect Role to level 2. Additionally, this caused the Universe to level as well and unlocked things called Rifts, Paragon Jewels, and Legacy Shards.
Ruwen, Rami, and Sift return to Grave to find that Gunder has mobilized over fifty thousand people, and they are not far from the outer settlements around New Eiru. Blapy arrives and informs them that saving the Black Pyramid is out of her control now and it won’t last much longer. Ruwen has the idea that Shelly might be able to easily consume the explosion, which causes Sift and Shelly to try the incredibly dangerous rescue.
The god of the Frigid Sea, Haffa, helped move the mob from Stone Harbor to their current location and Ruwen knows it means confronting the mob will trigger a trap the gods have set. He decides to go anyway and Rami, Hamma, Lylan, and Xavier go with him.
Six deities appeared and one of them is Lalquinrial. Nameless, the Narrator formed from a destructive nihilist book, immediately demands that Ruwen turn him over and Ruwen agrees, calculating that the strain on Lalquinrial from holding Nameless in his mind would kill the Infernal Lord. As soon as Lalquinrial takes Nameless he returns home via a portal.
This shocked the other deities, but they attacked anyway. Even though Lalquinrial had departed he left his Infernal Aspects and a horde of demons. While Ruwen battled the deities, the rest of the team protected the fifty thousand people, and the golden statues from the grove in his mind materialize to fight the Aspects.
During the fighting one of the Aspects tries to kill Gunder and Lylan jumps in front of the attack, taking a long sword to the stomach. A moment later Gunder and Lylan are whisked away by a Dimensional Mage, disappearing completely.
Ruwen uses Harmony to battle the deities and coupled with his Steps he kills two gods and injures Izac, Uru’s brother, destroying one of his pathways. The other deities flee in terror.
Tarot's Ninth Harbinger - Summary
Tarot's Ninth Harbinger
Fractal continues to work on the two semi-dead bodies of the gods Ruwen killed to aid in the understanding of the God Stone, which will allow cultivators to revive.
Sift and Shelly survived stopping the giant explosion inside the Black Pyramid, and they both leveled their souls in the process.
When Ruwen had fortified his body from diamond to Angel, he triggered some advancements in the universe itself. One of these was the addition of rifts.
Ruwen and friends explore one of these rifts that appeared in the Black Pyramid. Inside, they discovered a group of mechanical creatures that belonged to an Outerverse faction called the Nexus.
The Nexus had been researching something called the Affinity Wheel, and after Ruwen destroyed the rift with his mental energy, they escaped and were rewarded loot by the System. This System had become more active after Ruwen's transition into Divine.
The Nexus had something called an Affinity Wheel which was an attempt to quantify something called conceptual magic or what the Nexus termed psionics. Hamma has an aptitude for this type of magic.
Ruwen also learns how to create a soul vault from the Drake Chip. He uses this new inventory to store many of the mechanical creatures, which he gives to Fractal.
They travel south to find Lylan and discover a hydra instead. After fighting the hydra, Ruwen portals it to another location. They find Lylan only to learn they need the hydra, so all of them take the same portal.
This portal leads them to the Mediterranean Sea, just north of Alexandria, Egypt. The hydra is there, and when it detects Lylan, it calms down. Echo appears in her Death Aspect, and Ruwen and Sift take the opportunity to speak with her.
Back on Grave, Ruwen's friends remain down south to help with Lylan's quest, while he talks with old friends and gets advice on changes he wishes to make to both the class system and the country as a whole.
Ruwen finally can look inside the Apocalypse Hoop that Pen had left him. Inside, he finds a sword that depicts the 32 golems, a gem that transfers a person between realms, and access to a private library that only Ruwen can access.
This library contains all of Pen's research into the nature of magic along with a few items, including a large coin marked as the 10th Muse.
Tarot asks for Ruwen's help to counter something called the Realm Zipper. It appears the system is using this zipper to separate the Creation and Destruction Realms from the Material Realm.
With a lot of effort, Ruwen discovers he can use Harmony to access the Femite layer and successfully saves Grave’s portion of the universe.
This activity causes some of Ruwen's quests to level up. As he studies the new quests, more information about the Outerverse factions comes to light. Luminaria uses soul power, Radiants use chakras, and Harmonics use the identity lattice. Ruwen looks through the spells available to him from each faction and picks the ones that best fit his needs.
Ruwen had not been inside his mind since he had transitioned from Gem to Divine. When he looks inside, he finds it has upgraded and now consists of multiple planets and a statue ten of thousands of miles tall. The new planets orbit this statue.
Ruwen meets with Fractal and tours a few of the new levels. Fractal is doing great, and the dungeon has grown in size greater than the entire country.
Ruwen goes to the Black Pyramid to finish a cleaning quest for Fluffy the quartermaster. Ruwen uses minions to quickly clean everything in the vault. Because he finished it quickly, he won time and resources in the alchemy lab.
Ruwen uses a combination of minions and a alchemical narrator inside his mind to power level himself to Grandmaster. He chooses a path of fortune, which involves luck, and receives a recipe to create Liquid Luck when he reaches Grandmaster.
The Infernal Realm kidnaps Big D in an obvious attempt to lure Ruwen into a trap. He goes anyway, and Nameless, the destructive nihilistic narrator that Ruwen had given to Lalquinrial, attacks Ruwen through Rami.
Ruwen defeats Nameless but discovers that Nameless was also just a distraction to keep Ruwen from realizing the planet itself was being vaporized by a crossing ring explosion triggered by Lalquinrial.
Ruwen tries to save everyone in the last remaining city but finds the only idea that might work involves his soul, and he only has the power to cover a few hundred feet.
There is a source of power near Ruwen, but it contains conceptual magic that burns him when he tries to touch it with Harmony. Hamma is fine, however, and he uses her as a bridge to funnel the power from the artifact, which he then converts into soul power to increase the size of his soul vault.
Ruwen saves the entire city by holding it in his soul vault for just a second, but it is enough to damage his soul and stop his regeneration completely.
Tired of Lalquinrial's tricks, Ruwen and his friends travel to the Infernal Realm to confront Lalquinrial. They fight a demon horde, and Ruwen sees Lylan's new magic for the first time, which involves hand gestures.
They break into the central ring and find Echo holding her dead mother. Lalquinrial had killed her, and Echo is distraught.
In the epilogue, we catch up with Ash, who is the grandson of the old man that Ruwen had met in the Journeyman Trial. The crossing ring that Ruwen had destroyed and snatched up with his Void Band had a paired ring. That ring was deep under the pyramids in Egypt, and when it exploded, it created a huge pit and allowed Infernal Realm Spirit to leak onto the Earth.
Ash is a descendant of Pen's chakra experiment, and the US government asks Ash to help them discover what is in the newly formed pit.
The Tenth Muse - Summary
The Tenth Muse
Coming Soon - There is a recap in the "Preface" of Zealot's Eleventh Crusade!