In the folds of the Drygallis Empire, within the city of Addens, the man known as Alden awakens to a confusing world not his own. He is met by the cities doctor, Dr. Elmswood, and his assistant Mina, who both, under the impression that Alden is an amnesiac, introduce him to his new world. A world of magic, adventurers, monsters. A world of noblemen, and the knights who serve them.
Having granted himself a System using the mystical power of the All-Maker, he begins the arduous journey of improving himself and his status. After helping a local band of adventurers kill a monster Alden decides to become a soldier, only to discover that one of the very adventurers he aided was, in truth, a foreign spy intent on disorganizing Addens in preparation for an invasion.
Pulled into war, Alden makes use of the All-Maker once more to grant him enhanced learning capabilities, skyrocketing his abilities just in time for war. Partaking in a gruesome battle that results in the loss of his arm, Alden is soon after made leader of his own team and sent east to kill a knight leading of an invading force.
With his enhanced magical abilities he dispatches a group foreign soldiers terrorizing a village, then waits to ambush the enemy knight. But when he comes face to face with the foreign knight, an albino woman by the name of Amice, he discovers the gulf in power that exists between them. Captured and taken alive, Alden is visited frequently by Amice, who has taken an unusual interest in him. Taking the opportunity, Alden is able to discover the source of her power, that of the mystical arts of cultivation, and convinces her to teach him her ways.
Having shown immense promise in the arts of cultivation, Amice grows further interested in Alden. This interest reaches its pinnacle once Alden, through the help of his fellow soldiers, escapes imprisonment during a raging storm, only to be stopped by a distraught Amice. Alden then convinces Amice to betray her home, and the group returns to their army.
Once rejoined with the army, Alden is promoted to knighthood and shipped out once more, this time in search of highly skilled enemy soldiers hiding out in Drygallis and disrupting the army's supply lines. Alden then utilizes the All-Maker once more to generate the Book of Complete Knowledge, granting him the knowledge necessary to regenerate his lost arm. However, the enemy soldiers prove too much for Alden and his party, remaining a step ahead at every turn and being impossible to find. That is until one of Alden's soldiers, a young man by the name of Caldwell, suggests that they may be using the local city of Coalben, the city in which he grew up.
Entering Coalben, Alden separates from the group to chase after a golden thread, which he believes to be the manifestation of fate itself guiding him. The thread leads him to a trap, however, and he is captured by the knights of Coalben, each of whom far surpasses him in power and accuse Alden of being a traitor to the Empire. Meanwhile, Caldwell, alongside the archer Gosfrid, search for old friends and enemies in the hopes of discovering some inkling regarding the enemy soldiers. Discovering that Coalben's crime families have recently been destroyed, Caldwell and Gosfrid are ambushed by the enemy, barely making it out alive as they return to the rest of the party.
Regrouping with the party in an inn, Caldwell falls unconscious while Gosfrid, Uhtric, and Elric devise a plan, only to be blindsided by the arrival of the full enemy force, including a mage of nigh-incomparable power. The mage offers them terms of surrender then, once they refuse, uses powerful magic that blasts sections of the inn to pieces. As the battle rages, Alden sits in his cell, calmly awaiting his trial, unable to escape. Suddenly, the option appears for him to level up Elric's abilities. Knowing that he must be in battle, Alden does so.
With Elric's abilities greatly enhance, he distracts the enemy mage long enough for the surviving party members to escape, which costs him his life. During their escape, Alden is again given the option to level up one of his companions, this time being Aerin, Elric's sister. He does so, granting Aerin enough power to topple Coalben's closing gates and allowing the group to escape from the city.
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Alden, formally accused of being a traitor to the Empire, demands a trial by combat. He faces the youngest and weakest of the Coalben knights, a cocky young man far more powerful than himself. The knight proceeds to humiliate Alden in battle, only keeping him alive to taunt him, granting Alden the perfect opportunity to use his body-altering magic. Focusing his magic into his bones, Alden creates a spear of bone that extends from his arm fast enough to puncture the young knight's neck, killing him instantly.
Allowed to go free, Alden is taken by a local business man who reveals to him that the Duke of Coalben is a traitor in league with the Oracle, a mystic from the rebelling Hilva capable of seeing into the future. Dropped off at the edge of the woods bordering Hilva, Alden reunites with his companions and begins planning an assault on Licester, the city acting as a gateway between Drygallis and Hilva, as well as the current location of the Oracle.
Amice, during this time, had been separated from Alden, imprisoned in a fort out of fear that she may be a spy. She reveals nothing, having nothing to reveal, until the fort is visited by three Vigilants, the secret police and boogeymen of the Empire who far surpass Amice in power. Even after ascending to a new rank of cultivation, which enhances her senses enough for her to "see" through walls and all around her, each of the Vigilants individually surpass her. The three do not take an interest in her, however, and instead search for answers regarding Alden, to which she reveals nothing. Their interest piqued, the Vigilants take Amice with them to go and meet up with Alden.
Meeting up with Alden, they discover that he is not a normal man at all. Having used All-Maker to increase his Wisdom Stat, and thus his mana pool, substantially, Alden has used his newfound mana to sculpt his body into a completely new form. Now a muscular behemoth of a man standing 12 feet tall, the Vigilants are interested enough to offer him an opportunity: conquer Licester and be rewarded with the title of Baron.
Greatly desiring the enhanced Quest rewards that come with it, Alden decides to conquer Licester alone. Licester's army, however, had been expecting an invasion, and ambushes him with an army rendered invisible by the powerful mage his compatriots faced in Coalben, a man known as Lukas Merveillo. Desiring no bloodshed, Alden uses his overwhelming magical might and knowledge of biological processes to use large-scale Syncope magic, rendering Licester's army unconscious and allowing him to enter the city relatively unscathed.
Lukas awakes soon after, discovering his army is still unconscious, and rushes to the local church to gain a blessing from the Gods. Blessing in hand, he rushes to Baron Licester's manor, where the Oracle was being protected. He arrives in time to stop Alden, and the two proceed to battle, only for Lukas to quickly be outmatched. As a last resort to stop Alden from accessing the Oracle, Lukas conjures divine flames that blast the manor.
Still alive and short on time, Alden races through the manor to the top floor, chasing the threads of fate, eventually reaching the Oracle itself. The Oracle is not one, but two, conjoined twins with a grotesque and misshapen body. The flames slowly encroaching on them, Alden takes the Oracle and jumps from the manor. At the bottom waiting is Lukas and his soldiers, who attack Alden. Taking serious damage, Alden struggles to regenerate his limbs as he continues to search for a way out without bloodshed. Then, in a stroke of either insanity or brilliance, Alden rushes to Oracle. Unable to attack without risking the Oracle, Alden is afforded enough time to try a truly unique application of his body-morphing magic: integrating the Oracle into his own body.
The Oracle now attached to his own body, Alden escapes, with Lukas and his men unable and unwilling to pursue: with the Oracle gone, the war is lost, and Lukas orders a retreat, thus ending the war.
After fully absorbing the Oracle into himself, Licester is fully taken over upon the arrival of Commander Dhatri and his army. As a show of religious celebration, Alden is made to lead a prayer in the cities church. Upon doing so, however, Alden is greeted by a titanic entity in an incorporeal realm. Absorbing the energy, his senses adapt and he discovers the realm is filled with these entities, with a total of 8 being as titanic as the one before him. The Gods themselves. The Gods, detecting Alden and seeing him for what he is, that being the Maker's Mark, reveal that the Maker and the Gods are enemies and move to destroy him. The System, having absorbed the divine energy of the realm, is able to extract Alden safely from the realm. The System then reveals that it has evolved sentience, improving its functionality.
Thus, Alden's future awaits in Volume 2.