Chapter 1-30
Calvin Gadsint, a farmhand bastard (in the literal sense) wants more than anything to be a wizard when he Breaks, but his adoptive mother Karen insists that he become a warrior.
On the morning of his Breaking Day, Calvin sneaks out of the village and goes to the big city to find someone to teach him magic. The day appears to be a total loss until a young girl about his age takes him to see her uncle, and the older man teaches Calvin a few magical Skills, much to Calvin’s delight.
A couple years later, Calvin and the girl (Kala) are good friends. She is visiting his tiny village for an annual celebration that involves chasing a boar into the woods. Calvin pairs up with Baroke, a massive boy with a penchant for archery.
Together the two of them manage to cheese the competition and secure victory in minutes. Shortly afterward, a flare pops up above the forest. Karen mentions it’s Kala nd goes to solve the problem. Calvin dashes after her.
They get into a big fight with the people trying to steal Kala, and manage to drive them off.
Turns out Kala is a princess (surprise!)
As a present for assisting with her rescue, Kala’s uncle gives Calvin a book of riddles to train his Mind stat. Calvin gets a talking to from his mom, who tells a story about his birth mother, who was also a mage.
Calvin trains his mind, and sets out to learn some new Skills to complement his current ones. Gets into a fight with an underwater monster while trying to get the Fishing Skill.
After the fight, Calvin wants a third Break and learns the only way he has a chance of getting it is being present at a major battle.
Calvin gets word one will happen in the next week, and launches a plan to bury himself under the chosen battlefield for a couple days.
Technically, the plan is a success because Calvin gets that third break, but is also trapped in an underground coffin and forced to improvise to escape.
Shortly afterward, Calvin’s village is attacked by Genosians, and most of the village flees, but Calvin is kidnapped.
He spends several months with the Genosians, and learn they plan on ritualistically sacrificing him so he can become a Chained Spirit, a Skill that allows someone to summon replicas of the dead, complete with Skills and all their lifetime’s experience.
Calvin steals the skill, uses it on a wasp and winds up getting separated from the rest of the tribe with their princess (of course) in a strange, hollowed out mountain with ancient relics buried inside it.
After a long struggle to escape, they find their way back to the surface, they get arrested by some of his people out on an expedition of vengeance for the Genosian attack.
Calvin protects the Genosian princess (Ella) from his people because the Genosian’s used a mind-meld drug to make him sympathize with her….and she’s thicc AF.
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Calvin kills the captain and assumes his identity with one of his mutations. He leads the group back toward his home, and winds up interfering in an assassination plot on the roadside targeting Kala.
Calvin’s identity as an imposter is exposed, but Kala vouches for him, and Calvin gets drafted.
Chapter 31-64
Calvin gets drafted into the military, as a bit of an oddity sponsored by Kala. Another country is invading from the north: The Ilethans. He winds up going head-to-head with another princess (Nadia), a crazy Ilethan one this time, who attempts to conquer the city on multiple occasions.
Calvin’s ability to summon thousands of enormous wasps earns him a nickname ‘the wasp’. Calvin learns that his archer friend has been mind-controlled by the invading army and goes to rescue him. Kala insists she be brought along on the rescue mission, and Calvin inadvertently gets a Skill specifically for kidnapping princesses.
Through a difficult battle, Calvin rescues his friend and severely wounds the Ilethan princess (Nadia).
Over the course of that night, the Ilethan princess is betrayed and murdered, her body infested with a biomechanical puppeteer.
The undead princess leads another attack that manages to break through the walls of the city and set it on fire.
The mission becomes to go to a local weather-controlling tower and make it rain, dampening the burning of the city.
Calvin meets up with the undead princess and manages to kill the thing….barely.
He then uses Consume to add the ilethan Princess to his Chained Spirit Skill, and the general of the ilethan army defects, aware that he would be put to death for allowing the princess to die if he reported back home.
Calvin works on breaking the ilethan princess while the general’s second in command continues the war against them, utilizing an ilethan sorceress.
Calvin is assigned to build a fortress on the road between two cities in order to use it as a jumping off point for taking the city back from the Ilethans.
There is a large protracted battle for the fort that Calvin manages to finish in an unheard-of amount of time with the help of one of his summons and a lot of prostitutes.
Finally, The ilethans are driven out of Gadvera and Calvin can rest.
Chapter 65-98
Calvin is assigned as Kala’s bodyguard on a diplomatic mission to a rich desert country, called Uleis. He make devious plans to use his powers to create an overwhelming large amount of fine goods with his powers and make pure profit reselling them. People die, Nadia abuses a glassworker. Cobalts with unique spines are freed from slavery. The usual.
The huge amount of money that Calvin manages to siphon away from the Ulesian economy catches the attention of the oligarchs running the city behind the scenes.
After a few battles and a lot of political maneuvering, Calvin and Kala are captured by the secret society and thrown in The Hole.
Chapter 99-120
Inside The Hole is The Filter, a half-way dimension partly between our reality and another, where the worst monsters from the Warp are caught before they can leak into our actual reality.
Needless to say, the Warp is incredibly dense there, so Calvin Breaks minutes into their exile.
They have a short battle with a strange shapeshifting creature, then they are rescued by the locals: Men and women who caused the secret society trouble in the past, and managed to survive being thrown in the hole.
The reason they don’t leave: there is no exit. The Hole was a one-way, non-euclidean hole.
Calvin uses his Fishing skill to great advantage, fishing monsters out of the alternate dimension and making a place for himself among the people.
He also creates an Abyssal Alchemy skill from using the creature’s reality-warping organs to make some new spells.
When he’s ready, Calvin explores deep into the tunnels, finding an ancient alien command console that allows him to open up the exit.
They climb out of the hole while the entire secrete society is in session.
One of them begins worshipping Calivin, who points the man out and says ‘I guess he wants to die last’.