PART III: AFTER THE UNSEALING OF THE BLACK MAGE

Chapter 30: Heroes of Maple

• Damien led his demon army to conquer Rien, where they took control of Turtle Island as their base. There, Damien imprisoned Afrien and attempted to take his powers by using his mark of corruption.

• Sensing Afrien’s distress, Evan and Mir traveled to Turtle Island in order to save him. After meeting Afrien, Evan was shown a message from Freud contained inside Afrien’s mark of the Spirit Pact, transferring Freud’s memories into Evan. Freud then asked Evan to seek out the Sanctum of Abraxas with the other Heroes, adding that he had five friends whom Evan needed to seek out.

• Just then, Damien appeared and revealed that he had been absorbing the power of Afrien and all the countless other creatures whom he had branded with his sword. In order to save Evan, Afrien sacrificed his life to destroy the cave and teleport Evan to safety. Vowing to avenge Afrien, Evan planned to reunite the Heroes and follow Freud’s legacy.

• Meanwhile, a captured Alicia told Damien that he had gone too far by killing Afrien, though Damien revealed that he had planned to push the Heroes in order to gather them into one place.

• Evan gathered together the five Heroes, though upon recalling how Freud had mentioned his ‘five friends’, the Heroes deduced from Freud’s sealing spell that one of their members had sacrificed their existence. After deducing that their missing friend was Shade, the Heroes reunited with Shade, who was overjoyed to see that the Heroes knew about him.

• In order to prevent Damien from tracking them, the Heroes split up into two different teams. While Evan, Luminous, and Mercedes headed for the Sanctum of Abraxas, Phantom, Shade, and Aran attempted to go after Damien on Turtle Island.

• Meanwhile, the Demon confronted Damien at their family home, where Damien revealed his identity to his brother at last. Damien told the Demon that after the demons had been driven from Maple World centuries ago, the half-demons without wings had been sacrificed to power the Sword of Destruction, with Damien being the sole survivor after the sword had chosen him. Damien then attacked the Demon and warned him to stay out of his fight, vowing that he would fix everything that had gone wrong.

• Damien then returned back to Turtle Island and rallied his demons into battle, disappearing just as Phantom and his team arrived. Though frustrated that they had missed Damien, Phantom’s team soon encountered the Demon, who had come to stop his brother. After revealing that he and Damien were siblings, the Demon asked the Heroes to do whatever it took to stop Damien, adding that he would do the same.

• After learning that a horde of demons were approaching the Nihal Desert, Phantom and his team rushed aboard the Lumiere to stop them.

• Meanwhile, Evan and his team arrived at the Sanctum of Abraxas and discovered that it contained records of Maple World’s history, actively using a mysterious power to transcribe it as it happened. Inside the records, they read about how the Overseers had sealed away the Ancient Gods in the name of their creator, the Primordial God, as well as the balance of the three Transcendents from each of the three worlds.

• They also discovered that when the Black Mage had awakened as the dark Transcendent of Light, an object known as the Abyss Crystal had been created, capable of devouring anything - including the power of higher beings - which was how he had stolen the power of Rhinne centuries ago.

• Evan and the others realized that the Black Mage was planning to use the Abyss Crystal to take the powers of Alicia, for which they vowed to stop him. After the Heroes regrouped in the sanctum, Evan awakened an airship in the ruins, which the Heroes used to escape. Aboard the airship, they met with a projection of Freud, who had left a part of himself behind to meet the Heroes in the future.

• Freud revealed that the Black Mage had sealed the Abyss Crystal in a subspace between their world and Friends World, such that the crystal would recharge over centuries after being used to take Rhinne’s power. Though Freud had been unable to access the subspace, the disappearance of the Transcendents had caused the barrier between worlds to weaken and break down, making Friends World accessible.

• Freud also revealed that the airship and the entire sanctum contained the consciousness of Abraxas the Watchful God, whose divine power could be used to locate the Abyss Crystal, as the crystal naturally attracted the power of the gods.

• In order to learn more about Friends World, the Heroes worked with Grendel the Really Old, who revealed that Friends World was a parallel world within the same dimension as Maple World. Grendel also revealed that there were only three dimensions - Maple World, Grandis, and Tynerum - and that a portal in the south of Maple World leading to Tynerum had existed for centuries.

• To help the Heroes enter Friends World, Grendel created a large portal that the Heroes could use to bring the airship of Abraxas across worlds. With the help of Abraxas, the Heroes located the Abyss Crystal in a museum in Seoul. The Heroes infiltrated the museum in order to take the crystal, but upon coming in contact with it, Luminous’ powers were unbalanced, causing Phantom to fight him in order to help him regain control over himself.

• In the chaos, Damien arrived - having followed the Heroes through the portal - and stole the Abyss Crystal. Returning back to Maple World, Damien absorbed the Abyss Crystal into the Sword of Destruction and absorbed Alicia’s powers into it, binding the powers of the Transcendent of Life to the sword.

• Drunk and unstable from the power of the Transcendents, as well as the countless monsters branded by his sword, Damien fatally wounded Arkarium, who had revealed that he had never been keeping Damien’s mother alive at all. Damien then began to drain the life force of Maple World, with the World Tree growing large and corrupted as it gorged on the vitality of the world.

• The Heroes climbed atop the Dark World Tree and met with the Demon, who revealed that he had been looking for a way to disable Damien’s sword. The Demon revealed that the sword was the product of an experiment conducted by the pure-blood demons of Tynerum to imitate the power of the Transcendents, which had resulted in the destruction of their homeland.

• At the top of the Dark World Tree, the Demon attempted to dissuade Damien from his quest for vengeance, pointing out that the sword contained the spirits of all the half-blood demons sacrificed over centuries, adding that Damien would also be consumed by vengeance. However, Damien merely struck down his brother before attacking the Heroes.

• Nevertheless, the Heroes defeated Damien after a fierce battle, leaving the Demon to finish things. With the last of his senses, Damien asked his brother to strike him down, to which the Demon mournfully killed Damien before taking his body back to their family home in Leafre.

• With Damien’s defeat, Alicia emerged from the sword and revealed that she had been corrupted by the Black Mage’s darkness inside the Abyss Crystal. Together, the Heroes managed to stop Alicia from being consumed by evil, after which she revealed that she was slowly losing her ego to the Abyss Crystal, and that she would soon become a part of it.

• Because of this, however, Alicia revealed that she could also use the Abyss Crystal’s power to scatter her life force across Maple World in order to restore vitality to the ruined lands. By shattering the Abyss Crystal, the Heroes scattered Alicia and returned life back to Maple World.

• With Alpha and Beta divided and weakened into imperfect Transcendents, as well as Alicia’s powers being scattered beyond use, the Black Mage - having successfully eliminated two of Maple World’s Transcendents - ordered his Commanders to allow the Alliance to enter the Gate of the Present, where he awaited the Adversary to complete his plan.

• Meanwhile, Arkarium - who had survived Damien’s attack by transferring his life force into a backup snake body - returned to the Black Mage and regenerated his human body. The Black Mage then ordered Arkarium to bring Tana, who remained trapped in Kritias, before him, with the time having arrived to enact the Genesis Ritual and create a new world.