PART III: AFTER THE UNSEALING OF THE BLACK MAGE

Chapter 32: The Last Crusade

• The Adversary received a mysterious letter that brought them to a strange dimension, where they encountered Rachael the Time Alchemist. Unbeknownst to them, Rachael had been a minion of Will and had summoned them to a copy of Mirror World that Will had created with his new powers from the Black Mage.

• Rachael told the Adversary that she was looking for medicine to save her gravely-ill brother in Mirror World and promised to help the Adversary escape in exchange for their help. She brought the Adversary to Mirror World Mu Lung, where they began collecting ingredients from the monsters there. In exchange, Rachael sent them back to the real world, where they met with Starling, Elwin, and Lily.

• Starling revealed that more dimensional cracks had begun to appear across Maple World once again, with powerful creatures emerging through. As the cracks had a different energy signature from Arkarium, Starling asked the Adversary to help the Silent Crusade investigate.

• The Adversary began working with the Crusaders to defeat the monster surging out, with Elwin and Lily using their magic to seal the cracks. They soon discovered that only monsters marked with a red spider-eye were able to leave Mirror World, and that they were getting progressively stronger as time went on.

• During their investigation, the Adversary fell through the cracks several times and helped Rachael collect more ingredients in exchange for being sent back to the real world. As they did, they learned that Rachael had once served the creator of Mirror World, who had been holding her brother hostage, though she had broken free from him in order to find a way to heal her brother.

• The Adversary soon learned that Rachael had been using the monster parts that they had brought to her in order to rebuild her brother into a chimera, assembled from the various monster parts to form a stronger body. This caused the Adversary - along with the Silent Crusade - to wonder whether the chimera was really Rachael’s brother, or whether she had simply been lying.

• Eventually, Rachael pulled the Adversary into Mirror World and presented her completed ‘brother’, revealing that it had gone mindless from being fused with so many monsters. When presented with the choice to kill the monster and potentially harm her brother - an innocent party in the entire affair - the Adversary chose to fight him. Upon seeing their decision, Rachael laughed and left them to fight the chimera, revealing that she had lied about everything, including the chimera being her brother.

• After the Adversary defeated the chimera, they returned back to the Silent Crusade headquarters, where the Crusaders concluded that the cracks had to be the work of a new Commander. Based on Lily and Elwin’s additional evidence, they learned that the name of the Commander was Will.

• The Adversary also learned that the Silent Crusade had been investigating a powerful and enormous force was flowing through the Temple of Time, and that the Crusaders had decided to formally merge with the Alliance, rather than being an independent sub-organization, as they believed it best to unite as one for the beginning of the end with the Black Mage.

• Meanwhile, Rachael met with Will and informed him about the Adversary’s choice. Believing that their choice was within the expected parameter for the Black Mage’s plan to succeed unimpeded when the critical moment came at Esfera, Will recalled his copy of Mirror World and prepared to remain on standby and watch the Adversary’s progress until the time of the Genesis Ritual came.