I understand that most of you have Forgotten a lot of parts of Arcane Thief, but good news is, 4th volume is about to start in which he goes to Netherworld, meaning we start with a blank slate and all you really need to remember about the past is Axel's power level and his motivation for going to another World.
Still, I'm gonna write a casual summary of the three volumes in order to jog everyone's memories, so that you can read the next volume without any troubles.
You can read the summary of all three volumes or just the third volume and head over to patreon to read the latest chapters, which I've made free temporarily.
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Volume 1
Axel starts out as a petty thief, though an extremely talented one. The plot starts when Axel gets caught in the act by Cyrus Greengrass. Cyrus is a nutjob due to Greengrass family curse, so he likes to torture kids. He is pretty abusive to his family as well, especially his wife.
So, Cyrus Tortures Axel with Crutiatus but Axel manages to endure and even kill Cyrus. Here, Axel's freakish endure and strong mind is revealed and he's chosen by the Akashic Records.
Axel survived, but he was permanently disabled, as his nerves have been damaged and even moving a little hurts. When he wakes up in the hospital, he meets Andromeda Tonks, who tries to be nice to him for no reason, even getting him to meet her family. Axel doesn't admit it, but he's a bit touched. But her sister Bellatrix confronts him head, demanding how he managed to survive, so that they could heal Andromeda's husband who was tortured to insanity.
Bellatrix reads Axel's mind and finds out there's no trick and Axel is just that strong that he managed to endure the crutiatus.
Axel goes to Hogwarts while Andromeda is furious with her sister. At Hogwarts, Axel slowly trains his thief skills, trains his body, and changes his diet to magical ingredients recommended by the system. He also practices magic non-stop, even though it caused him a lot of pain and even though the Healers said it was impossible for him to learn magic, or do physical activites.
Generally, it should have been the case, but Axel increases his pain threshold to point that he can move, and he increases his concentration to the point he can do normal activities despite his uncoordinated body and cast magic despite the damaged nerves. In short, what he lacked, he made up my maximizing his other qualities.
Meanwhile, he slowly develops an acquaintance with Daphne. Daphne has just been set free after some unknow hero killed her father, so she is enjoying her freedom while Axel is always cynical and closed off.
Daphne discovers that Axel seems to have more and more secrets and finds him more and more entertaining once you can get him talking. When she talks to other kids her age, and when she talks to Axel, Daphne, who has already matured early after seeing her mother getting abused and with thoughts of wanting to kill her father, finds that Axel really is much more interesting than the rest of the students.
No matter how darks and unethical her thoughts were, when revealed to Axel, he would only find them cute at best. She found that when it comes to being crooked, Axel had a mastery. As someone who was allowed to have no free will and no fun until now, every time she learned something from him, she would feel more free and more thrilled.
Axel also found it interesting to slowly taint the sheltered and pure girl and teach her how the world actually works. It was also convenient that she would do Axel's homework for him so he was happy to hang out with her.
As they spent time together, Daphne tried to find out more about Axel, like why his hands are so shaky but Axel always said it was a casual injury.
Daphne seemed to really like Quidditch as Axel discovered when they went to watch the match. But during the match, all he could think so while looking at the flying teams was, 'what's so special about it? If I was not crippled, I could have done it better.'
Daphne suddenly left mid-game. Axel followed her and found her crying in the forbidden forest. After much persuasion, she reveals that her younger sister has blood malediction and her mother just told her the last hope was lost.
Axel calls bullshit on it as he finally decides to reveal that his injuries are unhealable and extremely painful and he was supposed to not have been able to do magic, which he proved wrong by being above average in magic casting in the class despite the injuries.
Daphne realizes the suffering Axel has had to go through this whole time the things he overcame and felt that she could indeed not lose hope. After this the two became closer and Daphne began to fall for Axel. I can't really explain it in a summary but Axel has that savage W rizz that just leaves Daphne no choice.
Meanwhile a lot of other things happened, Axel met Martina during the troll attack and Martina ended up tripping with her skirt riding up, and this happened the second time, making her realize that the Valentino Mafia Genius Princess was just a clumsy girl.
The Volume ends when Axel saves Daphne and Rose from Umbridge and steals the philosopher's stones. With it, he manages to heal his injuries, and heal Astoria's bloodmaladiction.
(I could write more but it would be too much timetaking for me to write and for you to read. I've tried to include most of the important things. The next Volume summary will be even shorter.)
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VOLUME 2
In Volume 2, Delegation Mahoutokoro School from Japan comes to Hogwarts for a cultural exchange. The two schools competed in the duel the first day in which Akiko Matsushima, Japan's best student and the principal's granddaughter reveals her lightning ninjutsu, something that is extremely rare and power.
The next day, in the ninjutsu class Axel discovers that he also has Lightning affinity, along with a very powerful water affinity.
The teacher of the stealth class, Kurai aka Kyrin Tenebrous discovers his stealth skills and is surprised. Kyrin is actually from Atlantis but even by the Kingdom's standards, Axel is extremely talented in terms of stealth so she offers his personal training but Axel rejects.
The next day, when going for training, Axel discovers Akiko training her other Affinity, the darkness Affinity, something that is frown upon to have. They ended up fighting and Axel wins and makes her sign a seal stating she would teach him everything she knows.
From then on, Akiko and Axel trained everyday, gradually becoming friends.
During Halloween, Lockhart, who was sent by Voldemort, summons a demogorgon, a dark creature of Netherworld and an evolution of demogorgon. Axel asks help from Akiko and Martina and the three of them struggle but find the creature to be too powerful. Martina has magic and talent but no attack power, Akiko had enough of both but her dark magic was ineffective against demogorgon. And Axel has low magic power and thus low attack power.
Axel activated [limit break] and used a special lightning spell that enables him to charge in wand with lightning, infused it with light magic, and fired, managing to kill the creature, but breaks his wand.
After that, the matter dies down and everyone focuses on other things. This year, on Daphne's insistence, Axel entered the Quidditch team, and as expected, he was great. In fact, he was too good since he broke all records by a huge margin.
Christmas arrives and Axel goes to Martina's home for Christmas to get his wand repaired upgraded. For the new version, he uses a wood that was Daphne's heirloom, which contains immense light magic, and the demogorgon hearthstone as the core to be used.
There, during the Christmas party, in order to reject their rival mafia's proposal for marriage, Martina's parents use Axel as a shield and announce that she is engaged to Axel.
The Mikhailovs try to kidnap Martina but Axel saves her and kills the kidnappers. Touched, Martina shares her secret that she is actually a person who remembers her past life, meaning she's a reincarnated person.
When Daphne, who had fallen deeply in love with Axel, saw the news, she was heartbroken, which caused her family curse to activate. It manifests in a way that takes away what the host cherishes the most, so Daphne forgot all of her memories of Axel.
When Axel returns and found out about this, he was shocked, and even more shocked by the indisputable fact that Daphne actually cherished him the most in the world. Having faced all kinds of hatred, disgusts, and betrayals from all kinds of people, Axel, who had stopped trusting in people, felt a new feeling when he found that there was someone in this world who loved someone like him so deeply. Decides to bring her memories back at all costs.
Returning to Hogwarts, Axel plays better Quidditch to impress Daphne and also slowly starts the process of becoming friends again, only this time, he is the proactive one.
He also finds a way to cure Daphne. It's a way to lift off her curse completely, but the materials are scarce. He cuts a deal with the Principals to play Quidditch against the Mahoutokoro school team in exchange for the ingredients.
After he wins, only one ingredient is left. But at this time, Rose Potter is kidnapped by Lockhart, who uses her to open a portal to the netherworld and summons three demogorgons. Martina, who has upgrade now, manages to stop the demogorgons with her new spell along with Akiko and Axel fight Lockhart, whose body was being controlled by Voldemort through the Horcrux.
Axel manages to win and rescue Rose, but just when the portal is closing, Voldemort unleashes a full powered attack, some of it manages to make it through the portal. Axel could have run away, but didn't since Martina and Akiko were in danger, Axel used limit break along with his best shield to block the attack. Even though he survived, he had no combat power left.
At this time, two Overseers from Kraken attack Axel. Kraken is an organization from Atlantis and they were after him because they wanted the key around his neck that his dad stole from Kraken.
Axel tries to resist but ended up getting his fist cut off, getting kidnapped. The two Overseers interrogate him by torturing him but Axel reveals nothing. Instead, with his body immobile and with no magical energy left, he bides his time awakening his water affinity under pressure.
Over the years, Axel has discovered that when under great emotional and physical pain, Axel can sometimes get energy out of nowhere. This energy actually comes from his bloodline. Every time he suffers, Axel inadvertently awakens his Atlantian bloodline, which is said to be impossible to awaken without the help of proper training and resources.
He used the painifera venom, much worse than crutiatus, and anger he felt when they also threatened Daphne when they find out that he cared for her through his magi-mirror. With these factors, he manages to awaken his water affinity to a high degree, upgrading his skill to [Water Monarch], and unlocks the ability to control water with just his thought, requiring no hand seals or a magical conduit like wand.
But he didn't know was the Daphne had heard the process of him getting tortured through the butt-dial on his magi-mirror. Daphne, who had memories of Axel, found that when Axel was getting tortured, it felt like they were torturing her. She felt such anger and desperation at the thought of Axel suffering that her Bloodline curse retreats and her memories return, reminding her exactly why she cared so much.
With his water bloodline, Axel takes the overseers by surprise and reunites with Daphne. The Volume ends with Axel healing his soul which was damage due to limit break with Daphne's help and then leaving for Atlantis to deal with the rest of the Kraken, who now know that he has the key.
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ABOUT THE ENTITY AND THE ALTINA TRENCH
The Entity is an anomaly created by greedy Aetherians by mistake when they were trying to create a being who won't have much awareness but would be able to store and generate immense power, which the Aetherians would be able to harness by bonding with it. Basically they wanted a substitute for the world tree, an overpowerful entity that only serves the royal family of Aetherworld.
But like the plot of every sci-fi horror movie, they failed and accidentally unleashed a monstrosity into the world. This monstrosity was named the Entity. It was impossible to kill and could adapt, evolve and grow infinitely. And, it had its own will. It wanted to take over every living being and absorb them into its own consciousness, thus becoming the all controlling existence in the world.
After a lot of death and destruction, the Atlantian Royalty, which had nothing to do with the incident, had to do the most heavy lifting. Using up a whole lot of power of the world tree, they managed to temporarily contain the Entity. But, it wasn't a permanent solution since the Entity could once again gain power as long as there was mana in the environment.
So, they began to explore other worlds. They discovered the Netherworld and Earth. Netherworld also had a lot of magic but Earth had no magic of its own. So, they decided to permanently seal the Entity on Earth.
Now the problem was how to keep the seal reinforced and how to protect it? Earth has no magic power, so the Aetherians cannot replenish their powers if they stay to guard the seal.
So, in order to guard and power the seal, they modified Aetherians and in a way that allowed their souls to have a connection with the Aetherworld or Netherworld, allowing them to draw powers from it.
These Aetherian with modified souls were the first of the wizards on Earth.
The Aetherian sealed the Entity in a space at the deepest trench of the ocean. This space is now know as Altina trench. They created a Kingdom in the sea to guard this space, Atlantis. The whole kingdom has an array that continuously takes a little bit of magical power from its citizens to maintain the seal.
In this way, the Entity remained sealed for thousands of years, but it could still influence people, creating a lot of chaos. It also managed to expand the space in Altina Trench, connecting it with various parts of the world in order to draw people from the outer world in the Trench.
The followers of the Entity called their organization the Kraken, reference the tales of the giant sea monster among the outer worlders.
VOLUME 3
In the next volume, Axel enters Atlantis disguised as a teenager who knew the previous crown princess (his mother) and the princess takes him in.
He doesn't reveal that he is supposed to be the crown prince yet since he doesn't know the situation and can't trust the princess. For all he knows, he might be attacked and taken down by those who have plans for the throne, like it happens in the stories.
Axel finds that Atlantis is currently under war against Kraken, the same enemy organisation he came to take down and decides that joining Atlantian Army is the way to go.
Axel is taken to the academy to enroll where has to pass a trial. Axel performs so well that he breaks the previous records in this as well and gets offers from various divisions.
Unfortunately, his trial has to end when Kraken bombards the capital city using bombs that can actually blow up despite the restrictions of Ancient Atlantian wards.
But after watching the video continuously, Kyrin manages to see through Axel's disguise and forces him to join her unit, which is Dark ops. There, he also finds Akiko who had come with Kyrin.
After joining, Axel and Akiko spend a day outside to get familiar with the city and Akiko has fun and relaxing for the first time in her life. But they are interrupted when the biopark, a place containing numerous magical animals, suddenly faces a Kraken attack. The creatures suddenly become a lot more powerful and aggressive due to the entity's influence and attack the tourists. Axel steps up and single handedly subdues the large beast tide, by controlling the dragon by simultaneously controlling hundreds of thousands of mana threads.
The video once again goes viral and now Axel is famous in Atlantis. He is supposed to be rewarded for his bravery soon. Kyrin takes them to train in the Altina Trench for a day, stating they'll be back for Axel's commendation ceremony.
In the trench, they were supposed to only train in the shallow layers, where there is no danger but Axel's key causes a space fluctuation and they end up in the deeper part, a place where the Relic Wielders of Kingdom are fighting the Overseers of Kraken to reach to seal and reinforce it.
Here, they first meet the Fifth overseer, the fifth overseer Karlock who is chasing a poisoned Sylthia.
Karlock has a relic that lets him manipulate machines and biological matter, using which he modifies humans and animals into grotesque creatures which he can control.
Sylthia tells them how the relic wielder division by single-handedly trashed by one person, and he was wielding the Royal Trident, the Relic wielded by the Atlantian Rulers. Axel gets a main quest, part one, to take down the Royal Trident wielder and retrieve the royal relic. And part 2, Reinforce the Seal.
Axel detoxifies Sylthia's poison using his poison mastery skill and after a lot of struggle, they defeat Kraken's fifth overseer. But during the fight, Karlock doesn't fail to notice that Kyrin, the legendary warrior who has single-handedly defeated 3 overseers at once, is either no using her full power or has gotten a lot weaker.
Before they can relax, Axel ends up being transported further deep into the Abyss due to an accident. In this layer, the Gravitation is extremely high, high enough to suffocate normal people.
He witnessed a fight between his Mother's brother Ender and the fourth Overseer.
Fourth can control all kinds of energy fields, including Gravity. He also almost as strong as Ender, kingdom's one of the strongest warriors, but Ender's lightning can be countered by Fourth's control over electromagnetic fields and the terrain of gravitation is also in Fourth's favour. Also, due to the loosening of the seal, the Fourth can borrow a lot of power from the Entity. So, Ender loses.
After dealing with Ender, the fourth fights Axel but Axel manages to hold on by protecting him with his exteme water control and completely exhausting the Fourth. Though when Fourth goes all and creates an explosion of energy fields, Axel has to protect himself by forcefully stuff his body into Theron's armor through the neck portion by dislocating his bones.
After that, Axel got out of the armor and reattached his bones and Killed the Fourth, taking his relic.
By now, Axel is exhausted. But just after a small break, he has to get up and run because the Wielder of Royal Trident is after him.
Axel wouldn't have minded if his conditions were better but now he's exhausted. He tries to run but Royal Relic Wielder is too fast.
Axel finds that the Royal Relic Wielder is actually Aslot, the traitor who launched a mutiny and crippled the previous king. Unable to run away, Axel fights Aslot, but he immediately finds that this is almost an impossible fight.
Aslot's is much better than Axel, being it close combat skills, magic power, affinity control, or attack power. But Aslot is also impressed by Axel's insane achievements at his age, especially about his high bloodline awakening, prompting him to not kill Axel.
Axel starts to bait Aslot. He fights while revealing very little of his actual power and skills, making Aslot think he could win easily. In this way, the fight just keep stretching. Every time Aslot feels like he would win, Axel just barely survives, making frustrated but also scared he might kill him and lose all the secrets if he used too much power.
And during this whole time, Axel is constantly getting stronger. The reason he was weak until now was because he barely had any real fight with a real opponent. But now that he had the opportunity, with his highly strong mind, he was able to continuously comprehend the system knowledge, create new skills, and unlock new knowledge.
His proficiency in controlling water also increased as he learnt from the best. In this way, Axel became a real thief and awakened [Skill Steal], stealing Aslot's skills and making them his own.
Aslot had long stopped trying to subdue Axel and was now actively trying to kill him, but now, the problem was, he could no longer do so. Axel had already upskilled to the point that he could survive Aslot. He even managed to survive the water curse, due to his high water comprehension and Aslot lost a lot of control over the Trident in order to cast it.
Aslot finally uses the spell he used to take down the previous king, the Soul Extinguisher. It is a soul affinity magic that directly targets the soul, and the only one to have survived it is the previous King, or Axel's Grandfather, and he only survived it due to the protection of the Royal Trident. He was only hit by a very small portion of the spell and the pain was so much that the King never recovered.
The reason Aslot can use this spell is because Aslot is able to use this spell is because Aslot is because the Royal Family has been mixed with the bloodlines of all septices, which includes the Soul Septis. And the Entity helped him awaken the Soul bloodline or Arhunt Bloodline, which is extremely difficult to awaken even for direct descendents.
So, Axel suffered the [Soul Extinguisher at full power. As expected, he almost dies. But, Axel has discovered a trick by now. When under great pain, if he manages to get his mind to focus at that moment, he can always do crazy things. But the problem was, this pain was just too much, even more him.
Just when he was about to die, he thought of Daphne and that helped him focus and calm his soul. The reason is that Daphne is a person he can be completely relaxed with. As soon as Axel managed to focus, he awakened the Arhunt Bloodline, a bloodline that went extinct because very few descendents were actually able to awaken it even with the proper procedures.
It is even more difficult to awaken than the royal bloodline. His father was actually from the Soul Septis, meaning he is a direct descendant, and he awakened it without any training or procedure, simply with pure will to survive.
When Axel even manages to survive this, Aslot goes mad and creates a suicidal explosion, thinking that he would survive using the royal trident. In order to start the chain reaction, he used dimensional bombs. But Axel throws the royal trident into the blast and uses the energy to free the Royal Trident by using [Unshackle]
The explosion takes place and both Aslot and Axel disappear. During this time, the princess, martina, general, Sylthia, and black ops were trying to find Axel, knowing that Aslot might sense his bloodline and go after him. Just when they're about to reach him the explosion occurs.
Estris uses her time ability and they see the previous legendary fight between Axel and Aslot and they realize that Axel is dead. No one knew that Axel used [Unshakled] at the last moment, so they think he has no chance, and they can't even find his body.
Seeing the fight, blood starts dripping from Akiko's eyes and she awakens Shinigan, the eyes of death.
They show the video to the rest of the higher ups and everyone realizes that Axel was actually the Crown prince. Every regret and lament the death of who could have been the most powerful ruler and launch an all out attack at Kraken for retaliation.
During this time, Martina hacks into the Atlantian database and finds the video. She watches it with Daphne, Astoria, and Rose.
Seeing the end, Daphne's bloodline curse recurs. She uses the bloodline awakening ritual that Axel has set up before leaving for exactly a situation like this to stop her memories of Axel from disappearing again.
But no one knew that Daphne's bloodline had a hidden mechanism of transporting her to Aetherworld after awakening it. It was written in her family motto that when they awaken the bloodline, they shall ascend, but no one took it literally.
After being unable to find Daphne, Martina leaves her family to the task and goes to Atlantis to take revenge.
Six months pass and the fight enters the final stage. And Axel also waves up during this time.
He wanted to go back and see Daphne but when he found out he was very close to the seal he decided to reinforce it first. But he finds that it was being guarded by the Second Overseer called Zeta. She was a beautiful woman who reminded Axel awfully of Daphne because of her aura and her looks.
Axel fights Zeta and realizes that she has the Royal Bloodline of the Aetherworld. Combined with the power of huge imitation of the world tree behind her, she was a formidable opponent. Only, she had very little knowledge on how to actually use her bloodline, letting Axel have the upper hand.
But the problem was, Zeta seemed to be immortal. Even after destroying her several times, Axel fails. At this moment, Axel summons his wand which was with Martina and the wand begins to absorb the power of the world tree. Then it is revealed that the world tree was made out of a real world tree branch, and that branch had turned into Axel's wand, so the imitation world tree was basically Axel's bitch now, and since Zeta had bonded to the imitation, so was she.
Atlantis was winning, but it turned out that Kraken had been hiding an ace with their sleeve. Then out of nowhere, all the Atlantian defense systems open fired at friendly forces. It was only they that it was revealed that the bedridden King was actually Kraken's sleeping cell this whole time.
After getting hit by a tiny fraction of the soul extinguisher, the King, who didn't have Axel's pain tolerance, wasn't able to bear the pain and gave in to the entity in order to lessen the pain. The Kraken used the King and Aslot to fight against Axel's parents, forcing them to destroy the key and disappear into the dimensional storm.
Then the organization used the King to poison Antilla in a way that destroyed her fertility, thus ensuring there would be no rulers in the Kingdom anymore.
After that, they erased the King's memory, and again made him disabled and left him to wallow in pain. Now that the Entity once again has the power, it once again awakened its dormant control over the king, giving the Kingdom a huge blow.
Kyrin fights the Sixth but it is revealed that she is actually dying and has very little power left, the after effects of over exerting herself when taking the revenge for Akiko's parent's deaths.
So, she is unable to save Akiko when she is in danger due to an attack of Sixth.
Martina also loses the fight against the fifth, while the princess was about to be killed by her own father.
At this moment, Axel returns, and three blades pierce three people, saving three women at the same time.
Axel fights the king and almost wins, but then Scitius, the third overseer takes control, controlling every person on the battlefield at the same time, including
Scitius can maximize the abilities of the people he controls, so he is able to have the upper hand against Axel and the Kingdom's forces.
At this moment, it is revealed that Scitius actually has the most powerful relic, and he can only use it to some extent after using extra brains in a huge tank in his ship. But even then, his powers are extremely formidable.
It is revealed that he is the mastermind for everything that has happened until now, and if not for Axel, he would have brought down this ancient kingdom that had never fully fallen.
(If you have only read Webnovel chapters, the summary ahead is spoiler, so it's better to just read the chapters. I've made them free for at least now.)
Basically, Sciutius can always anticipate Axel's every move, and Axel's mental power is also gone due to reinforcing the seal and fighting Zeta, so is about to lose but Axel surprises Scitius by using Arhunt Bloodline and kills the King.
But Scitius fights him himself. Axel lets Scitius into his mind, and traps him in the part of his mind that contains the memories of all of his pain and suffering, including the soul extinguisher. This place is so sturdy and even Scitius can't break out immediately and Axel force him to experience his painful memories. While Sctius is in shock, Axel destroys his body.
After this, Axel knows that the first overseer is coming. So he prepares well, shoving down potions and stabbing syringes that can boost him for a while and help him recover his physical, mental, and magical energy.
Then the First Overseer finally arrives. Axel was not surprised when it turned out to be his Grandfather, the father of Tristan Arhunt. He has an extremely high proficiency in Soul Magic. In Soul Magic, you have to follow a path. A path is something that describes you, your nature, and what you like to do.
The path the First follows is destruction.
(After this, just read from 246 or 247 to the latest chapter. They're temporarily free. Would only take a few minutes and it will be more fun)
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