1% Lifesteal, Volume 4 recap

Freddy Stern assumes control of a destabilized Repentawa and commits his wealth and strength to defending it from an ether-virus-driven monster invasion led by Nahar Kraven. He and Sophia build the city's defenses, recruit mercenaries, and fight beside Lucas Black, Janice, Emily Umbra, Georgie League, and other elite allies. Human sabotage and dream-borne infection undermine the wall, the Empire refuses evacuation, and Sophia creates controlled undead to hold back the horde. Nahar attacks inside the city, forcing Freddy to sacrifice his soul for enough power to wound him. A dangerous Blood Domain construct keeps Freddy alive, and Emily kills Nahar, breaking the horde's coordination. Sophia's awakened flesh golem then massacres evacuees before being destroyed. Repentawa survives with about 80,000 people, but Freddy remains badly damaged. Sophia leaves over their ideological split, Lucas survives as a second-star, Janice has departed as Lily, and the still-active virus-origin makes Freddy its enemy.

Previously: Freddy Stern survived kidnapping and torture by the Kraven clan, followed by prolonged isolation that left him traumatized and uncertain of his own perceptions. He became the owner of Repentawa and returned to a city whose former ruling interests had been removed, leaving its institutions unstable. Sophia remained his life-affinity companion and healer, while Bloodshed continued as his blood-linked combat companion. Valhalla remained central to Repentawa's security, with Travis among its established leaders, as Freddy faced the responsibilities created by his control of the city.

Repentawa is close to collapse after its ruling interests are killed or flee. Freddy takes control of essential companies and their debts, while Travis and Valhalla manage shortages, riots, and redevelopment. Freddy accepts a contract making the city independent under his administration and commits its taxes to recovery. He refuses Lucas Black's plea to spare Helen Black, and Valhalla executes her with the other traitors, ending Lucas's friendship with him. Freddy and Sophia raise billions by selling regenerated organs through an imperial adjudicator, then direct much of the money into Repentawa. Freddy's lingering trauma also gives him a sense for an approaching insanity-linked danger. The adjudicator confirms that an ether virus is gathering monsters into a regional catastrophe. Its source is Nahar Kraven, a former interim patriarch connected to the clan that once imprisoned Freddy. Although the adjudicator privately recommends escape and offers to remove Sophia, both she and Freddy choose to remain. They have about a week to prepare Repentawa for a monster horde that could devastate the Northern Belt.

Freddy and Travis decide to fortify Repentawa, treating its inner-space refuge as only a temporary fallback. A dangerous tempering attempt nearly liquefies Freddy beyond recovery, but Sophia reconstructs him and begins preparing death-affinity attacks while maintaining her refusal to create undead. The adjudicator discovers that Freddy is also the organ supplier known as Skull. Instead of exposing him, he advances Freddy $300 billion against future goods, and Freddy commits the money to the city's defense. Mainland factions rapidly build Repentawa's wall and send fighters because they want ties to Freddy, creating political obligations alongside military support. Freddy's older Freddy Cliff identity is recognized by a visitor from his past, but he continues using it publicly. The adjudicator assembles an elite team that includes the nature-oriented Reginald Price, regenerative mercenary Georgie League, and shadow specialist Emily Umbra. Freddy gives them only a limited account of his own powers. Repentawa now has layered defenses, tracking watches, and strong outside assistance, but overwhelming monster numbers and the visitors' competing interests remain serious risks.

Lucas apologizes for blaming Freddy alone for his mother's execution but cannot forgive the loss. Soon afterward, Freddy learns that his former trainer sold him to the Kraven clan and that Basilisk is connected to Thor's death. Freddy attacks Basilisk, but the adjudicator stops the confrontation. The trainer then recognizes Freddy beneath the Cliff identity, exposes his exceptional healing, and admits that his apology was false. A masked shadow user abducts Lucas and Janice and mutilates Lucas to provoke Freddy. Sophia secretly restores him at great personal cost. Because his recovery would expose her power, Lucas and Janice must abandon their appearances and public identities. Lucas initially demands a place in the coming battle, while Janice refuses to leave him. Elsewhere, Reginald gives Freddy an experimental ring that can collect discharged ether during combat. Emily offers a contractual marriage and an army, but Freddy declines the hidden restrictions. He ultimately agrees that Lucas and Janice may accompany his party once Sophia has altered them and he has equipped them. The horde is close, and the group is still completing its preparations.

Freddy and Sophia buy specialized equipment and hire every mercenary company they can afford, both to strengthen the walls and to prevent opportunists from exploiting trapped residents. Sophia then creates replacement bodies for Lucas and Janice with their consent. Lucas becomes Drake, while Janice becomes Lily Black, and the pair enter the defense under their new legal identities. The invasion begins outside Repentawa. Freddy's group fights with a contracted three-star support party while Sophia turns monster tissue into armor and later a huge concealed flesh construct. Freddy kills an intelligent metal deviant despite losing both arms, and Reginald's ring begins producing ether coins. A stronger blessing lets Freddy defeat a four-star snow minotaur but nearly drives him beyond control. After days of combat, a giant with a lethal death aura approaches the city. Freddy joins Georgie, Reginald, Emily, and the other elites, then stakes his life on stopping it before it reaches the wall. His accelerated blood javelins bring the giant down and produce a cache of ether coins. The city survives this immediate threat, but a square-pupiled figure serves the Lord of Despair by drawing monsters into its cause.

Sophia upgrades herself, Freddy, and her flesh construct with tissue from the fallen giant. Lily helps Freddy turn captured ether into blood-aligned coins, whose insights expose flaws in his abilities and eventually open contact with the primordial domain of Blood. He is warned that the domain offers rare rewards but is too dangerous for him before the third star. Inside Repentawa, Freddy stops a company from buying frightened residents' property and sending them toward a less defensible city, then delegates future civil enforcement to Travis. The military crisis worsens when saboteurs with square pupils destroy part of the wall. Their apparent external control makes defenders and construction specialists prepare to leave. Freddy, Emily, Perry, and Georgie support an evacuation petition, but the Empire refuses it. With conventional forces withdrawing, Sophia crosses a boundary she had resisted and creates temporary undead defenders. She limits their intelligence, lifespan, feeding, and ability to reproduce, and retains a means to destroy them. Repentawa gains a secret defensive force just as its hired mercenaries prepare to depart.

Emily secretly stays in Repentawa after her entourage leaves. Lily accepts Freddy's offer of covert passage into the Empire, while Drake admits that nightmares and guilt made him push her away. Freddy identifies the ether virus as a dream-borne influence that exploits despair until victims accept it. He restores morale by manifesting Bloodshed as a giant skeletal defender, but revealing his third spirit ability jeopardizes his imperial standing and control of the city. Sophia's hidden undead and harsh winter conditions reduce the monster pressure for a time. The enemy then surrounds Repentawa as a diversion and attacks from within near the evacuation passage. Lucas rejects the Drake identity, ascends to the second star while defending civilians, and receives metal affinity. Emily discovers that Nahar is now a four-star with two talents. Freddy returns but is ambushed by Firita, a square-eyed spear fighter who identifies herself as a body snatcher. The adjudicator sacrifices a star and is maimed merely delaying Nahar. With survivors retreating through a breach in the wall, Freddy refuses to flee. He takes overwhelming holy and unholy support and offers his own soul as the final sacrifice needed to confront Nahar.

The soul sacrifice leaves Freddy feral and apparently soulless, but the resulting power lets him kill Nahar's companion and inflict severe injuries on Nahar before collapsing. Sophia extracts Freddy while her flesh golem and concealed shadow bindings delay pursuit. His soul is breaking apart, so he enters the primordial Blood Domain and survives a series of trials in search of a cure. A rose-like construct consumes two of his items and stitches his soul together only enough to prevent death. It becomes a hostile black scythe tattoo that can merge with his sword. Freddy resumes fighting the exhausted Nahar, and Emily strikes from concealment to decapitate him and destroy his head. Nahar's death ends the horde's coordination. The awakened flesh golem then attacks civilians escaping through secret Valhalla tunnels. Freddy's allies destroy it, but Sophia can save fewer than one hundred wounded survivors, including Lucas and Georgie. About 80,000 people remain after the crisis. Sophia leaves after she and Freddy split over her plan for radical imperial change. Freddy is still severely disabled by soul damage. The ascended origin of the Aether Virus offers him a conditional cure, threatens him when he refuses, and remains active beyond Nahar's death. In the final scene, an unnamed Overlord enters the Northern Belt by force while pursuing the person who fled with his daughter.

Repentawa survives after Emily Umbra kills Nahar Kraven and the directed horde disperses, but the victory leaves roughly 80,000 survivors and severe losses. Freddy remains the city's owner, though his soul is catastrophically damaged and only partly stabilized by a hostile new scythe construct from the Blood Domain. Sophia's awakened flesh golem attacks Valhalla's evacuees before Freddy's allies destroy it. Sophia saves fewer than one hundred wounded people, including Lucas Black and Georgie League, then leaves after she and Freddy divide over her willingness to pursue radical change in the Empire. Lucas is alive as a second-star fighter who has reclaimed his name, while Janice has already departed under the Lily identity. Travis helped evacuate several thousand civilians, Emily and Georgie survive, and the adjudicator lives after sacrificing a star to delay Nahar. The Aether Virus continues spreading without Nahar, and its ascended origin threatens Freddy when he refuses an offered bargain. An unnamed Overlord also breaks into the Northern Belt, seeking to kill the person who ran away with his daughter. Basilisk, the body snatchers, Freddy's damaged soul, and his precarious imperial standing remain unresolved.