Mage Tank 2: A LitRPG Adventure recap

A year after the Cage, Fortune's Folly learns that the Get Out of Cage Free card points toward Phase 2 of the system and a set of special Delves. Warnings from Xim's goddess, Hiward, and the Operator establish avatars as a growing threat, though the Operator's account of repeated civilization-ending ascensions remains unverified. The party fights through the Littan blockade, kills a rogue gold captain, gains asylum in Eschendur, and becomes caught in the Littan invasion while Nuralie accepts appointment as an Inquisitor and evacuates her village. With the Operator's diversion, they enter a Littan-held special Delve, train from Level 6 to Level 10, and defeat its tailored remedial encounters. Their final opponent is a mountain-sized corrupted Delve remnant, killed through coordinated fire, bleeding, poison, and a massive Shared Vessel Explosion. The remnant proves to be a portal guardian. The surviving party takes its rewards and enters the next special-grade Delve, where the stated objective is Escape.

Previously: Arlo Xor'Drel leads Fortune's Folly with Xim, Varrin, Nuralie, Etja, and his bonded Delve Core, Grotto. Arlo is a highly durable dimensional mage whose abilities include Soul Sight, Reveal, teleportation, protective auras, and access to a pocket Delve. Etja was transformed from a clay construct into a Delver after carrying a fragment of Orexis, a hostile avatar-linked entity. Nuralie hopes to gain enough power to return to Eschendur and defend it. Arlo also carries unusual gifts associated with Fortune, including powers derived from his eye and an evolving Traveler's Amulet. The group survived the Cage and obtained a one-use Get Out of Cage Free card whose reference to the system's rollout remains unexplained.

Fortune's Folly clears a platinum Delve filled by one distributed mimic. The entity presents itself as the Mimic Architect, an ancient level-10 intelligence with system access and a body encompassing every lesser mimic in the site. After the party defeats its combat form, Nuralie's charged attack prevents its scattered pieces from recovering. The dying Architect examines the Get Out of Cage Free card and says it signals a cascading failure involving avatars and the system's phased rollout. Phase 1 challenges civilization, while Phase 2 would provide further resources and power after enough Delvers succeed. The party is too low-level to reach every required system core, but the Architect supplies the locations of three special Delves, including a restricted site in Eschendur. The group leaves with those leads, new loot, and another level, while postponing its decision until everyone has rested.

Arlo discovers that personally meaningful restrictions can strengthen magic and selects a Fortitude evolution that prevents bleeding and permits regeneration from any nonfatal injury. After the party compares new abilities and reasons for Delving, Varrin says that duty binds him to Hiward and Ravvenblaq, but revenge against Orexis drives him personally. Arlo warns that imperial expansion, defense treaties, unequal Delver access, and powerful weapons could lead to a multinational war. A gold-level Littan investigator then attacks him to measure his strength. Arlo survives by moving the fight into the pocket Delve and using Grotto's defenses and Shog Tuatha's help, but the attacker and a shadow-using associate escape. The assault reveals gaps in Arlo's individual offense and raises concern when Xim's divine fire reacts strangely to the associate. Varrin stays behind to investigate the Littans, while Arlo, Xim, and Grotto decide to travel to Xim's Third Layer community. Grotto admits that the phase rollout may threaten his existence, and Arlo promises that they will face that danger together.

In the Third Layer, Drel'Gethed explains how identity can reshape a manifested body, and Grotto experiments with his own form. Xim's goddess tells Arlo that avatars emerge after Delvers rise, grow stronger over time, and have destroyed earlier civilizations. She presents advancement through later system phases as a possible path to true divinity and resistance, while warning that the avatar linked to Ravvenblaq is especially dangerous. Arlo and Xim learn that only platinum-grade Delvers remain eligible for later advancement, excluding Xim's parents. During three months of training, Arlo develops his weapon skills and receives a changing warhammer forged through a communal dream. The party then reunites at Foundation after an avatar attack leaves a Timagrin city lethally saturated with mana. Ealdric Ravvenblaq Sr. says Hiward will announce an avatar kill-on-sight policy. Central quietly confirms that two lower-level special Delves may be the only available path toward Phase 2 and helps the party seek passage to Eschendur without formally endorsing the mission.

The Littan blockade refuses Fortune's Folly's valid passage, demands Nuralie's surrender, and opens a naval confrontation. A rogue level-17 Littan captain then attacks from experimental hidden caravels, killing his own side while attempting to blame Arlo's party. The fighting leaves Varrin disabled and drives Arlo through severe wounds, including a bolt through his heart. Varrin intervenes before the captain can finish Arlo, but the captain uses a deific skill to isolate Arlo in another layer until one of them dies. Arlo recovers, prepares traps and poison, summons Shog Tuatha, and kills the captain. Back in the main battle, Fortune's Folly reaches Eschendur's waters and receives asylum from the Zenithar of the water deity. When the Littan admiral continues the attack despite her ruling, the Zenithar uses overwhelming water power to destroy more than half of the blockade fleet. The surviving Littan ships retreat, and the party enters Eschendur under the Triarch's protection.

The Zenithar offers Nuralie appointment as an Inquisitor, a neutral crisis authority that would let her escort Fortune's Folly across Eschendur. As the party travels inland, it supplies a village suffering from blockade-driven shortages and treats its sick residents. Arlo works to deepen Soul Sight and Reveal, while Grotto seeks practical skills beyond his original Delve Core functions. News then arrives that a Littan legion has crossed into Eschendur through the Eshin Gap. With her home village near the invasion route, Nuralie accepts the Inquisitor office. Arlo establishes a portal destination near the capital so the group can evacuate the village if needed, and the party turns toward the threatened settlement. Eschendur mobilizes for war, while Nuralie's new authority makes the special-Delve mission inseparable from the immediate defense of her homeland.

Littan Delvers ambush the party during its approach to Nuralie's village, destroying Arlo's eye and part of his brain. He survives, expands Soul Sight to locate concealed attackers, and forges Reckless Shortcut, a long-range teleport that severely injures him when used. The party defeats the ambushers, evacuates more than a hundred villagers through Arlo's portal, and learns that the occupiers killed the local defenders. A Dajinin Zenithar takes custody of a prisoner but cannot abandon the invasion response to join the larger mission. Near the local special Delve, Fortune's Folly meets the Operator, a level-24 Architect protecting the site's reality anchor. The Operator recognizes Grotto as Core 1156 and finds his bond with Arlo anomalous. It claims that flawed ascensions created avatars and that successive civilizations have repeated the catastrophe more quickly. It also warns that Phase 2 would strengthen avatars as well as Delvers. The party treats this history as unverified but chooses advancement as its best available defense. The Operator agrees to distract the Littan force guarding the Delve.

The Operator engages the Littan base's strongest defender while Fortune's Folly uses Nuralie's diversions, Etja's ward-breaking, Xim's fear effect, and Varrin's soul-disrupting sword technique to reach the portal. Once inside, the party endures the attention of multiple divine beings and learns that the special Delve judges every member underprepared. It grants access to an immense training facility but imposes a 30-day deadline to reach Delver Level 10. Nuralie becomes an Inquisitor in class as well as office and recognizes Eschendur's three gods as aspects of a greater whole. An outside force replaces all of Arlo's Luck evolutions with a dangerous offer to invoke a divine being's true name, so he defers the choice. The party trains intensively, and Arlo forges powerful self-repairing heavy armor. After entering the remedial portal, Shog Tuatha kills the first guardian and begins another advance. The victory awards progress and stat points, but the chamber immediately collapses into the next trial.

The next trial is an escalating clockwork chamber that attacks the party with weight, heat, lightning, mental pressure, and restraints. Xim sustains the group while Arlo exposes the mechanism's hidden soul and Varrin destroys its core, earning a powerful shield for Xim. A crystal entity then isolates the companions in tailored encounters. Each wins independently, and Nuralie identifies the need for simultaneous attacks on the central crystal. After that victory, Etja incorporates the Prismatic Mask and gains line-spell effects, while Etja, Nuralie, and Varrin receive major attribute evolutions. The floor then gives way beneath the party, dropping everyone through a stormy sky toward the mountain-sized Delve remnant. Fortune's Folly enters the new encounter with stronger abilities but without a safe interval to recover fully.

Fortune's Folly attacks the Delve remnant through accumulating damage rather than direct penetration. Varrin opens bleeding wounds, Xim spreads divine fire, and Nuralie layers many poisons so their combined toxicity can grow. Etja and Arlo use Shared Vessel to shape and amplify a massive Explosion inside the remnant's eye, drawing its attention away from the others. When Arlo is nearly killed, Shog Tuatha rescues him and Grotto mediates a three-way mental link that lets Arlo guide the summon through Soul Sight and Reveal. The linked group also recovers Xim and the unconscious Varrin. Nuralie doubles the remnant's toxicity, and the accumulated wounds finally kill it. The obelisk reveals that this enemy was a portal guardian and awards diamond chips plus major intrinsic progress. Arlo reaches Fortitude 40 and Wisdom 40. His evolved amulet promises eventual sharing of intrinsic skills with Grotto and appears to carry an avatar's message. The surviving party immediately enters the next special-grade Delve, whose objective is Escape.

Fortune's Folly survives the remedial sequence, reaches Delver Level 10, and kills the enormous corrupted Delve remnant through a combined strategy of bleeding, divine fire, layered poisons, Shog Tuatha's rescue work, and an Explosion amplified by Etja and Arlo through Shared Vessel. The obelisk identifies the remnant as a portal guardian rather than the destination itself. Arlo, Grotto, Xim, Varrin, Nuralie, Etja, and Shog Tuatha all survive. Grotto is unsettled by the three-way combat link he mediated with Arlo and the summon, while Shog Tuatha recognizes a new concern for Xim. Nuralie takes custody of an ominous grimoire, and Arlo's evolved amulet promises eventual intrinsic-skill sharing with Grotto while implying communication from an avatar. After receiving diamond chips and major intrinsic progress, Arlo reaches Fortitude 40 and Wisdom 40. The entire party immediately crosses into another special-grade Delve with an Escape objective. Phase 2 remains locked, the Littan invasion of Eschendur continues, and neither the avatar cycle nor the Operator's history has been confirmed.