New Dreams recap

Max leads Fowl, Tanila, Batrire, and new ranger Cordelia through a rapid tower ascent while hiding abilities and rewards that could make them targets. He secretly becomes the legendary weaponsmith Joshua, survives assassination attempts, and uses his inner entity's powers to overcome bosses and protect the group. The party wins exceptional equipment, bonded artifact components, and a temporary tower boon, while Golden Axe provides training, materials, and political cover. Tanila reveals her elven royal nature to Max, and he tells her how his inner entity has changed. After reaching tower level 14, the group kills a Gorgon, gains petrification cures, and restores two long-missing Golden Axe members. Public attention forces a reckoning with Everett, who binds himself to secrecy. Max then reveals his identity and most of his history, but keeps his private dragon agreement concealed. Everett promises to protect the secret and support the unfinished climb.

Previously: Fowl, Tanila, and Batrire were Max's established companions, and Alexander was their innkeeper ally.

Golden Axe learns that Max's party is progressing through the tower at an abnormal rate, with yellow gems appearing far more often than expected. Everett orders secrecy, but an explosion at the faction workshop interrupts the climb and leaves a dwarf crafter dying. At the dwarf's request, Max ends his suffering, then accepts legendary weaponsmithing and rare armor-crafting abilities offered by Consume. Cordelia, a level-54 elf ranger, joins as the party's fifth member after Tanila reveals enough of her hidden royal nature to secure the newcomer's silence. Cordelia helps Max, Fowl, Tanila, and Batrire hunt two rare lizard-man enemies on the first floor. The second battle nearly kills Fowl when freezing magic overwhelms him, but Batrire keeps him alive and Max discovers a way through the caster's defense. Both rare enemies fall. The group gains unusually advanced equipment, including a bonded ring for every member that increases statistics by ten percent. Cordelia chooses loyalty to Tanila and the party, and the five complete the first floor while agreeing to hide the scale of their growth and rewards.

After reporting only part of their success, the five climbers receive Golden Axe housing and permission to push ahead. Everett and Tom support the plan but warn that rapid advancement will attract dangerous attention. On the second floor, a garden of hostile plants, Max combines sonar, mass pulls, and area attacks with Tanila's magic while Fowl holds enemies and Batrire covers emergencies. The approach produces many gems, but an enormous plant blocks the exit. Its seeds, roots, and vines injure Max and trap Fowl, and a barrier prevents retreat. Max survives with Batrire's healing, severs the creature's stem, and finishes dismantling it. The reward gives Fowl a defensive ring, while Consume grants Max more strength and constitution. The party clears the floor in a single day and pauses to recover. Tanila warns Max that his overwhelming contribution risks leaving the others behind, so he agrees to make more room for the group's skills. They also consider a long-term strategy of surrendering tower levels for permanent bonuses, then reclearing early floors with superior equipment.

During the party's rest, Max buys a disguise necklace and becomes Joshua, secretly practicing his new weaponsmithing skill in Zach's forge. He creates exceptional bonded hammers for teenage assistant Brian and for Zach, binding both to secrecy. An unseen pursuer then tracks Max through the city, and a poisoned bottle nearly kills him during dinner with Tanila. His inner entity takes control long enough to save him and warns that powerful enemies have found him. Max returns to training, defeats Golden Axe warrior Grace, and leads the party onto a werewolf-filled third floor. At the central enclosure, a giant werewolf's intimidation disables Fowl and Cordelia while a larger horde approaches. Max summons a demon with his own blood. His inner power compels the demon to accept a bargain to kill the enemies and protect Max's allies. Together they defeat the boss and the surrounding horde. Max releases the demon after it promises secrecy and future aid. The victory leaves him with an unexplained key and an enduring, uncertain connection to the summoned creature.

The key opens a rare tower chamber whose scaled host grants one temporary boon. The party chooses Fowl, who receives a bonded golden breastplate with enormous defensive bonuses that will last until he can enter the tenth floor. With Fowl newly strengthened, the group completes the third floor and advances into an undead graveyard. Disease clouds and fire-producing skeletons complicate the fighting, but Batrire supplies cures and Fowl's armor lets him hold the front. The party defeats a large red skeleton boss and reaches the exit. Back at Golden Axe, Max learns that the workshop disaster left the faction short of elite crafters. He offers to introduce an independent craftsperson who wants materials, privacy, and freedom from ordinary membership obligations. Disguised as Joshua, Max works in the faction forge for about twelve hours and produces a legendary ice dagger. Everett and Tom accept Joshua as an anonymous legendary weaponsmith and agree to give him access to ranked materials, never realizing that their new contractor and Seth are the same person.

The party undertakes its first tower boss route on a desert floor. After learning to destroy the moving cores of sand golems, the group enters an arena dominated by an enormous sandworm. Tanila devises a plan to trap its mouth around Batrire's barrier, allowing Max to attack from inside. Acid nearly destroys his body, but potions, improvised dilution, Batrire's strongest healing, and Demonic Teleportation keep him alive. The wounded worm dies from its own acid. Cordelia receives Elemental Shot and Poison Arrow from the rewards and is formally assured that she belongs to the party as an equal. Soon afterward, attackers fire on Max in the city. His upgraded sonar lets him block the bolt, pursue the ambushers, and capture one elf while another escapes. Captain Vela takes the prisoner into custody. Tanila drains his mind for information, then directs Max to kill him. She learns that further attacks are planned and that an elven royal daughter hostile to humans and dwarves appears to be directing the wider campaign. The immediate attacker is dead, but the larger threat remains beyond local authority.

As Joshua, Max crafts more legendary weapons for Golden Axe but still cannot find materials suitable for his dragon tooth. His inner entity unexpectedly helps with a difficult elemental infusion. The party resumes climbing through a minotaur settlement and uses walls, ranged attacks, and terrain to break a tunnel rush and drive more than a hundred attackers into a deep shaft. At the bottom they enter a sealed boss chamber containing an armored, one-horned minotaur. The creature's flaming club and ground attacks overwhelm ordinary defenses, and it charges Tanila after resisting Fowl's taunt. Max teleports into the strike and is gravely injured, while Fowl uses a one-charge ring from Tom to draw the boss away. Once recovered, Max combines demonic movement, Magical Strike, and Rampage to sever the creature's damaged leg, allowing the group to finish it. Consume grants him further physical power and a rare mental defense. Max claims the boss's bonded flaming club, and the chest yields a gem capable of carrying the entire party, including fallen members, out of the tower. The group survives and reaches level 55 with a new emergency escape option.

Max and Tanila compare their growing strength, though Tanila privately conceals that her bracelet can reveal royal power and double her attributes. The party clears a dangerous forest and a desert-pyramid floor, then Tom halts its rush toward the next boss and imposes focused training. He brings in Dexic, a senior Golden Axe climber, to test Max. Dexic's disciplined technique exposes weaknesses in Max's melee fundamentals. During the spar, her sword unexpectedly fails to injure him, and Max reveals that he can store the weapon after touching it. Dexic breaks his ribs and arm before Tom stops the match. In Everett's office, further tests confirm that ordinary blades slide harmlessly off Max's body. Everett dismisses Dexic to limit the secret, though she demands answers later. Max then tells Everett and Tom that Seth and Joshua are one person. He explains that a dragon encounter placed binding promises on him and shows them a dragon tooth that only he can craft. The two Golden Axe leaders now know his crafting identity and dragon-related secret, but not the wider truth behind his abilities.

Everett permits Max to continue limited work as Joshua and promises Golden Axe support beyond the fiftieth floor, while warning that the next level is exceptionally lethal. The party enters an ice castle, learns to defeat blue giants with fire, precision shots, and controlled terrain, then is sealed into deep snow with a much larger boss. Its fear effect disables Fowl and Cordelia, its ice storm threatens the three ranged companions, and it repeatedly restores itself from the surrounding snow. Max resists the fear, interrupts the storm by breaking the creature's armor, and climbs onto it using his mobility and defenses. He destroys its head faster than it can regenerate, burning his flaming club down in the process. The reward chest supplies powerful bonded equipment for all five climbers. Each member also receives a black box that bonds permanently to its owner. Max's inner entity identifies these as artifact components and says every person needs four before their purpose can be explained. It also warns that anyone who learns of them may hunt the group. The party completes this set of tower floors and returns to Golden Axe carrying a new secret shared by all five members.

Golden Axe celebrates the party's return, although Dexic continues watching Max for answers. Everett establishes a crafting quota that exchanges faction materials for Max's work, and Max creates a legendary healing staff for Batrire. The party farms early floors to tower level 10, then spends seven days trapped in a dark maze where light attracts flying creatures that bombard the camp. After escaping, it receives short-duration escape rings and enters another dark floor filled with giant bats. Max carries all four companions through the final stretch before the lights fail, and the group emerges with enough experience to bring Cordelia to level 60. On floor 12, a misplaced torch activates an invulnerable stone guardian inside a runic arena. Physical attacks accomplish nothing, so Max rapidly tests rune sequences while Cordelia records each attempt and Batrire struggles to keep Fowl alive. The correct sequence destroys the guardian and opens the barrier. Max gives its earth core to Golden Axe. Afterward, Tanila and Max discuss their unequal lifespans, and she signals that a concealed royal matter is ready to be revealed.

Tanila removes her suppressing bracelet and shows Max her elven royal form. She explains that it doubles her attributes and exerts increasing compulsive authority over other elves, creating grave danger if her parents learn of their relationship. Max responds by explaining that his inner entity has become a more cooperative guide in crafting and magic. He then makes Fowl a secretly exceptional vampiric hammer. The party clears two mechanism-based floors and reaches tower level 14, but its speed prompts Golden Axe to reduce visible support. On the fifteenth floor, the climbers discover a coliseum filled with petrified victims and identify the boss as a Gorgon. Max leads by sonar while everyone avoids its gaze. The creature fights with blades, acid, regeneration, and petrifying venom. Tanila and Cordelia attack when it turns away, and Max and Tanila burn the snakes on its head before trapping it between walls. Max kills the Gorgon, but its poison begins turning him to stone. Consume grants poison immunity in time to purge the venom, and Max survives the battle exhausted but alive.

The Gorgon's chest contains equipment for every party member and petrification cures. Using Golden Axe records, the group identifies a dwarf warrior among the statues and restores him after decades of imprisonment. It then finds and revives a human woman who had been petrified for about eighty years. Both long-missing members return to the faction, and two cure potions remain. News of the Gorgon victory becomes public, so Tom spreads a false account claiming the party used a mirror against it. The cover story cannot stop growing scrutiny of the group's speed. Everett confronts Max and insists that continued Golden Axe membership requires a more truthful relationship. He binds himself with magic that can punish disclosure lethally, and Max responds by sharing most of his history, statistics, concealed power, and dragon evidence. Max identifies himself as Max Host, the same person known as Seth Pendell and the weaponsmith Joshua, but withholds his private agreement with the dragon. Everett accepts the remaining boundary, promises secrecy, and commits his support to the party's unfinished tower ascent.

Max, Fowl, Tanila, Batrire, and Cordelia remain together after defeating the Gorgon and reaching tower level 14. They recover new equipment and use petrification cures to restore two Golden Axe members missing for decades. Two cure potions remain when the rescued members return to the faction. Tom circulates a false story about a mirror to disguise how the boss was beaten, but the victory and the party's speed have already attracted public attention. Everett responds by demanding a more truthful relationship. He binds himself to secrecy, learns that Max also operates as Seth Pendell and Joshua, sees evidence of Max's dragon connection, and receives most of Max's history and statistics. He then commits Golden Axe's support to the tower ascent. Max still withholds his private dragon agreement. The party must also protect Tanila's royal identity, Fowl's exceptional hammer, its five artifact components, Max's crafting role and inner entity, and the dragon tooth. The elven campaign against Max, the unknown poisoner, the artifact mystery, and the tower climb remain unresolved.