Awakening in the ancestral tomb, Gawain must immediately adapt to a physical body while surrounded by suspicious descendants who suspect he is an undead monster. He successfully mimics the legendary ancestor Gawain Cecil, using the name to defuse the tension and earn the loyalty of Heidi and Rebecca. He realizes his body is that of a legendary warrior, but he is completely disoriented by the return of physical sensations after hundreds of thousands of years. He defuses the panic of Rebecca, who is crying because she hit her ancestor with a metal staff. He inspects his gear, finding the black longsword known as the Sword of Pioneers in his coffin, while learning that his protective shield was lost a hundred years ago by a foolish descendant named Grumman. To escape the castle courtyard which is crawling with monsters, Gawain draws a crude layout of the fortress on the dirt, identifying a secret mezzanine corridor built during the pioneering era. Amber, a half-elf thief caught looting the tomb, leads them to this hidden path, but they are immediately ambushed by three giant, mud-like aberrations. Gawain channels his magical power to ignite the Sword of Pioneers, teaching his knight Byron to target the monsters' lower backs. After defeating the beasts, they escape to the surface, only to witness a massive blue dragon fly overhead and incinerate the ruins of their territory, leaving them homeless and forced to seek shelter in Tanzan Town.

During their journey through the dense forest toward Tanzan Town, the party is trapped by a sentient Mist Wraith that drains their life force and drives a soldier to madness. The mist begins to affect the physical realm, turning the skin of a soldier pale and dry as his mind breaks. Gawain uses his Mind Shock ability to restore the soldiers' sanity, but the young maid Betty has already vanished into the fog in a trance. Amber grabs Gawain's arm, dragging him through a cold, illusory barrier into the shadow realm, where everything is black and white, and his companions stand frozen like ceramic statues. They follow Betty's glowing footprints to a worn-out wooden cabin, where they find a wild Mage who believes Betty is his deceased daughter, Annie. The Mage has lost his mind, surviving as a half-spirit sustained by an ancient magic circle. Gawain reads the Mage's diary, which notes that the magic power in the region surged in tandem with abnormal red spots appearing on the sun. This mirrors the exact environmental changes that preceded the catastrophic Dark Wave that destroyed the Gondor Empire seven hundred years ago. Gawain pierces the Mage's chest with the Sword of Pioneers to end his suffering, causing the cabin to disintegrate and returning them to reality. The diary's contents leave Gawain with a chilling realization—the ancient disaster is returning, and the current kingdom is entirely unprepared for it.

Realizing that his fallen family cannot survive the coming magical tide without a secure base, Gawain travels to the capital city of St. Soniel to outmaneuver the political traps of the royal court. Gawain deliberately takes a slow, two-month journey, using his soldiers and local bards to spread rumors of his resurrection in every town. By the time he enters St. Soniel flying the ancient Cecil banner, the entire city is talking about the return of the founding hero. When he meets Prince Edmund privately, Gawain uses his knowledge of ancient laws to point out that because he is alive, all previous land confiscations are legally invalid, putting immense psychological pressure on the royal family. During the formal meeting in the Oak Hall with the King and the three powerful Dukes, Gawain presents the corroded armor of the aberrations as proof of the coming magical tide. Recognizing that the arrogant nobles will not mobilize their armies for a distant threat, Gawain pivots to his main objective—his permanent pioneering right. Because this decree was witnessed and signed by the long-lived Elven Queen, the royalty cannot legally deny it. The nobles, relieved that Gawain is not demanding his old, fertile southern lands, gladly hand over the desolate Dark Range. Gawain leaves the capital with a hundred royal craftsmen and a year of supplies, having successfully secured a sovereign territory where he can build his own industrial base.

Settling at the foot of the Dark Range, Gawain realizes that the world's progress is stagnant because magic is restricted to the noble elite. He finds a population of fewer than nine hundred survivors who are illiterate, superstitious, and exhausted. He immediately restructures the social order, offering free citizen status to serfs who work diligently and appointing a literate farmer named Norris to manage the fields. Gawain realizes that the traditional magic system is a bottleneck because it requires rare personal talent and expensive materials. However, the deceased rogue Mage's notebook contains revolutionary formulas for simplifying magic circles. When Rebecca demonstrates her unique ability to calculate and scale these circles mathematically, Gawain tasks her with building Magic Web 1, a simplified network powered by cheap quartz gravel and minor magic crystals. This network successfully mass-produces Rebecca Crystals, which store and release magical energy. When scouting teams report a massive horde of aberrations marching down from the Dark Range, Gawain does not send his few soldiers into a suicidal melee. Instead, he instructs Heidi to draw a massive explosive magic circle on the cliffs and buries hundreds of Rebecca Crystals in the mountain pass. When the monsters enter the valley, the resulting explosion triggers a massive rockslide that crushes the horde, proving that industrial magic can defeat ancient terrors.