As of today, the full text of Confessions of the Magpie Wizard Book 4: Dissolution has been pulled from the various free sites where I posted it. This is in preparation for the book arriving on Amazon, due to KDP's exclusivity requirements.

However, like I have with the other books, I am including a summary of the major events of Book 4 so you can keep on reading to Book 5 and beyond without leaving Royal Road. When the book is fully up on Amazon, I will update this post to include an Amazon link.

If you don't want to wait for that, until December 31st, the eBook is available for Patrons at the Magpie Mage level or higher on my Patreon. You can get the download here: Book 4 Patreon Download Link

SPOILERS PAST THIS POINT

Book 4 Summary:

Soren and Kiyo go into Tokyo for a romantic rendezvous, which is a cover for Soren’s remote meetup with Grand General Girdan and his daughter, Fera. They tell Soren that he can return home. However, he would come back as a servant at best. To keep his standing as a nobledevil, he needs to do something big, and he settles on killing Headmaster Tachibana and destroying the Nagoya Tower.

The challenge is that he has a limited time to do it before his ride home dries up, and Maggie doesn’t want to launch any attack until after the exams. So, Soren needs to do some manipulating to force her into position, while keeping his cover.

In the course of things, Paul and Rei end up being recruited as new Holy Brothers.

He finds that he has several tools to work with. Rose has been depleting her magic into the batteries, giving him lots of magical energy to work with. He also has the faulty Peace Bond fabricata that Tachibana had set up that will instantly freeze all of the students in place, holding them hostage.

He realizes that Maggie gave him the tools he needed to force her hand: the saucy selfies she had sent him! So, Soren tells all of the other Holy Brothers that the day of the War Games is when they strike. Then, he makes Mariko aware of the selfies, she calls Kiyo, and he captures her after a short fight. He tells Maggie, convincing her that triggering their plan is the only way to save them from legal or professional trouble. After some careful plotting, they have Hiro, Mariko, and Tachibana captured, all of the students frozen in place, a Horde tech jamming fabricata ready to activate at a moment’s notice, and a powerful magical bomb at the base of the Nagoya Tower.

Soren’s plan is simple: slip away in a car, turn on the tech jammer once he’s out of range, and detonate the bomb. The Tower would collapse with enough time for the Holy Brothers to slip out, but he knows a vengeful Maggie would kill Tachibana first to protect her secret. However, he realizes as he was about to leave that he had left Mariko tied up near the top floor of the Tower.

He decides that Mariko, his friend and a pacifist, doesn’t deserve to die to advance his plan. Hiro, a powerful warrior, he could abandon, but she was no danger to him, and it was his fault she was in that situation to begin with. So, he slips back in to try and get her out before carrying out his plan. In the course of things, he realizes that Rose, Kiyo, and Yukiko were also running around the Tower, having slipped in before they captured the student body.

In the course of things, Soren ends up betraying his friends, especially Kiyo. He gets a promise from Maggie that they’ll be left alive, so he decides it’s the only way to advance his plans and keep them safe. Kiyo he electrocutes while pretending they’re going to team up to fight the Holy Brothers. He’s leaving anyway; she doesn’t deserve to go down with him.

However, Mariko and Hiro are still on the loose, and Soren gets an ultimatum: it’s them or us. He activates the tech jammer, choosing option three. Paul switches sides and they end up with Holy Brother Maus going downstairs to blow up the Tower, and Maggie going upstairs to kill Tachibana. Soren goes upstairs, where he is forced to fight Rei to the death when she won’t give in. He and Kiyo fight Maggie, where it seems like Kiyo is smothered by a wave of Maggie’s magical glass.

Soren and Maggie move the fight to the roof, where Maggie threatens to blow up a magical battery. Kiyo reveals herself at a key moment, but ends up being Maggie’s hostage. To save her, Soren reveals that he is Captain Malthus of the Horde. He says that Maggie can even blame him for her fall to the Holy Brotherhood. He does tell Kiyo that he loves her, but then switches gears and pretends to be disdainful so Maggie lets her go.

Soren then turns on Maggie, and after a desperate last battle, he slays her, passing out from blood loss. He wakes up in the same hospital bed where Haru had been kept. He learns that he’s been declared a hero. His friends have accepted a cover story that he’s a reformed Demonkin that Maggie was blackmailing, and have decided that since he did save them that bygones are bygones. However, there is no sign of Kiyo.

Tachibana shows up, clearly aware of Soren’s demonic nature. Soren tells him everything, and Tachibana declares that Soren is clearly divided against himself, and thinks he can be a great wizard and a good man, if he’ll allow it.

Kiyo reveals that she heard the whole conversation from hiding once Tachibana leaves. After a tense conversation, she breaks up with Soren. She’ll keep his secret, but he lied to her one time too many. He is broken up about it, but he understands. She deserves better than him, after the shabby way he’s treated her.

He, Rose, and Yukiko are transferred to a military base called Fort Flamel, since the school has been shut down. This is where Book 5 begins.