What Happens in Turning Point 4?

Where Turning Point 4 Actually Begins

There is a useful distinction between the chapter called "Turning Point (Part 4)" and the larger sequence fans usually mean by Turning Point 4.

In Light Novel Volume 14, Rudeus returns home after the events involving Perugius, Nanahoshi, the Demon Continent, and Atoferatofe. He falls asleep and meets Hitogami again. During that conversation, Hitogami discusses how Rudeus's life might have developed had he followed earlier advice, then gives him one more seemingly minor instruction: check the basement of his house.

By this point, Rudeus has reasons to be wary of Hitogami, but he has also received advice from him that appeared useful. The request does not sound like a murder plot. Rudeus wakes and prepares to follow it.

Before he can reach the basement, however, an old, severely injured man appears and identifies himself as Rudeus Greyrat from the future.

Strictly speaking, the named Turning Point chapter brings Rudeus to this encounter. The future Rudeus's detailed warning continues in the following Volume 14 chapter, while the diary itself is read in Volume 15. So when fans describe the rat, Roxy's death, and the diary as "Turning Point 4," they are usually referring to this connected end-of-Volume-14 and beginning-of-Volume-15 sequence.

Oldeus Arrives Before Rudeus Opens the Basement

The elderly Rudeus has traveled backward in time using magic he developed much later in life. The jump has devastated his body, and he knows he has little time left. "Oldeus" is a convenient fandom name; in canon, he is simply an older Rudeus from a failed future.

His first priority is stopping his younger self from repeating the choice that created that future.

Oldeus explains that following Hitogami's instruction and going into the basement does not produce an obvious disaster. Rudeus does not discover an assassin or a magical trap. Instead, his presence causes a diseased rat hiding below the house to escape.

Rudeus would have no reason to connect opening a basement door with a death weeks later, and Oldeus does not understand the connection until decades afterward.

Oldeus also gives Rudeus broader guidance. He tells him to consult Nanahoshi, contact Eris, and remain suspicious of Hitogami without immediately confronting him. Those instructions are not random. Each addresses a mistake or missing relationship that became important in the future Oldeus lived through.

He then entrusts his younger self with his diary, the record that proves how far the consequences spread.

The Rat, Roxy, and Hitogami's Trap

The basement rat carries Magic Stone Disease, also called Petrification Syndrome in some translations and reference material. Infected rats can be recognized by their violet, crystal-like teeth. The disease is rare and is transmitted orally rather than simply by being near an infected animal.

In Oldeus's timeline, the rat escapes into the house after Rudeus opens the basement. It contaminates leftover food. Roxy later eats that food without knowing anything is wrong.

The critical detail is that Roxy is pregnant. Magic Stone Disease is exceptionally dangerous in this circumstance: the infection develops through the unborn child and then affects the mother, progressively turning her body into magic stone. Ordinary detoxification magic cannot cure it. The required treatment is God-class detoxification magic.

Cliff identifies Roxy's condition, but knowing the cure exists is not the same as having access to it. The necessary magical text is controlled in Millis. Future Rudeus, Cliff, and Zanoba travel there and resort to stealing the material required to perform the spell. Their escape goes badly. Cliff is fatally wounded, and Rudeus's return is delayed.

By the time Rudeus reaches home, Roxy has died.

This is not Roxy's fate in the main timeline. It is what happened in the future Oldeus experienced. Present Rudeus receives the warning before the rat escapes and therefore has an opportunity Oldeus never had.

The important canon fact is also narrower than saying Hitogami "directly infects Roxy." He manipulates Rudeus into performing the mundane action that lets the carrier loose. The horror of the scheme comes from its indirectness.

What the Diary Reveals About Oldeus's Future

Oldeus's spoken warning gives Rudeus the immediate danger. Volume 15's diary chapters show what happened after Roxy died.

Rudeus collapses under the loss. He drinks heavily, becomes increasingly self-destructive, and damages his relationship with Sylphie instead of relying on her. Eris returns after years of training, but the misunderstanding created by her earlier departure has never been properly resolved, and the broken future Rudeus repeatedly pushes her away.

Sylphie eventually leaves with Ariel when Ariel returns to Asura to pursue her claim. Rudeus follows too late. Ariel's attempt fails, and Sylphie, Ariel, and Luke die.

That second loss transforms grief into obsession. Future Rudeus becomes far more violent and morally compromised as he searches for the force responsible for destroying his life. More people around him die. His relationship with Eris remains tragic because he repeatedly rejects her help.

Eventually Eris dies protecting him during another confrontation with Atofe. Only afterward does he fully grasp how she felt about him.

Across the following decades, Oldeus develops formidable magic and researches the world's deeper mechanisms, but greater power cannot restore the people he lost. He eventually realizes that defeating Hitogami is not something he can accomplish by simply becoming stronger in his own remaining lifetime.

His solution is time travel: not to relive his youth, but to send information backward far enough that a younger Rudeus can avoid the trap before Roxy dies.

That is why the diary matters. It is not a prophecy that must come true. It is evidence from a future that did happen to Oldeus and can now be prevented.

What Oldeus Tells Rudeus to Change

Oldeus's advice can be reduced to three practical directions, but each has a larger purpose.

First, Rudeus should consult Nanahoshi. Oldeus's discoveries involve teleportation and time-related magic, and Nanahoshi is one of the few people Rudeus knows whose circumstances and research make her relevant to understanding impossible displacement phenomena.

Second, Rudeus should write to Eris. Oldeus knows that the younger Rudeus's interpretation of Eris's departure is incomplete. In his own future, failing to repair that relationship created years of needless hostility and prevented him from recognizing an ally who repeatedly tried to help him.

Third, Rudeus should doubt Hitogami but not openly oppose him. Oldeus has learned that Hitogami is an enemy, but he has also learned how dangerous it is to act without information. The warning is therefore strategic rather than emotional: stop trusting Hitogami, but do not announce that you know what he is doing before you understand the board.

How Rudeus Breaks the Failed Timeline

After Oldeus dies from the injuries caused by his journey, Rudeus is left with his future self's body and diary. He examines what happened, cremates Oldeus, and then deals with the immediate danger rather than ignoring it.

Rudeus enters the basement with the warning in mind and finds the infected rat. Its abnormal crystal-like teeth support Oldeus's story. Rudeus kills it before it can escape and later arranges for the remains to be studied.

That intervention prevents the exact chain that killed Roxy in Oldeus's world. Roxy does not eat food contaminated by the rat, so the Magic Stone Disease tragedy never begins in the main timeline.

Rudeus also starts acting on the rest of the warning. He writes to Eris and seeks Nanahoshi's help. The diary gives him information about dangers that have not happened yet, turning Oldeus's lifetime of failure into a strategic advantage.

The altered future does not become peaceful simply because the rat dies. Preventing the trap only stops Hitogami's preferred route. It forces the underlying conflict into the open and leads directly into Rudeus's decisions in Volume 15.

What Turning Point 4 Reveals About Hitogami

Turning Point 4 changes how both Rudeus and the reader interpret Hitogami's earlier involvement.

The confirmed revelation is that the basement instruction was designed to bring about Roxy's death. Volume 15 then expands the motive: Hitogami is concerned about a future in which Rudeus's descendants become connected to Orsted's campaign against him. Roxy and the child she is carrying therefore matter to a conflict much larger than Rudeus yet understands.

That later explanation should not be retroactively treated as knowledge Rudeus possesses the instant Oldeus arrives. At the end of Volume 14, Rudeus knows the practical truth: Hitogami tried to manipulate him into creating the conditions for Roxy's death. The fuller relationship among Roxy's child, Rudeus's descendants, Orsted, fate, and Hitogami is clarified afterward.

A reasonable interpretation is that Hitogami's most dangerous weapon here is information: a simple instruction can create consequences his target cannot foresee. That is an interpretation of the rat scheme, not a separate confirmed power.

Light Novel, Web Novel, Manga, and Anime Placement

For the light novel, Turning Point 4 is at the end of Volume 14. The chapter bearing that title ends with the shocking appearance of future Rudeus, and the following chapter contains his warning, death, and Rudeus's immediate response. The detailed diary account opens Volume 15. Seven Seas' Volume 15 synopsis explicitly begins from Rudeus's meeting with his time-traveling future self and the possibility of averting that suffering.

The web novel numbering is different. Light Novel Volume 14 broadly corresponds to Web Novel Volume 15, while the diary material appears in the following web-novel volume. Readers switching versions should therefore not assume identical volume numbers.

The manga is a separate adaptation and is substantially behind this material in the official English collected release. Seven Seas' English Volume 22, released in February 2026, is still centered on the Teleport Labyrinth-era Roxy crisis rather than Turning Point 4.

For the anime, Season 3 Episode 8, "Air Fortress," begins the Chaos Breaker section with Rudeus visiting Perugius to seek information about Zenith. Turning Point 4 occurs later in the light-novel storyline, so the source novels remain the place to read the complete event explained here.

The Blu-ray schedule confirms that Season 3's second disc contains Episodes 8 through 14. Episode 8 is only beginning the Chaos Breaker material that precedes Nanahoshi's illness, the Demon Continent trip, Atofe, and Oldeus's arrival, so assigning Turning Point 4 a specific episode is still prediction, not confirmed scheduling.

A later placement in that run is reasonable from the remaining Volume 14 material, but the staff have not announced a Turning Point 4 episode number. The event is established light-novel canon; its exact anime episode and how much of Volume 15's diary will accompany it remain unconfirmed.