Chapter 25: Dangerous Worldview
“No, now is not the time to rest.”
After An left, Muen suddenly sat up from the bed, ignoring his lingering weakness, and went to the nearby table.
From memory, he reached into the drawer of the desk and pulled out a blank piece of paper, then picked up a quill and dipped it in ink.
“The current plot has completely deviated from the original story, which means that all future developments are unknown to me.”
“The original book has no further reference value. I must rely on myself.”
“First, I must set a goal.”
Muen rubbed his chin in thought, then began writing in a somewhat neat handwriting on the paper.
One, survive.
Two, avoid the, “death by a thousand cuts” ending.
Third, get stronger.
“These are the current three goals.”
Surviving goes without saying. After all, he’s a man who’s been on the brink of death twice already. Up to this point, he still feels a lingering fear of death. Even though this world isn’t particularly friendly to a yellow-haired villain like him, he still wants to earnestly survive.
“Secondly, it’s about the ending foreseen in the prophetic dream…”
With the collapse of the catastrophic ending now completely out of the picture, it’s likely that the world line is inexorably heading towards the “death by a thousand cuts” conclusion.
But…
After a brief pause, Muen picked up his pen again and added a few more sentences after the second point.
→ Not apologizing to the protagonist may not trigger this ending.
→ Apologizing to the protagonist is only speculation based on the words of the mysterious person in the prophetic dream. It may not be a necessary condition, and the world line may still deviate towards the “death by a thousand cuts” ending.
→ The Black Book is not trustworthy.
“…”
Muen thought for a moment, then crossed out the last point. He dared not gamble.
“So, the current situation is like Schrödinger’s ‘death by a thousand cuts’?”
The more Muen thought about it, the more his head hurt.
“Ah, this won’t do. There’s too little information. No matter how much I think, it’s all blind guessing.”
The root cause of this is the overly vague prophetic dream given by the Black Book, without any other clues.
Muen didn’t even know if this kind of foresight was inevitable regardless of what he did, or if it would change depending on his actions.
“Never mind, no more thinking. What I should do now is to focus on achieving the most important goal at present.”
Muen’s gaze lingered on the third point.
Get stronger.
This is the most urgent point right now.
Even though this world isn’t particularly friendly to a yellow-haired villain like him, it’s ultimately a magical world where strength reigns supreme.
Strength is the foundation of survival.
Without strength, he would only end up like before, facing death with no choice but to trade life for life.
“The most important thing is…”
Muen gritted his teeth, his face showing displeasure.
“I damn well don’t want to be trampled by a woman again!”
Muen recalled the painful experience of being dominated by Selicia earlier, although sensually it was quite enjoyable, but his pride as a man absolutely forbids it!
Even if the other party is Selicia!
…
“As for how to get stronger, as the son of a duke, there are plenty of means to do so. Unfortunately, those are all too conventional and can hardly bridge the gap with the protagonist’s group.”
The original host wasted too much time. Even though he spent a whole year at the St. Marika Magic Academy, Muen can only recall one spell in his mind!
“It’s ridiculous. Was that guy sleeping in class every day?”
How could you sleep during this time period!
Muen wished he could go back in time, give a slap to the past Muen Campbell, and let him experience the harsh realities of society in advance.
“Fortunately, my physical fitness seems decent, at the level of a late-stage Rank 1 mage.”
In this world, the classification of power systems is somewhat complex. But it can generally be divided into:
– The Martial System, consisting of warriors who cultivate combat qi.
– The Magical System, consisting of mages who practice magic.
– The Faith System, where practitioners gain power through faith from deities as holy servants.
– And the Chosen System, where individuals are born with the favor of gods and receive blessings as Chosen Ones.
Apart from the innate Chosen Ones, the first three are the most basic paths for now. There are indeed many other paths, but those are not within Muen’s choice range.
For example, there are those assassins who pray to dark gods and offer sacrifices to gain temporary power. They are known as “Sin Priests.”
This is one of the divergent paths, enabling rapid power acquisition, but ultimately, making deals with dark gods often leads to dire consequences for Sin Priests.
In fact, Sin Priests are just a branch of the Faith System. However, they worship evil gods instead of benevolent ones.
…
If we’re only looking at it now, the power system doesn’t seem very complicated. At least, for the sake of convenience in memory and distinction, almost all power systems are divided into one to five tiers before becoming crowned-level strong. However, each power system may have different aliases.
For example, the first tier of the martial power system is called “Forge Body,” while the first tier of the magical power system is called “Mercury.”
But in reality, the differences are not significant; it’s just a nickname.
The real reason why it’s said to be complicated has two aspects:
Firstly, in this world, there’s no rule that says a cute, soft-looking cleric girl who uses healing magic to save lives every day can’t also be a tough, ultimate macho man who secretly pushes martial power to its limits and can take down dragons with a holy scripture.
Similarly, there’s no rule that says a skinny mage who’s been casting spells from afar at you can’t pull out a bigger club than yours and beat you to a pulp when you get close.
That’s right, there’s more than one path to take, and there are certainly more than one way to walk them.
For example, take the assassin from earlier. Not only did they display martial skills of at least the third tier, they also used gravity magic, and to top it off, they revealed the trump card of being a dark priest at the end!
It can be said that to a certain extent, a single realm alone cannot fully determine a person’s strength or weakness, because you simply don’t know how far they’ve progressed on another path.
The second reason… can be called external factors.
In this world, there are deities.
True gods, evil gods, demonic gods, all sorts of them.
Aside from obtaining power through stable belief, what these deities love to do most is bestow blessings upon those they favor.
These are known as divine patrons.
In other words, the author’s wholesale provision of official cheats.
For example, Selicia has the blessing of the Ice and Snow Goddess.
And then there’s the protagonist, who in the later stages of the original story, accumulated blessings from various gods to a frightening double-digit number. It could be said that she has connections with all sorts of gods, akin to a gender-swapped version of Sun Wukong, constantly calling upon various gods for help.
Having many gods isn’t the real issue because, for some reason, they can’t directly interfere in the mortal world. At most, they can only project a bit of power.
But the real problem is that no one knows which type of person the gods favor. Before the blessings are used, there’s no external manifestation. So, you might accidentally provoke a beggar on the street who could suddenly summon a nuclear bomb to send you to the heavens!
So, you might accidentally provoke a beggar on the street who could suddenly summon a nuclear bomb to send you to the heavens!
Exactly ahem in even simple words sike