Chapter 25 : Chapter 25
Volume 1
Chapter 25 : A Dangerous World Setting
“No, now isn’t the time to rest.”
After Ann left, Muen suddenly rolled over and sat up from the bed.
Ignoring his still somewhat weakened body, he went to the table at the side.
Following his memory, he pulled out a blank sheet of paper from the desk drawer, then picked up a quill pen and dipped it in ink.
“The plot has already completely diverged from the original novel. Which means that from this point on, every future development is unknown to me.”
“The original book is no longer of any reference value. I’ll have to rely on myself.”
“First, I need to set my goals.”
Muen pinched his chin and thought for a moment, then began writing in fairly neat handwriting across the paper.
One: Stay alive.
Two: Avoid the ‘death by a thousand cuts’ ending.
Three: Grow stronger.
“These are my three goals for now.”
There was no need to explain the first one.
No matter how one counted it, he was a man who had already died twice, more or less.
Even now, he still has a lingering fear of death in his heart.
Even if this was a world deeply unfriendly to a blond villain like him, he still wanted to live seriously.
“Next is the ending foretold by that prophetic dream...”
Now that the ruined ending had completely fallen through, the world line was probably already heading unavoidably toward the ending where he would be hacked to pieces.
But...
Muen thought for a moment, then picked up the pen again and added a few more notes after the second line.
→ I never apologized to the protagonist, so this ending might not be triggered.
→ The idea that apologizing to the protagonist leads to this ending is only an inference based on what the mysterious person in the prophetic dream said. It might not be a necessary condition. The world line may still be diverging away from the ‘death by a thousand cuts’ ending.
→ The black book is not trustworthy.
“...”
Muen thought for a bit, then crossed out the last line again.
He did not dare gamble on it.
“So my current state is basically Schrödinger’s death by a thousand cuts?”
The more Muen thought about it, the more his head hurt.
“Ah, no, this won’t do. I have far too little information. No matter how much I think, I’m just groping around in the dark.”
At the root of it all, the prophetic dream given by the black book was simply too vague, and he had no other clues to go on.
Muen did not even know whether that prophecy was the sort that would inevitably come true no matter what he did, or the sort that would change depending on his actions.
“Forget it. No point overthinking it. What I should do right now is complete the most important goal first.”
Muen’s gaze came to rest on the third line.
Grow stronger.
That was the most urgent matter at present.
No matter how unfriendly this world might be toward a blond villain like him, it was still, in the end, a fantasy world where strength reigned supreme.
Power was the foundation of survival.
Without power, all he could do was what he had done before—when faced with death, exchange his life for another’s, because he had no other option.
“And more importantly...”
Muen gnashed his teeth, his face full of resentment.
“I never want to get pinned down and ravaged by a woman again!”
Muen once more recalled the painful experience of being pressed beneath Selicia and toyed with however she pleased.
Although, from a purely sensory point of view, it had admittedly felt rather good, his dignity as a man absolutely could not accept it!
Even if the other party was Selicia!
...
...
“As for how to grow stronger, as the Duke’s son, I’ve got no shortage of methods. Unfortunately, all of them are too conventional. They won’t be enough to make up the gap between me and the protagonist’s group.”
The original Muen had wasted far too much time.
He had studied for a full year at Saint Marika Magic Academy, and yet the only spell Muen could remember from all that was a Light spell!
“This is ridiculous. Did that idiot sleep through class every single day?”
At a time like that, how could you even sleep?!
Muen dearly wished he could travel back in time and slap the old Muen Campbell across the face so he could experience society’s cruelty in advance.
“Thankfully, his physical condition does seem decent. He’s around the late stage of the first rank.”
...
In this world, the classification of power systems was somewhat complicated.
But broadly speaking, they could be divided into these categories:
The martial path, where warriors trained battle aura.
The mana path, where mages trained magic.
The faith path, where clergy exchanged faith for power granted by the gods.
And then there were the God’s Chosen, who were born under divine favor and received the blessings of the gods.
Leaving aside the God’s Chosen, whose circumstances were determined at birth, the first three were the most basic paths at present.
In truth, there were many side paths as well, but those were not within Muen’s range of options.
For example, that assassin had prayed and offered sacrifices to an evil god in exchange for temporary power.
People like that were called evil priests.
That was one of the side paths.
It could grant power quickly, but since it ultimately meant making deals with evil gods, the endings of evil priests... were usually not very good.
Strictly speaking, evil priests were just a branch of the clergy.
It was simply that what they worshipped were malevolent gods.
...
Judging from this alone, the power system did not seem too complicated.
At least, for the sake of convenience in remembering and distinguishing them, nearly all power systems were divided into ranks one through five before one became a Crowned-rank powerhouse, though each system had its own different title for those ranks.
For example, the first rank of the martial path was called Body Tempering, while the first rank of the mana path was called Mercury.
But in truth, the difference was not all that great.
They were merely different names.
And the real reason it was called complicated lay in two things.
The first was that, in this world, no rule said that a soft and adorable little priestess who spent every day casting Holy Light to save lives could not secretly have pushed her martial strength to the absolute limit and be a terrifying monster capable of beating a dragon to death with a holy scripture.
Nor was there any rule saying that a frail-looking mage who stood in the distance hurling spells at you could not, once you got close, pull out a club even bigger than yours and beat you senseless.
That was right.
There was not just one road, and there was even less than just one road a person could walk at the same time.
Take that assassin from before, for example.
She had displayed at least third-rank martial skill, used gravity magic, and in the end had even pulled out evil priesthood as her trump card!
It could be said that, to a certain degree, a single realm alone could not explain how strong a person really was, because you had no idea how far they had advanced down another path.
And the second reason... could be called an external factor.
In this world, gods truly existed.
Righteous gods, evil gods, demon gods—there were no telling how many of them.
Apart from steadily exchanging faith for power, what those gods loved to do most was grant blessings to people they took a liking to.
Those people were the God’s Chosen.
In other words, they were the damned author’s officially mass-produced cheat powers.
Take Selicia, for example.
She had received the blessing of the Goddess of Ice and Snow.
And as for the protagonist, by the very late stages of the original novel, the number of divine blessings on her body had reached a frightening double-digit figure.
You could say all sorts of gods had some connection to her.
She was practically a gender-swapped Sun Wukong, constantly able to call on one god or another for help.
Having many gods around was not the problem.
For certain reasons, they could not directly interfere with the mortal world, and at most could only project a small portion of their power.
But the real problem was that no one knew what kind of people the gods favored, and before a blessing was actually used, there was no outward sign of it at all.
Which meant that even the beggar by the roadside whom you accidentally provoked might suddenly whip up a nuke and blast you straight to heaven!