Even though my comrades had agreed with me on my decision to help the dwarves of the Hel-Moran Combine to fight off the demonic cultivator invaders, it appeared that the existences beyond the fourth dimension didn't.
First, I sent off the delegation with assurances that I would help them. To show their sincerity, they drew a map and told us of a route to get to their dungeons. It was on the same level as the one where I found the were-beasts, about two levels up. That meant they were within easy reach, and that if the Mystic Demon Sect successfully conquered their dungeons and seized their territories, they would be awfully close to my dungeon. Given that Jun Hai and I went up to the forest where we found the were-beasts within a day or two, that meant the Mystic Demon Sect would locate my dungeon inevitably.
"We will be there once we've made preparations," I told Einhard Ubisoft, who bowed his head repeatedly.
"Thank you very much! I'll inform the council right away, and we'll draw up a contract of payment. You won't regret this! We will reward you immensely! I promise you this!"
"Yeah," Angus agreed. "Even if the council is stingy, both Einhard and I have lots of wealth. If necessary, we'll pay you out of our own pocket. Rest assured, we have a ton of equipment and treasure weapons to offer you in exchange for this."
"I think the council will take this seriously and offer reasonable payment, so don't worry." The third dwarf piped up. There were a dozen of them, but only these three spoke for the most part, most likely because the studio couldn't afford more voice actors.
"Don't worry about that. I promised to help, and I will. Like I said, we can discuss the issue of payment later. I'm sure we will come to a satisfactory arrangement. I'm not going to squeeze your dungeons dry, otherwise it's kind of pointless for you to make an alliance with me in the first place if you're almost as worse off as you would be if the Mystic Demon Sect conquered you."
"Thank you. We are really grateful to you for that."
With that, they left. Raquel came to my side, bearing the map that the dwarves had given us. She had spent the entire time studying it, and when she finally spoke up, it was to confirm the accuracy of the map.
"It's authentic," she told me. "I can confirm that the routes displayed on this map are real. I'll scout ahead just to make sure, but I know these routes, and aside from the precise position of the dungeon, I've traveled through most of these regions before and can vouch for them."
"Excellent. We'll set off next week." I nodded thoughtfully. "Coincidentally, next week there's a school break. Spring break, actually. So yeah, it'll be just in time for us to do whatever we need to, for helping our new allies."
"We still need to be on our guard, though," Long Wang said cautiously. "In case they plan to backstab or betray us."
"Yeah. We'll have our own preparations in place just in case we need to escape or break out of a trap. But personally, I feel that we can trust them. I'm not naïve enough to trust them 100%, though, so we'll have a few fallback plans just in case."
"I totally agree. I have not heard of incidents regarding dwarves being treacherous or untrustworthy, but you can never be too sure." Long Wang nodded. Then he grimaced. "Actually, to tell you the truth, I don't know much about dwarves at all."
"From what I know of their race, they tend to be direct and simple," Raquel offered her opinion. "They aren't known for backstabbing or betraying other people. what you see is what you get. They prefer to work on their smithing and mining industries. They are more famous for their hardworking and hardy nature, as well as being frank. They also like drinking."
"That's what we heard to," Sylvie echoed with a nod. "So we don't have to worry about them betraying us, though I understand it's always wise to have our guard up."
"Aw…you guys sound so paranoid," Silvia complained. Jun Hai, on the other hand, remained silent the entire time. Almost as if he was uninterested. When I glanced at him, he raised his hand excitedly, though.
"I want to join the fight!"
"Are you sure?"
"Yeah. It'll give me and my summoned spirit beasts much-needed combat experience. I want to grow stronger as quickly as possible."
That made sense, though it seemed to me that Jun Hai was treating this whole thing like a game. That didn't sit well with me, but I had seen his relationship with his spirit beasts. At the very least, he didn't treat them like pawns – he had genuine affection for them and wouldn't needlessly sacrifice them for fun. But I had seen plenty of protagonists with systems treat everything like a game and lose their humanity, surviving only because of…plot armor.
Unfortunately, plot armor didn't exist in reality. We had to be careful.
"Oh, and don't forget to call sis-in-law. I think she'll want to come along."
"That's right," Sylvie agreed with what seemed like a disappointed sigh. "Myria will get mad if you don't tell her about this."
"We'll be telling her even if you don't!" Silvia threatened cheekily. I rolled my eyes.
"Yeah, sure. I think she wants a shot at revenge against the demonic cultivators too. She had a run-in with them, if I'm not mistaken."
With everything decided, I was about to return home and get some rest. However, the system began showing a bunch of notifications from the comment section. My jaw dropped when I read them.
"What's the matter with the MC? Why is he so stupid? I'm sick of all these heroic MCs who always go around saving other people. It's stupid for him to sacrifice himself and risk his life for other people."
"Stupid beta spineless MC. Just refuse the dwarves. It's none of his business if they die. Why stick his nose into other people's businesses?"
"Is the MC a simp? A gay simp, since all the dwarves are males?"
"Why the fuck is the MC helping them out when there's no benefit for him? He doesn't even ask for payment, saying that they can negotiate it all later. Obviously he'll let them take advantage of him! Pathetic!"
Wow. What was with these comments? I couldn't help but shake my head at the sheer amount of toxicity and selfishness that were being spewed about. So I shouldn't help other people because it didn't benefit me? I was stupid for being a good person and helping other people? I was being condemned for doing the right thing? What in the bloody fuck?
What had the world come to? Were these commenters serious? What did they want me to do then? Watch other people get killed? Because they wanted a ruthless, selfish protagonist to self-insert themselves into? Because they were projecting their twisted values onto me? I wasn't some blank canvas for them to self-insert. I was a real, living person with my own sense of morality. But because I wasn't behaving the way they wanted me to, I was "stupid and pathetic"? I could understand people condemning if I was evil and selfish, leaving the dwarves to die. But I was being condemned because I offered to help them while not being firm on grabbing whatever benefits I could?
Seriously?
Shaking my head in disgust, I decided to type out a comment in the system. It was a superlong comment, but I had it with these nonsensical and disgustingly toxic comments from keyboard warriors living their whole lives in their parents' basement and sticking their heads in their asses, thinking that the whole world revolved around them and their desires.
Have you guys not heard of the idiom, "If the lips are gone, the teeth will be cold?"
The replies to my comment were mocking, condescending and insulting, as usual. It occurred to me that the keyboard warriors churning out toxic verbal abuse in the comments were uneducated and ignorant. Seemed like their knowledge was amassed by reading cultivation novels and manhuas, or watching YouTube videos. No wonder their comments were so…juvenile and edgy. All the toxic influence from such ruthless and misogynistic protagonists, who they worshipped blindly without learning to distinguish what was right and what was wrong. It wasn't a bad thing to indulge in wish fulfilment sometimes, and I did enjoy a bit of escapism, but they went too far by allowing themselves to be negatively influenced by all these wish fulfilment stories that promoted such toxic values to the point where we had an entire generation of youngsters who bought into the "strong eat the weak" nonsense, toxic masculinity where men deserve to have harems and women should just obey their spouses and get raped, people should be self-centered and refuse to help other people if they don't benefit from it, and that protagonists should murder and massacre entire bloodlines to prevent them from taking revenge. And then they forced these values onto every cultivation stories they read, and if the protagonist didn't conform to what they wanted, they started harassing the author and even sending death threats.
It might sound ridiculous, but considering that it had happened in reality, I didn't know what to say. After all, we had people who worshipped Trump, who was pretty much one of these ruthless, delusional and misogynistic protagonists in cultivation stories…except that he was fat instead of handsome. But he was just as rich and powerful and corrupted as the hypocritical protagonists who infested cultivation stories.
Well, allow me to educate you guys. At least that was what I typed in the midst of the flood of insults and condemnations from the commenters from beyond the fourth dimension. They were raging so much that they didn't want to listen to me, which made me wonder why the hell they were following my exploits in the first place.
Anyway, this took place in the Spring and Autumn period, about 707 to 476BC. Duke Xian of the state of Jin wanted to expand his territory, and so he aimed to invade the state of Guo. Unfortunately, to do so, he had to pass through the state of Yu, which was a pretty fortified kingdom. One of his ministers, Xun Xi, advised him to bribe the king of the state of Yu with jewels and horses. Though Duke Xian was a stingy fella who was reluctant to part with his wealth and horses, Xun Xi reminded him that he would get all of them back in the end, and so Duke Xian acquiesced to the plan.
The king of Yu was delighted by the gifts from the state of Jin, and so he agreed to allow their army to pass through his state to conquer the state of Guo. However, one of his ministers, Gong Zhi Qi, protested by pointing out the king's shortsightedness and the relationship between Yu and Guo.
"Our state of Yu is close to the state of Guo, and we have to cooperate to fend off mutual threats. We are as close as lips and teeth. If the lips are gone, the teeth will be cold. We cannot allow the army of the state of Jin to pass through our gates!"
His king snapped at him and fired him. Sighing, Gong Zhi Qi left the state of Yu with his family because he knew in his heart that it was doomed. Meanwhile, the army of the state of Jin marched through the state of Yu and conquered the state of Guo in short order. When they returned, the king of the state of Yu came out to congratulate them, only for Duke Xian's soldiers to seize him. Soon after that, the state of Yu ended up conquered by the state of Jin.
Now these commenters were equally shortsighted. They only cared about benefits, and so they started raging when I offered to help the Hel-Moran Combine without asking for any concrete rewards in return. They probably were the type who demanded that I accept the bribes from the demonic cultivators since that would "benefit" me more, and watch the Hel-Moran Combine get destroyed. Of course, being the ruthless edgelords that they were, they would advise me to swoop in and attack the Mystic Demon Sect after they suffered losses and were still vulnerable after their attempts to conquer the Hel-Moran Combine.
What they didn't know was that this was a shortsighted move that would make me more enemies – if the Hel-Moran Combine survived, their remnants would be sure to take revenge on me for using them like that. Not only that, it also gambled on me being somehow able to defeat the Mystic Demon Sect by myself, even though they would now have access to the Hel-Moran Combine's resources, armory filled with treasure weapons and equipment, and mines. Furthermore, it was also assuming that the Mystic Demon Sect would have taken a lot of losses in this endeavor when it was just as possible that they would crush the two dwarven dungeons with astonishing ease.
It would be more disadvantageous in the short term if I helped the dwarves now and took losses of my own, yes, but in the long term it would mean gaining their trust, establish a strong alliance and lasting relationship between our dungeons, and cement our reputation for being honorable and steadfast in the face of danger. Furthermore, the Hel-Moran Combine served as a buffer dungeon between mine and the Mystic Demon Sect. It was just like the idiom I mentioned earlier – if the Hel-Moran Combine were to fall, it would be far more difficult for my dungeon to defend itself when the Mystic Demon Sect finally came knocking. In contrast, we had a higher chance of defeating the Mystic Demon Sect if my dungeon worked together with the Hel-Moran Combine. By pooling our resources and combining our strength, we had better odds of overcoming a mutual enemy rather than selfishly throwing them to the wolves in hopes of exploiting the situation like a fisherman watching a snipe and clam fight, only to find out that the Mystic Demon Sect was far stronger and suffered far fewer losses than I had anticipated, and then get crushed. It was more akin to a hunter watching a tiger hunting a fox and hoping to take advantage of its wounds, only for the tiger to easily kill the fox and then pounce on the hunter before he could fire a shot.
The commenters had to understand that sometimes it wasn't always about benefits. And if you don't help other people, how do you expect other people to help you? Sure, I could almost predict cynical comments that you couldn't rely on other people for help, but that was just impractical and unrealistic. No man is an island, and you would inevitably have to rely on other people whether you liked it or not. Whether it was asking people to hire you for a job, or renting a place to live in, or receiving aid from your family. Society ran on money, and you weren't going to magically make money grow in your room or your parents' basement. Sure, you could run your own business, but you still had to rely on customers to purchase your products.
A little goodwill and kindness went a long way. And people could tell if you were sincere. That was why the dwarves were impressed, and that was why I was optimistic that we could develop a long-term working relationship in the future. Sure, there was the risk of them betraying me, but that would come to bite them in the asses, and I wasn't naïve enough to trust them 100% without contingencies in place. It was about striking a balance between doing the right thing and being careful. Nothing was ever black and white, unlike what the toxic commenters believed. It was always a shade of gray.
Hopefully, they would understand that, but…somehow I doubted it. A leopard never changes its spots, and people only wanted to read what they wanted to. In other words, if they only wanted to read about ruthless, misogynistic murder hobos with harems, then they wouldn't learn any lesson from my preaching.
In which case…oh, well. I tried. For now, I had to focus on helping the dwarves, and so I couldn't waste any more time arguing with braindead commenters who insisted on their toxic perspectives and bashed whatever protagonists they couldn't self-insert and project themselves onto.