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AN: This chapter has slight bits of info dump but I made it as entertaining as possible as I LOATHE info dumps in stories, I'm sure that if you read along to our MC's thought process you will be entertained. I try to stay away from annoying cliches such as an MC who hides his identity and never takes any credit. My main point is, give this chapter a chance and please don't just skip over it, thanks a lot guys! Back to you Andri!
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"Phew..."
I collapsed onto the bed, waddling my way back to my dorm was tougher than I expected, I think I heard the golem cooks heave a sigh of relief but it must've been a hallucination... must've been for sure.
Remembering where the books I had looked through were, I found a blank one presumably for note-taking and with a pen found near it, fighting off a food coma I began to write out some plans.
'Hmm... I should do this first... no wait, if I do that...'
'Ok but what if I... Yeah, that's a possibility but what if that means... ugh...'
'Maybe then... no... shit.'
I came across my first roadblock.
I know the story by heart as well as most of the characters but the more I interact with the story, the more the story changes and the less control I have of the future.
Assuming that this is a one-to-one recreation of the Vishwas world I know with me being inserted into it, there are lots of opportunities for me to take hold of but that assumption in of itself is a big leap to make; but since that world is the only one that I have any knowledge of, I decided to keep this assumption up and plan around it, if it turned out to not be the case I would have to change my plans.
When you pick a class and choose your character, the other 4 main cast NPCs are made around the classes you didn't pick and one of the two presets (Male or female) is chosen for their appearance. My second big assumption was that these characters would continue to be the centerfold of the story to come and would all be in their preset form, male or female, I had no clue as the personalities were pretty much the same regardless.
'The story right now is a protective shield, the only people involved in any of the major plot points should be the 5 main characters who I'll assume aren't customised in any way and stick to the preset, maneuvering myself around them and letting the story play out would give me more time to prepare for the future as I can easily predict what will happen next. If I take action early the butterfly effect will drastically change the future and I will no longer have that advantage.'
But the thing is, no matter how much I want to stay low-key and not affect the story in any way; I have to disrupt it.
This world is hurtling towards disaster, almost every character I meet will be gone within the next 6 years either to war, betrayal, or some other machination of this world. I cannot be a passive force in this story, I need to be a wrench that spurs on every character and affects them as much as I possibly can to improve and better themselves.
The real question is, how long do I wait before I massively change the story to my liking? I need to use the future and my knowledge of it wisely and reap as many benefits from that as possible before I decide to derail everything for the benefit of everyone; if I wait too long, I could just cement the disastrous future I know is coming.
'My first priority before helping others get strong should be helping myself! I'm well aware that the 5 presets probably gain the same cheat-like blessings they do in the game, in reality, the same can't be said for myself.'
While I still held out hope for a powerful blessing, I knew that hope only gave disappointment a chance to knock you on your ass with a mean left hook.
During your first week of classes, each student is taken to a Pantheon Temple and is given a singular blessing from one of many gods. Pantheon Temples are temples that aren't centered around any one god in particular but rather around divinity in general, giving the populace a direct line to the gods in their times of crisis.
I remember some cutscenes within the game where almost every temple, pantheon or not, was overrun by pious believers begging the gods to protect them from the invaders but they received not even a speck of attention from them in return.
Not that I blamed them of course, the gods had died long ago.
The blessings that the students received were merely a manifestation of the gods' wills, in 4 years time, this collective will of the gods would cease to exist and no more future students of the academy would be able to receive blessings, rendering them much weaker than their predecessors.
According to the lore, the fact that the wills were getting weaker was one of the main reasons that the students of this year, in particular, received extremely powerful blessings compared to previous years. Some fans theorised that the gods' collective will might've sensed a great calamity approaching and decided to do a bit of a hail mary.
Either way, I'm going to assume that my blessing would be shite.
Luckily for me, there are other ways to get stronger. The easiest being to collect as many artifacts as possible.
Artifacts are items or objects that hold great power, typically forged by a skilled artisan or craftsman centuries ago! The main issue is that artifacts need to be bound to your soul, this is a great anti-thieving tool but it also means that only when I am of sufficient strength can I bind an OP artifact to my soul, for now I'll have to stick with the simple ones.
I groaned at the rigidity of this world, some MCs in novels could just head into a forest and gain a heaven-defying-supreme-god-angel-demon grade artifact and use it to blast through their enemies. Not me though.
I jotted down the locations of a few artifacts I remembered but got increasingly annoyed that I had forgotten most of their locations and that from the ones that I remembered, there were only a few that I could feasibly bind to in the near future.
'But these two artifacts definitely aren't bad at all...'
The best part is, they were right here in Oberon Academy.
According to Garth, last night was everyone's first night, which means I have 6 more days before the trials officially begin.
I need those artifacts ASAP.