Though Decarabian could not hear what his subjects were saying, Ji An heard every word of it, and his frustration rose steadily.
Where was that pitiful, desperate look they had worn when they came begging for protection? Who was it that had pleaded with the solitary king to spend his divine power keeping them safe?
Even if gratitude was too much to expect, some basic decency would have been nice.
Unfortunately, Ji An was stuck in viewing mode. He could only watch.
Then something strange happened.
A scene flashed before his eyes that had nothing to do with the simulation.
It was a space woven from countless threads of fate, stretching in every direction like an impossibly vast web. The white-clad, masked figure Ji An had glimpsed in previous simulation fragments was walking along these threads, stepping from one to the next with unhurried calm. At the end of each thread was an image that shifted and changed like pictures in a revolving lantern.
Finally, the white-clad figure stopped before one particular image, and Ji An's consciousness was pulled toward it.
A shattered royal city. A toppled tower. A wolf king riding ice and wind. A youth playing a harp. Mondstadters armed with every kind of weapon, mouths open in battle cries.
Is this the moment Decarabian's rule is brought down by the rebellion?
Then, without warning, the white-clad figure turned around.
Through the mask, those strangely familiar eyes seemed to pierce across endless time and space and look directly at Ji An's presence.
A sharp pain stabbed through Ji An's head, and his consciousness was thrown out of the scene entirely.
The vision dissolved.
What was that?
Before he could think it through, the system spoke.
[Ding. Host's emotional response has been detected. The option function for simulation mode has been triggered.]
[From this point forward, your choices will be able to influence the actions of the simulated character Decarabian.]
Ji An blinked: "There's a function like that? Why didn't you mention it before?"
[The option function is only triggered under specific modes and specific circumstances.]
Ji An considered this for a moment: "So you're telling me I've gone from watching a film to actually playing a game?"
[Not exactly. The host can only influence the character's actions through the options provided. The character will respond to your choices according to their own personality and may agree or refuse.]
"Got it. So it works a bit like a visual novel with choices." Ji An found the idea genuinely interesting. "That actually sounds fun."
[Warning to the host: please use this function with caution. Your choices may cause changes to the future.]
Ji An's enthusiasm cooled slightly: "You mean the butterfly effect?"
There was a saying from his past life: a butterfly flapping its wings in South America could set off a chain of events that ended in a tornado in Texas two weeks later. A small change in the past could quietly reshape everything downstream.
Directly tampering with a god's decisions was considerably more significant than a butterfly's wings.
Ji An hesitated: "Maybe I shouldn't use this function at all?"
As much as he wanted to steer Decarabian into teaching these ungrateful people a lesson, the thought of finishing the simulation and emerging to find Grand Master Jean gone, or Diluc inexplicably transformed, or some other cascading disaster waiting for him on the other side was deeply uncomfortable.
[The host need not worry excessively. Time has a natural tendency to correct itself. As long as you do not make extreme choices, the influence you can exert is limited in scope. The system will also issue warnings at critical moments.]
"Covering all your bases, aren't you," Ji An muttered.
But reading between the lines, the system clearly wanted him to use the function.
"Fine. Activate the options."
[Ding. Option function activated. Entering main perspective.]
---
Upon the high tower.
Decarabian, clad in dark armor, sat upon his throne in the great hall. The immense, intangible pressure radiating from him forced his subjects below to keep their heads bowed.
All except for one.
A barefoot huntress knelt before the throne, but her head was raised. Her gaze was fixed on the solitary king above her, and her face was filled with a tender, open longing that she made no effort to conceal.
The solitary king's gaze shifted slowly until it rested on her.
The girl trembled slightly. The king is looking at me. He has noticed me.
The solitary king was silent for a long time.
The subject before him showed no sign of leaving.
His mouth, which had not formed a word in months, finally opened.
At that moment, the system prompt sounded.
[Option One: "Why aren't you leaving? Am I that good-looking?" Adoption probability: 10%. If adopted, Resistance value increases by 3.]
[Option Two: "Take off your skirt, woman." Adoption probability: 5%. If adopted, Resistance value increases by 2.]
[Option Three: "Amos, you may leave." Adoption probability: 100%. If adopted, Compliance value increases by 2.]
[Note: The higher the Resistance value, the lower the probability that the host can influence the character. Compliance value can be spent to increase the adoption probability of options.]
What were those first two options? Completely out of character for a thousand-year-old god, and likely to cause chaos besides.
Ji An chose the safe path.
He selected Option Three.
"Amos. You may leave."
The solitary king's voice rang out like the clash of metal against metal.
Amos's expression froze. She stared at the king, but his gaze had already moved elsewhere, as though she no longer existed.
She opened her mouth, trying to say something more, but before she could find the words, a gust of wind swept up from the floor of the tower and carried her out entirely.
---
Elsewhere in the royal city, a hushed conversation was taking place.
"Amroun, have you heard? The leader of the Gunnhildr clan is planning to leave the royal city."
"Leave? Are they insane?"
"You don't want to go with them? Didn't you say you wanted to see the sky outside?"
"Tch. Only a fool would try. It's a frozen wasteland out there. You'd be dead within a day. And whose fault is that? That man up in his tower, building his walls thicker and thicker. I think he just enjoys making our lives worse."
Ji An sighed inwardly, watching from beside the motionless Decarabian.
Do you hear this? This is what your supposedly devoted subjects actually think of you.
The solitary king could not hear. He sat in silence, winds still turning around him.
[Compliance value increased by 2.]
Ji An felt a small surge of satisfaction.
---
The Gunnhildr clan made their decision. They gathered at the city gate, prepared to brave the winds beyond, even knowing what awaited them, even knowing Decarabian might choose to destroy them for the attempt.
But sensing their intentions from his tower, the solitary king did neither.
He did not call his winds against them. He did not block their path.
Instead, he opened a passage through the wind barrier and let them through.
"What does this mean?" one clan member asked, their voice low with fear.
"He wants to watch us walk out into the cold and die," someone said flatly.
"Cruel beast! Even if we freeze, we will never bow to him again!"
The clan leader looked back at the royal city one last time. Her expression was hard to read. Then she turned away.
"We set out to seek freedom. The king has opened the way. Let us not waste it."
Then, just as the group was about to move, a gale swept down from above and deposited a man directly into the middle of the group.
"Amroun! You're coming out with us?" someone recognized him and exclaimed.
"Coming out? What are you talking about? I don't want to go anywhere!"
Amroun spun around, looking back frantically at the gate: "My king! Please! I don't want to leave! I don't want to leave!"
Two members of the group stepped up and took positions on either side of him.
"Amroun. The fact that you feel this way only proves how thoroughly you've been conditioned. You don't even recognize the value of freedom anymore. Come with us. We'll find somewhere warm, somewhere real. You'll understand once you're out there."
This was clearly Decarabian's doing. He wanted the Gunnhildr clan to take Amroun with them.
And since having Amroun along would help ensure the group's own safe passage, they were happy to bring him, willingly or not.
This wasn't force, of course. It was helping Amroun understand what he was missing.
"I don't want to go, I don't want to go..."
Amroun's voice faded as the group disappeared into the snowstorm.
---
Ji An had spent one point of Compliance to make this happen, and Decarabian had followed through.
From what he knew of the story, the Gunnhildr clan survived their time in the snowstorm and eventually made it through. So he had taken the opportunity to send the loudest complainer in the city along for the ride, to see for himself whether the royal city's walls were truly the oppression he claimed them to be, or whether the blizzard outside offered the freedom he seemed to think he was missing.
Sometimes people needed to feel the cold before they could appreciate the warmth.
After making the choice, Ji An checked in with the system: "Did throwing that man out cause any significant changes?"
[There is good news and bad news. Which would the host prefer to hear first?]
"Bad news first."
[The bad news is that after leaving with the Gunnhildr clan, he traveled for a long distance and saw nothing but endless ice and snow in every direction. In the end, the despair became too much for him, and he buried himself in the snow and did not get up.]
Ji An was quiet for a moment. "So he collapsed that easily. He was the loudest voice in the city, always ranting and complaining, and it turns out he didn't have much underneath it."
He asked: "What's the good news? His death must have changed something, surely."
[The good news is that in the original course of events, he was going to die in the chaos when the royal city was breached. His fate was the same either way. The impact on the timeline is effectively zero.]
The system displayed a panel.
[Timeline alteration: 0%]
Ji An understood. The man was always going to die. The only thing that changed was the specific moment and circumstance.
---
A young woman named Amos walked through the streets of the royal city, her expression shadowed.
She had tried again, and failed again.
She could not hold the king's attention. No matter what she said or did, his gaze simply moved on.
Why?
She had carried such warmth for him. Such admiration. She had told him her dreams in the gentlest voice she could manage: waves and sandy shores, forests full of deep green, wild boars moving through berry bushes, tall spires rising toward a sky she could only imagine.
The solitary king had not heard a word of it. Or if he had, it had not reached him.
He had even said, at one point, "Don't you ever run out of things to say?"
The words landed like a blade. Amos's heart, which had held so much for him, broke cleanly.
She stood in the street and finally allowed herself to see clearly.
The solitary king had no real feeling for the people below him. He spoke of loving humanity, but what surrounded him was nothing but knife-edged wind. He looked down at his subjects from his tower and mistook their inability to stand upright in his gales for reverence. He had confused the bowing of bodies worn down by force for the bowing of hearts freely given.
He had never understood the fragility of mortal flesh. He had never thought to ask.
The warmth she had felt for him turned to ash.
"Since you cannot remember me," Amos said quietly to no one, "I will join those who stand against you. I will help bring this down."
A different kind of fire kindled in her chest.
---
"The rebellion should be starting soon," Ji An said to the system, calculating the timeline. "Decarabian's story is approaching its end."
He looked back over the days he had spent inside the simulation.
He had tried, in whatever small ways the options allowed, to push Decarabian toward communicating with his subjects. To make him notice what was actually happening below his tower.
It had achieved almost nothing.
One side had no capacity to perceive what others were feeling and had never thought to try. The other side had accumulated too much fear and resentment to reach across the gap even if an opening had been offered.
Prejudice, once it had grown deep enough, was like a mountain. You could not simply tell it to move.
In the beginning, Ji An imagined, there must have been people in Mondstadt who felt genuine gratitude. The god-king had kept the wind and snow out, had built walls between them and the killing cold. That was real. That had saved lives.
But people grew accustomed to safety. Once they were no longer cold, once hunger was no longer a daily concern, the memory of what had been given to them faded. Safety started to feel like something they simply deserved. And freedom, the ability to see the sky, to walk beyond the walls, became the thing that had been stolen from them. Gratitude curdled into grievance, and grievance had had a long time to settle.
Ji An looked at the Compliance points he had accumulated over the simulation's long run and felt a flicker of anticipation.
He was going to spend them on something that mattered.
---
The conflict between the solitary king and his subjects had finally reached a point of no return.
On the high tower, Decarabian sat motionless on his throne.
But the people below him had stopped bowing.
They stood. They shouted. They raised their voices against him for the first time, led by a youth whose harp rang out across the city with songs about freedom and open skies.
"Freedom! We want freedom!"
"We are done with these walls! We want to see the sky. We want to see birds!"
"Tyrant! You can imprison our bodies, but you will never imprison what we carry inside us!"
The solitary king sat in silence.
Ji An, watching from within, could feel the confusion underneath that stillness. Decarabian had given these people everything he knew how to give. He had used his power to shelter them, to provide for them, to plan their lives carefully so that nothing would go wrong.
Why had it led to this?
What could he do to make them love him again?
The system offered its options.
[Option One: Surely what he has given is not enough. If he makes the royal city even more impregnable, he will win back their love. Adoption probability: 100%. Compliance value increases by 2.]
[Option Two: Someone must have corrupted his subjects from the inside. If he eliminates the instigators, the problem will resolve itself. Adoption probability: 95%. Compliance value increases by 2.]
[Option Three: Say to humanity: "Fine. I grant you freedom." Then withdraw the divine power from the royal city and leave. Adoption probability: 5%. Resistance value increases by 5.]
Without Ji An's influence, Decarabian would almost certainly choose Option One.
Ji An checked with the system, confirmed this wouldn't cause any major alterations to the overall timeline, and spent every Compliance point he had accumulated on Option Three.
---
The solitary king was silent for a long moment.
Then his voice rang out from the throne above.
"As I once granted your wish for shelter from the wind and snow, I grant your wish now."
A pause.
"I grant you freedom."
With that, Decarabian withdrew his divine power from the royal city. The throne stood empty.
The people below went still.
They had not expected it to end like this. No battle. No divine punishment. Just those words, and then silence where the king had been.
Then the celebration began.
The Mondstadters who had lived too long in warmth and safety cheered and embraced one another, shouting about their hard-won victory.
No one noticed the first thin thread of cold air that slipped quietly through the unprotected walls.
No one noticed the second.
By the time the third arrived, carrying with it the full weight of the frozen world outside, it was already too late to miss what the walls had been keeping out.
-------
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