A Changed World
Next, Ji An turned his attention to the reward.
[One attribute point and talent skill draw opportunity, based on the simulated character Decarabian.]
He opened the detailed rules.
[One attribute point will be randomly drawn from the character Decarabian's attributes: Appearance, Physique, Intelligence, Family Background. The host will inherit 5% of the drawn attribute's value.]
[One talent skill will be randomly drawn from the character Decarabian's talent skills.]
"Five percent? That's barely anything."
Ji An's first reaction was mild disappointment. Then he instinctively opened Decarabian's full stat sheet.
"Holy crap."
He stared at the numbers.
"What is this? Even for a god, this is..."
The longest string of digits he had ever seen in this simulator sat in front of him. The most overwhelming attribute he had ever witnessed before this had been the pangolin's Physique of 105. He had considered that staggering at the time.
Decarabian's Physique broke four digits.
It made every number Ji An had accumulated feel like pocket change.
Was this what power creep looked like?
"I suppose that's what you'd expect from a god who specialized in defense."
Ji An shook his head slowly.
No wonder the system had built in a percentage cap. If he inherited the full value of any attribute from something like this, the result would be completely unmanageable. In that light, five percent was actually a reasonable amount.
"Wait. I'm getting ahead of myself."
He stopped and reconsidered.
He had been so stunned by the four-digit Physique that he had stopped thinking clearly. The question was not whether five percent was good in absolute terms. The question was which attribute he actually drew.
Decarabian's other three attributes were nowhere near the same scale as his Physique. If he pulled Appearance, or worse, Family Background, the five percent would be almost meaningless in practical terms.
His finger hovered over the draw button and stayed there.
Given his experience with gacha games in his past life, where he had never once beaten the odds when it mattered, his confidence in his luck was extremely low.
"Let me at least look at the talent skills first."
When in doubt, delay the decision.
---
Talent Skills:
[Little Luck]: Slightly increases luck.
[Born Different]: Appearance +3.
[Gales, Hear My Call]: Physique +5, Family Background +6.
[Wind Spirit of the Gale]: Every time a tornado sweeps across this land, your power increases.
The list went on. As expected of a being who had lived for several thousand years, Decarabian had accumulated a considerable number of talents.
Ji An was browsing through them with mild interest, mentally noting which ones he might want, when one particular entry caught his eye and made his hand stop.
[Love for Humanity]: You will love humanity unconditionally.
Ji An stared at it for a moment.
He suddenly felt significantly less enthusiastic about drawing.
Every other talent skill on the list was either a genuine benefit or at least neutral. This one was a hard limitation dressed up as a virtue. In the context of the simulator, where talent skills were supposed to be rewards, this was functionally a debuff.
He had no objection to the concept of loving humanity as a value. That was not the issue. The issue was having that concept installed directly into his mind as a binding compulsion, removing any element of choice from the matter. Those were entirely different things.
"Maybe I just won't draw."
He honestly did not feel he needed another talent skill at this stage and was about to close the window.
[Ding. Reminder to the host: the draw opportunity cannot be forfeited.]
Ji An: "..."
Fine.
To be fair, Decarabian had accumulated dozens of talent skills over his long life. The odds of landing specifically on Love for Humanity were low. Ji An told himself this, took a breath, and pressed the draw button.
After a tense wait, a flash of purple light appeared.
[Little Luck]: Slightly increases luck.
Ji An exhaled.
He had not drawn the debuff. More than that, he had pulled a purple-grade talent, which was a better outcome than he had any right to expect given his historical luck.
This was not a loss by any measure.
"That said," he said, looking at the description again, "it seems like a very ordinary effect for a purple rating. Why is luck classified this highly?"
He thought about it and could only conclude that luck itself must genuinely be a rare and precious commodity within the logic of this system. Enough to warrant the upgrade.
"Alright. On to the attribute draw."
He rubbed his hands together, positioned his finger over the button, and pressed.
The roulette pointer spun fast.
"Physique," Ji An muttered under his breath. "Physique. Come on."
The pointer slowed.
It drifted into the Family Background section.
Continued slowing.
Began to settle.
Ji An's face fell. He knew it. He had known this was coming. His luck followed reliable patterns, and reliable patterns did not include drawing the one useful attribute in a pool of four.
Then.
[Little Luck effect triggered.]
The pointer, which by all rights should have stopped in Family Background, shuddered and crept forward by a small margin.
It came to rest squarely in Physique.
Ji An stared.
Then, after a moment of processing what he had just witnessed, he made a sound somewhere between a shout and a laugh.
The luck buff was incredible. Genuinely, absurdly incredible.
[5% of Decarabian's Physique attribute has been inherited: 60 points.]
A surge of warmth poured through his body from somewhere he could not locate, moving outward through his bones, his organs, his muscles. Everything felt more solid. More real. His muscles tightened with a kind of explosive potential that had not been there before.
"I've gotten stronger again."
He closed his eyes and let himself sit with the sensation for a moment. It felt like something had been quietly and fundamentally rebuilt.
When he compared where he had been before to what he felt now, the difference was clear.
Before, he could rival a Vision wielder in a short burst of combat, but that relied heavily on the Divine Marksman's Combat Memories and other external talent supports. His body itself was still mortal at its foundation. He could push hard for a limited window of time, but sustained combat against something truly beyond human scale had always been a wall he could not cross.
Now, the foundation itself had changed. His body was no longer operating within ordinary mortal parameters. He felt genuinely confident for the first time about what he could handle in a prolonged fight.
---
After confirming all his rewards, Ji An turned to head back.
His vision blurred.
The world around him twisted briefly into a tangle of shifting, distorted lines, holding that shape for just an instant before snapping back into clarity.
The scene around him had changed completely.
Where he had been standing was the ruined top of a shattered tower: broken tiles, gaps letting in the wind, the solitary king's old throne with its cracked back and the general dilapidation of something that had been forgotten for a very long time.
Now, he was standing inside a grand, solemn stone shrine.
The stone throne was gone. In its place stood a lifelike statue of a god clad in armor, sword drawn and pointing forward, as if in the middle of defending something against an unseen threat.
[Ding. Timeline alteration for Mondstadt has taken effect. Alteration: 10%.]
Ji An stood there for a moment, orienting himself.
From behind him, voices drifted over. Jean was speaking with someone he did not recognize.
"Grand Master Jean, a thief broke into the Temple of the Gale God and stole the sacred relic left by the Divine King. This is an insult to His Majesty and to all who serve him."
"This matter cannot be left unaddressed."
"If we cannot retrieve the sacred relic, then we... we will have no choice but to die in atonement."
The old voice cracked on the last words.
"Elder Andrei, please. You must not speak of such things."
Jean's voice was firm but gentle: "The Knights of Favonius will not stand by while the Divine King of Gales' sacred relic remains in the hands of a thief. That is precisely why we have come."
"Grand Master Jean." The elder's voice settled slightly. "I trust that you have not forgotten where Mondstadt came from. Lord Barbatos established the new Mondstadt, yes. But before that, it was the Divine King who held the people of this land together. None of us can forget what he gave us."
Jean said quickly: "Of course not. As you can see, even though Mondstadt has moved and rebuilt, its people still make the journey here to the Temple of the Gale God to pay their respects. His Majesty has not been forgotten."
A pause.
"Grand Master Jean. That dragon covered in black that appeared above the old city... I suspect I already know what it was. The Wind Dragon. The Lion of the South. Dvalin. Am I wrong?"
Jean's reply came after a slight hesitation: "Elder Andrei, you are not wrong. But the circumstances surrounding it are complicated. I will need more time to explain."
The old man made a low sound. "I hope, when that time comes, the explanation is one I can accept."
---
Ji An pieced together the current situation from their conversation, cross-referencing it with what he had experienced inside the simulation.
The history of Mondstadt concerning the solitary king had indeed been altered.
In the original version of events, Decarabian's rule had simply ended with his defeat, and his royal city had fallen into ruin, gradually abandoned. In this adjusted version, the people he had protected stayed. When the spirit of a thousand winds who became Venti rose as the Anemo Archon Barbatos and used the divine wind to clear the ice from Mondstadt's land and open it for new settlement, most people moved to establish what became the new Mondstadt. But a portion of the population, those who had genuinely understood what Decarabian had done for them, remained in the old royal city. They built the Temple of the Gale God, committed themselves to honoring his memory, and had kept that commitment across generations.
Ji An walked over: "Grand Master Jean. About the Divine King of Gales' sacred relic..."
Jean looked up immediately: "Mr. Ji An, have you found something?"
"Can't quite say yes, can't quite say no." He kept his answer deliberately vague, angling to get more information without revealing how much he was missing. "What's the current situation?"
Diluc, arms crossed, supplied the summary in his usual flat tone: "After Stormterror attacked Mondstadt, it disappeared. We tracked it here to the old royal city, along with Venti. By the time we arrived, it had been completely consumed by darkness. Venti followed it when it fled."
Jean added: "Before he left, Venti indicated that someone has been using dark power to corrupt and control Stormterror deliberately. The sacred relic was stolen during the chaos of Stormterror's appearance above the old city, when everyone's attention was elsewhere. Whoever committed the theft and whoever is behind the corruption of Stormterror appear to be the same group. For now, all we can do is wait for Venti to return."
Ji An was listening.
Then he became aware of something else.
Paimon: Stare.
Lumine: Arms crossed, expression giving nothing away.
Ji An: "..."
He cleared his throat, cautious: "Paimon. Lumine. Why are you both looking at me like that?"
Paimon crossed her arms and huffed: "Ji An, you need to explain yourself. After you walked over to that stone chair, everything around here completely changed. The whole place just... mmph, mmph!"
Ji An had already moved, stepping forward and pressing his hand over Paimon's mouth before she could finish.
He glanced at Lumine. She raised her chin at him slightly, a prompt to continue.
He asked internally: System. Why haven't Paimon and Lumine's memories been affected by the alteration?
[Ding...]
Of course.
"Alright," Ji An said under his breath. "Honestly, I'm just as confused as you are. Come over here."
He pulled Lumine and Paimon into a corner. The three of them huddled close and kept their voices down.
His explanation was essentially this: when he reached out and touched the pale golden fragment resting before the stone throne, everything changed. He had no detailed account of what happened in between. His best guess was that he had accidentally activated some residual power left behind by the solitary king of the tower.
It was a thin story. Residual power from a god dead for thousands of years should not be capable of reshaping history in any meaningful way. The explanation had obvious gaps.
But in another sense, it was also unassailable.
He did not know what had happened. That was, as far as it went, the truth.
Lumine and Paimon did not dwell on it. After a moment the topic drifted, and they turned back toward Jean and the others.
Paimon said quietly: "This is such a strange feeling. Grand Master Jean and Master Diluc have been with us the whole time, but suddenly they have a completely different set of memories, and they treat those memories as real. It's like they've been rewritten."
Ji An said: "It's possible that what they remember is now simply what actually happened, at least from where they're standing."
Lumine said: "It's all Ji An's fault for stuffing strange things into Grand Master Jean's head and scrambling her memories."
Ji An stopped walking.
He turned around slowly.
"Lumine. That sentence can be read in a very uncomfortable way."
Lumine looked at him, genuinely puzzled: "Can it? What way?"
"Yeah, Paimon doesn't see what's strange about it either," Paimon said, tilting her head.
Ji An opened his mouth. Closed it again.
After a long pause, staring at their entirely innocent expressions, he arrived at an uncomfortable possibility.
Maybe the problem was him. Maybe spending too much time around certain kinds of people had quietly rewired the way his brain processed language, and his first interpretation of anything ambiguous was now the wrong one.
"Never mind. It's nothing."
His face had gone slightly red. He turned back around and started walking toward Jean and Diluc.
He did not notice Lumine watching his retreating back, the corner of her mouth curving upward in a small, knowing smile.
Paimon fell into step beside her, clasping her hands behind her back: "Traveler, why did Ji An say what you said about stuffing memories into Grand Master Jean was strange? Paimon really doesn't understand."
Lumine glanced at her sideways: "You don't need to. You're too small to fit anything in anyway."
"That doesn't make sense! A memory doesn't take up space!"
Paimon puffed out her cheeks: "Oh! Paimon understands now. The Traveler is calling Paimon small-headed and slow. That's what you meant!"
Lumine's smile widened slightly: "Come on. Let's go."
-------
A/n: New content and stories posted on my patreon go check it out!
patreon.com/deadlygoober