Skill 2: [Character Sheets]
Description:
◇ This is an active tool that lets you check a character's current state as the story interprets it. When you use it, the system creates a personalized character sheet based on the narrative's present view of that person.
◇ The information shown includes basic details such as name and age. It also displays the character's current general and magical stats, affinity, or blessings.
Requirements:
◇ The bearer must know the target's full name as recognized by the story to activate the skill. And must be positioned closer to the target.
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Skill 3: [Omniscient Review]
Description:
◇ This ability allows the bearer to momentarily peer into the structure of the novel itself, through already published chapters and narrative scaffolding up to the most recent point the bearer has reached. During the activation of this skill, the world will move slowly.
Requirements:
◇ The bearer must expend 500 Plot Points to activate the skill. These points are consumed upon use and do not return. The bearer must be mentally stable enough to withstand meta-narrative strain.
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Honestly, so far, the 3 [Editorial Skills] look very useful. That was his impression of them.
"Surely, the locked skills must be better than this, right?"
He assumed. Normally, that was how the unlocked skills were supposed to work. If he wanted to learn more about those skills, then he needed to raise his relevance.
Once he had inspected all the features of the Editorial System, another thought filled in the gap of the silence.
It was a heavy blow to his circumstances that he had just now realised. Ruvian sighed and sank himself deeper into the tub.
'If I remember correctly, this world should already have proper shower systems due to magical advancement.'
And yet, this household never did…
"So, they probably couldn't afford one."
Ruvain concluded that it could only mean one thing.
"I wasn't born rich…"
The thought sat bitterly in his chest. Ruvian Castelor wasn't poor. Not by commoner standards. He grew up above average, slightly wealthier than most, thanks to his father's craft.
His father's workshop had once been a rising name, a humble workshop that suddenly caught the attention of nobles a few years ago.
It started when his father crafted a commissioned wooden chair for a minor baron. Due to that, the orders were stacked high, and the Castelor household enjoyed the kind of comfort most commoners only dreamed of.
But still, he had hoped to be transmigrated with a silver spoon in his mouth. That would certainly elevate his life a little bit.
He dejectedly sighed.
Through the narrow window, a stripe of daylight cut across the room and stabbed into his eyes when he glanced up.
In the warped shimmer of the water surface, a stranger's face wavered where his own should have been. It was the face of 'Ruvian' he had inhabited.
Soon, he took the chance to analyse this new body of his.
'Seventeen years old…'
That was his current age if judged from this borrowed memory. There was more to the shape of his body than just his youth. There was hard work etched into the line of his shoulders, born from repetition of stacking firewood, hauling grain, and carrying water.
He studied his limbs, pale skin flushed from the bath. His hair was wet and dark, clinging to his forehead in messy strands, and when he reached up to brush it aside, it was strangely soft.
Then, his gaze locked with the eyes in the reflection.
Those eyes didn't belong to Yuzuki Nozomi anymore.
They were darker, slightly blue, and terrifying. There was no kindness in them, no warm light or boyish charm.
'He's surprisingly good-looking.'
Ruvian smiled after studying those eyes. He somewhat liked it. Perhaps, even more than he was willing to admit it.
He dragged a hand over his dark, silky hair.
There was no point in denying it anymore. The name had begun to settle in his mind, no longer foreign, and no longer borrowed.
Ruvian's memory had completely merged with his.
"Ruvian Castelor…"
No matter what, he needed to get used to that name, since it was his name now.
Leaning back, he rested his head against the rim of the tub. His thoughts began to settle around him as the fragments of his memory slowly stitched themselves into coherence.
He knew what was coming.
The first big arc of this novel.
Zian Herga, the bright-eyed, hopelessly idealistic, and cursed with a hero complex protagonist, was about to get chewed up and spat out by fate.
By the second semester at Velthia Academy, the kid would be framed and tossed out of the academy as a punishment.
After that incident, he'd head back to his village thinking the worst was over, but it wasn't. The place that he called home was gone, burned to cinders. The bodies of his family were left scattered among the ruins.
A cruel turning point!
"Well, that's a classic setup for a power fantasy."
Somewhere in that wreckage, Zian would fall to his knees and swear to get stronger, to never, ever be powerless again. And the universe answered him somehow by bestowing him a System.
[The Voice of the Strong].
From then on, Zian Herga would stop being just another unlucky kid and start turning into an impenetrable fortress. Monsters would crumble easily. Villains would be destroyed with a single slash of his sword.
"How generic."
But the real story began when he enrolled in the Wellencrest Academy…
Ruvian leaned forward, letting the water trail from his chin. His gaze was far away, buried in pages he had once scrolled through.
He had read the damnable novel until chapter 1602. He didn't know how the novel ended, but he knew the first stage of the calamity, and it was already brutal enough.
He had seen the slow erosion of the hero's resolve, the flickers of doubt, and the inescapable realisation that raw power meant nothing when the world insisted on breaking faster than the protagonist could mend it.
In the end, Zian had failed to save his people during the early stages of the calamity. Not just because he lacked any strength, but because fate was never fair to him.
And now, Yuzuki Nozomi… no, Ruvian Castelor found himself dragged into that very same story. Even worse, not as the hero or as a supporting cast member, but just as an extra in the current of a much larger story.
However, for what he knew, he wasn't just any nameless extra.
No, he was more than just that…
He was a nameless extra who proofread this world!
So, should he step in and nudge the story off its rails, guiding that naive, foolish protagonist, was all up to him if he wanted to.
The very idea was almost amusing, though. And if he truly wished it, then even the grand machinery of fate would have no choice but to bow to him.
A touch of ambition, really.
"No, hold on a second."
"Why the hell would I gamble my life on some self-righteous fool who's just doomed to fall anyway?"
Now, this one was an even better proposal.
There was no logic in throwing himself onto someone else's path, especially when that path was already painted in failure. So instead, why not just forge his own? If the world insisted on heading toward ruin, then he just had to face it as a wall and simply stop it.
Pulling out from his deep thoughts, Ruvian could feel the water had gone cold, as the chill seeped into his skin inevitably. When he rose from the tub, the ache in his muscles was dull.
He quickly wrapped himself in the coarse towel, the fabric rough against his damp skin, and stood quietly in the room for a moment longer.
Two weeks.
That was all the time left before Velthia Academy opened its gates. Ruvian didn't feel ready. Not for the world before him, nor for the dangers that hovered at the edges of his thoughts.
He groaned. The more pressing issue, however, was how little he truly understood about the coming calamity.
Throughout all 1,602 chapters of the novel, the author had only ever implied its structure, hinting almost by accident that it occurred in two distinct stages.
The revelation had come with a strange abruptness from her, and the moment had stood out as one of the more noticeable flaws in her writing.
'Was that intentional of her since I will be transmigrated into this story soon after?'
'Was that the reason why she was rushing the story?'
He couldn't tell. Even so, that single slip had given him something concrete; from it, he managed to identify at least one stage among the two.
The summoning of the Endbringer.
The other stage was still entirely unknown, yet he reasoned that if he could prevent the first, if he could prevent the summoning of the Endbringer, then the next might never occur.
"Well, let's survive first."
"Everything else can burn for all I care."
It was the only truth he could hold on to. He dressed quietly, as the gentle scent of rosemary remained on his skin.
Ruvian sighed, rubbing his face as if to wipe away the weight of the future.
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[Chapter 4: Editorial Access (2)]