Chương 67: The Truth About Where This Genre Comes From

The grey stone dome of the abandoned observatory sat perched atop the hill on the academy's western edge. Evening wind blew through moss-covered cracks in the stone. Under a darkening violet sky, the first stars began to appear, tracing geometric paths so precise they looked almost eerie — like light points programmed onto some massive projection screen. Lucian and Evelyn sat side by side on the edge of the dome, legs dangling over the drop below.

A small mana-crystal stove sat between them, two sausages sizzling on top, grease dripping onto the stone with a dry hiss. Lucian pulled a technical drawing out of his coat pocket and spread it across the stone.

"The Demon Realm agreed to five thousand tons of Tartarus ore a month. Is your automated arcane loom design finished? My dad's about to expand into ten new weaving mills south of the capital." Evelyn didn't look at the drawing. She picked up a half-burnt stick of charcoal and started tracing jagged lines into the soot on the stone.

"Hey, Lucian."

"What?"

"Have you noticed... something's off about this world?" Lucian picked up a sausage and took a bite.

"Off in the sense that the crown's corporate income tax is way too high, and Elf banks charge criminally predatory interest rates?"

"I'm being serious," Evelyn said, tapping her stick hard against the stone, and started listing.

"One: there's a Royal Academy of Magic specifically designed to dump noble kids into one place to fight each other."

"Two: there's an arrogant blonde princess with a holy bloodline who somehow doubles as both Student Council President and knight commander."

"Three: there's an orphaned Savior girl carrying seven layers of divine seals, who happens to have a personality that only wants roasted sweet potatoes."

"Four: there's a World Tower buried underground, exactly one hundred floors tall."

"Five: there's a dragon race guarding a treasure hoard, a dogmatic Holy Church, and a Demon race split into exactly twelve territories..." If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it. Evelyn spun around to face Lucian, pushing her glasses up her nose.

"And I even found a 'Cycle Myth' in the Church's forbidden archives, about a Holy Maiden who died and was reborn nine times trying to save the world." She tossed the stick aside and crossed her arms.

"Doesn't this whole world feel like a stew pot thrown together out of every trending tag on the fiction sites we used to read back home?" Lucian chewed and swallowed the last of his bite, wiping his mouth with a napkin.

"So what? Every fantasy world has this stuff. As long as there's currency in circulation and legal contracts I can profit off of, why should I care?"

"The problem is the underlying logic," Evelyn propped her chin on her hand, staring up at the constellations tracing their perfect elliptical orbits across the night sky.

"On Earth, a society takes thousands of years of class struggle, economic conflict, and industrial revolution to develop. But here, everything looks like some lazy screenwriter just crammed it all into one place to serve a preplanned plot." Lucian took a sip of apple juice, answering flatly.

"If it's a novel, you know what happens to characters who go around poking at the main plot, right?" Evelyn went quiet. Lucian tapped his fingers against his thigh.

"They get tortured to death by the writer as 'character development fuel.' Parents murdered, family lineage wiped out, love interest kidnapped, or forced to awaken their power through trauma and pain." He looked straight into Evelyn's eyes.

"So the best way to survive this stew pot is: don't be the protagonist. Just be an ordinary merchant, make as much money as possible, and get eight hours of sleep every night. Whoever wants to play the world-saving hero — let them carry that debt themselves." Evelyn looked at the ten-year-old boy's utterly unshaken, pragmatic expression and burst out laughing.

"Fair enough. Finance-guy logic is terrifyingly practical, every single time." She reached into her coat pocket and pulled out a half-foot-long key made of pitch-black titanium alloy. Tiny arcane semiconductor circuits, hand-etched by her using Earth technology, pulsed a soft blue glow across its surface.

"I finished integrating a Titan Script decryption layer into this key," Evelyn said, handing it over.

"It'll unlock the elevator from Floor 1 to Floor 30 of the World Tower without tripping any of the school's alarm systems." Lucian took the key, feeling the cool metal in his palm. He tucked it into his spatial ring and stood, brushing dust off his pants.

"Thirty floors of abandoned factory space down there. Once the automated loom line's up and running, I'm giving Vance Commerce exclusive export rights on arcane textiles to the Demon Realm." Evelyn picked up the half-burnt stick and tossed it down into the dark garden below the observatory. The glowing ember faded into the night air. She stood, looking toward the towering spire of the World Tower piercing through the clouds.

"Next week, we open the Titan gate beneath the tower. Let's find out what this 'stew pot' is actually hiding underneath."