Chapter 4: Character Profiles

Accompanied by your adorable meow, the marked thieves fell one by one like rice stalks swayed by a fierce wind, lifeless and defeated.

Even in the face of your morality, which sinks as low as the legal baseline, they were still utterly deserving of death.

What does it mean for morality to be as low as the legal baseline… Are you saying I have morals or not…?

Ron, too weary to retort, suddenly felt a stir within his mind.

A phrase abruptly appeared before him.

“Ding! You have obtained the character card: Echo of the Residual Soul · Demon King Ron.”

Here it was, the character card.

Ron narrowed his eyes.

It was said that this was the source of the Resonator’s extraordinary power. The stabilizer was known as the safest and most stable method to acquire a character card, though its use forced one into a dungeon.

Curious, Ron released the character card from his hands.

With a soft meow, a cute black kitten leapt onto his shoulder.

He could clearly sense the power contained within this Demon King Cat.

“I didn’t expect you to obtain the Origin character card so quickly.”

At that moment, the door to the room was pushed open.

A cute girl entered—no, a child, barely twelve or thirteen years old.

Adorable face, backpack on her back, looking just like someone who had just finished school.

Ron immediately saw through her identity.

“You’re my assistant?”

The girl covered her mouth and laughed.

“Your thought process is much more normal. Several others before you mistook me for a kid who wandered into the wrong room.”

You do look quite childish… especially with that backpack.

Ron’s certainty about her identity came from the partial information he had glimpsed upon her arrival.

Name: Bai Lu

Occupation: World Coordinator

Gender: Female

Description: The agent of the World Consciousness. Do not provoke her with unwarranted XP due to her stature; this is a death sentence. As long as you do not threaten the world, she will remain friendly forever.

Note: She is very interested in your cat and finds it extremely adorable, wishing to pet it.

This must be the ability brought by the Demon King Cat. It had already shown when he saw Vivian’s information earlier.

Unfortunately, when he first developed this ability in the later stages of his initial resonance, his strength was already enough to tear through entire worlds—there was no need to know the opponent’s specific information.

He had developed this ability purely to discern gender—he had suffered many losses because of this, as races like elves were too difficult to judge by appearance alone.

Bai Lu seemed to sense Ron’s scrutiny and smiled.

“It seems I don’t need to explain the part about using character cards.”

As she spoke, she pulled a stack of documents from her backpack behind her.

A thought struck Ron: “Are you here to assign me a mission?”

Bai Lu shook her head.

“Resonators are naturally drawn to each other; when a dungeon is invaded, it seeks you out actively. Only when many resonators cannot solve a dungeon do we ‘editors’ arrange specific resonators to form teams and tackle it.”

“Editors?” Ron found the term somewhat abrupt.

“Yes, editors.” Bai Lu said, handing the documents to Ron. “You can publish your experiences in the spirit realm by adapting them into novels, comics, and other cultural works on our platform.”

Ron squinted. “Is this mandatory?”

He was certainly no exhibitionist and had no desire to expose his privacy to others.

“No.” Bai Lu shook her head. “But the strength of your Origin character card is closely tied to the recognition you receive from the collective human consciousness. You must have noticed you can’t use the full power of your spirit realm form, right?”

Ron had indeed noticed this.

By all rights, he should have the skill “Punishment of Absolute Authority” now, but the Demon King Cat on his shoulder did not manifest this power.

Bai Lu continued, “Turning your experiences into creative works and sharing them with an audience is the easiest way for people to understand you and the other spirit realm characters you influence. As human recognition of your characters in the works increases, your character card’s power will grow stronger.”

Pausing, she added, “During this process, you might also acquire character cards of other characters in your works, no longer limited to just your Origin card. This holds no drawbacks for you. Our library contains many pre-filled works; ordinary people won’t know these are your personal experiences. Of course, participation is entirely voluntary…”

“No need to say more. I accept.” If it means gaining greater power, this exchange was acceptable.

“Also…” Bai Lu suddenly remembered something, warning Ron with a glance, “Make sure to delete any content that violates public order and good morals. Don’t make me come over to audit your work.”

“Although many readers enjoy certain types of content, your personal experiences, when adapted into text, have power—they influence readers.”

Because of this property, many gatecrashers deliberately hide among creators, secretly using their words to corrupt readers.

Ron recalled his earlier experience and wondered if that counted. Fortunately, he had no intention of including his climbing escapade in the novel.

“The last thing is this.” Bai Lu took out another document.

“Your base salary contract.”

“Huh? There’s a salary too?”

“Your job essentially helps the world clear invading threats. Naturally, there’s pay, though it’s not much.”

Ron quickly took the papers.

“100,000? Monthly salary?” Ron blurted out instinctively. “Damn, that much?”

“For a ‘world-saving’ job, this salary is too little,” Bai Lu said, having Ron fill in his bank details. “Luckily, this is just the base pay. When you clear dungeons, you receive additional rewards, usually item cards from the dungeons, which you can trade within the group.”

With that, Bai Lu pulled Ron into the authors’ group chat.

Ron glanced at the group name and was momentarily stunned.

“Uh… is this group serious?”

“What do you mean serious or not? This is my authors’ group,” Bai Lu said, looking at her phone.

Group name: Lulu White Socks Appreciation and Exchange Club.

“…”

“…”

Silence fell between them, the ticking of the instruments suddenly deafening.

“Bai—Yu—Lou!!!” Bai Lu’s voice dropped low, yet roared like a ferocious tiger, “That bastard changed my group name again! Aaargh!!! I’m going to demote this jerk from admin!!!”

She crushed her phone in her hand, then vanished from Ron’s sight the next moment.

Ron was dumbfounded. He looked down at his phone, which was filled with congratulatory messages like “Welcome, big boss” interspersed with long strings of incomprehensible characters.

[Bai Yu Lou: #%QT#Q@F@W$VC@RQ#]

[Bai Yu Lou: )——&（）%…*&TB)]

[Leader of the Fragment Faction: Haha, the Lou God really got arrested!]

He realized that when the author of the novel he had read said in their afterword, “If I don’t update soon, the editor will shove my head into the computer,” it was not an exaggeration.

Come to think of it, could this Bai Yu Lou be the infamous big shot of the harem romance genre?

He had once created a landmark achievement in the previously monk-dominated web novel scene: the protagonist lost their virginity within the first five words and got involved with three girls within a thousand words.

If all this was truly his personal experience…