Chapter 63: How on Earth Am I Supposed to Write This! Hey!

The next morning, Rohn sat slumped in his seat, staring blankly at the computer screen in front of him for a long while.

Last night, he had made an agreement with Sophia—right in the middle of a bath.

Actually, given Rohn's past experiences, this kind of thing wasn't even particularly stimulating to him.

Yet... how on earth was he supposed to write this plot progression?

He wrote clean vanilla fiction, for crying out loud; he didn't dabble in such flowery and complicated nonsense.

Rohn pondered for a long time, utterly failing to come up with the right phrasing to express this development in a reasonable and logical manner.

*Ding-dong.*

His phone vibrated.

Picking it up, he saw a notification regarding the next round of promotional features.

The second round of recommendations?

Rohn thought for a moment and opened the author dashboard.

In his updates over the past few days, he had advanced the plot to the point where Vivian obtained three fragments of the residual soul, though he hadn't yet allowed the Demon King Cat to unlock that specific ability.

The dungeon for the second round of recommendations would undoubtedly be much harder than the previous one, so Rohn decided to make a push for the rankings.

At the very least, before the second round began, he needed to have his character card unlock the abilities it rightfully possessed.

With this in mind, Rohn poured all the dungeon reward tickets from his dashboard straight into his new book.

Having done all this, he decisively logged out of the dashboard.

Those dungeon tickets were more than enough to propel his novel to the top of the new books ranking.

However, he didn't actually hold that high a level of confidence in the quality of his own novel—at least, not compared to that abstract, avant-garde piece.

When the time came, readers would inevitably question the reason behind his book claiming the top spot, but he preferred the out-of-sight, out-of-mind approach.

Thinking thus, Rohn brought his attention back to the text before him.

During the transaction last night, Rohn had not exposed Vivian's true identity.

Instead, he had used a plausible justification to explain who she was.

In his story, Vivian had become a barbarian avenger seeking to assassinate the High Priest.

This way, both parties shared a common interest.

Sophia's current status was that of the predestined wife of High Priest Till, giving her a natural and logical reason to approach him.

What Sophia needed them to do was to gather a sufficiently large sphere of influence before her assassination of the High Priest, granting her enough leverage to become the new High Priestess.

Although this wasn't particularly difficult for Rohn, it still required some experimentation and exploration.

Even though Axis had left behind a massive loophole regarding magic runes, the Rohn of today was no longer that powerful and mad Demon King of the past.

Therefore, he wasn't entirely certain what consequences would arise if he exercised his authority over the magic runes.

Before that, however, a lingering doubt remained in the back of Rohn's mind.

Can an imperial citizen truly become the High Priest of the barbarians?

["There is no problem at all." When you raised this question, Sophia smiled and pulled you into an embrace.]

[She was already beginning to daydream about you becoming her empress.]

[A white fox wearing the empress's crown—what a fascinating prospect.]

Wait!

No! Why on earth are you daydreaming about such bizarre things, you wretch!

So basically, as long as it isn't a human male, you're attracted to literally anything!

Isn't your fetish somewhat questionable?

Rohn rubbed his temples with a headache.

Could there ever be a normal person in Vivian's social circle?

["My father sending me out actually had the underlying reason of having me succeed as the barbarian High Priestess," Sophia said.]

["The inheritance of the barbarian High Priest depends solely on the recognition of the Barbarian God, and has nothing to do with bloodline."]

The recognition of the Barbarian God?

Rohn stroked his chin.

He vaguely formed an idea.

Even toward someone like Axis, whose wife had been stolen by Rohn, Rohn wouldn't employ them without a shred of precaution, no matter how many times that person swore loyalty.

Consequently, he actually held Axis's heart right in his own grasp.

However, such an item wasn't like Melia and the others' undergarments; it wasn't anything vitally important to keep track of, so Rohn hadn't bothered to memorize its exact storage location.

Fortunately, the extraordinary memory granted by the Demon King still gave him a general impression of where the heart was kept.

It should be somewhere near the former Elf Forest.

With this thought, Rohn decided to have Vivian and her companion head toward the Elf Forest first.

And coincidentally, search for any clues regarding Estelle.

["Are you really not going to tell Sophia?" Vivian looked at Sophia ahead of her and asked softly.]

[She was torn over whether or not to reveal her true identity to Sophia.]

["Don't!"]

[Your voice was resolute and absolute.]

Right, it was better not to expose herself.

Rohn wholeheartedly agreed.

[If Vivian revealed her identity, then Sophia would just end up clinging to Vivian.]

[Then how am I supposed to reap the benefits?]

Is that seriously the reason?!

Rohn's mouth twitched, utterly speechless.

Regardless, Vivian and Sophia could be considered to be on the road now.

They wouldn't need to walk all the way back to Arokasa on foot; much like the empire, major barbarian cities also possessed teleportation arrays. As long as they headed to the nearest one, their journey would be drastically shortened.

Rohn let out a long breath.

This sequence of plot events had finally been glossed over.

He felt quite exhausted by it all.

In order to stall through Vivian's five-day bandit-suppression period, he had proactively led Vivian to stir up trouble with the barbarians, which in turn triggered a whole chain of subsequent events.

Even though Vivian was back on track now, things had deviated significantly from Rohn's expected trajectory.

His original idea had been for Vivian to set out from Palavi and head all the way north toward the Northern Frontier.

Yet now, because of the barbarian affair, Vivian was forced to travel south to stir up trouble.

This robbed him of the chance to develop many of the potential plot conflicts he had initially conceived.

Next time, he really shouldn't interfere so casually.

That single disruption had completely scrambled all of Rohn's ideas.

Most crucially, he had no idea what kind of aesthetic the barbarian lands actually possessed. If the artistic style and background clashed completely with the magic world, it would be fatal.

Readers came here to read a magical fantasy world, and if they later found out the protagonist dropped magic in favor of cultivation arts, cursing his ancestors would be the most polite reaction possible.

As Rohn thought this, his phone began buzzing continuously with incoming notifications.

With his novel claiming the top spot on the new books ranking, reader comments multiplied in an instant.

[The writing style is a bit childish, but it's okay.]

[I don't get it... Is this Vivian an unruly brat?]

[Can this cat just die already? It's taking advantage of the female lead every single day.]

[......]

As the novel's metrics rose, a faint glow emanated from the Demon King Cat's body.

Before long, the Demon King Cat would likely be able to unlock those new abilities acquired within the story.

Simultaneously, Rohn began making preparations for the new dungeon.

During the first round of recommendations, he had already witnessed the sheer horror of having unreliable teammates.

Therefore, he made foolproof preparations this time.

Regardless of whether his teammates were reliable or not, factoring in the absolute possibility that every single teammate would be an utter moron during preparation was never a wrong move.