Extra's Survival: Raising SSS-Rank Characters Is My Only Option

«« Narrative Quests »»

[ No Active Quests. ]

[ New quests will generate as the host is involved in narrative-significant situations. ]

[ Tip: Involve yourself in the story. ]

Jin looked at the words a bit disappointed.

He had expected to see something since this section had unlocked as a reward for the emergency quest, after all. But there was nothing.

Just a blank slate and a tip.

’Let’s think about what it means.’

He had received an emergency quest the moment he possessed Encrid’s body, but it seemed emergency quests were categorized differently from narrative quests.

Emergency quests seem to trigger when the user is in unexpected situations that can cause great harm.

Whereas the narrative quests seemed to stem from being involved in the main story.

The Tip provided by the system also confirmed this fact.

So he could only come to the conclusion that the narrative quest would be triggered by being in the right place at the right time, in proximity to the people and events that actually mattered to the novel’s main story.

But the system offered nothing further. It didn’t tell him about the choices he had to make, which meant the decisions he took would shape what quests appeared.

’Will there be a quest at the Wall?’

The Wall wasn’t especially significant in the story, but it wasn’t a place that could be ignored either.

Three of the main characters were linked to that place, and considering that the Wall’s eventual fall caused a massive impact later on, it was worth noting that a quest might appear when he arrived.

Jin didn’t know where to find that character or what he was doing at this point in the timeline - the novel hadn’t explained it, and he wasn’t certain of the exact timeline either. He could only hope for the best.

He moved to the last section in the menu.

[ Narrative Relevance ]

[ Current Value: 0.11% ]

[ Narrative Relevance determines how important the character is to the story. ]

[ It is determined by the Host’s involvement in narrative-significant events and decisions that affect or alter the story’s course. ]

[ A Host with 0% relevance has no story left, and a Catastrophic consequence will follow. ]

[ Ways to increase Relevance value: ]

[ ▸ Participation in significant events ]

[ ▸ Building connections with important characters ]

[ ▸ Acquiring skills and strength relevant to the world’s interests ]

[ ▸ Making decisions that alter the story’s course ]

[ Golden Tip: A special event will be triggered when the Narrative Relevance reaches 10%. ]

Jin read through the whole thing carefully.

The last line sparked something in him, but right now, ten percent seemed like a long shot. He didn’t think it would be easy to reach.

He read the four pathways mentioned by the system to increase the narrative value.

’Participation in significant events. Building connections with important characters. Acquiring relevant strength. Making decisions that alter the story’s course.’

There was only a single conclusion - He had to be in the story!

Not watching it from a distance or surviving quietly at the margins - he has to participate in the story!

For his character, the first canonical event had been disownment, and he had somehow evaded that.

Now he had to think ahead and predict what would be next.

’Let’s organize my thoughts.’

He closed the menu, stood up, and crossed to the desk.

The painting on the far wall caught his attention again. He still didn’t know who she was, but he ignored it as something to find out.

He crossed to the desk, pushed the papers aside, and found a blank sheet beneath them.

He pushed the papers on the desk away and found a blank sheet beneath them. Picked up the quill.

And began to list every significant event he could remember from the novel.

✧ ✧ ✧

He wrote for a long time.

Starting from the very first volume to the recent volume 15. He wrote down all the major events he could think of.

The Thousand Beast Calamity Horde, The Crimson Rebellion, The Wrath of the Southernmen, The Silent Pruge, and more.

The list got so long that - at a single glance - he had noted more than fifty such important events.

Some of them he remembered clearly as the novel had clear arcs devoted to them. Others were half-formed impressions, things that were mentioned to have happened in the future or happened irrelevant to the main characters.

He tried to list them in rough chronological order.

When he finally set down the quill, he sat back and looked at what he’d written.

Suddenly, the room seemed very quiet.

’Alright, so...’

He read through the list from the top.

The first thing he noticed was the scale.

These weren’t small events. Most of them were the kind that erased kingdoms, sparked wars, and killed thousands of people. The novel has never shied away from the consequences of every action - it was one of the things he had loved about it as a reader.

The World of ’The Last Age of Radiance’ had weight, and all the choices had a cost.

The second thing he noticed was the names that kept appearing beside each event.

The Sword Saint, Yggdrasil’s shadow, The Great Sage Heaven’s Equal, The Crimson Seed, The Eternal Maw, and many more.

Names of the important characters that are related to the main events, and they kept repeating occasionally, interwoven with each other. Even among these names, he could identify two groups that were the most active.

The Eight Stars of Astralis and the Seven Sins.

These characters were cycling through ever-significant events throughout the span of the story.

It was very obvious, of course - the entire story of the last age of Radiance was built around the conflict between these two groups after all.

These are what the author described as the SSS-rank characters of the novel.

Jin stared at the page.

He had always known that they were the story. The novel was about them - their rise, their breaking, their becoming.

But seeing it laid out like this, event by event, name by name - something materialized in his reader’s mind.

’Every single thing that matters passes through one of these people.’

✦ ✦ ✦