Chapter 45: HTSCF CH 043 It kills me now

The Arena competition and Monsoon Convention ended in an anticlimactic manner. Both Jun and Oriana were disqualified for being no-shows, and the rest of the matches weren’t as interesting, except for the one between Feng Bingwen and Bai Changming, Feng Bingwen being the champion. As a result, Monsoon developers decided there would be a competition redo next month, but it would be held through VR instead. Those that won today still received their prizes.

Oriana and Jun ended the convention in a bitter mood but quickly got over it. They still had a chance next month, and it would be more convenient. After a hug goodbye, Jun returned to the apartment with Azazel and Elior. Although the kidnapping was a minor and brief affair, it seemed to have stirred up a strange but very plausible anxiety in the two men’s hearts—that Jun could abruptly disappear one day.

That night, the two men updated their personal pages and changed their statuses from “in a relationship” to “engaged.” Then they both posted an announcement regarding the date of their wedding, which was scheduled for the year Jun would graduate from college. Instinctively, they were obsessed with the idea of tying Jun to them through marriage. Once done, they again held him tightly in their arms to sleep, giving him only light kisses and lingering caresses.

A month later, the Arena competition redo arrived. This time, Oriana and Jun were able to participate and there were many upsets, but the important part was it came down to four people in the semi-finals: Feng Bingwen, Bai Changming, Oriana Silvie, and Fei Lan. The semi-finals consisted of three matches total. The first two matches determined who would go to the finals, while the third match decided the #3 and #4 spot between the losers of the first two matches.

The first two matches were Feng Bingwen versus Oriana Silvie and Bai Changming versus Fei Lan. Because Jun could do high damage, had good defense gear, and manually fought, he easily beat Bai Changming, a Paladin who mainly focused on defense and was a purely skill-based player. In the match against Feng Bingwen, Oriana Silvie lost, because her opponent was also like Jun, a manual player. The third match then became Bai Changming versus Oriana Silvie, both skill-based players.

However, Oriana was at a higher class because of her vast experience in the Arena and high damage output. As a result, she easily beat Bai Changming, bringing up the question of his #2 spot. Li Jie, who had been watching from the sidelines after losing badly in the first few matches, clenched his hands in anger as his two least favorite people managed to defeat someone like Bai Changming.

The final match was between Feng Bingwen and Fei Lan, and they were both manual players. While Jun practiced aikido in real life and had practical archery experience, Feng Bingwen also had real-life sword style skills. The difference was that one was a close combat type fighter and the other a long-range fighter. It was hard to tell who had the upper hand combat-wise since Feng Bingwen was able to fend off all of Jun’s arrows, but he couldn’t get close enough to use his sword until Jun decided to try a combination of aikido and archery.

Before, the use of his aikido wasn’t an issue when facing dungeons or quest bosses, but because this was an Arena fight between players of various classes, using his aikido skills cost him the win. Feng Bingwen was able to win by default, but it wasn’t an entirely unfair win, as he did have a slight advantage in terms of strength over Jun.

The competition ended like that, but it caused Jun to rise in popularity, which only further angered Li Jie. The animosity between Li Jie and Jun continued to grow in the following months, and Jun started to feel a little apprehensive. Nothing else had happened since the kidnapping, but his intuition kept telling him there was something wrong.

His fears proved to be true when he was accosted by Li Jie on campus, during a day when Azazel and Elior were back in A Country for an important meeting.

“What do you want?” The moment he ran into the shou he started a secret recording on his phone.

“I’m here to show the world what a liar and a fake you are.”

“How am I a liar and a fake?”

“You said you know the pain of coming out, but you don’t. You’ve never had to come out since your parents have been dead since you were 6. Your only living relative is your grandmother, and I’m sure you haven’t come out to her.”

Li Jie had a point, but Jun had a counterargument prepared ahead of time for this kind of conflict. “You’re right. I haven’t come out to my grandma. But who’s to say I haven’t come out to my parents?”

“How could you? Did you know you liked men when you were 6?” Li Jie was bewildered and furious. He felt like he was being made a fool of.

“No, but I came out to them at their graves.”

“How does that count as coming out? How could you possibly understand my pain?”

“Don’t you think it’s worse for me? Unlike you, who can receive either a positive or negative response and reach some sort of solution, I will never know whether my parents would have accepted me or not.” After all, wasn’t that the real reason behind the original Fei Lan’s warped personality as a closeted homosexual? He had nowhere to vent, no one to rely on. “I will always be in a state of uncertainty and limbo—”

“What do you know!? You've always had it easy! Everything always works out for you!”

“What—”

‘—are you talking about?’

As far as Jun knew, it wasn't often things worked out for him, if ever. Before he knew what happened, Jun was already falling from a very high place.

Why did he agree to have a confrontation on the rooftop? It was a disaster waiting to happen. This feeling of falling—why was it so familiar? Did he almost die this way in his original world? If and when he returned to that world, wouldn’t he just die?

If only he could have seen Azazel and Elior once more before dying…

‘Dammit.’

|Dearest Host!|

“Jun!”

Someone was shouting his name desperately. This seemed to have also happened before. The darkness enveloped Jun and he shut his eyes. The pain was instantaneous and brief, but it hurt so much like he was being shattered into pieces.

When he opened his eyes to the familiar dark space with bright lights in the distance, Jun sighed and closed his eyes, exasperated. System 00 was floating above his host with concern.

“Are you ok, Host?”

“Yeah.” He didn’t sound ‘ok’ but the system took his word for it. “How is it possible that I died?” Jun wondered aloud. “Wasn’t that world’s mission Type B?”

“It was.”

“Then I shouldn’t have died. At the most, maybe lost a few limbs?”

“Yes…”

“Do you know what happened, system?”

System 00 knew, but he didn’t want that information to affect the host in completing his missions. Then again, it might be best for the host to know.

“There was interference…”

“I see. There has always been interference?”

“… Yes.”

“Will there always be interference?”

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“No, the next world should be last should the Host complete the Main Mission. This world would have been the last, but the interference went berserk.”

“How many missions must I complete to end all of this?”

System 00 jumped up in excitement. “Dearest Host, are you finally getting serious?”

Before, Jun never took these missions seriously. After all, when the system first approached him, he was unwilling, because he didn’t care whether he died or not, but Azazel and Elior had changed him.

“Yes.”

“You need to complete a total of 6. Since you completed 2 worlds, you only need to complete 4 more. After which, you will return to the first world, where you failed once, and it’ll determine whether you’ll be able to return to your origin world or fall into an endless cycle of reincarnations as cannon fodder.”

“What happened to this last world? Did… Did it collapse too?”

“… Yes.” To think that the world with Ezekiel and Theodore and this last world ceased to exist just like that.

“Oh.”

“Although the Host didn’t complete the Main Mission, you did complete the Hidden Mission, so your learned skills and memory fragments are safe. However, you will not receive a chance at learning a new skill.”

“That’s fine.”

“Host, would you like to exchange a skill or memory fragment for a Redo?”

Sometimes Jun wondered if the system’s programming was faulty. What was the point of a Redo when the world already collapsed or disappeared?

“No.”

Besides, he planned to not have that option available in any of the future worlds.

“Then would you like to take a 30 minute break before entering the next world, dearest Host?”

“No.”

Not this time, nor the next. Jun would stop wasting time. He needed to see Azazel and Elior again. There was a question that had been bothering him since the zombie world that he never had the chance to ask.

“System, before we go, would you be able to tell me the source of the interference?”

“… I cannot.”

“I see.”

System 00 was even more concerned. Other than Azazel and Elior, his Host was usually apathetic and treated everything as a joke or as if they had nothing to do with him, but he was at least very talkative. Should he alert the Creator? But the Creator had already left on urgent business due to the interference.

“Are you ready to enter the next world then, dearest Host?”

“Yes, let’s go.”

“Alright, initializing the world ‘The Strongest Omega’ in 30, 29, 28…”

—

Perhaps because of what happened in the previous world, System 00 gave Jun the plot as soon as he opened his eyes. This world was another R-18 one featuring the omegaverse. Omegaverse has 6 sexes. There were three categories: alpha, beta, omega, and each category was separated into male or female.

There are many possible versions of omegaverse. In some, anyone could become pregnant regardless of their sex. However, this one was the standard type, where only female betas, male omegas, or female omegas could become pregnant, omegas having the highest fertility rate, especially for alphas, who had a tough time impregnating betas as compared to omegas.

Betas were pretty much “normal” people, and in terms of population, they accounted for the vast majority at 85%. As for alphas, they made up 10% of the population, and omegas, the rarest and most precious, a measly 5%.

The unique aspect of this world was that there were many possible plots from the beginning, as it was one of those stories where the reader could choose how the protagonist proceeded.

The reader took the position of the overpowered Mary Sue type of protagonist shou, an omega, and could pick from 6 possible story routes. The first five were all the available “bachelor” alphas’ routes, while the last route was a harem one.

‘There’s always a harem,’ Jun thought. With his experience, this world would most likely follow the harem route, so he skimmed through the other possible routes then focused his attention on the harem one. What stood out to him was that in every route, including the harem one, his cannon fodder role always ended up in the same way: death by Zerg.

—

A/N: And that wraps up Arc 4! And a preview to Arc 5. There are two extra smut chapters after this and one veryyyyy short extra with Azazel and Elior conversing. This chapter’s title was influenced by the song “The Way We Say Goodbye” by Circa Waves. Some of the lyrics:

Take this plane, delay it
I heard the music fading
With you, you know
With you

We'll stay outside the cages
And read all the last pages
With you, you know
With you

And I miss you
God, I miss you
Love, I miss you
You know I do

But it's the way we say goodbye
It kills me now
It's the way we say goodbye
It kills me now

And I won't look back in time
'Cause, darling, it's just the way we say goodbye

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