The veins on the forehead of the old man bulged. He looked at the youth and barked out, “Boy, you better tell me your business here!”

  “Not much,” the youth shook his head, “just wandered in here, saw it was in trouble, and decided to help out.”

  Even though he honestly confessed what he was doing, the old man didn’t let go of his vigilance. With narrowed eyes, he said, “Because of the state of our village, we can’t entertain guests right now. Please leave.”

  The youth stayed silent and stared at the old man. After a few seconds, he sighed, “Fine, then I’ll be on my way.”

  His easy agreement with the matter stunned the old man. The old man doubted if the youth really had no ulterior motives. But without the time to ponder, the youth picked his feet up and started walking.

  In a few steps, the youth passed him by. The old man looked at his departing figure with a bit of emotion which he quickly suppressed.

  Under his watch, the youth stopped and turned around. With an unhurried voice, he said, “I saved…no, rescued is it? No, I found some people on my way here. A pair of siblings are in one of the houses from where I came as well as a woman with her two sons inside the big house.”

  The old man appeared in front of the youth with a speed quite unlike his appearance and grabbed him by the arms. He looked at the eyes of the old man. They were full of hope and worry.

  “Was she inside the basement?” the old man shook him.

  The youth nodded, “She was.”

  “Stay here,” without hesitating, the old man let him go and ran back at speed faster than an Olympic runner. Such a sight was quite bizarre.

  The youth sat on the ground and waited, just like the old man asked him to.

  “I wonder why you’re still here.” Jian Gong appeared sitting next to him.

  “I mean, I have nowhere better to go. So, might as well stay here, you know?”

  “If you really want to help them, then you should lead them out of here.”

  “I know, but will they listen to me?” the youth laid down on the ground. “The Deviant Beasts will come back. It’s getting dangerous every second.”

  “If you leave, you can save yourself.”

  “But will I be able to live with myself? Knowing that I let people die even though I had the chance?”

  “No…” Jian Gong sighed, “You probably can’t.”

  “Then what’s the point of living,-” the youth grinned, “-if you can’t even live with yourself?”

  “So troublesome…” Jian Gong covered his face in exasperation. “At least, take a look at your Status Screen so you can get a grasp of what you need to do.”

  “Oh, right!” the youth finally remembered the System's update. He quietly muttered, “Status.” A blue screen appeared with a wall of text on it.

  “Ah, there’s the quest tab!” the youth nodded in satisfaction.

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  “Man, you can’t keep track of what you need to do?” Jian Gong side-eyed him.

  “Well, forgive me for not being a hyper-advanced AI,” his retort was dripping with sarcasm.

  “Yeah, well-”

  “I get it, I get it. Shut up so I can check my quests out!” the youth shooed him away with his hand and pressed the tab labeled “Quest”.

  The text on the blue screen changed.

  “Whoa! What are all these quests?” the youth read all of them over again, only to be filled with more questions.

  Jian Gong ran his hand over his face and scolded him, “If only you’d read over the knowledge you gained from the previous Monarchs, you illiterate fuck!”

  “Does it look like I have the damn time, you retard?” the youth didn’t let up. “At least let me fuck off from here!”

  “Haah~, all I hear is excuses.”

  “You can shove your complaints where the sun doesn’t shine and let me look into the quests peacefully.”

  He didn’t press the (+) button next to the main quest since he had a rough guess as to what happened. However, the appearance of quests had made him somewhat giddy. As every gamer knows, every quest has a reward as well as a loss. Well, he was eager to see the rewards for each quest. He pressed on one of the optional quests.

  “Hmm, what?” the youth couldn’t make heads nor tails of the quest reward. He understood the description as it was pretty straightforward but the reward was just nonsensical. Going through with this quest would mean he would permanently become a random race of Devil Race.

  Although this looks like a good deal, the keyword here was ‘random’. Even if the pill’s original purpose was to elevate lower-ranked demons into higher ranking ones, there’s no guarantee it’ll have the same effect on him who’s a human. Hell, it might just turn him into a lower-ranked Devil with a set of glaring weaknesses.

  And this was not everything. There was also the fact that the reward for the quest did not have anything extra than what the quest was intended to do.

  To confirm his suspicions, he pressed on the other optional quest.

  “Ah, you’ve got to be shitting me!” the youth yelled to the skies.

  “Hahahahaha! Did you think this was a JRPG?” Jian Gong clutched his sides and laughed until tears came out.

  “Bastard!” he spat out through gritted teeth.

  “As I said, the system’s not omnipotent. It can gamify your life to a certain extent but nothing to world bending. The systems that can do that are far inferior to us and run on different principles.”

  “Such as?”

  “Most systems that you commonly read are three types- A system that was originally a soul, a system born from technological advancements, a system born from a plot setting.”

  The youth raised an eyebrow and asked, “I can roughly understand what all the types are. So, which are you?”

  “You know you won’t get an answer, so, why bother asking?”

  “Tch!”

  He ignored Jian Gong and pressed the only available side quest.

  “What the-argh!” the youth felt a piercing pain in his mind. It left as quickly as it came. But his back was drenched with cold sweat. He had not been attacked by migraines in a long while. He naively believed that they were gone for good.

  They were still very much present. And they threatened to turn his life into a living hell.