Then it occured to me that I should probably think more about these occasional message windows appearing in front of me. I never mentioned those in my novel.

I wasn’t all that sure about this subject, but what I had to think about the most right now were probably these achievement points.

So, the way I understood it was, that the novel I wrote now suddenly had a game system implanted in it, making it some strange chimera..

Who the hell would read this shit? Even though I prayed so much on every holiday for some kind of cheat, this just wasn’t right.

Anyway, I might have been given some type of cheat skill. Even if this turned into some dog-shit novel, if I could live a comfortable life I’d prefer that over anything else.

I kind of understood now why the ‘isekai’ genre got so popular. I’d have been living comfortably if I had just written more novels of that genre.

No, I wouldn’t have necessarily been reincarnated as the main character, so I might have ended up in an even more unfortunate situation. Maybe as just a normal high schooler or something. Moreover, I would have to watch some nerdy high school kid, who was also heir to his family’s  secret art of swordsmanship, holding a japanese sword, talking up a big game, wouldn’t I? Aah, if I had to follow that kind of brain dead main character I might die of high blood pressure again.

Anyway.

I really hope I can become some godsend cheater in this dog-shit I wrote.

Hoping that I was the owner of such a cheat, I tried to look through the system. Just by thinking about it, a message appeared before my eyes.

[Congratulations, you have been granted the power to interfere with the world of ‘The Demon King is Dead’, your undisputed masterpiece, which was rated as ‘Neither this nor that and a typographical crime’ by the office of Atonement, Judgement and Evaluation]

Why are you insulting me all of a sudden?

I’ve been calling this novel dog shit all this time, but hearing those things from someone else made me feel kind of depressed.

[You will have to go through events from time to time. There are various types, from minor to major events. Most of the rewards will be in the form of achievement points.]

I couldn’t find anything as convenient as a settings window. I didn’t need something like volume control, but couldn’t you at least give me some kind of interface?

It didn’t seem like there was anything like that.

[You can change the main story by preventing things that should happen or making things happen that shouldn’t. In case you do such things you might get more achievement points than for normal events.]

[Additionally, you can also earn some through ‘Challenges’. If you succeed in overcoming a challenge, you will get achievement points.]

What did they mean with Challenges?

[Challenges are challenges. If you would like to take on a challenge, please check the ‘List of currently available Challenges’. The entries are updated periodically. Some challenges may not appear again.]

When I checked the Challenge list, I immediately understood what they were.

[Slap the Emperor across the face (Full swing only) – 10000 Points]

[Get imprisoned in the Gardium Prison – 1200 Points]

[Escape from the prison after getting imprisoned – 2000 Points]

[Pickpocket a Knight without getting caught – 100 points]

[Buy an over 1067 m² house with money earned from begging – 1000 Points]

.

.

.

Somehow, I felt like there were no normal options on the list

Slap the Emperor? You want me to exchange my life for achievement points? I think it’s impossible for me to get an audience with the Emperor in the first place, you know?

What’s with this feature that made one feel like crap by just looking at it?

So what else was there? I need to know these things first.

[As a reward for clearing the Prologue, the privilege of using achievement points has been given.]

[Achievement points are used for ‘Revising’ functions such as changing certain settings of this world, forcibly granting you certain talents, making events happen that shouldn’t or prevent events from happening that should. Furthermore, the function ‘Preview’ can be used limitedly, to check the changes your actions have caused. However, interfering with big events or main characters is impossible or requires a fairly large amount of achievement points.]

[Be careful not to cause a ‘Setting Collapse’. If you are not able to recognize the collapse of the setting and try to add new settings or try to ‘revise’ the event, you will be penalized. If your memory is bad enough to cause a setting collapse in your own novel, I recommend you to add the setting ‘A cure for Alzheimer’s exists in this world.’]

It didn’t seem that serious in the beginning, but are you trying to pick a fight with me? Am I imagining things ?

[Keep in mind, you cannot remove settings that have been added or already exist.]

[For example if the setting ‘The Dragon can’t be killed’ was already in place you won’t be able to add the setting ‘The Dragon can be killed’.]

[Of course, while you were alive you used to paste additional settings to your already existing one’s later on, regretting the choices you made like an idiot, like ‘Actually, the Dragon couldn’t be killed normally, but it was possible using the Dragon Slayer OO’. Frivolous behavior such as adding ‘additional settings’ Like “It’s XX but it was actually OO’ will require more achievement points or will not be tolerated.]

I definitely did not imagine things, it was the truth. You were really picking a fight with me.

What’s with this? It wasn’t just here to help me. This felt like I was reading malicious comments written by someone who absolutely hated me. Why were these descriptions charged with emotions?

There was clearly some malicious intent behind these mysterious messages. Just looking at the mention of what I did when I was still alive, made it obvious. And just hearing about the additional settings made me feel like shit.

That seriously broke my heart. I’m not joking. I’m 100% serious.

People tend to feel bad if they are faced with the uncomfortable truth. That was a fact.

Just who was writing this? Was it in real time?

Then a sudden thought went through my mind. Was everything that happened here actually  broadcasted to the outside?

‘Come, watch some asshole newbie writer get punished.’. Maybe it was titled like this?

No, well, I wasn’t that bad, you know…. So if this was getting broadcasted, who was doing that? ‘Cause Frick you.

[Achievement point requirements are subject to change. A feature that may have cost you 100 points yesterday might cost 200 points or 50 points the next day. It might not even work anymore.]

I wondered if it would respond to my thoughts, but I was a little disappointed as it didn’t address any of them. Were you telling me that my thoughts weren’t even worth dealing with?

After that, numerous actions that could be done using Achievement Points were listed.

I felt something the moment I saw that.

So.

It seemed like this was my cheat.

It was a cheat, but an oddly uncooperative cheat.

It seemed like I, as a writer who was sent into his own novel, had the ability to directly interfere with this world’s common sense. I was pretty sure that was what the functions ‘Revise’ and ‘Add Settings’ were for. So my purpose was to rewrite my novel and make it a little more interesting.

But.

It had clearly stated earlier that it would take 100000 points to add something to race settings.

Also, I was being punished, not rewarded here.

Based on the developments so far, I don’t think this will help me much. To begin with, the fact that I reincarnated as the Demon King’s son didn’t feel that random anymore. I could feel a lot of malice mixed into all of this.

These functions might turn out to be important someday, but I only had 1100 achievement points.

What could I do with these?

[For example, take this situation: you can trigger the event ‘The bakery owner gives you, a poor beggar, a piece of bread.’ to satisfy your hunger, which wouldn’t otherwise happen. Of course, if the subject is less altruistic it would require a greater amount of achievement points to trigger this event. This means that it would require a large amount of achievement points to cause something that would seriously violate the ‘Law of Probability’. You know the Law of Probability, right? the one you repeatedly screwed with? The biggest reason why you gave up on your novels after getting criticized for ruining the story and being unable to fix it, giving only ugly excuses .]

What do you mean, a beggar? I’ve got plenty of other opportunities! That’s just too much.

Reading that description, it felt like it was written by one of the victims of my bad habits.

I didn’t really know who they were, whether it was the will of this world or God, but they must’ve really hated me.

And why were there so many restrictions?

So, big things, such as interfering with the main characters or causing the death of someone, who was unlikely to die, under the guise of an accident, would, of course, require an insane amount of achievement points or would be entirely impossible.

No.

But wouldn’t I be able to do ‘that’ if I had a lot of achievement points? That.

That ‘Half die’ move or something like that.

Wasn’t this actually one hell of a cheat?

Achievement points could eventually be used to revise and add settings on a larger scale. In the end, it was a matter of scope and scale and it not deviating from those two frameworks.

For example, one could understand this as being able to rewrite a novel.

However, I wondered if I could break through my current situation with just 1100 achievement points. While looking through the functions that used achievement points, I discovered a peculiar one.

[Function – A Writer’s advice]

What’s this? Advice from who now?

[Sometimes, you may find yourself before a crossroad or you may not know how to proceed.  In that case, you can execute ‘A Writer’s Advice’ to receive advice from the writer on what to do next.]

[This feature is of rather low cost, but usually it’s unknown what consequences said advice will lead to or what purpose it serves.]

[Sometimes the Writer’s Advice is a trap. Following it could have bad consequences for you. It’s common to receive both good and bad results simultaneously. There’s rarely just a good outcome.]

[Advice can be divided into ‘Clear Advice’ and ‘Vague Advice’. ‘Clear Advice’ suggests certain actions, but is more likely to lead to bad results, while ‘Vague Advice’ is more likely to have only good outcomes, although it is hard to guess the intent behind it.]

[Wish you the best of luck.]

[(･◡･)]

You don’t even pretend to be an explanatory text anymore.

I felt my heart breaking just by reading that description.

* * *

There were many things I could do with my current amount of points. If I went to a grocery store with a generous owner and caused an event, I would be able to get food.

However, that was just temporary. It would be great if I made a kind, wealthy family accept me as their adopted child, but I didn’t know how many points that would cost. And also, how was I to find out if they were a nice family or not?

Also, who is that description person? Why do they hate me so much?

If one told me they were a collection of people that hated my guts, I’d believe it.

After examining various possibilities, in the end, the only thing I could really try right now was ‘A Writer’s Advice’.

There was a possibility of the advice being a trap, but its price was low.

[A Writer’s Advice – 150 Points]

I was told that the achievement point cost was variable. After some time, the prices might suddenly inflate and it might end up costing more than a thousand points.

It was also up to me whether I took the advice or not.

I executed ‘A Writer’s Advice’.

[Clear Advice]

[Vague Advice]

There were two options. Clear Advice was easy to understand but was most likely a trap and Vague Advice was the complete opposite.

And if one took the advice, most of the time good and bad things would occur simultaneously.

I mean, it couldn’t really get any worse than my current situation. Homeless and hungry.

No, it could be worse. My life could be in danger.

Still, to increase my odds even by a little I chose [Vague Advice].

[A Writer’s Vague Advice]

[How did so many people get kidnapped to the Demon King’s Castle?]

What.

What’s with this?

This went beyond vague, and straight up had nothing to do with my situation at all.

What’s with that riddle all of a sudden?

No, couldn’t you at least tell me something like ‘Go this way, go that way’? I thought some voice would tell me what to do, but instead this riddle suddenly appeared. I was dumbfounded.

Kidnapped to the Demon King’s Castle.

What was I supposed to do with this? Let myself get kidnapped?

This obviously wasn’t a trap, which I thought was good. If this were a trap, they would have made it a lot more clear, otherwise I’d doubt their intelligence.

“Sigh….”

As I sighed deeply while looking at the ground, a guy passing by looked at me strangely.

Do you even know how I feel?

If I knew how these people got kidnapped, would my situation be any better? They were just kidnapped. I didn’t know how vague that advice was supposed to be, but this was hella cryptic.

I’d rather it gave me some solid advice.

“……Huh?”

Oh, right

Couldn’t I try it one more time?

[A Writer’s Advice – 150 Points]

I wasn’t told that I couldn’t use it repeatedly.

No, wait, why is it like this?

Back when I was alive, I really hated these types of gacha games, so I didn’t even try to play any of these, so why did I have to do something like this after coming to another world.

It’s not like I poured a thousand won into buying some gacha crystals or something. However, I did have to put my life on the line to get these points, so I couldn’t help but cry bitter tears.

I chose Clear Advice this time.

[A Writer’s Clear Advice]

[Go to the Magic Tool Shop]

Yes.

That’s the type of advice I was looking for.

Who’d have known.