novelsite Chapter 2 Believe and You Possess
Chapter 2 Believe and You Possess
While she was making things up, she opened a forum on her phone. "Nameless Land" was currently the most popular superpowered shonen manga, with exquisite plot, character design, and art style. It had only been serialized for a short time but had already garnered a considerable following.
Beneath the veil, humans with supernatural abilities fight against monsters known as "ghosts," while outside the veil, ordinary people remain completely unaware of the truth of the world. They die protecting ordinary people, and no one will remember who they are; they are nameless.
There were many posts on the forum, analyzing combat strength, shipping couples, and arguing. Jiang Xing glanced at them, then went straight to the comics and quickly started browsing.
The protagonist of the comic, Xiao Jiming, is naturally a superhuman, capable of taking the monsters he has killed into his own possession and summoning them.
In addition, there are three other characters who appear—those who are part of the main group.
He Jingtong, Pei Zhaoye, and Song Juexiao.
Using talismans to manipulate data and brainwash people with sound.
None of them are ordinary people.
Jiang Xingni found the number she was looking for without spending too much time.
Not long after the story begins, the official department tells the main characters—or more precisely, the male protagonist—that if they encounter any strange events that have not been detected, they can call this number.
Jiang Xingni opened the door to the cubicle, just as a young woman walked in. She quickly rubbed her eyes, which were red and swollen, and looked at the young woman who had just entered.
"Sister... could I borrow your phone? My phone's dead, and I want to call my family. I'm not a scammer, you can put it on speakerphone..."
The girl wasn't wary at all, and casually took out her phone and handed it to her: "Okay, no password, go ahead and call."
Jiang Xing glanced at her phone screen and quickly dialed the number she had seen in the comic.
The system yelled in Jiang Xingni's mind: "Are you crazy?" Its tone was surprised, yet strangely sincere. "Isn't the most important thing right now to understand the comic and ride its popularity?!"
Although you're just cannon fodder like them, I've now tied you to the main characters. As long as you ride on their popularity, you'll survive!
Jiang Xingni completely ignored the system—she could save people if she wanted to, what did it have to do with popular characters? She waited for the person on the other end of the phone to speak.
*
This was supposed to be a very ordinary day, originally.
As the monitoring department of the Anomalous Society, especially the department responsible for handling external reports, Kan Yi rarely receives actual reports by phone.
Even if ordinary people encounter unusual events, they have no way to find out the reporting hotline.
If they are superhumans... then there's even less need for them to call and report it; they have more effective methods than calling.
While pondering the identity of the person making the call, Kan Yi silently wrote down the phone number.
"This is the Anomaly Monitoring Center. Is there anything I can do to help you?" The woman's voice was calm and composed.
Jiang Xingni lowered her voice on the other end of the phone, narrowed her eyes, and then gave the coordinates of the shopping mall.
"There's something unusual on the second floor." Jiang Xingni said simply and then hung up the phone, deleting the call log as well.
The more you say, the more mistakes you make.
She doesn't know much about that world yet, and the more she talks, the more she exposes herself.
When the owner of the phone came out, Jiang Xingni smiled slightly at them, said "thank you" politely, returned the phone to the owner, pulled up her scarf, and walked straight out of the mall.
As Jiang Xingni stepped out the door, he glanced back.
The department's processing speed wasn't as fast as she had imagined, and the escalator to the second floor was still stopped, but that didn't stop people on the upper floors from going down, or people on the first floor from taking the stairs. Jiang Xingni wasn't frustrated.
That's all she could do—there was nothing more she could do, but that wasn't her fault.
The north wind was biting in January. Even though Jiang Xingni was wearing a scarf, he could feel his cheeks being stung by the wind, and the air he exhaled swirled into white mist in the air.
Only then did the system speak: "Is this all you're going to do?"
"Otherwise what?" Jiang Xing asked the other person in his mind. "I can only do what I'm capable of."
During the conversation, someone hurried into the mall, wearing a down jacket and looking quite ordinary.
Seven minutes had passed since she hung up the phone.
As they brushed past each other, Jiang Xingni glanced thoughtfully at the man, then quickly looked away before he realized what was happening: "Let's look at some comics now."
She was still very concerned about what the system meant by "popular characters".
The young girl randomly picked a nearby milk tea shop, ordered a cup of milk tea, and through the floor-to-ceiling windows, Jiang Xingni could just bask in the warm sunshine. She also saw that it seemed that someone had already arrived at the mall.
Jiang Xingni breathed a sigh of relief. Fortunately, the official organization in this comic wasn't a bunch of good-for-nothings.
Jiang Xingni had been so focused on finding the number that she hadn't had a chance to read the whole plot, but now she had time to look through it slowly.
"What are the criteria for determining a popular character?" Jiang Xingni opened the forum app, pondered for a moment, and then asked this question.
The system paused strangely for a moment—Jiang Xingni suddenly felt that his system seemed a little unreliable—before it replied: [For year-end summaries, you need to break into the top ten of the popularity poll.]
Top 10 most popular characters...
Jiang Xingni said thoughtfully, "Am I only allowed to ride on the popularity of the main characters? Why can't I just become the main character myself?"
Her reasoning was perfectly valid: "Since I'm going to become a popular character anyway, wouldn't it be better to become the main character?"
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The system choked, its voice weak as it denied, "No...you can't do that."
Once she started speaking, her pace quickened: "The main character has already been decided, so even if you become a popular character, you can't become the main character."
[Furthermore, in most comics, the protagonist doesn't seem to be the hottest character, right?]
Jiang Xingni recalled for a moment and was reluctantly convinced by the system's words: "That's true."
*
Jiang Xingni opened the forum. There were many people on the forum, and the posts were all kinds of things.
[LOL, do people who ship male and female characters have any taste? Any two of the three would be better paired up than Song Hye-kyo, right? I suggest you eat something better.]
[Li Tao, based on current combat strength, who is the strongest fighter among Xiao He, Pei, and Song?]
[Can anyone discuss what the potential weaknesses of this shadow puppetry might be?]
[I bet this dungeon will introduce a new character to the main cast! And it'll most likely be a girl!]
……
Jiang Xingni silently noted down the key information mentioned in the forum—"shadow puppetry," after all, she had only experienced it herself.
Then she returned to the comics, and instead of just skimming through them as before, she habitually began to categorize the plot information within them.
The main character has black hair and black eyes, making him stand out as particularly plain among a sea of colorful eyes.
Jiang Xingni's fingertips ran through her soft black hair. Black hair wasn't an uncommon element; many of the main characters had black hair. But she had black eyes—which made her a target of criticism because she shared the same element as the main characters.
【Why not analyze their personalities?】The system was very pleased that Jiang Xingni had finally started to follow the normal process and was preparing to take out the treasured "How to Increase the Protagonist's Favorability" manual from the database.
"They're definitely not as simple as they are in the comics in real life." Jiang Xingni smiled as before. "Besides, comics love to do plot twists. If I actually believed the personalities they portrayed in the comics, I'd be doomed."
However, analyzing the character design is necessary. If you want to join the main characters, you definitely can't have the same character design as the existing characters in the main characters.
Otherwise, the popular character project would have collapsed from the start.
"What is my special ability?" Jiang Xingni asked abruptly.
Jiang Xingni is just an ordinary person; if he wants to get involved in the plot, he needs to have the ability.
The system finally proved reliable for once in this regard.
[That depends on you.] Since the system can grant Jiang Xing access to the forum, it must have other cheat codes as well. [As long as you convince the readers that you have them, you can possess them.]