A Guide for Background Characters to Survive in a Manga - Chapter 333 : Chapter 333

Chapter 333

Everyone’s expressions were a colorful mix of panic, fear, helplessness, and anger…

Only one person laughed, but it was a cold laugh. That person was me. I lowered my head and let out a low, muffled laugh.

I was wondering why it was so easy. It was so smooth that everything seemed to fall into place naturally, without any difficulty.

So this was where they were waiting for me!

Only I could see that through the phone screens, the Destiny Compasses above everyone’s heads had changed drastically in an instant. Everyone’s small pointer had suddenly shifted to the right, and the large pointers of Si Zhaohua and Wu Mingbai had even moved directly to the lower half of the compass!

Oh, and the one above my head, my large pointer had also gone down.

The author actually wanted to reduce the number of the protagonist’s team in this incident, and also wanted me to go offline!

I was so angry I laughed. If it was just the small pointer changing, it would be fine, but normally the large pointer wouldn’t change so suddenly. Was it so sudden this time because they were afraid that if my fate was revealed in advance, I would intercept and change it?

Under the huge impact of the news, no one noticed my abnormality. Wu Mingbai almost immediately thought of a solution, “I’ll finish my side first, then I’ll find you guys. You guys hold on for a while, wait for me…”

Before he could finish, Jiang Tianming interrupted him, “Even if you can know our specific location by us firing a signal gun, how will you get here? At your speed, by the time you arrive one by one, we might not be able to hold on anymore.”

It should be known that the Nightmare Beasts approaching them now must be the elites among the high-level Nightmare Beasts. Let alone holding on for an hour or two, they would have difficulty holding on for even ten minutes.

“I can go pick him up.” Si Zhaohua immediately spoke up. “I can fly, and my speed is already faster than others. And I brought a flight accelerator, as well as some other items that can increase speed.”

This was a special item for flying-type abilities, which could provide a boost during takeoff, increasing the flight speed by four to five times. Si Zhaohua always kept it on him.

With these items, even if the several locations were far apart, he could still arrive in a short time.

Hearing this, I already understood in my heart. It seemed that this was how these two died. As the people on the road, they would definitely encounter more danger. Along the way, who knew how many interceptions they would encounter, and it was normal for them to die in the end.

As for how I died, who knew? Wasn’t it a piece of cake for the author to let me die in the chaos?

Under normal circumstances, if I wanted to change the large pointers of three people, although it would consume a lot of mental power, I could still do it. But the problem was that among the three of them, there were two members of the protagonist’s team, one of whom was the protagonist of protagonists.

Changing the fate of the protagonist consumed a lot of mental power. I had just used my mental power many times to change the luck of Jiang Tianming, who was the protagonist, and the fate of the stone forest Nightmare Beast and two high-level Nightmare Beasts. Now I only had less than a quarter of my full mental power.

It was impossible to change the large pointers of three people in a row. My mental power would definitely not be able to hold on. Let alone mental power, even if I added all my life force, it would not be enough.

Wu Mingbai alone was enough to consume more than half of my mental power. Plus Si Zhaohua, it would almost cost all my mental power at its peak. The protagonist was just that terrifying. If Jiang Tianming was here, the consumption would only be greater.

If I didn’t save these two people, there would be no problem. I could use my remaining mental power to change my own fate, and I wouldn’t even need to consume my life force. If I saved these two people, whether I died or not was another matter, but I would definitely pay a great price.

But this choice, which seemed to be the best for me on the surface, I was unwilling to accept.

I laughed out loud again, but this time it was a bitter laugh. When I first entered the school, I had thought that I shouldn’t get too close to the protagonist’s team. With bonds, it would be easy to get involved.

It was truly a self-fulfilling prophecy. I really couldn’t be as hard-hearted as I wanted to be now.

The author could be ruthless enough to let the characters go offline, but I couldn’t just watch my classmates who I got along with day and night die like this. Although I always looked like I was detached from everything, only I knew in my heart how much of it was an act.

Besides, even if I didn’t look at it from an emotional point of view, but purely from a rational point of view, I didn’t think I could just stand by and watch.

“Tell me, with the author arranging it like this, is he really trying to kill me, or is he trying to test me?” I suddenly asked in my heart.

After a long time without hearing the voice of the “Manga Consciousness,” I was not surprised. For such a major plot, it was normal for the other party to be blocked or unable to speak. Otherwise, what if he accidentally revealed information?

The reason I asked that question was because I suddenly thought, did the author really not care about the death of the characters?

The deaths of Wu Mingbai and Si Zhaohua were indeed reasonable. Although the readers in reality would definitely be heartbroken when they saw the plot, no one would think that they were completely killed by the plot, or that they went offline because the author was crazy.

After all, this was a major node of the main storyline, and it was normal for some characters to die. If the entire cast could survive until the end of the manga, it wouldn’t be a shonen manga!

But if the plot was reasonable, would the author not be sad?

Let’s not talk about Si Zhaohua for a moment. Wu Mingbai was a character he had written for two whole seasons. Even if he wasn’t the absolute protagonist like Jiang Tianming, he was the first person under the protagonist. The author must have invested countless efforts in him.

Did he really want Wu Mingbai to die?

But the above were just my fleeting speculations. Based on whether the speculations were correct or not, two possibilities could be derived.

One was that the author arranged for the characters to die here, but actually hoped that I would save them. Then, after I saved them and then saved myself, perhaps the author would completely let me go.

The other possibility was that the author just wanted some characters to die here, and if I saved them, it would ruin his plan. Then, after ruining the author’s plot arrangement, I would face an even more fierce “pursuit” from him.

If I were faced with a choice about other things now, I would definitely choose to do less rather than more. The author had already arranged it like this. Was I looking for death by going out of my way to destroy it?

But this matter involved the life and death of my companions, so I couldn’t help but hesitate.

To be honest, with a tendency in my heart already, I couldn’t even tell if my analysis just now was really out of reason, or if it was just an excuse that my emotions had forced me to find to save them.

Save them, I had no choice. I had to have a clear conscience.

I sighed in my heart. The fate the author had arranged for me, I accepted it, but only half of it. I was willing to save people, but I was not willing to die for it.

The author of 《King of Abilities》 was a bastard, but the characters he created were quite cute.

In any case, I had a way to keep myself from dying. A small price for the lives of two companions was worth it. Afterwards, I could go to the forum to find a way to make up for it. Maybe in the end, I wouldn’t have to pay any price and get two lives for free.

With this in mind, I looked up.

At this time, Jiang Tianming was frantically throwing out defensive items to set up a formation. The Nightmare Beast army was already approaching. As the group that Wu Mingbai and the others had decided to come to last, they needed to hold on for the longest time. If they didn’t set up the defense before the Nightmare Beasts arrived, they could just pack up and prepare for reincarnation.

Seeing me come back to my senses, Jiang Tianming quickly asked, “What were you thinking just now? Did you have a solution?”

From the moment he finished discussing the plan with Wu Mingbai, Jiang Tianming had noticed me with my head down in thought. But because he saw that my emotions were clearly not right, Jiang Tianming was very considerate and did not disturb me, silently and quietly setting up the formation.

Only when he saw me look up did he speak up and ask.

I looked at him, my eyes flashing with a complicated expression that could not be described.

A moment later, Jiang Tianming saw me give a wild smile, “Remember to apologize to me afterwards, for making me pay such a huge price to save your lives.”

That smile carried a hint of fatigue and relief. A premonition that he himself could not explain rose in Jiang Tianming’s heart. He subconsciously wanted to stop me, but he didn’t know why he had this thought. His hand was slightly raised, and the words stopped at his mouth.

I slowly levitated into the air. My golden hair floated with the energy fluctuations from the center of my hand. A miniature gear appeared between my hands. The gear had a slight halo. At first glance, it seemed ordinary, but no one could ignore the huge energy it contained, which made the faces of the people around me change.

At the same time, a compass array emitting a dark light rose from under my feet. The runes carved on the array were mysterious and magnificent. As the gear rotated between my hands, dots of light floated up from the bottom until they converged in the gear. In an instant, the light shone brightly.

However, before everyone had time to admire this amazing scene, they saw that at the moment the gear emitted light, my hair turned white inch by inch from the top of my head, spreading to the ends. That white was more sacred than the whitest snow anyone had ever seen, but it brought death and decay.

“Su Bei!” Jiang Tianming cried out in alarm, reacting immediately to what was happening. “You’re using your life force to use your ability?!”

As expected of the protagonist, his reaction was fast. I thought with a somewhat chaotic mind. I slowly raised my heavy eyelids and looked at the Nightmare Beasts that had already arrived nearby and were beginning to attack the defensive barrier set up by Jiang Tianming. Feeling the little life force left in my body, I slightly raised my hand to hold the gear pendant on my chest and forced myself to cheer up. “I’ll help you one last time.”

The pointer turned, and the next second, more than half of the Nightmare Beasts surrounding them suddenly died. I had exhausted my life force and cast my last ability.

Jiang Tianming was first startled by the sudden fall of the Nightmare Beasts, then suddenly seemed to realize something. He quickly turned back to look at me again, shaking his head repeatedly, as if he wanted to say something.

However, before he could open his mouth, under his gaze, I calmly disappeared from the bottom up, until I turned into ashes and dissipated in the air.

“Su Bei!” The moment I disappeared, Jiang Tianming roared in panic, his eyes filled with unprecedented panic.

Unfortunately, only a piece of silence remained, and my voice was no longer heard.

At this time, the few people outside the phone screen also reacted. Qi Huang asked anxiously, “What’s the situation? What happened to Su Bei?”

“I… I don’t know.” Jiang Tianming stood there in a daze. He actually had a guess in his heart, but he couldn’t say it out loud no matter what.

Then he suddenly thought of something, as if he had grabbed a life-saving straw. He quickly took out a sensor from his storage space. This sensor could sense whether a person was alive and their specific location.

Jiang Tianming had previously put the hair of every classmate in the class into it to record it once, so it could now sense whether I existed once.

“Beep beep!”

The indicator light of the sensor emitted a red light, accompanied by a rapid beeping sound, which disappeared in the blink of an eye.

Jiang Tianming’s face turned pale in an instant, as if he couldn’t believe it. He took two steps back and muttered to himself, “I can’t sense it… The sensor can’t sense Su Bei’s existence.”

Under what circumstances could a sensor not sense a person’s existence? Only when that person was already dead.

Su Bei is dead? How is this possible!

The others were also all stunned. They had guessed the truth from Jiang Tianming’s performance and that sentence.

“…He said just now that he saved us? Did he overuse his mental power to save us, to the point of consuming his life force? But he looked like that just now… He…” Qi Huang said incoherently, her expression showing unprecedented panic.

The more she spoke, the more hesitant her voice became. Qi Huang felt that I looked like my life force had been exhausted and I had returned to dust, but she didn’t dare to say it. Even someone like her couldn’t help but be afraid of this result.

But even so, Qi Huang still couldn’t believe it. “But how is that possible? That’s Su Bei! Hasn’t he always been invincible? How could he die?”

Not only her, but everyone was unwilling to believe this result. Just as Qi Huang said, I had always been an omnipotent image in their hearts, and they couldn’t imagine that I would just die like this.

Lan Subing’s face was as pale as Jiang Tianming’s. She was silent for a moment, then suddenly began to use [Word Spirit], “「Su Bei appear」! 「Su Bei survive」! 「Su Bei return」…”

One after another, Word Spirits came out of her mouth, but they had no effect. My figure did not appear, as if I had completely disappeared from the world.

“Pfft—”

The overuse of her ability brought a huge toll on Lan Subing’s body. She spat out a mouthful of blood and her whole person immediately slumped down.