In the author's playground, imagination takes place like a one-player game.
The empty canvas will only be stained by their own ink.
The novel is their chessboard, and the characters are their pieces.
An author cannot mercilessly sacrifice their key pieces.
If a character serves no purpose, they become 'disposable pawns' instead.
Among those pieces, the 'queen' stands as the most valuable.
Without her, the game becomes much harder to maneuver.
You can sacrifice many things to save the queen—
But you can never sacrifice the safety of the King.
If you do so, it would be a fatal move.
No matter how vital your protagonist seems, never let them overshadow your creativity or derail your plot.
---
Elijah watched as the scene unfolded like some sort of fiction.
Wait, it is a fiction.
Victoria followed up with an attack towards the enemies from a safe distance with her wind-infused arrows, while Dohwun charged headfirst.
However…
"This will never end," Elijah muttered under his breath.
Sure, they were "winning," but in truth, they were losing.
Every nightmare they killed was quickly replaced by another. The spawning cycle would continue endlessly unless someone figured out how to stop it.
'Hmm… should I step in?' Elijah thought, tapping his chin. 'Nah, let's see how far they can go without me.'
The fight dragged on.
Finally, Victoria—clearly irritated by Elijah's relaxed stance in the background—snapped.
"HEY! ARE YOU JUST GOING TO STAND THERE LIKE AN IDIOT?!"
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
Elijah tilted his head innocently. "What dwo ywo mwean?" he replied, deliberately lisping and batting his eyelashes in an exaggerated attempt at looking "cute."
Victoria recoiled in visible disgust. "STOP THAT! You're creeping me out!"
"Don't you have anything you can do to help? A skill? Anything?"
Elijah smiled lazily. "Hmm… nope!"
A blatant lie, of course.
He had his Author skill, but as if he could say his only trump card aloud—so he rather say he is skilless.
"YOU MEAN TO TELL ME YOU'RE SKILLESS?!"
"Ehe~."
"Don't laugh! WHY ARE YOU EVEN HERE?!"
"Aren't you the one who dragged me along?" Elijah shot back with an amused shrug.
Victoria opened her mouth to argue but quickly shut it again, realizing he wasn't wrong.
Grinding her teeth in frustration, she turned her focus back to the battle.
Her bow was a gift from her mother.
With her basic Hunter skill, she could create arrows imbued with wind affinity, manipulating their trajectory mid-flight.
It was an excellent ability—except for one glaring problem:
If the enemy had a strong outer shell, her arrows were practically useless.
And these nightmares? Yeah, they were nightmares in every sense of the word.
Every arrow she shot merely caused tiny cracks in the monsters, barely scratching them.
Dohwun's ice affinity was the only thing keeping them at bay, his frigid attacks chipping away at the creatures' defenses.
However she doesn't know if Dohwun realizes it, but these spiders will keep on multiplying unless the core is destroyed.
Which is the red gem in its forehead, somewhere Dohwun can't reach.
If only Dohwun could make those ice arrows reach further and higher.
Victoria paused mid-draw as an idea struck her.
'Ice affinity… wind arrows… what if…?'
Her eyes flicked toward Dohwun, and then to her bow, a bold plan already forming in her mind.
---
"Hoh? Has she figured it out?" Elijah mused, perched comfortably on a fallen brick as though watching a casual theater performance. "Impressive. I thought she was just a filler side character."
When Elijah had written Victoria into his novel, she was intended to be little more than a damsel—someone who is always in distress, relying on the protagonist to swoop in and save her.
Yet now, observing her stance and gaze, Elijah felt some sort of excitement.
She was breaking free from her scripted role, turning into something.
Something that exceeds his expectations.
A sudden piece that is unpredictable.
Just like a...
'Knight'.
The two; Dohwun and Victoria seem to discuss something, and after that, they basically scatter around as if they just discussed something like a plan.
And then, with impeccable timing, the headmaster and a group of instructors arrived, armed and ready to engage.
"What's the situation?"
Elijah raised his hand lazily.
"Shush, the kids are fighting."
Madam Zero's eyebrows twitched. "We need to eradicate these nightmares immediately—"
"Aren't you going to let them fight? You know, as their exam?" Elijah interjected. "Just watch."
Madam Zero stared at him in disbelief.
What makes him so confident in these students?
Wait- why is he even just watching?
She ended up sitting beside him with her legs crossed.
Her eyes narrowed, clearly questioning every decision that had led to her listening to this man.
"Madam!" one of the instructors exclaimed, visibly flabbergasted.
"It's fine," she toned. "If it becomes truly dangerous, we'll intervene."
The instructors exchanged uneasy glances, but none dared to question her authority further.
The headmaster's gaze turned to the scene unfolding before them while adjusting her eyeglasses.
It was then from this short silence, Elijah's voice came to ask.
"Do you know the Bucking Bronco Mate?"