Oh my bent ruler

A week passed. A dreadingly long time, it felt like, before Eric was reunited with Lav and found him still injured inside the wooden shed Eric found him the first time. Tending to his wounds, Eric told Lav about the king's plans.

"That old geezer-" Eric didn't mind his language in front of Lav anymore, the angel act was thrown somewhere far away from where not even butt hair could reach the tiny butt hole anymore,

"plans to take over Murim by absorbing Murim's core. I have no idea what it is but I guess you do. Anyways, apparently for that he has to use a device to suck their power out and kill all Murim people. With that, they can defeat the magicians. New earth knows that Magic is eyeing the archvillain who's slumbering. If the archvillain wakes up and aids them, new earth knows they're doomed, so they need Murim's power."

How ridiculous, the stupid words Eric was sprouting. In the first place, new earth was guaranteed to win with Hans, yet they foolishly abandoned and even tried to kill him. It was their loss. Whatever hogus bogus they attained would never be able to defeat the arch-villain, only Hans, the MC, could.

But obviously, these characters didn't know Hans was the MC and all of them were in a novel controlled by fate, called plot, so who could fault them for magically acting OOC and having hidden agendas. If they believe they were better off with space domination without Hans, then let them do as they please before they would be destroyed by their ignorant stupidity.

Eric looked at Lav who had been quiet all the time, expecting him to be serious, only for him to have a giddy smile and say excitedly, "Teacher, isn't it fascinating how the story changed?"

Fascinating my ass! Completely irritating, annoying and an immense amount of new work!

"But why did it change?" Lav as well was very confused as to how things entered this state, "Teacher what do you think of the new direction the story's going into?"

Don't make this into some analysing shit! What are you going to do? Write a 7500-word essay on it? Hoping to achieve the ground-breaking 100 marks that only those with brilliant minds could achieve?

But seeing the glistening eyes of Lav, Eric bit his tongue and said, "It isn't too bad, we can work with it, but it's going to be more troublesome. I just want to complete it. But, for now, we should ally with Murim. How strong are you as Hans?"

"Hmmm," Lav scratched his chin thinking about the right way to put it, but in the end, he only said," Hans is pretty strong."

No shit sherlock, this helped me a ton. But... whatever let's just bank on the fact that Hans is the MC and OP.

"Our new goal, no, Hans' new goal as the MC, is to stop both new earth and magic. We can view this as the first act turning point, basically where the MC is thrown into this new journey, with no return, and where his goal is shown. Well, the first act was a bit long. Let's suppose the story starts with the inciting incident of Hans being injured, escaping to Murim where he's rescued by new earth.

Things go well for a while, Hans is entrusted with finding the ruler but then this is the turning point! Hans is betrayed, hunted by new earth he trusted so much and now swears to stop the war and new earth's greedy plan from dominating. So, we go from there into now the second act, the middle part of the story. Did you understand?"

"Yes, teacher," Lav smiled like a child getting candy and soaked up everything Eric said like a wet sponge ready to scrub Eric's body off of all of that knowledge. He even, out of nowhere, got a notepad and started to scribble down every word of Eric's.

Cough, Eric didn't mean to suddenly ramble about his editor stuff but Eric was still happy Lav was a studious and meticulous student. Eric almost shed a tear at this wonder.

"Lav, why do we ally with Murim?" Eric thought about questioning this future student and pride of Eric's class.

"Because Murim is the only neutral planet. Since new earth wants to take the power, it must mean Murim is still pretty strong. Since Hans is now on his own, he needs trusted allies. We can't side with magic either because A- their goal is probably the same as new earth and B- they killed his parents."

"Brilliant!" Eric flashed Lav a smile and was really moved to tears. Lav gave an even better answer, Eric could've imagined. Eric really thought Lav might have said, " 'New earth and magic bad' but of course Lav wasn't this kind of simpleton Fil might be.

"Now, we have to think of a way to get Murim on our side and start the second act."

After recuperating for a few days until Lav was nurtured back to life, they thought about various possibilities, yet Eric's mind constantly hung onto this one idea. It must be his dragon sense, telling him that.

"Lav, let's go back to the island."

The place where they've been betrayed by the king. For some reason, Eric felt like something didn't add up. The dimension hid the ruler for so long, but for it being so easily found and destroyed by new earth was too fishy. No matter how Eric thought about it, even with new earth's technology, this shouldn't have gone so smoothly unless-

And Eric's suspicion became true. The island that should've been a mess after the attack of new earth was completely restored as if nothing happened. More than that, the trials still functioned, meaning Lav had to retake them. This couldn't happen if the ruler was dead and the dimension destroyed or else what would these trials protect, stopping outsiders from? Nothingness?

This time it took not even a few minutes for Lav to breeze through trials and voila, after he managed to pass them, lightning struck through the air, but the intensity of it was so dim and weak, it could only mean something did happen to the ruler!

And as expected, the next second, the air coughed out the handsome ruler covered in blood and injured. Quickly, Eric and Lav tended to him.

"Super-" glare, "Ruler," Lav quickly corrected himself.

"I'm... fine," Kuagh, the ruler, spit a mouthful of blood. Eric's face... blank, you're obviously not fine, dude. Then Eric's face became a cloud, slowly floating away to escape this information dump.

"Since... the clone's still a part of me... my main body, the real body, still received damage."

Alright, I got it, I got it... just rest now. Eric flapped to the ruler and literally covered the ruler's mouth with this hand. The ruler and Lav were surprised until, "Teacher, you're so benevolent."

Stop misunderstanding! But Eric had no energy to correct Lav.

"Ruler, my Howl-" who's your howl?!

"is my pet dragon. Please don't strain yourself and rest. Let me take care of you and I'm terribly sorry. I hope you can forgive me! I really didn't know about their schemes and never meant to hurt you!"

"Don't worry, I can feel your sincerity, I believe you," the ruler nodded. His youthful face really didn't match the 1000 years old wisdom. Thanks to Lav's convenient magic, they teleported back to the small wooden house and quickly tended to the ruler and fed him.

Almost two weeks passed since the incident, the ruler was fucking tenacious to survive this long with the injuries.

"They aren't after you?" with them the ruler meant new earth.

"They are, but I can use magic to divert their attention from us."

Lav chose to be honest with the ruler about his identity. After all, the ruler was a strong ally. With him, they had more fighting power and a bigger chance to stop the enemies.

"We need more allies," Eric told Lav after he revealed his goal and identity to the ruler. The ruler instantly accepted and became a trusted ally.

Wow, fucking hell was that quick! Anyways, target 1 conquered. Onto the next!

"New allies?"

"Yes, and we need to take care of new earth here in Murim."

"How?" Lav was confused.

"I have a perfect plan," Eric smiled evilly.

What did his brilliant brain produce?