Protagonist

After saying that much, John who was previously a 10-year-old kid, kneeled down on the ground with a pious expression as though he was facing his god and said, "Master!"

"Good. From this day forward. You, John, shall inherit my will, as well as my name. You shall be my first disciple; John Conner."

After using some mana to pull John off the floor, Luke spoke again.

"Get ready. We will be leaving in 3 days' time. Prepare food for us for a month as well as equipment for yourself and tools to survive in the wild."

Nodding, John Conner, bowed to his master and left.

It had not been too long ago, around half a year ago when he had crawled into CoD with a large amount of flesh missing from his chest and torso, where he was saved by none other than the mighty Sage himself! John, as a kid, had always been told stories by the old man Jacob about how mighty the Sage was that he was already a Grand mage.

He had also been repeatedly warned before going on each of his hunting missions to gather food and meat for whatever was left over of the Conner village, that in case anything happened to him, the best place he could ever go to was the CoD base.

That was why, when he was attacked by that monster, and suffered grievous wounds in order to kill the monster that killed of his entire team of hunters, he did not return to his village but instead came to the CoD base.

Over time, the CoD base had basically sucked the conner village completely dry of human resources, not even leaving the elderly and the disabled. The only people remaining in the conner village were those who were rejected by the CoD base due to various reasons such as being spies of other organizations, being charged of petty crimes, etc., as well at those who did not wish to leave conner village itself.

John fell somewhere in the middle, just like his life in Conner village, he did not belong anywhere and was simply living day to day, barely surviving. When the conner village was pretty much emptied out, with only a few people left, and he had thought of going and joining CoD, Jacob had approached him and asked him to either join the hunting team or leave conner village since they did not have enough food production to feed everyone in conner village, let along someone who is not helping out to do anything in the village.

And that was how he became a hunter. But then disaster struct only 5 months after he finally became something, leaving him nearly dead until the Sage came in and saved him from the cold hands of death.

After that, The Sage had also told him to decide on whether he would take him as his master, where he would gain a lot and be able to become stronger, but in return would have to care for his master the Sage, or just become a normal member of CoD, as well as half a year to come to a decision.

This day, he had finally come to a decision, and felt rather odd about it.

Luke, on the other hand, could not stop grinning.

A protagonist-type character was a rather unique existence within Ultimatum. They were NPCs that faces a tone of hardships and misfortunes. They would either overcome the challenge and grow a lot from the encounter, or die early. These NPCs had a growth speed that was a lot faster than most players, comparable to the grinding speed of professional players and their entire guilds combined.

Clearly, John had faced such a challenge, and had survived.

However, he could not control a protagonist-type character using soul contracts, since any such methods would face the direct counters from luck itself.

This was just the way these NPCs were. They had the bad luck to face innumerable hardships and might die at any moment, however, as long as they were alive, nothing could hold them down as they took one step at a time towards their goal, unstoppable.

Any attempts to control them which went against the pre-set hardships that they were programmed to face, would be retaliate by fate itself. How? Simple, if Luke tried to enslave him, Roland might just decide to send over a top leader from their side to completely destroy CoD, and kill Luke, while John might somehow survive, or an earthquake might just crush Luke to death while John would survive. Such retaliations from fate were the scariest thing in the entire game, and even the players feared it since they could not do anything to stop it, simply losing a life with a 100% guarantee. However, these would leave the protagonist completely unharmed, allowing them to face the challenges they were meant to face.

This was what protagonist-type characters were, and Luke had successfully coaxed such a character into becoming his disciple without forcing him or anything along those lines. In essence, Luke would not face any backlash of fate, and would only have to face the challenges together with John. For the Level 44 Luke, the challenges a level 12 John would face were child's play.

How could he not be happy? He had finally gained a protagonist-type member, which all large organisations had a few of without knowing it.

Based on Luke's predictions, MI9 itself had around 2 such NPC, while the entire Leon should be having around 8 such NPCs including the 2 with MI9. Now, he had one of those 8!

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