The First Variable

I'd been blankly staring at the DLC info tab for quite some time now, my pizza turning cold and soda turning flat. I was frankly baffled by the first change in the setting I found. Or was it perhaps the 2nd with myself being the 1st?

Either way, Wendy had regressed?! Woah, woah, woah. Isn't this too big a change for the DLC, this felt more like the premise of a sequel than some extra content!

Not only did this make me worry about what I should do going forward, it also made me scared of what other changes were waiting for me. But the most worrying aspect of Wendy's regression was what route and ending she had come from.

"After the death of her loved ones and the betrayal of her closest companion, Wendy Heartseeker was executed by the holy kingdom."

There were many routes in which Wendy lost her loved ones or was betrayed by a close companion. But only one of these routes ended with her execution by the Holy Kingdom.

It was the Flase Saint route, or more popularly named by myself and the other fans, the "Pink-Haired Bitch" route.

The ending was found through maxing affection with the aptly named "Pink-Haired Bitch" and following her to join the Holy Kingdom in their war with the Immortal Cult. When playing through the route, it deceptively makes the player fall into a false sense of security. With playful scenes and heartwarming, triumphant victories over the forces of evil, I even felt like I had been playing an entirely different game during my playthrough of it, right until the last minute. 

In the last hour of playtime, after the war is won and Wendy is lauded as a saint by the Holy Kingdom, her engagement with her chosen love interest is in stone, the rug is pulled from under the player's legs, multiple characters are murdered under mysterious circumstances and at the funeral of her lover, her best friend accuses Wendy of the murders, leading to her public shaming and execution.

It was a gut punch that almost made me break my monitor in frustration, right after I'd thought I had finally found a good ending, it turned into one of the most tragic. It felt like a whole lemon was shoved down my throat.

And now I was discovering that the Wendy from that route had regressed?! I could sit still in abject terror.

This created two major issues for me.

First was Wendy's oath of solitude at the end of the route. "New Dawn Kingdom" was a game created with tactical combat in mind, no matter how broken the character, none of the important battles could be won alone. Even if Wendy now had years of experience in combat and war, if she truly refused to create new connections and forge any bonds, it was hard to see a way for me to safely survive the game.

One of the strongest and main aspects of the combat in NDA was skill fusions. Each class gave a character passive and active skills (Well, every class other than my current one I guess), and once Wendy reached a high enough level of affection with each character, skill fusions could be unlocked and used, with there being hundreds of thousands of possible combinations. They were the key to defeating the end-game boss battles.

Now, with Wendy avoiding making friends and lovers, the strongest character in the game couldn't use the strongest combat function.

The second problem had to do with myself, I had become a variable for Wendy. Now that she had regressed, with a full memory of what should happen at the academy, my appearance in the academy would become an outlier that she couldn't ignore. I might even be... silenced by her. She must have developed severe trust issues after her betrayal at the hands of her best friend after all.

My role in the story was something I had to address first and foremost, If Wendy had regressed at the same time I had transmigrated, I had to think of what exactly she would do first after coming back to her teenage years. 3 days had already passed since her regression, and a Wendy with her experience would have already understood the opportunity she had been given and made moving according to her memory of the past.

I pulled out Lucas' phone, opened his news app and scrolled through article after article to find any important upcoming events Wendy would interfere in given her disposition. It was difficult based on my own memory since in terms of the timeline, we were still in the prologue, a point in the game where the genre was still a wolf in sheep's clothing, most of the game time was spent thinking about relationships and what dessert Wendy would have for the day. Political discourse and tragic events never got mentioned with severity in the game until after Wendy was attending New Dawn Academy.

But I was able to track down 3 events Wendy had a good chance of interfering with, and luckily, they all occurred consecutively, If I rushed I should be able to get to them one after another.

I quickly changed clothes, tidied myself up as much as possible and ran out the door...

Of course, after finishing my pizza.

I didn't want it to get stale after all.

---

[SSS Sword Saint Stan: Wtf you mean? There isn't a world where Branston is defeated by that Barbarian Ube. 10/10 times Ube is going home with a hole in his chest or face.]

[RetiredNDAfan: I mean what I mean LOL. Stay mad. Branston is old af, bet he can't even move at his age. 90 yr old man LMAO]

[SSS Sword Saint Stan:???]

I felt the rumble of the train tracks as I rhythmically tapped on my phone, replying to whoever responded to me on this world's social media, arguing with them on points I personally didn't even agree with.

This was of course to test out and see the application of my traits, namely "Keyboard Warrior". I typed in the same way I did back on Earth but could see a large increase in activity on my posts, even on a freshly made account. And despite my arguments not making a lick of sense, I was still receiving more likes than my detractors.

That confirmed my understanding of the charisma stat.

Charisma was a stat under the category of "Soul", meaning it had nothing to do with the words I said or how well I put them together, but the sheer presence that came off my words, an effect that could be felt even through a screen.

The effect of my trait seemed to give my words the ability to anger and rile people up, it made sense since the trait was named "Keyboard Warrior".

[SSS Sword Saint Stan: WHAT YOUR SAYING DOESN'T MAKE ANY SENSE. EVEN IF HE'S 90 HIS CLASS IS SWORD SAINT!!!! SWORD SAINT!!!]

[RetiredNDAfan: K lol]

[RetiredNDAfan has left the discussion]

[SSS Sword Saint Stan: *************???!!!]

I was right, despite their off-putting names, my traits did seem to have a good amount of value. "Keyboard Warrior" even appeared to be the worst one in terms of actual application, I was excited to see how well I could use "No-lifer" and "Last-Minute Crammer".

*Beep* *Beep*

I felt the train slowly come to a stop, turning off the phone I got out of my seat and made my way out the doors.

I had just arrived near one of the New Dawn Academies' testing grounds, I wasn't here to try and enrol, of course, my stats were just too trash for now. I was here to see someone, 2 people hopefully.

Today should be the first fateful encounter between the main character Wendy Heartseeker and the main love interest of the game, Damien Belmond, The first prince of the Belmond Kingdom.