Chapter 402 (1): Not Villainous or Crafty Enough
Backyard, Wayne’s residence.
Snow the owl perched on a branch, its owl eyes wide like saucers.
Unlike their nocturnal relatives, snowy owls were white owls that were active during the day. Its white body seemed right at home in the tree.
In the short distance, Valkyrie was teaching Vera how to wield a spear.
Valkyrie was a multi-talented veteran knight. She could fight with a sword off a mount and wield a spear while mounted, and she had no problem using a staff or a shield. She was an excellent teacher, even in spearmanship.
Why did she forego the dragonslaying swordsmanship in favor of spearmanship, you ask? The reason was simple.
Through Wayne’s introduction, Darienne had become acquainted with Sun Knight William. William, with his positive personality, could be considered a walking source of positivity. His interest in card games was the cherry on top.
You’ve got a good personality and good pecs, boy. Let’s continue to play cards in the surface world.
The inner world differed from the surface world, and William turned out to be Vera. Darienne took a further liking to Vera. When she returned to the Frozen Land for her shift, she told Sun Knight Leo about Vera. It was partly because she did appreciate Vera, and partly because... well, maybe Leo would stop trying to steal Wayne from her once he had a new successor.
Leo had been unconvinced. Before heading to the inner world for his mission, he had swung by Londan to meet his squires, Cushing and Carter. Knowing that Vera was their daughter and Wayne’s lover, he decided to give her a chance to prove herself.
Might as well let her try.
She tried and gained the recognition of Dawn Doctrine, proving herself to be an excellent successor. When Leo looked at Vera again, he saw all the signs that he hadn’t noticed.
The Goddess of Sun’s messenger, a dragonslayer as a teacher, both parents being his squire, and a boyfriend who was a successor to multiple knights... The Goddess of Sun had long since highlighted Vera as the next chosen knight!
In Darienne’s words, if Vera weren’t the Sun Knight, she would eat Dawn Doctrine—without drinking water!
Leo was pleased with the successor. He saw Cushing as his brother, which would make Vera a daughter to him. After personally instructing Vera for three days, he entrusted the important duty of teaching his successor to Valkyrie.
I’d leave this child to you, Senior. Please make sure to train her into an excellent Sun Knight.
In response to Leo’s request, Valkyrie solemnly promised to make Vera a proper knight rather than someone with an indirect approach to justice like a certain someone.
Chosen knights weren’t judged by their purity. Even though Wayne regularly made Vera into a cream puff, it wouldn’t stop her from becoming the Goddess of Sun’s knight. However, Wayne’s influence had given Vera a few bad habits.
In Valkyrie’s eyes, Vera had quite a lot of minor problems: she was mischievous, fidgety, easily distracted, reliant on little tricks, tended to use her cuteness to get herself out of a pickle, and was too good at deceiving herself to make her feel better. While she was optimistic and kind-hearted, she was incredibly lacking in diligence and ambition.
Like other girls her age, she was more passionate about romance than magic.
She needed correction!
She thus began to lead a ‘good life’. Every day, she woke up early to train in spearmanship, and during breaks, she had to learn about the virtues of knights. If the Dawn Doctrine didn’t have the ability to slay dragons and would allow her to banish the evil dragon to monopolize the ‘princess’ after becoming the Sun Knight, she would have long given up.
Um, she had wanted to give up, but didn’t dare to.
Valkyrie was a strict teacher. With the threat of her pointer stick, Vera decided to follow her heart between the choices of giving up and submitting out of fear.
“Let’s take five minutes.”
“Yay!”
As soon as the words were out of Valkyrie’s mouth, Vera tossed aside the staff in her hand and slumped down on the ground in an undignified manner.
“Get up and rest standing up.”
“Oh...”
Valkyrie came up to her with her stick. Seeing Vera’s lopsided posture, she swung it.
Vera jumped up, rubbing her bottom and yelping in pain. Not even Wayne had hit her so hard before!
Vera batted her big, teary eyes at Valkyrie, trying to appeal to her sympathy, but it didn’t work. Valkyrie wasn’t Wayne and wasn’t susceptible to such manipulation.
“If you keep making that face at me, I’ll double your training today.”
“I won’t do it again.” (╥˘‸˘╥)
Valkyrie nodded approvingly when Vera corrected her posture. A good teacher had to balance the stick and the carrot, praising the student when appropriate to motivate them.
“Vera, you’ve made good progress in the past two days. You’ve already mastered the essence of the spear technique.”
“Wayne taught me.”
“Wayne?”
“Yeah, he taught me personally.”
Vera puffed out her chest proudly. Kristen lacked the talent, while Veronica was too much of a tsundere. The former couldn’t take the girth, while the latter simply didn’t want to do it. She alone had both the courage and attention to detail to master the use of the staff. She’d learned to deftly manipulate it.
“Wayne knows spearmanship?” Valkyrie asked in surprise. “Well enough to teach you?”
“He’s amazing. If you’re interested, Master, you could spar with him.”
“That’s right...” Valkyrie nodded seriously. “Wayne has gained the recognition of Dawn Doctrine and received Knight Leo’s training, giving him a solid foundation. He is qualified to teach you. I should train you alongside him someday.”
Hearing Valkyrie talk about Wayne’s spearmanship so seriously, Vera felt no satisfaction for teasing the older lady. She thought back to Kristen’s comment and agreed to it after the fact. These ancient ladies might be beautiful, busty, and long-legged, but they were each more innocent than the last.
***
“Tsk, tsk. Vera’s meant for greater things!”
Wayne looked below at Vera’s antics from the balcony of the second-floor study, thinking back to the burly man he had met and the little sun in the inner world. The Vera of the surface world hadn’t been subject to many trials, so she lacked the drive to grow stronger like her inner world’s counterpart. Wayne hoped that the strict teacher would be able to produce a competent student, that Valkyrie could prepare Vera for the real world.
He narrowed his eyes and wove his thoughts into a thread to whisper into Valkyrie’s ear, explaining what Vera meant by ‘spearmanship’.
It took Valkyrie a few sentences to figure out what Wayne was talking about. Realizing her mistake, she raged.
“Vera—”
“Here!”
“You’re doing tenfold the training today! No, twenty-fold!!”
“No, Master! I repent. I’ll never do it again.”
The backyard erupted into a ruckus. Valkyrie chased after Vera with the pointer stick, making her run around yelping with her hands on her backside.
“Interesting.”
Wayne nodded to himself. This was the kind of life that Vera should be leading.
“Teacher, stop looking that way. Please spare this student of yours some attention.”
Kristen sat at the desk typing away on the typewriter, walking the last mile for her soon-to-be-published masterpiece.
“Miss Kristen, you should believe in your talent...”
Wayne went up to the desk. He was going to compliment his student like Valkyrie had, but thought better of it. Kristen’s talent left much to be desired. If she hadn’t found herself an honest man the second year after she graduated from college, she would have to moonlight at a bar to make ends meet for her dream of becoming a writer.
Wayne picked up the manuscript, going through every line.
Kristen waited with bated breath. After he finished reading the new chapters, she asked tentatively, “What do you think, Master?”
“Pretty good.”
“In what way?”
“The ink is neat, and there’s no typo.” Wayne approved. It was amazing that he didn’t find any mistakes even though he was looking for one.
“...”
“Don’t be discouraged. You’re a newbie after all, and this is your first long-form story.”
“I’ve written several before...”
“It doesn’t count if no publisher has made a big offer to publish your writing.”
“My publisher is you...”
“Shut up. I’m the only one who could say anything in this matter.”
Wayne sat down and pulled Kristen onto his lap, stroking her slim waist and marveling at how such a slim trunk could support such large, full fruit. Scrumptious and arousing as the fruit was, it was no wonder that Veronica would fall so hard that he had to share with her.
“Stop touching me, Teacher. Look at the manuscript.” Kristen stopped his naughty hand and kissed him on the cheek.
“As a complete novel, it has no problem...”
“Let’s skip the empty praises, Teacher. Just tell me what’s wrong with it.”
During the two months Wayne was on a work trip, Kristen had been writing at home, turning the premise of Dumas’s The Count of Monte Cristo into a real story.
A thousand readers would have a thousand different interpretations of Hamlet. Similarly, a thousand writers would create a thousand different stories with the same topic and outline. Kristen, with her elementary writing chops, failed to create a compelling protagonist even with Wayne’s advice.
The protagonist wasn’t villainous or crafty enough.
“Your boyfriend is such a bad man that you just have to copy his personality,” Wayne said bemusedly. “Why would it be difficult for you to create a protagonist who acts like a villain?”
“My boyfriend isn’t a bad man,” Kristen said with a smile, her eyes curved into crescents. “Though he’s a shameless playboy and loves to make me do embarrassing things, I know he’s a good person.”
Critical hit! Wayne liked her even more now. He lifted her chin and kissed her deeply.
“Teacher, stop kissing me. Look at the manuscript.”
Kristen pushed him away and jumped off the desk, smoothing out her wrinkled clothes. While sitting on Wayne’s lap, she listened to him talk about writing techniques.
“First, you need a solid grasp of your character. We’ve established that the protagonist of the story will do everything for revenge and has committed a lot of sins. He behaves like a villain.”
Wayne tapped on the desk. “Your protagonist is too reserved. He’s bad, but not fully so. I see him passively being forced to do bad rather than doing bad actively. That’s a problem. You can’t leave a deep impression like that. Currently, your protagonist seems like a pushover trying to get what he wants while clinging to his conscience.”
Kristen nodded vehemently, urging him to continue.
“A novel isn’t a movie. The readers cannot just see the character. To make them understand a character immediately, the character has to be radical...”
“Look at your protagonist. Is he radical? Has he really been stopping at nothing for his revenge?”
“He hasn’t, has he? So you have to make changes.”
“Write him like this...” Wayne typed on the typewriter. “I’ll list a few traits of antagonists for you to add to the story to flesh out the protagonist.”
“First, he smiles a lot and shows great confidence.”
“Second, he’s a charismatic leader able to attract subordinates who will sacrifice themselves for him. Every time he appears, he’s joined by a large group. He’s never alone.”
“Third, he has a great ambition and a noble pursuit, always talking about the world and all of humanity. Every day, he works hard for his dreams. Failures only make him work harder rather than discourage him.”
“He’s also rational, never talking about love or friendship. He believes that everyone has to rely on themselves rather than seeking help from gods. He’s an atheist...”
The more Wayne spoke, the more confused Kristen became. She covered his mouth and said, “Allow me to chime in, Teacher.”
“Sure, but I want to be in later.”
“Teacher, based on my education, the kind of people you just described are usually considered heroes rather than villains. The protagonist is the opposite of a villain.”
“You’re too young to understand heroes.” Wayne launched into a spiel. “Protagonists, or heroes who oppose the villains, do not have a clear goal, often pontificating about empty beliefs. They are pushed along and usually act on their own. They do not believe in teamwork and often only make an appearance after everything bad has happened...”
“They smile little and keep losing their temper, only laughing after stopping others from fulfilling their dreams...”
“That, is a hero.”
“Um...” Kristen’s confusion compounded. “Teacher, if that’s the case, you are a villain.”
“Do you like that?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s right. Now, it’s time for me to be inside.” Wayne rubbed his hands together with a smirk. When Kristen gave him a bashful look, he suddenly stood up. “Ah, I just remembered there’s a meeting I have to attend for there to even be a meeting. Keep writing. I’ll be back with Veronica tonight.”
With that, he up and walked away, leaving Kristen hanging.
“Bad man, you’re the worst.”
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