Chapter 8: No One Understands the Protagonist Better Than Him

“The difference between a wizard and a wizard apprentice isn’t about how many witchcraft spells they’ve mastered or how much magic power they possess.”

While reciting the text from the book, An Luo also explained some of the settings from Supreme Wizard to Meieruita.

Meieruita wasn’t particularly interested in the plot developments. Instead, he placed more importance on the world’s settings and background knowledge.

So An Luo told him.

Meieruita looked puzzled. “Evolution?”

He had never encountered such a concept before.

“Yeah.” An Luo’s memories of some plot points were fuzzy, but the settings were crystal clear.

He said, “All creatures in the world are constantly evolving. Humans didn’t start out as humans. In the beginning, all life originated from the ocean, and the earliest life forms born there were single-celled prokaryotes.”

Cells, insects, fish, lizards, ancient apes, Homo sapiens.

Meieruita had never been exposed to such wondrous knowledge before. He quickly jotted down everything An Luo said, his quill pen flying across the page.

Then, he raised a question. “So, the mermaids from the sailors’ legends—are they creatures that never came ashore and evolved in the ocean?”

An Luo replied, “I’m not sure. That falls under fantasy creatures. I didn’t set it up in that much detail. To be honest, evolution theory comes from my world. I just borrowed it. In reality, my world is pretty barren. The only intelligent life is humans—no fantasy races like in this world, and certainly no fantastical powers.”

An Luo subtly tried to implant the impression in Meieruita’s mind that Earth was a poor, rundown place, doing his utmost to quash any potential interest.

My home? Just some backwater village in the sticks. Nothing there. Totally broken down. Don’t even think about checking it out. Not worth it.

“Understood.” Meieruita swiftly wrote a note: “Humans best fit evolution theory. Other creatures TBD.”

“Exactly.” An Luo said, “Let’s continue with evolution.”

Meieruita flipped to the next page in his notebook.

“Wizards discerned the path of human development in the past. Through research, they invented the first witchcraft. But the ancient wizards soon discovered that the human life form had far too many limitations, and their senses were too lacking. To advance further and pursue more knowledge, they had to evolve proactively.”

Meieruita thought for a moment. “Proactive… Evolution divides into passive and proactive. Passive evolution is influenced by the environment—you have to change yourself to adapt to the conditions, and it takes a ton of time. But proactive is different, right?”

An Luo: “Yes.”

He grasped it that quickly. As expected of the protagonist—his brain is sharp.

An Luo continued, “Wizard apprentices are still human, but wizards have already evolved, shedding their humanity to become a humanoid yet inhuman species. The higher the rank of the wizard, the greater the degree of evolution, and the wider the gap from humans. At the same time, their mindset changes as well.”

Meieruita’s voice was faint. “Just like how humans don’t consider fish to be their own kind.”

He had already sensed the cruelty of the wizard world.

In the mundane world, nobles and commoners were both human, the same race, yet the oppression was already so brutal.

But high-rank wizards and low-rank wizards weren’t even the same species. The infighting would only be more ruthless.

Take the wizard in this wizard tower, for example. He didn’t care at all about the lives of wizard apprentices, whether they came from nobility or commoners—he treated them all equally as ants.

Just like how humans didn’t care what fish thought.

He looked up at An Luo. “After evolving, do wizards’ mindsets change too?”

“Yes.” An Luo nodded. “Once the life form changes, the mindset is affected as well.”

Many guesses flashed through Meieruita’s mind. Then he asked the most crucial question. “So, how does one evolve proactively?”

Before An Luo could answer, Meieruita gazed at his face and guessed. “The soul influences the body, so proactive evolution must start from the soul. The soul evolves first, thereby influencing the body. Is that it?”

“Yeah.” An Luo thought, The protagonist is so smart—he gets it right away. “Evolution requires finding a warp point.”

Another brand-new concept. Meieruita waited for An Luo to explain further.

“This has to do with dimensions,” An Luo said. “Humans live in three-dimensional space—length, width, and height.”

For clarity, he drew a cube on the paper. “These three edges are length, width, and height.”

“But beyond the three dimensions we can perceive, the world has other dimensions. For example, one dimension is just a line, two dimensions is a plane.”

An Luo continued, “Creatures living in a one-dimensional world see everything as a single point identical to themselves—they can’t see the whole line. Creatures in a two-dimensional world see everything as lines of varying lengths—they can’t see the full plane.”

Meieruita quickly drew a further conclusion. “Then, creatures in a three-dimensional world see everything as different surfaces—they can’t see the full volume at once.”

He thought for a moment and added, “Two-dimensional beings can only see one-dimensional images, three-dimensional beings only see two-dimensional images. That’s the limit of our senses. Two-dimensional beings must evolve into three-dimensional ones to truly see the full picture of their world. So our evolution is about becoming four-dimensional beings as much as possible, right?”

“And warp points…” Meieruita stared into An Luo’s eyes. “Those are points where different dimensions intersect?”

An Luo couldn’t help exclaiming, “Exactly! You’re so smart!”

Meieruita’s conclusions seemed simple enough—nothing special, as many modern people could think of them with a bit of pondering. But the thing was, Meieruita had never been to school. He had only been a servant before, learning to read from cheap knight novels at best, with extremely limited knowledge.

Yet he rapidly absorbed and understood all the unfamiliar concepts and theories An Luo presented, even extrapolating further.

This learning and comprehension ability was downright terrifying.

Meieruita curved his lips into a polite smile. “Thank you.”

“Warp points are mostly in wizard academies, controlled by high-level wizards. Only wizard apprentices who pass the trials can enter.”

An Luo explained, “In theory, dimensional spaces all have slight warps. For instance, a one-dimensional space slowly curves upward as it extends infinitely, eventually forming a circle and becoming two-dimensional. Two-dimensional spaces do the same, warping into a sphere to form three-dimensional space. Lower dimensions are always enveloped within higher ones—three-dimensional space is too.”

“In short, the most orthodox way to evolve proactively is for the soul to enter a higher dimension through a warp point, persist there for a while, then return, slowly influencing the body. This grants entirely new perspectives and senses.”

“Orthodox?”

Meieruita latched onto the word.

An Luo nodded. “Yeah, that’s the path a small portion of wizards take. Many wizards evolve by swiftly capturing advanced creatures at warp points, then transplanting limbs or organs from even higher creatures onto themselves—like adding a new sense. This uses the body to influence the soul. The advantage is it’s fast-acting; the downsides are it has a ceiling, and… it’s ugly.”

“For example, the wizard in this wizard tower—he transplanted an eye from an advanced creature.”

An Luo’s expression was blank. “If you lifted his wizard robe, you’d see eyes everywhere, densely packed. Dissect him, and you’d find tons more inside his body.”

The natural enemy of anyone with trypophobia.

Meieruita glanced up at An Luo.

My creator is still fixated on human aesthetics?

Maybe fish find humans ugly too, but that doesn’t stop humans from being superior beings.

In the face of power and evolution, appearance is irrelevant.

But…

Meieruita said, “So the path you arranged for me is the most orthodox one, right?”

His tone lifted at the end, carrying a hint of amusement.

An Luo: “Of course. You’re the protagonist, after all.”

This was a novel written by a human for humans, after all. It was best if the protagonist still looked mostly human. Turning into some full-on alien would be a bit too grotesque.

After thinking, he added, “But this orthodox path has drawbacks too. First, it’s extremely dangerous—low-dimensional souls are fragile. Entering a high-dimensional world requires precise timing; stay too long, and the rules there will shred you. Second, it’s slow-acting. Even if the soul ascends a bit, the body and surrounding world are still low-dimensional, so the transformation is gradual.”

An Luo shrugged. “Since this is already a real world, you can choose whichever path you want. Take your time to think about it.”

Meieruita was slightly surprised.

No commands at all. He’s handing the choice entirely to me.

This indulgence toward his creation—is it favoritism, or indifference?

“No need to think.” He closed his notebook, the slender, pale fingers holding the quill pen. “I want the best.”

“Besides, if I became utterly hideous, you might not like it anymore.”

An Luo: “…”

Big bro, why are you acting again?

An Luo got goosebumps all over.

As a rational, normal person, An Luo didn’t buy that Meieruita’s behavior stemmed from gratitude or any positive emotion.

He had written Meieruita’s character bio, after all.

Thousands of words worth!

No one understood the protagonist’s coldness and cruelty better than he did.

Meieruita was probably just pretending now to lower An Luo’s guard—like boiling a frog in warm water—then strike with full heat when An Luo was lulled, turning him into braised frog.

An Luo was spooked by his own imagination. He forced a smile and quickly changed the subject.

“But that’s all far off. Proactive evolution requires a soul tough enough, so you still need to master plenty of witchcraft knowledge, do lots of meditation, and max out your mental power before the next step.”

“Okay.” Meieruita seemed oblivious to An Luo’s tension. He smiled faintly in agreement, then went to the side to read.

He picked up Rules and Basic Applications of Fire Element Control.

Unlike An Luo, he could actually understand it.

An Luo pretended to be casual as he slipped to the other side of the room, racking his brain for how to conceal his appearance change.

Gotta be careful. If he finds out, I’ll get dissected.

But even if I successfully hide my identity, there’s still another danger.

That veteran wizard apprentice is still lurking, wanting to kill me for gold coins.

Sigh, what a headache.