Chapter 49: Gentleness, Sweetness, and Love Part 2

Like university classmates prepping for grad school or civil service exams…

Of course, one unique attitude treated the Apprentice Exam as no big deal—just another task.

Only the protagonist, Meieruita, held that view.

The Apprentice Promotion Exam differed from real-world paper tests; it was all practical.

The Wizard Tower’s owner wasn’t benevolent—his sole reason for the exam was to assign riskier troubles to capable apprentices.

Outstanding among low-level? Great—become mid-level and handle deadlier magic plants and beasts.

The exam was simple: assign dangerous magic plants or beasts and tasks. Complete to promote; fail otherwise.

Everyone had to participate, but the weak could hide and avoid contact—no penalty.

An Luo had zero plans to pass… and surely wouldn’t anyway.

For some reason, those magic plants and beasts just hated him.

The man-eating flower and thorn beast could still barely be considered accidents, but later Meieruita took him on several more missions, and those magic plants and magic beasts did the same—upon seeing An Luo, they froze for a few seconds before going completely berserk.

An Luo: …I didn’t provoke any of you.

Meieruita offered no comment on this and didn’t complain. He remained calm and composed, his emotions remarkably stable, which left An Luo quite impressed.

An Luo went to Pangzi to collect the money sent by the Lanrian Family. As usual, he pulled out a bag of gold coins as payment, but Pangzi waved it off. “The Apprentice Exam is coming up soon, so I won’t take your reward for now. If you pass and become a mid-level apprentice, don’t forget about me.”

An Luo: “I know my limits. I don’t think I’ll pass.”

“You never know,” Pangzi said. “I have a good eye for people.”

“However,” he changed the subject, “if you really don’t pass, I’ll collect the reward from you then.”

An Luo left in a daze.

Wait… Didn’t I write a dark world?

Could it be that I got it wrong and this is actually a fanfiction world?

But that’s impossible—my stats were so poor, the novel bombed so hard that the number of readers who made it to the end could be counted on two hands. Where would the fans even come from?

Ruling that out.

After returning to the dormitory, An Luo carefully reviewed his experiences and realized that people’s changes had started after he replaced his identity with the rune.

Could it be that rune [Gradual Change] at work?

The more An Luo thought about it, the more likely it seemed.

Otherwise, there was no explanation.

It couldn’t be his looks, right?

Though he was decent-looking, Meieruita was too—and he stood there like a male model—but in the original story, no one gave him any preferential treatment because of his appearance. After all, An Luo hadn’t written that.

So it was impossible.

It had to be the effect of that [Gradual Change] rune.

In the original story he wrote, every character who appeared was a bad person without exception. John was the only outlier, and he got boxed early on, establishing one of the dark world’s truths:

Good people don’t live long.

At the beginning, when An Luo was still using Lan Lian’s identity, he could clearly feel the malice and indifference directed at him.

But after he changed his identity and appeared as An Luo, that malice and indifference began to fade.

Only now did An Luo realize, belatedly, that he hadn’t felt any malicious gazes from the other wizard apprentices in a long time.

They were mostly neutral now—indifferent, without goodwill or malice.

Since An Luo had been exposed to this kind of indifference the most back on Earth, he hadn’t thought much of it.

But now, he suddenly realized that in this Wizard Tower where it was either you harming me or me harming you, indifference was practically a huge show of goodwill!

And those who had interacted with An Luo a bit more—like Alfonso, Aogufusi, and Pangzi—displayed even greater goodwill. It wasn’t exaggerated, just providing him some convenience without harming themselves, like the help from strangers on Earth who harbored no ill will. But for these people, that already qualified them as great benefactors!

Was that [Gradual Change] rune so miraculous?

An Luo suddenly felt much more hopeful about surviving in this world.

He didn’t ask for much—just that others wouldn’t come after him, letting him live peacefully.

And if this effect persisted after leaving the Wizard Tower, life in the outside world would be far more comfortable!

At the same time, the magic plants and magic beasts’ hatred toward An Luo might be a side effect of the [Gradual Change] rune.

Every gain came with a loss. The side effect actually put An Luo more at ease.

While An Luo was reading the witchcraft book on the Light Orb Spell, Meieruita returned.

“You’re back.” He was a bit absentminded. “Dinner’s still heating in the pot.”

Normally, Meieruita would give a brief response at this time, but now there was only silence. An Luo looked up in confusion and met Meieruita’s gray-green eyes staring back at him.

There was something odd about the expression on Meieruita’s face.

An Luo couldn’t quite describe it—unclear if it was joy, sorrow, or some other complex emotion.

After a while, Meieruita finally let out a low hum in response.

An Luo tilted his head.

Had he allocated most of his processing power to calculations again?

With the Apprentice Exam drawing nearer, An Luo made a decision.

He planned to tell Meieruita the rest of the plot before the exam.

And write some more Chinese runes to hand over to him.

That way, as long as he gave Meieruita some Chinese runes every month afterward to maintain some utility value, Meieruita wouldn’t act against him for the time being.

It would also show his sincerity more clearly.

Leaving aside whether An Luo himself had the ability to advance, even if they both became mid-level apprentices together, he’d only hold Meieruita back.

Lan Shengning was still a junior apprentice now, so Meieruita had to take him on missions to gain his trust, but he must have been annoyed deep down.

The Apprentice Exam was a perfect, legitimate excuse to ditch him.

And if An Luo died during a mission in the process, it might even be a pleasant surprise for Meieruita.

In the flickering candlelight, Meieruita continued flipping through that manuscript.

The manuscript wasn’t just simple notes; it was interspersed with casual essays unrelated to witchcraft knowledge, as well as diary-like entries.

In the past, Meieruita would have ignored these outright, not wasting even a moment on them.

But now, he didn’t look away.

The yellowed pages had faded ink.

[The day they detected my talent, my mother was very sad. She feared I wouldn’t fare well after leaving home. I told my mother I had to go, that becoming a wizard apprentice would make me stronger.]

[Her tears fell on the back of my hand. I said I’d come back. Now I know that if I pass the Apprentice Exam and become a mid-level apprentice, I can fight for a mission to recruit new apprentices outside.]

Moth…er…?

Meieruita frowned.

These entries weren’t continuous but scattered, appearing in blank spaces every few pages—like memories, or sources of motivation.

[My mother was very beautiful in her youth, but ever since giving birth to me, this frail and sickly child, her life got worse and worse. She looked nothing like her portrait anymore. I noticed she would sometimes stand blankly in front of it for a long time.]

[There’s a potion in the Wizard Tower that can restore youth, but I can only hope to afford it after becoming a mid-level apprentice. Junior apprentices earn too few contribution points from missions. Next month is the Apprentice Exam—I have to pass.]

There were many such fragmented phrases on the pages. As Meieruita read the previous owner’s descriptions of his mother, those snippets of text gradually pieced together a vague figure.

But when that illusory figure turned around, Meieruita was shocked to discover that it was An Luo’s face!

How could that be?!

He had never considered this.

An Luo was his Creator, male by nature, and thus rightfully occupied the image of a “father.”

Yet… Meieruita had noticed more than once that An Luo didn’t fit the “father” role.

An Luo wasn’t aloof or flaunting his authority; his behavior clashed too much with what his position demanded.

But he was still the “father,” the one wielding power—the existence Meieruita needed to overthrow and defeat.

But…

The “mother” image depicted by the manuscript’s previous owner matched An Luo astonishingly well.

Gentleness, sweetness, and love.

The previous owner clearly loved his mother deeply. She was just an ordinary person, without the ability to manipulate his mind.

And if An Luo’s role was shifted from “father” to “mother,” then both his actions and Meieruita’s feelings suddenly made perfect sense.

This realization freed Meieruita from his previous suppression and anxiety.

Yes, mother.

An Luo had created this novel—and him—all by himself. Why couldn’t he be called a “mother”?

Father and son were destined for power struggles, just like the myth An Luo had transmitted through his soul: Cronus overthrew his father to become the god king, then swallowed his children out of fear they would do the same to him.

Father devours son, son slays father—power cycles this way.

Meieruita had once seen An Luo’s influence over him as a father’s control over his child, the Creator asserting authority silently.

But what if it wasn’t?

If An Luo was his mother, then their relationship wasn’t one of control and submission.

It was… something else. A bond easier for Meieruita to accept than father and son.

A frail, beautiful, helpless mother—didn’t she need a strong child to shield him from wind and rain?