No matter how much I tried to hold onto it, time continued to slip through my fingers.
Classes unfolded in a strict routine: morning training, afternoon classes, then evening free time.
If I wasn't so busy trying to find a solution to everything, I would have found it amusing how I was basically living out the gameplay loop of Persona right now.
But obviously, I WAS busy.
The plan was... well, it wasn't foolproof. But I was fairly certain it had a 99% chance of success in saving Eve.
In the 1% chance it failed, I had Plan B, for which
And in the event that Plan B failed, there was Plan C too, which I had already hidden on Eve's body a while back just before I chose to accept her love.
But anyway, the plan required me though. And all of my SP.
I just needed to arrange enough 'plausibility' for it to work.
And to meet that plausibility, I was going out of my way to show off.
Pointing out things in class, flexing on my classmates, accepting random duels from mob characters...
Rather than an 'extra' now, I was going out of my way to try and take the role of a protagonist. But...
> NOTE: User is notified that the Trait of Playwright allows taking on a 'character' and a 'play' but that Alexander Smith is an 'Extra.' You are not qualified to take on the role of the protagonist in the story.
> NOTE: User is notified that Traits are distinct from Talents in that they are external power and authority written upon the User's record of existence. Talents, however, are an emanation born of the entire record of one's existence.
...I had to resolve those problems.
I had been operating under the assumption that I could take Roland's spot if I chose to. But even though I was the author of this world, and even though I wrote Roland and the scenario, it seemed like there were some rules that were hard-coded.
Whether fate, destiny, or the decree of a higher ranking entity, I couldn't just take the spotlight from Roland.
...Well, the system was telling me I couldn't.
If I insisted, I could do it.
But Rob was on my side, and the system was created for my sake.
If the system was saying to not do it, then there was a good reason for that.
I could guess it.
Similar to a few other webnovels and manhwas, odds were high that the moment I actively took the role of protagonist in 3D-ED the events would absolutely spiral out of control.
Roland was someone that I had thoughtfully designed to be able to resolve this entire scenario and defeat the Demon God along with achieve his own happy ending beside Mari.
Taking his spot meant I needed to simultaneously adopt that responsibility and account for the butterfly effect that unfolded from that moment onwards.
Or in other words, it would be completely trashing the story I crafted with my own hands and running on pure notes about the greater setting as a whole.
I could do that. And I was indeed planning to do that.
But it was still early.
That was why the system was prompting me. It was essentially telling me 'not yet' in terms of the minimum threshold I needed to cross in order to make it possible.
Of course, it didn't account for things I didn't currently possess or actualize.
There were a few 'tricks' that were outside of this story setting that I could pull in if things became desperate.
...But that would escalate the conflict to outerplanetary powerscaling, and that was NOT a good thing.
Something to keep in mind, yes. Something to rely on as a first measure? No.
The objective here was to stay within the bounds of the story long enough to ensure that the people I cared about were settled.
Eve and Betty were my first priorities. I had to make sure they were safe and strong enough to protect themselves first.
Which meant I had to clear the hurdle of saving Eve.
...Which went back to the whole crux of my dilemma.
'This is hard.'
...But it never went away.
That was the problem.
It seemed like while it was enough to neutralize the demonic energy, it wasn't enough to remove it.
If I had to describe it, I would hazard a guess that it was similar to how cold medicine could alleviate the symptoms of the flu virus but didn't remove the virus. That was the body's job. All the cold medicine did was provide the body ammunition and weaken the virus.
The problem was that Eve's immune system was compromised.
Thus begged the question: how do you eject something that the body had already embraced as a core part of what it was?
You couldn't. Not really.
That was why I was wracking my mind for a solution.
I HAD one. But I didn't even dare think about it in detail lest it tempted fate into making it not work.
While I was fairly sure that there weren't gods here, at least not any that could still exert direct influence, that didn't mean they couldn't exert ANY influence.
Rob existed, after all.
I did NOT want to lose Eve due to letting my plans get leaked somehow. Even if it was a 0.00000000001% chance, I was going to erase that and make it certain.
So, until I put it into action, I wasn't thinking about it.
I just had to make sure the preparations were in place before I executed.
As for what those preparations WERE...
===
"Are you sure you want to spar with me, Alex?" Roland raised his training sword and furrowed his brow, clearly concerned. "Really?"
I drew my own training sword and nodded. "Really. There are a few things I need to check."
> Jack-of-all-trades activates! Your skills have been set to average expertise!
As expected. That part remained true.
It was evening. December 7th. Two weeks before the fateful day. And it was the second free day of the week... which translated to Sunday.
I had challenged Roland to a proper sparring duel and dragged him to the challenge arena.
Because of that, we had a small audience. Mari and Eve were in the crowd, of course. But there were also some of our classmates, some upperclassmen, and even a few professors.
I was sure that at least half were spies. But that was even better.
> Playwright activates! You have selected the 'character' of 'hidden prodigy' and you have selected the 'play' of 'the hidden prodigy reveals his true depths for the first time!'
That was expected as well.
To the general populace, I was still a mystery. The reason for that was that I was initially a nobody. An extra.
But after all that I had been through, after they saw the people I associated with, the battles I resolved, and the glimmers of my abilities before, now they were convinced I was hiding something.
So it was time to cement that reputation.
I couldn't be the protagonist of this story.
But I could be the protagonist of the sidestory that belonged to me alone.
And in order for that to happen...