Days as a Spiritual Mentor in American Comics

The room fell silent.

Agent was the first to stand up and say, "You set up the hotel tragedy?!"

"What's the problem?" Greed retorted. "I got my inspiration from the Bishop."

Agent opened his mouth, glanced at the Transcendent, and thought to himself that he should have realized earlier that the Bishop rarely participates in the game; it's highly unlikely for him to have any connection with the Transcendent. They barely know each other, and the chance of the Transcendent designing game elements based on his experiences was slim.

On the other hand, every Shiller could access the memory bank, and he himself knew about the Bishop's past experiences. That meant almost every Shiller was aware of how Greed, who was adept at scavenging, was best at reusing waste.

"Are you thinking in your head that the Bishop is useless?" Greed asked the agent, staring at him.

"I'm not, I didn't, you're talking nonsense," the agent categorically denied.

Meanwhile, Batman was mentally piecing together the entire backstory along with Greed's setup, making the origins of every background power in the game clear.

Originally, the origin of the Church seemed a bit abrupt because simply creating some bizarre incidents and then showing up to rescue hardly seemed enough to develop the Church to its current state.

But if they had made a deal with an Outer God and cooperated with an old family born during the Age of Exploration, then it wouldn't be surprising at all.

The line involving Greed must be that the ancestors of the Sirteck family were worshippers of Evil Gods since the Age of Exploration, faked their deaths to escape the Royal Family, and then established a hotel in Massachusetts.

In the process of building the hotel, they did not abandon their faith, continuously engaging in various evil rituals within the hotel, which attracted all sorts of monsters.

By capitalizing on the hotel, the Sirteck family made their first fortune and firmly established themselves in Sigeltek, gradually turning it into their stronghold.

And with the dawn of a new era, they were no longer satisfied with being just an ordinary family, so they orchestrated the hotel tragedy themselves, supported the Church to profit from it, used the power of Evil Gods to create bizarre incidents globally, raised the status of the Church, and step by step, developed a global dictatorship organization.

Very well, this fits perfectly with Greed's style. This is what Arrogant thought.

"So, if even this backstory is made up by us, then what exactly did you do?" the agent still stubbornly bit onto the point about the Transcendent.

"I also made up a backstory, okay!" the Transcendent defended himself: "Isn't Madeline's story written by me? Isn't this twist good?"

Arrogant tapped his fingers gently on the table and then asked, "Where's the twist?"

"It's that at first he seemed like a victim and an assistant to the Protagonist, but turned against us when it came to core interests."

Arrogant fell into a momentary silence, then spoke, "Do you think after reading Madeline's notes, we would still consider her a normal person?"

Before the Transcendent could say anything, Arrogant continued, "Alright, let me ask you another question. How do you rate Bruce's Psychology level?"

Transcendent glanced at Bruce.

"I guess you would say 'not bad', so you think it's unsurprising that someone would still think she is a good person after reading the description of the tragedy involving her relatives written by Madeline."

Transcendent felt dizzy as he was led around by Arrogant's logic and looked towards Greed.

"He's calling you incompetent," Greed stated bluntly.

"You didn't write it on purpose?" Batman asked seriously, adding, "Wasn't it to give us a hint, to let us discover Madeline's true face in advance?"

"He didn't." Arrogant quickly replied, "He's not a Human and cannot understand what relatives are; that's why he could describe everything so coldly."

"No!" the Transcendent protested: "Though I'm not Human, I do have relatives!"

"Would you feel sad if they died?"

"Uh..." Transcendent was stumped by the question, pausing before saying, "They won't die."

"That's exactly the problem," Arrogant pointed out while pressing on the table with his finger.

Transcendent watched as a wary expression slowly formed in Batman's eyes, as if he was looking at a psychopath.

Feeling unjustly aggrieved, the Transcendent said, "I too am an intelligent being with emotions, but my relatives just won't die. Is it wrong to state a fact?"

"But you think it's fine for Madeline to write it that way," Bruce added fuel to the fire.

"Because I... well, I thought they were just details. I wrote them carelessly without much emotion; it was an oversight. Happy now?"

"What's the deal with the 'Skill'?" Batman raised another question. "I can understand the others', but what's with Greed's Wind Blade?"

"That's not actually a Wind Blade," Greed shook his head and replied, "That's Space Cutting; my role is 'Cult Descendant.' Basically, this skill is inherited from my ancestors."

"But weren't your ancestors made up by you?"

"I created them based on this role," Greed explained. "Your process should be the same as mine – you choose your role first, and then you acquire the corresponding skills."

The others nodded; most of them did it just like how Arrogant had chosen the role of a Soul Calmer and then obtained the Soothing Soul skill.

"What professions could you choose from?" Bruce asked out of curiosity.

"Descendant of a Cultist, Descendant of a Captain, and Descendant of the King," Greed spread his hands and said, "I've already told you, my profession is that of a rich second generation."

Everyone was speechless, they didn't expect his words to be true. Weren't these identities just branches of the rich second generation profession?

"Don't talk nonsense, it's called 'Heir of a well-known family'," said Transcendent. "All your professions have names, didn't you listen carefully?"

Arrogant recalled for a moment, Transcendent had indeed told him before that he was clergy, and he thought it was just a brief adjective. He didn't expect the profession to literally be "clergy."

"I haven't asked you yet." Greed looked at Batman and asked, "How can you control corpses? What is your profession?"

"He is the 'Child of Nature,' with the chosen branch being 'corpse collector.' Actually, I wanted to persuade him to choose Druid, but he didn't listen."

Batman sighed softly and explained, "As the introduction stated, Faralines is also known as the lighthouse covered in heavy snow. Although we can't be sure what season it is outside, what if it's winter? Where would I find animals to command?"

Transcendent laughed awkwardly, admitting that he did indeed want to trick Batman a bit, as he thought it would be more interesting.

"And what about Joker?" Bruce looked towards Joker and the Pale Knight.

"This one is the 'Great Artist' profession's 'Painter,' whose skill is to change the dice's points. This one is the 'Elite's' profession of 'Lawyer,' whose skill is Persuasion," Transcendent introduced them one by one, listing their professions and the branches they had chosen.

It's really called 'Great Artist'? Greed was surprised because when they were asking about each other's identities before, Joker had said he was a Great Artist, and everyone thought it was just his exaggerated way of speaking. No one expected that the profession was actually called "Great Artist."

Transcendent seemed unconcerned with their strange looks and pointed to Night Owl, saying, "He is a 'Law Enforcement' professional within the 'Police' category, Bruce is under the 'dishonest' category as a 'Disguiser,' transforming according to the switch of the two identities."

Everyone's gaze turned towards Bruce, it was clear that his identity was special.

"Alright, at the beginning of the game, after I picked my branch profession, Transcendent told me that my profession was quite special, as I could select two identities, one true and one false, with two sets of skills."

"My true identity is Agent, and my false identity is Psychiatrist. The Agent's skill is Shooting Mastery, and the Psychiatrist's skill is First Aid."

"How can a Psychiatrist have the skill of first aid?" Greed asked, puzzled, "I've been wanting to ask, why does your skill restore health value, not mental health value?"

"Actually, I'm not a Psychiatrist at all, just a regular Doctor, but I claimed to be a Psychiatrist," said Bruce. "I didn't want to expose my own skills, and I wanted to give the impression that there was a way to restore mental health value, so you all might not be so cautious."

Now Arrogant understood why Transcendent spoke so strangely when asked if one could be a Psychiatrist.

Bruce's intent was obviously to lull the others. He had thought from the start that this might be a game where players compete against each other.

By saying he was a Psychiatrist, it would be easy to associate him with restoring mental health value. If some inexperienced players only thought it was a team cooperation game and felt that it was okay to have him backing them up even if they lost some mental health value, he would gain an advantage.

"Maliciously clever," Greed commented.

"Now that the story is almost straightened out," Transcendent put his hands on the table and swept his gaze around, "can we now talk about how exactly you all managed to play the game like this?"

"It's a problem with the backstory," said Arrogant. "You gave them too much freedom. This situation is of your own doing."

"I don't love hearing that," said Greed. "First of all, our professions are fixed, and even if we can pick branches, there aren't many options. That's a big restriction already."

"Secondly, we can't choose skills, and we can't even see what they are before choosing a profession. It's a blind choice. My Space Cutting skill actually isn't very useful..."

"You're talking nonsense!" Transcendent slammed his fist on the table and stood up, saying, "Didn't you use that skill to kill the Protagonist?!"

"You think without that skill I couldn't have killed him?!" Greed bared his teeth.

Transcendent was left speechless.

"It really should have been your group of friends who saw this," Arrogant said slowly, and Greed immediately simmered down.

"I was just stating the facts," Greed said. "The restriction of fixed professions is already big enough. If you don't allow editing of backstories, then the game is too boring."

"Moreover, the backstories we wrote, as outlandish as they were, still made sense in the end, didn't they? Even if the details weren't very precise, the overall integration wasn't bad. Starting the game with such backgrounds isn't a problem. I think the problem didn't lie there."

Bruce, who also wrote a rather outlandish backstory, agreed with Greed's point but then added, "I think it's because the Protagonist died too early. If he hadn't been killed right at the beginning, he could at least have led us to the main storyline."

"But I didn't kill Madeline," Greed immediately defended. "I left alive one member of the protagonist's group, wasn't that considerate enough?"

"But Madeline went mad, she didn't give any useful clues." Bruce said, "That's not my doing, I'm not a Psychiatrist, I couldn't have hypnotized her."

"Then how did she go mad?" Batman asked, curious, then he suddenly realized and said, "I remember now, the Wandering is actually an avatar of an Outer God, was she driven mad by the Outer God?"

Transcendent nodded and said, "But if Greed hadn't trapped Ipo's blood entity inside Doug's corpse, Madeline wouldn't have gone mad from touching his body."

"How did Greed trap the Wandering?" Batman asked again.

"Using water, that thing is afraid of water," Greed said. "At that time, I still didn't know he was an avatar of the Outer God. Thanks should actually go to Bruce for that."

Everyone looked at Bruce again.

"The Dark River," said Bruce.