Shift! The Side-Character Heroine

In the familiar world of the cognitive mind, or rather, the subconscious world, or even, a type of dream world, there was only one eye-catching, mysterious huge door in the vastness of space. This was because a few vivid figures were already standing at the door. These character cards were just like personality masks. Zhao Youyue could pick any of those masks at her discretion. She could even swap them out, any time she wanted.

Zhao Youyue had not yet chosen to sacrifice any of her character cards. Even a “highly popular character card” like the “Youyue Meow card” was still spared. This character card had proven to be extremely useful in the spiritual source world. Moreover, it could prolong its lifespan by drawing energy from the spiritual source world. Hence, even with an expiry date, she could prolong its lifespan, one second at a time.

Therefore, Zhao Youyue had to step into a random world, once again. Randomness may have been unpredictable, but she had not exactly lost anything from it. It was true that she had been shoved into some really bad works and recently, every Tom, Dick, and Harry seemed to have become creators. Bearing that in mind, she was prepared to enter a completely hopeless world.

However, as long as she gets a random, reliable work that would provide her with a space to operate, she could achieve a win-win situation, together with the creator. For example, in the “Tale of Wuxia” game series, Jane Doe Su turned the game into an extremely hot topic. Because of her efforts, the game was now trending on the internet. The game was already reputable, to begin with, and she had turned it viral.

It should be no surprise if “Tale of Wuxia 3: Swords of the Future” receives the Best RPG single player game award of the year.

This had given Zhao Youyue a new lease of inspiration. The randomness of the “Two Dimensional Gate” had its graces. Now, she was ready to gamble on a new random world of works.

Lady Zhao, who was essentially an African headman[1] was also very stubborn. She always felt that the next time she drew a card, no, the next random world, it would grant her a “sleeping victory”…

Actually, if you looked at all of Zhao Youyue’s character cards, the only real “sleeping victory” she had earned was with the “literary girl” Wen Qingyu, because Shi Jingnian was an extraordinarily talented genius. The other characters had more or less required the drama queen Zhao Youyue to put in lots of effort and perform.

This was probably what an African headman was. Her efforts had far outweighed her luck, but she always wanted to proudly tell everyone that she had been lucky. Call her a European Emperor, please!

Others would break out in laughter at that. The “Two Dimensional Gate” was not the only object that refused to gratify her. Zhao Youyue was a notorious African headman in many other games of chance. Many viewers enjoyed watching the stubborn Zhao Youyue spam her gachas. In cases where she was having extremely bad luck, money would pave a bloody road…

Tencent games were ideal for Lady Zhao. After all, if you had money, you can be the boss. This did not apply to NetEase games, though. Regardless of your wealth, NetEase games would remain as your boss, unless you directly bought their company over.

Take a look at “Fantasy Westward Journey.” Zhao Youyue had personally spent money to get better in the game, but nothing had turned out as planned. All the weapons and accessories she got were “no level” light weapons, three super boost spiritual earrings with the exact same stats, and such were all fake. In this game, there was no such thing as “no level” equipment, whatsoever!

However, when others spent money, they got the good stuff. With the amount of money Zhao Youyue had spent on the game, she could already buy those weapons in real life. However, the stubborn missy still believed that she was a European Emperor…

This time, Zhao Youyue skillfully entered the “Two Dimensional Gate,” once again. She should finally be able to enter a cooking world this time, right? She had even named her society “FR Society.” If she still did not get herself into such a world, her society was going to crumble. After all, Xu Jing’s cooking was only limited to home cooking. There would be no “light-emitting cuisine” on par with “spiritual music” of Goddess Chu. How would she be able to conquer the appetites of all the teachers and students in school?

Wait. She shouldn’t think like that. That was only asking for trouble. She should start thinking in the opposite direction. If she did not expect to enter a cooking world this time, would fate throw her a bone?

At the same time, she also entertained the possibility of randomly entering a regular, urban world. She could still find a path by joining the culinary artists of that world. She would directly mess up the original idea of the story, which was an urban love story, and turn it into a gourmet one. That would work too, right?

However, it would be very difficult to create an iconic character when a story is forcibly deviated from the original storyline. The biggest taboo for creators would be an unclear storyline. It was best to set the tone of the story at the beginning, and then write around it.

Zhao Youyue had repeatedly thought about trying to create a work focused on delicacies. After all, she was very good at tasting food. Whenever she “ate books” with the Wen Qingyu card activated, she could even describe the taste of the books as various types of delicacies, at a level that surpassed the heroine in the original work.

However, because Zhao Youyue often interacted with many creators, she understood very well that the process of creation was truly no easy task. The literary girl Wen Qingyu moved on to creation herself, only because she ran out of books to eat. However, reality had so many more books to offer, that Zhao Youyue would never be able to finish reading all of them. How could she possibly gain the motivation to start creating?

Zhao Youyue actually regretted it very much. Wen Qingyu’s character was evidently more of a reader. She was better-suited as an editor, to advice creators and help them broaden their imaginations. She would have been very good at her job. Either way, she would not have to do it herself…

If she had known this earlier, she would have given Wen Qingyu similar settings as Xu Jing, who would be “uncomfortable and would feel like dying if she did not study.” However, if she did this, Wen Qingyu might not have turned out as demure and cute as she was. A creator like her who did not suffer from “laziness,” did not delay her updates, and did not look for various excuses to go and gather materials would be too dull.

This was similar to how some people like a hard-working genius was not a genius at all. Only people who relied on their talents entirely could be considered geniuses. In the real world, the former would always trounce the latter.

Among the many creators in the world, quite a few genius authors were really weird and were plagued by various problems. However, those who could really reach the peak were those that were born talented and equally hard-working…

Wen Qingyu’s quirk was that she loved reading more than writing. Whenever Zhao Youyue used this character card, she was always ready to write, but if there was a book beside her, she definitely had to pick and chew on it. Whenever she was with Han Leng, she would never resist eating the things he wrote. Why write a book by yourself, when you have so many books to eat?!

Zhao Youyue felt truly helpless. If she forced herself to write something and tasted it, the experience would have been most awful. Works had to be written from the heart, or they would never reach the heart, or in this case, the stomach of the insightful.

If a book was not iconic, it should have never been written, in the first place. It was not like she needed to earn money from books. It was like she had a father-son relationship with creators. They could just point at her, and she would be rewarded…

Perhaps, her best option was to look for creators who had great potential and invest in them ahead of time.

Just as Zhao Youyue got busy imagining things, she finally saw the name of this new world —- —- “Everyone in the World Other than Myself is in A Deep Sleep.”

Translation Note:

[1] “African headman” is a Chinese internet slang, used often in card games to refer to the unluckiest of all unlucky people.