218 Stealing all the Headlines (1/2)

”I've become famous… as I wished, I'm now headline news!”

I abandoned all so-called sense of shame for my reputation, and now even I feared myself after I gave up all my limits.

I obtained those fresh flowers with great difficulty after I made an incredible effort to contact all the plant specialist mages I could. I stole my formal attire from some random groom, I spent a great amount of money to purchase those balloons from the goblins, and if it weren't for the fact that it was still daylight, I even prepared goblin fireworks in case Amelia arrived at nighttime.

You see, in order to steal all the headlines, I was giving it my all.

It seemed that my luck was actually pretty good. At the very least, it was better than a certain person, who had failed to steal the headlines due to an even more attention-grabbing piece of news.

One of the people involved was the famous beautiful archmage with a renowned reputation—Amelia, the former Truth Overseer, who possessed beauty, brains, and power. That was why this mega-level gossip of ”kneeling at the intersection to beg to get back together again” immediately spread through the entirety of Karo City in a single day. Just about everybody was discussing this hot topic.

”Did you hear? That Roland guy actually bought all the available fresh flowers that day and spent at least several tens of thousands of gold coins, just for that one moment…”

Seeing my Reputation points increase at a furious pace, I was both delighted and frightened. I prayed that this incident wouldn't become known in the mortal plane, especially by a certain person.

And what scared me the most of all was Amelia's reaction.

If she beat me up at that time… I had expected an over 90% possibility that she would react like that, which would actually be easy to deal with.

As long as she beat me up, this incident would end just like that, and the headline would be set. The ”failed romance” would easily become a huge piece of news, and this would actually solidify my status as a scumbag even more… By the way, it wasn't easy for me to think of some way to give myself the reputation of a scumbag.

However, Amelia's reaction was far from what I expected. She neither got angry, nor did she go on a rampage right then and there.

She only ground her teeth and squeezed out the words ”Roland, you bastard” in a particularly low voice. When combined with her mysteriously reddening face, it would easily make others read too much into it.

I could understand, as I knew she was just forcing down her anger in order to protect her angelic reputation and not get exposed here. But what was with her red face as she accepted my flower bouquet? Was this supposed to be accepting my request to get back together again? But the problem was that this was all just a rumor to begin with! With no romance to begin with, how could we possibly get back together!

”Congratulations, you actually got ahead of me in finding a girlfriend. And she's even Teacher Amelia. Having a student-teacher romance? You lucky bastard. Sigh, I suppose that in this entire world, only you can conquer her heart. Treat her well in the future. Stop messing around, or there'll be quite a lot of people that'll come looking for trouble against you.”

Kaid! This guy's congratulations for my upcoming wedding was coming way too soon. Stop touching your beard and pretending to be giving me your blessings while acting like some saint. I still wasn't prepared yet!

Alright. Since I didn't think before I acted, perhaps I was now in deep trouble.

Now, whenever I saw Amelia, who was always so direct and unabashed in the past, she would blush to the point where even her ears would turn red, acting all shy. When the ferocious tiger suddenly turned into a cute tiger, when the maniacal witch suddenly turned into a romantic teenaged girl—this abnormal feeling made me really want to smash my head against a wall.

*Smack!* *Smack!* *Smack!*

Fine then, I already did smash my head into the wall to the point that I was bleeding all over, but this still hadn't been resolved. The past few days even Reyne had been looking at me with an expression that she believed I was a scumbag.

The most abnormal part of all was that after I finally got to Venerated status, there wasn't something like (villainous name known far and wide) tacked on to the end like usual, but instead…

[Venerated (playboy who has finally reformed): 20000/20000 points. System Reminder: As a playboy who's finally reformed, you need to treat Amelia well from now on. As your mother, I'm so proud of you, and I wish you the best. You absolutely have to have an active little baby that's just as mega-level mischievous as the two of you.]

Alright, at the time I truly didn't know how to respond anymore. If it was possible, I really wanted to fight my System to the death, but the other slightly more serious system notification finally allowed me to heave a sigh of relief.

[System Notification: The Mage Country Arlodante now views you as Venerated. The first stage of the Epic-ranked Quest ”Battle of Two Dragons” has been completed. You have now officially chosen the Mage Country, and will be rewarded with 50,000 Fate Points.]

[For the next step, please proceed to the Mage Country's capital of Arlo to find the Truth Overseer named Oslowen. If you don't trigger the next stage of the quest within one year, 100,000 Fate Points will be deducted.]

[88%, 10243]

Perhaps this large number of Fate Points that I just received gave my System new motivation. Its comments were sharper than ever before.

As for the next stage of my quest? I didn't intend to do it for the time being, as the reward seemed so easy to come by [Easy? Are you really sure?], and the part where I would suffer would likely come later. And as for that point deduction punishment, all I'd to do was secretly run off and trigger the next stage of the quest at some point in time [Do you think your System is an idiot?]

Alright, I knew that I would likely suffer at the hands of my System in the end, but there was nothing wrong in dreaming a good dream, was there? I truly felt that my System was preparing a deep pitfall for me, and I really didn't want to jump into it. But based on my understanding of the System, there would always be a reason for me to jump into it in the end, and I would be forced into it.

After I tossed all those annoying things to the back of my mind, there were still things that I could be happy about. At the very least, my Reputation increased at a much faster rate than I had expected, and I didn't even need to use my backup plan, which would risk Adam beating me to death—dragging the other beautiful and well-renowned mage Margaret's name through the mud in order to have a forbidden taboo love triangle scandal, or even a love square… I suddenly couldn't help but feel a strong sense of pity for myself. In such a day and age, apart from me, was there anyone else that would voluntarily make himself into a scumbag? Why was it so difficult to obtain some reputation?

Fine then, let's not talk about those heartbreaking things anymore. Let's focus on the happy things in life, instead.

At the very least, our allied armies had finished organizing. Although it was impossible to have an overall command system or anything like that, all the factions were very interested in eliminating Emordilorcan. At least before we accomplished our goal, I wouldn't have to worry about any internal conflicts causing our self-destruction.

In order to prevent a hilarious scenario like ”Roland felt that he had such an advantage that Roland decided to just all-out attack without a plan! Oh, Roland is now typing gg (good game and surrender), how regrettable” appearing, I indeed made some efforts at increasing our chances of victory.

The first wave sent out would forever be cannon fodder, but this time, the cannon fodder was at quite a high level. The huge demon army became our first wave, and of course, if everything was successful, they might even become our last.

As for why I sent the demons as the first wave? It wasn't that I personally viewed them with distaste; it was that all the other species and factions viewed them with distaste. Just standing together on the same side as demons made them all feel unpleasant, and they kept worrying about the possibility of some horrific plot awaiting them at the end.

”You say that there's a top-level Demon Warlock in your army controlling these demons? Stop joking around! You think I'm a novice greenhorn? There's no way that anyone from the mortal plane could possibly control such a large-scale demon army. How is it possible for there not to be some Demon Lord from the lower planes here?”

”Don't work hard only to have the demons reap all the benefits in the end! Before we understand what's really going on, we refuse to listen to your commands.”

Well, it couldn't be helped that the demons had such a negative reputation. For our own side's morale and trust, I had Reyne send out her entire demon army for them to be the first wave of cannon fodder.

Reyne unhesitatingly and directly accepted.

She stood on her demonized dragon's back and watched her destructive demon army proceed, leaving nothing but scorched earth in their wake. I mysteriously felt as if it would be really fun, giving me the feeling of an evil boss behind the scenes.

”You finally feel the joy of it? You were a lich and then the commander of tremendous undead armies. You always used so many underhanded plots, with even the Gods falling victim to you. You were always the biggest evil antagonist of all.”

Fine then, I now regretted asking Reyne. Suddenly, she smiled as slyly as a fox.

”However, there's nothing wrong with playing the role of the antagonist. At the very least, bad people live far longer than good people. If you really were as proper and had good morals like the main characters of most stories, you'd perhaps be nothing more than a rotting corpse by now.”