The youth ignored the two church higher-ups who were already planning how and where to crucify him. His eyes were at the girl walking in front. To the unreliable being in his mind, he asked,"Hey, system. Answer me. Why is there another female lead in this world? Didn"t you say it"s the princess confronting the royal concubine Agatha, not a daughter of a Viscount?"
The priests had clearly introduced Marian as the heiress of a Viscounty. Believers of the G.o.ddess of Wisdom were arrogant and stubborn when it comes to the truth. They wouldn"t lie. This only meant one thing.
Marian Osbon was also a female protagonist.
Yet he was not informed about it. "Hey, b.a.s.t.a.r.d!"
The system let out an awkward chuckle. It then went silent for almost a minute before reasoning out with him. "Host… er, I didn"t tell you because she"s not related to our mission. I, It"s for your own good! So you can concentrate on what you should do! Believe me, my intention is only this!... And also, didn"t you already see it from the previous world? A world can have multiple protagonists aside from the original pair… Every world is large after all."
Jiang Li felt weird in his heart. Then he inwardly shook his head.
"Have you always been treating me like an idiot? I"m asking about why there"s another female lead because it might mean there"s another villainess! So if ever there is one, it"s not related to me because that whoever Agatha is my only goal in this world?"
The system was initially caught off-guard, so it did not immediately reply, double-checking something. It then clarified, "Don"t worry, host. There is only one villainess here. The one Marian Osbon and her knight Adam has to confront is a villain."
"Oh."
Jiang Li didn"t really believe it. In all the worlds he had gone to, apart from the villainess, there were also the second male leads or villains. For example, in Jiang Ying Yue"s world, she was not the only person supposed to give the biggest headache to the leads, there was also the cruel fourth prince.
So yeah, when was it not a trend for both leads to have a very persistent admirer who would do anything to obstruct them from getting together?
Ah, wait. Perhaps, Selena"s realm was an exception. All it had were minor girl rivals since the author of Liu De"s story was more focused on creating villains for Liu De.
Jiang Li looked away from the girl walking in front. They were already in the church"s dining hall and the nuns and church volunteers were preparing the table for them. The ladies and the priests sat down. Before he opened a seat for himself, he asked one last question. "System, when you threw me to this kingdom, are you perhaps thinking I won"t b.u.mp into this heroine so you felt it"s not necessary for me to know?"
System:...
That time, the one asked wondered what would happen if it confessed that it simply got the wrong soul client. Instead of the one from Holon, it grabbed the poor soul from Borley...
Silence could mean yes and no at the same time. The interpretation was basically up to the person who asked.
"Ah, let"s pretend I didn"t know I"m not muted."
When the bishop led the prayer, Jiang Li did not actually close his eyes but stare at the candle flame trapped in the gla.s.s lamp. His mind flew somewhere, the plot he got playing.
It had been a week since he arrived in this world. The system said he was back to doing main missions and this time, the one who needed to be steered away from the path of destruction was a witch called Agatha.
It was unfortunate for him, but the stage of the story was in the neighboring kingdom, Holon. This was also why he immediately denied the possibility that the female lead in his memory was Marian.
But yup, to his annoyance, he had not only entered the world when it was already halfway into the story, he had also become a young wandering philosopher of Borley Kingdom. The combination of his age and profession was really making him grind his teeth in anger, yet nothing beats knowing he would really have to travel on foot for about three or so months before reaching the Holon Kingdom. By then, who knows if all that would be left for him to do was attend a celebratory feast because the story had ended?
Anyway, that was all his complaint about his current situation. He was an orphan and a regular lowborn so there was nothing interesting about his previous days… There was only conflict with a landowner south of the Osbon"s fief. Then again, he simply fled after knowing the situation, finding nothing more urgent than to arrive at the Holon Kingdom.
The male lead was a young duke from a powerful family named Andre Grey while the female lead, Margarette Holon, was a low-rank, almost forgotten, princess. The two had a contractual marriage and were set to separate in a few years. Divorce was not allowed in this continent so they made an agreement. After three years, the female lead would pretend to die and then slip away before taking over a new ident.i.ty somewhere.
Yet how could there be a divorce between the two lead characters?
The marriage started off loveless, but due to the matchmaker slash troublemakers, they ended up falling for each other. And the process was quite slow... it appeared natural because while at it, they were strengthening their fief, capturing the hearts of the people, and saving the kingdom from a malicious witch. Weren"t they a lovely couple?
Agatha, the villainess, was quite the opposite. She was a very ambitious woman who wanted to be queen. The problem with her was that she could go to any length to get what she wanted. To be honest, the life of this person even before the plot was already quite spicy.
When she first entered the palace, she was so young yet was selected for the female lead"s grandfather, the former king. However, due to the age difference, she couldn"t find herself liking her husband.
She got into an ambiguous relations.h.i.+p with the old king"s brother who was younger than him by a decade. The man knew of Agatha"s desire for the queen"s crown so he planned to stage a rebellion. Unfortunately, in a battle against the Borley Kingdom, he died before he could even begin.
A year after that, the old monarch also died due to a strange disease. A new king was placed on the throne. Agatha vanished from the scene for several months.
Yet one day, the king who had just finished a hunt went back with this woman in tow. He was so smitten with her and began to favor her over his queen.
The only thing barring her from getting the queen"s crown and seal was that she could not bear a child. Oh, wait, there was actually one more reason, the king could not depose the current queen since she was blessed and acknowledged by the churches in the kingdom.
But without these, given the monarch"s affection for her, she could have been the one sitting on the throne next to him.
Agatha"s misgivings stemmed from this fact. So using her talent in witchcraft, she kept creating troubles for the royal family and the other members of the aristocracy. She hated those supporting the queen and those related to her, and her hate manifested in a strange illness that made one have an insane fit of laughter, causing cardiac arrest or asphyxiation.
Princess Margarette was not in the queen"s faction so she could have lived a life away from these troubles... Unfortunately, she was a female lead.
Long story short, the princess saw the skeleton in Agatha"s closet, not literal in meaning, of course… and Agatha became aware of this. Since there was no way a witch could tolerate someone knowing her secret, she repeatedly tried to kill Margarette or made things difficult for her. The female lead would not have survived the villainess" witchcraft if not for the male lead, a powerful military duke, who kept on rescuing her.
At first, the male lead was only occasionally helping. But he later fell for the princess, so he went full-force and pushed the villainess towards destruction.
How did the leads withstand Agatha"s witch power and smoothly carried out the counterattack?
Oh, well... The male lead was actually from a mysterious bloodline, a descendant of the first prophet of the Great Deity. Not only that, he inherited a legendary sword from an Archangel. In the whole continent, he could rank within the top 3 list of swordmasters because of it. Lastly, his uncle who loved him so much was a church"s pope...
The female lead? No need to ask. If the male lead was like a cat with nine lives, she probably had more than that... This world adored the female lead more than anyone else. It gave her a male lead a thousand times better than the Emperor in the G.o.ddess" world.