i don’t know you guys but im inclined to believe this is actually the real world .why the author made that chapter ages ago in the real world if not for our boy reappearance ? it would make sense imo and boy o boy we got ourselves a real trash mother . all this time i thought she was an adopted one but nope … it even worse like this . it really make sense why bjorn can’t really trust romance wise . really sad . i wonder if he will be bring back by the witch or audris now ps i loved his last attempt for freedom kekw
something that i think will come up in this, is that one guy who was mentioned in the community who was about to die when he was brought there. And Bjorn telling him to try and survive. And that guy instead accepting his fate, and talking about his life on earth. With all of the info Bjorn got, it may be possible to Bjorn to reach out to the family of that dude, and see if he’s also missing, and all that
I'm expecting the ex to show up tbhIf he looks anyone up I wouldn't be surprised if it's baekho.If it's plain wish fulfilment everything is going to come up aces for bjorn and he could spot it that way, it's kind of seeming like that aswell, his mom is happy/sad to see him, were told that's out of character, either he's way more fucked in the head and the most unreliable narrator or its dream/wishfulfillment potentually using his thoughts, memories and desires to build the scenario. I think if he reaches out directly, since he knows the guy is dead/missing the guy will be dead or missing.Would be interesting if they're not dead, were missing and are now back. Would indicate bjorn died in the game and got sent back.I wonder what happens if he clears the game here again?If he is in reality there's like a 1 to 3 time dilation or something? So every day he spends here is 3 gone in the game, assuming he goes back in.
if he cleared the game again, it would be really dissatisfying if he was sent into a new body and had to speedrun start over, so i hope if he does clear it again to return, its into his Bjorn body. Also wonder if he will play the cheat version just to return faster. Plus this could be a Chance for him in a big way. He knows about the Basement now, he knows about the outside of the walls access method now. He knows ALOT of new things, and if he plays the game again, and accesses those areas, then its possible he can learn even more, and bypass the basement ban he has at the moment as well, gaining new information to bring back once he eventually returns to being Bjorn
The interesting thing would be if he does play the game and if it does send him back, at what time does it send him back? Now? Same time as Bjorn? 20 years earlier?I don't think the author will take these paths, I think it more likely bjorn gets fed that berry mentioned earlier that forcibly wakes you up. Might happen when Hansoo has a nap or gets KTFO'd to add more to the “what even is reality" theme they've been going for.Regarding dissatisfaction, if he's been double Isekai'd in the first place it would be unsatisfying since the novel would be over. He wouldn't go back into the game if he accepted the current world as reality, I don't think he's that much of an escapist and if he is I'd probably drop the novel tbh
Man, Bjorn is in neck deep with delusion… not only is he’s thoroughly convinced this is a dream, he starting to treat everyone of them with contempt, even his own mother. Explaining the isekai circumstance, humoring his mother, being docile, all the while plotting to smash their heads and escape… He must seem like a serious nutcase to all of them.
We also get more backstory on his relationship with his mother… it’s interesting how he resents her but also claims to sort of understand her now. Odd how he references their current age difference (his age accelerated by Raphdonia time).
I wonder if he’s going to slowly start to accept this place as reality or if he’ll maintain his position that it was all a dream (used to read word up magazine…)
him treating the mother with contempt is 100% deserved tho . let’s try to not excuse evil . he was her child . no matter what was going on a mother should never had acted like her . and now she is here only cause of money . she s trash
Okay so this is definitely real. This could have just answered a question that's existed from the beginning. What happens when you die in the game? Bjorn might have straight up died and got sent back. The resurrection stove is clearly chekhov's gun, so we're going to need to see it go off at some point. So maybe Bjorn found a way to revive without the penalty? Maybe that's what the corruption cleanse was or the witch did it when they met briefly?
I betting it’s a dream, he originally in last chapter grabbed and choked out the captain, in this scene captain was fine and his partner said an entirely different officer was the in the hospital from choking, plus Bjorn intended to kill ‘baton to temple guy, that plus his mother’s change in behavior given the back story. Hopefully we find out next chapter
It was the same officer, I think when officer Kang was talking to him, he was just stating facts, rather than stating which individuals was injured. Hansoo injured 2 officers, so he’d be in trouble if they didn’t protected him. Hansoo confirmed it was Dt. Kang he choked earlier when he realized he didn’t choke him hard enough to kill him
He's going to have issues forming and maintaining any form of meaningful relationship if that's the backstory.
I wonder if he's seeing actual goblins in police uniforms with batons or if he's just coping really hard post isekai.
If it's a visual hallucination it reminds me of the villagers in the basement, did the earth witch curse them too?
Also bet bro is dreaming, remember how some people never wake up? If he accepts this as reality he won't wake up, the earth witch is removing a player she percieves as a threat since she really doesn't want people to open the abyss gate and oh boy are we close to the real abyss gate.
edit: I hope I'm wrong, I've never seen the “and it was all a dream" play out well even when it's this foreshadowed
It can't actually be a dream as things are being reflected that happened for real that he has no way of possibly knowing. Also, this doesn't really exist or explain his behavior. He has unique relationships already full of trust and understanding, including a romance with Misha. Even to the point that other non-traumatized players can never have. He earned the trust of his comrades through sacrifice and in turn they've earned his regardless of what he may say or believe. There is no justifiable excuse for his behavior because it was just a joke/gag that went too far.
Tbh I still think this is a dream… the witch told Bjorn she will make his dream come true. So maybe it's possible for her to make it true if Bjorn accepts it as true, or maybe Bjorn just becomes a permanent resident of the dream, in which case, it would still be ‘real’ for him.
Author can just say magic. We already know there's a mcguffin being who has summoned people to the game from multiple dimensions. I don't think knowledge for constructing a scenario is an issue. But it is more likely from an Occam's POV he's been double isekai'd even if that's the objectively worse story from a “character goals" perspective.I reckon it's a dream, I reckon someones going to give him the berry that forcibly wakes you.
I really really hope he doesn't mcguffin it away. He's already dropped the ball enough, if he just starts getting outright lazy with his own setting and rules it's going to be super upsetting. I've already chosen to ignore a bunch of crap because of how much I love this novel, but I don't know how much more I can take
For plot reasons I don't think it's a double isekai.If it is then every day here is 3 days gone in the game if we go back. Impromptu timeskip?Re trust of his comrades, he doesn't trust them all. Them trusting him isn't a 2 way street. They don't all know he's an evil spirit. The cringe around the doll fucking instead of picking a spouse is a little bit more justified if this is his damage. It's still cringe but at least we have a written explanation.I think you're underweighting mental health. I also meant more it explains how he's acting now too. He does not want to accept he's just Lee Han Soo once again, because those relationships he values would be over, because once again he's been abandoned / is all alone. I don't think our guy could cope with going from a stable-ish social friends group where he has power and is adored to weak, shut in, loner gamer nerd. Sounds like he'd be building a rope swing sooner rather than later.I think it’s incorrect saying his relationship with misha is special and unique to him. I cbf scrolling for it but I'm fairly sure players and npcs in noark hooked up going by the authors words, if not its probably not unrealistic to assume it's happened.
I'm sticking with unique as he's the only player that consistently risks his own life for his comrades the way he does. He doesn't consider them npc’s at all. Conversely, most of them know our highly suspect he's an evil spirit and still dgaf. They still willingly risk their lives for his and straight up sacrifice themselves for him because they know he does the same. The novel hasn't really explicitly demonstrated this level of trust with other players, so until it does it has to be considered unique.As far as the doll thing, I just have to hard disagree. That's just stupid and inexcusable. I said it at the time and meant it. The author could have said he was straight up sexually abused by his mother and every single girlfriend he had and I wouldn't care. The suspension of disbelief was too much and any explanation is too little too late. This wouldn't have been the case if this came out earlier however. The problem is the level of character growth and time spent on him to come to terms with it has gone beyond what I'm willing to allow, and I'm pretty sure that's true for a lot of people. The author fucked up massively by dragging on a joke that failed, and according to Blue it seems he was aware. At this point, the people like me who he's lost don't really care about the reason, we're just trying to turn a blind eye from an inexcusable failure and move onto the rest of the story
That we know of, that the author has gone into detail about. Loosely from background characters.From memory during the stuck in Floor 7/8 section where the marquis set them up, we learnt about alot of players who were well trusted and acted like he did with their npc comrades who existed in the world far longer than he did. There was an interaction like “do we pray for them even if they're an evil spirit" “yes theyre our comrades" “k ill do that -npc priest agreeing to do a heresy” comes to mind.Bjorn is emotionally stunted, he always has been even pre-isekai. We now have the explanation, yes it's way too late.
I don't think those are comparable though. It's different knowing someone is an evil spirit and sacrificing yourself for them vs praying for them after they died. If anything we've gotten too many examples of comrades turning on players when they find out for it to not be implied that most npcs will turn on players. I don't count any noark npcs either as the culture is competely the same and it's more acceptable there. It's like saying accepting your friend being gay in the US vs in Syria where they get thrown off of buildings. One requires much more loyalty and risk than the other
I think they are comparable, difference between literal heresy and just saying “glad he's dead" in terms of risk.Even your extreme example, the friend in Syria probably isn't going to throw a funeral for them after they die from getting tossed off a building and is likely to renounce the friendship if tossing someone off a building was a real thing that happened as a result.I meant while they were alive we have players, who are tanks, tanking for NPC parties. Exactly the same shit as bjorn. We actually have the flip of this in baekho's party, where the tank is a “disposable npc"
They were all marked for death already anyway, and who was going to mark then as heretics anyway? It was just a gesture that no one would ever know about. Bjorn's comrades actively kept it hidden and ignored royal orders because they trusted and cared for him over the potential consequences of harboring an evil spirit. That's not what I mean when I say that Bjorn risks himself for his team. Tanks are just playing their role in a party, it's their job. Bjorn went back for Misha for instance when she was the target of the floor boss. Show me an instance like that where a player does something similar, and I'd be willing to accept his relationships aren't unique. It seems like the author has continuously gone out of his way to demonstrate this, the the point that the Marquis noticed. Again, show me any examples of another player like this.
Nah, I'll just re-pivot you back to thing I said since you've altered the scope.Players other than Bjorn care about and have romantic relationships with NPCs.I'm not going to contest that of the player's the author has told us about Bjorn goes the furthest out of his way, probably because he's the MC and primary perspective!?In your example though, an argument can be made that bjorn did it to protect his investment. Because he saw misha as an investment and didn't want to start over with another companion. The author used that language ALOT in that particular timeframe around team loser and shortly thereafter.Runner up for player who gives the most fucks we know about is probably the GM, develops and shares magitek for the benefit of the realm. He directly bumped the party limit magic to 6 that benefits everyone.I don't see a point continuing this discussion further if you insist on removing noark and the player's in that event from discussion as those are the 2 biggest sources of non-bjorn player-npc interactions we have.Edit: Editted some stuff, contested your example, clarified why the discussion as you frame it isnt meaningful.
I don't know how you can even try to justify an apples to oranges comparison with such stark differences in consequences. How can you possibly derive anything meaningful from that? There's a difference of consequence when you do something that is legal in one culture vs another. You can't possibly contest that. Advocating for gay marriage in the US where it's already legal for instance vs Syria where it isn't will likely lead to an arrest or straight up death. Same as here. Noark doesn't care about evil spirits which means there's no real risk, Rafdonia on the other hand will kill them. I can't imagine they'd be cool with accomplices that knowingly aided them. It feels like you're just arguing for the sake of arguing at this point, especially when the Marquis straight up acknowledged bjorn's uniqueness.
So the NPCs and priest in that arc weren't from raphdonia?So bjorn is openly an evil spirit in raphdonia?So the NPC rose knights didn't make a utilitarian choice to group up with known evil spirits to achieve their goal?Bjorns interactions with Misha and co are comparable to other known NPC-Player interactions, your extreme example strawman is just shit and frankly not worth discussing.The useful thing to discuss is whether bjorn has always been a sociopath. Because the sociopath MC trope is currently in full swing. I personally think yes, looking back every decision bjorn has made has helped bjorn first and foremost. Helping NPCs or others has always been a side-effect, even saving the marquis to an extent can be considered bjorn beneficial. So I ask you, what is a major decision bjorn has made to save or help an NPC that hasn't been clearly beneficial to bjorn?We'll say saving the marquis is the outlier here since he didn't intend to do it, was surprised by it but it turned out to have been hugely helpful to him as it got him off the marquis’ kill list.
Oh I see what you’re saying now. Okay I think I got it. My point wasn’t that he was selfless as I don’t think that’s even possible. My point was that his relationships and loyalty with his companions are unique (at least with what we know as you pointed out.) I don’t think there’s an example anywhere of a relationship that isn’t self serving at all. I married my wife for instance for plenty of self-serving reasons. She trusts me and my decision making ability, we have lots of sex, and she has great traits that made me want to start a family with her. All of these are self serving, just like she has some for choosing me over everyone else. That wasn’t what I was saying at all.The problem with judging Bjorn with his words instead of his actions is that he’s already explicitly been shown to be an unreliable narrator. Even in his head, which we read. He made excuse after excuse about not noticing Misha until Dwalki outright called him out on it, which showed us he was lying the entire time to the reader. This means we can never fully trust his words even when it’s an inner monologue. At least when it comes to relationships. This leaves us with judging his character on his actions. It’s also irrational to believe he would go save Misha or anyone else just because of an investment. I would never risk my life for my 401k or investment accounts. Especially, when he was likely to die and the investment would have been moot anyway. He cared for her. We even know that now after the fact since he admitted it. So I don’t know why you’re even bringing up that specific example when they literally said they loved each other.
Bjorns interactions with Misha and co are comparable to other known NPC-Player interactions, your extreme example strawman is just shit and frankly not worth discussing.
It is with others that have the same consequences. Not with ones that have none. It’s not even an extreme example it’s a literal one taken right out of the page. Noark = nothing happens if you’re an evil spirit. Rafdonia = you die if you’re an evil spirit. Reconcile that.
So the NPCs and priest in that arc weren't from raphdonia?
Yes they were but what was their risk? They were already marked for death and how would their heresy have possibly come out? You didn't answer that. They didn't risk anything by doing that
i think the earth witch influenced the dream because she said she would fullfill his dream. but i dont think hes really back bc then he would just end up in an asylum or something and the story would end
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He seems to be completely broken!
i don’t know you guys but im inclined to believe this is actually the real world .why the author made that chapter ages ago in the real world if not for our boy reappearance ? it would make sense imo and boy o boy we got ourselves a real trash mother . all this time i thought she was an adopted one but nope … it even worse like this . it really make sense why bjorn can’t really trust romance wise . really sad . i wonder if he will be bring back by the witch or audris now ps i loved his last attempt for freedom kekw
something that i think will come up in this, is that one guy who was mentioned in the community who was about to die when he was brought there. And Bjorn telling him to try and survive. And that guy instead accepting his fate, and talking about his life on earth. With all of the info Bjorn got, it may be possible to Bjorn to reach out to the family of that dude, and see if he’s also missing, and all that
Man, Bjorn is in neck deep with delusion… not only is he’s thoroughly convinced this is a dream, he starting to treat everyone of them with contempt, even his own mother. Explaining the isekai circumstance, humoring his mother, being docile, all the while plotting to smash their heads and escape… He must seem like a serious nutcase to all of them.
We also get more backstory on his relationship with his mother… it’s interesting how he resents her but also claims to sort of understand her now. Odd how he references their current age difference (his age accelerated by Raphdonia time).
I wonder if he’s going to slowly start to accept this place as reality or if he’ll maintain his position that it was all a dream (used to read word up magazine…)
On a side note: what if this is a part of the witch's curse. Like, maybe it's the way she recruited the vampire duke and floor boss in the 1st floor.
Maybe if Bjorn accepts this dream, he would become and insane monster that roams outside forever… like those noark guys.
Okay so this is definitely real. This could have just answered a question that's existed from the beginning. What happens when you die in the game? Bjorn might have straight up died and got sent back. The resurrection stove is clearly chekhov's gun, so we're going to need to see it go off at some point. So maybe Bjorn found a way to revive without the penalty? Maybe that's what the corruption cleanse was or the witch did it when they met briefly?
Okay, trauma plot drops.
He's going to have issues forming and maintaining any form of meaningful relationship if that's the backstory.
I wonder if he's seeing actual goblins in police uniforms with batons or if he's just coping really hard post isekai.
If it's a visual hallucination it reminds me of the villagers in the basement, did the earth witch curse them too?
Also bet bro is dreaming, remember how some people never wake up? If he accepts this as reality he won't wake up, the earth witch is removing a player she percieves as a threat since she really doesn't want people to open the abyss gate and oh boy are we close to the real abyss gate.
edit: I hope I'm wrong, I've never seen the “and it was all a dream" play out well even when it's this foreshadowed
Oh I see what you’re saying now. Okay I think I got it. My point wasn’t that he was selfless as I don’t think that’s even possible. My point was that his relationships and loyalty with his companions are unique (at least with what we know as you pointed out.) I don’t think there’s an example anywhere of a relationship that isn’t self serving at all. I married my wife for instance for plenty of self-serving reasons. She trusts me and my decision making ability, we have lots of sex, and she has great traits that made me want to start a family with her. All of these are self serving, just like she has some for choosing me over everyone else. That wasn’t what I was saying at all.The problem with judging Bjorn with his words instead of his actions is that he’s already explicitly been shown to be an unreliable narrator. Even in his head, which we read. He made excuse after excuse about not noticing Misha until Dwalki outright called him out on it, which showed us he was lying the entire time to the reader. This means we can never fully trust his words even when it’s an inner monologue. At least when it comes to relationships. This leaves us with judging his character on his actions. It’s also irrational to believe he would go save Misha or anyone else just because of an investment. I would never risk my life for my 401k or investment accounts. Especially, when he was likely to die and the investment would have been moot anyway. He cared for her. We even know that now after the fact since he admitted it. So I don’t know why you’re even bringing up that specific example when they literally said they loved each other.
It is with others that have the same consequences. Not with ones that have none. It’s not even an extreme example it’s a literal one taken right out of the page. Noark = nothing happens if you’re an evil spirit. Rafdonia = you die if you’re an evil spirit. Reconcile that.
Yes they were but what was their risk? They were already marked for death and how would their heresy have possibly come out? You didn't answer that. They didn't risk anything by doing that
So this is interesting. Is he truly in a dreamworld, or did the earth witch send him back to avoid him opening the abyssal gate?