Prologue
[Before reading, please take a moment to check the content warnings and potential pitfalls in the synopsis!!]
“An’an, don’t be sad. The failure of the mission wasn’t your fault. You completed every plot point. The final evaluation must have been the Main System’s problem. The male and female leads in the Small World had issues too. Whether they fell in love or not had nothing to do with you!”
In a warmly and comfortably furnished system space, a chubby orange cat was racking its brains to comfort the dazed young woman before it, whom it called “An’an,” while indignantly defending her.
Ning An was reviewing the plot of the previous Small World, trying to figure out where the problem had arisen. Hearing this, she let out a laugh and said, “I’m not sad. You don’t need to worry. I’m just analyzing everything to figure out which part went wrong.”
The orange cat looked at its master and felt that she was extraordinarily beautiful when she smiled. Her pair of alluring, peach-blossom eyes shimmered with emotion; whoever she looked at would fall helplessly under her spell.
It leaped onto Ning An’s lap and meowed twice, just like a real cat. It knew that Ning An liked it best in this state.
Sure enough, after it meowed, Ning An extended her tender, pale hand and began stroking the cat with practiced ease.
The orange cat purred contentedly.
Ning An smiled even more brightly.
The orange cat was her system, Number 0023. Its simulated form was that of a cat, and it had been officially assigned to her when she first joined Small World. She had named it Xiao Juza.
The human and system had journeyed together through dozens of Small World. After returning from each one, a similar scene would play out: Ning An would gaze into the distance and review the plot, while Xiao Juza comforted her and took the opportunity to complain about the male and female leads who stubbornly refused to follow the plot, causing An’an’s missions to fail time and again.
In Xiao Juza’s opinion, although the bureau still awarded Ning An points because the Small World had not collapsed, that did not erase the psychological trauma inflicted on Ning An by the enormous stigma of having “zero successful missions.”
In reality, however, Ning An truly did not mind at all. She had been born in an apocalyptic wasteland Small World. She had no parents, siblings, or other family. She was a product of the advancement of genetic research after the apocalypse, when humanity’s natural reproduction had reached the end of the road and people had been forced to resort to extreme technological measures.
Ning An was one of the particularly successful results. Not only was she exquisitely and perfectly beautiful, but her physical abilities were astonishingly powerful, and even the degree of development of her brain far surpassed that of ordinary people. She had also awakened Water Element, Wood Element, and a Mutated Space-Type Ability. She had lived quite well in the apocalypse.
Later, Ning An was discovered by an observer deployed by Spacetime Bureau in her Small World and was recruited to work for the bureau, traveling to various Small World to carry out missions. Honestly, every Small World was countless times better than the world she had come from!
Even if she had managed to thrive in the apocalypse, that did not mean she liked it.
Nobody liked the apocalypse!
After joining Small World, Ning An had genuinely wanted to perform her missions well. She especially liked this job.
Although she was sent to play a stepping-stone female supporting character, she had a good family background, a loving family, and the attention of everyone around her. Aside from eventually being overshadowed by the female lead and mocked by the public, her life was practically one big cheat code.
Besides, public ridicule could only hurt you if you took it seriously. If you did not care, it was nothing.
Ning An certainly did not care.
So she happily entered the Small World to play the stepping-stone.
In the first Small World, she was the daughter of a wealthy family, with everything she wanted at her fingertips. Her parents and older brother doted on her at home, while her childhood sweetheart protected her outside. She herself was exceptionally talented in music and was a world-renowned violinist. Then the impoverished female lead appeared out of nowhere. Not only would she surpass Ning An in violin, she would also capture the attention of Ning An’s childhood sweetheart and complete a romance of “the childhood sweetheart losing to the girl who appeared from nowhere.” Ning An, meanwhile, would lose both her reputation and her love, becoming a classic case of “a child prodigy who failed to live up to her potential.” She would suffer from depression and go abroad to recover.
That was the predetermined plot.
But in reality, after Ning An arrived, her violin talent became utterly unrivaled. Her childhood sweetheart stared at her all day and never even glanced at the female lead. The female lead became her devoted fan, trembling with excitement whenever she saw Ning An. And whenever she saw the childhood sweetheart beside Ning An, her eyes filled with hostility…
After that Small World ended, the mission was judged a failure.
Ning An had been terrified, afraid that Spacetime Bureau would send her back to the apocalypse.
Unexpectedly, her supervisor sighed and said, “You can’t really be blamed for this.”
As for whom to blame, even the supervisor did not know.
And so Ning An entered the second Small World.
In this Small World, she was the eldest daughter of the number-one sect in the cultivation world. She possessed extraordinary talent and abundant resources, because the sect master was her father—and he was also a hopeless daughter’s slave. The female lead was a pitiful girl whom the Grand Elder had brought back from the mortal world. As the sect’s junior sister, she was cherished and protected by the entire sect. They helped her reconstruct her Spiritual Root and searched for rare treasures of Heaven and Earth for her. In the end, the female lead was reborn, her cultivation advancing by leaps and bounds until she trampled the former prodigy Ning An into the dirt, turning her into the laughingstock of the cultivation world. Her father was even forced to resign as sect master because of her.
That was the original plot.
In reality, Ning An became the number-one cultivator in the cultivation world. She eventually ascended to the Upper Realm and only then left that world, becoming a legend of the cultivation world. The junior sister, who was the female lead, regarded her as an idol and constantly said, “Senior Sister said…”
…
She had completed missions in dozens of Small World, and every ending had been outrageously dramatic. Not a single one had gone normally.
Eventually, Ning An simply gave up caring.
Besides, even when her missions failed, she still earned points. It did not affect her.
In the end, her supervisor said, “If you can’t do it, stop staying in the Female Supporting Character Acting Department. Go to the Female Supporting Character Wish Fulfillment Department instead. Help those female supporting characters who are unwilling to accept their fate and still harbor grievances fulfill their wishes. I feel that might be what you’re better at. However, considering your record of zero successful missions, the bureau needs to give you a small punishment. You’ll specialize in going to those relatively harsh period-drama Small World.”
Ning An pulled a long face and looked pitiful. She glanced at the supervisor twice, hesitating meaningfully. Her intention to ask for some benefits was extremely obvious.
The supervisor laughed in exasperation. “Don’t put on an act here. You have a space ability of your own, and in that cultivation Small World, you even bound yourself to a Secret Realm. Who knows how many rare treasures of Heaven and Earth you harvested? Have you ever returned from any Small World empty-handed? I’m not even going to argue with you about it, and you’re still trying this trick on me?”
Ning An slipped away without the slightest hesitation.
After she left, the supervisor began humming a song as well, looking to be in an exceptionally good mood.
Ning An’s missions could not truly be considered failures. After all, the Small World she visited all approved of her. Not only did they make everything go smoothly for her while she was there, they even gave her merit when she left.
Clearly, this stepping-stone female supporting character had replaced the female lead and become the new Favored Child of Heaven. The only problem was that the girl was too slow-witted to realize it herself.
He had no intention of reminding her.
When he had nothing better to do, he enjoyed teasing young people. Ning An’s current state was precisely the most entertaining.
As it happened, a pile of period-drama Small World missions had accumulated, with no one willing to take them. So he might as well send her. If she could not only resolve the female supporting characters’ grievances but also reach new heights, that would benefit the development of the Small World as well.
Note: I had a hard time deciding if i will use Small World or Mission World – at the end i choose Small World.