"Does Grandma Citlali like novels to this extent?" Paimon said, somewhat surprised.
"Grandma is too old and rarely finds friends she can chat with. On the contrary, those paper novels have accompanied her for a very long time, so perhaps Grandma prefers reading light novels over actually exchanging words with people," Ororon explained.
"If you're looking for Grandma to ask for opinions, then that's perfect. With her two hundred years of insight, she can definitely help you create good works," Ororon said.
"Has Yae Publishing House's light novels been around for two hundred years?" Paimon asked, a bit uncertain.
"Probably," the Traveler hadn't paid attention to this either, but judging by Yae Miko's age, Yae Publishing House should have existed for over two hundred years.
After finishing the conversation with Ororon, the Traveler and the others began trying to call out Citlali.
"Grandma, we want to ask you about light novels."
"What is it?" Citlali opened the door at lightning speed, then paused slightly. "Oh, it's you all. I thought new light novels had been delivered to my doorstep."
The Traveler, Paimon, and Ororon looked at each other and shrugged. As expected, just like Ororon said, Grandma Citlali really did love reading light novels.
After explaining what had happened, Citlali immediately furrowed her brows. "That kid Rios—when I went to the Stadium of the Sacred Flame to find him earlier, he said he was already writing, but turns out he hasn't touched a single word. He got my hopes up for nothing."
Citlali gritted her teeth, looking exceptionally angry.
"Stadium of the Sacred Flame?" Paimon was stunned for a moment, then recalled something she'd heard before. "I heard someone say that when the Pyro Archon closed the Rite of Parting during the Night of the Sacred Flame, Grandma went to find him too, but afterward, Grandma left the Stadium of the Sacred Flame all smiles."
"Could it be that the Pyro Archon promised Grandma he'd hurry up with the updates, and that's why she was so happy?"
"Hey, don't make me sound so shallow! Am I the kind of woman who would cast Natlan's affairs aside just for light novel updates?" Citlali said, somewhat angrily.
"It was just that kid Rios who persuaded me, and along the way, he mentioned the novel would update soon—that's all! He didn't buy me off with light novels!" Citlali added.
"So, Citlali, as a book fan, can you provide opinions for the next parts of the stories?" the Traveler asked.
"Of course," Citlali said. "I have tons of opinions!"
"For example, in that book "Super Lovey-Dovey One Hundred Couples", the thirtieth couple and the sixty-fifth couple were originally super lovey-dovey, but after meeting, both sides actually developed feelings for the opposite sex from the other couple. Wasn't it supposed to be a pure love light novel? How did a third-party plot sneak in?"
"And that one "My Teammates Are All Kicked Out from Other Teams"—I can understand that Rios might want to write a harem-style light novel, but there's no need for all the kicked-out people to be girls, right? And the number of people kicked out is way too many. Every volume has someone getting kicked, and now the protagonist's team has nearly ten people!"
As soon as light novels came up, Citlali's mouth wouldn't stop.
The Traveler awkwardly twitched the corner of her mouth and looked at the floating little white-haired one beside her. "Paimon, do you usually read these kinds of novels?"
"I'm not, I didn't!" Paimon quickly shook her head. "Although I like reading the novels the Pyro Archon writes too, when I read light novels, I choose adventure-themed ones. I rarely read these romance ones like now!"
The Pyro Archon Rios's novels covered a wide range of themes, and even his light novels weren't just one type of romance—mystery, family, kinship, adventure, all were involved.
Like the contents Citlali had just mentioned, they were all written by Rios alone, but Paimon really had never read them.
After Citlali spoke for a few minutes and finally paused to catch her breath, the Traveler interjected: "Then, Grandma Citlali, for the sequels to those books you mentioned, what opinions do you have? Like, how do you hope the stories continue?"
"Well..." Citlali crossed her arms, tapping her fair arm with her finger. "First, for that "Lovey-Dovey One Hundred Couples", those two couples I mentioned earlier must love their own partners—no fickleness!"
"But the twenty-third couple and the ninety-first couple, I feel they're not quite right together—it's really forced. It's better if they break up; it'd be better for each other!"
"The ninety-third couple hasn't gotten together yet, but I feel the girl from the ninety-third pair is really suited for the guy from the twenty-third pair. I think pairing them up would be great!"
Hearing Citlali's words, Paimon furrowed her brows in confusion. "Grandma Citlali, you just said no fickleness, but now you're turning around and assigning someone else's girlfriend to another guy?"
"How is that the same?" Citlali said after being choked up. "I'm saying have that couple break up first, then find a new girlfriend—this plot is very reasonable, and there's no fickleness at all. Absolutely no problem!"
Paimon and the Traveler exchanged a glance, both reading the same thought in each other's eyes: they knew that if they really followed Grandma's suggestions, this book would be "dead on arrival" for sure.
It seems we'll still have to come up with the plots ourselves, the Traveler thought inwardly.
And so, in the players' eyes, multiple options appeared before them:
Terrible choice: Follow Citlali's arrangement—break up two couples and swap to more suitable partners. Normal choice: Take Paimon's suggestion—skip those two couples entirely and focus on polishing the later ones. Wonderful choice: Use the Traveler's experiences from other events to graft moving love stories onto those two mismatched couples and the subsequent ones.
"Isn't C obviously the pick?" The vast majority of players didn't even think and selected the C button.
After clicking, the screen before them shifted from beautiful scenery to pitch black, then the editor's face appeared.
"Brilliant! Truly brilliant! The Pyro Archon was right—the Traveler's insights from different worlds can indeed bring us fresh feelings!" The editor exclaimed after reading the manuscript.
"I think for romance novels, this could be a groundbreaking work. The Traveler's name will surely go down in history!"
With the editor saying that, the performance of this novel was definitely not going to be bad.
And if other options were chosen—for example, following Citlali's suggestion—the editor's words here would become: "Do people from other worlds all have such strange ideas?"
The editor looked embarrassed: "If our people here saw these plots, the book getting burned would be the least of it—we might even have the places we sell books smashed!"
The implication was that this plot was a complete mess.
As for choosing Paimon's approach, the editor's response was simple: he just nodded and said, "This idea is good. It's not particularly stunning, but there are no flaws either. Just write it like this."
No matter which was chosen, the players would get Primogems, which led many players to prefer selecting the terrible options over the praised ones.
Excellent books don't have to be uniformly outstanding, but trashy works can truly be rotten in a thousand different ways.
They wanted to see just how rotten the work could get after picking the bad options.