Suppressing the Protagonist at the Start to Seize the Heroine - Chapter 3 - Asking the campus belle for help, Su Lin’s plan

In a world full of caped superheroes, supervillains, and monsters, Aldrich is worthless. 95% of humanity has evolved to develop superpowers, but Aldrich is one of the rare few that has no powers at all.

When Dirga signs a mysterious contract, his world is turned upside down. Shadows stretch, reality bends, and he’s thrown into a brutal game where power means survival — and the cost is everything.Guided by a devil with a smile too wide and a past too deep, Dirga must train body, mind, and soul in a realm where death is never far and every choice echoes beyond comprehension.Armed with evolving powers and a weapon tied to his very will, he steps into a world ruled by chaos, facing monsters, trials, and truths that were never meant to be uncovered.But in a game designed by devils, with rules no one fully understands — how far can conviction carry a man who fights not to conquer… but to protect?

A striking man of mysterious origin and peerless talent, he looks back at the world, in all its entirety, with utter disdain. And yet, in the treacherous and unpredictable ultimate formation of the Boundless Secular World, he guards a breathtaking ancient qin with broken strings, waiting silently for the destined one to arrive!

A boy encounters him, and knows for the first time that the world beneath the Heavens is a fickle place. Not even demons, devils, ghosts and monsters can match the frivolity of human nature!

A slender physique, and jade-like beauty, but the sword that strikes between heaven and earth is not unlike a streaming rainbow!

The vastness of the starry sky, the seven emotions and six desires! Greed, anger and ignorance! The teachings of Buddha will grant you boundless strength!

A sea of blood will come, at the cost of all mortal beings full of honest hope!

The ghosts wail as the gods roar, but the sea of blood has no end!

Where, pray tell, is the path I should take?

Since there is no path, no matter how bitter and bloody the sea, even if my boat is made out of bones, I will soar to the heavens above!

- Description from Novelupdates

Book I: Lost ThingsTristan Abrascal is a thief, one of many making their living under the perpetual twilight of the greatest city in all of Vesper. Quick wit and a contract with a capricious goddess have always kept him one step ahead, until one night he crosses a line by accident that burns all the bridges he had left. But not all is lost, as his mentor offers a way out of peril that turns out to be more than a simple escape.It is also an opportunity to get even with the infanzones, the nobles he’s lived under all his life, and it so happens that Tristan has a full ledger’s worth of scores to settle with them.Lady Angharad Tredegar has fled halfway across the world, leaving behind a ruin of a life: her family butchered by a ruthless enemy, their estate torched and their nobility revoked. Yet no matter how far she flees the blades of assassins follow, and she finds herself growing desperate for any protection. She has one relative left to call on, her estranged uncle, but she finds that the safety he offers comes at a cost.Angharad has sworn revenge, however, and her honour will allow for no compromise. She will do what she must to survive so that one day bloody vengeance can be visited upon her enemies.The paths of the two take them to the doorstep of the Watch, but for desperate souls like them enrolment is a lost cause. They will have to do it the hard way instead, by surviving the trials on the isle known as the Dominion of Lost Things.Where every year many go, and few return.Book II: Good TreasonsThe trials of the Dominion are over.The four survivors have become students of Scholomance, enrolling together as a cabal, yet even on those infamous grounds they soon learn none are beyond the reach of their pasts.Angharad Tredegar is returned to a semblance of the world she left behind, but finds her honor sorely tested by bargains offered - every bit as tempting as in the stories and even deadlier.Tristan Abrascal needs answers. Mysterious enemies keep trying to abduct him, his classroom does not exist and he’s now had several conversations with dead people. Worst of all, his carrots keep dying.Maryam Khaimov is going mad, which would worry her less if it were happening on schedule. More frightening yet is the possibility that she is not, and there truly is someone else going around wearing her face.Song Ren must forge the others into a functional unit, all the while fending off enemies on all sides: rival cabals, vengeful countrymen and the deluge of implacable foes her companions simply cannot seem to stop attracting.Failure is not an option, for Song must bring back honor to her family’s name whatever the cost: it is the only way to keep their disgrace from literally eating them all alive.And as the four chase shadows in Scholomance, in the distance looms the greater test awaiting them in the Asphodel Rectorate. Asphodel is a faded power, the rotten carcass of what it once was, but under that rot looms darker things - of which monsters might just be the least dangerous.Besides, is treason really such an evil when you have the best of reasons for it?