Reborn with Steve Stand-Chapter 862: Being a Student in Blue Archive?!

“Wha… the heck???”

Fang Mo couldn’t help exclaiming when he saw that row of Books of Era.

He could tell right away these weren’t cheap knockoffs churned out in bulk. They were the real deal—actual portals to other worlds. Each one gave off a faint purplish-gold glow, that distinctive enchanted sheen.

As mentioned earlier, there was a whole row of them.

Even though it was just an ordinary wooden chest—not some fancy Dragon Chest or Resonant Storage Box—an entire row still meant nine Books of Era in total.

Glancing over them, Fang Mo noticed they were a surprisingly random assortment:

Terraria, One Piece, “Mysterious Awakening,” Puella Magi Madoka Magica, Neon Genesis Evangelion, No Game No Life, Blue Archive, Marvel, and Red Alert.

“Hmm…”

He couldn’t help getting a little lost in thought at the sight of these titles. It wasn’t so much the worlds themselves but what this variety implied. The spread was all over the place: different anime titles, different games, from a 2D sandbox to an RTS, even a certain gacha game.

But that wasn’t the weirdest part. Mixed in there was a type of instance he’d never encountered before—a fourth category, after movie-based, anime-based, and game-based instances. Namely… a novel-based one.

Yes, that’s right.

The so-called “Mysterious Awakening”… was actually a Book of Era leading to a novel’s world.

If his memory served, it went by another name too. Overall, the story was about supernatural horrors descending upon Earth like a living hell. A group of individuals barely managed to harness eerie powers—using monsters to fight monsters—and in the end they threw everything they had into protecting humanity. Fang Mo had read it ages ago and didn’t recall many details. He only vaguely remembered that several classic scenes and major plot points never actually showed up in the main text, because the author cut them early on.

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It was like a general being ambushed by their own soldiers—trusted allies turning into traitors overnight, leaving the strategist’s name tarnished and their legacy in ruins. He almost ended up in the same boat as another banned novel about Gu cultivation.

“A novel-based instance, huh…”

Fang Mo found himself mumbling as he stared at the Books of Era in the chest. “I was starting to think these didn’t exist.”

He wasn’t just making that up. Ever since he unlocked the Mysterious Island mod, he’d obtained at least a dozen Books of Era. But aside from movie and comic worlds, at best he had a handful of game-based ones. Not a single novel-based volume had appeared, so he just assumed that category wasn’t around.

And yet here was his little “partner” at home…

He had no clue why she’d decided to stash all these Books of Era away.

But the facts were right there. It turned out his Books of Era could connect to novel-based instances as well. Maybe the odds were just super low, so he’d never drawn one until now.

Fang Mo was actually intrigued. After all, compared to films or anime, novels could be way crazier. At his current level, there weren’t many villains left in typical shows who could give him a serious challenge.

Novels, though, could run on pure imagination. Japanese light novels were one thing, but Chinese web novels for guys were another story—every protagonist inevitably wanted more power. In modern settings, nine out of ten ended in immortal cultivation, and out of those, nine out of ten eventually ended with the MC becoming a god. “Multiverse,” “infinite multiverse,” “beyond the multiverse”—the power scale was completely absurd. Some stories had the protagonist literally jump out of the book in the final chapter to “deal with” the author. Ridiculous.

Honestly, Fang Mo wouldn’t mind having a friendly spar with characters at that level. And if it turned out to be an awful novel, he wouldn’t mind stirring up trouble either. Like a certain continent with a suspiciously high hydrogen density. Across the way, the teacher turned into a revered elder in some endless flame domain, but here? Leveling up a few notches was too underwhelming, and even after Bibi Dong ascended to godhood, she could’ve helped you ascend too, right?

“Well, maybe I’ll just keep opening more loot boxes… see what pops up.”

Shaking off those random thoughts, Fang Mo’s attention shifted to another Books of Era in the chest: a volume labeled Marvel Comics.

He was familiar with this one. It was actually the first Books of Era he’d ever found. He could still picture himself standing there in a dungeon, totally stumped. Then he right-clicked it and wound up in that cave in Afghanistan, where he met Tony Stark, which kicked off the rest of his Marvel adventures. That book was basically his starting point.

But strangely… now there was a second Marvel Comics Books of Era. Fang Mo stared at it for a good while, even checked its details. Everything—down to the ID and suffix—was exactly the same.

“Two Marvel books?”

He couldn’t help wondering: Did Books of Era sometimes appear in duplicates? If he opened it, would it send him back to the same Marvel world he’d visited before? Or was it a separate instance—some fresh version of the MCU? Another possibility was that it linked to the main Marvel comic universe, or some standalone timeline. After all, Marvel was famous for having countless parallel universes—practically every editor had one. Occasionally, they’d even spin out a short series about some random big bad wiping out an entire universe.

“So, hey—Xiao Yao?”

That thought in mind, Fang Mo turned to Alex, standing nearby. “Where’d you even get so many— Wait, what? Where’d she go?”

Sure enough, Alex had vanished. No doubt feeling guilty, she’d bolted before he could grill her.

“Heh, like you can run from me,” Fang Mo muttered with a grin. He was the full-permissions ‘server admin’ here, plus literal lord of the real dimension. Where could she possibly hide? With a mere thought, Fang Mo located her both in the game and the real world.

And sure enough, she was hiding out in the villa.

No need for any fancy moves; another thought and he teleported straight over.

On the second floor, in one of the villa’s bedrooms, there was a flash of white light—and the next second, Fang Mo stood there, glancing immediately at the bed. He could make out a humanoid bump under the quilt. Obviously, that’s where she was.

He didn’t hesitate. Walking over, he yanked back the comforter, exposing a now-embarrassed little figure. Startled, she stiffened up, then quickly turned away, pretending nothing happened. An awkward silence fell.

“…” “…”

After a pause, Fang Mo calmly began unfastening his belt.

“Y-you! What’re you doing!?”

That was enough for the other party to stop pretending she hadn’t noticed him. A blush flashed across her face, and she scooted backwards in a bit of a panic. “W-when people interrogate someone, they normally ask questions first! Why’re you busting out torture tools right off the bat!?”

“This isn’t a torture tool, it’s my su—”

“Okay, fine, my mistake!”

Before Fang Mo could finish, she slapped a hand over her eyes. “I wasn’t hiding these to keep them from you, okay? Just let me explain first!”

“All right, fine.”

Fang Mo stopped messing with his belt. “So, which is it—detailed explanation, or ‘detailed explanation’?”

“Ugh, you—!”

She bit her lip, face still bright red. After a moment, she looked aside and admitted in a muffled voice, “I’m just… I’ve got this little pet peeve, all right? You always jump from one storyline to another. I can’t stand it. If you’re going to start something, can’t you see it through to the end?”

“Huh?”

Fang Mo raised an eyebrow. “That’s all?”

“What do you mean, ‘that’s all?’”

Glaring at him, she continued, “Have you ever followed up on Naruto’s later arcs? Or tried Marvel’s Ragnarok storyline? Have you done JoJo’s Stardust Crusaders? Or run DNF’s Prey raid? You people who are all about fighting always hop onto the next thing halfway through. Don’t you care about finishing the storyline?”

“Um… yeah, guess we battle-junkies don’t really care about that.” Fang Mo scratched his head. “We don’t mind where or who we are. As soon as a good brawl’s on the horizon, we’re all in…”

“You’ve literally been ruined by your addiction to ‘kill routes.’”

She looked at him with exasperated eyes.

“You can’t exactly blame me—I’ve always been like that.” Fang Mo shrugged. “We’ve known each other forever. Is it even possible you didn’t know my personality by now?”

“I…”

Sighing, she rubbed her temples. “Never mind. Point is, I’m not changing my mind. I found these Books of Eras on my own. If you want ‘em, you have to actually finish a storyline. Every time you wrap one up, I’ll hand over one of the books. Otherwise, go dig around in some dungeons yourself.”

“You’re kidding, right?”

Fang Mo looked momentarily stunned. “C’mon, that Marvel film timeline is ridiculously long, JoJo’s already up to Part Six, Naruto hasn’t even been born yet… You want me to run around in those worlds for decades grinding everything out?”

“Ehhh…”

She frowned, apparently thinking he had a point.

“All right, here’s an idea.”

Fang Mo spread his hands. “If it’s too much trouble, we can split them up. I’ll let you have some of the books, you let me have some of the others, and we each work on a different storyline.”

“Split them up?”

She looked surprised.

“Yeah.”

As he spoke, Fang Mo summoned Steve and pulled out one of the Books of Era. “For example, Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid. That’s a fluffy slice-of-life show, so I’m not that interested. It’s all about the cutesy ‘girl bonding’ stuff—not my cup of tea. But you could go in there to… uh, study the dragons. Maybe you’ll unlock a ‘dragon research’ mod.”

“Huh?”

She blinked. “Right, we haven’t unlocked that mod yet.”

“Exactly.” Fang Mo nodded. “I even picked up a chunk of Chaos Metal at some point, but since that mod’s still locked, I can’t do anything with it. See if you can figure that out.”

With that, Fang Mo handed her the book.

“All right, sure. I’ll give it a shot.”

She nodded, then briefly zoned out as she summoned Alex to take the book from him—before dismissing her Stand again. “So, which one do you want?”

“Heh heh… Blue Archive—”

“Not that one!”

“What the hell!” Fang Mo slapped the nightstand in annoyance. “Why not?!”

“What, are you short on girls over there?” she shot back, totally refusing to budge. “Hey, I used to be a teacher, you know. I know exactly what that second game is like. I bet you just want to jump in and stir up trouble with the students. If you really love these gacha spinoffs, I’ll dig up a ‘Girls’ Frontline: Exile’ for you in a few days.”

“What would I want with that?” Fang Mo frowned. “Ugh… first thing I’d do is kill that Yuzhong guy’s mom with a single slash!”

“See, you’re not even denying you want to go psycho on students.”

She spread her palms in fake despair. “Busted. You’re exactly that ‘pervy teacher’ from fanfics. So you are not going to Schale!”

“Why you—!”

A vein twitched in Fang Mo’s temple. Furious, he started tugging on his belt again.

“Oh, for crying out loud!”

She looked exasperated now. With a quick move, she produced a Quantum Ring from who-knows-where and dropped it on her head. “Fine, you want it that way? Tell me, should I turn into Hina, or Ibuki?”

“…”

That abrupt counterattack left Fang Mo standing there slack-jawed.

“Ugh, fine, let’s knock it off, all right?”

A moment later, he grumbled and let go of his belt. “I really was just curious about the storyline, okay? No ulterior motives. If anything, I’m more interested in that teacher character—”

“What do you mean?”

She tilted her head in confusion.

“It’s more fun being a student than being a teacher,” Fang Mo said without thinking. “If I go there, I’m gonna enroll as a student and see how much I can piss off that weird mascot guy…”

“???”

She stared at him, wide-eyed. After several seconds of silence, she finally managed a single word:

“…Damn.”