"The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook."
***
I forced myself to remember everything I knew about Heirs of the Azure Orb.
The story followed Leo and his annoyingly perfect friends through their academy years. Standard fantasy stuff. Ancient evil threatens the kingdom. Chosen heroes rise to stop it. Good guys win, bad guys lose, everyone goes home happy except the corpses.
The writing was decent. Character work was solid. Fight scenes were actually pretty good.
And Kaelen?
Kaelen showed up every few chapters to get his face kicked in. The comic relief villain. The speedbump. Every single appearance was more desperate and pathetic than the last, a steady decline from "minor nuisance" to "why is this guy still alive."
His death came early in the first academy year.
Two paragraphs.
That's what my entire existence in this world amounted to. Two paragraphs of Leo looking appropriately serious while "justice" was served. Kaelen would try to poison the protagonist during some tournament. He'd get caught through a series of coincidences so contrived they made my old creative writing professor spin in his grave. Public execution. Treason against a ducal heir. The end.
The scene had all the emotional weight of taking out the garbage.
Fantastic. I got isekai'd into the role of a speedbump. No golden finger. No cheat skills. No goddess with questionable proportions. Just a scripted death and two paragraphs of closure.
I hadn't asked for this. I hadn't chosen to get dropped into a failing narrative as a disposable character whose only purpose was dying in a way that made the protagonist look good.
But here I was.
And the universe seemed determined to push me toward that ending whether I wanted it or not.
Unless...
A memory surfaced. Not Kaelen's this time. Mine.
Late nights on fan forums. Laptop glow in a dark dorm room at 3 AM when I should have been studying for thermodynamics. Endless discussions with strangers who had way too much free time and way too many opinions about fictional power systems.
Most of it was standard garbage. Shipping wars that required moderator intervention. Power scaling arguments that devolved into accusations of illiteracy. Wish fulfillment posts from guys who wanted to get transported into the story with perfect knowledge so they could seduce every female character.
But there was one thread.
A user called PlotDeviceHunter69, because of course that was his username, had put together this massive list. "Chekhov's Guns That Never Fired." Minor details the author mentioned once and then forgot. Items described in loving detail that never showed up again. Characters with interesting backstories who vanished without resolution. Plot threads that went nowhere.
The [Rune of Diminishment] had been on that list.
I sat up straighter. The bruises complained. I ignored them.
Wait. Wait wait wait.
In the novel, there was a throwaway scene early on. Kaelen wandering through the abandoned wing of the Leone estate, bored and aimless. He'd found something in a dusty storage room. A cursed artifact. Felt the bad vibes coming off it like heat from an open fire.
The original Kaelen had dropped it and walked away. Smart enough to avoid obviously dangerous magic items, if nothing else. The scene existed to establish that the old wing was creepy and that Kaelen had basic survival instincts.
Two sentences. Maybe three.
Then? Nothing. The rune never came up again. Four hundred chapters of story, and the author completely forgot about it.
PlotDeviceHunter69 had written this whole theory about it. The post was impressive in its thoroughness and slightly unhinged in its dedication. Classic web novel problem, he'd argued. Too many ideas in the early chapters. No organization. No beta reader willing to say "hey, you forgot about that magic item you introduced fifty chapters ago."
I'd left a comment on that thread. I could almost hear my own voice.
"The Rune of Diminishment sounds like it reduces stats or abilities. But what if it works both ways? What if 'diminishment' doesn't mean weakening? What if it means hiding? Making something appear less than it actually is? A cursed item that forces you to hide your true power would be useless to a protagonist, but for a spy or an infiltrator..."
The theory had gotten twelve upvotes and two replies calling me an idiot.
But what if I'd been right?
A cursed item that could mask your real capabilities. Make your stats look pathetic even if they weren't. Make you seem weak and harmless and not worth the effort of destroying.
For most people in this world, that would be terrible. Nobles needed to show strength. Academy students needed to prove themselves. Looking weak was a death sentence in a society built on power hierarchies.
But for someone like me?
Someone stuck playing a pathetic villain?
Someone who needed the entire world to underestimate him?
That could be exactly what I need.
I swung my legs off the bed. Stood up too fast. Swayed as the blood rush caught up with my brain.
The abandoned wing of the Leone estate. I knew where it was. Kaelen's memories had the layout of this place burned into them from years of wandering these halls, trying to find somewhere he belonged.
If the rune is still there...
It had been years since Kaelen found it. Someone might have moved it. Cleaned it out. Destroyed it. The old wing might have been renovated or sealed off or burned down for all I knew.
But if it was still there?
If I could get my hands on an artifact that let me hide my true power while everyone assumed I was the same pathetic weakling they'd always known?
That changes everything.
I could train in secret. Get stronger without anyone noticing. Build up my actual abilities while the whole world kept treating me like a joke.
By the time anyone realized I wasn't the pushover they expected, it would be too late.
Okay. New plan.
Step one: Find the rune.
Step two: Figure out if it actually does what I think it does.
Step three: Get stronger while everyone's busy ignoring me.
Step four: Don't die.
The last step was really the important one. Everything else was just setup.