A brave man may not live, but he cannot die

Chapter 172 Analysis
"Transmigrator System?"

Ankua was slightly taken aback. "What is that?"

"Every hero has a unique trump card. You can think of it as an extraordinary ability, but it is quite powerful and can even achieve near-miraculous effects if used properly."

"Then do you have it?"

"I'm not a hero, so where would I get a system?" Quinn sighed. "His Majesty the Demon King did give me a few, saying they were taken from the corpses of heroes. But these systems are all broken and basically useless."

".Is it."

"Didn't the Demon King tell you? I thought you knew."

Quinn observed Ankuya's expression.

“Your Majesty doesn’t explain everything to me in detail. There are many obstacles to the Demon King’s Castle transmitting information to this world.” Ankuya frowned and looked at him with dissatisfaction: “You should have shared this kind of information with me earlier.”

"Who knows? It's ineffective."

"Can such a system really do something like time reversal?"

"Should be able to?" Quinn now felt that [Future Hint] and Time Reversal were of similar strength, and if the other divination and encyclopedia were not damaged, their effects would probably not be weak either.

Ankuya rested his chin on his hands and fell into deep thought.

He suddenly understood why heroes throughout history had always been able to defeat the Demon King.

How was the system obtained?

"I don't know, is it innate? You'll have to ask the Demon King."

"..." He leaned back in his chair, a headache throbbing. "If your guess is true, we're both finished now. Since you have memories from before, the hero must have them too."

"No, not necessarily."

Quinn had considered this issue long ago.

"Almost no one knows that it was the two of us who fired the Eye of Grindelwald—if the hero had been inexplicably shot at in the audience, he wouldn't even have suspected that the shot was aimed at him."

“We just need to use the process of elimination. Right now, it seems the biggest risk is Ike Capone,” Quinn said gravely. “That guy can see through your tampering with Starflower. If he is the Hero, he certainly won’t sit idly by and let the operation against Golden Wind happen again.”

Ankuya immediately understood Quinn's meaning.

"You mean, to monitor Golden Wind and his movements?"

“Yes.” Quinn nodded. “If there are no unusual behaviors, then we can most likely rule him out.”

Ankua pondered for a moment before making a decision.

"Then tonight's operation is canceled. I have a backup plan; I can remotely manipulate the Eye of Grindelwald's energy storage to make it appear as if the spell was accidentally damaged. Now we just need to wait for someone to check on the Eye of Grindelwald's anomaly."

“Then the hero has been caught.” Quinn gave a thumbs up. “Aqua is always good at coming up with ideas.”

"Besides Lin and Ike, who else is at the party tonight?" Ankua tapped his fingers rhythmically on the table. "I'm talking about the five suspected heroes."

“Celia is definitely not here,” Quinn said decisively. “If we can rule out Ike as a suspect, then it’s either Elon or Sysa.”

“Looks like we’ll have to start planning from scratch again.” Ankuya let out a long sigh. “Time reversal… With this ability, how do we kill him?”

His frustration stemmed not from the fact that two months of work had been in vain, but from his inability to undo the rewind of time.

The Eye of Grindelwald's bombardment is equivalent to a ninth-order arcane spell, a firepower capable of killing even high-sequence transcendents, yet it can be evaded using time rewind.
The most terrifying unknown now is whether the hero's time reversal was used actively or triggered passively.
If it's used intentionally, that's fine; as long as they can't use it, there's still a chance. But if it can be triggered automatically after death...
That would mean complete invincibility and immortality. No matter how meticulous the plan or how carefully designed the death trap, the opponent can simply restart it.

“Time reversal shouldn’t be a skill that can be used casually.” Quinn said while eating, “Activating this thing once should come at a great cost. At least until today, this is the first time I’ve felt a change in time.”

"You mean he can't use it a second time in the short term?" "Who knows?" Quinn recalled the system's description. If the [Future Hint] wasn't damaged, then higher difficulty requirements would come with heavier costs. The [Divination] system was the same; to get better rewards, one needed to choose longer-term tasks and more unchangeable futures.
“But at least we can be sure that the hero can’t rewind time and start over indefinitely. As long as we can pinpoint his true identity, we can fire a few more shots—” Quinn waved his hand: “We can kill him, right? The premise is that we have to be careful enough that even if he rewinds time, he won’t be able to catch us.”

Ankua nodded. "That's true, but how can you be sure he can't go back indefinitely?"

"If he can rewind infinitely, what's the point? Vote!" Quinn immediately initiated a 15-vote campaign. "The system definitely has limitations. The sooner we find him, the better. He just used it once, so maybe the skill is still on cooldown or he has a mission to complete."

Quinn explained the system's features to Ankuya.

By combining the reward methods of the three systems, it is not difficult to deduce the underlying mechanism of the Hero System—you reap what you sow.

The rewards from the encyclopedia system come from collecting. Although Quinn's collection rewards were lost due to a system malfunction, actively collecting mysteries is still necessary to achieve certain collection milestones. Future hints are based on 'equivalent exchange,' while divination alters the predetermined future.
Although the triggering conditions for time reversal are unknown, there must be some kind of mechanism to constrain the hero as a task.

Moreover, this mechanism will inevitably lead to abnormal behavior from heroes, just like how players who collect all achievements in a game seem like paranoids to NPCs.

Ankuya nodded after listening.

“I’ll go investigate Golden Wind now. If they find nothing amiss, then the operation against the Yangen government-in-exile is canceled.”

"Isn't Elon in charge of the paratroopers?" Quinn asked cautiously. "What if Elon is a hero with memories of yesterday? Wouldn't he notice your unusual behavior?"

"His schedule is packed today, with business activities, diplomatic events, press interviews, and a charity luncheon. I will monitor the Eye of Grindelwald. If this busy man takes time out of his busy schedule or sends someone to check the arcane matrix of the launch tower, or if he directly cancels the party and prevents the audience from being affected, then the suspicion will be basically confirmed."

“If he didn’t come,” Ankuya’s eyes narrowed dangerously, “canceling the operation would be a good opportunity to test him, wouldn’t it?”

"Wow, that's fierce," Quinn exclaimed. "Aren't you afraid he's a true hero and might just chop you in half?"

"Ah."

Ankuya laughed.

"Of the five suspects, Lin is the hardest to kill. Now that Lin is no longer the hero, killing the other four won't be as difficult. I can just take action directly."

"Damn, what a man." Quinn couldn't help but recall the two fingers Ankuya had gestured to him.

Hakiqua, you can even breathe on Tiresia for two minutes straight?
What is that hidden eye?
Quinn wouldn't ask, because Ankuya wouldn't say, but he would silently remember it.

"I have two more questions."

Quinn asked seriously, "What is a Colossus?"

Ankua frowned. "Are you sure Lin calls herself 'Giant Warrior'?"

"Her body is constructed entirely of magical circuits."

"No wonder. This must be something the Elf Queen left at the academy. Do you know Ragnarok?"

"You mean the end of the Second Age?"

Ankua nodded.

"Since then, the Age of Gods has ended, and of the gods who once ruled the earth, only the sun remains. The gods of the other six major religions either slumber or are worshipped by believers in incomplete forms. Not only the gods, but even mythical races such as ancient dragons, primitive humans, and elves have all perished."

"In the Vatican's Gospel of Creation, these gods and beings who died in Ragnarok were all burdened with 'original sin'."

"Based on very limited documents and Tiresia's own account, the Colossus was a powerful magic prepared by the Elves to counter Ragnarok. But it's clear the Elves failed, and whether the Colossus truly existed remains a mystery."

"However, the fact that Ruolin is a giant warrior means that all research on the elves is wrong."

Ankuya looked at the sunlight streaming in through the window.

"The fact that Lin appeared in this era means that the Titans were not meant to survive Ragnarok, but rather had other missions."

(End of this chapter)