===[Sky Screen]===
Don Quixote: "I am a Fixer who shall sprint for the dream side by side with thee. 'Tis a pleasure."
Dante: ""
Don Quixote: "Dost thou wish to know what a Fixer is? I can answer thy question! Fixers are protectors of the City!"
===[Line Break]===
Qin Dynasty
"Hmm? Fixer? Rather than a guardian... it seems more like some kind of profession?" Li Si mused.
[At this moment, an introduction to Fixers appeared on the light screen.]
[The City—this colossal civilization ruled by the Head and sustained by the Wings—long ago discarded history, faith, and morality as obsolete relics. In their place, people pursued a single thing above all else: Ahn. To obtain more Ahn, people founded corporations, assembled Syndicates, carved out territories in the Backstreets, and struggled endlessly to rise as new Wings of the World.]
[And in such an age, the profession known as the Fixer was born. Fixers augment their bodies with prosthetics, wield singular weapons, and gamble every fragment of their lives for the sake of obtaining more Ahn tomorrow than they possess today. They will search for your missing cat, deliver your message, protect your life, destroy your enemies. Or erase entire families without leaving behind a witness. So long as you can pay the price, a Fixer can obtain nearly anything for you.]
[Ah, yes. In the distant past, before the City buried the old world beneath steel and neon… Ahn used to be called money.]
(Association-related content will be mentioned later; thanks to the great Yu Ge for the information here (｡･ω･｡)ﾉ♡)
"Isn't this just a servant who will do anything for money?" a son of a prominent family mocked.
"Exactly, we have plenty of such fellows."
"Birds die for food; men die for wealth," an anonymous scholar sighed.
"For money, they not only disregard the lives of others but even fail to cherish their own lives. How tragic!"
The woman on the Sky Screen didn't seem to know the true nature of Fixers; looking at her, she truly treated Fixers as the guardians of The City.
But the way she pursued her dreams was no different from how he now studied for the Imperial Examinations.
Dreams... his own dream was to become the top scholar, be an honest official, and protect the local Common People.
Thinking of this, the scholar gave a faint smile and continued to immerse himself in Confucian classics.
Later, he achieved his wish and became the high-ranking official he dreamed of. Decades later, that clear and shining gaze disappeared, replaced by the greedy, obsequious gaze of an old official whose eyes lit up at the sight of silver.
He not only killed his former self but also the "Don Quixote" in his heart. (Who didn't have a Don Quixote in their heart when they were young?)
Spring and Autumn Period
"It seems The Head is like the Son of Heaven of Zhou, and the Wings of the World represent the Vassal States," Confucius commented.
"Although I don't know what the icons above represent, I feel they are different from the Zhou Dynasty."
Qin Dynasty
"I didn't expect the world on the Sky Screen to be implementing enfeoffment as well," Fusu said with a look of joy.
"Since the world on the Sky Screen is implementing enfeoffment, why can't our Great Qin do the same?"
Spain (16th Century)
"So that Don Quixote in the sky became addicted to reading Fixer novels and hallucinated that he was a great Fixer," Cervantes said in confusion.
He couldn't quite understand why a fifty-year-old man had been drastically changed into a young blonde girl who looked only in her teens?
"Better to read knightly romances; at least knights have the concept of virtue. These Fixers are purely mercenaries born for money."
"This is her pursuit of dreams, I suppose... Sigh," Cervantes sighed.
The Don Quixote on the Sky Screen was perhaps just another young soul whose mind had been clouded by novels.
"I find it hard to imagine what you will become after seeing the truth of all this."
(Cervantes' purpose in writing Don Quixote was to satirize the knightly romances that were very popular in Spanish society at the time.)
===[Sky Screen]===
Don Quixote: "Ah! Perchance thou mayst struggle to remember the City! 'Tis—"
Vergilius: "I believe I said this was for brief introductions."
Don Quixote: "Ngh..."
Vergilius: "Don't make me say it twice. Next."
Hong Lu: "My name's Hong Lu. I hope we can get along well."
[太虛幻境 // HONG LU, SINNER #6]
[A Sinner who had lived an affluent life before becoming our company's asset. As such, he has a certain admiration for a free life; but occasionally, he may make ignorant and unsavory questions in regards to the food cooked by a certain other Sinner or other aspects of the low-lives' lowly culture. This can cause significant irritation for the other Sinners. However, it is important to note that no sarcastic undertones are contained in his curiosity-driven inquiries, so it is ill-advised to let them get physical over it.]
Hong Lu: "Wow, and look at you! Isn't that a fascinating head you've got there? A popular model these days, I suppose?"
Dante: "
Hong Lu: "It's not my cup of tea, though."
===[Line Break]===
Tang Dynasty
"Looks like a son of some prominent family out on a tour?" Huang Chao said disdainfully.
"We've been in business for three generations—why should we be inferior to you and your ten years of hard study!"
"I'll kill you all and see what you have to say then."
Qing Dynasty
"The Land of Illusion! (太虛幻境)" At this moment, Cao Xueqin looked at the signature on Hong Lu's introduction with a face full of shock.
"Isn't this from the book I wrote? And the couplet on both sides of the gate appearing behind him..."
"'When the false is taken for true, the true becomes false; where nothing is taken for something, something becomes nothing.' Isn't this from the passage I wrote about wandering in the Land of Illusion?"
"Moreover, through that cyan eye of his, I get a strange sense of familiarity."
"Could it be... he is Jia Baoyu! Or maybe not?" At this moment, Cao Xueqin tightly gripped the unfinished manuscripts in his hands, and the original title on the cover was "The Story of the Stone."
(The Dream of the Red Chamber was originally called "The Story of the Stone," telling the story of a stone left over from Nüwa mending the heavens entering the mortal world, similar to modern fantasy novels. It wasn't until 1784 that it was officially named "The Dream of the Red Chamber.")
===[Sky Screen]===
Heathcliff: "... The hell's wrong with your attitude?
Heathcliff looked to be just moments away from swinging his bat…
But when he noticed the red gaze laid on him, he grunted and sat himself back down.
Ryoshu: "Ryōshū."
[無我夢中 阿鼻叫喚支離滅裂 // RYŌSHŪ, SINNER #4]
[As they say, every person has their own creed and it's only right to respect it as the Executive Manager. But with some creeds, you will have difficulty in even simply pretending to sympathize. You will have noticed that the Sinner in question is a silent chain-smoker whose eyes shine with a euphoric gleam only during battle. She believes that senselessly destroying the enemy's heads is an uncultured act and a step backward for art. [CAUTION]: This Sinner's background is one that even our company may have trouble handling, it is advised against making her breed personal resentment towards you.]
===[Line Break]===
Three Kingdoms
"Hiss—that woman named Ryoshu on the Sky Screen looks like a tough one," Xiahou Dun said bluntly.
"And, treating crushing heads as a desecration of art, and the way she looked at her own wounds during that earlier resurrection… she's a crazy woman."
"True," Cao Cao replied casually, but his eyes were fixed on the warning in the introduction.
"A background difficult to deal with... Just what is Ryoshu's origin?"
Japan (20th Century)
"Instead of choosing suicide, she rode straight into hell," Akutagawa Ryunosuke said.
"Could it be that hell itself was calling for Ryōshu?"
(In the original work, Ryoshu is described as a stingy, greedy, and arrogant man, and the entire storyline is told by a servant under Lord Horikawa. The real Ryoshu chose to hang himself after completing the Hell Screen.)
(It also corresponds to the Ryōshū in Limbus Company, whose fragmented manner of speech and distorted artistic values make her seem as though she has already stepped halfway into hell.)¹
=====
T/N:
¹: Had a hard time trying to translate this, originally it goes: (It also corresponds to that line in the PV: "Why did you make me stutter like this?") But it doesn't really makes sense to me so I changed it, does it make sense to you?
FOUND ANY ERRORS?? LMK!!!