Discussion = good stuff, so here's some discussion.
Every story spoken has been spoken before.
The boy from Earth stumbles into another realm. A world of wonder and magic, suffering beneath the Tyrant's cruel yoke. The boy becomes a man, the man becomes a hero, the hero defeats the Tyrant, and all live happily ever after. So destiny has decreed.
But the Tyrant is not so easily overcome.
He is wise to destiny's tricks, greater than destiny's stewards. He sets the world spinning to the direction of a new master. Destiny falters; only causality remains. And mere causality does not suffice a hero from coddled Earth to stand against the Tyrant.
This makes me think that the whole Tyrant and Hero situation is an AU situation of EFB, just shifted slightly for a swords and sorcery universe instead of Xianxia. Tyrant appears, somehow outscales the Gods, and wrecks Destined Hero. Certainly sounds familiar, doesn't it?
Although, something doesn't add up. If the Tyrant was able to scale up enough to break Destiny over his knee, why did he have trouble with literally anything else in the setting, let alone weak little Isekai Lad who had only a few months of training at that time?
Like, either by strength of arms or force of will or some other way, the Tyrant was able to break Destiny. We've seen in EFB that such an act generally requires you to be at the pinnacle of the local power scaling, so the Tyrant should've automatically won at that point.
The fact that this
isn't what happened is a little suspicious. We see that the Hero tries again and again to defeat the Tyrant, but always fails, suffering for it each time. But here's the even more suspicious part: Though the Hero was rebuffed at every turn, though the Tyrant seemed almost unassailable, the Hero was never killed. Isn't that a bit odd? Like, literally every character of importance except the Hero is immediately killed by the Tyrant, no hesitation (except for the moment of hesitation after killing Waifu). But the Hero is just increasingly wounded every single time, despite the fact that the Tyrant growing past destiny meaning that he should have just as easy a time killing the Hero as he would everyone else.
The fact that the Hero was able to get away with crippling injuries the many, many times he attacked the Tyrant seems to indicate to me that there was some higher force at work, safeguarding the Hero. Perhaps some more malicious entity was able to take control of this world in the absence of Destiny, and decided that it would allow the Hero to win only after he'd lost everything.
I dunno, just spitballing there.
The killing stroke descends. The hero's final companion throws herself into its path. The hero becomes a widower.
In the Tyrant's implacable guard, a momentary opening appears.
I wonder what this right here means. Sure it might just be shock at there suddenly being a dying woman on the ground, but this still feels important. Like there was something about that specific girl that would make the Tyrant have a momentary lapse in the middle of battle. Pure speculation here, but what if the Tyrant is the Hero from the future, come back in time to preserve his own existence, and the hesitation that occurs is because "Oh god oh fuck I just murdered my waifu".
[ ] Three Wishes - Your heart's desire.
There's some pretty decent cheese here, if taken with Progression. Use the Lesser and then Least Wishes to improve your capabilities right off the bat, immediately jumping past the period of vulnerability that all Progression Types possess. Sure, you won't have Wishes, but they recharge if you do extraordinarily well or substantially mitigate Curses, which is something we'd want to do as we go along anyway.
It'd change the metric from being an early Progression Type with two get out of jail free cards to being an already strong Progression Type with the opportunity to earn Wishes as the Quest went on.
