The Issue of TBOAH's Narration – was it wrong??
As those who finished reading TCF Part 1 know (spoiler alert); Cale Henituse got his knowledge about the world he got transmigrated into from a series of books called "The Birth of a Hero", by "Nelan Barrow" – aka. Choi Jung Gun, Choi Han's uncle.
CJG wrote them as a "guide" for Choi Jung Soo, Kim Rok Soo's friend, who was originally supposed to be the one transported into that world to help Choi Han defeat the White Star. Plans changed, however, when he and Lee Soo Hyuk altered fate and saved KRS's life, at the cost of their own. So KRS-turned-Cale took CJS's place and the TBOAH series served as a guide for him, instead.
There are still many questions unanswered about this whole thing. For example: how did CJG know all the things he did? The novel was supposedly from TBOAH!Choi Han's point of view, and yet, it had some inexplicable details… like how to earn the Indestructible Shield (which supposedly was never gotten by anyone), or Harol Kodiang parentage – why mention such a thing at all? Was Harol somehow important in the TBOAH verse later on?
Or another example: why didn't the books mention the White Star at all? Surely, if past-volume-5 Choi Han's knowledge was given to CJG to write about, shouldn't he first and foremost explain to CJS who the Final Boss is and how to defeat him??
Or another: why was it so important for CJG to tell his grand-nephew just how pretty the Whale People are???
So many unanswered questions!!
Today, however, I will be focusing on topic of them in particular:
Was TBOAH's narration actually, 100% correct?
Here's the thing: I was re-reading one of my favorite fanfics recently, "In an Instant" by Messy_haired_bum on AO3. I got to the chapter where a certain part of TBOAH came up – namely, "the Last Survivor of the Wolf Tribe", the Wolf King Lock. The characters in the fic discuss a particular problem with that title: Lock wasn't the last Wolf.
Or, well, he wasn't supposed to be.
Arm's goal in attacking the Wolf Tribes wasn't exterminating them at all – it was abduction of their children. Lock's siblings, by all account, should have gotten kidnapped in TBOAH verse, not assassinated. It is important, because later on the races "abandoned by the gods" – like the Wolf Tribe, Vampires and Dark Elves – were meant to be used as sacrifices to the God of Despair, to summon the 8 Unranked Monsters from the demonic statues in Endable, as well as the Temple of the Sealed God in Puzzle City. Lock was part of the team who managed to rescue some of the abducted Wolves, himself.
The problem is this: did the TBOAH!Lock not know about the abduction somehow, only assuming he was the last one when that wasn't the case… or was the TBOAH's narration wrong, for some reason?
The characters in the fic are torn on the issue – neither argument supported by the omniscient narration (which was a clever move on the author, that's why the writing's so great in this) – and the two Locks despise each other: TBOAH!Lock believes his counterpart to be weak, while TCF!Lock thinks the other him was blind and failed to notice his siblings getting abducted.
However, there is a third option. Which is a theory I've had for a long time.
I do not believe that CJG's writing could actually be 100% correct – especially where it comes to subjective stuff, such as beauty or people's personal beliefs. He clearly has some idea of his character's motivations and personalities, and yet he had no idea about OG Cale throwing his reputation for the sake of his step-brother Basen.
On the other hand… I think CJG got his objective facts right, such as the order of events. Even if the timeline wasn't explained to Cale as clearly as he would have wished – causing him to encounter the Whales in the Ubarr Territory, despite visiting the shore way earlier than the events of TBOAH's volume 5… Still, CJG never wrote any lies. Sure, TBOAH!Lock believed to himself to be the last member of the Wolf Tribe when that clearly wasn't the case. However, I think the attack on his village could have been a complete assassination after all.
How, do you answer? One word: Redika.
Redika was the one who attacked Lock's Wolf Village in both TBOAH and TCF, but his actions could have been different in the two timelines. Why...?
...Because of Raon, of course.
Think about it: Cale's actions caused massive differences from the very beginning. From Choi Han's relationships, to the survival of the nameless village where Raon was being tortured at. However, most people forget that there was an important link between Raon and Redika. Redika was the one who sold the Black Dragon Egg to Marquis Stan – and the thing is? He wasn't supposed to do it!
No, in fact, the Black Dragon going on a rampage and dying at Choi Han's hands? It probably gave Redika a lot of trouble! Because he was never supposed to sell that egg!! It never should have been in his posession at all!!!
The Dragon-Half Blood, which was presumably Redika's teacher in magic, gave him the Black Egg in secret in order to "dispose of it" – aka. protect it. Redika agreed, then double-crossed him by selling it to a random low-ranked Arm member (because let's be honest, the Stans couldn't have been high in that hierarchy) for some BIG CASH. Everything went down well under the table of course, so he was pretty confident there would be no bad consequences for him.
...Except, he Dragon escaping and revealing himself in such a public way?? No way he could have covered it up! Redika was probably sweating bullets when he found out! If someone connected the dots about him being involved… oh boy. If the Dragon Half-Blood heard about it, Redika would be good as dead. If the White Star heard about it… he'd be worse than dead.
And I bet the news reached him juuust around the time he got the mission to abduct some Wolf Tribe children. What would a psychopath do in such a stressful situation?
Why, murder a bunch of children, of course!
It makes 100% sense. Maybe Redika didn't kill all the children in TBOAH – maybe it was just some of them. But it was enough to make Lock and others convinced that Arm's goal was assassination. Redika went on a rampage to let off some steam, and probably killed more of the "seeds" than he should have on this mission. He'd probably get even more in trouble because of that, but hey – YOLO, am I right?? 😂
I mean c'mon, it's not like Redika was a particularly restrained guy.
Of course, there were other factors: such as Choi Han and Rosalyn arriving earlier than in TBOAH, thus saving more lives. But I'm pretty sure that Redika's actions were different in TBOAH, as well. There's no way he would be unaffected when he about the Black Dragon escaping in TBOAH. The butterfly effect in TCF is super strong. If tiny differences like Choi Han not beating up Cale resulted in his actions being different, why wouldn't the same apply to other characters? We all know the moment Cale transmigrated, the whole thing went of the rails.
Basically: I think CJG was right in TBOAH, mostly. Except Cale's actions caused such huge waves of changes, the situation changed drastically. Lock believed to be the last of his kind because for all he knew, that was the case. But the attack on his village probably went differently in TBOAH from the start, not just because of Choi Han and Rosalyn.
