I don't get the pay off for helping Lucia when she is such a bitch...
Ehh power isn't everything. She deserves to go to the farm.
Just need to fuck the bitch out of her.
You're not cultivating enough.
Being a bitch doesn't make her deserve to be sent to a torture prison for the rest of her life
We had a recent discussion on Discord that I thought others might be interested in regarding what Lucia thinks Evelyn did that led to her bullying.
General consensus was that we don't think Evelyn actually or intentionally did anything that would truly justify the bullying. At most, it's some unknown slight that only seemed significant because they were young teens at the time. And it's mentioned that it's not that same reason as others gave for bullying Evelyn regarding having flier friends or family sent away after the lawsuit.
But then another proposed theory came up that was quite interesting. What if someone with a a flier friend or family member manipulated Lucia into believing Evelyn had done something truly terrible as an indirect way to get "revenge"? Remember that in this world shapeshifting, illusion projecting, and maybe even memory manipulation powers exist. From the mind of a teen kid, how better to make someone they hate's life miserable than to trick the most popular girl in school into bullying her? All they'd have to do from then on is spread the occasional rumor (on the normal path, Lucia said she didn't start most of those herself) and get years of torment out of it.
If that's the case, suddenly Lucia isn't just a bully but also a bit of a victim herself. On a Lucia "normal" path instead of "manipulate", I can totally see them talking about it (which seems likely to happen
next chapter) and realizing they've both been played. And then perhaps they team up to take whoever was actually responsible down. Between Evelyn's scrying, Amber's invisibility, and Lucia's time stopping ability (plus MC with all his powers), they definitely have the "spy power" chops to really investigate if they need to. I could actually see Ev and Lucia eventually even bonding in doing so, which would make it much smoother for MC to be with Lucia on a normal path (hell, even can see an Ev+Lucia victory threesome as possible), and maybe even Lucia becoming a pseudo-member of the harem on such a path (Jacq has said that his plan for her blurs the line a bit between main and side LI).
Time will tell how close we might be, but it's definitely an interesting theory and something like it could go a long way in making Lucia a sympathetic and redeemable character.
