Starting with an A-Rank Forbidden Artifact and Making the Players Work for Me

Lin Qi transmigrates into a game world and becomes the illegitimate son of a noble house -- a character so insignificant that the original story barely mentions him. To grow stronger in this world, he begins lurking around the game's protagonists, stealing the spotlight and resources whenever he can. But after a chance encounter, Lin Qi obtains something the game's main characters would kill for: an A-Rank Forbidden Artifact. The artifact is not just powerful -- it is sentient, dangerous, and hungry. It grants Lin Qi abilities that break the game's balance, but each use comes with a cost that the system never intended players to pay. While other characters grind through quests and level up through conventional means, Lin Qi leverages his forbidden advantage to turn every encounter into a rigged game where the other players work for him without realizing it. As Lin Qi's influence grows, the game's protagonists begin to notice the anomaly. The system itself flags his artifact as a threat, sending increasingly dangerous challenges to eliminate the imbalance. But Lin Qi has read enough novels to know that the system's rules are suggestions, not laws. With cunning, audacity, and an artifact that defies classification, he sets out to prove that the best way to win a game is to make everyone else play it for you.