The reason that ML originally came into contact with MC is pretty weak and poorly explained, and the way he fell into a coma sounds like something from a D grade action movie.

In the early stages, MC thought the ML was AI, but ML was a human being and suffered quite a bit psychologically from being forcefully jailed and oppressed under a force he could neither see nor hear.

Some hints of Stockholm syndrome and being touch/sound-starved for human interaction due to ML's forced isolation. Author portrayed it surprisingly thoroughly.

From the very beginning, the author foreshadowed the later competition by repeatingly emphasizing MC losing out to that other famous author and how much money and reputation the other guy had in the author circle.

If you are a frequent reader of CN novels, you'd know immediately that by the end of the book, it's pretty much a requirement of the MC to climb to a higher status and earn more money/publicity for his own novel.

CN readers will also expect this. That is not to say that this is the "best" writing, but they are the ones paying money for those chapters of the novel, so the author generally has to fulfill those expectations.