Bride of the Serpent King - Chapter 9: I’ve fallen in love with you

Some say he is the bad apple in a basket, that he’s rotting everything around him with disgrace and corruption.

Some say he is the biggest scum of the South Zhanbu Continent, that he’s colluding with the dark sects to cheat, steal, and commit all manner of atrocities.

Some say he is the most wanted playboy. “Lock your daughters at home to keep Fang Xing away!”

To all of those people, “That’s right, I am that big rotten apple. Any problem with that?”

This brand of anti-hero is a young orphan with poor prospects and nothing more than the keepsakes of his uncles. He plots, schemes, and orchestrates all manner of villainy in his quest for power and revenge, unafraid to live precariously and make enemies out of those he really should not.

- Description from Novelupdates

We have all heard the legends of great wizards, but do we know how those stories begin? Ardan Egobar, a young man living in a remote corner of the New Monarchy Empire, does not. He doesn't realize that this story is about him. Not yet...In a world where steam locomotives chug along iron rails, where massive airships hover in the skies, where in the cities you might encounter orcs in suits involved in organized crimes, dwarves with cigars controlling major banks, or elves strutting down fashionable boulevards, where humans have built vast nations on the brink of a world war, almost anything seems possible.Maybe, in such a world, even an ordinary young man, the last of the mountain hunters, might one day become the greatest wizard in history.

Starting from today, I am retired. But what should I be doing? I neither have the skills, nor the mind to do business, my only advantage is this pair of hands which have taken this world. What a headache…

Note: The usage of the term “retired” here doesn’t mean retiring from old age, work etc. It’s a specific term to refer to not involving oneself in the affairs of a certain society.

What the hell? That menace who bullied me since I was six years old, actually became a pretty girl after three years of living apart? And she even ran to our agreed duel location to confess to me, hoping that I can become her boyfriend?!