Divine Rune Awakening: Starting With Various Divine Runes and Dominating the World - Chapter 9: Desert Ants

It begins on the mountain.

With the glint of a knife, a flash of steel in the hands of a sworn brother. A betrayal.

Stabbed and pushed down the mountain, Zi Chen lied within the red-stained snow, left to die.

This is where it begins; he is given life by lightning,
baptized by thunder.

Those who had once betrayed him should all suffer in his cruel revenge.

- Description from Novelupdates

Sixty years after the global catastrophe, the Little Freeze Period ended, and the governments of the living regions began to collect land in the anarchic areas to be planned on a large scale, reorganized resources, and entered the recovery stage in an all-round way. These two decades are also called “golden Twenty years”.

This is a bright era in which new regions are rising one after another, politics is set up, capital is acting, careerists are everywhere, heroes are powerful, villains and grassroots are rising together! A young man rises up in troubled times with a full stomach of strategy, hides a tiger in his chest, and measures the world.

- Description from novelbuddy

[Sexual Content and lemons warning]This novel has smut but is not smut focused.It has Plot and story, developing relationships. Though it may feel a bit slow in the beginning it will pace up soon.No NTR.18+-----------------------------With her sitting on me, I could feel her thighs, so soft and I didn't want her off of me but this was not the time for that.“I wouldn't betray you like this Jennifer, you know this” I said, shifting my gaze from her thighs to her eyes.“You were with Renn all along.” She said as she drew a blade to my neck. “You can't tell me you don't have a hand in this”At that moment, there was nothing I could say to please the beast who had me in chokehold. I just laid there and prayed for a miracle.—-------------------------In a world where every player controls five versatile avatars, Contrario Williams is cursed with just one avatar.Mocked, outclassed, and labelled “One-slot player,” Contrario enters Irish Valley, a faction known for chewing up the weak. But when his last avatar, named Stray, really bonds with him, everything begins to change. What starts as a desperate struggle to survive quickly grows into a chaotic rise through ranked raids, underground brawls, and deadly bounty missions.With 290 days until a tournament that will shake the game world, Contrario is thrown into brutal training simulations, tangled love interests, and savage battles with elite bounty hunters and mercenaries like the infamous Kyra and Axel. Killer twins who fight for who can pay them the most, and who just might hold the key to Contrario's haunted past.But in a world built on stats, politics, and power, what happens when the most underestimated player becomes the most unpredictable? How would Contrario handle opening up to people who later betray him?And how far will Contrario go to prove that one slot is all he needs?

Yeon-woo had a twin brother who disappeared five years ago. One day, a pocket watch left by his brother returned to his possession. Inside, he found a hidden diary in which was recorded “By the time you hear this, I guess I will be already dead….”