EPIC: Path of Demons and Dragons - Chapter 74: Maou

I am currently re-writing the first chapters of this story. They are quite rough and bounce around a lot and I can do better. At some point, I will replace these with the better chapters.Sometime in 2024 Aethon Books will publish the first volume of this story on Amazon, KU, and audible. This will mean the story will be stubbed. I will notify people far in advance of that.In the dystopian world of the future, life is rough when you live at the bottom. Jobs are non-existent. Far too many people live in poverty, crammed into huge buildings called Habitats. With no jobs in the real world, many people can only find work online in VR worlds as servants to the very rich. And it's getting worse. The old internet is unusable and hacked to pieces. The new system needs AI to run things, but all but one of them were destroyed. The last sentient AI is ordered to create a new game world so the rich can have a playground, and the corporations that rule the world can have a new global market place. Everyone wants a piece of the new game. The guilds are competing to be the first to find the dungeons and kill the biggest monster. The corporations are claiming land and putting in their online market places. Ozzy and his friends just want a paycheck.Four friends sign five year contracts as virtual serfs in a small village, and can't go adventuring at all to gain money. They don't have many choices. They can work as a blacksmith, barmaid and shepherd for all those years....or they can cheat and find ways to take advantage of the system and carve out a section of the game world for themselves, and earn a fortune in the real world.When they give you a mop and not a sword, you have to find the loopholes and change the rules.

What happens when you run really low on luck and get intimately entangled with a perfect on the outside and ruthless on the inside man? Well, sparks fly but not the kind you imagine in cute fluffy love stories.

Already an orphan, Xia Xi Jin has been struggling through these past years to make a bare minimum living. She is a struggling writer who seems to have a careless attitude towards life and a dirty appearance. However, after a one-night stand with President Xi Mu Tian everything changes.

Being forced into a marriage Xi Jin tries to adapt to her new life, new friends and begins to unravel the mysteries of her past and that of her husband. Can love bloom in this penned down marriage of convenience. Read to know!

- Description from Novelupdates

Bro!

You wouldn’t believe this!

Everything was normal. Me and my bros doing some mining for mana gems for that old sockethole, Somanda like we always do all day, everyday.

Me, Fractures, Bonet, Mono-socket, Broadbone and the gang.

Then from nowhere, that ungrateful sockethole, Somanda tries to END me! Can you believe that?!

I mean, I have told some questionable stories about him caressing my skull affectionately and deeming me his prized undead, but no need to axe a skeleton for something like that, right?

RIGHT?!

I managed to escape through one of the most convenient and contrived get-aways in all of undead history, even managing to pull a bony one on the Lich bastard by stealing two of his seemingly important possessions which I find out later to be better than I thought they’d be!

From there it’s a just a SPIRAL of boneshit left and right! I can’t catch a break! What’s with this atrocious luck, bro?!

A voice speaks to me about how I have qualified for something about a something that’s supposedly something’s something!

Then I find myself in a new world that reeks of life and gives my bones a disgusted rattle.

Powerful beasts and men are at every turn, all lining up to be a huge pain in my PELVIS!

GAAAAH!

Jeez this is happening too fast!

However, even while I’m in the thick of this, the one saving grace is that I got something worth while!

A new path of power!

I can NOT be an undead!

I can be something better than both the Living and the Dead!

Immune to the antics from both sides. Well... most of them!

I’m no longer on the path for Undeath!

Only Lifelessness awaits me!

I’m the one who transcends reality in this tale!

I am... SKULLIUS!

And I’m not an UNDEAD!

.......

[Sneek Peek]

“What kind of skills are these? What can I do with them? They better not be worthless VOW Bro!”

[Please refrain from calling me- you know what, whatever! Scroll down to access the actual descriptions about the skills].

Um ok.

Click.

~~~

[ Supreme Skill ]

[ Flesh It Like You Mean It | Lv. 1 ]

Tired of looking dead? Are your eyes hollow? Do you need to smile and show off something other than bones? Call on the power of cosmetic flesh and get a body that's to your liking (not really).

----

[ Supreme Skill ]

[ Lifeless Evolution ]

Tired of the same old undead evolutions? Is being undead not trendy anymore? Is your Lich a sockethole who doesn’t admire your efforts? Well then, try the Lifeless Evolution Package. For strong, unorthodox and peculiar evolutions that will knock your skull off.

-IfyouareseeingthisinyourGuidancefielditmeansthatthisskillisboundtoyouandisnon-refundable-

~~~

I’m going to regret this right?

......

In my former life, I dedicated most of my adult life to achieving my goal of exploring the stars. Unfortunately, due to circumstances outside my control, my life abruptly ended leaving my dream unfulfilled. Thanks to the intervention of the Big Guy Upstairs, I was given a chance to achieve my dream though the one who reincarnated me screwed me over. Unlike the futuristic type of world I wanted to start in, I ended up being born in a medieval, magical world as the third son of a regional baron. All I can do now is Dungeon Crawl for ancient technology in the hopes that I find a ship or technology to get me off this damn world!