Forgotten Legend of the Bloodied Flower - Chapter 9 - Martial Arts Training

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.

Qiao Shao, who worked hard to stay up all night and study, was first in class — if you count from the bottom.

have you heard of it?

If you turn on the music player in the dead of night, put on headphones, hide your head in the quilt, and listen to the looped single repeatedly.

Fall asleep after looping forty-four times. If you are unlucky and open your eyes again, you will no longer be lying on your own bed, but will enter a strange space that is completely isolated from reality.

That space… On the surface, it looks like the places we usually see, such as our bedroom, living room at home, underground garage, bathroom, basketball court, construction site, etc. But if you look closely, you will find that it is different. …Everything is different.

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This is the experience of an ordinary person who, after acquiring superpowers, transforms and grows step by step in a blind corner, reaching the ultimate level.

- Description from novelbuddy