From Villain to Virtual Sweetheart: The Fake Heir's Grand Scheme(BL) - Chapter 173: A Strand of Silver

Manchester United, once a dominant force in world football, finds itself struggling under Erik ten Hag despite having the financial power to rebuild.Big-money transfers fail to restore the club’s glory, forcing Ten Hag to shift his focus to homegrown talent.Among the overlooked prospects in the U18 squad is Leo Calderon, a 17-year-old central midfielder buried deep in the pecking order.Lacking physicality and dismissed by teammates as weak, Leo endures constant ridicule from those who dominate with strength and athleticism.But during one ordinary training session, everything changes—Leo suddenly sees passing lanes no one else can, angles of play invisible to even the most talented prospects.Yet, there’s a problem. His vision surpasses his ability. The passes he attempts don’t connect, his technique unable to match his newfound awareness.Coaches dismiss his efforts as sloppy, and his struggles continue. But one unexpected observer—a visiting League One assistant coach—notices something different.He watches Leo’s movements, seeing potential where others see failure.As Leo fights to prove himself in an unforgiving system, the question lingers—can he refine his raw talent before the club moves on without him?

This novel is also known as Only I Level Up

10 years ago, after “the Gate” that connected the real world with the monster world opened, some of the ordinary, everyday people received the power to hunt monsters within the Gate. They are known as “Hunters”.

However, not all Hunters are powerful. My name is Sung Jin-Woo, an E-rank Hunter. I’m someone who has to risk his life in the lowliest of catacombs, the “World’s Weakest”.

Having no skills whatsoever to display, I barely earned the required money by fighting in low-leveled catacombs… at least until I found a hidden catacomb with the hardest difficulty within the D-rank catacombs!

In the end, as I was accepting death, I suddenly received a strange power, a quest log that only I could see, a secret to leveling up that only I know about! If I trained in accordance with my quests and hunted monsters, my level would rise.

Changing from the weakest Hunter to the strongest S-rank Hunter!

- Description from Novelupdates

In less than an instant the world as we knew it was at its end.

That’s right. The Apocalypse. In a single blink Zombies appeared and mutated monsters began to rampage all throughout the world. Now it was the human species turn to fight for survival and planetary dominance!

On the same day that the world descends into chaos we meet Yue Zhong. Initially only hoping to get to his friends and escape to a refugee camp our protagonist sets out, inadvertently building a team along the way. After a series of fortuitous events and a few serious hunches our hero decides it’s time to do more than just survive!

Yue Zhong begins to form the foundations of an enormous survival plan… before he suddenly discovers that he has only gotten over the first hurdle…. Unbeknownst to Yue Zhong and company, the world outside of China is mostly a wasteland! Country sized swathes of nuclear radiation and an extreme shortage of supplies in the world after the nuclear explosions was quickly becoming the “norm”. Mutants, Evolved animals and what’s worse, intelligent out of control dinosaurs had quickly appeared and claimed their own sections of the planet. There were several innately powerful Evolved races which appeared that were more than 10 times stronger than humans, nearly all of them possessing bodies impenetrable by normal bullets. The fabled orcs’ were another of these Evolved races, the leader of which had in fact enslaved many of the remaining human beings.

Unceremoniously exposed to such a cold and heartless new world, Yue Zhong is faced with a choice: Find a deep dark hole and hope it goes back to “normal”? Or overcome all obstacles and struggle towards Evolution!!!

- Description from Novelupdates