Martial Arts Ain't That Big of a Deal - Chapter 178: Maintenance Fee (2)

An eternal prison, a soulless body, a sealed spirit, everything lost.

To resign before merciless fate, or to become destiny!

“I lived in an illusion, I was lost, I could not find my home, I did not have a home… but why does it matter?! Between bowing to the threat of death and a spine that would never bend, I will choose the latter!”

- Description from Novelupdates

God gave me one more chance and finally came back after four hundred years.

As soon as I realized I returned, I decided that ‘no one should have pride.’

My goal was to destroy the country. So, I grew up with a genius prince who lived in hiding before returning.
He took up the empire for me and I left him for him to achieve his goal.

‘I came to pick you up Charlize Ronan.’ Dylan, who became a perfect tyrant after a few years, found me after searching all over the continent.

‘Why did you flee and run away?’

Lucy Gray was a tech genius—until a stranger smiled, pulled the trigger, and ended his life.But death wasn’t the end. It was a recruitment.Dragged before a pantheon of ancient gods, Lucy learns his soul has been drafted into the Holy War—an eternal bloodbath in which Gods fight across shattered realms. Out of thousands, he was soul #4,000, chosen by Seraphine, the Goddess of Rebirth and Suffering.Now reborn in a dying world of Ogres, Giants, Beastkin, Dragonkin, and Elves, Lucy is a human among legends—a species exiled and nearly forgotten, for reasons that make him hated.Armed with nothing but defiance, sarcasm, and a bizarre ability to steal and master the powers of others, Lucy has one job: survive the impossible.The gods wanted a pawn.They got the wrong dead man.

Some crowns are forged in blood. Others are drowned beneath it.In a city strangled by smoke and silence, where children are shackled to machines and shadows rule behind gilded masks, Keiran is just another forgotten soul—until the mark appears.Buried beneath the factory’s foundations lies a world long erased from history. Ancient oaths whisper through stone and water, and something older than memory begins to stir. As Keiran is drawn deeper into the abyss, he uncovers a legacy not meant for mortal hands—a crown shattered in defiance, a flood sealed by sacrifice, and a power that demands a price.Hunted by tyrants, haunted by echoes, and bound to secrets he never asked for, Keiran must choose: drown in the tide of what came before, or rise against the current and reclaim what the world was forced to forget.But the deeper he goes, the more the truth unravels…And beneath it all, something still breathes.