Mysterious Awakening - Chapter 3: The Elderly Ghost

In 2177, the world changed forever. The first full-dive VRMMORPG, 'Eclipse Online', was released.With its breathtaking graphics and adventures, countless players and already established guilds flocked to the game, which stunned the entire world and forced the largest conglomerates to act immediately after gold could be bought with money.It was supposed to be the future of gaming.For Yone, it was the cause of his destruction.Starting over once more, he has entered this “living game” again to control his own fate.This time, he will not be controlled by others and will instead walk his own path.“Kill them till they are allies”This was Yone's infamous phrase as he will rise from just an assassin expert to an unprecedented peak in this life.

He, since childhood, had followed the Foreigner to practice the Defying Heaven Art, entering the most secretive special forces and becoming a fearsome assassin that made others tremble at the mere mention of his name. After a single failure, he took early retirement, but he ended up as the personal bodyguard for a rich heiress, a school beauty. Accidentally provoking some mysterious Cultivators, he gradually unveiled a hidden world of Cultivation beyond the mortal realm...

Ren Takahashi, a shy, hoodie-wearing tech genius, hides behind the online alias GhostHood — a quiet legend in underground hackathons. Despite appearing average in school, he dreams of becoming a real-life Iron Man — not the hero, but the builder of world-changing tech.Enter Aoi Hoshizaki, a bold, gal-style girl with a love for code, a messy room, and a mysterious spark. When she moves in next door and discovers Ren's secret, their world begins to change — from quiet club meetings to national hackathons, late-night debugging sessions to secret rooftop conversations.What starts as teamwork grows into something deeper, more complicated, and far more electric than either expected. Together, they aim for Japan’s most elite tech university — and face rivalries, rumors, and the whisper of love in every line of code.

Apocalypse befell, and roommates performed a skyward ritual.As the fog descended, the Book of Blood Spirit appeared in the hands of all survivors, and only those with a Contract monster could survive.Su Han directed his gaze to the neighbor who had already mutated and twisted, silently pulling out a gleaming fruit knife...Grotesque meat corpses, giant spiders with gaping mouths, eyeballs enveloping the city, one-eyed sharp-toothed hand monsters...Civilization fell, cities shattered, and all humans became meat for the monsters. There was only one way to survive:Use monsters to fight monsters.