There must be something wrong with me - Chapter 32 - 26 Rushing by the Half Moon

[Sexual Content and lemons warning]This novel has smut but is not smut focused.It has Plot and story, developing relationships. Though it may feel a bit slow in the beginning it will pace up soon.No NTR.18+-----------------------------With her sitting on me, I could feel her thighs, so soft and I didn't want her off of me but this was not the time for that.“I wouldn't betray you like this Jennifer, you know this” I said, shifting my gaze from her thighs to her eyes.“You were with Renn all along.” She said as she drew a blade to my neck. “You can't tell me you don't have a hand in this”At that moment, there was nothing I could say to please the beast who had me in chokehold. I just laid there and prayed for a miracle.—-------------------------In a world where every player controls five versatile avatars, Contrario Williams is cursed with just one avatar.Mocked, outclassed, and labelled “One-slot player,” Contrario enters Irish Valley, a faction known for chewing up the weak. But when his last avatar, named Stray, really bonds with him, everything begins to change. What starts as a desperate struggle to survive quickly grows into a chaotic rise through ranked raids, underground brawls, and deadly bounty missions.With 290 days until a tournament that will shake the game world, Contrario is thrown into brutal training simulations, tangled love interests, and savage battles with elite bounty hunters and mercenaries like the infamous Kyra and Axel. Killer twins who fight for who can pay them the most, and who just might hold the key to Contrario's haunted past.But in a world built on stats, politics, and power, what happens when the most underestimated player becomes the most unpredictable? How would Contrario handle opening up to people who later betray him?And how far will Contrario go to prove that one slot is all he needs?

After being torn from the only life she knew, 16-year-old Margo is forced into a new home with strangers who call themselves her parents. Haunted by memories of her past and consumed by feelings of isolation, she struggles to adapt to her unfamiliar surroundings. School offers little relief—until she meets Lucien, a mysterious boy who appears just when she needs a friend the most.Gabriel is everything Margo needs: kind, attentive, and always ready to whisk her away from her troubles. Each night, he invites her to secret places—an abandoned playground, a fog-choked garden, a crumbling train station at the edge of town—each more unsettling than the last. Yet with every chilling rendezvous, Margo feels more alive... more seen.But something isn’t right. Gabriel never comes to school during the day. Her adoptive parents never see him. And when they catch her talking to thin air, their concern deepens into fear. They say Gabriel isn't real—that he’s a figment of her imagination. Margo wants to believe them, but Gabriel feels real. More real than anything else in her life.As the nights grow colder and more twisted, Gabriel’s true nature begins to surface. Shadows move where they shouldn’t. Time warps in his presence. And the places they visit seem to echo with whispers from another world. Margo is forced to ask herself: Who—or what—is Gabriel? Why does he only want her? And what will happen on the final night he asks her to come with him?As the line between reality and delusion begins to crumble, Margo must make an impossible choice: stay in a world where she feels loved, or return to one that barely feels real.But one thing is certain—some friendships never let go.

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.