Infinite Paths: The Raging Phoenix - Chapter 3: New home

When the system warned the world that it was coming a week in advance, Alex couldn’t have been more excited. In college for a degree he didn’t care about to get a job he didn’t want, the promise of a world where magic and challenge awaited — even at the potential cost of death — was the best news he possibly could have imagined. Alex was ready for a new life. He ready for his only friend to shove him through a portal into hell the moment the apocalypse started. Instead of getting to punt rabbits and farm wolves, Alex finds himself stranded in a warped world where even the bugs are stronger than he is. Even with a summoner class that gains the powers of its monsters, most people would have died. Alex didn’t get the memo. He might have liked challenge a little bit too much. Where others saw certain death, he found something else. Opportunity.

In this world, there are people who, despite having both talent and luck, always fall a step short of happiness, and Lin Xiaoguai, unfortunately yet fortunately, is among them.Born in the sixties as the beloved youngest daughter in her family, Lin Xiaoguai was both beautiful and intelligent. However, she was burdened with four mediocre and weak older brothers and four formidable sisters-in-law. Her family background was initially poor, dimming her prospects, but just at the right age, she encountered the restoration of the college entrance examination and succeeded in entering university. Her father, overjoyed by the occasion, went to sleep never to wake again, leaving Lin Xiaoguai devastated and ill. During her high fever and delirium, her greedy in-laws married her off. Fortunately, she met a decent man, but his family proved to be a relentless headache, ultimately costing her the ability to become a mother.Disheartened, she divorced and moved far away. On her own, she carved out a new world in the city, living comfortably and leisurely with money and leisure, but unexpectedly, in her later years, she suddenly acquired a powerful ability that should have appeared decades earlier. Thankfully, her broad-mindedness prevented her from succumbing to depression.When calamity struck, she thought her end had come but woke to find herself back at the beginning.Considering her past, Lin Xiaoguai realized that if she wasted this second chance, she would truly be foolish.

People called him a genius—but Agares never believed it.Tired of expectations, he abandoned everything to live an ordinary life, working just to survive in a cruel world.But fate had other plans.A sudden transmigration took Agares into a world of swords and sorcery—a land ravaged by demons, ruled by power, and merciless to the weak.To his shock, he awakens as one of the Chosen Heroes. Sounds like a dream come true?Wrong.“That's a cursed job!”“He's no hero—he's a demon in disguise!”“Kill him! For the sake of the world!”[DING! Congratulations, you have obtained a Job.][Name: Agares][Job: Saber]Hunted by the empire he was meant to protect, feared for the power he never asked for, Agares finds himself branded a threat to humanity. All because of a job he didn’t choose.Just as the noose tightens, a red-eyed woman named Liel offers him a different path:“You were born to be more than their hero.”“The empire betrayed you. Humanity rejected you. Even nature turns away.”“Why not embrace what they fear —and become the successor of the Demon Emperor?”Now, Agares has a choice: run, or rise.This is the beginning of his war.A war not just for survival —but for vengeance.

I had nothing left to live for.No family. No friends. No future.Just a shattered soul wandering through a world that had already taken everything.Then I died.And that’s when everything changed.I woke in a world of light. A void between realms. A place where gods whisper and broken souls wait to be judged. There, I met Ashen Crimson—a man who had once been worshipped, then feared, and finally cursed by the very gods he had defied. A tyrant who had destroyed his own world.But now, he’s offering me something terrifying:His life. His past. His power. His chance to make things right.The catch?The world of Zerawell is fractured.Ashen’s name is soaked in blood.His fate is sealed—exile, ruin, and eternal hatred.And now, it’s my name.Because I’ve been reborn as Ashen Crimson, heir to a house that both reveres and reviles me. A noble with dormant shadow magic, a shattered reputation, and a cursed destiny I never asked for.But I’ve lived a life of pain. I’ve walked alone through hell already.And I won’t follow his footsteps into madness.With a divine system familiar in my soul, a second chance burning in my chest, and the memories of a monster as my burden—I will rewrite this fate.Let them call me villain, disgrace, or traitor.I didn’t choose this story.But I’ll finish it.Even if it kills me.