Martial Arts Ain't Anything Special - Chapter 6: Friends of Friends

Chu Yi, who was accidentally reborn into a beast-taming world 18 years ago, has finally awakened the Evolution Compendium, a system that could help him with binding beasts.Yet the first “beast” he binds is a little bit extraordinary.[Ding, binding success!][Player binds first Deceit Beast, reward: Initial evolution points +5.]“Binding successful? What did I bind?”“This is... my hand?”

Earth Online – a virtual MMORPG that takes place in the future year of 2190 – a game that everyone will bet their futures on. Set in a map that is ten times the size of real-world Earth, players battle for supremacy in the first game to feature personal adventure, territory construction, and grand warfare. For every death you experience in the game, your level would drop back to zero. Ouyang Shuo, an above average player, suffered the ultimate betrayal. For merely a piece of equipment, his sworn brother betrayed and backstabbed him. This time, after he reincarnated in the game, Ouyang Shuo swore to exact vengeance.

When a terminally ill young man awakens in the world of his favorite childhood game, he realizes he isn’t the protagonist, the destined hero, or even a major side character. Instead, he has become an extra—a disowned noble barely clinging to relevance in a world where strength determines everything. Worse, his fate in the game was to die an early, meaningless death.Armed with only his knowledge of the game’s storyline and a common system that tracks his stats and skills, he is determined to survive. But mere survival isn’t enough. He remembers a hidden easter egg from a long-forgotten anime collaboration: the Mangekyō Sharingan—a power limited by game mechanics but unrestricted in reality.With Kamui as his trump card, he walks the fine line between fate and freedom, seizing power from the shadows while avoiding suspicion. As the protagonist and his allies battle against demons and unravel the game’s grand destiny, he secretly builds his own strength—manipulating events, mastering forgotten arts, and even forging ties with villainous factions.Will he remain a footnote in history, or will he carve his own legend in a world that was never meant to be his?

A number of university students are given a simple survey in which they must watch a number of short films and rank them in order of preference. The reader takes the survey along with them with the short films being told as short stories.