Mercenary's War - Chapter 59 - Action

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.

Young Chen Xiang had a fateful encounter with a goddess & demoness and received their peerless heritage, divine pulses, ultimate martial arts, and transcendent alchemy techniques, which gave him an easy ride in his journey of cultivation.

When hungry, he refines some spirit pills to eat as snack, when lonely he flirts with the goddesses, when bored he teases those martial artists who came to beg for spirit pills, when tired he lets his beautiful wives massage him.

- Description from Novelupdates

When Logan and his classmates are suddenly transported to a world teetering on the brink of destruction, they find themselves thrust into a desperate battle against a relentless demon invasion. In this new realm of magic and peril, each student discovers unique powers to aid humanity's fight for survival. However, Logan's ability to tame creatures is deemed the weakest among his peers, earning him scorn and ridicule.Despite the doubts of those around him, Logan's determination never wavers. As he bonds with mystical beasts and uncovers their hidden strengths, he begins to realize that his power might be the key to turning the tide of war. With every creature he tames, Logan grows stronger, proving that true strength lies not in raw power but in the heart and courage to stand against overwhelming odds.Logan's journey is not just about battling demons; it's also a personal struggle against his own loner personality. Having always been an outsider, Logan must learn to trust and connect with others, both human and beast. His solitary nature is challenged as he forms unlikely friendships and alliances, discovering that unity and cooperation are essential in the fight for survival.

Lady Dawn expected to die.After casting her soul to the wind, taking a one-in-a-million chance to escape the wretched dungeons of Taegrin Caelum, the once-caged songbird of the Asclepius wishes nothing more than to find her Hearth and warn them of the coming danger. Instead, she’s found herself a shade, anchored to a young man who knows far too much—and with far less hope than she’d started with.Toren Daen, for his part, only wanted to make it home safely. Now he’s in a world taken straight from the page, questioning what is real and what is fiction, and scrambling to make something worthwhile. And with his foresight, there’s only one way that Toren can see to keep this new world safe: prevent the descent of the Legacy. But those in power will not make it easy: Nico Sever is in a league of power all on his own, and Arthur Leywin bears the burden of Fate a continent away. In this familiar-yet-not world of mana, monsters, and looming deities, any misstep along the roads of Alacrya and the High Sovereign’s Dominion could lead to a Fate worse than death.But what is death to a phoenix? With a burning secret in his mana core, knowledge of the future, and a maelstrom of fears and questions, Toren might just survive to be more than what Lady Dawn expected him to be. He might just survive to waylay the encroaching tide of death in the proxy war between raging asura clans.More than all of that, he might just live.