MTL - Great Voyage: The Cartoonist of the Straw Hats - Chapter 16

This is a ‘rebirth’ story where Chen Rong, the heroine, finds her second chance at life after burning herself to death. Set in the Eastern Jin era when bureaucrats and their lofty yet equally hypocritical and oppressive ideas once ruled the empire, Chen Rong is made to use her past life’s experience to survive and hopefully find happiness this time around.

- Description from Novelupdates

The eldest son of the assassin aristocrat Tuatha Dé.

The skill, experience, knowledge of the previous life, magic, all of which grows his power as an assassin.

Excellent assassins pass through. He was usually admired as the ideal lord, and behind it wielded a blade as an assassin aristocrat.

After living as a famous Korean vlogger-slash-mukbanger, Neoma died a (shameful) death and regressed to her tragic first life— the life where she has to live as a hidden princess with a tyrannical father and a yandere twin brother.

She died at the hands of her psycho brother in her first life. But luckily, she charmed her “big brother” this time. Her father remains a sc*mbag, though.

But a blessing in disguise happened when her twin brother got “sick.” Because of that, she has to pretend as the “Crown Prince,” forcing her father to treat her well.

She thought she was finally on the road to becoming a lady of leisure.

But, despite her laziness, she still ends up completing royal duties that put her closer to the throne than her sick twin brother. The next thing she knew, they already prophesied her to be the first empress of their very patriarchal empire.

Now Neoma finds herself in the middle of the succession war she never wanted to be involved in!

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.