Beauty and the Beasts - Chapter 1573 - Growth

Meet Alex Knight, a hardworking young man burdened by crushing debt and a bleak future. When his new boss turns his life into a waking nightmare, Alex finds himself trapped in a job he can't escape, his future held hostage by the whims of a tyrant.Just when he believes he has one anchor left—his girlfriend's love—a devastating betrayal leaves him utterly broken.But then the world changes. The system descends, dragging everyone into a chaotic new reality. Alex becomes the first to sync with it, earning a mysterious title:[Apocalypse Baby][You have awakened the skill: Exploding Touch][Anything you touch turns into a bomb.]Armed with a deadly gift, Alex rises from the ashes of his former life to become an unstoppable force in an urban fantasy world where power rules and vengeance drives him forward.

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.

I was proposed to by the Final Boss.

SLASH!(So this is death?!!)I, Elysia, found myself dead before even reaching the Demon King's lair, and our Hero Party was completely annihilated.And this was done by none other than a fellow human—my former classmate.He had been mostly invisible during our time at the academy, but then he started committing one crime after another until he became a lackey of the Demon King.Who would have thought that the strongest party of humanity would be wiped out by humanity’s traitors?(If I could go back to the past, I swear I will kill you!)Just when I thought I could finally pass on, I opened my eyes.Five years back, when I first enrolled at Arcadia Academy.And there he was, the traitorous bastard of humanity...****“Huh? Where am I?”One day, I opened my eyes to find myself in an unfamiliar place and came to realize this was the world within the novel Savior's Dawn that I had read.Everything seemed to be proceeding the same as in the novel—except for one thing.The main heroine is glaring at me as though she wants to kill me.Could I survive with the main heroine after my life?