Parallel Memory - Chapter 6: Ace Academy [2]

The world ended.Zombies and monsters rose. Cities crumbled.And Merek? He woke up in the apocalypse with a job that lets him create armor for lingering souls—spirits without bodies, desperate for purpose.Turns out, the dead don’t rest easy. Some are angry. Some vengeful. Others? Just lost. When Merek binds them into steel warframes, they don’t just fight... they evolve.Now, he leads a legion of the undead—ghosts in armor, bound to him by oath and fate.Faction leaders call him mad. Warlords want him dead. And God? If He’s watching, He’s not talking.Merek was supposed to die with everyone else.Instead, he got a support type job no one’s heard of... and a shot at rewriting his pathetic Earth-life.In this world, only the fittest survive.And Merek? He’s got undeads in steel at his side.

Hunger, poverty, and death are the inevitable fate of those who live within the mist, a territory dominated by monsters where sunlight never reaches. With only one eye and missing an arm, daily suffering was all Lily could expect. In a world where the strong rule over the weak, she faces aggression and abuse every day, learning in the harshest, most painful way that kindness doesn’t exist.However, everything changes when she encounters a sentient metamorph, a nameless monster, wounded and abandoned by its pack. Together, they discover that perhaps they don't have to face this cruel world alone. Now, with a companion willing to risk everything to protect this bond, Lily, the girl who had lost everything, finds a new reason to live and fight.

The jeers followed her like a persistent shadow. “Murderer!” the crowd screamed, their faces contorted in a grotesque parody of the adoration she once commanded.Just months ago, they had screamed her name, their voices a deafening roar as she shimmied across the stage, a beacon of light and pop perfection. Now, their cheers had morphed into venomous hisses, their eyes burning with a hatred that chilled her to the bone.Noelle clutched her lawyer's arm, his face a mask of grim determination. The cameras flashed, capturing her every move, every tremor of fear. The headlines screamed: “Pop Princess Plummets: Noelle Accused of Murder.” The irony wasn't lost on her. Her life, once a carefully constructed fairytale of fame and fortune, had become a grotesque tragedy.The trial was a circus. The whispers, the sneers, the relentless scrutiny – it was a constant assault on her senses. Her once loyal fans, the ones who'd plastered her face on their bedroom walls, now reveled in her downfall. They devoured every salacious detail, every whispered accusation, every tear she dared to shed.The verdict was a foregone conclusion. Guilty.Noelle watched the judge pronounce the sentence, her mind a whirlwind of disbelief and despair. Death by lethal injection.‘At least they did not give me the electric chair’ she thought to herself in a poor attempt at humor.Months later, a solitary figure knelt at her grave, the wind whipping at his hair. Rain lashed down, mirroring the tears that streamed down his face.“I'm sorry, Areum,” he sobbed, his voice hoarse with grief. “I'm so sorry I was too late.” He clutched a single, wilted rose, its petals stained crimson, a poignant reminder of the life that had been brutally extinguished.Noelle is a bright star who has the world at her feet, she feels no guilt about being the other woman coming between a husband and his wife. After all, Evan had been in love with her since they were teenagers. The only reason he married Ma-Ri was because his family demanded it, if he had a choice he would surely have picked her…When she gets wrongfully accused of murdering Ma-Ri, she loses everything and is sentenced to death, everyone including Evan turn against her and she is left to die a miserable death.She is reborn and this time she faces the humiliation of being the woman who is being cheated on. She is determined to end the cycle and not let the future she had seen come to pass, she decides to step out of the picture and focus on her career.In doing so, everything changes, Evan clings to her and refuses to let her go, a mysterious stranger who has been studying her also steps in and decides to fight for a chance to be with her.

Following a brutal and tortured death, a former assassin, known only by his codename Kuro, is given the opportunity to reincarnate in another world, a world with magic and monsters. Armed with an unrivaled healing factor and an inhumane pain threshold, Kuro opts to go for a reckless direct approach in this world instead of a stealthy and cautious one, and as a result, slowly gains attention bit by bit.

Having previously been a loner in his old life, he interacts and befriends people for the first time in his existence, however, his blunt nature also sees him making just as many enemies, both big and small. By combining his old assassin skills with the magic powers of this world, along with his high resistance to pain and rapid regeneration, he doesn't take long to establish himself as a formidable force in this world.

Initially, Kuro only faces minor threats, like weaker monsters and bandits. But before too long, the threats slowly but surely become more and more severe…from Zombies to a bloodthirsty empire to Vampires and Demons, and even divine beings…however, as the enemies he faces grow stronger, so does Kuro, gaining rare powers that have never or rarely ever been seen in this world…