Penitent - Chapter 16: Old Dog, New Tricks

Xia Mi traveled to a classic JRPG game and became a villager in Xinshou Village.

My biggest wish is to save money, then marry a woman from another race, live a safe and worry-free life, and finally die in bed.

On this day, the brave men defeated the Demon King.

【Name: Xia Mi】

[Occupation: Villager]

Added: [Occupation: The new heir to the Demon King]

[Devil King act quickly! Kill all the heroes! Revive the glory of the demon race! 】

Wait, is this a mistake?

In Xinshou Village, besides farming every day, Xia Mi, who is serving as a background board, suddenly has an additional identity board.

He is just a novice villager!

“Where is the devil king! Where is the devil king!”

The news of the Demon King’s birth spread throughout the mainland. Every brave man who came to defeat the Demon King could see a steady stream of monsters in Xinshou Village, but he never saw the Demon King.

Villager of a certain Xinshou Village: Demon King? I’m a farmer, so I really don’t know.

- Description from novelbuddy

Markus spent his life piecing together fragments of his past life on Earth, flickers of faces, half-remembered streets, the ghost of a world that no longer existed.Slowly, gradually, he’d finally found his footing in this new world of monstrous beings. He felt grounded, as if his fractured memories could finally settle into something resembling a family.But it all went downhill from there.A lingering touch, a promise, an obsession. As if fate itself was playing a cruel joke, his life begins to spiral down. Gradually tumbling down like a crescendo of madness, dragging him deeper into something inescapable.Every attempt to claw his way back only pulls him further down, like a bottomless pit with no end in sight.How much can a person endure before they break? And when they do, can they ever truly piece themselves back together?

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.

“As if I’d marry an ugly woman like you!”