Sleeping With My Step Daddy - Chapter 14: "Just Us Tonight"

# endoftheyearJi Yuanyuan was the type of person who would ruin a nicely dealt hand. She could have led a carefree life under her family and ex-husband’s protection. Alas, for the sake of a scum named Zhao Tianhua, she caused her mother to die an aggrieved death, her eldest brother to die in a foreign land, and her second brother to be run over by a car and had his head disembodied. She herself even died from childbirth in a shabby house at the countryside, and her baby was strangled to death by Zhao Tianhua. It was right before her death that she learned that her quiet ex-husband almost went mad searching for her.Ji Yuanyuan was reborn back into the 90s era with extreme luck and a mysterious spatial ability. Since then, Ji Yuanyuan would find money on the ground, boars would run into trees on their own if she was lost in the wild, and her investments would all be successful… When the b*stard scum, Zhao Tianhua approached her again, Ji Yuanyuan kicked him away and latched onto her ex-husband’s leg instead. “Sir, please protect me.”

The year is 2025. A devout Christian named Arthur Bennett wins a lottery to participate in a revolutionary virtual reality experience at a high-tech company called Elysium. The program utilizes a unique VR pod to immerse users in a world based on a popular anime.As the other participants—a mix of personalities with varying degrees of anime knowledge—prepare to enter the simulation, Arthur remains the only one who has never indulged in anime. Upon entering this new world, he discovers an unsettling truth: pain is excruciatingly real, despite the creators' claims of a dampened pain response.He eventually finds himself trapped in prison, unable to log out, and demanding to be released from the program. Calls go unanswered, and the world of ninjas becomes a nightmare where hunger, thirst, hygiene, and even death are all real.Angered that he was deceived, he abandons all sense of logic and vows to become a villain no one would have ever anticipated.

After you’re awake but find yourself looking like a character in a game and came to a strange place, is this a different world or a game? Is it a rebirth or a cross over to another world? Everything needs to be explored by yourself!

- Description from Novelupdates

When the enigmatic and overpowered Kieran Drayke awakens in a foreign magical world after a sudden transmigration, he brings along a system unlike any this realm has ever known. The “Sovereign Architect System” doesn’t just make him invincible—it gives him the tools to build something far greater.But Kieran isn’t interested in world domination. At least, not in the usual way.Disillusioned by the world's surface-level glimmer and the rot beneath it, Kieran sets his sights on the forsaken—those discarded by society, lost in the shadows of nobility and corruption. From slums, war zones, and forgotten ruins, he gathers orphan girls of various races—elves, beastkin, humans, and more—each with untapped potential and pain behind their eyes.He trains them in secret. Guides them. Empowers them. Not as soldiers, but as a family. A hidden organization that operates behind the curtains, shaping the world while appearing as ordinary students at the prestigious Aetherion Magic Academy.Kieran himself? Just a carefree, slightly lazy transfer student with a penchant for sweets, sarcasm, and sneaking naps between classes—on the surface, at least.With a slow-burning plot that weaves magical worldbuilding, deep friendships, training arcs, casual comedy, and a cast of unforgettable girls who grow into queens of the unseen, Chronicles of the Hidden Crown explores what happens when an OP MC doesn’t conquer the world with brute force…But builds a legacy from its forgotten pieces.No betrayal. No forced drama. Just the steady rise of a secret kingdom in the shadows of a crumbling empire.