A Black Market LitRPG - Chapter 150: Mages

In the year 2090, technology has advanced to the point where Simulation Boxes, (Sim Box for short) are common place, allowing for the user to link up their brain's neural network to a full dive Simulation. While initially used for educational purposes, recently a large gaming company, Averon, released a fully fledged immersive MMORPG simulation where users can become anyone they desire, level up, choose their class, and become a hero or a villain. The name of this simulation is The Shattered World Online.

Eli Winters had no interest in playing it. His father, a jobless bum who spent his entire life playing games in the hope of becoming a famous player or streamer, was able to use the release of The Shattered World Online to gain wealth and fame, quickly becoming the number one player and a household name as the game took the world by storm. He immediately abandoned Eli and his mother in favor of being with someone from his guild, despite his mother having worked two jobs to support them and raise Eli by herself. Eli had nothing but spite for his father and the game.

When Eli's best friend convinces him to try out the game, his father's fame begins to interfere, culminating in him being singled out and shunned by his peers, and his father offering to pay for his university tuition in return for Eli hiding their relationship and quitting the game. Instead of complying with his father's wishes, Eli decides to prove to everyone how useless a guy his father is by challenging him that if Eli is able to surpass him in the game world he must delete his account and quit his streaming career. His father accepts the challenge believing his son to be useless at games - but Eli will soon show him just how ambitious a spiteful person can be.

A normal high school boy with nothing much happening in his life except for...life. Every new day was the same as the one before but he doesn't really care much about it. He thought of himself as a normal high school-going boy with no clear future. Lazy, sarcastic, but kind of intelligent, he was living a normal life.Though fate had different plans for him as he met a girl who he did and did not know. The school princess was the first thing he saw when he woke up in his bed caressing his head. To any other boy in his situation, it would be pure bliss but he was worried.Why?Since she was in his house which he had locked before going to sleep. Little did he know that the girl was more than what she showed and was about to turn his entire life upside down. How will he tackle this situation? No one knows that.

Kim Taejong once believed that death was the only true end—a final mercy.He was once a rising star in the game Rise of Legacy, hailed as the prodigy who would one day dominate esports.But at the peak of his career, a hand injury ruined everythingThe championship title he had spent his entire life chasing slipped away.Taejong blamed himself. The pain, the regret, the endless cycle of what-ifs—it was unbearable.So when an accident took his life, it felt like mercy.But death wasn’t the end.Taejong woke up in the body of Seunghoon—an unknown and struggling player who was desperately chasing the dream Taejong once had.But Seunghoon had neither the talent nor the skills. Just desperation and a working computer.

Fifty years ago, the world changed forever when Earth was mysteriously connected to the Primordial World, a reality that operates like a game.This world can only be entered by Awakeners—people who have awakened with special powers. However, out of fifteen billion humans, only one million have this privilege.Enzo, a poor young man with no connection to the Primordial World, should have had no chance of becoming an Awakener.However, against all odds, he awakens... and more than that, he gains an innate skill unheard of before—the ability to make skills with only his imagination.In a world where power determines everything, how will a nameless young man carve his own path?