Hiding a House in the Apocalypse - Chapter 99.2: The Four Axes (2)

“I shouldn't have used illegal downloads in the first place.”

Ian woke up in the middle of a strange swamp as his own terrible character.

In a dark era on the verge of destruction, the hopeless character struggles to safely return to reality.

Chen Lun traveled to the year before the game’s public beta and became an NPC in the game world.

And so, a new version was born…

Steampunk, spooky things, churches, shelters, the sequence paths of the seven righteous gods…

He put on his black top hat and stood on top of the ruins.

Standing behind him are the villain bosses of various versions in the previous life, the dead nun Floyd, the bloody painter Noah, the sword fighter Antonio, the delusional clown Alex…

Chen Lun: “Player spawns monsters, I spawn players, this is in the Taihe River…”

…

Also known as “Rational Use of This Sustainable Resource Named Players”, “These BOSS are really strong but they are all my younger brothers”, “No way! So I can also become a god? ! “

- Description from novelbuddy

I thought I had seen bad endings before—but nothing prepared me for the garbage conclusion of The Hero’s Path.Years of investment, countless struggles, and for what? The protagonist failed. The villain won. Everyone else? Dead. Furious, I sent a message to the author, only to get a chilling response:[Do you think you could do better?]Before I could even blink, my phone exploded in a blinding light, and the next thing I knew—I was waking up in a completely different body.Now, I’m Merlin Everhart, a fourteen-year-old with a 12-star talent, the kind of gift only the strongest should have.But here’s the problem: I have no idea who I am supposed to be.With nothing but a system and a first-day-of-school alarm ringing in my ears, I’m thrown into the world of The Hero’s Path.Am I just another side character in a world that already ended once?…Either way, I refuse to let this story beat me too.

After being torn from the only life she knew, 16-year-old Margo is forced into a new home with strangers who call themselves her parents. Haunted by memories of her past and consumed by feelings of isolation, she struggles to adapt to her unfamiliar surroundings. School offers little relief—until she meets Lucien, a mysterious boy who appears just when she needs a friend the most.Gabriel is everything Margo needs: kind, attentive, and always ready to whisk her away from her troubles. Each night, he invites her to secret places—an abandoned playground, a fog-choked garden, a crumbling train station at the edge of town—each more unsettling than the last. Yet with every chilling rendezvous, Margo feels more alive... more seen.But something isn’t right. Gabriel never comes to school during the day. Her adoptive parents never see him. And when they catch her talking to thin air, their concern deepens into fear. They say Gabriel isn't real—that he’s a figment of her imagination. Margo wants to believe them, but Gabriel feels real. More real than anything else in her life.As the nights grow colder and more twisted, Gabriel’s true nature begins to surface. Shadows move where they shouldn’t. Time warps in his presence. And the places they visit seem to echo with whispers from another world. Margo is forced to ask herself: Who—or what—is Gabriel? Why does he only want her? And what will happen on the final night he asks her to come with him?As the line between reality and delusion begins to crumble, Margo must make an impossible choice: stay in a world where she feels loved, or return to one that barely feels real.But one thing is certain—some friendships never let go.