I Gave Up Being Stronger - Chapter 390

Lucy Gray was a tech genius—until a stranger smiled, pulled the trigger, and ended his life.But death wasn’t the end. It was a recruitment.Dragged before a pantheon of ancient gods, Lucy learns his soul has been drafted into the Holy War—an eternal bloodbath in which Gods fight across shattered realms. Out of thousands, he was soul #4,000, chosen by Seraphine, the Goddess of Rebirth and Suffering.Now reborn in a dying world of Ogres, Giants, Beastkin, Dragonkin, and Elves, Lucy is a human among legends—a species exiled and nearly forgotten, for reasons that make him hated.Armed with nothing but defiance, sarcasm, and a bizarre ability to steal and master the powers of others, Lucy has one job: survive the impossible.The gods wanted a pawn.They got the wrong dead man.

Catching arrows, running up walls, crushing boulders and bending metal, these are but petty parlour tricks in the eyes of martial artists. But where can a genuine martial artist stand in an era where martial artists are nothing more than a myth?

Fear breaks the boundaries between dreams and reality, and it is impossible to tell which is reality and which is illusory. When the nightmare really comes, no one can be alone.

This is both a danger and an opportunity.

- Description from novelbuddy

In the year 2022, gamers rejoice as Sword Art Online-a VRMMORPG (Virtual Reality Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game) like no other-opens its virtual doors, allowing players to take full advantage of the ultimate in gaming technology: NerveGear, a system that allows users to completely immerse themselves in the game world by manipulating their brain waves to create a wholly realistic gaming experience.

But when the game goes live, the elation of the players quickly turns to horror as they discover that, for all its amazing features, SAO is missing one of the most basic functions of any MMORPG-a log-out button.

Now trapped in the virtual world of Aincrad, their bodies held captive by NerveGear in the real world, users are issued a chilling ultimatum: conquer all one hundred floors of Aincrad to regain your freedom. But in the warped world of SAO, “game over” means certain death-both virtual and real…