I'm a villain within the hero's party - Chapter 8: Dukedom of the South, Duke Ashby

Ke Jin transmigrated into an era where gaming was in utter chaos. Everyone here deeply believed in the notion of buying happiness with money, as game companies ran wild with various schemes to trick and force players to spend.As a game enthusiast from his past life, Ke Jin felt like he was in a world without sunlight. Luckily, he obtained the Free Game Production System!Players could get the ultimate reward of the “Complete Collection of All Game Design Schemes” without spending a single cent!Not spending money? How hard could that be? Heap on the benefits!Give away 50 consecutive draws during the summer heatwave! Give away 100 draws on the second day after the server opens! Due to the game reaching 50 daily active users, we are issuing a cool skin set originally priced at 999! The planner's niece just turned 17 years and three months plus 7 days old, so we're giving away 50,000 crystals!My sincerity is almost flooding the players. Surely nobody will spend now, right?Secretary: Mr. Ke, good news! Our newly launched game has just reached over a hundred million in daily transaction volume on its first day!Ke Jin: Huh? How is that good news... No, what about the other game? The one where we give full 100-99 discount vouchers upon starting, isn't its sales terrible?Looking puzzled, the secretary said while anticipating the boss's reaction: They've been shouting things like 'what a conscientious company' and 'if we don't spend, they'll go bankrupt,' so they just topped up. That game sold a whopping one hundred million copies globally. Congratulations on making a billion!“......”At 3:30 a.m., lying in bed, Ke Jin was wide awake, unable to sleep. He posted a status: Please, I beg you, stop spending. You guys are really making it hard for me...Player: Understood, Mr. Ke is hinting life is hard, brothers, let's step up! Charge it!

Jiang Li traveled through time and found himself without any cheat tools, so he could only rely on diligent cultivation. After five hundred years, he became the strongest person in the Nine Provinces.Suddenly, a system appeared, claiming to be able to help him go from being a Qi Refining cultivator to becoming the number one person in the Nine Provinces.Jiang Li looked at the first task and fell into deep thought.“Please defeat your cousin, who is at the sixth level of Qi Refining.”“Your system has quite a delay,” he said.

After suffering from a heat stroke while working under the scorching heat of summer, Lu Zhou, a hardworking but poor university student, somehow becomes the owner of an advanced technological system. With the cheat given by the system, his university life changes overnight.

A Master’s degree? Easy.

PhD? Not a problem.

From a nobody, he quickly becomes a huge celebrity in the world of science. With the missions given by the system, he is on his way to winning a Nobel Prize.

“System, can points be exchanged for money?”

“No.”

“F**k, what use are you then!?”

“This system will make you the ultimate scholar, the kind that lords over all of humanity. What use will money be to you?”

- Description from Novelupdates

How long will it take for a murdered thief to distill into something monstrous? In this story the darkness only grows stronger, and its reach only grows wider as it expands by devouring the life that surrounds it. This is a dark fantasy where evil is a where, not just a who that focuses on slow progression, undeath, and atmospheric storytelling.