In This Life, I Will Extremely Pamper My Short-Lived Husband - Chapter 16 - : Deserting Friends for Beauty

In 2173, the world’s first Full-World Virtual MMORPG game ‘Astral Online’ went on sale globally, forever changing the blue planet Asteria!

With its revolutionary Digital Capture System, astonishing graphics and ability to scan yourself into the game with up to 20% beautification, countless defenders rallied to play the game.

Fifty million players logged in on launch. There were no queues or lag on launch, leaving countless critics impressed and willing to try the game. Because the game used a 6-hour play limit a day, it allowed even working adults to keep up with young students and the unemployed.

A resounding success, as more people poured onto the game servers, families and friends alike. Astra Online became a household name overnight.

One month later, the game opened its first RMT system, which made earning a living from the game easier... Thus began the Astral rush!

Professional players formed guilds and factions to increase their profits, but nobody could know this prosperity was a mere joke.

One year later, players fused with their avatars, gaining powerful abilities in the real world, which tipped the power and caused chaos.

Two years later, demons and monsters from inside the game invaded the real world.

Three years later, over 90% of humanity perished, leaving the rest to hide like rats, unable to fight back in fear.

Four years later, this world is no longer ours. The demons march on our last bastions, one by one. They exterminated us.

Zell was an average player who liked to collect beasts in the game and evolve them into humanoids, as they were primarily females.

He spent most of his life working two jobs to make ends meet.

Thanks to the excellent healthcare of his country, there were no crippling debts. There was only emptiness.

When the end came, he was powerless and alone. His only companions were his cute pets and Rika, his cherished Flame Rabbit.

She was the only beast he evolved to a humanoid form after his late start to the game.

He died saving the life of a strange girl with white wings and his pet Rika, the sad eyes of Rika and the girl’s sorrow floating through the air as he slowly passed away.

However, instead of dying, he awoke inside an empty white room with a single computer and a strange, game-like screen that allowed him to edit his IRL avatar and persona.

Who offered him this second chance?

For what reason did they help him?

Can he meet Rika again?

Zell could never know; he only knew his second life’s goal.

Survive!

Choi Hyun-seok, a heavyweight champion of the biggest mixed martial arts league on Earth and the one who was called the strongest had died.Afterwards, he was granted new life as a hero in another world.‘Wealth! Honor! Endless beauties at your fingertips!’With thoughts of such a dazzling future, the first thing that he saw when he came to this new world was a towering ox monster.The monster, who was the commander of the demon army, asked.“Hero? You’re saying you’re the hero?”“Uh…I think…?”And so, that was the start of hell.

According to a popular legend, the famous God of War of Great Liang, Huo Wujiu, was once captured by an enemy country. He had his meridians severed and both his legs broken before he was thrown into the prison. In order to humiliate him, that incapable ruler of the country gifted him to his cutsleeve brother as a concubine.

General Huo suffered a great deal of humiliation. He laid in wait for three years before he shed his cicada skin and returned to the Great Jing. He treated his crippled legs, and three months later, he led his army to storm the enemy’s capital. He slaughtered the emperor, razed the capital, and finally beheaded that tr*sh of a cutsleeve, displaying his head on the city’s walls for the next three years.

Since then, the world has been united.

——

A certain university’s history lecturer received a graduation thesis depicting the legend of Huo Wujiu, and he wrote a full page of criticism for the student.

Then he blinked, and he was transmigrated into the body of that cutsleeve prince.

There were lanterns and decorations everywhere. A man came, sending word that the disabled general of the enemy state had already entered the manor in his wedding sedan.

As he looked at the General Huo in front of him, taking in his malicious gaze, his tortured state, clad in a red wedding gown, Jiang Suizhou realised that even legends can come true.

This legend could even cause him to be beheaded in public in the future, with his head hung on the city walls for three years.

Jiang Suizhou’s only option was to take good care of General Huo.

In spite of the hidden arrows of the court’s political agendas and the incapable ruler’s endless attempts to humiliate him, he could only bite the bullet and bear the brunt of it; his only wish was that after three years, he could protect his own head.

Of course, he didn’t dare to even dream of asking this 3 meters tall “concubine” to serve him.

However, before the three years was up, General Huo’s legs recovered on their own.

He didn’t just slaughter the incapable ruler and unite the land under the heavens, but he also climbed into his own bed and pinned him down with a heated gaze, stubbornly wanting to establish his status as a concubine.

“Now you see?” she shouted in a mix of annoyance and disappointment. “You can't outsmart Scrients! They're the most intelligent beings across the two realms.”“You're right,” I muttered, averting my gaze with a heavy sigh. “I made a mistake. I was too arrogant to think that a mere human like me could fool them.”—BOOM!!“Heik! Wh-What was that?”“Hmm? I'm not sure. Maybe you should go and ask the most intelligent beings across the two realms. Oh wait, you can't. I killed them all.”______My name is Samael Kaizer Theosbane.On the last day of high school, I got into a fight with a kid I used to bully.It was a stupid, pointless scuffle, and in the middle of it, I tripped and hit my head on a rock.That’s when the memories came flooding in - the memories of another life, of a different world.Suddenly, everything made a twisted kind of sense. I realized two things.First, I was in a game I used to play in my past life.Second, I was a villain. A villain!Not the cool and mysterious kind, either.No, my destiny was to be manipulated and die a dog's death!I was the worst type of cliché: an ungrateful, privileged, insufferable young master. The sort you'd find in those poorly written fantasy stories.The kind everyone hates — a snobby brat from a powerful noble family who thinks he owns the world just because he was born with a silver spoon lodged in his mouth.You know the type. The one the hero beats to a pulp to prove his worth.Yeah, I was that guy.And the hero? The hero was the kid I’d been bullying all this time. The same one I got into a fight with.He was the supposed savior of this damned world.A world teetering on the edge of destruction, beset by wars, calamities, and a grim future that only I knew.And at the end of it all, the final antagonist of the game, the undefeatable boss… the Spirit King, was waiting.But could I even make it to the end?Could I conquer a game where defeat was the only certainty?A game that was now my reality!“Ah, fuck it.”I had no idea if I could, but I sure as hell was going to try.Extorting extras, manipulating main characters, twisting the story to my advantage, stealing the hero’s cheat items, killing villains before they could become threats - nothing was beneath me.Would the main characters be affected? Who cares!Would the story change? Even better!All I cared about was me—my survival, my life, my choices.“I will live this life with no regrets.”…But as I soon discovered, fate was not easily changed.And the price of altering one's destiny was steep.