MTL - Pirates: King of the World From the White Town - Chapter 163

Follow Benjamin Joyce, an elderly man with a passion for blacksmithing who spent his life travelling the world and learning new things. Now, after helping out the developers of the first ever real VRMMO game, he gets the chance to play said game earlier than the majority of other people.

“Young man… if you could go back in time, what period would you like to be in?”

The year he was fifteen, Ling Ke realized he was gay, and that he fell in love with a hot guy the same gender he was! Ling Ke spied on the other’s online friend group, payed attention to that person’s every move, and privately, started his fanatical fanboying actions. Unfortunately, the hot guy he liked was someone who changed girlfriends like he changed clothes, a pretentious and straight male.

A few years later, Ling Ke and the hot guy he was secretly in love with got into the same university and became good friends. In order to prevent his beloved from hating him, Ling Ke repressed his true feelings and forced himself to pretend to be a 24k, pure gold straight guy.
……

Having high-spec looks, Qi Feng was a networking expert, but in order to preserve his all-around shining and popular hearthrob image, he always hid his true sexuality, that he was gay. He got himself (fake) girlfriends all throughout school, literally playing himself into being branded as a skirt-chaser.

Until one day, he met his true love. The other looked delicate and gentle, cold and out-of-reach, as if the ideal lover he’d dreamed of in his heart.

Except, there was just one thing. That guy also looked completely straight……

In short, this is the love story of two scared, in-the-closet gay guys pretending to be straight while mutually trying to feel the other out.

- Description from Novelupdates

Ernest Quelt, the alchemist renowned for his unparalleled mastery of alchemy, has perished.But his death wasn't a noble sacrifice in battle, nor the result of a failed expedition—it was a betrayal. The very comrades he trusted most turned on him, driven by envy of his growing power.Yet fate wasn’t entirely cruel. With his final breath, Ernest's gaze fell upon the tube that contained his greatest achievement: a perfect artificial being known as the Homunculus.More than just a vessel resembling a human, this creation harbored the power of a catastrophic beast—one that had once nearly brought the world to ruin.