Road to Mastery: A LitRPG Apocalypse - Chapter 471: Shattering Expectations

—WSA 2025 Entry—Melissa, a common salary woman, now Lillian Ker Arius, an extra she had never heard of, has to survive in a world based on a Rom-Com RPG game she played before meeting her untimely end.Finally, being able to meet a character she admired for so long due to their uptight, strict, but gentle personality, how will she fair when she finds out that this character she admires so much is secretly a yandere underneath all her coldness?===

Mana Awakening. Systems. Gates. Reincarnation.Any one of them would be enough to build a story around. But Ellis’s story has them all… and more.It began with the sudden changes to his world, and how Ellis believed he was adaptive enough. That maybe, finally, he could achieve something.But with coincidences and circumstances stacked against him, in the end… he was reincarnated into a different world.What awaits him there? Will he be able to return to Earth?And more importantly, will he let the circumstances dictate the course of his life again?

2011. That was when earthquake and tsunami hit Japan, changing thousands of lives.And Kobayashi Yuki is just one of them.A month ago, he was just a normal boy, graduating from a small middle school in Fukushima and was excited to go to the high school. However, the disaster changed his life. He lost both parents, not because they died, but because they were still missing until now.He lost his home. He lost his friends. He lost his school. He lost everything.Having no choice, he moved to Tokyo, to a small, new orphanage to accommodate victims of the disaster who didn't have any home or wanted to change their lives in the biggest city in Japan. In his mind, all he wanted to do was enter a normal high school, do a part-time job, make some money to help the orphanage, and maybe if he were lucky enough he could be admitted into a good university with a scholarship.However, one challenge from the volleyball team and one half-Italian blonde boy turned everything upside down. Now, he was trapped inside the crazy team, being dragged into the mess.Inter-High.National Tournament.Volleyball.Those three words kept spinning around his life as he entered a crazy high school life. Can he strive in the place where he was unfamiliar with? Would he be a good volleyball player? And what does the future hold for him?

Ethan was betrayed, he was broken, left crippled by those he trusted most: Zachary and Ivy, the people who ruined his life. Stripped of everything, Ethan crawled through three grueling years in the abandoned depths of despair, desperate to regain what he lost.Until one final act of defiance opened the door to something greater.When Ethan completed a hidden quest, fate granted him a miraculous reward: a second chance.He awakens years in the past, on the eve of a revolution: the launch of Ethereal, the world's first fully immersive VR game and humanity’s obsession. Armed with memories of four years in Ethereal, he’s no longer the helpless pawn who lost everything.This time, Ethan knows every secret, every hidden quest, every exploit to climb back to the top. But when he steps into the game, the system unveils a shocking twist: a divine bloodline, legendary abilities, and a class no one believed could dominate.Ethan vows to rise once more, but this time, he knows where the paths of glory begin, where betrayal lurks, and where to find legendary treasures that will crown him king in this brutal new world.The stakes are higher than ever. Factions are forming, alliances are shattering, and the clock ticks toward an event that will rewrite reality itself.The weak will perish, and the strong will thrive.They betrayed him once.They won’t live to do it again.