Space Odyssey: Spectre - Chapter 12: Cain

Before his gruesome death, Gene Conti was one of the greatest icons of the 1960s. But after spending half a century in Hell, only gambling and the suffering of others excite him.Fortunately for him, his days of boredom are over. Having served his sentence, he finds himself in the body of a young man in the modern era.Now freed, Gene wishes to continue what he missed the most as a dead man: acting.Once again, he aspires to be an actor admired the world over.But will the angels and demons leave him alone? Will his bold attitude clash with the sensitive modern era? Or will the actor from Hell surrender to his lust for chaos and violence?

Leo had a problem. Don't be like Leo!It wasn't that he was poor. It wasn't that he was unlucky. It was that he had been cursed, or blessed by the Accidental Tycoon System.The rules were deceptively simple. Any money he lost on an investment would be returned to him, doubled. And any money he gained, aside from system reimbursement couldn't be used by him on himself.His life's new mission was crystal clear. He had to go bankrupt.In a high-tech world of S-Rank Heroes, magic, and newly-contacted alien civilizations, this should have been the easiest thing to achieve in the galaxy. He just had to become the biggest, most spectacular loser the universe had ever seen.So, he tried. Oh, how he tried...He threw billions at publishing a dungeon guide written by a 10-year-old. The maps were in crayon, and it listed the final boss as a Big Grumpy Badger.[Breaking: New S-Rank dungeon called 'The Whispering Labyrinth' appears! All high-tech mapping drones fail. A lost F-Rank porter used the crayon guide... and it's 100% accurate. The final boss is a 50-foot divine badger. The Galactic Union has declared the guide a 'holy text' for exploration!]He bought the galaxy's most useless moon, planning to build a 'Museum of Paint'.[Alert: Ancient magical ley-lines discovered under the moon's surface! It's the only place in the universe that can safely grow the 'Star-Lotus,' the key ingredient for immortality!]To the Intergalactic Hero's Guild, the Magic Academies, and the Alien Federations, Leo was the god of investment whose every move was like 5D chess that ordinary people couldn't understand.Heroes would soar with his sponsorship. Alien emperors offered him their daughters' hands in marriage for a single 'tip'.But Leo just stared at his bank account, which now displayed his wealth that he couldn't use on himself, with tears streaming down his face.“Please,” he cried, “I'm trying to fail! Why won't you just let me be poor?!”

Each stroke of good luck is a triumph over someone else’s misfortune.Jack Grim, the son of two legendary assassins, was born and raised on nothing but coldness, and the skills to spill blood.At seventeen, Jack received his final task as an assassin apprentice under his parents.“Succeed, and you’ll run your own organization — live the life you’ve always dreamed of.”For Jack, it was everything he had ever wanted: the chance to finally become the professional assassin he was born to be.He struck his target at midnight, succeeded, and received everything his parents had promised.But in the wake of victory came a pounding headache, a relentless fever—and then… transmigration.Jack now found himself in Raiden’s body, the keeper of the Book of Ashes, the heart of the Devourer, and the very book the coward Raiden had died protecting with his life.Jack had no desire to live in another world, magic or not. He simply wanted to return to his life as an assassin.But duty had other plans. The balance of this world now rested on his ability to protect the book, and like it or not, the responsibility was his to bear.

Li Zhizhi was taken back to the capital at the age of fifteen to recognize her ancestral roots. As the true eldest daughter of the Li family, she should have been cherished. However, everyone preferred Li Suwan, who was knowledgeable, polite, and clever. As for Li Zhizhi, she grew up in a remote and impoverished village, ignorant of the ways of the world, and her name even carried a sense of disdain.