Stranger: Back Home - Chapter 7 - 6: The Five Elders

I somehow managed to be reincarnated as a maid who monopolized the Emperor’s affection. In the end, she was killed by the Evil Empress through vicious means.‘Fortunately, I’m only five years old.’‘I still have a long way to go before the original work begins, so shouldn’t I just avoid the Emperor and Empress until then?’I thought so, but…“Lize, what did you say to the Emperor?”“I said that I support you.”The evil Empress who was supposed to kill me in the original story won’t leave me alone.“Truthfully, you like me much more than the Emperor, don’t you? Am I right?”Is the Empress trying to win me over?

The outside world is filled with monstrous shadows. I’m so scared.I just want to stay in my safe house, forever…————————Unkillable phantoms and endless monsters abound. Yu Hong arrives here with a mysterious black mark. Using its power to strengthen everything, he gradually builds an absolutely secure zone of his own within his safe house.

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?!”

Before I woke up, I had a dream about the end of the world. At first, it felt like a vivid nightmare that left me shaken. But as I slowly woke up, I realized that the dream was the pre-ending scene of my own novel.I am Zio Varrez, an unnamed character in my own book, and to my disappointment, an extra. As I lived in my novel's world, I couldn't help but feel that my existence was meaningless. But what made it worse was the fact that the ending of my book was the end of the world - a bad ending.I knew I had to do something to become strong enough to change the world's fate, even if it meant altering the story I once knew completely. Little did I know, there was more to this world than I realized, and the journey I was about to embark on would uncover secrets that I never even imagined.“I thought I knew everything about the world, but as I lived and experienced it, I realized there was so much more to it than I ever imagined.”