Surviving as a Barbarian in a Fantasy World - Chapter 24 – Uncharted Dungeon (2)

I am currently re-writing the first chapters of this story. They are quite rough and bounce around a lot and I can do better. At some point, I will replace these with the better chapters.Sometime in 2024 Aethon Books will publish the first volume of this story on Amazon, KU, and audible. This will mean the story will be stubbed. I will notify people far in advance of that.In the dystopian world of the future, life is rough when you live at the bottom. Jobs are non-existent. Far too many people live in poverty, crammed into huge buildings called Habitats. With no jobs in the real world, many people can only find work online in VR worlds as servants to the very rich. And it's getting worse. The old internet is unusable and hacked to pieces. The new system needs AI to run things, but all but one of them were destroyed. The last sentient AI is ordered to create a new game world so the rich can have a playground, and the corporations that rule the world can have a new global market place. Everyone wants a piece of the new game. The guilds are competing to be the first to find the dungeons and kill the biggest monster. The corporations are claiming land and putting in their online market places. Ozzy and his friends just want a paycheck.Four friends sign five year contracts as virtual serfs in a small village, and can't go adventuring at all to gain money. They don't have many choices. They can work as a blacksmith, barmaid and shepherd for all those years....or they can cheat and find ways to take advantage of the system and carve out a section of the game world for themselves, and earn a fortune in the real world.When they give you a mop and not a sword, you have to find the loopholes and change the rules.

One day, after five years of living in the shadow of the popular actor—Mo Boyuan, Dr. Jiang suddenly decided that she had enough!

She, a 21st century mercenary queen, had crossed over into a tragically betrayed body of a waste. Waste? She will show them what it means to be a waste! Betrayed? With the Ancient Manual in her hands, she will astonish all the despicable men and cheap women!

Wait! Didn’t everyone say that she was an evil woman which everyone feared? Why is his Third Highness, full of mystery and charisma, so interested in her?

- Description from Novelupdates

Lin Qian once thought the man she wanted would be handsome and formidable, able to “create clouds with one turn of the hand and rain with another turn” in the business world, causing her to look up to him in admiration. There would be nothing he could not accomplish.