Surviving as a Genius on Borrowed Time - Chapter 5: Recognition

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.

Wealthy, powerful and handsome; Gu Jingze is the cream of the crop in the entire country. Every guy wants to be him and every girl wants to be with him. His life is perfect… except that he has one tiny secret that keeps him from getting close to any woman—apparent impotency.

That is, until he wakes up in bed with a total stranger one day. The next thing he knows, he is forced to marry this stranger; a feisty and boisterous woman by the name of Lin Che.

Lin Che is an average girl whose only aim is to become a successful actress. Ostracized by her family and forced to become independent, she cooks up a scheme to attain her goal. But her plan fails and she ends up marrying this cold and seemingly heartless Gu Jingze. Not only that, she must now find her place in high society, where jealous women and devious plots lay abound – all while juggling her new career.

Two strangers under one roof: From the outset, they agree to stay out of each other’s lives, but he somehow always manages to appear during her moments of crisis. Slowly and unwittingly, Lin Che begins to find it difficult to imagine a future without him. Will their relationship grow, or is their marriage destined to remain just a contract?

- Description from Novelupdates

“Everyone deserves a happy ending, don’t they?”…In the brutal fantasy RPG Fall of Ares, saving the world came at a cruel price — the deaths of every heroine the player had grown to love. No matter how skilled you were, their sacrifices were inevitable. The game warned you not to get attached.But one young man did.After beating the game and lamenting their tragic fates, he wakes up in its world — reborn as an extra, armed with one mission from a mysterious system:[Change their endings. Let them live.]Now enrolled at Mysteria Academy alongside the heroines doomed to die, he must rewrite fate itself. For every girl he saves, he’s rewarded. But the world resists change. Calamities draw closer. The true enemy — the Children of the Sky — are watching.And one of the heroines… remembers it all.

It was started with a harmless request, “Jessica, clear out a room for Zoey, she'll be moving in with us for the time being.”Jessica's marriage soon ended when that 'guest' climbed up the ladder, from a guest room downstairs, to Jessica's bedroom, and then, her husband's bed.After losing in the fight for her husband's attention and love, Jessica realized it was time to wear back her garment of dignity and respect. She signed the divorce papers and left the country.Two years later, she returned as the heiress to a conglomerate, but her husband was at the airport, waiting to welcome her home.“When did I say I didn't love you, Jessica?” he asked.