The Demon of The North - Chapter 18 - 17. Karma or a Choice?

Zaria of the village of Latian. A former skilled mercenary with a strong, beautiful face and a tall, voluptuous body, she fell in love at first sight with the kind and gentle villager Albert, and since then has quit rough work and lived as a married woman devoted to him. It seemed as though their happy days would continue forever, but one day her husband Albert was injured at work, and he was barely able to stand or walk. To cover her immediate living expenses and her husband's medical expenses, Zaria uses her “previous job” to become a sword instructor for the son of a certain lord, but...

The world ended.Zombies and monsters rose. Cities crumbled.And Merek? He woke up in the apocalypse with a job that lets him create armor for lingering souls—spirits without bodies, desperate for purpose.Turns out, the dead don’t rest easy. Some are angry. Some vengeful. Others? Just lost. When Merek binds them into steel warframes, they don’t just fight... they evolve.Now, he leads a legion of the undead—ghosts in armor, bound to him by oath and fate.Faction leaders call him mad. Warlords want him dead. And God? If He’s watching, He’s not talking.Merek was supposed to die with everyone else.Instead, he got a support type job no one’s heard of... and a shot at rewriting his pathetic Earth-life.In this world, only the fittest survive.And Merek? He’s got undeads in steel at his side.

They say a god cannot fall.Apollo would like a word.Cast out of Olympus for giving mortals a prophecy they were never meant to hear, the once-golden deity finds himself stripped of power, name, and worship.Now he’s just a half-frozen stranger bleeding in a ditch, trying to remember how to be human without losing what made him divine.But the world below is not as he left it. Cities rot, old powers stir, and the threads of fate unravel where no loom should reach.Something is shifting in the dark, something even the gods did not foresee.Apollo was sentenced to live as a mortal for ten circuits of the sun.He plans to survive them.But survival is no guarantee of peace and power, once given, is rarely forgotten.

Deceived into marriage, exploited for a lifetime as a nanny without pay, and finally beaten to death by her adoptive mother in front of her adoptive father's sickbed, Shen Mianmian's miserable life came to an end.When she opened her eyes again, she found herself back at fifteen. Shen Mianmian vowed to escape her past fate, punish her malicious cousin and adoptive mother, but accidentally shone too brightly in the process.The third-to-last student in school suddenly rose to the top, becoming the candidate fought over by prestigious universities, causing a sensation among all the teachers and students...While others were busy studying, Shen Mianmian was busy starting small businesses to make money...While others were preparing for the college entrance exams, Shen Mianmian purchased the two most notorious haunted houses in Beijing in one go... becoming an oddity in everyone's eyes, they mocked her that even if she had the fortune to buy them, she might not have the life to live in them.While others graduated and were busy looking for jobs, the haunted properties purchased by Shen Mianmian were requisitioned by the government, earning her a considerable amount of demolition compensation.Those who had mocked her couldn't help but slap themselves twice... inquiring everywhere where there might be haunted houses for sale.Shen Mianmian, originally needing to borrow money for tuition fees, used the demolition funds and leveraged her rebirth advantage to buy a suitable plot of land and built a rental building, transforming into a Beijing's wealthiest and most prosperous landlady...One day, Shen Mianmian, carrying a bag of keys and having just collected the rent, was dragged to the Civil Affairs Bureau.“Shen Mianmian, it's time for you to pay back what you owe me.”