The Hero Returns - Chapter 267

When I woke up after a pretty crappy death, what greeted me was one of those famous fantasy worlds! I didn’t expect anything like becoming the strongest with a common job, or rising to the top with the weakest class…

When he was categorised as an Omega at the age of 13, Rong Yi made a tiny little wish. In the future, he wanted to fall in love with a tall, handsome and elegant Alpha whom he could share a romantic love with, then build a blissful family with him and give birth to many cute babies together.

A few years later, he grew into a tall, handsome and elegant Omega and was passionately pursued by countless admirers of the same gender, while all Alphas backed away from him in face of his superiority.

This was not the life he wanted.

It’s 2100, and Vincent Carter – Ying – is a twenty-year-old virgin with a penchant for profanity, he has but three guiding principles:“In a world where honour and valour seem like unaffordable luxuries, cowardice remains the pragmatist’s ultimate virtue. Spinelessness isn’t shameful, it’s simply self-preservative romance.”“Doubt is unironically the cheapest superpower a person can have, after all if it’s human, it’s probably plotting something. And if it’s plotting something, it’s probably hiding something. And if it’s hiding something… well, you get the idea. So question everything, one sceptical step at a time.”And lastly,“Muscle heads – because who needs brains when you can just flex your way through life? Couldn’t be me, I’ll tell you that much.”Armed with nothing but these… questionable (?) values, as well as experiences shaped by a hellish life in the slums, Ying dives headfirst into the latest VR sensation – Cultivation Climax, a world brimming with great magic, ancient mysteries, and blood-curdling conspiracies just waiting to be unravelled.However, because Ying’s life is just that kind of special, he is greeted with a rather ‘lovely’ surprise upon opening his eyes to the new world…Ding![Your misfortune is truly astounding!][You have awakened the absolute WORST talent for Cultivation!]‘…’“…W-what?!”Yes, what indeed.

Book I: Lost ThingsTristan Abrascal is a thief, one of many making their living under the perpetual twilight of the greatest city in all of Vesper. Quick wit and a contract with a capricious goddess have always kept him one step ahead, until one night he crosses a line by accident that burns all the bridges he had left. But not all is lost, as his mentor offers a way out of peril that turns out to be more than a simple escape.It is also an opportunity to get even with the infanzones, the nobles he’s lived under all his life, and it so happens that Tristan has a full ledger’s worth of scores to settle with them.Lady Angharad Tredegar has fled halfway across the world, leaving behind a ruin of a life: her family butchered by a ruthless enemy, their estate torched and their nobility revoked. Yet no matter how far she flees the blades of assassins follow, and she finds herself growing desperate for any protection. She has one relative left to call on, her estranged uncle, but she finds that the safety he offers comes at a cost.Angharad has sworn revenge, however, and her honour will allow for no compromise. She will do what she must to survive so that one day bloody vengeance can be visited upon her enemies.The paths of the two take them to the doorstep of the Watch, but for desperate souls like them enrolment is a lost cause. They will have to do it the hard way instead, by surviving the trials on the isle known as the Dominion of Lost Things.Where every year many go, and few return.Book II: Good TreasonsThe trials of the Dominion are over.The four survivors have become students of Scholomance, enrolling together as a cabal, yet even on those infamous grounds they soon learn none are beyond the reach of their pasts.Angharad Tredegar is returned to a semblance of the world she left behind, but finds her honor sorely tested by bargains offered - every bit as tempting as in the stories and even deadlier.Tristan Abrascal needs answers. Mysterious enemies keep trying to abduct him, his classroom does not exist and he’s now had several conversations with dead people. Worst of all, his carrots keep dying.Maryam Khaimov is going mad, which would worry her less if it were happening on schedule. More frightening yet is the possibility that she is not, and there truly is someone else going around wearing her face.Song Ren must forge the others into a functional unit, all the while fending off enemies on all sides: rival cabals, vengeful countrymen and the deluge of implacable foes her companions simply cannot seem to stop attracting.Failure is not an option, for Song must bring back honor to her family’s name whatever the cost: it is the only way to keep their disgrace from literally eating them all alive.And as the four chase shadows in Scholomance, in the distance looms the greater test awaiting them in the Asphodel Rectorate. Asphodel is a faded power, the rotten carcass of what it once was, but under that rot looms darker things - of which monsters might just be the least dangerous.Besides, is treason really such an evil when you have the best of reasons for it?