Apostle of the Void - Chapter 51: Wintering (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.

Traveling to another Blue Star, Lin Chen awakened the “Catch the tricky reselling system”. You can catch the weird, sell it to the black mine for mining, and exchange for the weird coins.

It’s a pity that there are too few strange things in this peaceful world. In this case, Lin Chen used the method of looking for a needle in a haystack to catch the strange things for more than ten years, but still very little.

Until one day, Lin Chen received a letter from a thriller game…

This time, the purchase life began.

In the ghost restaurant, the foreman, with tears in his eyes, looked at his miserable restaurant.

In the weird school, the students shivered, and the principal lit a cigarette for them. There is also a dungeon deserted village that makes all human players feel terrifying, and eventually became a real deserted village.

I don’t know when, in the world of horror, a peddler named “Uncle Chen” began to spread…

- Description from novelbuddy

Bro!

You wouldn’t believe this!

Everything was normal. Me and my bros doing some mining for mana gems for that old sockethole, Somanda like we always do all day, everyday.

Me, Fractures, Bonet, Mono-socket, Broadbone and the gang.

Then from nowhere, that ungrateful sockethole, Somanda tries to END me! Can you believe that?!

I mean, I have told some questionable stories about him caressing my skull affectionately and deeming me his prized undead, but no need to axe a skeleton for something like that, right?

RIGHT?!

I managed to escape through one of the most convenient and contrived get-aways in all of undead history, even managing to pull a bony one on the Lich bastard by stealing two of his seemingly important possessions which I find out later to be better than I thought they’d be!

From there it’s a just a SPIRAL of boneshit left and right! I can’t catch a break! What’s with this atrocious luck, bro?!

A voice speaks to me about how I have qualified for something about a something that’s supposedly something’s something!

Then I find myself in a new world that reeks of life and gives my bones a disgusted rattle.

Powerful beasts and men are at every turn, all lining up to be a huge pain in my PELVIS!

GAAAAH!

Jeez this is happening too fast!

However, even while I’m in the thick of this, the one saving grace is that I got something worth while!

A new path of power!

I can NOT be an undead!

I can be something better than both the Living and the Dead!

Immune to the antics from both sides. Well... most of them!

I’m no longer on the path for Undeath!

Only Lifelessness awaits me!

I’m the one who transcends reality in this tale!

I am... SKULLIUS!

And I’m not an UNDEAD!

.......

[Sneek Peek]

“What kind of skills are these? What can I do with them? They better not be worthless VOW Bro!”

[Please refrain from calling me- you know what, whatever! Scroll down to access the actual descriptions about the skills].

Um ok.

Click.

~~~

[ Supreme Skill ]

[ Flesh It Like You Mean It | Lv. 1 ]

Tired of looking dead? Are your eyes hollow? Do you need to smile and show off something other than bones? Call on the power of cosmetic flesh and get a body that's to your liking (not really).

----

[ Supreme Skill ]

[ Lifeless Evolution ]

Tired of the same old undead evolutions? Is being undead not trendy anymore? Is your Lich a sockethole who doesn’t admire your efforts? Well then, try the Lifeless Evolution Package. For strong, unorthodox and peculiar evolutions that will knock your skull off.

-IfyouareseeingthisinyourGuidancefielditmeansthatthisskillisboundtoyouandisnon-refundable-

~~~

I’m going to regret this right?

......

Beside the coast, a hundred-meter star gate is overflowing with light.

Outside the star gate, the army made of steel can’t see the edge at a glance.

On the sky, a fighter jet flew across the sky, interweaving the iron curtain.

In the distant ocean, aircraft carriers, destroyers, and frigates are all over the sea, ready to go.

All the muzzles were aimed at a figure walking out of the star gate.

“I order you to withdraw in the name of the Federal Command, otherwise, all-out war awaits you.”

“war?”

Ancient and Jinlai took a step forward, and his body rose against the wind. In an instant, he grew from less than two meters to a Chaos Demon God thousands of meters high. The brilliance of a white dwarf radiated from him, and his own gravity alone caused it to be caused by thousands of miles around. Lightning and thunder, tsunami tides.

He bows his head…

Looking at a toy-like war weapon.

Reaching out, a hydrogen bomb fell into his hand.

The electron degenerate star nucleus in the body releases helium, and the helium element expands. The terrifying high temperature instantly causes the isotopic elements of hydrogen to aggregate deuterium and tritium, and the energy explodes. The sudden white brilliance is like lighting a sun on the sea.

Before waiting for the sun’s energy to be released, he closed his hands together, and the blazing whiteness mixed with hundreds of millions of high temperatures was compressed and sealed in the palm of his hand, escaping less than half of it.

“I think you should choose peace.”

- Description from novelbuddy