Hogwarts - Era of Darkness - Chapter 119 – Face-off (2)

“Can’t I properly read stallion novels anymore!”

Markus spent his life piecing together fragments of his past life on Earth, flickers of faces, half-remembered streets, the ghost of a world that no longer existed.Slowly, gradually, he’d finally found his footing in this new world of monstrous beings. He felt grounded, as if his fractured memories could finally settle into something resembling a family.But it all went downhill from there.A lingering touch, a promise, an obsession. As if fate itself was playing a cruel joke, his life begins to spiral down. Gradually tumbling down like a crescendo of madness, dragging him deeper into something inescapable.Every attempt to claw his way back only pulls him further down, like a bottomless pit with no end in sight.How much can a person endure before they break? And when they do, can they ever truly piece themselves back together?

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.

Wyatt Jacob, a young man who hated the profession he once loved as a marine biologist after being brutally castrated and sexually assaulted by a pod of dolphins, had lived his life with pain and suffering as an impotent man having no other choice than to continue his work as a marine biologist with the emotional trauma that now accompanied it to earn a living.

But that was until he met the 'Happiness god' who granted him the chance to be reborn in the 'World of Tharcania'. A world filled with wonders and mysteries as 'a pirate; -'a prince exiled by his empire and thrown into the sea.

Now given another chance to live his life with his little brother intact, Wyatt will sail the seas of the 'World of Tharcania', exploring its beauty and wonders with the various pleasures that came with it.