MTL - Mister Li, the Heart Bandit - Chapter 2 How could you talk to an old man ...

“You’re the moonlight that lights up the night’s darkness~

He wasn’t some chosen hero.Not the golden boy in prophecy.He was just Kieran Marcoth—a boy born on the wrong side of fate,A mistake, a misfit.Not blessed by heaven.Too stubborn for hell.And now…Thrown onto a battlefield meant for gods.The world had already been broken long before he came into it.People sinned, as they always do—And one day, the sky finally answered.The day God turned away,Everything fell.Cities burned.Families vanished.The silence afterward was louder than any explosion.But even in wrath, the Divine left something behind.A final olive branch—if you could call it that.A way to survive what came crawling out of the darkness.Talents.Powers.Strange, unique abilities passed down like gifts from a god who no longer cared.And on the day Kieran stood in line—quiet, hopeful, a little scared—Waiting to receive his talent,He dared to believe his life might finally start to make sense.Instead…He awakened something different.A hidden SSS-ranked talent.The kind with a condition attached.A catch.And just like that, everything went wrong.Laughter.Whispers.Stares like knives.He became a joke.A disappointment.Even the instructors didn’t bother to hide their sneers.Then the bullying started.The beating.The betrayal.And one day, it nearly killed him.He lay there, bleeding.Angry.Humiliated.A part of him still hoping this was some twisted mistake.But it wasn’t.And then—A sound.> [Ding! Conditions have been met][Host has been successfully selected as a God Candidate][Defeat the other candidates! Become the next God of this ruined world]Kieran stared at the message blinking in front of him.He didn’t smile.Didn’t cry.Didn’t feel triumphant.He just felt tired.And then, something in him shifted.One thought, sharp and cold, rose to the surface:“I’m going to fucking kill those bastards.”Not for power.Not for glory.But because he was done being the punchline.That’s how his journey began.Not as a hero.Not yet a monster.Just a boy who had lost too much—And found something worth fighting for in the wreckage.The question now is:Will the world break him again?Or will he become the god who remakes it?

Arriving in a new world where the steam industry was booming, he inherited a three-story apartment on the capital’s royal square, took in someone else’s cat, and listened to the whispers at his ear, ready to witness this mysterious and bizarre era. The epic of the Sixth Era was about to commence, and behind the curtain, The Chosen One was destined to step into legend. Old Gods, Relics, steam, witches, detectives, ancient secrets, the Era’s brilliance... “Would you like to play a round of Roder Cards?” Time engraved the hours, as Silvermoon illuminated the shadows. I compose your legend, you whisper your verses to me.

Every “Diver” gets 96 hours on Earth before Thirstfall drags them back. Most return broken. Some don't return at all.Dryden Sands survived that loop for ten years—until he reached Rank-A... and got killed by the person he trusted most.But the Sacred Codex he'd found had other plans—it reset everything to Day One.Now Dryden remembers everything—hidden dungeons, broken rules, future disasters.But the System remembers him...And in Thirstfall, anomalies don't just struggle—they get purged.--------------