MTL - Survivorship Bias - Chapter 5 material negotiation

Set in the Shadow Slave world...a time before Sunny was born...this story follows a simple soldier who must survive in a dystopian, apocalyptic landscape where magic and gun warfare collide.In a far-off Quadrant known as North America, a young soldier named Hope is 16 years old when he gets infected by the Nightmare Spell. He passed! But...he feels a bit scammed...?A flaw that makes him fade from people's memories...A cursed attribute that makes him remember everything endlessly in eternal wakefulness...It's as if the Spell is twisting his future and existence into an almost improbable one.All he has ever known his purpose to be was to serve as a simple soldier. Not too powerful. But not so weak either. And maybe, just maybe like some others, become an Awakened. Although he never dreamt of being one.Now that his whole life is compromised after his First Nightmare, his first objective is to survive on his own. But as he tries to escape his fate, his actions seem to lead him further from his goal.He struggles against obstacles that slowly grow bigger and out of proportion.Maybe the Dream Realm and the Real World aren't so different than one may think.Hope's journey involves uncovering secrets and gaining knowledge about his true nature and his new role in the world.Is he fit to be a hero?Could he redefine it?***Please read the READER DISCLAIMER in Volume 0.This is my spin-off novel of “Shadow Slave” by Guiltythree.But please don't expect the same writing style, setting, and characters, especially the main character.This story reveals more about how people/cities/governments operate after the Spell’s arrival. I always find it interesting how maybe one country handles it fairly, but how others handle it with desperation to the point that you question humanity.There will be easter eggs pointing to the original novel either intentional for the plot or unrelated to it, but all for fun.I am a new author so props to all who bear with me and helps me improve my writing. If it is not for you, please don't leave outright hate comments. Eat wassabi instead if you want pain. Critique and advice would be great too.

5 years after the world changed, the final boss appeared.

The top five players in the world, including Specter Seo Jun-ho, finally defeated the Frost Queen…

But they fell into a deep slumber.

25 years passed.

“A second floor? It didn’t end when the Frost Queen died?

Specter awakes from his slumber.

Akira Tsukihara was a romance author who despised love. Though she wrote best-selling novels filled with idealistic romance, she harbored nothing but contempt for the genre and the readers who adored it. Love, in her eyes, was a lie—an illusion that blinded people from the true forces of the world: power, betrayal, and ambition. One night, in a fit of frustration, she cursed love itself... and woke up trapped inside one of her own stories.Reborn as Aira, a nameless peasant girl in the Kingdom of Seraphis—a world she had meticulously crafted—Akira quickly realizes that reincarnation isn’t the fantasy dream she had written about. She isn’t a noble, a princess, or a heroine blessed with beauty and power. She is a nobody. A commoner, struggling to survive in the harsh realities of the medieval world she had once designed as a mere backdrop for her grand romances.As Aira, she faces starvation, endless labor, and the crushing weight of insignificance. But Akira was never one to accept fate. If she couldn’t escape this world, she would rewrite the story on her own terms. She would carve her name into history—not as the lovestruck heroine of a cliché romance, but as the mastermind who would bend the world to her will.In a land ruled by noble bloodlines and political schemes, where the romance tropes she once loathed play out before her eyes, Aira sets her sights on one goal: destroying the very ideals of love that had imprisoned her in this wretched world.Even if it means becoming the villain of her own story.