MTL - The City of Terror - Chapter 8 2 star creature

Despite having found Mingxi, the Zhao family continued to favor the fake daughter, saying that Mingxi was not as kind nor as graceful as Zhao Yuan.

Mingxi didn’t mind. She continued to work hard to please her family although they would always say that she was trying to rob their attention away from Zhao Yuan.

Until she died because of a terminal illness.

It was then that she realized that Zhao Yuan was the actual lady blessed by luck while she was merely this novel’s evil supporting character with a tragic ending.

Zhao Mingxi who was given a second chance at life was bitterly disappointed. She no longer cared about her family. Screw her family and her fiancé. She immediately packed her bags and left home, off to complete the task given by the system named ‘Becoming Friends With Fashionable and Valuable Characters’.

After she left, the house suddenly became cold and quiet.

By right they should feel at ease, but–

Her parents, her indifferent elder brother, her brash younger brother, Chen Liyao who was used to her pursuits were all successively feeling… unused to it?

Theodora is the Queen of Polis, a city-state that lost the war against the most powerful empire in the continent.

She is sure that they'll execute her immediately but, somehow, she survives the meeting with the Emperor, and she finds herself... Married?

Tossed in a new world without connections and allies, she has to either accept her fate or lose the chance to help her people once again.

She soon finds out that her new husband knows more about her than she does herself, and that his purposes are often far from what she expects.

A fallen queen that doesn't know how to be anything else. A handsome Duke who's the cause of her ruin. And their efforts to find some happiness in a marriage that's been forced on them.

WARNING: there are contents not suitable for a sensitive audience.

The smut scenes are half-censored at the beginning, but the amount and details will increase after a few dozen chapters (according to the Queen's mood .-. )

***

«I'm sorry for lying to you, your grace...»

«You're a Duchess. No one will dare to consider your words a lie: if you say that you were painting souls, then it's the truth.»

«I will remember it.»

«No, you have to understand it, Theodora. You're not a prisoner, but my wife. I'll protect you when you need it, and I'll help you with any issue you have. You're not just a Duchess in the name. You're my Duchess.»

«It's hard to believe in such a short amount of time.»

«For now, stop shaking like a chicken. I won't hurt you.»

***

Harry got a strange Life Achievement System which assigns missions that reward him for acting like a scumbag and earning Scum Points.Scum Points Could can be exchanged for powerful magical items, rare abilities, and tools that give Harry an edge in both life and business.At first, he resents it. Then he gets curious. And finally… he gets hooked.But being a scumbag is a high-risk profession. One wrong move, and he could lose everything, even his life. To survive this dangerous game, Harry must walk the line between manipulation and strategy, charm and ruthlessness.He’ll cheat, scheme, and hustle his way to the top.

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.