Rearing Demons - Chapter 28: Gruelling Battle

Nicholas Crowley is used to scraping by in a world where magic is dying. The modern age has left the arcane behind, and the few remaining practitioners fight over scraps like starving dogs. That, however, is no longer his problem. While performing a ritual, something interferes, and his soul is ripped from his body. He awakens during the Class ceremony as Nick, a kid living on the frontier of the Green Ocean, a seemingly infinite expanse of trees brimming with rare ingredients and powerful creatures. Mana is abundant here, and the omnipresent System allows for feats he had once thought impossible. And yet, not everything is as rosy as it seems. Legends walk the land, and Gods require their due. Will his experience as an Occultist be enough to navigate this wild new world?

I thought I had seen bad endings before—but nothing prepared me for the garbage conclusion of The Hero’s Path.Years of investment, countless struggles, and for what? The protagonist failed. The villain won. Everyone else? Dead. Furious, I sent a message to the author, only to get a chilling response:[Do you think you could do better?]Before I could even blink, my phone exploded in a blinding light, and the next thing I knew—I was waking up in a completely different body.Now, I’m Merlin Everhart, a fourteen-year-old with a 12-star talent, the kind of gift only the strongest should have.But here’s the problem: I have no idea who I am supposed to be.With nothing but a system and a first-day-of-school alarm ringing in my ears, I’m thrown into the world of The Hero’s Path.Am I just another side character in a world that already ended once?…Either way, I refuse to let this story beat me too.

As a child with an unattainable dream, I yearned to become a Hero, but I veered off the right path. Looking back, my aspiration to save others was nothing more than a foolish dream. I now realize the magnitude of my sins and the impossibility of atoning for them.