Rebirth: The Courtyard Bride Is Cool and Radiant - Chapter 317: Worse than Beasts

As the era of dragons gradually came to an end, as arcane masters left countless riches and legends under the starry sky, one awakened youngster after another began to set foot on their journey.

In the year 2090, technology has advanced to the point where Simulation Boxes, (Sim Box for short) are common place, allowing for the user to link up their brain's neural network to a full dive Simulation. While initially used for educational purposes, recently a large gaming company, Averon, released a fully fledged immersive MMORPG simulation where users can become anyone they desire, level up, choose their class, and become a hero or a villain. The name of this simulation is The Shattered World Online.

Eli Winters had no interest in playing it. His father, a jobless bum who spent his entire life playing games in the hope of becoming a famous player or streamer, was able to use the release of The Shattered World Online to gain wealth and fame, quickly becoming the number one player and a household name as the game took the world by storm. He immediately abandoned Eli and his mother in favor of being with someone from his guild, despite his mother having worked two jobs to support them and raise Eli by herself. Eli had nothing but spite for his father and the game.

When Eli's best friend convinces him to try out the game, his father's fame begins to interfere, culminating in him being singled out and shunned by his peers, and his father offering to pay for his university tuition in return for Eli hiding their relationship and quitting the game. Instead of complying with his father's wishes, Eli decides to prove to everyone how useless a guy his father is by challenging him that if Eli is able to surpass him in the game world he must delete his account and quit his streaming career. His father accepts the challenge believing his son to be useless at games - but Eli will soon show him just how ambitious a spiteful person can be.

It wasn’t until he paid a huge price for giving up emotions that he realized how important they were to practice martial arts.

In his previous life, in order to become a master, he had given up all his emotions and became a ruthless expert. But in the end, he realized that it was meaningless living as a person without any emotions. Before he died, he regretted a lot and made a wish that if he could be reborn, he would never be a heartless person again. He would be a person with feelings, a true person.

He had actually been reborn. In this life, he had adopted seven orphans, and each one was a genius material for cultivation. However, he could not cultivate in the beginning, so he had to keep selling off his family’s assets in order to maintain the children’s education and living needs. When he remembered the memories of his previous life, the time he had spent with his children had made him feel the great power of love even more. Through his experience of emotions, his cultivation progress in this life was incredibly fast. He cultivated together with the children, searching for treasures, and even helped many people succeed in cultivating. In the end, the battle began, and he became the publicly acknowledged strongest expert.

“...is that the end for me?”His eyes closed, accepting his fate. He thought it was the end. However, it was not.When Liam awoke from the endless darkness, he found himself in a world much different from his own―and in a body that was unfamiliar.“...[ The Golden Hero ] This is...”It seemed that he was given another chance at life. No longer as Liam, but as Rowen, a character from a novel.But, there was a slight problem.Rowen was a villain. A secondary villain at that.His fate was to be manipulated by the antagonist and killed by the hero.It was a tragedy. What could he possibly do?Of course, not wanting to let fate decide for him again, he took up his arms, stopping at nothing to prevent his tragic death.He had to survive in a cruel world where fate was not in his favour.If it meant killing the protagonist, the crown prince or even the main villain; he would do so.All so that he could live the life he wants.