The Hunter's Odyssey - Chapter 52: The Bloodclaws

Introvert!? Me!? The hell am I an introvert? I stay indoors all day because I am afraid of getting my butt kicked.Until I contract my beast, I won’t be walking freely. This is a promise I made to myself.My name is Ryder, and I am black-marked. The planet where I live is dominated by summoners. If you guessed it, then you are right—we contract beasts from the Astral Shadow Plain and summon them at will after successfully forming a contract.A mark appears on the left shoulder of every human after a period of maturity, a mark given by the beast that chooses you. There are five different types of marks—the brown, the orange, the red, the black, and lastly, the white.Of all the markings, I was marked black. I was chosen by a supreme demon monarch of the Astral Shadow Plain—the Dracogon.There was only a 0.5 percent chance for me to survive the contraction process. However, with a slight twist in the original outcome, contracting a creature from the black-marked plain was nothing compared to the catastrophe I caused shortly after—I opened a link between the beasts of the Astral Shadow Plain and the planet of humans, Terra.Everyone on my planet has been endangered because of me. The fact that no one knows when the link will trigger and cause a breach that pours mindless creatures into my world makes it all the more unsettling.Now, with no other choice, I have to find a way to resolve the mistake I made—alone, just like I caused it.

When you're reborn as Jorah Mormont you ain't got much. A Dad looking to bale and go spend his days hanging out with the guys on the Wall, a wild Aunt raising your wild cousins you can't stand, an arranged marriage to a girl you never met with a dowry almost low enough to be an insult, and a populace of smallfolk so inebriated and incompetent its no wonder nothing's changed around here in 8,000 years. Hopefully the gold finger granted by Levid's Magically Wheel of Reincarnation can help.A really nice pair of testicles.With that, the right attitude, and a shovel I have everything I need to dig a nice grave to lay in.Or Bag End. Let's see which happens first.

A cursed CD game falls from the sky. I boot it up, build a ridiculously handsome villain with broken talents, and just as I hit “Start”—boom, I get electrocuted.Now I’ve reincarnated as Lucien Caelum Valebrandt, a six-year-old noble and the infamous villain who helped the Abyssians win the last war.Every 500 years, the Abyssian King is reborn. But when the 16 chosen heroes of this generation lost against the battle of the Abyssian King because of my character, the Goddess panicked—and rewound time.Now those same heroes remember everything… and they want me dead.Even though I just got here.All I wanted was to play a game. Now I’m the villain blamed for destroying the world.

In this world, mastering runes is the key to becoming a cultivator. The ability to control these runes depends on the development of one’s Brain Domain. The more advanced the Brain Domain, the quicker and more precise the rune control, determining one’s potential as a cultivator.He was a boy from the slums with slim chances of rising above his station. Despite knowing his limitations, he worked tirelessly, driven by his dream and gratitude towards a childhood friend who helped him secure a spot in a prestigious high school. However, with a less developed Brain Domain, his prospects for further education and becoming a cultivator were bleak. His hard work seemed in vain when, six months before the crucial entrance exam, the girl he cherished rejected him, claiming their worlds were too different for their paths to cross again.But then, everything changed when he found himself engulfed in a mysterious ocean of golden runes!