Husband With Benefits - Chapter 2: The Reception

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.

Ten Years after the Descent to Earth of a Radical And All-Knowing System Called Arkadia, Life has changed in ways we could only surmise given we lived in a comic book. People with superpowers, Monsters, Heroes and Villains, Hell, there were even Other races coming out of the woodwork like Elves and such. Still, it wasn’t until The Extraterrestrials Invaded that things went from bad to worse.Yet, as if hope truly existed, 5000 of us Earthlings were given the opportunity to Head back into the past, only we didn’t know at the time there was a cost for doing so. By sending us back, the Descent Clock began, as Arkadia was pushed 10000 years into the Future, and it was up to us Returners to get things set back on course by changing the past to mold the Future.And I, being a boogieman of a Villian in what I dubbed the Origin Timeline, have come up with thousands of potential ways to affect my new life, like stealing popular franchises to earn some long-term funds or….hunting down notorious Serial Kills and Solving long-standing Cold cases I had been curious about since I was a teenager.

One of the seven strongest people on the continent, the King of Mercenaries. He started a war to avenge his fallen family and destroyed territory but failed and lost his life. However… “Wow, I’m alive?” I returned to the past, back through time. A perfect opportunity to right my regrets and reverse everything. It doesn’t matter if people around me point fingers, calling me a scoundrel, or dismiss me as tr*sh. Because… “I’ve got a plan.” “What plan?” “A plan to destroy everything.” There won’t be a second failure. This time, I’ll wipe out all my enemies. …But first, I need to rebuild this damn estate.

Reach the peak of immortal cultivation and become able to run amok without fear!
Use the power of martial arts to rule the world and defeat heroes!

The weather changes at the whim and wave of a palm. He who cultivates both immortal techniques and martial arts, who could possibly defeat him!

Xiao Chen is a shut-in who purchased a ‘Compendium of Cultivation’. Soon after, he crossed over into the Tianwu World, a world ruled by martial arts. He then refined pills, drew talismans, practiced formations, crafted weapons and cultivated the Azure Dragon Martial Soul that had not been seen for thousands of years.

This is a story that tells of an exciting and magnificent legend!

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