MMORPG: Rebirth of the Shadow Mage - Chapter 23 Absolute Power

I am currently re-writing the first chapters of this story. They are quite rough and bounce around a lot and I can do better. At some point, I will replace these with the better chapters.Sometime in 2024 Aethon Books will publish the first volume of this story on Amazon, KU, and audible. This will mean the story will be stubbed. I will notify people far in advance of that.In the dystopian world of the future, life is rough when you live at the bottom. Jobs are non-existent. Far too many people live in poverty, crammed into huge buildings called Habitats. With no jobs in the real world, many people can only find work online in VR worlds as servants to the very rich. And it's getting worse. The old internet is unusable and hacked to pieces. The new system needs AI to run things, but all but one of them were destroyed. The last sentient AI is ordered to create a new game world so the rich can have a playground, and the corporations that rule the world can have a new global market place. Everyone wants a piece of the new game. The guilds are competing to be the first to find the dungeons and kill the biggest monster. The corporations are claiming land and putting in their online market places. Ozzy and his friends just want a paycheck.Four friends sign five year contracts as virtual serfs in a small village, and can't go adventuring at all to gain money. They don't have many choices. They can work as a blacksmith, barmaid and shepherd for all those years....or they can cheat and find ways to take advantage of the system and carve out a section of the game world for themselves, and earn a fortune in the real world.When they give you a mop and not a sword, you have to find the loopholes and change the rules.

“Listen, the ancient gods are whispering, He said…they will return eventually!”

According to legend, the rulers of this world should have been those ancient gods, and every death of them was a grand rebirth…

Those who believe in the gods wake up the sleeping gods, light torches in the dark, and burn the world.

My father disappeared because he was investigating the resurrection of a certain god, and his life and death are still unknown.

I panicked, but not totally panicked.

Because the resurrected god is me.

- Description from novelbuddy

The leader of the thousand demons, the Demon God Chun YeoWoon. Due to an unfortunate accident, he had been sent to the distant future.

In the Kunlun Snow Palace, a sage once said, those who pass away wander, while the living cannot let go.Once the soul departs, it will wither like the autumn grass.Those who are reborn from the dead, existing apart from the mortal realm, shall be shunned by all celestial sects and smitten as undead demons.On this day, a youth awakens from within a coffin, his blood dry and his bones chilled, to find himself a century old upon opening his eyes.A single tear from a sage awaited, a constant companion, may unravel the dreams of the past.Seeking not immortality but a mundane death, not to lament with the ages over lost love and resentment, but only wishing to grow old with tenderness in this lifetime, beneath the white clouds that hold no envy for the heavenly realms.