A Record of Ash & Ruin: The Grieving Lands - Chapter 29Book 2: : Faith’s Reward

In the year 2057, the world has become a corporate-run utopia for the super-rich, and a hellhole for all the rest. Catherine 'Cat' Leblanc is an orphan that is about as far from super-rich as one can be. When the Incursion alarms start blaring and the sky starts raining hungry xenos, it's just another blemish on an already piss-poor afternoon. A cyberpunk magical-girl alien-invasion LitRPG.It’s exactly as wild as it sounds.

A skilled thief gets a system in an Alternate Wizarding World. The system seems useless in the beginning since he hasn’t unlocked any features. But…

[The very first feature of the System has been unlocked.]

[Congratulations. You’ve unlocked the class feature. Due to your existing skills and experience, you have gained the Special Class "Arcane Thief" as your starting class. There’s nothing an Arcane Thief can’t steal. The more you steal, the more your Class will progress.]

[The fields of expertise include:

— Stealth Magic
— Wards
— Traps
— Enchantment
— Pickpocketing
— Knife/Short-Sword Wielding]

Wait…this is just the first feature?

Arthur Grail, a hardcore player of the VRMMO Trinity Star Online, woke up one day in the body of Gerard Astoria—a petty villain fated to die before the main story even began. To make matters worse, Gerard's death was a crucial event in the game's narrative. If he didn’t meet his predetermined end, it could disrupt the story entirely, leading the universe toward one of the countless “bad end” routes!Unwilling to leave his fate to chance, Arthur decided to take matters into his own hands—recruiting the “player” as his partner to help him clear the game and rewrite his destiny.But wait—“Why is the player not a dude but a sharp-tongued beauty instead?!”Follow Arthur's odyssey, filled with trouble at every turn, as he works to uncover the mystery behind his awakening in a universe eerily similar to Trinity Star Online's setting, all while trying to save the entire universe… without forgetting to enjoy himself!

This is the first part, the second part is “Playing Fish Trapped in a Secret Room (密室困游鱼 Mi Shi Kun You Yu)”.

In 2007, at the WCG Asian Tournament in Singapore. In just a few hours time, between left and right hands, there goes a life and death battle. In the Chinese team that year, there is a professional player who’s only 15 years old, nicknamed “God’s Left Hand”. At that match, he sits right next to her.

Their professional lives start from 14 years old until they retire, disappear, at 25 years old.

In these non-mainstream tournaments, where a small niche of the population follows closely, their only possessions are a mouse, keyboard, and headphone each. There they won gold medals one after another for China.