Apocalypse: Inhuman Ascension - Chapter 3: Rewards and Consequences

Johnathan, an old man with an extraordinary past but an ordinary end, gets reincarnated in a dark fantasy world full of magic, darkness, and mysteries furled.

However, he committed a grave blunder by taking the fiction he had read as a reference. Reborn as a baby, he hoped to be deemed gifted by speaking early.

One thing led to another, and tragedy struck. The villagers declared him a demon-possessed and called the church. Johnathan, now known as Sylvester Maximilian, realized that he had messed up.

When the church's inquisitors came to judge him and burn him on a pyre. As a last resort and to welcome his soon to arrive second death, he started chanting holy hymns as his last breath.

Overwhelmed, they kneeled, thinking he was a messenger of Solis.

From there, the story of how Sylvester Maximilian rose through the ranks to sit at the top began.

But his life won't be ordinary, as he uses his cunning and the tag of 'God's favored' to his advantage. Fighting treachery, unearthing secret plots and world mysteries, facing the darkness around him and creating his place in history, engraving his name in the annals to be forever remembered as the—Immortal Pope, The Young.

[A/N: To not mislead you, the novel's name does not mean he instantly becomes the Pope from the start. The story will follow the life of MC. Though he will become the Pope at a pretty young age. 40% of the novel will be based around MC fighting to sit on the supreme throne.

If you enjoy world building and lore building, then you will like this story.]
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***Main Tags: FANTASY, ADVENTURE, MAGIC, DARK, STRONG MC(Weak at the start because he's a baby. Not an instant OP though.), WHOLESOME, COMEDY, KINGDOM BUILDING. MENTALLY OLD MC, Politics, Backstabbing, World Building.***

[WARNING: MC will not go around saving everyone. Absolutely not if it puts him in danger. But if he can save someone using his status or position in the church, he will. He will kill innocent people if he has to. MC is not crazy, cynical, or unsociable. The world at some times may seem very DARK.]
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[DISCLAIMER]
The religion will be fake. I won't make it similar to those existing in our world not to trigger anyone. However, the Church terminologies and designations may feel identical as they are simple vocabulary words.

Again, everything you read in this novel is fictional and has no relation to our world.

I hope you enjoy my work. Stay safe and eat healthy bananas.
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Leo had a problem. Don't be like Leo!It wasn't that he was poor. It wasn't that he was unlucky. It was that he had been cursed, or blessed by the Accidental Tycoon System.The rules were deceptively simple. Any money he lost on an investment would be returned to him, doubled. And any money he gained, aside from system reimbursement couldn't be used by him on himself.His life's new mission was crystal clear. He had to go bankrupt.In a high-tech world of S-Rank Heroes, magic, and newly-contacted alien civilizations, this should have been the easiest thing to achieve in the galaxy. He just had to become the biggest, most spectacular loser the universe had ever seen.So, he tried. Oh, how he tried...He threw billions at publishing a dungeon guide written by a 10-year-old. The maps were in crayon, and it listed the final boss as a Big Grumpy Badger.[Breaking: New S-Rank dungeon called 'The Whispering Labyrinth' appears! All high-tech mapping drones fail. A lost F-Rank porter used the crayon guide... and it's 100% accurate. The final boss is a 50-foot divine badger. The Galactic Union has declared the guide a 'holy text' for exploration!]He bought the galaxy's most useless moon, planning to build a 'Museum of Paint'.[Alert: Ancient magical ley-lines discovered under the moon's surface! It's the only place in the universe that can safely grow the 'Star-Lotus,' the key ingredient for immortality!]To the Intergalactic Hero's Guild, the Magic Academies, and the Alien Federations, Leo was the god of investment whose every move was like 5D chess that ordinary people couldn't understand.Heroes would soar with his sponsorship. Alien emperors offered him their daughters' hands in marriage for a single 'tip'.But Leo just stared at his bank account, which now displayed his wealth that he couldn't use on himself, with tears streaming down his face.“Please,” he cried, “I'm trying to fail! Why won't you just let me be poor?!”

Monsters and mysterious portals called Gates keep appearing in New York City. and Hunters are treated like heroes for fighting them.Michael's legendary father is now a broken man who forbids him from using his powers. His mother vanished in a Gate disaster years ago.When Michael breaks that rule to save a child, he almost dies, and instead of death, he awakens something far more dangerous than a normal Hunter’s System.This isn’t a basic RPG template. It’s a forbidden inheritance, a glitch in his Arcana bloodline that makes him a Void Reaper – a class that bends the very laws of power.Instead of leveling up through training towers, his strength comes from a terrifying skill: [Soul Devour].To grow stronger, he must consume the very souls of the monsters he kills—absorbing their power and broken memories at the cost of his own humanity. Each level increases his [Soul Corruption], flooding his mind with the whispers of everything he has devoured.His path leads to unlocking a sealed skill tree: [Revenant Calling]—a dark art that lets him drag the echoes of powerful monsters back from the abyss to fight at his side.His greatest summon is Umbraxis, a glitching shadow-dragon forged from the soul of a Gate Guardian, its roar like static and its flames are pure void energy.Now Michael is hunted by a black-ops DGC unit known as “The Ghosts,”the unit brands him “Anomaly Echo-01”, part of the same conspiracy (Project Chimera) that destroyed his family.To survive,To Revenge.He teams up with three outcasts:Jinx – a pink-haired street rat with razor-sharp instincts, raised in the alleys of New York and willing to do anything to stay alive.Chloe – a cold, calculating strategist who treats Michael like a weapon, yet hides fierce loyalty and protective care.Jax –a demolitions 'artist' who communicates primarily through C-4 and swears Michael's void powers would be perfect for “teleporting grenades directly into a monster's stomach.”Together, they’ll dive into the heart of New York’s Gates to uncover the truth about his mother.But every soul he devours makes the monster inside him strongr.and when your greatest weapon is a dragon born of your own sins, how long before you stop being human?

Jerry traversed across worlds and arrived in a Beast Summoning era. In this world, everyone could summon their own pets. Darkness was looming, and the world was in turmoil. Relying on the power of their summons, many shrines plundered the resources at every corner of the world like tyrants. But when everyone else was summoning adorable pets that could help them in battle, Jerry discovered that his summoned pets were a little different. Other people's pets are all kinds of beasts, but Jerry summoned gods from Greek mythology! King of the Gods, Zeus, “Master! I, Zeus, is at your command!” Athena, “I will fulfil all your requests, master!” Poseidon, “I will conquer this sea in the name of the master!” In constant summons, step after step, Jerry became the supreme ruler of this world!