Beast Taming? Nah, Dragon Herding is Way Better! - Chapter 41: Encounter With Bandits

Ancient existences wake up in the abyss, demons whisper in people’s ears, unknown horrors erode the spirit, and madness breeds in the darkness of people’s hearts.

But it is not only darkness that descends on this world.

There are heavily armed dark knights walking in the dark to judge crimes; tight-fitting supernatural beings wandering between buildings to act as friendly neighbors; The impossible god on earth, the “S” symbolizing hope shines like the sun on his chest…

No one could have imagined that behind all of them, there was just a player sitting in front of a computer screen holding a keyboard and punching hard.

- Description from novelbuddy

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.

In the shadowed halls of the Nether Blossom Sect and the treacherous expanse of the cultivation world, mastery is a dance of power, lust, and betrayal.True enlightenment lies not in forcing the path, but in weaving ambition with desire until the cultivator becomes one with their schemes.Only when the line blurs between ally and enemy, pleasure and pain, does one glimpse the ruthless truth of the dao.Lin Fengyang, a spark in a realm of predators, forges his ascent through cunning and will.His enemies plot in whispers, their blades hidden in smiles, but he’ll carve his legend across sects, empires, and heavens, one step, one scheme, one conquest at a time.In this cultivation world, trust is a lie, and every touch is a gambit. He is the schemer of shadows, the breaker of chains, and the bane of those who underestimate him.Read now to witness a tale of dark cultivation, where ambition burns brighter than any flame.

I wasn’t supposed to awaken. I didn’t have a System. I didn’t have power. I was just another nobody trying not to die.Then I fell, into something ancient.Now I’ve been chosen by a Trial that wasn’t meant for me.If I survive, I won’t just awaken.I’ll become something the world was never ready for.One of the Primordials.