MTL - Marvel: I, Created the Masked Foundation X - Chapter 268

In a world where kingdoms rise and fall, a seasoned player unexpectedly finds himself transmigrated into the very game he once mastered—Caldera. However, his new life as a ruler comes with a crushing twist: severe debuffs and harsh restrictions on his talents make survival nearly impossible. Against overwhelming odds, he fights tooth and nail to carve out a legacy. Despite his brilliance in strategy and marvels in combat, failure becomes his ultimate fate.

Dual cultivation and apocalypse—words that mix like oil and water. There's nothing charming about seducing feral women on the road.

However, when Kaze Lexicon, the emperor of the Immortal Plane, got transmigrated into the past, he refused to give up his debaucherous ways—apocalypse or otherwise.

Armed with the knowledge of the future and an encyclopedia of overpowered cultivation techniques, he immediately set forth to obtain resources and build a lavish settlement to live a comfortable life dual cultivating in the apocalypse.

However, while it's obscenely protected and powerful, he finds himself in another predicament. The cultivators farming humans for their war, and the desperate humans, become enemies far more dangerous than the zombies and monsters that afflict humanity.

Join Kaze as he rebuilds his reputation from a bullied weeb, obtains wealth, builds power, starts a faction, makes lemonade, trains his people, protects his past lovers, conquers settlements, and fights humans, monsters, and cultivators, all for the sake of two obscene goals: enjoying life and building an army of engineers to bring modern technology to the higher planes.

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.

Fear breaks the boundaries between dreams and reality, and it is impossible to tell which is reality and which is illusory. When the nightmare really comes, no one can be alone.

This is both a danger and an opportunity.

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