Starting from Zero - Chapter 158: Dragon Riders [Vol 5 Chapter 9]

They stole his future. Now, he’s rewriting reality.Ryan was at the top—champion of the world’s biggest VRMMO, but one wish changed everything.“I wish I could start over.”The Orb of Wishes granted it. Literally. Time snapped backward. The world unraveled. And Ryan woke up years in the past, holding his younger sisters close in a rotting apartment, broke and desperate.This time, he’s not starting from scratch.He remembers it all. Every hidden boss. Every bugged quest. Every game-breaking secret. While the world waits for the launch of Kingdom Forge, Ryan prepares to tear through it like a storm.But when he logs in, something glitches.His old character is locked. His class is reset. His power? Supposedly gone.Then the system flashes something strange:[Access Granted: Legacy Bank Synced][Warning: You were never meant to exist.]Ryan grins. He doesn’t need a strong class. He doesn’t need fair odds. He has what nobody else does—endgame knowledge in a beginner’s world, and an account holding gear, gold, and exploits that broke the game once before.He’s done being a pawn.This time, he’ll become the glitch the system can’t contain.

A top hacker was chosen by the Lord God to be reborn into countless worlds, always as an expendable villain.

With no free will, every world became a dead end. Every one of his lives ended tragically.

Finally, after wresting control of the Villain System, this ace hacker decided to enact revenge. Even if his very bones were rotten, he’d choose to occupy the very heights of morality, if only on the surface.

Thus, he would change his fate as an abused slag.

- Description from novelupdates

I am Ye Qing. Lucky I found a [Monster Factory] application.

After being torn from the only life she knew, 16-year-old Margo is forced into a new home with strangers who call themselves her parents. Haunted by memories of her past and consumed by feelings of isolation, she struggles to adapt to her unfamiliar surroundings. School offers little relief—until she meets Lucien, a mysterious boy who appears just when she needs a friend the most.Gabriel is everything Margo needs: kind, attentive, and always ready to whisk her away from her troubles. Each night, he invites her to secret places—an abandoned playground, a fog-choked garden, a crumbling train station at the edge of town—each more unsettling than the last. Yet with every chilling rendezvous, Margo feels more alive... more seen.But something isn’t right. Gabriel never comes to school during the day. Her adoptive parents never see him. And when they catch her talking to thin air, their concern deepens into fear. They say Gabriel isn't real—that he’s a figment of her imagination. Margo wants to believe them, but Gabriel feels real. More real than anything else in her life.As the nights grow colder and more twisted, Gabriel’s true nature begins to surface. Shadows move where they shouldn’t. Time warps in his presence. And the places they visit seem to echo with whispers from another world. Margo is forced to ask herself: Who—or what—is Gabriel? Why does he only want her? And what will happen on the final night he asks her to come with him?As the line between reality and delusion begins to crumble, Margo must make an impossible choice: stay in a world where she feels loved, or return to one that barely feels real.But one thing is certain—some friendships never let go.