Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king - Chapter 71: Reaching the city(1)

Birth rates are decreasing. Hope is vanishing. The world has gone gray.Humanity, drifting in quiet collapse, receives an email.Every person on Earth. Simultaneously.The Aegis Mandate.Disguised as a cosmic aptitude test, it triggers The Incident of Separation—a global psychic cataclysm that erases identities, wipes memories, and divides all survivors into three factions: Law, Neutral, and Chaos. Overnight, cities become battlegrounds. Apartments become dungeons. Ordinary people become monsters—or the ones who hunt them.Ragnar Vhagar was just a loner university student. Now, thanks to a system he didn’t ask for, he’s a newly minted Demon King, locked in a crumbling apartment with goblins under his sofa and a glowing soul crystal next to his frozen peas. His new job? Build a deadly domain, defend it from invading “Heroes,” and somehow level up fast enough to not die.Alongside him is Isabelle Thorne, a razor-sharp warrior of few words and one very sharp sword. Their reluctant alliance, born in blood and snark, evolves into trust—and maybe something dangerously close to affection—as they rise together through the layers of the game-like world they’re trapped in.With each conquered domain and defeated boss, Ragnar realizes the truth: the dungeons aren’t meant to crown a winner. They’re meant to break the players. The Law faction wants control. The Chaos faction craves destruction. But Ragnar? He wants something they’re all too afraid to say out loud:Freedom.In the ruins of Kanta’s ogre stronghold, Ragnar and his misfit warband take their biggest step yet—claiming a kingdom, unifying a fractured system, and preparing for what comes next. The Heroes are watching. The gods are stirring. The world is watching a war.And somewhere deep beneath it all... Ragnar is rewriting the rules.

A marriage contract lasting three years, a marriage in name only, as if they were strangers.To provide for her child, she went out to work in a large corporation, only to find her boss was actually her contract husband...“I'm sorry, I didn't mean to intrude. I chose the company because the salary was high enough.”The man flipped through the resume in his hand and asked casually, “Why did you take a year off from university when you were 19?”“I, when I was a freshman... something happened in my family.”“Is that so? Then why do you have a scar on your lower abdomen?”“I had appendectomy...”His gaze was inscrutable.......After a three-year marriage, she signed the divorce agreement with a heavy heart.She turned and walked away with dignity and poise, like a splash of light ink.But why did this man keep pursuing her?

At the moment of her suicide, she was filled with joy, for her great vengeance had been satisfied, and her wishes were fulfilled.Yet, heaven ordained her rebirth before the apocalyptic world.In her past life, she harbored fear towards his possessive imprisonment.In this life, she depended on him, was infatuated with him, clung to him, loved him.Together, they faced ghostly trickeries and walked through the hell on earth, never to be separated again.

Wang Yanqing’s father died in battle. She was adopted as an orphan by the Marquis of Zhenyuan. She loved Fu Tingzhou for ten years and would go through fire and water for him. However, this woman carried a family history full of scars, and ultimately, Fu Tingzhou sought another woman to marry.