《Shelter at my end》


 Prologue

    It was a new day as the sun slowly rose up in the sky. Outside the window the surface of the ocean was tainted in a amber glow, and the reflection of the sun looked like a sea of tiny diamons. The waves rose, fell and crashed on the shores creating a wonderfull view. Today was aother gorgeous day in San Diego California, surfers were out enjoying themselves, couples populated the beaches, and joggers went about their business.


    Far away as one can see, was a colony of pellicans flying hlow in the skies, circling a specific area, with they''re eyes focus on their prey. Judging by they''re repeated action on can speculate that they''ve been at it for a long time. ''One must persevere through trials and tribulations before reaping benefits'' that was the way of life, at least for Alex Sun anyway.


    Alex stood there watching the show with a hot cup of coffee in his hand. his posture was ramrod straight like a newly polished sword. With a smile on his face he put down the cup, he adjusted his black tie, and picked up his suit jacket that was on the back of the chair behind him before leaving the room in a flash.


    As per usual, Alex left is house at six am sharp. He was always on time no matter what his punctuality was admired by his neighbors, his landlord went as far as calling him the human alarm clock, she also encouraged him to teach her twenty -three year old daughter on punctuality. But she may not be as happy when she finds out that her daughter has been getting some...er lessons from him in bed instead.


    Just like that he was out the door and on his way to his appointment, today is shapping up to be the greatest day in his life. Before today Alex could not recall ever being this happy, he was an orphan. As a child, Alex was abandoned on the doorsteps of a rundown orphanage in the Bronx, a borough located in the state of New York and from then on raised in the orphanage.


    The orphanage was located in the Bronx river and to date has been ranked in the top five most dangerous neighborhoods across the state of New York. In these strets gangs, drugs, prostitutions, murders, robberies, rapes, you name it and you see it. These parts are tough and to live here means to be grow up fast or end up being prey.


    Like his neighborhood, his upbringing was tough. The orphanage lacked money and ressources, so they had to improvised. Every winter and summer vacations the boys and girls did odd jobs to provide ends meat, Alex worked at the library as a janitor from six am to nine pm four days a week. In order to save bus fares and violence he slept on the isles at night, and washed up in the bathroom in the morning.


    There he learned Spanish, Italian, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Russian, and Farsi. New York City is a meltting pot, in one block you have on average five or six different ethnic group, and being stuck in a library for four days a week is without a doubt boring for a boy, so he found ways to pass the time in the most effective way he could, by learning as much as he could, and as fast as he could. He learned how to make homemade liquor, to basic blacksmithing.


    He also learned how to computer electronics, networking and coding. As a side hustle he started playing chess and checkers at the local boys/girls recreational clubs for pocket money. Overal he was barely making it in life, he took every opportunity to learn any and everything. But sadly life was never too kind to him, there were days where he was robbed at gun point, beaten for being half black and half chinese, once he was stabbed over a pair of knock off jordans, another time he got hit by a stray bullet while walking home from work.Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.


    No matter what he did, he got no break, There were times he asked himself why, why go on living if nothung good came out of it. Over the years he has seen girls he grew up with end up in the streets as crack whores, or being pimpped out by gangs in the corners. Through out all that he never felt sorry for them,because they were weak and weakness gets taken advantage of because this was the name game ''be a prey or be a predator''.


    He had done lost count of how many of these former ''family'' members he done slept with either. He was numb to it all, he just wanted out, he wanted to leave this sewer of a city and so at eighteen years old he joined the united states marine corps. There he finaly found true family, Men and women who genuinely cared about him. After four years he harsh combat life, he and his combat buddy by the name of Dennis Shu were nearing their contact and were due back home in three days.


    Dennis was a second generation chinese immigrant from Los Angeles, both of his parents owned a grocery shop in china town, unlike most kids in america he was highly curious about his heritage, hence his parents sent him to china every vacation to live with his uncle who was a low level pc game designer. Being curious he to started to play and work on games.


    His hobby soon became an obsession, but upon his return to LA he learned that his father suffered a stroke and was unable to work, his mother and younger brother filled in as he enlisted in the UMSC for financial aid. Soon after meeting Alex the two quickly became buddies, and he got Alex addicted to gaming and reading wuxia, xianxia, and xuanhuan novels. Their dream was to create their own game after leavinfg the military.


    But sadly life once again had other plans, on a routine patrol a IED blew their humvee up sky high. In the insuing disater, four marines were wounded, one in critical condition, and three were dead. which included Dennis, the shrapnel tore through his body like a hot knife through butter.


    Alex never forgave himself for that, because James was never suppose to be in that humvee to begin with. They were a man short and Dennis volounteered, and like an idiot Alex agreed. Now his best friend was dead, and he knew he was responsible for that. For the next two years after that event Alex worked hard in order to acomplish their dream of creating a pc game, he read novel after novels, and now he finally realized his goal.


    In his backpack was a USB drive with the game called "Rise of the Monarch". It was a cultivation based game, overal it wasn''t anything new, but what it did have was an open world setting, where one could do team fights or one vs one style. The story mode featured the rise of a trashy sect disciple who was kicked of his sect for being incompetant, to him stumbling on a legendary artifact.


    That artifact granted him all sorts of cultivation, martial arts manuals, blacksmithing skills and so on. With his new found knowledge he rose through the ranks and became a monarch. Finally, in his mind he was shouting like a madman. He stayed up all night tweeking out and fixing all the bugs in the system and it was all for this moment, he stood on the side walk waiting for the light to turn so he could cross.


    He was nervous yet excited, across the street was the building of Kushu gaming, a giant in the pc gaming industry. He was so close he could taste it.


    "Come on come on, come on you stupid light change already...yes yes yes"


    As soon as the light changed Alex ran as fast as he could, his headphones blasting his favorite song named ''streets are on fire'' by lupe fiasco. He was on cloud nine, he felt like he was invincible, finally life was going to give him what it owed him.


    But again like so many times, the blessing of misfortune stiked again, out of the corner of his eye he saw a truck making it''s way for him at break neck speed.


    The only word he could utter before impact was ''FUCK''.

 the perks, the downsides, and the recreation

    Darkness, it was dark and moving was also hard. Whenever e tried to move his limbs, they felt heavy and weird, but there was something else. Somehow there was some external force restricting his movements


    "Fuck where am i and what the fuck is this cursed place"-(Alex)


    Right after speaking a cold and emotionless voice sounded in his head saying rhe following words


    "Congratulations to host for activating Rise of the Monarch system interface this system shall help you to survive, protect you, assist in your new life and ensuring that you shall soar to the heavens by any means necessary"


    Quickly snapping out of his stuppor Alex rsponded by firing a torrrent of questions in order to make heads or tails of what was currently happening to him.


    "What system? hey where am i? what in the world is this place? Hey answer me danm it"


    "Host was dead and has now reincarnated to unknown plane, right host is in what you humans call the woumb and host is currently awaiting birth"


    "Holy f**king s**t, are you pulling my leg?" (Alex)


    "No host i the system does no such questionable act. Now i shall explain the rules to host, please pay attention as i will do so only once."


    "Y..Yes sir system" (Alex)


    "One of the main feature of the system is allowing host to play story modes while sleeping, please note that tome flows differently in story mode from real life. On that note host will only be able to interact with system A.I during that period of time, but host will have unlimited access to system''s shop at all times.


    During sleeping host will be able to play out the live of a pre set character, from random cultivation world. That story will be from one of many novels from host''s previous world, host will stay in that specific story untill dompleting it. After completeing the story mode, as a reward host will receive spirit stones from system which will allow host to buy ressources from the shop feature of the system.


    Additionally, all cultivation techniques, spirit beast cores, weapons, seal, spirit medicine and so forth from that completed story will be available to buy from shop. But host needs to be extremely carefull when bring those treasure in his currently world, some things are to magical and could disrupt this world peace.


    Do you as the host and player understand the words that I THE SYSTEM HAS EXPLAINED? "


    "Yes sir i do" (Alex)


    "Now system shall load default story, Rise of the monach we shall began momenterally beginning coundown 3,2,1..."


    As the system''s voice faded Alex felt light headed, suddenly his vision turned bright as a white light blinded him, after a few seconds that it took for him to adjust to the sudden brightness, he was assaulted by alot of noises.


    He opened his eyes wide and tried to take up as much information as he could, aound him were approximately four to five women of varying age, the oldest one looked to be around her seventies, while the youngest around early twenties.The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.


    But as he tried to turn himself he realized he had no control over his body. Then it dawned on him, and he suddenly had a premotion that all was not well in heaven.


    One of the women present in the room was observing the child with keen and trained eyes.The woman¡¯s forehead creased in thought as she looked at the bundled infant.


    The infant¡¯s eyes were bright and showed no impurities within them as it looked all over the place. One moment he would look over here, and the next moment he would look over there.


    He was very cute in this way, and just by looking at him you would think there were no problems with him. But that surprised her greatly in her many years of delivery babies for the Su clan never had she seen something like this.


    To her credit all of the kids of the previous generation had been delivered by her and more than half of the generation before that as well, and do not even mention those fledglings of this one.


    She was well versed in the birth of babies, their attitude, their movements, and the was they act upon being born, but this one was an anamoly for sure.


    Not only that, but the little rascal has been born for nearly eight minutes, and he has not cried one. Not even once danm it, quite frankly that kind of worried her a bit.


    Shaking her head she decided to give it a try and see what the problem was, she picked up child in the midwife¡¯s arms. Right after she did so, her eyebrows knitted together.


    The little rascal was busy reahing out for trhe midwife''s breasts like a pervert with stupid grin on his face, in fury she laid a tight skap on the little guys bum without mercy.


    She let him experience decades upon decades of hard calluses from hard work upon this naturally born silkpants with a shred of remorse, the room went quiet.


    The little guy was shocked and his face displayed a very wise look on it, one that should never appear on that of new born baby, and soon after he started wailling from the top of his lungs, meanwhile all the women present were shocked into silence.


    "What are you all shocked about? What? don''t tell me you didn''t notice that the lirrle tweerp has cried once since being born? anyways her clean him up and get him over to his mother time of the essence"


    The old woman handed over the baby to the midwife, and sure enough, the little pervert calmed down and sank his face in her breats like a calf looking for it''s mothers udders.


    Shacking her head, she made sure to remember that little one, she knew that he was by far the most pecular baby she had ever met in her life, and should be destined for greatness...or the opposite.


    In a flash, nine moths had already passed in the real world. Butall of that mattered not because In front of a waterfall a yound man was seated on the banks without a shirt on, watching as the perfect scenery unfold before his eyes.


    That young man was around the age of twenty-three, and that yoiung man was the character being played by Alex, his gaze was cold, his face was dyed red with blood.


    Numerous scars battled for dominace all over his body, in his hands two blades were held tightly. The edges were jagged beyond repair, the grass painted was red.


    Behind him were what looked like iver eighty-nine headless corpse, if one were too look carefully they''d notice that the small forest located at the extreem back of this seen also looked like it was sprayed with a pool of blood.


    Shaking his head the young man stood up and sighed bfore speaking.


    "Man, this is ridiculous this is my eight world so far, and in total i live for over four hundred years. Well this one was the shortest i''ve had so far, gotta admitt it was nice though. Short hella bloody and even more cunning and ruthless."


    As he finished his monologue the system sounded and woke him up from his daydreaming


    "Host has accomplished, the task of completing the story mode. The rewards will be assigned to the Hosts chest, and the accomplishments will al result in a six percent spirt stone increasse. For this mission host has gained one thousand spirit stones."


    Now the prologue has ended host should get mentally ready for the real stroy mode. This will be real life, host shall be born shortly, Thank you good bye."


    "Wait what?, wait one sec.." (Alex)


    "Countdown begins in, 3,2,1..." (System)