Chapter: Chapter 139"I'm so glad you like it." Mia's eyes curved up. It was worth asking Mycroft about the Duke's preferences. "Do you want to have breakfast with us or later?"When she was in a good mood, her attitude towards others was also good. She happily asked the Duke about his plan."Even breakfast is eaten separately here?" Bassett felt that since he came to Luworth, his life concept has been challenged. Whose breakfast is divided into time periods?"We have to take into account the different habits of different people." Mia smiled, handed the reins to the groom, and walked side by side with Bassett on the road of the manor to explain the situation to him, "People who are used to getting up early will have breakfast at eight o'clock, and those who get up late will have breakfast at eleven o'clock; the same is true for dinner, people who go to bed early will have breakfast at six o'clock, and those who go to bed late will have breakfast at ten o'clock; for lunch, the latter will postpone the form
Last Updated: 2025-04-07
Chapter: Chapter 138It is certainly a happy thing that the employer gives a lot of money and good benefits, but it is also sad that the employer has a weird guest from time to time.A while ago, a crazy Duke of Bresmons came, and today a depraved playboy came. Now the two have collided with each other, which is really a bit unbearable.The butler began to miss the time when these two dukes did not come.At that time, there were tutors with different personalities in this manor, and there would be occasional guests to visit, but at least everyone's behavior was still within the normal range. Unfortunately, the good times did not last long. The Duke from Spain made a bad start, and then things went in a strange direction and never looked back.A duke who trains himself and his subordinates in the training ground every day is already scary. The manor is about to set up a pharmacy because of his existence; now there is a playboy duke. The butler is worried that he will be asked if there is a brothel that sui
Last Updated: 2025-04-07
Chapter: Chapter 137After sucking in his stomach, he felt that after the exercise in the past few days, his abdominal muscles were stronger, not to mention that those effective special training made his hands and feet more flexible, making him jump back and forth between this joy and upset mood, contradictory to death. 2*** : "......." I don't know what to say to this gentleman. You look happy and sad at the same time. Are you really mentally healthy? But thinking about Mia who just left very happily, he also wanted to sigh. Sometimes some people are really qualified to be unreasonable. Silently following Lionel into the bathroom, Bassett was very surprised when he saw the liquid poured out from a bottle on the sink, "What is this?" Don't you use soap to wash your hands? Why use this liquid? It's not like there is no soap. "Removing the gunpowder smell on your hands will prevent you from being affected by the gunpowder smell when you eat." Lionel rubbed his hands carefully and said to Bassett. Thi
Last Updated: 2025-04-06
Chapter: Chapter 136"Bang!" "Bang!" "Bang! Bang!" The sound of the bullets was very regular, and Mia's shooting method was also very skillful. The first bullet tried the bullet, and the three bullets behind began to exert their strength. First, one bullet hit a flying disc, and the two reloaded bullets hit the flying disc at the same time, making two very symmetrical holes on it. "How boring." Mia looked at the falling frisbee and curled her lips. She threw the hunting bullet in her hand on the table, picked up the hand bullet that the manservant had brought before, weighed it, and began to load bullets. "Click?" She shook the hand bullet, and the shell returned to its position with a crisp sound. "Release the frisbee." Mia used her left arm as a support point and put her right hand on it, "Bang bang bang bang bang bang?" Six bullets were fired continuously, directly hitting the frisbee in the air. Ignoring the stunned eyes of the people around her, she reloaded her handgun, then picked up another
Last Updated: 2025-04-06
Chapter: Chapter 135Apart from some very few landscape paintings, he really prefers portraits of people. For him, the latter are more valuable to appreciate. A group of people quickly moved to the collection room, a room that had been covered with curtains for a long time, and was exposed to the sun again because of the arrival of the guests. "...... It's spectacular." Bassett didn't know how to describe the owner's style of behavior here. In this collection room, not only are there portraits hanging on the walls, but there are also rows of wooden shelves hanging on the open space in the room. People with poor eyesight would think that there are a pile of colorful cloth hanging inside. What kind of weird behavior is this? But even so, he had to admit that there are really a lot of collections here, so many that it dazzled him. How many portraits are hung here? For Mia, it's a lot. The portraits of the three richest men in the Leamington family are all here. How can there not be a lot? It's because
Last Updated: 2025-04-05
Chapter: Chapter 134The Duke of Hastings really didn't want to see this situation, but that didn't mean he had to sell the land to Mia. It didn't matter if he sold it to the enemies of the Leamington family, or if he kept it and didn't sell it or develop it, or just left it there?? Anyway, he had sworn to his father that he would never marry, and was ready to make the Duke of Hastings completely extinct, so what else was there to worry about? But we need to analyze the specific issues specifically. His relationship with Mycroft was still okay. Since the other party was the matchmaker, he didn't mind going there to discuss the deal. But he didn't expect that the person who was negotiating business with him was not the Earl of Leamington himself but his sister. Oh, by the way, the Earl of Leamington standing next to him was still a child, so of course he couldn't negotiate business with him. If it wasn't his sister who was in charge, could it be his great-grandmother, Old Lady Leamington? "Hello, Miss L
Last Updated: 2025-04-05
EARTH ONLINE
EARTH ONLINE
The black towers hung silent over every city for six months. Then, one November morning, a child's bright voice rang out in every head at once — Earth has gone online — and gave the world three days to eliminate a stranger, or be erased.
Half the planet didn't make it.
Cole Mercer is a librarian. Quiet, exact, ruthlessly calm — the kind of man who reads the room while everyone else is screaming. When the games begin he finds he's been handed no fire, no lightning, no gift worth the name: only a snide little book that collects the powers of the people he kills, and a mind that has never once lost a game that had rules.
The Spire has a great many games. Every one is a trap dressed as a fairy tale, and every one can be solved — if you're cold enough, and fast enough, and willing to do the math while the monster is still smiling.
But there's a voice on the other end of a cracked artifact, two hundred miles away: the strongest player on the server, a man Cole has never seen, who already seems to know exactly how he thinks.
The tower wants them to climb.
It should never have let them meet first.
A slow-burn M/M apocalypse where the deadliest thing in any room is two minds that refuse to lose — and the one mistake the end of the world ever made was growing them a partner.
Read
Chapter: Chapter 19 — Draw a Circle, Curse You / Give Me Back My GrandpaThe first gunshot tore the silence apart.Cole twisted and threw out an arm, shoving Mr. Reyes off his feet. In his sharpened sight a silver bullet drifted, almost slow, through the space the teacher had filled, and buried itself in the wall — and Cole's eyes snapped to the line it had flown, fixing the shooter's position."Toby," he said, low and fast. "Kill the gym lights."A nail shot through the air and smashed every bulb. The world dropped into black."Cole — what are you doing?" Wes hissed.Cole crouched and, with a speed no one could follow in the dark, drew a clean circle on the floor. The others saw only that he'd dropped down; none saw what he did. He stood."Drawing a little circle," he said, even, "to curse him."The students slipped out of the gym by its four separate doors.Another round split the dark and punched through the concrete floor."A police pistol's effective range is fifty meters, a hundred at the outside," Toby whispered.They moved in three groups. Wes and
Last Updated: 2026-07-02
Chapter: Chapter 19 — Draw a Circle, Curse You / Give Me Back My GrandpaThe first gunshot tore the silence apart.Cole twisted and threw out an arm, shoving Mr. Reyes off his feet. In his sharpened sight a silver bullet drifted, almost slow, through the space the teacher had filled, and buried itself in the wall — and Cole's eyes snapped to the line it had flown, fixing the shooter's position."Toby," he said, low and fast. "Kill the gym lights."A nail shot through the air and smashed every bulb. The world dropped into black."Cole — what are you doing?" Wes hissed.Cole crouched and, with a speed no one could follow in the dark, drew a clean circle on the floor. The others saw only that he'd dropped down; none saw what he did. He stood."Drawing a little circle," he said, even, "to curse him."The students slipped out of the gym by its four separate doors.Another round split the dark and punched through the concrete floor."A police pistol's effective range is fifty meters, a hundred at the outside," Toby whispered.They moved in three groups. Wes and
Last Updated: 2026-07-02
Chapter: Chapter 18 — What Makes a ReserveDawn came pale through the gym's far window, and the nerves that had held everyone taut all night finally began to ease.Cole walked the corridor where the six bodies lay, looking at each in turn, his face blank, his pace slow."How did you become a Registered Player?"He looked up. Cassie had come out of the gym and stood against the wall, watching him.He was quiet a moment. "On the third day after Earth went online, I played a game of the Spire's and won. It was a one-on-one. The other player was your father."Her body went tight, then loosened. "You don't have to feel guilty.""I don't."She looked at him."Your father pulled me into that game," Cole said. "Without it I'd likely have been erased already. I've finished what he asked — I've seen that you're safe. The game was him or me. I felt guilty, for a while. But you're alive, so I won't anymore. And I don't think your father would blame me."She studied him a long moment, and then she smiled. "You're a strange person."A girl
Last Updated: 2026-07-02
Chapter: Chapter 17 — Kill Them, Then SurviveUnder the tall pines, Mr. Reyes spoke low. "I'm sorry. We were genuinely afraid you were a bad man — a Stowaway. We couldn't take the smallest risk. This is the most dangerous hour of the day, and you came in the middle of it; we had no way to be sure of you. Better to be wrong and turn someone away than to let one of them through."Cole nodded. "Eleven at night to two in the morning. Deep sleep. It's the most dangerous stretch of the day — if someone means to strike, that's when they'll do it."A student piped up. "That's exactly what Cassie said."Cole glanced at the short-haired girl in the center of the group.Mr. Reyes sighed. "You're right. We were afraid someone would creep in under the dark and kill us in our sleep. Eldridge had over a thousand people, students and staff. When the Spire said the game had begun, most of the school vanished — and we were left with two teachers and sixteen students.""Where are the rest?" Cole asked.The teacher's voice went dry. "They're here."
Last Updated: 2026-07-02
Chapter: Chapter 16 — What Exactly Is a Reserve?> [ Ding-dong! On November 19th, two players worldwide have cleared the First Floor of the Spire. 416,230,000 players remain. Please strive to climb the Spire! ]Cole's foot stopped mid-step. He looked up, disbelieving, at the black shape hanging in the dark over the city.He remembered it precisely: yesterday morning, just over four hundred and ninety-eight million players had loaded into the game. Now — eighty million fewer. Was that the cost of the assaults on two servers? Or were there other ways for players to die?Eighty million people, gone again, in a single day.His face went hard, and he put his head down and walked on. The streetlamps up ahead guttered; he took the flashlight from his pack and lit the map. Three corners, four streets, no wasted words to himself, and soon a traffic sign loomed at the roadside — SCHOOL ZONE, REDUCE SPEED. He was close.Crunch.Glass shattered under his shoe. He looked down at a spray of fine fragments, then up: the streetlamp over his head ha
Last Updated: 2026-07-02
Chapter: Chapter 15 — Sugar / Sugar~Cole did not know it, but elsewhere — on the First Floor of the Spire, in the nest of a turkey the size of a tiger — the egg's twin had just changed hands.The giant turkey lay dying in a spreading pool of its own blood, claws still red with a man's, gabbling weakly, unable to rise; one more blow would finish it. It was lucky only in that the man who'd gutted it had no strength left to stand either.The turkey ground out, "Gobble… Stowaway… eat you…"A man in black, one leg torn away by the bird, drenched in his own blood, his left arm punched through with holes, his right arm ending in no hand at all — instead, from the wrist, a vast black spike had grown, a brutal awl of black-violet metal. He coughed red, flicked the arm, and the terrible spike vanished, the wrist becoming a battered ordinary hand again. On both arms he crawled into the nest, reached into the heart of the straw, and lifted out the white egg the turkey had hidden there."Put my egg down!" the turkey howled."You kep
Last Updated: 2026-07-02
