One hundred and seven times.
That was the number of rejections he had received from WebNovel.
Justin lay motionless on his tattered bed, staring at the old woman who stood before him with the blank expression of a man who had long since grown numb to misery. He was thirty-five years old. A cripple. A reject.
Welcome to the thrilling adventure of how much my life sucks.
He mumbled. In his left hand, he cradled a cup of cheap synthetic coffee, the kind that tasted like burnt plastic and sadness, the kind that riff raffs like him had access to.
His parents had divorced when he was fifteen. His mother took custody, collected the government stipend, then abandoned him a month later. She took custody of him all for the money. Nothing more, nothing less.
Thrown onto the streets for failing to pay rent, Justin had survived in the slums for fifteen years. Fifteen years of hunger. Of beatings. Of insults that cut deeper than any blade. Life had been cruel, merciless and unforgiving.
But he had never lost hope. Not until the accident.
A tragic, stupid accident that left him crippled from the waist down. If not for an old woman—a so-called Good Samaritan—he would have died on that road, bleeding out while pedestrians stepped over him like trash.
She claimed to be a nurse. She found him unconscious, took him in, set him up in a tiny apartment that could barely fit two people. It was better than the slums, at least. She'd been taking care of him for five years now.
Five long, torturous years.
"Time for your injections," she muttered, grabbing his right hand.
She sat close. Too close. Her legs spread just enough to reveal her faded, stained panties.
Every time she did that, Justin wanted to vomit. No one should have to see this. No one.
"Um... Mrs. Agatha..." he began, but she cut him off.
"I've told you a thousand times not to call me Mrs. Agatha," she snapped, her voice sharp and grating. "Call me Horny, you crippled bastard!."
Justin clenched his jaw and shut his eyes, swallowing the insult like poison. He was used to it by now. But the reason she'd taken him in? That was something he could never stomach.
She wanted to turn him into her sugar baby.
Good Samaritan my ass.
"Ah... H-Horny," he forced the word out, each syllable tasting like bile.
Who in their right mind would want a seventy-year-old woman as a sugar mommy?
"Please, could you maybe... close your legs a little?" He faked a smile, keeping his tone calm and respectful.
He wanted to scream at her. Only God knew how many times he'd fought the urge. But he knew all too well. Insulting her, hell even raising his voice a little, would result in unbearable beatings, starvation, or worse: being thrown back onto the streets.
And for a cripple like him, being sent back to the streets were nothing more than a death sentence.
"What!?" Agatha scoffed, her wrinkled face twisting into something ugly. "You don't like the view? I know you've been jerking off every day while I'm out. What, am I not as good as those girls in your dirty little videos? Tsk..."
Justin inhaled deeply, biting back every insult that burned on his tongue.
This old, dumb fucker.
Even if he were starving. Even if someone offered him a million dollars. Not even God Himself could make him put his sanctified dick anywhere near that old, rusty, expired pussy. The mere thought made his brain feel like it was disintegrating into a billion pieces.
Instead, he waited. His fingers twitched with anticipation.
The apartment came with an unexpected bonus: a computer. It was old, strange, slow as a dying rat. But it worked. And right now, all he wanted was to get his hands on it.
Being crippled didn't necessarily mean he was useless. His legs might not work, but his hands did. So for the past five years, he'd poured everything he had into writing novels online.
One hundred and seven books, and received one hundred and seven rejections. But he'd never given up.
And last night, he'd seen a contest on WebNovel.
[Sprinting Contest: The novel reaching 12,000 words in 24 hours with the most views and reviews will receive $10,000.]
Ten. Thousand. Dollars.
The moment Justin saw it, he didn't hesitate. He applied immediately. Except he wasn't submitting some rushed 12,000-word story. No. He had a novel sitting at over 100,000 words—something he'd written a long time ago, just for fun.
But now? Now it had a purpose.
There were so many things he could do with that money.
He just had to wait for the old hag to leave.
"Alright, I'll be leaving now."
Justin barely suppressed a sigh of relief as the old nurse stood and walked toward the door.
Finally.
But then she stopped.
A bad feeling crawled up his spine as she slowly turned around, her lips stretching into a creepy, unsettling smile.
"Oi... you better get ready tonight."
Justin stiffened. Something about the way she said it made his stomach churn.
"F-for what?" he asked, though he wasn't sure he wanted to know.
"Because we're doing it tonight. I've waited long enough already. Crippled legs be damned."
She walked out, slamming the door behind her.
Justin sat frozen, her words echoing in his mind like a nightmare that refused to end.
Doing what tonight? What does she mean? And what does it have to do with my legs?
Then it hit him.
A chilling sensation slithered down his spine. His eyes widened in absolute horror.
No way... that perverted old hag... she can't mean...
He clutched his head, his whole body trembling.
"AHHHHHHHH!"
Just the thought was enough to shatter his mind.
CLING!
The computer suddenly chimed, rescuing him from the torturous thought.
"Ah, yes. The contest!" he muttered, shaking off the disgusting images as he forced himself into his wheelchair. He grabbed the handles and rolled toward the small wooden table where his old computer sat.
He opened the novel application to investigate the notification.
[Your novel 'The Battle Of Kings' has won an Award as the Most Cursed Book in Less Than 24 Hours.]
"What!?"
Justin frowned. He immediately moved to the comment section. The reviews made his breath hitch.
— The main character is a piss-poor excuse of a hero. Fuck this shit!
— This is the worst novel I've ever read in my life. I need bleach for my brain.
— Dude really had sex while his kingdom was burning to the ground? Seriously?!
— Why didn't the MC save his kingdom? Is the author an idiot?!
Justin's face darkened.
"These damn bastards!"
He slammed his fist on the table, but his fury was short-lived.
CLING!
A new notification appeared. His eyes flickered over it, and in an instant, his anger twisted into something else—something that made his lips curl into a slow, eerie smile.
[You Have Received an Omni-Exclusive Contract.]
"Yes! Finally!"
After writing hundreds of novels and suffering hundreds of rejections, he'd finally gotten a contract.
And not just any contract. An exclusive one.
Wait.
He blinked.
Omni-Exclusive Contract?
He'd never heard of that before. Last he checked, there were only two types: exclusive and non-exclusive.
He quickly opened Google and searched for it. But Nothing. No results.
Confused, he asked about it in his novel's comment section. Instead of answers, all he got were more insults.
He frowned, rubbing his chin.
"Hmmm... if I remember correctly, 'Omni' means something all-powerful... or something that exists everywhere..."
A realization struck him, making his heart pound.
"Am I the first to receive an Omni-Exclusive Contract from WebNovel?"
The thought alone made him the happiest man on the planet.
"I'm a god now?" he murmured, gazing up at the ceiling like a king surveying his domain.
CLING!
[You Have Received an Omni Quest: Save the Kingdom of Zebedonia in the Novel 'The battle of Kings.']
[Do You Accept? Yes/No]
"Huh?" Justin squinted at the screen.
Zebedonia? That was the kingdom that got destroyed in his novel—the same destruction that had everyone raging in the comments.
"I guess they want me to re-edit it," he chuckled. "Well, no biggie. I can easily do that."
Without hesitation, he pressed 'Yes'.
[If You Die in 'The Battle Of Kings,' You Die in Real Life.]
[Press Next>]
"H-huh?" His finger hesitated over the keyboard. "What kind of creepy joke is this?"
But curiosity won. He clicked Next.
And then his breath caught in his throat.
[Rewards for Completing the Omni-Exclusive Quest:
*Reward 1: Ten Billion Dollars.
*Reward 2: You Will Walk Again.
*Reward 3: Exclusive Contract for Any Novel Created by You]
"What the fuck...!?"
He rubbed his eyes. The words didn't change.
"T-te-ten billion dollars!?" he shouted.
If he could walk, he'd be jumping around right now. He couldn't believe it. A billionaire from a single novel.
But the second reward made his mind race with suspicion.
How did they know I'm a cripple?
He glanced around the apartment.
Are there hidden cameras in here?
But he shoved the thought aside. The idea of becoming a billionaire consumed everything else.
CLING!
[Penalty for Failure: You Will Never Return.]
He immediately pressed *Accept* without reading it thoroughly. He was simply uninterested in anything that might dampen his euphoria.
[Ten Minutes Until the Quest Begins.]
"Whoa, just ten minutes?" That surprised him. Normally it would take a few days for contract applications to process.
"Of course it's Omni," he chuckled, beginning to stretch his hands in preparation, limbering up his fingers like a pianist before a performance.
As he stretched, his eyes happened to drift toward the computer's power cable.
It was unplugged from the socket.
His gaze snapped back to the computer, which continued operating without any visible power source.
A cold shiver crept down his spine.
This was scientifically impossible. The computer wasn't a laptop with an internal battery—he'd been using this same machine for five years, and it had never ever powered on without being plugged into the wall.
His hands trembled as he reached for the monitor, searching desperately for a brand name, a manufacturer's logo, anything to explain this impossibility.
But instead... he discovered something even more terrifying.
The keyboard he'd been typing on, the keyboard he'd used to accept the contract and quest—it wasn't even connected to the computer.
"What the actual fuck?... How!?"
He lifted the keyboard, turning it over, examining it from every angle, trying desperately to understand how any of this was possible.
And then...
[3... 2... 1...]
[Welcome to... THE BATTLE OF KINGS.]
The screen flickered for 5 seconds.
And then everything went dark.
Immediately, an earthquake began shaking the very foundations of the apartment. The ground beneath him rumbled with apocalyptic intensity. The walls trembled, plaster cracking and falling in chunks. The floor vibrated violently, sending fissures snaking across the concrete.
"What the hell is happening!?" Justin shouted, gripping his wheelchair with white-knuckled desperation as everything around him shook like the end of the world had finally arrived.
His vision began to blur, the edges going soft and indistinct. His body went limp, muscles surrendering to some invisible force.
And before he could process anything else, before he could scream or pray or even curse...
Darkness swallowed him whole.