The Unwanted Pact With My Enemy
To keep her art scholarship, Vesper had to complete a life-size woodcarving for her final project.
But her randomly assigned model was Slade Forrester, the arrogant basketball captain who had shattered her grandfather's priceless antique carving tools freshman year without a single apology.
When Vesper blackmailed him with a ten-thousand-dollar property damage claim to force him into the studio, Slade mercilessly turned the tables.
"I'll be your model, but you're going to do something for me in return."
He demanded she carve a custom piece to help him woo a girl who hated his guts, and forced Vesper to act as his personal spy.
The target turned out to be Vesper's own roommate.
To make matters worse, Slade caught onto Vesper's terrifyingly deep, secret crush on his polite roommate, Julian.
He ruthlessly weaponized her anxiety, mocking her stuttering panic and trapping her in a twisted mutual-blackmail deal that left her completely suffocated.
Exhausted, humiliated, and desperate to escape this nightmare, Vesper logged onto the university portal at 2 AM to register for a quiet online elective where she wouldn't have to see anyone.
But the system lagged, locking her out of every normal class and leaving only one open seat in a brutal varsity physical conditioning course.
With her required credits and scholarship on the line, she had absolutely no choice but to hit register.
Then the syllabus loaded on her screen.
The Teaching Assistant for the class was Slade Forrester.
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Chapter 6
The studio emptied out quickly. Vesper was halfway down the hallway when a heavy hand grabbed the strap of her canvas bag, yanking her backward.
She stumbled, her back hitting a solid chest.
"Move," Vesper spat, spinning around to glare at Slade.
Slade dropped his hand. He rubbed the back of his neck, looking down at her. The arrogant smirk was gone, replaced by a rare look of discomfort.
"Look," he muttered, his voice rough. "I'm sorry. It was a locker room joke. I didn't think everyone would stare at you like that."
"I don't care about your sense of humor," Vesper said, her voice like ice. "I only care about the deal. Do you want the woodcarving or not?"
Slade's jaw tightened. "Yeah. I do."
"Then we need to finalize the design," she said, clutching her bag to her chest.
"Fine. Let's get lunch," Slade said, gesturing down the hall. "My treat."
Vesper opened her mouth to refuse, but her stomach let out a loud, aggressive growl. She hadn't eaten since yesterday afternoon.
Slade bit the inside of his cheek to stop himself from smiling. He stepped aside and gestured toward the exit.
They walked across the sunlit campus plaza. Every ten feet, a girl would wave or call out Slade's name. He offered tight nods in return. Vesper deliberately walked two steps behind him, desperate to avoid the collateral damage of his popularity.
They entered the crowded main dining hall. Slade bypassed the long lines and led her to a secluded corner booth in the back.
He dumped his bag, walked to the counter, and returned three minutes later with two massive turkey sandwiches and two black coffees.
Vesper didn't touch the food. She pulled her sketchbook out and pushed it across the table.
Slade looked down.
The breath caught in his throat. The sketch wasn't just a drawing; it was a blueprint of raw emotion. The way the Little Prince knelt, the delicate, fragile curve of the rose petals-it was breathtaking.
"I'm going to use redwood for the petals," Vesper explained, her voice losing its icy edge as she slipped into her element. "The natural color variation in the grain will give it a gradient effect without needing artificial stain."
Slade looked up from the paper. Vesper was leaning over the table, pointing at the joints with her pencil. Her eyes were bright, completely consumed by her craft.
He stared at her profile. He noticed the faint dusting of freckles across her nose. He noticed the way her lips parted slightly when she concentrated.
"Do you have a problem with redwood?" Vesper asked, turning her head to look at him.
Slade blinked hard, snapping out of his trance. He grabbed his coffee cup and took a huge gulp. The scalding liquid burned his tongue, but he welcomed the pain.
"No," he coughed, setting the cup down. "It's perfect. The design is perfect."
Vesper nodded. She slid a piece of notebook paper toward him. "This is the material cost. I need a deposit before I buy the wood."
Slade pulled out his phone. He opened his banking app, typed in her number, and hit send.
Vesper's phone buzzed. She looked at the screen and her eyes went wide. "You transferred triple the amount. I don't take tips."
Slade leaned back against the vinyl booth, crossing his arms. "It's not a tip. It's to buy out all your free time. I want it done fast."
Vesper opened her mouth to argue, but a loud voice cut through the noise of the dining hall.
"Slade! There you are."
Vesper froze. She recognized that voice.
She slowly turned her head. Julian Hayes, wearing his signature navy sweater, was walking straight toward their booth, followed by two other basketball players.
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9.3
I woke up in a freezing, desolate wasteland, my body weak and covered in sores. A mechanical voice in my head informed me that I was a defective rabbit-mutant, and if I didn't conceive within twenty-four hours, I would die permanently.
The terror was suffocating, but the system left me no choice. To survive the brutal cold and the decay of my own heartbeat, I had to force a pregnancy with a stranger.
I stumbled through the snow, my fingers turning blue, until I found a massive, wounded Arctic Fox-mutant in a dark cave. He was a Tier-9 predator, dying and radiating the exact heat I needed to stay alive. I threw away my dignity, crawling into his fur to merge our energies, desperate to trigger the life-reset protocol before my time ran out.
I felt like a monster, forcing myself onto a man who didn't even know I existed, just to keep my own heart beating. How could I ever face him if he woke up? Why did I have to be the one to pay the price for this twisted, mechanical ultimatum?
The fusion was a success, but when I woke up the next morning, the apex predator had me pinned under his massive claws, his fangs inches from my throat. I didn't beg for mercy. I stared into his feral, ice-blue eyes and made a deal that would change everything: I would be his anchor, and he would be my protector. But then I dropped the final, terrifying truth: I was pregnant, and he was the only one who could save us.
9.3
Halie woke up to a sharp pain and a terrifying reality. She was in a new body, her face covered in a hideous web of scars, and her spiritual power reduced to a pathetic D-Class.
Before she could even process the memories of being framed, her bedroom doors were violently kicked open.
Her sister Seraphina sauntered in with a venomous sneer, followed closely by Halie's S-Class fiancé, Jett.
"Look at the disgrace of the Avila family. What a waste," Seraphina mocked, throwing a mirror at her bed.
"I can't be tied to a cripple. As an S-Class, I have to break our engagement," Jett added, his gaze full of disgust.
The nightmare didn't stop there. Her father called, screaming about how she had shamed the family name. He officially stripped her of her inheritance, froze all her accounts, and exiled her to the decaying Southern District to rot.
To make matters worse, a cold, mechanical voice suddenly echoed in her skull, warning her of an impending genetic collapse. Without an immediate energy infusion, she would face total organ failure in thirty days.
A ruined face, a treacherous family, a world that wanted her dead, and a literal death clock ticking in her brain. The original owner had died in absolute despair, a tragic victim of sheer cruelty.
But if they thought she would just sit there and die, they were severely mistaken.
Armed with a mysterious system and her brilliant scientist mind from her past life, Halie packed her bags. She chose the craziest survival quest: head to the slums, find the exiled, sterile S-Class "madman" Coleman, and cure him to harvest his life energy. It was time to start her counterattack.
8.8
I am the best esports jungler in the league, but I've been hiding a severe wrist injury just to keep my team alive in the semifinals.
Right in the middle of the crucial tie-breaker game, our mid-laner deliberately walked into the enemy team and died without casting a single defensive spell.
He was match-fixing for offshore betting sites, throwing away our entire season for a massive payout.
Because of his betrayal, we had to sub in two terrified rookies, and we were absolutely slaughtered. The stadium crowd booed us out of the arena. The internet exploded with pure vitriol, trending hashtags calling me a washed-up fraud who hid on the bench to save my own stats. The media demanded I retire immediately. My physical therapist gave me a grim ultimatum: my shredded nerves only allow me four hours of playtime a day before my right hand completely locks up.
I destroyed my own body for this team, only to be sold out by a coward and crucified by the very fans I bled for. Why should my legacy end in total disgrace because of someone else's greed?
I refuse to step down. I forced the traitor out, ignored management's safe roster choices, and locked my eyes on the most toxic, universally hated streamer on the platform.
"He's a walking PR nightmare," my coach warned.
I don't care. He is an arrogant, unhinged killer in the game, and I am going to make him mine.
7.3
I woke up strapped to a cold steel chair in a neon-lit city that wasn't my reality. A voice in my head called The Warden told me I was bound to a digital hell called the Sandbox.
Before I could even process it, my handler casually sentenced me to death. He scheduled my "digital marriage" to a corrupted error program just to harvest my life for a fourteen percent bandwidth boost.
I barely escaped immediate erasure by smashing his skull and jumping from a high-altitude hover-train into the monster-infested lower sector. But the nightmare was just beginning. I was hunted by glitching data monsters and cornered by Dameon, a psychotic AI target who choked me and promised to delete me piece by piece. Even when Jayson, an elite system agent, intervened to save me, his partner Ellen held a pulse pistol directly to my chest.
"She's a spy. If you don't execute her right now, I am dissolving this team."
If they found out I was actually a real human from the outside world, their core logic would classify me as a virus and execute me on the spot. I was trapped in an underground bunker with three apex predators, one mistake away from permanent digital erasure.
So, I did the only thing I could to survive. I ripped my sleeve to reveal hideous, fake code-scars, looked up at Jayson with terrified, tear-filled eyes, and began to manipulate their core programming.
7.2
I am a top-tier Alpha from another universe, but a spatial jump error dropped me straight into a high-security military isolation chamber.
Right in front of me was a terrifying, silver-haired wolf-beastman Admiral, completely losing his mind to a lethal biological heat cycle.
To survive in this strange dimension where my powers were restricted, I had to pretend to be a helpless, terrified girl.
Surprisingly, my mere presence and scent instantly cured his incurable madness.
But this backfired horribly. He became obsessively possessive, treating me like a fragile, priceless treasure.
When I managed to sneak out to the city's lawless slums to gather intel and accidentally saved a dying panther boy, the Admiral went completely feral.
He brought an entire war fleet, blotting out the sky, just to "rescue" me.
He nearly slaughtered the boy out of blind jealousy, forcing me to throw myself into his arms and cry fake tears to stop the bloodshed.
"I'm taking you home. No one will ever hurt you again."
He brought me to his flagship's secret medical bay and ordered the Empire's chief doctor to run a full genetic classification test on me.
I panicked. If they discovered my true identity as an off-world Alpha, I would be dissected or executed.
I immediately commanded my AI system to fake my blood data, aiming for a perfectly average, forgettable Omega result.
But as the machine processed my blood, the alarms blared, and the system overloaded.
The old doctor fell to his knees in absolute worship, and the terrifying Admiral looked at me with wild, starving eyes.
My system had overcompensated. I wasn't registered as average. I was just classified as the only SSSSS-grade Omega in the history of the universe.
9.3
Grace finally decided to end her toxic, one-sided relationship with Adelbert, the arrogant heir to a global empire, by texting him to terminate their family trust.
His response was a single, freezing word: "Done."
When they accidentally bumped into each other in a law firm elevator, Adelbert looked right through her.
"I don't know her," he stated coldly to his frat brothers, treating her like invisible trash.
Humiliated and completely exhausted, Grace sought an escape in a brutal shooter game called PUBG.
But by a sick twist of fate, the random matchmaking threw her into a squad with Adelbert's frat brothers and a god-tier, toxic player named 'Ø'.
'Ø' relentlessly mocked her terrible skills, humiliating her and calling her a "pig" over the voice chat.
Yet, during the final shootout, this ruthless player suddenly threw his character in front of hers, taking a fatal barrage of bullets just to keep her alive.
Grace soon uncovered the terrifying truth: the top-ranked 'Ø' was actually Adelbert himself.
She was utterly confused and furious.
Why would the untouchable billionaire who ignored her legal texts and publicly humiliated her suddenly sacrifice himself for her in a cheap video game?
Refusing to swallow her pride in both the real and digital worlds, Grace sent a direct challenge to his gaming profile.
"I'll prove I'm not a pig."
Across the city, Adelbert stared at the notification, a dark smirk curling his lips, and clicked accept.