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 7
"Mind if we join you?" Julian asked, his warm smile directed at Slade.
Slade's jaw instantly clenched. He let out a heavy sigh and slid over, making room on his side of the booth.
Julian sat down directly across from Vesper.
Vesper's lungs seized. Her heart started beating so fast it physically hurt her chest. She panicked, slamming her sketchbook shut and shoving it awkwardly under her arm so Julian wouldn't see it.
Julian noticed the sudden movement. His smile softened. "Sorry, did we interrupt a study session?"
"N-no," Vesper stuttered, her voice barely a whisper. "Just... talking."
She stared down at the table, her face burning. She could feel Julian's eyes on her, and it made her skin prickle with nervous sweat.
Slade sat perfectly still. His dark eyes flicked from Vesper's flushed cheeks to Julian's polite smile.
One of the teammates sitting next to Julian took a massive bite of a burger and grinned, leaning across the table. "Forrester, didn't peg you for a fan of the fine arts. What's the project? You finally expanding those horizons?"
Slade's head snapped toward the teammate. "Mind your own business, Miller," he muttered, his voice tight and carrying a warning edge that instantly killed the teammate's smile.
The table went dead silent. Miller swallowed hard and looked away.
Julian cleared his throat, trying to ease the tension. He looked at Vesper. "I know you, don't I? Freshman year. Outside the library in the rain. I gave you my umbrella."
Vesper's head snapped up. Her eyes went wide with pure, unfiltered joy. "You remember?"
In her excitement, her elbow jerked outward. It slammed into her full glass of ice water.
The glass tipped over. Freezing water flooded across the table, soaking into the napkins and dripping onto Vesper's lap.
"Oh my god!" Vesper gasped, jumping up from the booth. She grabbed a handful of dry napkins and started frantically wiping the table, her hands shaking violently.
"Hey, it's okay. Let me help," Julian said. He reached across the table with his own napkins.
His fingers accidentally brushed against the back of Vesper's hand.
Vesper gasped like she had been burned. She yanked her hand back, clutching it to her chest. Her face turned a violent shade of crimson, the blush spreading all the way down her neck.
Slade watched the entire exchange.
A sudden, violent surge of heat erupted in his chest. It wasn't annoyance. It was pure, blinding jealousy. He hated the way she looked at Julian. He hated the way she trembled when Julian touched her.
Without thinking, Slade reached across the table and violently yanked the sketchbook out from under Vesper's arm.
"Hey!" Vesper cried out.
Slade held the book up high, out of her reach. He plastered a cruel, mocking smirk on his face. "Since we're just 'talking,' Vesper, why don't you show Julian what you've been drawing? I'm sure he'd love to see it."
Vesper's face drained of all color. She looked at Slade, her eyes wide and filled with absolute terror and pleading. If Julian saw the confession gift she was making for Slade, he would ask questions. Her secret deal, her humiliation, everything would be exposed.
Slade looked into her terrified eyes. The anger in his chest suddenly vanished, replaced by a sharp, painful twist of guilt.
He lowered his arm. He tossed the sketchbook back onto the table in front of her.
"You know what?" Slade said, his voice tight. He stood up abruptly, grabbing his jacket. "I lost my appetite."
He didn't wait for a response. He turned and stormed out of the dining hall, his heavy boots hitting the floor with aggressive force.
Julian watched him go, shaking his head. "Don't mind him, Vesper. He's always been moody."
Vesper clutched her sketchbook to her chest. She couldn't look at Julian anymore. The guilt of what had just happened made her stomach churn.
She mumbled an apology, grabbed her bag, and practically ran out the opposite door.
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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.