MTL - The Book of Troubled Times - Chapter 289 firewood

“You need my help, Tesoro. You choose. A marriage with me or be torn apart by them” His voice was cool as though this wasn't a matter of life or death.I didn't want this life. My father had gambled a lot and left me with a lot of enemies and now I needed the help of Don Vincenzo LaRosa who was my high school bully and now the Don of the most powerful mafia family in Italy if I was going to survive it.It was just a marriage of convenience but I realized something. He wasn't helping me out of a good heart. I had been sold without my permission to him. I was the mafia's pawn.

ln the Higher Realm.{Ehhh! It’s started?} an entity exclaimed.{Yeah, but like, what the hell—she gave the golden finger to him? Of all people, someone useless and a scheming bastard?} another shot back, clearly not having it.{Someone Immediately Stop him he's corrupting the system!} An entity roared before they could even get ready for see how had had been chosen!___On Earth.[System Integration... 1%A wicked grin spread across his face. This was his chance—a chance to do something no one in those web novels and mangas and animes had ever done. To corrupt the system!minute later....[System integration... 85%...][System integration... 99%...][Integration complete!] It ran one last time...“Did I succeed?”And so the journey started.

Word went around that no one that had ever knocked on the esteemed Eleazar family’s doors seeking shelter were turned away.Fleeing the prince of Lustris no less, Arabella Sterling held out hope that those weren’t mere rumors as she crossed the border over to Umbraria, home to all creatures of the night. A land where noble blood like hers was a highly coveted delicacy.As such, she wasn’t turned away, but since the Eleazars ran no charity, Arabella was compelled to become the sole blood provider to the heir of the family in exchange for safety.Though never, in a million years, did she imagine that what had started as a simple trade off, could morph into a swirl of tangled passion when the cold and stoic vampire she served showed interest in the young woman beyond the crimson nectar coursing her veins.

Kael Veyne was betrayed, hunted, and left for dead in the depths of the Abyssal Dungeon.As an infamous assassin, he was the empire’s deadliest shadow—until the day his guild turned on him.Ambushed in the Abyssal Dungeon, his body was torn apart, and his soul was consumed by the abyss. But death was not the end.He reincarnates 25,000 years later with the Devouring Bloodline System. Kael awakens in the body of a noble scion sharing a similar name to him, and his very essence fused with eldritch power.With every kill, he absorbs primal energy, evolving into something far beyond human. Monsters, mages, mancers, knights, assassins—nothing is beyond his reach.