MTL - The Man Standing on Top of the Food Chain - Chapter 37 Hero (below)

Vainqueur Knightsbane is your average dragon: a giant, fire-breathing lizard who loves to take naps on his golden hoard, kidnap princesses for fun, and make the life of adventurers miserable. Vainqueur's only pleasure in life is to watch his treasure get bigger, one coin at a time.

So when a would-be thief turned unwilling minion tells him about "classes," "levels," and "quests," Vainqueur wonders if maybe, just maybe, he should consider a career change.

After all, why bother hunting monsters for free when you can get paid for it?

2011. That was when earthquake and tsunami hit Japan, changing thousands of lives.And Kobayashi Yuki is just one of them.A month ago, he was just a normal boy, graduating from a small middle school in Fukushima and was excited to go to the high school. However, the disaster changed his life. He lost both parents, not because they died, but because they were still missing until now.He lost his home. He lost his friends. He lost his school. He lost everything.Having no choice, he moved to Tokyo, to a small, new orphanage to accommodate victims of the disaster who didn't have any home or wanted to change their lives in the biggest city in Japan. In his mind, all he wanted to do was enter a normal high school, do a part-time job, make some money to help the orphanage, and maybe if he were lucky enough he could be admitted into a good university with a scholarship.However, one challenge from the volleyball team and one half-Italian blonde boy turned everything upside down. Now, he was trapped inside the crazy team, being dragged into the mess.Inter-High.National Tournament.Volleyball.Those three words kept spinning around his life as he entered a crazy high school life. Can he strive in the place where he was unfamiliar with? Would he be a good volleyball player? And what does the future hold for him?

“Not even the gods can stop me from finding my family!”Max only wanted to reunite with his parents and sister. But for that, he had to awaken a class.With no high expectations, Max would’ve been satisfied with a C or D rank.But fate had other plans. He unlocked a legendary SSS-Rank class.[Dimensional Keeper]This class changed everything.Max mastered every skill to perfection and grasped the Concepts of Space and Time while his peers were playing around with swords.In no time, he ascended to become the Keeper of the Universe. Armed with unimaginable power, Max’s journey to find his family had begun.Nothing could stop him now—not fate, not enemies, not even the mighty gods!

“Why didn’t you tell me?”“Tell you what, Richard? What would you have done?”“I don’t know. Apologized sooner? Bought you a burger to make up for it?”Her eyes lit up with fire, “You think what you did to me… you think a burger can make up for it?” her eyes twinkled like she was fighting tears. Did I hurt her that badly? I was just a foolish teenager.“Nita, I am sorry. I was young, I was stupid. I wish I could take it all back and tell you how I feel instead of being a constant jerk to gain your attention.”“How did you feel that would justify what you did to me?”I paused for a minute, finding the words. “I had a huge crush on you at the time. And I didn’t know how to express myself. I was full of myself, I was the school’s ladies' man and the one girl I had eyes for didn’t even care if I existed,” “And that justified what you did to me? Richard, you broke me. I can forgive you for ‘accidentally’ spilling your ice cream on me, or throwing my due assignment in the toilet, or the gum in my hair, or the glue in my chair but tell me how can I forgive you for what you did that night? Tell me!”“What night? Nita, what are you talking about?”“Remember when you asked me if I knew who sexually assaulted me?”I nodded, but what does that have to do with anything? The more we spoke, the more confused I became.“You did and I cannot believe that you would stand there and pretend like it didn’t happen!”Nita has spent years trying to forget the torment she endured at the hands of Richard. When her family’s financial ruin forces her into an arranged marriage, she is horrified to find out the groom himself was her bully.Richard, a charming and successful businessman meets the first woman to be repulsed by him. Intrigued, he proposes a deal of a one year marriage of convenience.Navigating life as a couple, old wounds reopen, buried memories surface. As Richard learns more about his wife, he finds that he has enemies that followed him from his past to continuously cloud his wife’s judgement.Will Nita believe the truth and bury old wounds or will the pain of the past prove too strong to heal?