Tianzhu's body tensed as images began to flood his senses.
A rush of memories that didn't belong to him: flashes of a different life.
Despite the fact that this is entirely a different world, he was transmigrated into the person that looked exactly like him, with same name, same family, and almost same life, or atleast the first 17 years of memories as him, but followed by 16 years worth of similar yet vastly different sets of memories.
To be exact, he was transmigrated, or should one say his soul merged with the soul of his counterpart, an inhabitant of this parallel world.
One could say this is a parallel world because the people living here were the same as the ones on the Earth that Tianzhu was familiar with.
However, the world itself is different from Earth.
From geography point of view, unlike Earth, this world is divided into five continents namely, Zhonggou, the central continent. Siberia, the northern continent. Novus Mundus, the western continent. Zuania, the eastern continent. Terra Icognita, the southern continent/the ice continent.
Surprisingly, the entire world speaks only one language: The language of Orlon.
Across the world, there are various currencies according to the nations but the globally, only one digital currency of Credits is opted as official one.
Meanwhile, the humans with powers actively intrude into the dungeons before the dungeon breaks happen. These are called Hunters. And the Hunter Association is responsible for managing hunters and the dungeons.
"Wha…" Tianzhu's eyes widened, his gaze shifting once again to his trembling hands as more and more memories of his life were stored in his brain, almost making him dizzy. "My children are alive?"
In this life, Tianzhu used to be the leader of Pavel, once the the strongest criminal organization in the world that controlled the entire northern continent but an incident took away everything from him, leaving behind three loyal subordinates and his twin children.
As for his background story, it remained the same, more or less. Born in the Southern Wu, one of the five countries in Zhonggou continent, Tianzhu was a musical prodigy, an outstanding violinist with a bright future. His mother, a struggling actress, passed away by suicide due to sheer mental pressure and complicated marriage life; His father is an excellent and honest police officer, but a bad father; His sister was a Hunter, turned actress.
At the age of 16, Tianzhu was selected for the International Tchaikovsky Competition. He travels abroad for the competition. He falls in love with a fellow competitor.
The same tragedy. The night after the semifinals, they go on a drive and have an accident. As a result, Tianzhu loses his left eye, and the girl gets badly injured.
In both of his lives, In his past life story, the girl had the background of mafia, her father being a gangster who gets the assignment of transporting a prototype quantum AI chip, the first of its kind, to a client, but instead, the father would hide it in a bionic eye before transplanting it into Tianzhu as he was angry at the accident aimed at his daughter.
Tianzhu married the girl, stayed back in Moscow, and was forced to stay with his in-laws as the house husband, renaming himself as Alexander Qin.
However, this is where both of their life paths have diverged.
In his past life, Tianzhu saw the deaths of his father-in-law, his wife, and his 3-year-old daughter in one of the drone strikes from a rival gang, which resulted in becoming the first step for him to become the Mafia Boss.
In this parallel story, Tianzhu's father-in-law goes missing, his wife dies in childbirth, but gives birth to a pair of twins.
In his past life, only one of the babies survived the birth to live for three years before another tragedy occurs, taking her life.
But, in this life, the wife dies, but both babies survive, not just for three years, but they grew up to be fine teenagers.
It is because of them, Tianzhu had to live in hiding as an ordinary owner of a convenience store. Somewhere during one of the dungeon break incidents, Tianzhu awakens his powers of Mimic.
And now, as both souls had merged into one, making the experience faced by this counterpart as real as it gets to Tianzhu.
His lips quivered as streams of tears uncontrollably ran down his cheeks as he digested the memories into his own. "So, Vera and Theo are alive in this reality. It's good. Very good…"
A few minutes later, Tianzhu took deep breaths in meditation, clearing up his mind to wash down whatever unpleasant feelings he had in his mind and the heavy discomfort he was feeling in his new body, putting away the things from his past life to the back of his head and getting terms to with this new reality of his.
Eventually, he snapped his eyes open and mumbled. "I had enough struggling to maintain my power, raise my wealth, or status in the underworld. In this life, my family will be my priority. I'll be a proud father to both Vera and Theo, and a dutiful younger brother to Xueli, keeping them closer to me. Dungeons… monsters… world domination… all of them can go to hell."
Birth name: Qin Tianzhu
Alias: Alexander Qin
Age: 33
Ethnicity: Han
Arcane Path: Mage
Ability: Overlord's Authority
Ability Rank: SSS
Mana reserves: Tier-7 (Max: Tier-1)
OVERLORD'S AUTHORITY:
1) Chain of Command:
Can recruit underlings (up to 10). For every underling recruited, strength is increased by 5%.
2) Eyes of Dominion:
Can copy abilities from anyone the user sees [Limit: Only one-time use. Need to be within a 20-meter radius. Only 3 extracted abilities can be used per 24 hours. Mana consumption depends on the strength of the ability.]
3) Sovereign's Resistance:
The user gains high resistance to the abilities the user stored under the Overlord's Authority. All damages from such skills are reduced by 50%. Elemental resistance also rose by 20%
4) Dungeon's Reins:
Can temporarily control monsters in a dungeon (up to 10) [Need Tier-6 Overlord's Authority to unlock.]
5) Inheritor's right:
The user can copy one ability from an underling and permanently add it to Overlord's authority (Only 1 permanent ability can be stored) [Need Tier-5 Overlord's Authority to unlock]
6) Trophies of the Fallen:
The user can extract one ability from a dead monster the user killed and use it without limitations (Only 1 permanent ability can be stored) [Need Tier-4 Overlord's Authority to unlock]
7) Sigil of the Chosen:
Can Brand underlings with a Soul Sigil, giving them a permanent boost of 10% in strength and mana reserves (Limit: The user cannot enjoy any benefits from these special underlings, such as buffs or ability copy. Only underlings with tier-2 or lower can enjoy the boost.) [Need Tier-3 Overlord's Authority to unlock]
8) Iron Loyalty:
Passively enforce loyalty into an underling (Limit: The target has to be an existing underling) [Need Tier-2 Overlord's Authority to unlock]
9) Throne of Mana:
Can use underling's mana as one's own [Need Tier-1 Overlord's Authority to unlock]