The Deprived: Awakening Made Me the Most Wanted Criminal in the Alliance

(Feel free to message me privately to get the rest of the story for free.)

(No romance + ensemble cast + realistic logic + expansive worldbuilding + awakening + not a power fantasy + slow-paced + order and resistance. Worldbuilding enthusiasts, come on in!)

After a mysterious cataclysm shattered the old world order, humanity's flame of civilization struggled to survive amid disaster. Civilization's continuity was broken, and the past was swallowed by time.

In this world, people live in city-states, each a basic center of habitation. Beyond their walls lie vast wastelands, choked with poisonous mists and teeming with mysterious dangers and monsters.

Yet even amid disaster, life finds a way. Some lucky humans awaken strange abilities upon reaching adulthood. They are known as “Awakened.”

In the year 237 of the New Era, steel city-states vie for control of the radioactive wasteland. Their walls are impregnable, and rank determines one's fate. Yu Xiaoyu and Cheng Yan, two girls ground into the dust by the times, face “Awakening Day” beneath the suffocating weight of debt and surveillance. When the cold needle pierces their skin, the Arbiter System reflected in their irises unleashes a storm of upheaval. Is it a forbidden power, or the dawn of a new world?