Hell's Eternal Garden (Infinite)

[Also known as: Raising a Bug Crow in a Hell Game] One-line summary: A max-level expert gets adopted by a newbie and shamelessly mooches food and lodging. Ling Yi is dragged into a terrifying endless-game world called "Hell's Eternal Garden," where he faces all kinds of bizarre instances. He's an ordinary person with nothing special about him except for being a little braver and having slightly red eyes. No matter. This is only the beginning of Ling Yi's rise to dominance in the Eternal Garden. Little Ling Yi is trembling in fear in a horror instance, but he gets "lucky" and "catches" a crow monster that looks incredibly powerful! So he happily keeps it as a pet. Ya Qing: ...Caw! I'm not a pet! The player lobby in Hell's Eternal Garden has a huge 3D projection screen displaying the player rankings. The rankings list the top hundred players in various categories, such as points, missions, and kills. There are all kinds of rankings, but for years, the same person has held the top spot on every one. Known as a "legendary player," he goes by the name "Ya Qing." No one knows his gender, and no one's ever seen his face, but stories of the crow expert have circulated among players for years without losing their appeal. Then, one day, Ya Qing's name suddenly disappears from every ranking... Everyone knows that a player disappearing from the rankings usually means one of two things: either they've escaped the Eternal Garden and returned to the real world, or they've died for good. People guessed both possibilities, but both answers were wrong. Ya Qing had neither returned to reality nor died. He'd simply brought this upon himself. And, to his great embarrassment, a new player had penned him up as a pet. Ya Qing (who had really turned into a crow) stands on Ling Yi's shoulder with his wings tucked in, glaring at him from the corner of his eye. Ling Yi feels the scorching gaze and runs his fingers over the little crow's smooth feathers. "What is it? Are you hungry?" Ya Qing stiffly turns his bird head away, but his body obediently lets Ling Yi pet him. He even involuntarily raises his tail feathers (he likes being petted >o). Pairing: A devious, cunning, down-on-his-luck expert seme x a brilliant, god-tier newbie uke. I just felt like writing this, so I did. It's an infinite-flow story, focused more on the plot. The uke pulls all sorts of clever moves to help the seme overtake the competition, a story about showing off. The battle-system stats in the story are all made up by the author. They're too complicated to fuss over, so don't pay them too much attention. This story is entirely fictional, the product of the author's imagination, written to make myself happy. It has no logic and isn't based on any real people or things. Please don't look for reality in fiction. Theme: A story about the protagonist overcoming setbacks and climbing step by step toward the peak.