I was getting ready to graduate, with only one semester left, when I took a ski trip with my fiancee and ended up dying to save a little girl's life. This wasn't the end, though, as a deity chose me to save another world. I woke up in the body of Kupiec Aiden, in a world where magic was real. Unfortunately, unlike many isekai novels I've read, I retained none of his memories, and had to learn everything. HIs family took me in, and I recovered from his sickness before learning about magic, or Aether as they called it. I discovered that I had immense innate talent in Aether Gathering, and was offered a scholarship to attend Azyl Academy, the city's premier institution. Where do I fit in this world, and how am I going to be key to saving it?

I was getting ready to graduate, with only one semester left, when I took a ski trip with my fiancee and ended up dying to save a little girl's life. This wasn't the end, though, as a deity chose me to save another world. I woke up in the body of Kupiec Aiden, in a world where magic was real. Unfortunately, unlike many isekai novels I've read, I retained none of his memories, and had to learn everything. HIs family took me in, and I recovered from his sickness before learning about magic, or Aether as they called it. I discovered that I had immense innate talent in Aether Gathering, and was offered a scholarship to attend Azyl Academy, the city's premier institution. Where do I fit in this world, and how am I going to be key to saving it?

Beast waves, Chaos cultists, new Primordials rising. The world has gone crazy. A tournament has been called to find new champions. Aiden and his team must compete in Craesti City, the capital of their kingdom, to earn the right to journey to Monster Island for a multinational competition. Can Aiden rise to become the true chosen one, or will he fall into obscurity and failure?

It's been six months since I died on Earth and was brought to the Kingdom of Craesti. In that time, I've made friends, gained a family, and begun learning how to gather and channel Aether, a.k.a. magic. I started attending Azyl Academy, the premier magic school of the city, after it was discovered that my talent was exceptionally high. I am learning Alchemy, Inscription, and how to fight, all with the goal of expanding the Kingdom and keeping the populace safe. It hasn't all been smooth sailing, though. I made an enemy of one of the local noble Clans, and just survived an assassination attempt thanks to one of the guardian Beasts of the Academy I have a budding friendship with. Now I have to recover from my injuries and continue to advance. Coming soon will be our ranking tournament, where we will compete within our tiers to see who is the strongest. After the tournament, we will be divided into teams and go on an expedition into the Great Western Forest to cull Beasts and harvest rare plants. Throughout all of this, though, my focus is on getting stronger; to be ready for the calamity I was warned about by Darkness, the deity that brought me here. I just hope I have enough time.

Zorian Kazinski has all the time in the world to get stronger, and he plans on taking full advantage of it. A teenage mage of humble birth and slightly above-average skill, Zorian is attending his third year of education at Cyoria's magical academy. A driven and quiet young man, he is consumed by a desire to ensure his own future and free himself of the influence of his family, resenting the Kazinskis for favoring his brothers over him. Consequently, Zorian has no time for pointless distractions, much less other people's problems. As it happens, though, time is something he is about to get plenty of. On the eve of Cyoria's annual summer festival, Zorian is murdered, then abruptly brought back to the beginning of the month, just before he was about to take the train to school. Finding himself trapped in a time loop with no clear end or exit, he will have to look both within and without to unravel the mystery set before him. He does have to unravel it, too, because the loop clearly wasn’t made for his sake, and in a world of magic even a time traveler isn't safe from those who wish him ill. Fortunately for Zorian, repetition is the mother of learning…

"He's a fake," declared Chipper Cooper positively, backing up against the steam radiator to warm himself on the other side. "I'll bet a hundred dollars he never was west of Scranton, Pennsylvania." "A hundred dollars," drawled Sile Crane, grinning. "Why don't yeou bate something while you're abaout it? Nobody'd bother to take a measly little wager like that. Now I've kinder got an idee that the new feller really comes from Texas, jest as he says he does. I guess he ain't no fake." "Oh, is that so!" retorted Cooper, a bit warmly. "Well, I'll talk business to you, Mr. Crane; I'll really bet you fifty cents Rodney Grant never saw the State of Texas in his life. Now put up or shut up." "I don't want to bate on it," said Sile; "but I guess I've got a right to my opinion, and I cal'late Rod Grant ain't no fake Westerner."

The Internet is host to a world of information… and misinformation. At the Khan Academy—an online education site started by visionary Salman Khan—one can learn about such diverse subjects as whether there are different sizes of infinity, or if basketball star and regular contributor to the site LeBron James thinks it’s easier to make three free throws or one three pointer. That’s right: LeBron James is a regular contributor. And Bill Gates’s kids are regular visitors. Find out just who Salman Khan is and how he became a superstar magnet—and a superstar in his own right.

For Jiyong, Bastion Academy is more than just a school for magic in the heart of the Kingdom... It's his chance to pursue the secrets of the ancient ones' machines and get his family out of the poverty-stricken outer-city. His acceptance letter in hand, Jiyong is sure nothing will stand in the way of his dreams. When a street brawl lands him in a coma only weeks into the year, his chances of graduating are all but shot. With an unlikely digital companion, he'll have to rebuild his magic core and catch up on all his classes, or risk being dropped from the academy at the end of the year. But kingdom life is not like the outer-cities, and kingdom kids are far more ruthless about who they'll allow to climb to the top. Jiyong will have to train hard and fight for every score to make it in this wealthy academy for powerful families, all while supporting his own from afar. From J.D. Astra, author of Viridian Gate Online: Firebrand, comes a brand-new Cultivation Academy series, bursting at the seams with nanites, martial arts, and robot battling.

In the modern world, qi is money.The days of traveling martial artists and mountaintop masters are over. Power is controlled by corporations, modernized martial arts sects, and governments. Those at the bottom of society struggle as second class citizens in a world in which power is a commodity.Rick is a young fighter in this world. He doesn't dream of immortality or becoming the strongest, just of building a better life for himself and his sister, who suffers from a spiritual illness. Unfortunately, life isn't that easy...

We are pleased to introduce our 17th and latest volume from our regular conference: Business and Non-profit Organizations Facing Increased Competitions and Growing Customers’ Demands, which contains articles highlighting the problems of contemporary for-profit and non-profit organizations. The added value is the inclusion of multifaceted aspects of an organization’s functioning, including the sectoral and industrial view. The diversity of the approach to the problems of organization, management, business and economy becomes a valuable interdisciplinary view of the economic reality that surrounds us. The monograph is divided into four sections. In the first section: Business and non-profit organizations as the objects of research, articles are exposing the area of strategic management, including a museum as a research object, surgical workflow, the performance of cultural organizations, and organizational forms of housing resource management. In addition, this section covers a process-oriented view of management, including process maturity of the organization and process approach to the analysis of creative capital; and mixed project-management methodology. In a separate thread, there are articles related to public university mergers based on an example of two academic case studies; the analysis of scientific excellence as a factor influencing academic involvement; and the nature of competition for non-profit and for-profit organizations. The second section, entitled Modern tools for business and non-profit organization management, opens with an article on design thinking and the TransistorsHead tool used to analyze teams through organizational terms. Other tools used in eye tracking, such as enova365 and Soneta, are presented in an article on the optimization of an IT system. In the context of profiling scientific research, not only in the area of academic entrepreneurship but also in the search for research gaps, bibliometrics is undoubtedly a useful tool discussed in a further article. In another article, an attractive tool for competence analysis is the business model and the construction of the competence assessment method, which could prove to be helpful in assessing the effectiveness of professional careers. Other articles in this section feature the concept of innovation and knowledge management; medical data management based on a precise legal basis; external financing and its impact on the flexibility of enterprises; and a systemic, process and resource approach to port modularity. In the next section: Business and non-profit organizations in a market economy, the primary thematic topic is corporate social responsibility, client capital creation, and social entrepreneurship. We note the greater emphasis on the social aspects of the organization’s functioning and on the social economy. The human thread and the so-called ecosystem in business are becoming more and more desirable, and the perspective of business is changing: from a profit-oriented one towards a more societal one. In the last section, entitled Business and non-profit organizations - sectoral and industrial aspects, there are articles discussing the issues of organization in macroeconomic terms. This section opens with an article presenting the structural characteristics of industrial clusters and research streams in this area. Subsequently, we have articles that present: the municipality, from the point of view of the configuration of the network of relations between stakeholders, and their involvement in the creation of smart specialization strategies; the determinants of employment change in the Polish services sector; consumer awareness of the credit market; the transparency of public finances; local food and regional products; consumer behaviour in Ukraine; as well as, trade credit, profitability and leverage in Polish companies. Every year, this monograph is built on articles that present an up-to-date view of the business and geo-economic reality that surrounds us, whose organizations form the backbone of the economy and its sectors. The dynamics of changes are so significant that such studies bring readers closer to current trends and draw the interest of researchers.