To Be a Power in the Shadows! - Chapter 142

There was no light in the night, save for the sound of war drums and war cries.

The young man listened carefully, it was the sound of his heartbeat and the flow of his blood.

What lay hidden in the darkness ahead? Is it man, god or……a monster?

There was no such thing as the best road, because the journey beneath one’s feet is limitless!

The world ended, seven days of earthquakes, volcanic eruption and then came the meteor storm, bringing something worse—mutation.Now, survivors are group into Shifters, mutated humans and normals.Ava Zhang was supposed to be a Normal. Useless. Disposable.Thrown into a military-controlled bunker, she is sorted into Level Three—the bottom rank, where the weak are left to rot. Starving, overworked, and surrounded by desperate scavengers, she realizes that in this world, strength decides survival.But Ava isn’t as powerless her hidden System activates. The Blueprint System—an ability that lets her design and invent anything, from weapons to high-tech defenses.

After being torn from the only life she knew, 16-year-old Margo is forced into a new home with strangers who call themselves her parents. Haunted by memories of her past and consumed by feelings of isolation, she struggles to adapt to her unfamiliar surroundings. School offers little relief—until she meets Lucien, a mysterious boy who appears just when she needs a friend the most.Gabriel is everything Margo needs: kind, attentive, and always ready to whisk her away from her troubles. Each night, he invites her to secret places—an abandoned playground, a fog-choked garden, a crumbling train station at the edge of town—each more unsettling than the last. Yet with every chilling rendezvous, Margo feels more alive... more seen.But something isn’t right. Gabriel never comes to school during the day. Her adoptive parents never see him. And when they catch her talking to thin air, their concern deepens into fear. They say Gabriel isn't real—that he’s a figment of her imagination. Margo wants to believe them, but Gabriel feels real. More real than anything else in her life.As the nights grow colder and more twisted, Gabriel’s true nature begins to surface. Shadows move where they shouldn’t. Time warps in his presence. And the places they visit seem to echo with whispers from another world. Margo is forced to ask herself: Who—or what—is Gabriel? Why does he only want her? And what will happen on the final night he asks her to come with him?As the line between reality and delusion begins to crumble, Margo must make an impossible choice: stay in a world where she feels loved, or return to one that barely feels real.But one thing is certain—some friendships never let go.

Player: I’m a worker whose monthly salary doesn’t even hit $5,000. My monthly rental already takes up half of my salary, I don’t have a girlfriend and is reprimanded by my superior every day. However, I feel very happy because there has been a new virtual game recently. In the game, I have a powerful bloodline. Not only do I have my own fleet, I even have a powerful overlord that granted me a colonized planet. Although I know this is fake, but inside there, I found the meaning of my life!

Actually…the overlord who gave him the planet really wanted to tell him that this game wasn’t fake. (You really have your own fleet and colonized planet…) but the overlord knew that he couldn’t say this. Because, once he said it, these subjects who thought of themselves as ‘players’, would definitely not be as terrifyingly hardworking as now!!