MTL - Mediterranean Hegemon of Ancient Greece - v9 Chapter 173 Escape the golden cicada

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.

Fate, a gatekeeper who had been working for the castle, is beset by a few burdens.

Each stroke of good luck is a triumph over someone else’s misfortune.Jack Grim, the son of two legendary assassins, was born and raised on nothing but coldness — and the skills to spill blood.At seventeen, Jack received his final task as an assassin apprentice under his parents.“Succeed, and you’ll run your own organization — live the life you’ve always dreamed of.”For Jack, it was everything he had ever wanted: the chance to finally become the professional assassin he was born to be.He struck his target at midnight, succeeded, and received everything his parents had promised.But in the wake of victory came a pounding headache, a relentless fever—and then… transmigration.Jack now found himself in Raiden’s body — the keeper of the Book of Ashes, the heart of the Devourer, and the very book the coward Raiden had died protecting with his life.Jack had no desire to live in another world, magic or not. He simply wanted to return to his life as an assassin.But duty had other plans. The balance of this world now rested on his ability to protect the book — and like it or not, the responsibility was his to bear.

The number one swordsman Zhao Jiangui is the martial world’s best hope for peace: All he has to do is seduce the Demon Sect Leader.

(Basis for the web drama “The Birth of the Drama King”)

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