Shadow Hack - Chapter 1: Mysterious Shadow

“The world’s not fair, but fairness doesn’t pay the bills. You don’t wait for a handout — you build your own damn ladder, one step at a time.”Ethan Grey’s life was built on ambition, hard work, and hope — until a single accusation destroyed it all.Framed by his ruthless boss, Ethan loses his job, his reputation, and is left drowning in half a million dollars of debt.Cast aside by a society that thrives on crushing the weak, he’s at rock bottom with no way out.But in his darkest moment, something extraordinary happens. A mysterious system awakens, offering Ethan a second chance — but with rules.[Congratulations, You have awakened the Harem Investment System]It can’t make him rich overnight, and it won’t give him shortcuts. Instead, it points him toward physical investments: crumbling properties, broken-down machines, and forgotten treasures.Each one is a gamble, but with every success, the system rewards him with newfound skills and opportunities.

Summoning ceremonies can freely call forth even “those which lurk in the depths beyond the gods”. One boy has top-level abilities even among the cutting-edge summoners who can use those ceremonies. He is Alice (with) Rabbit aka Shiroyama Kyousuke. But this strongest boy summoner has a single fatal weakness. Certain “cursed words” spoken by girls: “Help me.”

When Kyousuke hears those words from Meinokawa Higan, a girl brought to the verge of death, he throws himself into a city where three great summoner forces clash!

She, the world's chief doctor of the 21st century, the legendary overlord of the medical world, was killed and her soul transmigrated…She, the useless miss of the Windcloud Empire, was ugly, silly, and obsessed! She died in her own sister and fiancé's hands…When she reopened her eyes again, she had the soul of the strong but the body of the weak…When she became her, her fate would be rewritten and a miracle would appear…This was a story of a two-faced person meeting another two-faced person. With pure hearts, they would end up together.

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.