The Science of Cultivation - Chapter 174: Eagerness

Several hundred thousand players are trapped in a gritty zombie apocalypse survival game just after game launch. There are hints that deaths in the game might be serving some other terrible purpose in the background of reality…

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.

In the end, war couldn’t be extinguished. But, there was a transformation. Even in the heart of a worthless accomplice in murder who was indifferently continuing his task, there was a transformation. The massive weapon “Object”.

This was a weapon that changed the whole definition of war. An exchange student named Quenser, who was dispatched to the battlefield, met at the base a girl with a strange aura. The girl, dubbed “Elite”, is the pilot of “Object”. The near future. This diminutive boy had come to take on the role of standing up against the strongest weapon “Object” for the sake of the girl. This was the motive for their first meeting.

In a world full of caped superheroes, supervillains, and monsters, Aldrich is worthless. 95% of humanity has evolved to develop superpowers, but Aldrich is one of the rare few that has no powers at all.