These Familiars Are Strange - Chapter 256: Corrupted sand person (1)

Lucy Gray was a tech genius—until a stranger smiled, pulled the trigger, and ended his life.But death wasn’t the end. It was a recruitment.Dragged before a pantheon of ancient gods, Lucy learns his soul has been drafted into the Holy War—an eternal bloodbath in which Gods fight across shattered realms. Out of thousands, he was soul #4,000, chosen by Seraphine, the Goddess of Rebirth and Suffering.Now reborn in a dying world of Ogres, Giants, Beastkin, Dragonkin, and Elves, Lucy is a human among legends—a species exiled and nearly forgotten, for reasons that make him hated.Armed with nothing but defiance, sarcasm, and a bizarre ability to steal and master the powers of others, Lucy has one job: survive the impossible.The gods wanted a pawn.They got the wrong dead man.

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.

Chu Yang, the Ninth Master of the Nine Tribulations Sword, sacrificed almost everything he had for the sake of improving his martial arts, including the love of his life. After spending three years locating the fifth fragment of the Nine Tribulations Sword, he was ambushed by all sides at that very place. Mortally injured with no means of escape, Chu Yang executed a sacrificial technique by plunging the Nine Tribulations Sword into his very own heart. “With the blood of my heart, ten thousand tribulations will collapse!”

After witnessing the death of all his ambushers, Chu Yang’s vision began to darken. At a distance, moments before his death, he saw the mastermind who had plotted his downfall — Mo Tian Ji. With that, his eyes finally closed.

However, with a start, Chu Yang once again awoke to find that he had returned to when he was sixteen years of age! Furthermore, the Sword Spirit of the Nine Tribulations Sword now resided within his Dantian, the energy center of his body! From that very moment, Chu Yang would then begin to right all of his past regrets, and carve his very own legend by fulfilling his destiny as the final Master of the Nine Tribulations Sword, and defeating the Heavenly Devils beyond the realm of the Nine Heavens Continent.

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