Chrome Shelled Regios - Volume 12, Chapter 2 — The City of Descending Shadow

Year 2022, December the 1st. This was the day it all began.

Labyrinths had started forming all around the world, hundreds and thousands of people lost their lives as casualties.

Mutations followed after, occurring amongst the people, they began awakening super powers, the same for animals.

However these mutations brought along a virus. It quickly spread amongst the dead as they began to rise. Humanity had begun its fall.

Gray who had given up all hopes of living life, was granted a system with a special ability. On the very same day, of the outbreak, he was consumed by a labyrinth.

By the time he had gotten out, a week had passed. It was hell all around. A virus had broken out from the mutations, the dead were walking and spreading this virus.

However this was only the beginning.

Over time the mutations began to evolve and people learnt that the through the cultivation of their powers, they could improve their abilities.

【A new work from the author of 'Top Tier Providence, Secretly Cultivate for a Thousand Years'!】As a young servant, Gu An accidentally broke a pot containing a spiritual flower. While he was panicking, he discovered that he had absorbed twelve years of lifespan from it!Thus began Gu An’s journey to immortality.To cultivate safely, Gu An chose to become a servant disciple in the Taixuan Sect, where he planted medicinal herbs daily to consume their lifespan and enhance his own cultivation.He continuously evolved his basic skills with his evolution skill until they became divine abilities.Eras passed, stars shifted, and the world changed.Legends of immortals began to circulate.Gu An, now an immortal, spent half of his lifespan to push his cultivation beyond the limits of immortality and achieved the saint realm and stood above the heavenly Dao.However, one day, an old man in white robes, who looked like a true immortal, visited Gu An.“I am the Celestial Lord Xuanqing from the heavens. The Great Emperor Taihao has heard of your numerous good deeds in the mortal realm. You have repeatedly saved countless lives and have accrued great merits. He has specially dispatched me to invite you to join the ranks of immortals and assume the celestial position of Divine Steed Officer.”“Dare I ask, what the duties of the Divine Steed Officer arre?”“The Heavenly Court possesses divine horses capable of traversing heaven and earth and move between yin and yang. The Divine Steed Officer is responsible for overseeing and feeding these horses.”Hmm?

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.

Baek Yigang is a son of the Baek Clan, one of the seven great clans of Zhongyuan. Afflicted with the Taiyin Qi Blockage, he is cursed with a shortened lifespan and the inability to collect internal energy. He had been peacefully spending the rest of his days indoors when he was ambushed by a group of masked people. During the ambush, he lost his servant who was like a sister to him. Chased by the attackers, Baek Yigang escaped through a secret underground path. When he came across a blocked path, he decided he’d at least die fighting and picked up a rusted sword that was stuck in the ground…