Merchant Crab - Chapter 196: Into the Dragon’s Lair

After making a deal with a peculiar goddess, Victor awakens in a new world of swords & magic with a body of pure darkness and far too many eyes.

He had become a Netherborne—the strongest undead race in all of existence.

But what happens when a human mind inhabits such a creature? With dulled emotions and an insatiable hunger?

Does only death and destruction await the world? Or will Victor be the herald of a new undead civilization?

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.

“I’m a warrior from the alternate universe.”“The Goddess summoned me to this world to defeat the Devil that has imperiled the world and to restore peace to the world.”“I understand that it’s my cardinal duty. Since I’ve been summoned to become a Warrior, I’ll do my best to beat my opponent even if he’s the almighty Devil.”“Don’t ask me why. That’s what the book says.”“But… isn’t this development straying from the plot?!”This is the beginning of a scam in an alternate universe. It is also the story of a warrior with a mission to defeat the Devil. At the end, he realized that he had been duped instead.

Uchiha Kai has been cautious since he came to this world. He vowed that he must be cautious and go to the end.

But one day he received a mission – to cover the wave wind team to blow up the Kamabashi Bridge, Uchiha Kai knew that he was going to be unlucky…

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