The Retired Supporting Character Wants to Live Quietly - Chapter 21 – Ride Your Steed, Knightley (1)

To the one who has never owned, obtained, or enjoyed anything throughout their entire life.“You have been chosen.”Thus, I shall bestow this power on you, for you are ’empty.’The power of the Void.Be my apostle and carry out my will.

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.

They called him the Shame of the Clan but before that, Vale Athrimir was born a prodigy, one of the rising stars expected to lead the next generation of the Clan. But on the day of his manifestation, he was awarded the Forbidden Mark Order, a power feared and loathed throughout the realm.In an instant, his world collapsed, his friends turned their backs, his father disowned him, and he was cast into prison. After three years of starvation and torment, he was thrown into the Borderlands, a labor camp where the forsaken dig rocks until they die.But Vale refused to break.With nothing but his rage and ambition, he clawed his way free and began to build. Starting with outcasts and exiles, he forged the foundations of something the world had never seen, an empire that would span nations, topple kingdoms, and unite the fractured lands under the Eternal Skies.The Forbidden Mark Order carried a terrible secret, and with an Ancient's Inheritance in his grasp, Vale discovered he possessed power beyond measure. Now, he would transform from prisoner to emperor, from outcast to conqueror.From the ashes of betrayal, the Universal Empire would rise.

Xu Qing woke up to find himself turned into a Zombie.Zombies do not die; their life is endless, yet they suffer from the lack of a method to evolve and ascend!Facing a chaotic era where ceremonies and music collapse, and demons and strange creatures emerge endlessly, Xu Qing chooses to remain under the radar and becomes the most inconspicuous Corpse Driver in the shadowy profession of corpse craftsman, earning various rewards by performing rites for the dead each day.Be it folk arts, innumerable professions, or the nation's destiny and heaven's will, gods, ghosts, and the extraordinary, Xu Qing hides within a shop, mastering them all.Watching clouds rise and fall, witnessing the dynasties change and old acquaintances fade; with eyes opening and closing, witnessing the vicissitudes of life, thousands upon thousands of years, my form remains unchanged, eventually becoming an eternal name among the immortals!------------------[Alternative Longevity Stream, Folklore and Anomalies, Management Daily, Steady Cultivation]