I Stepped on Their Shadows and Skills Started Copying Like Crazy - Chapter 16

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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16
An encounter with the Sword Saint I never saw coming.
Thanks to it, I’d obtained a skill that earned the Sword Saint their very name.
Now it was time to put it to the test.
Brimming with anticipation, I left the waiting room on the third floor and headed toward the mission zone.
“To the mission zone.”
The waiting room dissolved like a mirage the instant my feet touched down.
And there before me: a vast golden plain.
Behind me stood a colossal gorge.
As if I’d just emerged from the gorge and stepped into the wasteland.
Sweeping my gaze across the third floor’s stage, I spotted a cluster of goblin figures in the distance ahead.
‘For a solo entry: one hobgoblin and five goblins. One archer mixed in—worth noting. Yeah, that matches what I studied.’
The third floor’s mission: clear out the Goblin Bandit Group.
Everything matched the strategy guide I’d reviewed beforehand.
‘And there’s the cart, standing out plain as day.’
Among those creatures, I could make out a muscular ox and the cart it pulled.
‘The third floor’s reward is generous because of that cart, from what I heard.’
The third floor was famous for its generous rewards relative to its difficulty.
I’d heard that the plundered goods loaded in that cart were included wholesale in the mission rewards, regardless of who’d stolen them originally.
That’s why it was considered the training ground for wage-earning Awakeners, or so they said.
“Well then. Let’s go.”
Click.
The Nocturne slid from its sheath with a crisp, bright sound.
The pale blade released wisps of white light in succession, followed by a biting chill.
“Let’s see just how incredible this Sword Saint skill of mine really is.”
Without hesitation, I sprinted out across the wasteland.
My target lay ahead—the enemy in the distance.
* * *
I’d learned one thing climbing through the first and second floors.
Even deploying Stealth Movement and Flash Slash on basic missions, there was nothing to sweat over.
The only thing straining myself earned was depleted stamina.
‘Basic missions are meant to be cleared quickly as a warm-up. They’re not suited to my level anyway.’
The first floor had been the same. The second floor too.
The third floor? If the enemies before me now were all of it, there was nothing particularly different about it either.
The goblins spotted me charging toward them and came rushing to meet me.
“Kee-eek!”
“Kee-ruk! Kee-ruk!”
As we charged toward each other, the distance closed in an instant.
And then—impact!
The one in front was armed with a crude circular shield and a rusted blade.
“Kee-eh! Kee-eek!”
The moment it shrieked and thrust its sword forward, shield raised—
“…!”
In a flash, the optimal evasion path appeared before me.
The moment I saw it, my body followed that path without hesitation, as naturally as breathing.
A half-step to the side. Not even a full stride—barely half a step.
The bare minimum of movement. Yet that alone sent its blade whistling through empty air.
‘I dodged that? Just like that?’
I’d never experienced anything like it before.
It had to be the effect of the skill I’d stolen from the Sword Saint moments ago.
Before surprise could fully settle, my blade—dark as twilight—found the creature’s throat as it stumbled off-balance.
Scratch.
The goblin didn’t even realize it was dying before its neck gave way, a blow from out of its field of vision.
I swept past its falling corpse, already moving toward my next target.
Whistle—!
An arrow came screaming through the air from my blind side, its passage sharp and true.
“Hah!”
I tilted my head slightly and let it pass.
The wind of its passage grazed my cheek, sending a chill down my spine—and at the same moment, my heart soared.
‘This is it…!’
The Beginning of Training—this skill.
When I first read the description, I wondered what good it would do.
Movements refined by microscopic degrees? Honestly, it seemed like an effect that made no difference.
‘I figured it was just a growth-type skill, so I’d use it anyway….’
But the actual combat told a different story.
The arrows’ trajectories, the arcs of my blade—they bloomed before me with crystalline clarity, as if mapped by an invisible hand.
Before, I’d simply hacked and thrust and dodged and parried, my mind scattered across a dozen instinctive movements.
Now it was utterly transformed.
I could feel exactly how to angle each cut for maximum depth with minimum effort, where to strike for lethal precision.
As though an unseen master stood at my shoulder, correcting each posture, each shift in weight.
“Performance checks out.”
The second goblin drew closer. I swept my blade through without hesitation.
A diagonal slash, starting from the right shoulder, bisecting the body.
Crack!
By the time the severed green body hit the ground, I was already upon the archer.
“Kek—?”
Bewilderment flickered across its face. Whether from my speed, or from glimpsing its own death, I couldn’t say.
Slash!
There was no way to know now. The dead keep their secrets.
Three goblins dispatched in an eyeblink, and I stood surrounded in the heart of their formation.
Three enemies remained.
“Kieee!”
Three weapons descended at once—thrusting, slashing, crushing.
And yet, through that storm of steel, I saw a single path.
The same skill that had made the Sword Saint the strongest Awakener in Korea whispered to me.
Dodge thus, block thus, counterattack thus.
Before understanding could form, my body simply followed.
“Breath!”
The dagger stabbing for my abdomen—I gave ground.
The horizontal cut, I turned blade to blade and spun it away. The cudgel swinging for my knees met only the arc of my sword shearing through the goblin’s wrist.
Their coordinated assault crumbled into nothing in a single breath.
My counterattack needed only one stroke.
From left to right, a dark arc traced through the air.
Slash!
The three remaining goblins, already within my reach, fell into six neat pieces.
No flash. No death cry. Only the staggered thud of severed limbs hitting stone.
Massacre would be too generous a word for what had just unfolded.
Even after the fighting stopped, the strangeness lingered.
‘I just tore through all that and I’m barely breathing.’
Not a wasted motion, not a wasted ounce of force. Pure efficiency.
Six goblins in the blink of an eye, and my pulse hadn’t so much as skipped.
‘This is a cheat skill wearing a D-Rank disguise.’
The performance was so absurd I couldn’t help laughing.
I’d thought it would be on the level of Stealth Movement or Flash Slash, but it outclassed every skill I’d ever wielded.
I’d wagered on the future potential of the Sword Saint’s name, and it was already performing at peak capacity.
‘If this is what it does at D-Rank, what happens when it grows to S+?’
By then, I might truly be able to cleave mountains.
I’d already cracked a boulder. The thought strained my imagination.
‘Too bad Healing Touch is gone… but there’s no helping that. Still, this is an even trade, no?’
Either way, the basic mission was complete.
I wiped the blood from my blade and approached the cart the Goblin Bandit Group had been guarding.
“Anything worth having?”
The cart was crammed with crude refuse.
Rusted, broken weapons any goblin might treasure. Strips of jerky of unknown origin. Even pilfered dinnerware from the human world.
I’d heard that with luck, you sometimes found Common-Rank equipment items. I’d come hoping, but a glance told me fortune hadn’t favored me today.
“Well, it can’t be helped…”
[Basic Mission complete.]
[Calculating reward.]
“Auto-store.”
Most of the junk piled haphazardly in the cart vanished into my Inventory with a soft pop.
As a result, all that remained in the cart were things that wouldn’t fit in the automatic storage anyway—items too trivial to bother cataloging….
“What is this?”
Among them, something caught his eye that seemed out of place.
A smooth, jet-black elliptical sphere. This was definitely….
“An egg?”
A black egg he’d never seen before—larger than a chicken’s, smaller than an ostrich’s.
He wasn’t certain, but it didn’t look like the sort of worthless junk item to be discarded.
He was thinking he’d throw it into his inventory and check on it later when, the moment he picked the egg up in his hand, a system message appeared.
[You have demonstrated outstanding performance on the 3rd Floor.]
[The Tower’s Gaze turns toward you. A new Trial or opportunity may be granted.]
This much he’d anticipated. What came next was slightly different.
[Will you challenge the Trial of the 3rd Floor?]
Unlike the first Trial, the warning was considerably simplified—apparently they’d said their piece on the 2nd Floor.
A smirk twisted across his face.
Directed at that thing called the Tower’s Gaze, watching from somewhere.
“I accept.”
Bastard. As if you didn’t already know.
* * *
[Commencing the Trial of the Tower’s Gaze.]
Whoooooo—!
A horn blast sounded from somewhere, simultaneous with the message.
“…?”
Somewhere?
Normally, a sound comes from a direction you can pinpoint.
But somewhere?
In that moment of turning his head at this peculiarity, the horn sounded from every direction at once—before, behind, left, and right.
Whooooooo—!
An enormous reverberating echo that filled the entire vast Wasteland.
“Ah.”
Along the distant horizon, dust clouds were rising everywhere his sight could reach.
It was a situation similar to the 2nd Floor Trial, but the scale of the enemies bearing down was different.
Even an extra zero wouldn’t have been sufficient.
[Mission Objective: Survive the overwhelming all-out assault of the Sand Claw Bandit Group and transport the Strange Egg to the safe zone (Gorge).]
[Failure Conditions: Destruction of the Strange Egg or death of the primary target.]
Once the Trial began, you’d think they’d spell out the objective right away—but here came the mission briefing a beat late, as if toying with him.
“Damn! They sure know how to drag things out!”
Unlike the 2nd Floor Trial, he couldn’t even muster the audacity to attempt anything beyond the stated objective.
Boom-boom-boom!
A horde of goblins thundering toward him, shaking the earth with their clamor.
He had to make a choice immediately.
‘Give up or push through.’
At that crossroads, he first checked the location of the safe zone—the mission objective.
He could see a Gorge far down the path he’d come.
‘When did that get so far?’
It was the very same Gorge he’d had at his back when he first entered the 3rd Floor.
The problem was that just because the Gorge was a safe zone didn’t mean the path leading to it was safe.
The route toward the Gorge was already swarming with those green little bastards.
“Trials and opportunities, my ass…!”
Why not just admit they wanted him dead?
During the 2nd Floor Trial, he’d caught on that the difficulty gap between the Basic Mission and the Trial was massive, but this was excessive.
The 3rd Floor Basic Mission was clearing six goblins, but the Trial was plowing through hundreds of them to escape?
“Disgusting. I’m out.”
The word ‘surrender’ had reached the back of his throat and was about to spill out when—
Crack!
“…?”
A strange sound came from directly below, and his gaze naturally shifted to the egg.
“What, was it fertile?”
The moment those words left his mouth, the hairline fracture on the egg’s surface widened slightly.
Tap. Tap.
“…Huh?!”
Followed by a string of soft, cute sounds.
Something was moving inside.
‘Wait… they said Strange Egg… could this be the hint?’
A distant memory surfaced suddenly.
There was a game I’d played on an ancient handheld console at the orphanage more than ten years ago, back when I was a child.
A game made from the world’s most successful IP ever created.
That game had something called a “Strange Egg” too.
Since we only had one console and several of us played it, the save file got scrambled every time someone played, so none of us could ever follow the story properly.
Because of that, I’d half-given up on enjoying the game and never really learned what happened, but one thing was crystal clear to me.
‘Something amazing hatched out of that egg.’
— Hey, Kim Si-hyeon, you were the one who carried the egg, right?! Did something really strong hatch from it? Want to see?
After I’d delivered the egg, I never touched that handheld again, but the look on the guy’s face as he proudly showed off the creature he’d hatched from it was still vivid in my memory.
‘…come to think of it, I wonder if that guy’s doing well now.’
He was a lucky kid—apparently he’d saved a country in his past life, because even after reaching an age when adoption usually fell through, he managed to get adopted anyway.
‘I should’ve at least glanced at what came out of that egg when he showed me.’
While I was lost in nostalgia, the goblins that had looked bean-sized before were now the size of chestnuts and approaching fast.
I readjusted Nocturne as the green wave drew closer.
It was ready too.
The chill of the Prelude had already faded, and the activated Crescendo was slowly radiating warmth.
Powered by that heat, I reignited my fighting spirit, which had cooled to ice.
“Alright, let me open this one myself. Let’s see how amazing it really is.”
Let me take a look.
What does the strongest one look like?
Just stepping on a shadow copied skills
Author |
Killingpart
Publisher |
Samyang C&C Co., Ltd.
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Editorial Department
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@dreambookss
Submissions |
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No part of this book may be used in any form or by any means without written permission from Samyang C&C Co., Ltd. – Dream Books.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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