I Stepped on Their Shadows and Skills Started Copying Like Crazy - Chapter 34

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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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34
Home at last, after a long day’s work.
“Ugh… I’m exhausted.”
“Meow.”
“You have labored well, my lord.”
Hmm? Did I just hear something I wasn’t expecting?
I spun around in surprise, and there on the screen was a familiar green face.
It was Snig.
“What—what the hell? Why are you here?”
“How sorrowful to hear such words. Wherever my lord travels, it is only right that I should follow.”
“Why am I your lord? Where’s Goldarac?”
“As the rightful heir, you have inherited the Lord’s Ring from your predecessor. Naturally, I must serve.”
This wasn’t mentioned anywhere in the item description…
Snig, oblivious to my confusion, glanced around my cramped rooftop room and opened his mouth again.
“So this is where my lord dwells? Quite austere, I must say.”
Who does he think he’s poking fun at?
I’m just scraping by, doing whatever it takes to survive in this place.
“Wait, how did you even follow me out in the first place?”
“Before I was the Warehouse Keeper of Bigo, I was the Lord’s confidant. Though the previous Lord has long since passed and I could not serve him, it is only natural that a lord’s faithful servant should follow where the lord goes!”
He was thumping his chest with such conviction, as though declaring some grand loyalty.
I had nothing to say—he was too confident.
I’d heard that Summoned Creatures could only be called forth inside the Tower, yet here was Bami, and now this one too. I’m beginning to worry about why this keeps happening.
Skills activating outside the Tower was already a headache by itself.
“Then go back inside. There’s no room. I can’t fit you too.”
“Please, anything but that…!”
“Hey, don’t you see this Ring? Are the Lord’s commands no longer absolute?”
“That’s not it, but… there’s truly nothing in there now. Before, there were treasures to admire, ways to pass the time, but now there’s genuinely nothing to do inside at all.”
……
He wasn’t wrong.
I’d scraped every last treasure from Bigo to feed the Ring’s hunger, so when I left, the place was completely empty.
Spending time alone in that blank white space would drive anyone mad.
But that was his problem, not mine.
My own situation was already precarious enough. Was I supposed to attach another burden to myself? Absolutely not.
“No. I can’t afford to support you too.”
“My lord…!”
“Who’s your lord? This won’t work. I need to take off the Ring, or something. The Ring is the problem, right?”
“No! Don’t! Please, anything but that…!”
Snig clutched at my pant leg in panic, refusing to let go.
“I’ll earn my keep! Just let me stay in a corner! I’ll clean! I’ll do laundry! I’m quite skilled with my hands, I assure you!”
He hung there, tears and snot streaming down his face.
My resolve wavered slightly.
‘Sending him back alone to that empty place does seem a bit cruel…’
But bringing him here didn’t feel right either.
‘Bami can at least be passed off as a cat. But if anyone saw this one…’
He’d be snatched up by some mysterious agency and dissected on the spot.
“No. I’ve thought about it again, and the answer’s still no. It’s too risky for me.”
I pulled the Ring off as I spoke.
Problem solved, I thought—but Snig just stood there, blinking.
“…My lord?”
“…Why are you still here?”
“Well… I am I, and the Ring is the Ring.”
His expression suggested this was an obvious question.
“Wait, then what was all that pleading about not taking off the Ring?”
“Well… the Ring is an item easily forgotten once removed. If my lord were to lose something so precious, my heart would shatter!”
“…So you were worried I’d lose the Ring?”
“Precisely, my lord! Your wisdom grasps the depths of my devotion in an instant!”
Snig stood there, moved to emotion, while the Ring lay bare in the palm of my hand.
This is bad.
There’s no returning this.
“Okay, fine. But you can’t stay here. If anyone sees you, it’s over.”
“If that’s a problem, rest assured! I can vanish at any moment, my lord!”
Vanish? Like the way Bami hides into shadows?
I was about to ask something, but Snig had already slipped out of sight.
‘…Did I lose him?’
Then, mocking my uncertainty, Snig reappeared before me with a soft whoosh.
“How was that, my lord? Quite seamless, wouldn’t you say?”
Hell. I hadn’t even spoken—only thought it. I shouldn’t have thought at all.
“Should anyone approach, I’ll hide just like that. Please, grant me this one chance, my lord! Master!”
Thud!
With that, Snig flattened himself against the yellow linoleum floor, pressing his head down with such force that his entire scalp gleamed in my vision.
For a creature already disproportionate—head too large for his scrawny frame—the sight of that bare dome filling my field of view was somehow pathetic.
“Sigh…”
The fluorescent light caught his naked scalp, making it glint with a sort of wretched luminescence.
Something in my chest tightened looking at that pitiful back of his head.
‘Fine. He understands speech, so he’ll do whatever I ask. He can handle cleaning, at least. And with that bald head, there won’t be any hair getting everywhere.’
I’d obtained a Legendary Grade Ring, and it seems a porter came bundled with it as a bonus.
What can I do? There’s no return policy.
“…All right. I’ll give you a chance. But you only get one.”
At those words, Snig’s head snapped up, his eyes blazing with fervor.
“My lord…!”
Tears of gratitude pooled in his large goblin eyes.
“Lord Snig shall prove his worth to you, master! Every speck of dust in Bigo, every pebble that might obstruct your path—I shall clear it all away!”
“Ah, never mind that. Just don’t let anyone else find out. If anyone does, I’m dumping you straight back into Bigo.”
“Yes, yes! I shall make that my first principle, my lord!”
Damn. I’d let my mouth run away with me again.
* * *
While Si Hyeon emerged from the Tower wrestling with an unforeseen complication, the world underwent another seismic shift.
[Tower-Wide Announcement: Tower of Korea]
[A hidden dungeon, Floor 10.5, within the Tower of Korea has been cleared at EX+ Rank difficulty.]
[Great deeds transcend mere abundance—they usher in true prosperity.]
[The Blessing of Marsh Abundance has ended, and the superior blessing, the Golden Age, has arrived.]
[Golden Age]
[All rewards from the Tower grow abundantly more generous.]
▶ For 168 hours, loot acquisition rates are doubled.
▶ For 168 hours, the frequency of lowest-tier loot plummets dramatically, with the reduction proportionally redirected as increased odds of acquiring higher-tier loot.
▶ For 168 hours, all Awakeners within the Tower of Korea are graced by the Protection of the Golden King.
[Protection of the Golden King: The authority of Goldarac, the Lord who once ruled the Crimson Lands, descends upon you. All basic stats of every Awakener beneath this protection increase by 5.]
A massive buff no one had foreseen.
In response to this unexpected windfall, The Lobby—Korea’s largest Awakener community—experienced another traffic surge.
[Breaking) Deity of Abundance clears Floor 10.5 lol running to the tower rn∼]
[Live Feed: Tower 1st Floor Lobby Situation.jpg (packed to bursting lol)]
[Some guy saw the announcement and threw his resignation at his department head. What a legend?]
[RIP early birds who already cleared the Tower today, you got buffed ㅋㅋ I already did it once ㅋㅋㅋ]
[Praise the Deity]
[New to the Tower, can I bring my mom’s kitchen knife? She packed it for me;;]
[Didn’t get Coins, but at least I got Awakened. Dodged a bullet there ㄹㅇ;]
[Hello, kind Korean friends. I am an American Awakener. I used translation assistance. I’m considering visiting the Korean Tower to experience it. Is it truly safe? I’m a bit worried since it says it’s a divided nation.]
With each refresh, hundreds of posts flooded and vanished—an overwhelming deluge of traffic.
In the old days, the servers would have crashed from this alone.
Indeed, Tower-related communities worldwide were erupting from the appearance of this Golden Age.
Yet The Lobby alone remained standing.
The only domestic community that didn’t crash in this great flood!
After the Deity of Abundance appeared and the servers kept crashing repeatedly, they reluctantly expanded server capacity—and that decision proved to be a stroke of genius.
Thanks to that foresight, Korean Awakeners could swiftly join this “Gold Rush.”
【Free】 (Requesting sticky) Current situation summarized in 3 lines.txt
1. Base stats +5 = even a freshly Awakened civilian becomes a UFC fighter. Survival rate jumps 500%. Honestly, dying on Floor 1 is impossible unless you’re actively trying to kill yourself.
2. Drop rate doubled = goblins are literally vomiting loot. It’s a money dupe bug.
3. Conclusion = the Tower is literally throwing money at you. Pick it up already.
Seriously, the final train for a life turnaround has arrived. Board it.
Build your foundation while the buff is active, and your life from here on out could go anywhere. The right direction, hopefully.
Above all, I wish for the good health of our new junior Awakeners. Don’t die out there.
▼ Comments
Anonymous1: What the— ability stat +5? So if someone just awakened and goes up the 1st Floor, they’d get specs equal to climbing 5 floors? This feels genuinely massive, right?
└ Anonymous (Author): Yeah, that’s why all the newbies who were too scared to climb after awakening are swarming the 1st Floor and pounding on it lol. The goblins on Floor 1 are probably dying by the millions rn lol
Anonymous2: Wow, info spread fast lol. Just so you know, no fake news. I grabbed my secondary account and even brought my mom’s and dad’s phones to leave four upvotes.
└ Anonymous (Author): I appreciate it, but that’s cheating. Tower Tower Tower…
【Free Talk】 Yo lol, have you guys been getting random links about tower news from your parents lately?
I’ve been an Awakener for a while, but my whole family talked me out of climbing because it’s dangerous, so I got a regular job instead.
But lately my mom and dad keep posting tower-related news articles in the family chat. Is this some kind of signal?
▼ Comments
Anonymous1: What are you doing lol, go climb the tower quick lol. This is your life-changing moment lol
Anonymous2: Damn, dormant Awakeners just hit the lottery. I’m so jealous.
Anonymous3: Wait… you haven’t quit your job yet?!?
Anonymous4: My family was also against it super hard, so I was sneakily doing part-time climbing for some salary, and my dad who said he’d erase me from the family registry if I climbed the tower suddenly says I seem to have real talent lol
An unprecedented occurrence in tower history: the emergence of a stat buff.
A single Awakener shaking the very foundation of how an entire nation’s tower is conquered.
This shockwave inevitably rippled across the entire world.
[Economics] KOSPI surges sharply ahead of market close… ‘Tower-related stocks’ trading volume explodes
[Society] “Can’t miss this opportunity”… 1st Floor swarmed with ‘dormant’ Awakeners desperate to return
Not only domestic media but major international outlets halted regular broadcasts to rush out breaking news from Korea.
[U.S. GNN] Seoul is the 21st century’s Eldorado… Korea bathed in ‘golden blessings’
[Japan JBS] Korean Tower enters ‘Golden Age’… Japan Awakener Association issues emergency mobilization order
[International] Eyes of Awakeners worldwide turn to the Korean Peninsula… inquiries for flights to Korea ‘surging’
Outside the window, the sun sank low and amber, but the fervor gripping Korea showed no sign of cooling.
All kindled by one person’s spark.
* * *
At the same moment, in the basement situation room of Tower Administration Headquarters.
Dozens of analysts rushed back and forth in frantic motion, while the status board’s graphs flashed urgent red warnings and convulsed wildly.
“Director! The U.S. Awakener Management Bureau hotline is connected! It’s the director himself!”
“Put him on hold for a moment!”
“Director! Direct call from the President’s Security Office!”
“I’m coming. Keep them on the line!”
Calls pelted in from every direction.
The instant he decided one call absolutely had to be taken, another would ring demanding the same urgency.
“Director! Japan’s demanding immediate clarification… should I drop this one?”
“…Clarification of what?”
“Sir, they’re spouting nonsense about us intentionally manipulating the tower’s system. They’re saying there’s no way the tower would show such blatant favoritism toward Korea otherwise.”
Though admittedly, not all the calls were like that.
“Whatever… I’m drowning in work, so feed them some pleasant-sounding words and hang up.”
Jeong Jin-hyeok—when was the last time he’d moved with such desperate urgency?
So long ago he couldn’t even remember.
Since his meteoric rise to director and the rigorous order he’d established at Tower Administration Headquarters, nothing like this chaos had ever occurred.
“Route all diplomatic matters to External Relations! Block the higher-ups’ calls—tell them I’ll brief everyone personally later!”
“Yes, sir!”
Jeong Jin-hyeok tugged at his necktie with irritation, loosening it.
This was the same Jeong Jin-hyeok who hadn’t faltered even a month ago when Korea’s Tower itself faced collapse—yet now he was uncharacteristically disheveled.
His eyes fixed on one thing alone: the text hovering at the center of the screen.
[Protection of the Golden King: ……All Awakeners standing beneath this protection gain a basic stat boost of 5.]
“This is maddening. A stat boost of 5? What’s the current situation inside the tower—specifically the 1st Floor?”
“Uncontrollable, sir! All field personnel have been dispatched to the 1st Floor lobby, but it’s beyond containment.”
The world darkened before his eyes.
Tower Administration’s job was to encourage Awakeners to climb the tower—for the sake of national survival itself.
But not like this.
‘This isn’t climbing. This is a stampede. A mass suicide.’
He could already see tomorrow morning’s headline.
‘How many will die?’
A hundred? Two hundred?
He couldn’t fathom it. His mind refused to even conjure the image.
The 1st Floor was nominally the 1st Floor, but inside the tower was a different world.
Spears and swords crossed in a dance of death, blood sprayed, entrails spilled, heads flew.
A savage space, utterly unlike the modern society these people inhabited.
Even if the 1st Floor was a place where those foolish enough to venture there were treated as though they deserved their deaths, it was still the Tower.
“What about the personnel we dispatched earlier? How difficult are the conditions?”
“That’s… we’re currently assessing the 1st Floor difficulty as unprecedentedly easy.”
Only at this relatively good news did Jeong Jin-hyeok finally let himself breathe.
“Ah… thank goodness for that. So, how many non-returners are we projecting? And the casualty count?”
“Well, I’m not entirely sure if I should even be reporting this, but….”
It was exactly the kind of report Jeong Jin-hyeok most despised.
A hesitant preamble. A wavering tone.
“Just tell me.”
“Every field operative has reported that casualty counts are ‘unable to be tabulated.'”
“Unable to be tabulated?”
At this bizarre report unlike anything he’d ever heard, Jeong Jin-hyeok’s brow twitched.
Did that mean there were too many to count?
No, that couldn’t possibly be right.
This was still the 1st Floor, after all.
“The number ‘5’ carries such absolute significance on the 1st Floor that untrained civilians are literally beating goblins to death with their bare hands.”
“…So what you’re saying is, no matter how I think about it, nobody’s going to get hurt… correct?”
“Yes, that’s the field operatives’ assessment.”
“Hah. Then of course there won’t be any non-returners.”
A hollow laugh burst from Jeong Jin-hyeok’s lips, tinged with disbelief.
For all his position at the very forefront of Korea’s Tower administration, this was the first time he’d heard such a bizarre report.
Crowds of people venturing in, and not a single one failing to return?
‘Was such a thing even possible… in the Tower?’
In other words, the current situation broke down like this.
Countless Awakeners who’d undergone their Awakening yet were too frightened of the Tower to do anything but let their licenses gather dust—they were now, at this very moment, safely accumulating real combat experience.
Which meant, in short, that South Korea’s Tower defense capabilities had skyrocketed overnight.
After this one week passed, South Korea’s Awakener infrastructure would become more robust than any other nation on Earth.
The Deity of Abundance had granted the Tower a Blessing?
No, that phrasing was nowhere near sufficient.
This was, quite literally, the Deity of Abundance not merely blessing South Korea but coming to its rescue.
True, no nation could afford to dismiss Tower security as unimportant, but South Korea’s circumstances were different.
The Tower was buried in the heart of the Seoul Metropolitan Area, where half the nation’s population was concentrated.
If collapse could not be prevented, half the population wouldn’t merely find themselves homeless—they’d be erased from the map entirely.
That was why South Korea had become the forerunner in Tower climbing.
Not by choice, but because the alternative was national collapse. They’d endured it through sheer desperation.
Yet here, in a nation like this—one sitting atop a time bomb of unknown detonation—a single Awakener’s exploits had triggered an influx of new Awakeners.
It was nothing short of a miracle. This was what true miracles looked like.
‘…Even if it killed me, I won’t let him slip away to foreigners. I have to find him and bring him in, no matter what.’
In that moment, Jeong Jin-hyeok’s internal assessment of the Deity of Abundance’s status underwent another dramatic upgrade.
From future economic asset to savior of the nation.
Who could have possibly imagined such a thing?
“Let’s see, let’s see… what should I make for dinner tonight so people will talk about how good it was?”
What none of them could know was that this great savior was at that very moment humming to himself, pondering what to eat for supper.
I Just Copied A Skill By Stepping On A Shadow
Author | Killing Part

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Samyang C&C Co., Ltd. — No part of this book may be used in any form or by any means without the express written permission of Dreambooks.

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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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