I Stepped on Their Shadows and Skills Started Copying Like Crazy - Chapter 69

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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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69
A black marble rolled across his palm.
Somehow, knowing he stood on the brink of a decisive battle, Bami had spat up another Shadow Crystal for him. Thoughtful, that one.
Last time, he’d fed it to Cardia’s swordplay.
The result had been Shadow Dance. Its performance needed no comment.
‘Hmm. What should I strengthen this time?’
Skills borrowed briefly through Shadow Imprint couldn’t be enhanced, so all the engraved skills were out of the running.
After narrowing it down that way, the list of candidates wasn’t particularly long.
[Enhanceable Skills]
▶ Severance (Unique)
▶ Superhuman Regeneration (A)
▶ Star Step (A―)
▶ Persona (B)
※ Skills engraved through the unique ability Shadow Mimic cannot be selected.
Tomorrow was Floor 20.
He didn’t know what else the Tower had prepared, but it wouldn’t be easy.
‘It’ll go to lengths to kill me again.’
So Persona, being non-combat oriented, was out for now.
It had been a lifesaver when Tower Administration was searching for Feng You with bloodshot eyes, masking him as a third-floor healer—but its enhancement priority was low at the moment.
The three skills that remained were all front-line combatants worth calling his main force.
Their effectiveness had already been proven, so whichever he chose, he’d take no loss.
“Hmm… the key is how it changes.”
Severance—the power strike that put force behind his cuts.
It was straightforward enough, but he couldn’t quite visualize what came after enhancement.
‘Would shadows flicker off the blade?’
Still, one way or another, he could expect some boost to physical destruction power. Worth keeping on the list.
‘Next is Superhuman Regeneration… wounds and shadow don’t mesh well.’
Even now, blade marks that went in and out of his limbs were light enough that he could just take them on faith in Superhuman Regeneration.
Enhancement wouldn’t make the original effect vanish anywhere, so if he could boost this recovery capacity alone, it was worth the investment.
‘Keeping this too. Last is Star Step.’
Well, the name might become something like Shadow Step. Maybe it’d get faster when he stepped on shadows.
“Ugh… it’s not easy.”
Lost in deliberation and forgetting dinner entirely, Sang Sik paused mid-wrap with a lettuce leaf and glanced over at him.
“What’s weighing on you so heavily?”
“Skill enhancement.”
“Oh, skill enhancement! That’s the first time in a while I’ve heard you talk like a proper Awakener.”
“First time in a while? Every grain of rice going into your mouth—I risked my life climbing that Tower to earn it.”
“Which is exactly why I don’t leave any rice behind.”
If only he could just keep quiet.
Since the topic had come up anyway, he figured he’d ask Sang Sik’s opinion. Which one seemed best.
“…But if it were you, which of these three would you enhance?”
“Hard-hitting strikes and wound recovery. And the last one was what again?”
“Faster footwork.”
“Then obviously the recovery one, right? When you’re risking your life, you need to stack every insurance you can.”
“I suppose…”
It wasn’t wrong.
But he preferred killing before getting hit, or just not getting hit at all.
“Are those really all of them?”
“There’s one more. I just excluded it from the running.”
“What’s that skill do?”
“Hmm… it’s hard to explain. It’s non-combat, so if I had to describe it as simply as the others—identity fraud?”
“Identity… fraud? Wait, what are you doing in the Tower?”
Sang Sik narrowed his eyes and tilted his head back with a long expression. He looked like he’d just spotted a criminal.
Why had he even asked this man.
“Never mind.”
He’d finish deliberating later anyway. For now, he just wanted to eat, so he picked up his chopsticks again when his phone buzzed—”Vrrrrr―.”
“…Hm?”
He figured it was another ad or phishing attempt from somewhere.
But the notification wasn’t from the text app. It was from the messaging app—Hush.
‘This is… that app I downloaded after hearing about it from the teacher last time.’
The intent behind citing security and anonymity is fine, but domestic perception of it feels a bit off, to be honest.
In any case, I pulled up the message from Shin right away.
[Be careful. Tomorrow, Tower Administration agents will be lying in ambush throughout the Floor 20 Lobby. They seem determined.]
Ah, so? They’re tightening the noose already?
Each floor I climbed, the number of people in the lobbies visibly dwindled—I’d thought that hiding a tree in a forest would hit its limits soon enough, but Tower Administration made the first move.
“Hmm, so then….”
My gaze naturally drifted back to the black sphere resting in my palm.
“I think I need to use this.”
* * *
The Floor 20 Waiting Room of the Tower.
On the surface, it looked no different from any other day.
“We need a healer to join our party for Floor 20! Two melee dealers, one mage—we’re ready to go the moment you arrive!”
Some were busy recruiting party members, while elsewhere a fully prepared group was in the middle of checking their gear.
Yet less than half of those present were ordinary civilian Awakeners.
More than half the Awakeners gathered in the Floor 20 Waiting Room right now belonged to Tower Administration.
Even as they each fulfilled their assigned roles, their eyes swept the surroundings with sharp precision.
The scale of personnel Tower Administration had mobilized was hardly an exaggeration—it was virtually all their available Awakener agents.
The magnitude of this deployment was the operation’s linchpin.
There was no great secret to hunting an Awakener bent on concealing their identity beneath the Tower’s shadow.
The only option was to overwhelm with numbers, observe, and record.
They’d been running a scaled-down version of this operation for the past ten days or so, but the lower floors had too much traffic—their current method had clear limits.
However, from the 15th floor onward, foot traffic through the waiting rooms had dropped sharply, and at Floor 20, the situation was entirely different.
They’d been posted at the floor where VVIPs climbed, and from the accumulated intelligence, they’d already narrowed down their candidates.
“What about the waiting room entrance?”
“Six agents stationed there. Mostly those with Detection skills.”
Pair them with a recording team and add another unit headed by your highest-ranked Detection operative. We’ll make our move at the entrance.
“Understood.”
“Stay sharp. Another one’s coming.”
A new Awakener entered the waiting room.
In an instant, the scattered gazes naturally converged on them, and the agent standing near the entrance replied with eyes narrowed.
“Nothing unusual.”
The Awakener passed through the agents without suspicion.
They had no idea that thirty-odd people had just scrutinized their appearance, build, equipment, and gait in meticulous detail.
A moment later, another one arrived.
This time, the Detection specialist’s expression shifted.
“The person who just entered is using a concealment skill.”
“Send an agent over to verify their identity.”
Almost simultaneously, one of the waiting agents scurried over and approached them warmly, inviting them to join a party, and soon the result came back.
“Nothing unusual.”
“Clear them.”
The covert gazes dispersed as though nothing had happened.
‘Nine so far. It’s about time….’
I’d been waiting here since before dawn, and it was already three hours in.
A VVIP who’d completed most of their climb by this point in the morning would likely pass through the waiting room around now.
Just then, another Awakener crossed the entrance and stepped into the Floor 20 Waiting Room.
Slightly tall, with an ordinary build—neither bulky nor lean.
Not even wearing the typical robes or helmets to hide their face.
An average Awakener, the kind you’d see anywhere.
They caught the eye, yet there was no particular reason to look twice.
The man glanced over in that direction, then turned his gaze away without special interest.
“Watch anyone with their face covered carefully. If they match our inner candidate list, you’re authorized to demand they reveal themselves.”
The target was the Tower’s core military asset—someone the entire world had its eye on.
They needed to find them as quickly as possible and bring them under the nation’s protection.
Otherwise they’d be taken.
By those jackals waiting beyond the border.
* * *
The moment I crossed the threshold separating the waiting room from the mission zone, the scenery around me shifted and flowed into place.
I was back within the familiar forest once more.
“Phew….”
I never thought I’d miss a heat this oppressive—the kind that matched the Korean summer in its sweltering intensity.
The moment I stepped into the mission zone, I could breathe easier.
What Professor Si said wasn’t exaggeration.
From the Floor 20 Lobby to the portal leading to the mission zone was just a straight shot—barely a few dozen paces.
In that brief stretch, I lost count of how many eyes had followed me.
On the surface, they were all ordinary Awakeners.
The problem was that a few of them were already familiar to my sight.
This wasn’t the tower’s lower reaches, and a normal Awakener shouldn’t be climbing one floor per day at this level.
‘It’s good I was able to strengthen my Persona. Otherwise I’d definitely have been caught just now.’
[Masquerade]
Grade: Unique
Description: Casts a shadow to conceal your presence.
You can manipulate your own information to layer over your actual identity, and skill activation blurs the user’s presence.
※ Can be pierced by higher-tier detection skills.
※ All applicable concealment and stealth effects are greatly increased.
A new skill I’d obtained by granting shadow properties to my Persona—Masquerade.
Even after getting a hint from Professor Si, I’d wavered on whether it made sense to strengthen a skill with zero combat power right before Floor 20, but in the end I’d chosen this one.
‘I was worried that bit about blurring presence sounded too vague, but it’s working great.’
I’d definitely made eye contact with a grim-faced man standing near the entrance just moments before.
He’d seen me—no doubt about it. He’d feigned indifference, but his gaze had swept from my head to my feet, thoroughly cataloging me.
But his interest stopped right there. His eyes had quickly shifted past me.
‘It’s not that he can’t see me. It’s that even though he sees me, he doesn’t care.’
Like how you can make eye contact with a stranger passing you on the street, but ten steps later you can’t remember what they looked like.
To sum it up: if Persona was like pinning on a fake badge, Masquerade was more like making people not even want to stop and check that badge in the first place.
Either way, I’d slipped past that rigid security check without issue, so Masquerade had earned a passing grade.
‘Then I’ll bid you all farewell.’
What remained was the real climbing.
But as the final stage of the Linked Trial, today felt different from the start.
[The number of hostile entities in the surrounding area falls below the threshold required for normal Base Mission completion.]
[The Base Mission has been deemed unsuitable for normal execution and is being omitted.]
※ Base Mission rewards will be automatically granted without separate completion.
[You may now challenge the Trial of Observation immediately.]
Both the tower’s message and the scene before my eyes were unlike anything usual.
A thousand goblins, at least—their bodies packed so densely they filled my entire field of vision.
Creatures that would normally be making a raucous noise were oddly silent.
“Wow… solemn, aren’t we.”
Fully armed and standing beneath their tribal banners, they looked like they’d already completed their preparations for a military campaign.
Among them were the banners of several large tribes I’d grown familiar with by now, and crude flags I was seeing for the first time.
Moments later, one standard-bearer from each tribe moved toward the base of a large rock.
I was about to ask what they were doing, but given how grave they looked, I simply watched in silence.
One by one, the flags gathered in a single spot.
Thump, thump!
And through them all rose one massive flag.
A design I knew well, and a standard-bearer I recognized.
“Wait—that’s Roga.”
Roga, holding a banner several times larger than his own body, hoisted the flagpole with all his strength.
Fluttering—!
Among the countless tribal banners of different shapes and colors, a single crimson flag billowed—a solemn and majestic sight.
Nearly in unison, Roga’s voice rose into a shout.
“Ki-sharak! Ashkatal!”
“Ki-sharak! Ashkatal!”
Following Roga’s lead, all the goblins roared out in unison.
The sound was so deafening I could feel it reverberating through my entire body.
Rather than hearing it with my ears, it felt like the sound waves were hammering through me.
My own name was the opening note.
Roga raised the crimson flag high once more.
“Kirak! Rasha!”
“Kirak! Rasha!”
Words I’d never heard before.
Since I hadn’t called for Snig yet to interpret, I couldn’t know their exact meaning.
‘Well, I don’t really need a translation anyway.’
We gathered here under different names, but now we walk into battle as one. There’s no other way to see it.
“…It really does feel like the end.”
This long journey through the Great Forest had to conclude sometime.
“I accept the trial.”
[Initiating the Trial of Observation.]
[Mission objective: Achieve victory in war alongside the Red Flag Alliance.]
Of course. This was what I wanted.
I followed only shadows and skills copied endlessly
Author |
Killing Part
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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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