SSS Awakening: All My Clones Have Divine Bloodlines!

Shadow didn’t respond to his remark, which seemed to irritate Adrian slightly.

"A Quiet one, huh. Fine by me, I enjoy breaking ones like you just as much. And you, little bitch, get comfortable. Once I’m done with him, I’ll take my time with you too," Adrian said, his expression growing uglier, more unsettling by the second.

He didn’t waste another breath before he lunged.

He went straight for Shadow, who, seeing him come, didn’t do anything at all.

Lirien felt the instinct to intervene, but held herself back. She’d seen enough of what that being was capable of to know he was nowhere near weak enough to need her help.

Adrian closed the gap between them in a fraction of a second, blade already darting toward his opponent’s throat. But the strike was only halfway through its arc when the ground in front of Shadow, the same ground beneath Adrian’s own feet, turned black.

At that exact moment, while Adrian was still committed to his attack, several dark spears burst out of the corrupted earth, shooting straight toward his exposed body.

’Wha-’ His instincts screamed.

Twisting his body in midair, Adrian kicked off one of the spears, using it as leverage to redirect himself away from the deadly barrage.

He narrowly escaped.

But he barely had time to catch his breath before the ground behind him darkened again, and out of it rose a figure, a massive blade already swinging halfway toward him.

’The hell are these things?!’

Caught off guard, confused, gripped by something close to terror, he snapped his sword up and managed to deflect part of the blow. But that split second of distraction didn’t go unnoticed, and an instant later a dark arrow, fired from somewhere far off, caught him square in the shoulder, punching clean through.

"Argh—"

A cry of pain tore out of him. He threw a desperate slash at the figure in front of him, more to break free than to actually land a hit, then pulled back to a safer distance, breath ragged, blood already soaking through his sleeve.

"This... what just happened?" he muttered, still not quite believing what had just occurred.

It had all happened in a matter of seconds. And in those few seconds, he was the only one who’d taken a wound.

The other hadn’t moved. Not even a single step.

The confidence and arrogance he’d carried into what he had assumed would be an effortless mission vanished, replaced by a growing sense of crisis as he stared at the silent figure before him.

He finally understood why his Master had told him to handle this one personally.

’This guy... he’s dangerous,’ he thought.

With his recent boost in power, he’d broken through the gates of B-rank and reached its very peak. His speed, his attacks, even if they weren’t showing their full potential, should have been more than enough to overwhelm a mere Awakened.

Yet Shadow had stopped him with ease.

And in an incredibly bizarre way.

’What the hell are those creatures?’ His thoughts drifted back to those strange beings and the eerie aura surrounding them.

They weren’t alive...

At least, not in the conventional sense.

He could feel something coming off them, some strange sensation. Fear, maybe? No. Impossible. Him, afraid? What could someone like him possibly have to fear from a freak like that?

"Tch. And to think, for a second there, I actually started fearing you," he said with a scoff, his expression settling into something more severe, almost solemn in its own twisted way.

His aura began to climb, and with it, a faint trace of elemental mana bled out from him. Soon enough, his sword was wreathed in a faint, yellow-orange glow.

He didn’t waste any more time on words and threw himself at his opponent.

Unlike before, he didn’t close in for melee. Instead, keeping his distance, he unleashed a wide arc of fire straight at Shadow, who, seeing it come, didn’t move, just like before.

’Let’s see if you can still just stand there,’ Adrian thought, already ready to strike the instant the other side tried to dodge. But to his disappointment, Shadow didn’t move at all, instead, a wall of shadow rose up in front of him and seemed to swallow the attack whole.

Not in the conventional sense, either. It looked more like it had absorbed the strike entirely, and that made Adrian’s eyes narrow.

’This is going to be harder than I expected,’ he thought, already gathering his mana, condensing the crystal’s energy into his body, readying himself for another round of attacks, this time from multiple directions at once.

But it seemed Shadow had had enough of him, because in the next instant, he struck the ground, and the air around them began to tremble, the atmosphere shifting, growing darker.

The change put Adrian on high alert.

He could feel it, some instinct screaming that he needed to get out of there immediately. But he never got the chance, because in the very next second, dozens, then hundreds, of those strange shadow-formed creatures began appearing all around him, rising out of the blackened ground, out of the tree trunks, even out of the air itself, as if the entire territory had bent to a single will.

The hair on the back of Adrian’s neck stood straight up.

’Shit, shit, shit—’

He understood instantly that if he got trapped inside that closing circle, it would be the end of him. Pride didn’t matter anymore. Neither did the mission. The only thing that mattered now was getting as far away from this place as fast as possible.

But it was already too late.

Behind Shadow, something like an illusion began taking shape, a tall, twisted tree, dry and bare of any leaves, its branches tangled together like claws, and hanging from each of them, embedded like rotting fruit, skulls that seemed to watch Adrian through empty sockets.

Adrian felt his stomach turn at the sight.

"What the hell is that thing?"

He didn’t get time to wonder any further. From the base of the tree, shadows shot outward, moving like living serpents with impossible speed, closing the distance in an instant, and from within them, strange chains lashed out.

He managed to dodge some. Not all of them. A moment later, he found himself skewered by the ones he’d missed.

He’d braced for pain. But that wasn’t what came, only a cold sensation, almost like death itself, and nothing more.

He felt his own strength drain immediately, only a little, but it didn’t matter, because at the same time he could feel the creatures around him growing stronger.

’Fuck. What kind of monster did I end up messing with?’

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