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So, Adam can now turn into shadow. That means I am morally obligated to turn this arc into an 'I am Shadow' edgelord narrative that takes itself 110% serious.

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Chapter Two-Hundred-and-Seventy

Adam slipped across Interim Island in his new shadowy form, hurrying through the night to reach the player house for one last session of practise before the day came to an end.

Unlike the slime, blood, and statue transformations, shadow wasn’t like anything he’d experienced before. He was ostensibly still part slime, since his body retained its mass, but the nature of shadow meant that Adam was able to move in ways that was deeply alien to his human mind, allowing him to make himself thin like a sheet, stretch himself like fluid smoke, and move in a way that no sensible mind would be able to predict.

He was sure weaknesses to daylight, true flame, and even holy magic might be part of his powerful transformation, but since he could change between the various types of elements, he was much better protected against those things, compared to when he’d been transformed into a bloodfiend permanently.

I need to see what other kind of cores Sprite can make.

Perhaps it’s possible to make a light elemental, or fire, wind, water, or other useful things.

The main challenge is just finding someone to supply the mana needed for those, but if I harvest the sun gems from Alepheria’s tower, maybe it’s possible to make a core out of those.

I just hope it won’t be another sapient life that’s made. That part is pretty hard to reconcile.

As he went inside the player house and started beating up the target dummy, Adam quickly realised something unusual.

His attacks went through the dummy, dealing no actual physical damage or impact, but still delivering his damage to the target in way that made them just drop dead.

This is absurdly powerful…

Is this what true damage feels like?

Adam recalled how he’d been killed with a soul blade during his fifth loop. It had gone right through him, and this was much the same.

Does this mean all shadow damage is true damage?

I wonder if there are any limitations to what I can actually hurt this way, since it would be insanely overpowered otherwise.

He looked at Parvillo. “Am I vulnerable to being absorbed with the mage aspirant’s cowl in this form? It feels like I’m more mana than slime.”

[That does appear to be the case.]

So that means keeping this form constantly active is making me very vulnerable.

“What would happen if someone absorbed my shadow transformation?”

[I am uncertain, but given that you possess the cores of slimes, blood elementals, and statues, it is likely that you will revert to one of these states. It is also possible that your cores are exposed and that you perish immediately, similar to if you were struck by magic-nullifying powers.]

“Am I weak against holy magic while shaped into a shadow?”

[Yes.]

By extension, that implies that I am also weak to crushing while shaped into a statue elemental and vulnerable to crystallisation when transformed into blood.

I guess there really is no power without drawbacks.

“Just to be clear, my shadowy attacks count as true damage, right?”

[Correct.]

Adam tested a bit more with normal punches and kicks, before moving on to his relics, where he made the most fascinating discoveries.

The bear traps, which dealt 100% player damage, also dealt true damage while he was transformed into a shadow. Unfortunately, it only worked when he was fully transformed, even though partial transformations of his arm enable him to deal shadow damage with his punches.

On top of that, his nightwing cloak worked even when he was bathed in light, as it appeared to look specifically at the surface of his body, and thus, if it was complete shadow, it counted as him being ‘submerged’. The night moth’s bracelet also let him teleport to his own body when it was transformed, allowing him to do tricks like stretching one of his shadowy feet around the back of the target and teleporting to that part of himself.

He was willing to bet that the shadowy transformation would also charge up the bracelet during daytime, though if that did work, it likely would have the downside of his white moth’s wings not working while he was made of shadow. It wouldn’t be something he could test until it was daytime though, but he had to keep it in mind for his plan to take out the other players at the start of stage six, since it required the use of his wings.

I need to keep in mind that the hero’s blade pendant can hurt me with its holy nova when I’m shadow, but once the Flayed Lady’s adherents are progressed enough to be bloodfiends, then I’ll be able to use it against them to great effect.

With ten minutes to spare before the day came to an end, Adam hurried to the market and bought eight rerolls, leaving him with thirty points. He had a lot of relics he wanted from stage six, particularly the grafted limbs, so he didn’t want to leave anything to chance.

He made sure to also pull the nightwing heart out of his storage, since he was fairly sure he needed it for the chaos demon ritual, even though his patron hadn’t explicitly said so.

As he waited for the final minutes to run out, he stood next to the fountain besides Yenna. He absentmindedly wondered why Sprite had been so interested in the water, and leaned over the edge to look down at the bottom.

“Don’t touch any of the coins,” Yenna warned him.

Adam couldn’t help his curiosity and lifted the block over his left eye, the unclouded gaze.

At the bottom of the fountain, the coins were revealed to have eyes all over them like barnacle growths.

What the hell?

“What do you see?” Yenna asked him.

“Eyes,” he replied. “They aren’t coins at all.”

As he pulled himself back up, he wondered if the fountain was sentient. It would explain why she was always so protective of it, but it also raised the question of why it was even alive in the first place.

Then Adam’s gaze fell on Yenna.

He didn’t see the wasp humanoid that she would become once he gifted her the vanity, instead he saw something else. Wet murky-green scales, hair like tentacles and seaweed, slitted eyes like a serpent, elongated fangs, webbed claws, and a lower half like a snake but with a tailfin at the end.

Is this why she is afraid of flying? Because she belongs in the water?

“Yenna, are you a… mermaid?”

She looked at him with a surprised expression on the serpent-like face he saw through his unclouded gaze, but he never heard her answer, because the day came to an end just as she opened her mouth.

***

< < Now Entering > >

< Stage 6 >

< Alepheria’s Crooked Tower >

< 24-hour Timer >

Adam blinked and found himself puppeteered up the stone steps leading out of the dark underground altar. His thoughts lingered on what he’d seen of Yenna’s true nature, but he knew he didn’t have the luxury to focus on it right now. As he emerged out into the light of day, at the bottom of the Elphin Sanctuary’s ritual site, he found that something had changed. The guards who normally awaited him on the steps were missing, and the little bit of the city he could see was completely abandoned, with no voices or the sounds of reconstruction reaching him.

Is it because I’ve got the deathguard eye? he wondered.

Parvillo moved out in front of Adam, but he made sure to look away from his guide, since his unclouded gaze was wide open and he wasn’t able to cover it during the cutscene. The last thing he needed right now was to be pulled into a vision.

The ground under Adam shook as the engraved ritual disc spun and sealed the Forbidden Altar. Instead of the normal speech about the dimensions converging, Parvillo simply said, [Prepare yourself, Adam.]

The air rippled and the disc made one full revolution in the blink of an eye, and then five other players were standing around Adam, all of them staring at him. Next to each of them was a red cube, and to Adam’s side was the hardmode orb, its eye glowing red, meaning it was still on.

Through the revealing sight of his left eye, Adam saw giant blood-red arms floating in the air, the clawed fingers pulling on liquid strings tied to the five people. He couldn’t make the vision go away, and when he looked upon each of the players in turn, all he saw were their figures bathed in a crimson veil of blood.

Adam couldn’t tell what their relics were because of the visions, but he saw their weapons and felt a quiet relief that nobody carried the Spellcaster’s staff, since its Element Tamer evolution would be a direct counter to his shadow form.

Ever since Chaos removed her corruption from my dimensional shard, she has lost the ability to truly track my every move, which means she can’t make the perfect build to counter me quite as easily, but that might mean she’ll try some other underhanded tricks instead.

Adam tried to recognise who the other players were, but even that much was impossible thanks to the visions of the unclouded gaze.

It’s probably better this way, he considered.

The moment the cutscene released its hold on them, all five of the floating arms in the air started to move.

Adam locked in on the closest person’s cube and immediately transformed his body into shadow, following it with an activation of his nightwing cloak to make him impervious to physical attacks.

Thanks to his shadowy body, Adam’s right hand was able to slip right through the outer layer of the other player’s cube, and he grasped onto whatever was inside and pulled, the balloon glove allowing him to yank it free.

All of the players rushed towards him, firing attacks and swinging weapons that passed right through him. Adam immediately conjured a cloud under himself and used his boots to leap high into the air. The second he emerged above the hole in the ground, he aimed down and activated his spider ring, then swapped back into his slime form to engage his wings, and lastly threw his four bear traps down onto the three overlapping webs that formed above the five players.

A violent bang immediately reduced one of them to mincemeat and blasted dust and earth out of the hole.

[Trap triggered. 100 Points rewarded. One Player defeated.]

Another one of the players exploded like a bomb, flinging spear-like bones and darts of blood in every direction, much to Adam’s surprise, though none of them were even remotely close to hitting him.

[Three traps triggered. 300 Points rewarded.]

The remaining three survived but were immediately entangled in the webs, the phantom ones being the most effective, since they passed through armour to stick directly to their bodies.

Adam hid away his secret-seeing eye, but though the visions abated, he couldn’t tell who the players actually were, since they were obscured by a cloud of dirt and dust, and covered in overlapping webs. He didn’t waste any time and flew to the roots of the giant tree, thankful that the elphin people had fled the city before he could enact the last part of his plan.

The core he’d pulled from the corrupted cube was still in his hand and he spared it a brief look before he put it inside one of his two spidersilk bags, which had stayed put within his body, despite the shadowy transformation.

< < Quest Object > >

< Corrupted Core of a Guiding Eye — The core of a Guiding Eye corrupted by the Flayed Lady >

Holding the rotmaker idol in his hand, Adam squeezed it and aimed the pale flesh cocoon at the enormous tree.

The relic didn’t disappear after use and stayed in his hands, even as malevolent energy flowed through the Heart Spire tree.

Oh right, the renewal stone ensures this thing doesn’t disappear.

Instead of sticking around near the base of the tree, Adam flew back to the ritual site, just as one of his bear traps went off with a loud explosion.

[Trap triggered. 100 Points rewarded. One Player defeated.]

Each of the four traps had summoned two additional phantoms, and all of them stuck to the webs like mines, ensuring that anyone who tried to break free would set them off.

Adam had decided on this strategy to ensure the enemy couldn’t fight back with ease, and by removing himself from the area, they were forced to try and break free to chase him.

Another trap went off with a loud bang that blasted blood and chunks up into the air, but it didn’t result in a kill, which surprised him.

[Trap triggered. 100 Points rewarded.]

I guess my lighthouse boon is working against me here.

He also hadn’t had time to properly set up the effect of his pugilist’s belt, which might have ensured the protective boon of his lighthouse wouldn’t have mattered.

Suddenly, the ground shook violently and the tall stone and vine buildings of the city swayed dangerously from side to side. Adam flew past the hole in the ground as the giant tree lurched towards him.

It still looked like a tree, but two enormous arms had sprouted from its sides and the canopy folded into itself as the top of the tree split down the middle to form a massive maw. The roots at its bottom, as well as the many buried deep beneath the ground, all twisted together into a single braided tail.

Besides the slug dragons and the cloud leviathan, it was one of the biggest enemies Adam had ever encountered.

The moment its shadow fell across the ritual site, a figure clad in a dome of blood and flesh broke out of the trapped webs, defying Adam’s strategy by using the other players’ corpses as a defence.

The dome split apart into several floating projectiles, but before the player could fire them at him, the rotmaker chomped down over them with a sudden burst of speed belied by its gigantic form.

[One Player is still alive,] Parvillo said as Adam clenched his fist and prepared to take out the gigantic monster.

He finally understood how Emelia had died to this thing in his fourth loop and lost her cheat death. The fact that she had survived surprised him more than anything, now that he was facing down the monster himself.

Adam landed onto the ground, leaving the ritual site between him and the rotmaker.

“Is the last player inside the hole?”

[No. They are inside the tower. They triggered your trap and survived through some sort of teleportation. I believe the Flayed Lady violated the rules again by using Chthonic Script. You are able to sense their location, given that they are afflicted with the Trapped affliction from your Bear Trap Relic.]

Adam gritted his teeth. Letting one of them get away was bad. He needed to hurry this up and chase them down.

He ran towards the hole in the ground, just as the rotmaker dragged itself forward as well. The moment Adam reached his top speed, he jumped and activated his boots to summon a cloud, leaping from it to triple his speed and cocking back his right fist, while transforming himself into a shadow elemental.

Adam’s body flew through the rotmaker without any resistance or sign of damage. He was forced to quickly transform back into a slime, just so he could activate his wings to stop himself from flying into the forest outside of the elphin city.

The city shook as the rotmaker collapsed across its centre, a strange kind of purple-black sap leaking from it across dozen rapidly-growing weeping sores.

It’s poisoning the city, Adam realised.

As much as he wanted to chase after the last player, he couldn’t let the bodies and their relics go to waste, so he flew down to the ritual site, finding the remains of three players, which his brooch immediately turned into soul seeds.

However, none of them had any relics.

“Did the person who escape loot them?”

[No. It appears all of these Players did not possess a single Relic. I believe they were each blessed with the Flayed Lady’s spells, meant to take you out immediately, but clearly she had not anticipated your plan.]

Guess she didn’t want me to come away with a bunch of points like last time.

“I’m not going to celebrate until the last player is dead. For all we know, these four could just have been a distraction to let them escape and do something that is going to fuck me over.”

[That is a distinct possibility.]

Adam made sure to collect his four traps, and he was surprised to find that only one of the normal ones had gone off, but it went some way to explaining how the last player could have survived, since the phantom traps dealt half the normal damage, and then his lighthouse boon lowered that by half again.

The fourth player who’d been able to break out of the webs was inside the decomposing remains of the rotmaker, and Adam didn’t enjoy the process of excavating them from within, though he was able to obtain another soul seed from their macerated remains.

“Where’s the seed that the rotmaker is supposed to drop?” Adam asked, recalling the thing Emelia said she’d obtained from using the idol on the giant tree.

[It appears to be located by its roots.]

Adam flew down its length, glad he didn’t have to trudge through the malevolent-looking sap that oozed in great streams from the monster’s corpse.

The rotmaker idol might be one of the most insidious trap relics I’ve encountered so far. I wonder just how many players end up dying as a result of using it. I guess I should count myself lucky that I never used it before now, because if I’d known this is what it was like, then I don’t think I would ever have thought to use it on the glass tree.

Where the roots had braided together into a tail was a single fist-sized seed, which looked like a heart-shaped strawberry made of reddish-brown wood.

< < Collectible Relic > >

< Seed of the Great Tree (Uncommon) — The seed of the Elphin Sanctuary’s Heart Spire tree >

It’s only uncommon? That’s kind of crazy.

Adam lifted up into the air as he put the seed into a spidersilk bag as well.

He used his wings to spin around in the air, trying to find the connection to the player who’d been hit with his trap.

“I don’t sense them anywhere.”

[It appears they must have died from your afflictions. Truthfully, I am surprised they survived for as long as they did.]

“The Flayed Lady probably gave them something that would allow them to survive for longer. But what is the point of teleporting to the tower, just to die?”

[It is an oddity indeed.]

“Well, I’m glad they’re dead at least.”

Means I can clear this stage without having to worry about fighting on two fronts.

I think I’m only missing speedrun from this stage, so I should go for that.

Adam rolled his shoulders and lifted higher into the air, until the crooked tower popped up in the distance, past the towering trees of the forest.

I’d better not waste any time then.

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