Chapter Ninety-One: The Price of the Shadow Speaker?

The occult class line of the Dark Night path was extremely rare. Many people might go their whole lives without ever seeing one, because not only was it a niche branch of the occult, it also had an unusually high threshold: from the very beginning, one needed royal blood. In the early stages, the people who had any chance of obtaining royal blood before changing classes were either blessed by extraordinary fortune or gifted enough to stand out on their own. However you looked at it, most of them had at least a fair amount of confidence. So the odds that someone who already possessed royal blood would then choose such an obscure occult path were close to zero.

Either they were true eccentrics, the sort who loved challenging twisted and unorthodox ways, or they had been cultivated by some vast power specifically for that sort of novelty. In any case, the chances were pitiably small. So why did Guo Lang know of this class, and why had he been so unwavering from the start?

Because he had seen it.

The last two months of his previous life had been spent with a gold-rank Shadow Speaker, and one could even say his own death had been dragged down by that man. Yet in those two months, he had witnessed the terror of that class firsthand.

That man was called Li Wei Hua, a cousin of Li Chao and one of the few players left in the Li family after its fall. In the beginning, the fellow had actually run with Guo Lang. He was timid to the core, always shrinking back, too afraid to seize opportunities when they came. As a Dark Night, he wasted his beginner resources the moment he entered the game, then drifted through hardship and uncertainty. After meeting Guo Lang, he stayed right behind him, scraping together enough to survive. For ten whole years, he never changed classes.

Men like that were common in the great age that followed. Because power and resources were monopolized by those above, many newcomers to the planes found themselves struggling from the outset, and there were even people who made a living swindling beginners out of their resources. It was all perfectly normal. Starting a business was always easiest at the beginning; once the market matured, the road naturally grew narrower and narrower. Because the Li family had once helped his father, Guo Lang had looked after that man for ten years. But during one battle against a Void invasion from another plane, he lost contact with him. They did not meet again for another year.

That reunion completely overturned everything Guo Lang thought he knew.

The younger man, who a year earlier had still failed to change classes and used to cower behind him like a trembling lackey, had suddenly leapt to become a gold-ranked powerhouse.

A leap from no class at all to gold rank. Guo Lang had not merely never seen such a thing; he had never even heard of it. This could no longer be explained by genius. It was outright cheating. At the time, he had wondered whether the fellow had somehow obtained some absurd growth system or perhaps had one of those ridiculous old masters secretly guiding him. It was outrageous beyond belief.

But before he had time to investigate, the pursuers arrived. There were nearly twenty gold-rank enemies, and from their insignia Guo Lang recognized them at once: they were from the Human Radiance Knight Order. Behind them stood the political power of the Nordic District Government, one of the strongest forces in the entire Federation.

While fleeing, Guo Lang learned roughly what had happened: his pathetic little comrade had somehow stolen a royal bloodline potion belonging to the Nordic District Government. Guo Lang was stunned. Damn it, why had something like that never happened to him? And even if it had, how on earth had that man done it? This was not merely a matter of boldness. What sort of luck did it take for an unclassed nobody to steal a royal bloodline potion from the government?

Then, over the course of the two months that followed, Guo Lang witnessed the might of that royal occult class. He himself was only at the initial gold rank, while among those pursuing them there were more than five at advanced rank. Yet during that chase, relying on the class’s peculiar traits, Li Wei Hua managed to style on and kill more than twenty gold-rank experts one after another.

That same useless trash had become someone Guo Lang could only look up to.

Just as Guo Lang thought he might finally have a towering backer to cling to, another powerhouse descended from the heavens: the second-ranked expert of the Federation’s human race, an epic-level wielder known as the Sword of Punishment, Orar Jack. In reality, he was also the Supreme Commander of the Nordic District’s three armed forces. A figure of that caliber had been the sort of person Guo Lang had only ever worshiped from newspaper headlines. He had never imagined he would one day meet the real man in person, and then... end up dying along with the rest. Thinking back now, that death had truly been a waste.

Coming back from his memories, Guo Lang glanced around. The atmosphere in the Hall of Shadows made him uneasy. Everything around him was dark. Dark Night people were supposed to possess night vision, but he could not see a thing. The darkness completely severed his sight. Strangely, though, he could still make out Mavey’s figure ten meters ahead, so he could only keep close behind her in this bizarre situation. Where were the steps? Where were the obstacles? He could not see any of them. Fortunately, it seemed to have been a straight path all the way so far.

"Here we are."

She stopped, and Guo Lang stopped with her. He could clearly see a mirror behind Mavey, a huge one that nearly filled his entire field of view and seemed to have no end.

But he also noticed something else.

Mavey had no shadow.

"Why did you choose to become a Shadow Speaker?" Mavey asked at last, breaking the long silence.

Guo Lang grew even more anxious, as though some ill omen were about to unfold. Faced with her question, he considered carefully and finally decided to tell the truth.

"I saw your kind before, from an elder. You’re powerful."

"Powerful?" she murmured. "Such a blunt answer. But you are not wrong. We are indeed powerful, far beyond what you imagine."

Guo Lang felt a surge of delight. In truth, he knew very little about this class. After becoming Dark Night, he had tried to learn as much as possible from the archives, but records of Shadow Speakers were extremely scarce. Only a few notes mentioned that it was a mysterious and formidable class, one capable of stealing everything under heaven.

He knew the word stealing all too well.

He had seen Li Wei Hua steal other people’s abilities with his own eyes. The man could imitate the skills of any class, whether mage, warrior, or any other occult path, and the results were not inferior to the real thing.

To this day, Guo Lang still could not make sense of it. There were plenty of agile people who, at low ranks, could imitate certain combat techniques, but never perfectly. And the higher one climbed, the harder imitation became, because many skills relied on attributes to support them. If you lacked the required strength or mental power, no amount of imitation would help. Many abilities were also things people only came to understand after long years of practice and insight. How could one possibly see through them merely by relying on a few points of agility? Let alone the abilities of spellcasters.

Guo Lang had even seen Li Wei Hua inscribe a massive alchemical array, lay an ambush, and use a large-scale fire spell from a Human Flame Oracle formation to reduce three high-tier knights to steaming vapor. It had nearly blown Guo Lang’s mind. Spellcaster abilities demanded extensive theoretical foundations and belonged to a completely different school from martial combat. And to control an alchemical array that enormous, just how much spiritual power would one need?

How had he done it? Guo Lang had never been able to understand. But one thing he could confirm: this class truly could imitate the skills of others. It made no scientific sense, but it was fact.

"Once you step into this mirror, your inheritance trial begins," Mavey said. Her voice had turned icy, utterly without warmth, unlike her previous gentleness. "But I will ask you one final time. Are you certain you wish to become a shadow?"

Guo Lang shivered. For some reason, a chill rose in his heart. He felt that if he walked into that mirror, he would lose something very important. But what would he lose? He silently weighed the possibilities.

All things in the world have two sides, advantages and drawbacks alike. Guo Lang was convinced of that. Such a powerful class must surely have a weakness, or perhaps some severe price attached to it. But what exactly it was, he did not know. That period had been far too rushed; he had never managed to learn the details from Li Wei Hua.

Still, he remembered asking something like this once, asking why the man had become so strong. Li Wei Hua had only given a bitter smile and said, "Because I chose the wrong class." Then he had looked at Guo Lang with a strange, distant expression. "If I could do it again, I would never make the same choice."

Back then, Guo Lang had thought the man was simply showing off, the way some smug tycoon had once said with a weary air, "The thing I regret most is founding Alibaba." It had sounded utterly beatable. But now, standing at the final step, Guo Lang suddenly felt that those words might have carried a hidden meaning.

"Elder," Guo Lang said, bowing low, "I would like to ask something. Does the Shadow Speaker have any major flaw? Or does it require some terrible price?"

"Oh?" A faint smile touched Mavey’s cold face. "Have you not seen one of my kind? Surely you do not know?"

"He never told me."

"Hm. Yes, that makes sense." She inclined her head slightly. "Such things are not for outsiders to hear."

"Then what exactly is it?"

"Forgive me. To us, you are still an outsider, so by the rules, I cannot say."

At that, half of Guo Lang’s heart went cold. He had a faint feeling there was a huge pit waiting for him ahead.