Chapter Thirty-One ــ you idiot. You're not the only one who uses shadows
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"His power increased so much, all of a sudden."
The statement was a dry, internal observation from (Uchiha Sasuke), made just as the blinding electric light finished exploding directly into the atmosphere. The afterimage was seared onto the retina of the world. Lashing tendrils of leftover electricity crackle-snapped through the air, earthing themselves on any piece of raised rubble, filling the zone with the smell of a thousand burnt matches.
And in the heart of that fading white brilliance, (Sasuke) felt it. Not the heat, not the shockwave, but the other thing. A dark, cold, and profoundly hungry aura that had suddenly begun to swell, like ink blooming in clear water. It was a presence that swallowed sensation, a vacuum where power should be.
"You. I will kill you. No matter what."
The voice of the Predatory Shadow Monarch cut through the sizzling silence. It wasn't a roar; it was a low, merciless promise, devoid of any emotion but intent. Before the last syllable faded, (Song Jin-Woo)'s body dissolved. Not into a speed-blur, but into a living silhouette of condensed blackness, his form now outlined and filled with shifting, stygian shadows. The air around him warped, a heat-haze effect but cold, making the light bend and weep away from him.
[Alert: Mana levels have risen.]
A system chime,annoyingly cheerful given the circumstances.
Space itself seemed to squeal in protest—a high-pitched, metallic WRENCH—as distortion rippled out from him.
In the very next second, he moved. Or rather, the Chaos Daggers in his hands did. They carved the air in a wide, horizontal arc, unleashing a crescent wave of pure, destructive black energy. It wasn't fire or lightning; it was negation. The wave, silent and horrifying, shot forward, and where it passed, the very fabric of the environment didn't just break—it unmade.
The stony earth in its path didn't explode. It disintegrated with a sound like a mountain of glass being ground to dust—SHHHHHHCRUNCH. It simply ceased to be solid, vaporizing into a fine, dark powder that hung in the air.
"You think that's enough?"
(Sasuke) sneered, the derision clear even over the roar of annihilation. His Sharingan tracked the oncoming wave of oblivion with contemptuous ease.
[Lightning Release: Lightning Flash.]
His body transformed into a living bolt.One moment he was there, the next he was a jagged, sizzling line of white light cutting a perpendicular path through the battlefield. He didn't dodge the black crescent; he intersected it.
BOOM-CRACKLE-ZZAAAAP!
The collision was a spectacularly bad idea made manifest. Light and void met. The black energy ate at the lightning, and the lightning tore at the void. For a moment, they canceled each other out in a sphere of chaotic, spitting energy that lifted what little remained of the ground in a ten-meter radius before letting it all drop with a deafening THUMP-CRUMBLE.
It was a stalemate born of equal, opposite fury.
(Uchiha Sasuke)'s eyes, spinning with tomoe, were filled with murderous intent. Yet, behind that killing glare, his tactical mind was whirring at high speed.
"Why does this man keep growing stronger, bit by bit? I don't feel him gaining anything from an external source. His power just… increases. For absolutely no reason."
As a ninja—a prodigy who had dissected gods and mortals alike—he had been analyzing his opponent's strength from the first moment.He was acutely aware he held a certain edge over this shadow-user. But ever since this battle began, that edge felt like it was being sanded down, millimeter by frustrating millimeter.
"Is there something I'm missing? Does he possess some method to enhance himself continuously?"
He didn't get more than a few moments to think. (Song Jin-Woo) wasn't in the business of granting leisurely contemplation breaks.
The attacks resumed with inhuman speed.
From a hypothetical bird's-eye view, it would have looked like two comets—one a blazing blue-white, the other a devouring black—streaking across a ruined canvas. They clashed, parted, and clashed again, dozens of times in a single second. Each impact was a masterpiece of violence: a CLANG! of kunai on dagger, a WHOOSH-SLICE! of a near-miss, the SCREECH! of energies grating against each other.
It was a duel of opposing philosophies. (Song Jin-Woo)'s movements, honed through countless life-and-death battles and system-enhanced instincts, were brutally efficient, precise, and adaptive. They lacked the refined, centuries-old martial artistry that (Sasuke) possessed, but they made up for it with savage, unpredictable grace. Thanks to his Sharingan, (Sasuke) could predict, parry, and counter each individual move. Yet, he was being pushed.
And (Song Jin-Woo)'s eyes were growing sharper, colder, more focused.
"I haven't felt like this since I was a player."
The thought flashed through(Jin-Woo)'s mind as he was forced back by a concussive wave, skidding across the glassy ground with a SHING-SHING-SHING of boots on fused silica. He didn't stop; he used the momentum, driving a foot down with a CRACK that split the platform, using it as a springboard to launch himself back into the aerial fray with even greater velocity. He did this several times, a pinball of dark rage.
"I've never felt like I could lose… in a way like this."
The earth kept breaking, a perpetual victim.
One of the Chaos Daggers in his hand began to undergo a change. The unstable, crackling black energy around it deepened, and from its core, a menacing red glow emerged, like the heart of a dying star.
[Blade of Ruin: Chaotic Star.]
[Skill 'Blade of Ruin' activated. Attack power increased by 30%.]
His offensive power spiked violently, instantly. And with it, his afterimages multiplied. The sheer speed, combined with the eye-deceiving properties of the dark energy, created the illusion that (Song Jin-Woo) was in three, four places at once. A swirling vortex of lethal intent.
(Uchiha Sasuke)'s Sharingan whirled madly, its pattern a red blur as it traced lines of probability, mapping dozens of potential attack trajectories in nanoseconds. He saw the feint, predicted the real strike coming from behind his left side—a classic exploitation of a perceived blind spot.
"You think I'll fall for the same trick twice?"
The voice of the Shadow Monarch came not from behind, but from directly in front. The feint was the trap. The figure attacking from the front, which (Sasuke) had dismissed as a primary afterimage, solidified into utter blackness. It became a comet of pure shadow, a thing that didn't reflect light but consumed it, a tiny, personal black hole hurtling forward. The air around it whined as it was sucked in.
Thanks to the intensely brutal exchange, (Uchiha Sasuke) was facing a problem he hadn't anticipated in this world: his chakra reserves were depleting, bit by bit. Not critically, but noticeably. And in that minuscule moment of calculation—weighing chakra conservation against defense—(Song Jin-Woo)'s movement broke through.
It shattered the lightning-charged barrier (Sasuke) used to dampen and deflect offensive movements.
KR-SHATTER!The defensive wall of crackling energy fragmented like glass.
[Alert: Hostile intent has risen multiple times. Confrontation escalating for the Player.]
Time seemed to slow.The system's voice in (Song Jin-Woo)'s head became crystal clear, an unnervingly calm narrator to his rising fury.
"What are you saying? I'll handle it now!"
The desire to defeat his opponent,to break this infuriatingly adaptable enemy, overrode everything else. The Shadow Monarch ignored the system's warning label. This wasn't a 'confrontation'; this was a hunt.
(Uchiha Sasuke) smiled in that stretched moment, watching the shadow-cloaked monarch charge him.
"What a fool.You have no chance."
The arrogant pronouncement left his lips.It was the last thing he said before his body was seemingly engulfed by the dark comet.
If this had happened normally, (Song Jin-Woo) would have been pleased. But in the very next instant, (Uchiha Sasuke) did not explode into gore and bloody fragments before him.
He burst into smoke.
A solidPOOF of white haze, accompanied by the faint, familiar scent of a releasing ninjutsu.
"It was just a shadow clone, you idiot. You're not the only one who uses shadows."
The words were spat out in less than a fraction of a second,coming from everywhere and nowhere. The real (Uchiha Sasuke) had moved with imperceptible speed, employing a layered technique.
[Ninja Art: Transformation.]
He had transformed into a piece of the environment—a darker shadow among shadows—masking his presence completely.
And using the Rinnegan's power,he had suppressed his energy signature, becoming utterly hidden for a few critical seconds.
[Ninja Art: Shadow Clone.]
The clone had been the perfect,chakra-filled decoy.
Now, the real (Sasuke) moved. As (Song Jin-Woo)'s attack passed through the dissipating clone, (Sasuke) reappeared directly behind the Monarch's undefended back. His killing intent was a physical chill.
[Danger. Danger. Danger. Danger. Extreme danger. Activating emergency protocols.]
The system's voice lost its calm cadence,becoming a rapid, insistent alarm clanging in (Jin-Woo)'s mind.
Before the explosion of white, transferring lightning—crafted to atomize the Shadow Monarch at point-blank range—could fully form in (Sasuke)'s palm, a sound erupted from within (Song Jin-Woo)'s body.
It was not a roar. It was a SCREECH—an ancient, terrifying, and profoundly angry sound that seemed to tear its way out of his throat. It wasn't human. It was the sound of a ruler defied, a predator cornered. It carried a tangible weight of authority and rage that made the very air thrum with pressure.
The sound made the last Uchiha narrow his eyes sharply. And in that same moment, he remembered. The aura he had sensed back in the volcanic dungeon.
"It's you…isn't it? This aura… I know it. It resembles their state. Those wretched Monarchs."
(Sasuke)'s voice dripped with disdain as he glared at the source of the sound,at the young man whose body was now radiating limitless dark, furious energy. He decided, right then and there, that he no longer cared about gathering information.
"I will kill you now,you bastard."
The order in his mind was crystal clear.He would exterminate this young man in front of him, immediately.
Extending that desire, the tomoe in his Sharingan began to bleed into a deeper, more profound violet glow. A purple aura erupted from him, mingling with the crackling white lightning of his Chidori. The destructive power escalated, the white light deepening, intensifying, transforming into a violent, sizzling purple.
[Lightning Release: Chidori — Susano'o Enhancement.]
He unleashed his enhanced,newly forged technique. The Chidori, now a concentrated spear of amethyst devastation, shot forward, aimed to impale.
It enveloped (Song Jin-Woo), who was now emitting a deep purple beam of his own energy—but one that was so densely wrapped in layers of impenetrable black it looked like a slit of nothingness, a cut in reality itself.
[Instantaneous Transfer procedure activated.]
The protective aura formed by the system's emergency protocols slammed into the force of the purple lightning spear.
KABOOOOOOOOOM-MMMMMMMMM…
From afar, every single S-Rank hunter could finally see something: a gigantic explosion. This one was different. It wasn't just white or black. The force of this blast surpassed all previous limits. The shockwave that reached them was visible, a rippling wall of distorted air carrying a rainbow of destructive colors—purple, black, white, deep blue—all churning and mixing at a horrifying, beautiful speed.
Before the sound even arrived, the light formed a new crater atop the last one. The level of devastation was simply more, and more terrifying. Where before the earth was shattered, now it was vitrified completely, turned into a vast, smooth bowl of obsidian that glistened under the unnatural light. The heat was so intense it warped the view for kilometers.
The S-Rank hunters, now on American soil with nowhere to flee, didn't waste time on talk. They acted. A chorus of grunts, shouts, and the CLANG of activating skills and barriers erupted as they pooled every ounce of strength they had to erect a joint defense against the incoming shockwave. It hit their collective shield with the sound of a thousand freight trains—RRRRRRROOOOOOOOAAAAARRR—pushing them back, boots digging trenches in the dirt, but they held. Barely.
This entire battle had taken less than fifteen minutes so far.
Meanwhile, the drones that had been broadcasting the scene to the entire world—with one Nicholas from some company frantically making deals with every media outlet on the globe—met a sudden, definitive end. A massive electromagnetic pulse erupted from the center of the explosion. Every drone in the air simultaneously sparked, fizzed with a pathetic ZZZT-POP, and went dead, raining down as melted plastic and metal. The global broadcast cut to static, universally and abruptly.
And in the center of this apocalyptic aftermath…
The figure of (Uchiha Sasuke) stood, largely unscathed. His clothes were slightly singed, and a single, slow trickle of blood ran from his right eye—the one housing the Sharingan. It was a painless but telling seepage of strain.
He stared intently at the spot where his opponent's corpse should have been lying, broken and defeated.
Instead, there was only the shimmering, smoking void of the new crater.
His voice, when it came, was low, cold, and saturated with a wrath that promised storms.
"So.You ran away. You coward. I will find you. And I will kill you."
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End of Chapter.
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A box for you, dear reader:
Welp. The pay-per-view just got EMP'd. The neighborhood (continental shelf) is permanently redecorated. One guy's eye is leaking, the other guy has apparently opted for a "strategic relocation" (read: teleported the heck out). Was it the system's emergency bail-out? A Monarch-level power? Or did (Jin-Woo) just remember he left the shadow oven on?
The cliffhanger is real! What did you think of this chapter's escalation? Were the sensory details (the crunch of disintegrating earth, the screech of rage) vivid enough? Is (Sasuke)'s chakra drain going to be a real problem? And where, oh where, has our favorite Shadow Monarch vanished to?
Drop a comment below! Your theories and reactions are the true source of power here. Let's chat!