Chapter 30: Shadow Hiding

Chapter 30

At that moment, the participant being filmed by camera number 41 was…

“Heok, heok, heok!”

He was running so hard that he was gasping for air.

The one who kept running and looking back without rest, only came to a halt after reaching the edge of a cliff.

The participant, who had been running for a while, caught his breath.

“Hoo… How much mana do I have left?”

After checking the MP value on his status window, he immediately slid into the shadows at his feet.

But.

The place he re-emerged was a small cave located about halfway up the cliff,

a place that could only be reached by going down about 20 meters from where he had just been standing.

“Phew, I’ve arrived.”

Only then could he relax and slump down in the place,

which was a spot he had discovered by chance the previous evening and decided to spend the night.

“Nobody should follow me all the way here, right?”

This was a cave situated on a cliff, and in such a location halfway up, it was unreachable by anyone. It was not easy to discover in the first place.

Without his own unique skill to utilize shadows, he wouldn’t have dared to venture inside the place yesterday.

“Everything inside should still be intact, right?”

He immediately opened the big bag he had secretly stolen from the supply box.

His expression lit up at that moment.

The bag was filled with food and various potions.

“Kekeke, that’s it!”

Thunk!

“–!”

A heavy thudding sound reached the ecstatic man’s ears.

Someone’s sword had pierced right through his heart.

The participant turned his head slowly, with wide eyes.

The owner of the sword was none other than Kim Jinsung.

“..How… did you…?”

Kim Jinsung did not answer the participant, who looked at him with disbelief.

He simply drew his sword again and coldly swung it at the participant’s neck.

With a swish! The participant’s neck was cleanly cut off, and then Kim Jinsung murmured briefly.

“It’d take too long to explain.”

In fact, Kim Jinsung had been following him for quite a while.

Kim Jinsung, who had been scouting the battle for the supply box from high atop a dead tree, soon spotted the participant fleeing right below him.

As soon as he saw the big bag the participant was carrying, Kim Jinsung immediately gave chase.

It wasn’t difficult to track him down to the cliff. Since he chased after him jumping from branch to branch like a ninja, the participant didn’t notice him.

The problem started at the cliff-top though…

-Huh?

Kim Jinsung was slightly confused when the participant suddenly disappeared into the shadows.

But he quickly composed himself and came down to search the area below the cliff.

Using the ‘Wall Climbing’ skill.

Wall Climbing (comprehensive trait: For 5 minutes, it makes your palms sticky, allowing you to stick to walls. Consumes 50 mana.)

As Kim Jinsung stuck to the cliff and went down, he was able to discover the cave where the participant was hiding.

He immediately leaped into the cave.

While using the ‘Sneaking’ skill.

Sneaking (comprehensive trait): Eliminates the sound of the user’s footsteps for 5 minutes. Consumes 50 mana.

Thanks to that, he made no sound when he landed inside the cave, eliminating the chance of the resting participant reacting and causing an annoying situation.

‘I could assassinate him comfortably, all thanks to that beautiful noona.’

Kim Jinsung realized that the skills he had obtained from the ‘Born Thief’ trait after killing Lee Young-eun were actually quite useful in a chase like this.

‘But what was that skill the other guy used?’

Kim Jinsung closely read the notification that had just appeared before him.

You have slain a villain.

You have earned 25 Beast Karma points.

You can acquire the opponent’s skill ‘Shadow Hide’.

▷ Activating Shadow Hide allows you to hide in nearby shadows. If there are other shadows nearby, you can move while staying hidden. It keeps consuming a lot of mana while active.

▶ Do you want to delete an existing skill to acquire ‘Shadow Hide’?

‘Ah… So that was the skill.’

As soon as he read it, Kim Jinsung understood everything that had happened.

Perhaps the participant used ‘Shadow Hide’ at the supply box to sneak under another participant’s shadow and approach the box.

At the time when everyone was distracted with the fight, he moved into the box’s shadow to take the bag and then used the shadows of other participants to flee safely to a secure area.

And then, Kim Jinsung just happened to notice him popping out of the ground and escaping.

‘The reason he could move under this cliff was because the terrain was shaded by shadows.’

Considering it, the entire cliff was a terrain without sunlight. That means one could use ‘Shadow Hide’ to move along the entire cliff.

‘This skill would be incredibly useful, wouldn’t it?’

Even at noon when the sun is high, the terrain is mostly shadowed because of the leaves, isn’t it?

Way beyond the setting, in a survival fight where tracking and escape are crucial, this skill looked almost like a cheat.

Of course, it was a must-have.

‘But what to get rid of…?’

That’s when Kim Jinsung’s dilemma began.

He currently had a total of six skills.

Among these, ‘Stealing’, ‘Sneaking’, and ‘Wall Climbing’ were obtained through the ‘Born Thief’ trait, so they are comprehensive traits and excluded.

He had to discard one of the remaining three skills, but ‘Unstoppable Charge’, which grants immunity to status effects and boosts agility, is an S-grade skill and definitely can’t be discarded.

‘Indomitable Spirit’, which increases the physical recovery speed, is a skill needed for emergencies, and ‘One-hit Kill’ has been too useful in every fight so far to discard.

So, which of these three should he discard?

Kim Jinsung was deeply engrossed in thoughts with a grave expression.

***

[Ah, player Lee Dohyun, you let your guard down! Did you not expect someone to chase you all the way down to that cave beneath the cliff?]

[I’d like to commend Kim Jinsung’s persistence, climbing the wall to follow. Honestly, I thought finding the cave would be difficult too.]

[But wasn’t Kim Jinsung’s wall-climbing skill impressive? Perhaps he learned to climb professionally as a child?]

[To me, it looked like a skill…]

[Ah, a skill! But doesn’t that mean Kim Jinsung has too many skills?]

[Hahaha, you’re right. We’ll have to take another look at that later.]

The caster then gave a summary of the situation.

[Thus, it appears the first battle for the supply box is a victory for Kang Minhyuk and Kim Jinsung.]

[Kang Minhyuk’s bloody battle was impressive, but Kim Jinsung made a very smart decision to secure the bag almost effortlessly.]

[Right. Now, let’s turn our attention to the second supply box, shall we?]

For reference, the supply plane that flew this morning dropped two supply boxes in the forest.

The control room immediately started broadcasting the area where the second supply box had landed on TV.

[Ah, it seems this situation has also concluded. There are fewer casualties here compared to where the first box was, right?]

[It ended with just over ten people. But who took the items?]

[It looks like the situation has been settled for a while… Oh! The screen has changed.]

The newly changed screen showed a participant hidden in a dim place, donning the armor from the supply box.

The face was very familiar to the commentators.

[Fade! It’s Fade! Fade has gotten the second supply box!]

[Unlike Kang Minhyuk, this participant managed to get his hands on all the items, right?]

Indeed, Fade was currently inspecting all the items after wearing all the armor and opening the large bag to check the contents.

***

‘Three healing potions. Three mana potions. Two status ailment recovery potions. Meat and combat rations, water…’

Fade, counting out the items one by one from the large bag, including their numbers.

He then took out the last item from the bag.

It was a full-body protective suit.

At first, he thought it was green so it was a ghillie suit, but upon closer inspection, it was not.

‘Fireproof suit?’

The words ‘fireproof suit’ were clearly written on the label on the back of the head.

‘Was there ever a fireproof suit issued during the Colosseum preliminaries?’

To his knowledge, there never was.

Pondering for a moment, Fade then put the fireproof suit back into the bag.

‘There must be some use for it.’

The fact that they gave it for the first time means there will surely be a place to use it by the time you reach the summit.

Soon after re-securing all the items, Fade slung the large bag and stood up.

‘No items forgotten, I hope.’

His gaze then moved to a corpse lying right beside him.

Fade’s way of monopolizing the supplies from the supply box was similar to Kim Jinsung’s.

Chase down and assassinate another participant who was trying to escape with supplies after winning the supply box battle.

After checking the participant’s body once more, Fade disappeared from the spot.

He had used a stealth skill.

Kyaah!

A giant monster resembling a crocodile charged at Kim Jinsung with its mouth open.

Kim Jinsung easily dodged the biting attack and sliced precisely across the neck.

As the monster was cleanly cut in two and the sound of it echoed, a notification window popped up before him.

You have slain a monster.

You have earned 15 Beast Karma points.

You have already acquired ‘Leather Skin’ trait from the other monster.

Kim Jinsung, without even checking the notification, quickly leaped back.

At the same time, something fell from above to where he had just been standing.

A monkey-shaped monster had thrown a spear down from the tree.

As the monster tried to pull its spear from the ground, Kim Jinsung attacked.

The monkey monster hastily picked up the spear in a defensive stance, but

Swish.

With the spear, the neck of the monkey monster was also cleanly cut off.

You have slain a monster.

You have earned 10 Beast Karma points.

▶ You have already acquired the ‘Tree Climbing’ trait from the other monster.

Kim Jinsung once again dismissed the familiar notification without checking and swept it from his sight.

‘Getting tired of slaying the same monsters.’

It was already the third day of the survival preliminaries.

Excluding the frantic flight from the supply box that fell over his head yesterday morning, there hadn’t been any more situations that could be called a crisis.

He just steadily eliminated the monsters he encountered on his way to the summit, like now.

The same familiar monsters he’d been meeting consistently since the first day.

‘The production team wouldn’t leave us to just keep catching the same monsters.’

Baek Jun, Colosseum’s representative, is famous for meticulously planning movement routes to ensure there’s never a dull moment from the preliminaries.

Certainly, another element, like the supply box, is bound to make an appearance by the end of today.

‘I wonder what new element they will add. Since the walkie-talkie is quiet today, it seems they’re not dropping something from the outside like the supply box…’

Thinking these various predictions, Kim Jinsung continued his steps.

It was about ten minutes later.

Taang!

Suddenly, a gunshot sound came from ahead, and Kim Jinsung instinctively bent down.

Activating his magic just in case, he carefully approached towards the sound source.

After a while, he could verify the cause of the sound.

‘What is that?’

At the same time, he was bewildered.

Why was there a towering metal wall, easily 10 meters high, erected right in the middle of the forest?

What’s more, what are those densely-packed guards doing on top of it?