Online Game: I Started with Max Charisma and Caught the Goddess's Eye

Deep in the armory at Daskhollow Base, Nova sifted through a dazzling array of weapons, picking out what would suit her best for the coming fight.

In the middle of choosing, a twinge of foreboding hit her.

It felt as if something had slipped into the base.

At first she didn’t think much of it, but after settling on a weapon, she grew more and more anxious.

“Could something bad really have happened?”

Doubts gnawing at her, she quickly got in touch with the captains of every patrol squad in the base.

None of the squads had encountered any incidents.

After getting definite answers, Nova finally let out a breath of relief.

She then grabbed the two weapons she’d chosen and left the armory.

At the same time, a shadow seeped out through a crack on Sublevel One.

It swelled rapidly in the corridor, and in an instant the entire hallway was swallowed by black shadow.

The avatar of silent dark shadow had finally made it into the base.

It headed for the elevator shaft without a moment’s hesitation.

It could sense that what it needed lay at the very bottom of the base, and the fastest way down was the elevator shaft.

A black blur flickered along the corridor and slipped into the main elevator.

Through it all, no one in the base noticed the shadow’s presence.

The shadow raced down the shaft at extreme speed toward the deepest level of the base.

At that moment, Nova was riding the elevator up from the bottom.

The two sides met on Sublevel Six.

silent dark shadow struck first!

A dense shadow wrapped the moving elevator car completely. Nova inside was startled, but she reacted fast.

She lit the torch she’d brought from the armory.

It wasn’t an ordinary torch; it was imbued with a powerful light-aspected chaos energy.

The instant it flared, it poured out intense light and heat.

The shadows in the car were driven back, and Nova thus blocked silent dark shadow’s opening attack.

Failing to fell Nova in a single blow, silent dark shadow immediately disengaged!

It shrank itself to the size of a ping-pong ball, then plunged down the shaft at extreme speed.

It hadn’t fallen far when the ascending elevator slammed on the brakes.

Before the car had fully stopped, Nova kicked the doors open.

Without hesitation, she jumped out of the elevator.

“Whatever your goal is, I’ll stop you!”

Nova said coldly, eyes fixed on the rapidly falling black orb.

From that initial skirmish just now, she had already identified the black shadow as silent dark shadow.

Though she didn’t know how it had gotten into the base, she had to stop whatever silent dark shadow was planning next, no matter what.

They were falling at nearly the same speed.

Because silent dark shadow had started dropping a bit earlier, it reached the very bottom of the elevator shaft before Nova.

The instant the black sphere struck the floor at the bottom of the shaft, it morphed into a dense shadow, which slipped straight out through a crack in the shaft.

A moment later, Nova landed steadily.

She watched the shadow racing ahead at blistering speed, and alarm flashed across her face.

silent dark shadow was now tearing down the corridor that led to the armory.

Nova had a pretty clear idea where it was headed.

“You’re trying to get to the armory! I will stop you! You won’t get your hands on a single weapon in there!”

Forcing down her panic, Nova drew her custom handgun and blew a hole in the wall of the shaft with a single shot.

She then used the shortcut she’d made to sprint ahead and cut silent dark shadow off.

“If you want to get through, you’ll have to step over my dead body!”

Nova suddenly appeared directly in front of silent dark shadow and kept firing her custom pistol at it.

But silent dark shadow’s behavior was very strange.

It didn’t dodge Nova’s shots, nor did it counterattack.

It just kept driving forward, heedless of everything.

Under Nova’s astonished gaze, a dense shadow slipped right past her.

By now, silent dark shadow was less than a hundred meters from the armory.

There was nothing Nova could do to stop it anymore, no matter what she tried.

Faced with this, she made a snap decision!

She slammed the emergency lockdown button she carried.

The instant she hit it, every security door in Daskhollow Base slammed shut.

Every corridor in the base was sealed off completely, and the entrance to every sector was locked down with powerful sealing artifacts.

silent dark shadow crashed straight into the armory’s main door.

Although silent dark shadow could turn itself into shadow and slip through most barriers, the sealing artifacts behind Daskhollow Base’s armory security door were extremely powerful.

Even its true body would need time to break the seal; its avatar had absolutely no chance of cracking it.

The avatar of silent dark shadow gathered all its strength.

Its form had already sharpened into a black needle.

It hoped to punch a breach in the seal as fast as possible this way. As soon as a flaw opened, it could seep through.

But its attempt was doomed to fail.

No sooner had it begun trying to break the seal than Nova came charging in.

At that moment, Nova had a custom handgun in one hand and a torch that kept pouring out light and heat in the other.

There was no way silent dark shadow could ignore Nova’s attacks.

It had no choice but to meet her head-on.

The fight between them was fierce.

And because every security door in the base had been shut, the base was carved up into a great many very small sectors. None of the sectors connected to any other.

That meant the damage caused during their battle was confined to the sector they were in.

It wasn’t long before the avatar of silent dark shadow could no longer hold out.

The torch in Nova’s hand never went out.

Light and heat flooded the entire area.

Under the harsh glare, silent dark shadow had no way to draw energy from the shadows anymore.

In the end, Nova won the fight.

The avatar of silent dark shadow was completely annihilated, and all the darkness was driven back by the torchlight.

Nova could finally breathe a sigh of relief.

But it was only a breath of relief; there was no joy on her face.

Even though she had successfully stopped silent dark shadow’s move, the situation at Daskhollow Base was also dire.

Daskhollow Base would be out of commission for a while.

Normally, when a single security door is triggered, it can be reset.

But if every security door in the base is triggered, then it can’t be restored. To bring the base back online, every security door would have to be blown open.

Nova had no idea how she was going to explain this to the higher-ups at Zenith Technology Company.

After racking her brains for a while, Nova suddenly let out a laugh.

“Looks like I’ve been overthinking it. I should figure out how to stay alive first. Since silent dark shadow managed to infiltrate a clone, that means it’s already found a gap in the base’s outer defenses.

“I’m sealed in the deepest part of the base now, and there’s no way for me to support the people in the other sectors. They’ll have to fend off silent dark shadow on their own.

“When they can’t hold any longer, silent dark shadow will make it to me. That fight will be the one that decides life and death.

“I’ll worry about the other problems after I survive that fight.”

She was someone who always focused on the here and now.

After all, for someone like her, if you can’t secure the immediate gains, the long-term gains might as well not exist.

The higher-ups at Zenith Technology Company don’t have much patience.

If anyone fails to complete the tasks assigned by Zenith Technology Company’s higher-ups, those higher-ups will write them off completely.

Once you’re written off by the higher-ups, no matter what you’ve contributed before, you’re as good as dead.

Nova quickly regained her composure.

She began preparing for the decisive battle that would come at some unknown point in the future.

Meanwhile, the others inside Daskhollow Base still had no idea what was going on.

They had only heard a loud bang, and then all the security doors in the base slammed shut. They were split up into different sectors, without even the possibility of contacting anyone else.

Everyone was in a panic.

In the sector closest to the surface, some people were trying to get out of the base.

They figured staying inside the base was even more dangerous.

Maybe the base had already been breached by monsters; if that were true, the monsters would definitely be pouring into the base. In that case, the outside would be safer than the inside.

Their actions played right into silent dark shadow’s hands.

As the people closest to the outside crawled through ventilation ducts and used keys to unlock one sealed door after another, silent dark shadow appeared right in front of them.

Everyone was devoured by silent dark shadow.

After that, silent dark shadow followed the ventilation ducts into the base interior.

Although all the security doors in the base had been activated, the true body of silent dark shadow was far stronger than its avatar.

It could quickly force its way through one security door after another and head straight for the deepest part of the base!