Chapter 90: Shadowmancer

Shadowmancer.

This was the exact name she was going to give to this newly comprehended property.

It was a property that allowed her to stretch out her consciousness and directly grab into the realm of shadows itself.

Now she fully understood the fundamental mechanics behind how her mother controlled the creeping dark, and how Salma was able to seamlessly store and hide her subordinates within her personal shadows without a single trace.

Summer was bursting with raw excitement as she slowly opened her crimson eyes, returning from the deep spiritual sea back to the physical world.

However, when her vision finally cleared, her mother was nowhere to be found inside the quiet stone chamber.

Summer looked around in thorough confusion, tilting her head as she wondered where her mother could have gone in just a few short minutes.

[Girl, what on earth do you mean by a few minutes? You have been sitting in that exact spot for seven full days!] the system chimed in, laughing.

An epiphany was an extraordinarily rare occurrence in the path of power. It was a divine state of heightened comprehension in which a true genius could absorb and master the complex knowledge of several years within a single day.

The system had never expected Summer to casually fall into a deep, world-altering epiphany simply by listening to her mother explain basic element theory.

It seemed they could safely increase her training workload by a massive margin. Summer had absolutely no idea that the system had just drastically expanded her future training syllabus in its internal database.

"Oh..." Summer nodded simply, accepting the sudden time jump without much fuss.

Now that she understood the nature of shadow detachment and storage, it was finally time for her long-neglected puppets to stop hiding in the dark.

A sharp glint of pure excitement flashed across her crimson eyes as she turned around and walked purposefully toward the deepest, unlit section of the cave network.

As she neared the pitch-black end of the cavern, several pairs of glowing eyes suddenly snapped open within the dense darkness.

"Hey," Summer spoke up softly.

Those glowing pairs of eyes blinked several times in startled recognition before instantly widening with overwhelming excitement.

Before Summer could take another step, she heard a heavy, reverberating thud echo against the stone floor as one specific pair of eyes zoomed directly into her line of sight.

By the loud, ecstatic roar that followed, Summer did not even need to guess who the owner of those eyes was.

It was One.

Summer let out a soft sigh of exasperation as her tiny body was suddenly scooped right up into the air by a pair of massive, rock-hard arms and pulled tightly into a cold, hard chest.

"Aww..." Summer complained in a muffled voice as her nose slammed slightly against his rigid shoulder bone.

"M-as-tah!" One shouted in supreme excitement, his voice raspy and broken, yet filled with yearning.

"Okay, okay. Why the huge overreaction?" Summer said, her tone softening as she reached up to gently pat his massive, rugged head while he carefully set her down and repositioned her comfortably onto his broad left shoulder.

Summer clicked on the high-intensity torch in her hand, casting a bright beam of light across the cavern floor and finally making her hidden army visible.

Looking at their actual numbers lined up before her, she let out a long sigh of quiet relief. Except for the single zombie that had to be put down by One previously after it completely lost control, the entire group had remained intact.

Summer still felt a faint trace of sorrow whenever she recalled that lost construct, knowing deep down that it had lost its mind only because of her early, unstable control.

’Do not be sad, little girl. Every single one of them was supposed to die in the apocalyptic wastes anyway without you taking them under your wing. Consider that it died serving a real purpose,’ the Shadow spoke up within her mind, offering a surprisingly rare piece of practical comfort.

Summer took a deep, steadying breath. There was truly no point in lingering on sadness for things that had already transpired in the past. It was time to focus entirely on the future ahead.

She now had exactly forty-two zombie puppets left under her command. And with her newly awakened Shadowmancer property, she wanted every single one of them to become her personal, unkillable shadows.

An excited, predatory grin stretched across her small face as she pointed the bright torch beam one by one across the waiting ranks of zombies.

"Listen up," Summer commanded from her high perch on One’s shoulder, her crimson eyes glowing with absolute authority under the dark hood.

"You guys have been hiding in the dark for far too long. From today onward, you no longer need to hide. You are going to become my shadows."

One let out a low, approving rumble from his chest, his large hands resting securely around Summer to ensure she did not slip from his shoulder.

Standing right beside him in the glowing light was Two, whose sharp, glowing eyes stared up at Summer with quiet, intense anticipation, waiting for their master’s command.

Summer raised her right hand, bringing her dark golden gauntlets into the open air.

Channeling her newly evolved Shadowmancer domain, she allowed the cold, corrosive shadow energy to seep outward from her palms, forming thick, liquid-like ribbons of darkness that slithered through the air like living snakes.

Instead of spreading outward to coat the entire room in a dome, Summer meticulously controlled the ribbons of shadow energy, directing them to wrap directly around the feet of the forty-two standing zombies.

The dark ribbons hissed as they touched the stone, sinking directly into the natural shadows cast by the torchlight.

"One, Two," Summer called out, her voice dropping into a focused, authoritative register. "You two will be the very first to enter. Do not resist the pull."

One gave a firm, heavy nod, while Two stepped forward without a single shred of hesitation.

Summer snapped her fingers. The shadows beneath One and Two suddenly opened up like deep, bottomless pools of ink. The black liquid rose violently up their legs, swallowing their towering bodies inch by inch.

One let out a low growl of amazement as his physical form melted down into the darkness, completely submerging into Summer’s spiritual shadow space without causing a single ripple on the stone floor.

Two followed a fraction of a second later, vanishing entirely into the dark abyss until not a trace of their physical presence remained in the cavern.

Summer felt a sudden, heavy weight settle deep within her spirit. Inside her inner space, right beside the floating, detached shadow wings, two distinct, dark silhouette marks appeared on the glowing floor, holding the complete physical forms of One and Two in a state of suspended animation.

A thrill of genuine triumph shot straight through her heart. It had actually worked seamlessly on her very first attempt.

"Now for the rest of you," Summer smirked, sweeping her hand across the remaining forty zombies lined up in the cave.

The ribbons of shadow energy reacted instantly to her command, surging forward like a dark tidal wave. The bottomless pools of ink expanded underneath the entire ranks of the remaining zombies, swallowing them up in groups of ten.

One by one, the quiet groans and heavy footfalls of her puppet army vanished from the physical world. The darkness rose up, devouring flesh, bone, and armor until the back of the cavern was left completely empty, stripped of every single construct.

Within Summer’s spiritual realm, forty-two distinct shadow marks were now lined up in neat, orderly rows beneath her detached shadow wings.

She could feel every single one of their heartbeats and corrupted cores tethered directly to her own soul.

At any given second, with a single thought, she could pull any of them out from any shadow in the world to strike her enemies by surprise.

If Salma were here, she would be utterly surprised. Because making someone a shadow would normally destroy their physical body. But in Summer’s case, she had made all her puppets into Shadows without destroying their physical bodies at all!