"What?! Did… did it talk?"
But the system didn't give him a chance to understand, as a huge notification flashed across the entire screen:
[ WARNING! Interaction detected between "Authority of the Shadows" and "Corrupted Essence"]
[WARNING: Probability of unauthorized fusion occurring – 12% → 19% → 31%]
[Immediate cessation of activity is advised]
But Shaun… didn't stop anything. He stared at the wolf with a lunatic gleam in his eyes.
"If this thing carries a Corrupted Essence, and my Authority is Dark…" He gave a crooked smile. "Let's see who corrupts whom first."
He raised his hand and commanded, "Unleash all pooled energy towards the wall!"
The Village Center erupted in a dense black glow. A vortex of energy channeled itself into a dark spear that cleaved the air and struck the wolf directly.
A scream pierced the air. It wasn't the shriek of an animal, but of a human.
The wolf froze in place, and then the shadows began to slowly devour it until it completely vanished, leaving only a small, grey trace on the ground, glowing with a persistent, faint light.
A final notification flashed on the screen:
[Corrupted Essence successfully absorbed]
["Authority of the Shadows" has leveled up to Level 2]
[New Feature Acquired: [Distorted Follower Essence (Type: Feral)]
Shaun froze as he read the last line. Then he raised his eyes to the horizon, where the grey sky began to crack with streaks of dark red light.
Growl!
Many black wolves started appearing from everywhere. But their level was only between 3 and 6.
He whispered softly, like one who had realized something terrifying: "Yes… the game is truly corrupting itself."
As soon as Shaun finished his words, a black thread burst from the Village Center and stretched out like a network of dark veins toward the Shadow Soldiers standing rigidly before him. Only a few seconds passed before their bodies began to tremble, and then they emitted breaths that resembled wheezing, half-human and half-animal.
[Shadow Soldier has leveled up to Level 2]
[Shadow Soldier has leveled up to Level 2]
[Shadow Soldier has leveled up to Level 2]
[Shadow Soldier has leveled up to Level 2]
The alerts dropped before his eyes at a frantic pace, and he almost lost control of his laughter.
"Hahahaha… Who said Human-type summons are the weakest of all summons? Kiki—all it took was one virus of my own making!"
One of the Shadow Soldiers took a step forward, its spear, carved from a charred branch, glowing with a faint flicker as if the fire within it hadn't been completely extinguished.
As the soldier prepared to receive orders, Shaun noticed something strange—the shadows extending from beneath their feet were gradually expanding, twisting around the trunks of nearby trees like hungry snakes. It was as if something deep within the earth was responding to the call of his new authority.
Even Leet, the dark farmer, who could barely lift his scythe, had eyes that burned with a dark, purplish light. He received a fraction of that experience too, but his level hadn't increased yet.
Shaun frowned slightly. "That's weird… He didn't land a single blow on that wolf, yet he got experience points?"
He felt something else. Every time a Shadow Soldier leveled up, his own body briefly felt heavy, as if some power was being drawn from his essence to sustain them.
"My God…" he muttered with a pale smile. "This system is more fair than I expected. It draws from my health for them? What a great deal!"
But the real shock began a few minutes later.
When the Black Wolf battle ended, the body vanished. It left no ash, no corpse, only a dense shadow twisted into the shape of a sleeping wolf.
"Damn! Where's my magical monster crystal!"
As Shaun watched in astonishment, one of his soldiers nudged the shadow with the tip of its spear. The result? The shadow swallowed it.
The soldier let out a muffled cry, its body shrinking, before it straightened up again, its gaze sharpened into something brutally savage. The interface before Shaun flashed:
[Shadow Soldier transformed into "Shadow Hunter – Level 3"]
"What the heck…"
This wasn't supposed to happen. No guide or forum had mentioned this kind of transformation. Even "Authority of the Shadows" itself didn't list any such ability.
Shaun felt a strange prickling on the back of his neck, as if someone was watching him from behind the screen. He reached for the village control interface, trying to open the event log, but the records were vanishing before his eyes. Page after page, automatically erased. It was as if the system itself refused to acknowledge what had happened.
"Great… the game is deleting the evidence now? How comforting!" He let out a nervous, soft laugh.
It was the first time he had seen the sky change in the "Starting World."
At the game company's main administrative headquarters in the United States, three hours after the incident.
In front of a massive glass wall displaying dozens of monitoring screens, the employees sat in tense silence while one of the windows showed the scene of Shaun Evander's village.
"Are these… environmental fractures?" one programmer asked with a trembling voice.
"No, those aren't environmental, they're changes to the world engine itself!" another replied, staring at the electromagnetic diagram which showed an unprecedented fluctuation in data.
The department head, a man in his mid-fifties with a thick grey mustache, shouted, "Shut down the server immediately! The server is rewriting itself!"
But before any of them could execute the command, a red window appeared on all screens:
[Warning! Shutdown attempt rejected.]
[Affected Unit: Novice Village #001-ME.]
[Host: Shaun Evander.]
[Modified Code: Unknown.]
Everyone froze.
In the next moment, the connection to the server was completely severed.
"Damn it!"
Shaun stood in the middle of his village, submerged in darkness, a slow, sickening smile spreading across his lips.
He issued a new command through the system interface:
[Summon New Shadow Soldier x10]
[Transfer all personal magical energy to the Village Center]
The sky lit up again with a black, lightning-like flash, and the sound of the pulses amplified until they almost deafened him.
"Come on…" Shaun muttered, staring into the open abyss beneath his feet, "let's see who consumes whom first—me, or my shadows."