Chapter 705 – Dreamweaver World 43

Chapter 705 – Dreamweaver World 43

Dani stomped her feet anxiously, her pale little face flushing bright red. “I won’t dare anymore, I won’t dare anymore! Please give it back, big sis! Without this piece of shadow, my skirt hem will keep letting drafts through!”

Mo Lan let out a soft laugh and flicked her fingertip. The flowing shadow flew toward Dani like a night bird returning to its nest.

The little girl immediately reached out with both hands to catch it, cradling it as though it were some precious treasure, carefully pressing the shadow against the gap in her skirt hem.

The patch of darkness writhed like a living thing, fine ripples spreading along its edges before it seamlessly merged with the skirt’s shadow. Not the slightest trace of damage remained.

Dani twirled in a circle, her black shadow-skirt sweeping up in an elegant arc. She tilted her little face upward and said happily, “Thank you, big sis! Your shadow control is even better than Granny Matina’s when she was young!”

“Nonsense!” Matina’s stone cane suddenly shot out, landing with precision on the top of Dani’s head. “When I was young, I could string up ten beginners like her and beat them all at once!”

However, her shadow twitched unnaturally.

Mo Lan tactfully refrained from pointing this out and simply bowed her head respectfully. “It’s all thanks to my teacher’s excellent instruction.”

Matina snorted, thumping her stone cane heavily against the ground. “Cut the flattery! Now that you’ve learned basic Shadow Walk and how to seize other people’s shadows, leave the shadowstone plaza and go explore the real shadow world!”

She swept swiftly toward the edge of the plaza.

Mo Lan was about to follow when a chorus of startled little cries erupted around her.

The Shadow Tribe children in the plaza poked their heads out from around her. Even wrapped entirely in shadow, their worry was plainly visible.

Dani anxiously grabbed the hem of Mo Lan’s clothes with her small hand. “Big sis, you just came out of the altar, and you’re already going outside the plaza? That’s way too dangerous!”

“Yeah, yeah! There’s no shadowstone protection out there. One wrong step and you’ll fall right out of the shadow world!” Another child made an exaggerated falling motion, then covered her eyes, peeking at Mo Lan’s reaction through the gaps between her fingers.

Though both her finger gaps and eyes were nothing but a mass of black, making it impossible to tell the difference.

The tallest of the children stepped directly in front of Mo Lan and explained with serious gestures, “In places without shadowstone, shadows get scraped by the light!”

She revealed several faint indentations on her arm. “Last time I accidentally fell out of the shadow world, my shadow got grazed by light. It took a whole month of using Power of Shadow to repair it!”

A warmth spread through Mo Lan’s heart. She crouched down and ruffled the children’s heads. “Thanks for the warning, but I’ll take good care of myself! Besides…”

She turned to look at Matina, who was already standing at the edge of the plaza, impatiently tapping the ground with her stone cane. “With my teacher there, it should be fine!”

“As if!” the children shouted in unison. Dani even made a face. “Granny Matina loves watching beginners make fools of themselves! Last time there was this older boy who fell out and got stuck on a rock wall, couldn’t get down. Granny Matina happened to walk by, and guess what?”

Another child chimed in, “She just glanced at him and kept walking. But we all heard her shadow laughing — super, duper loud!”

Matina’s furious bellow exploded from the distance. “You little brats! Say one more word and tonight I’ll stuff all your shadows into a teapot and boil them into soup!”

“Help! Granny Matina’s going to eat children!” The kids immediately burst into wailing screams, but their faces wore mischievous grins as they scattered like startled little animals in every direction, vanishing in an instant into the ever-present shadows of the shadowstones.

Mo Lan noticed, however, that suspicious little bumps kept rising in those shadows from time to time. Clearly, these little troublemakers weren’t scared at all — they were just putting on a show.

When Mo Lan reached the edge of the plaza, the little rascals had quietly followed along.

They stood in a row at a safe distance, watching Mo Lan’s every move.

Dani had even produced a handful of shadow-solidified snacks and was munching on them with gusto, looking for all the world like she was watching a show.

“Ignore those little punks.” Matina pointed her stone cane at the boundary of the plaza’s edge. There, the vast shadows cast by the shadowstones gave way to a blindingly white zone of light, like a pale abyss, with only scattered fragments of shadow interspersed throughout.

“See those white areas? Those are places claimed by light. Shadows have nowhere to hide there. If your Power of Shadow can’t keep up, or if your will isn’t clear enough, you’ll be violently yanked back into reality. Only the black areas — those belong to the shadow world.”

She bared her teeth in a grin. “Ready, little monster? This time you’ll have to jump across to reach the real shadow world. If you can’t make it — you’ll fall right out!”

Mo Lan took a deep breath and nodded.

Behind her came the children’s tense whispers:

“She’s going to fall out, she’s going to fall out…”

“I bet three shadow balls she won’t last one second!”

“I bet three seconds!”

…

Mo Lan turned back and winked at the children. “I bet I’ll make it for sure!”

She suddenly channeled her Power of Shadow, following the method she had studied in 《Professional Skill Book – Shadow Armor》, and activated Shadow Armor.

The Power of Shadow gathered upon the shadow wrapped around her body, forming a layer of dense black armor.

The shadow ball in Dani’s hand dropped to the ground with a splat. “Wow! She put armor on her shadow!”

“And it’s not one of those cookie-cutter skill armors the other adventurers use!”

…

Mo Lan paid no attention to the exclamations behind her. After estimating the direction and distance, she focused her full concentration and issued a clear “jump” command to her shadow.

In 《Professional Skill Book – Shadow Jump》, the mana cost for jumping was fixed. The maximum distance was only about ten meters, with light points to help pinpoint the landing spot. There was a three-second delay before activation, but mistakes were essentially nonexistent.

Bypassing the skill book and casting Shadow Jump on her own, however, meant she had to control how much Power of Shadow to use, how far to jump, and the direction and distance — all by herself. Any miscalculation meant failure.

Mo Lan had good spatial awareness and calculation skills, and she didn’t hesitate with her own estimates. The moment the command was issued, her form suddenly blurred, like a pencil drawing being erased. The next second —

A jet-black arc traced across the edge of the plaza, and Mo Lan’s figure re-materialized in the shadow of a stone grotto ten meters away.

The entire movement had nothing to do with her legs. It was purely her shadow carrying her through.

During the jump, she distinctly felt the white light of the illuminated zone comb across the surface of her shadow like a brush, scraping away a sliver of Power of Shadow and weakening her Shadow Armor by a fraction.

“That’s impossible!” The child who had placed the bet shrieked. “How can she do it on her very first—”

Matina’s stone cane suddenly landed with precision on his head. “Shut up and watch! This is what a true genius looks like!”

“Again.” Matina appeared abruptly at Mo Lan’s side, pointing toward a distant stretch of mottled light-and-shadow boundary. “Try a longer jump!”