Vanguard of the Eternal Night

Chapter Ch45 - Individual Competition – Shadow Dance

translator: xiin

editors: bear & celtic

Sorcerers who had specifically prepared a set of skills for the sake of targeting assassins were truly annoying. Maple Leaf’s teleportation was very fast, and he also held a polymorph on hand.

If Tyron didn’t want to be caught up in the polymorph, he had to make sure to keep up with Maple Leaf’s teleportation speed and stay behind him! Constant back winding! He had to make sure not to show himself in his opponent’s field of vision.

Lord Four was able to rely on footwork to continuously remain behind an endlessly teleporting sorcerer, which amazed everyone.

But they hadn’t expected that soon after, Tyron’s arms would cross, his short sword and dagger blades reflecting two flashes of cold light while––

He continued to rotate and dance leisurely.

However, this was no longer a gentle shadow that followed directly behind his opponent. It was now an explosive, stormy dance accompanied by blades.

Because rotation has always been the easiest way to reach high speeds during melee attacks. It was just like ice skating, where strength and speed came together. Technique and control both had to have reached their highest peaks and unify in order to attack, then pull back one’s arms, the body remaining at the same spot as the attacker completed a super-high-speed rotation before coming to a gentle stop.

In the competitive arena, high speed meant massive impact, a huge amount of damage, and a horrifying attack speed!

This was an elegant, balanced, flexible, and stable aesthetic; it was also a cold, sophisticated, mysterious, and arrogant killing philosophy.

It was easier to implement such a technique in the air, which was known as a ‘windmill combo’. On the ground, however, only a few people in the world would achieve it. It was called––

“Shadow dance!”

The male commentator called out this term.

After shouting, he didn’t know what else to stay. For a moment, he lost his voice and leaned back in his seat.

.

As soon as ‘shadow dance’ began, Maple Leaf suddenly fell under a boundless storm of death.

Short-distance teleportation allowed him to escape the path of ‘flash’, but it was unable to avoid the shadow dance.

Because in fact, back winding was a mere prerequisite technique for shadow dance. Back winding, rotation, combo attacks and so on were all required and had to be executed at high speeds in order to combine into the prototype form of shadow dance.

Shadow dance was a peak pursuit and dodging technique of master assassins. A mere one-meter teleportation distance was simply not far enough to escape pursuit.

And how could a sorcerer manage to find a long enough respite during this storm to cast out a longer teleportation spell and escape?

A white light flashed within seconds!

.

2:0 Knock out. Another victory for the War God!

The system had already announced the game results, but everyone was still very excited and unable to calm down.

The female commentator even added, “This move that the War God kept up his sleeve! It’s really! Really! Absolutely!”

She couldn’t come up with a single adjective, but the situation on the public screen was pretty much the same.

The audience couldn’t find the right words to describe how they felt until someone commented, “Frenzied!!!”

It was suddenly followed by a large number of comments, “War God, you aren’t human. You’ve made your opponent lose their mind in a frenzy!”

“I just knew that Lord Four was going to pull out some big trick, but directly pulling out a shadow dance was really frenzied&#k2026;”

“So! The back winding just now was actually the first step to the shadow dance!”

“Could it be that Maple Leaf was flashing here and there and the War God became impatient, so he simply went! Into! A! Frenzy?! And then took out his shadow dance…”

The audience was also in a frenzy as they expressed their excitement. Meanwhile, the two contestants were now shaking hands onstage while the host made her usual finishing remarks.

The individual tournament was almost finished. There were only two more games before it ended. One was Lord Four vs Flower Blower, and the other was Tower vs Maple Leaf.

As of right now, Lord Four had already won two matches. There was no doubt that if he won against Flower Blower, then he would become the current Earth District Individual Competition’s champion.

.

Lord Four’s fans were in a state of ecstasy while the male commentator was currently in a daze as he stared at a strange number.

Total time for the second match: 20.07 seconds.

Male commentator: “???”

He always had a feeling that something was… off?

Nevertheless, there still seemed to be a barely passable explanation for it: The two contestants were both squishy. They didn’t have any healing skills, and their attacks were very powerful, so it was understandable for the matches to end so quickly. From another angle, although the time was short, they had clashed many times––Maple Leaf alone had teleported about sixty to seventy times. Truly, there was no way to say that the end of the match didn’t make sense.

After all, the match speed of individual competition matches depended on the types of players. In the previous tournament, the average time spent across all matches was approximately one minute. If both players were violent DPS dealers, the average time spent was only 32 seconds.

––Lord Four wasn’t exaggerated… right.

Just like this, the male commentator was able to temporarily convince himself and then glossed over the rest of the proceedings as he immersed himself in thought.

However, after work, he suddenly had a flash of inspiration and discovered that there were several things that didn’t make sense!

First, the War God could obviously use shadow dance. The second match also demonstrated that dodging polymorph wasn’t a problem for him at all. In that case, why did he use a little monkey to dispel his polymorphed state in the first match?

Second, it was still this question––he clearly knew shadow dance! During the early part of the second match, he had constantly used back winding to remain behind Maple Leaf and played with him for so long. It wasn’t until Maple Leaf’s teleportation was almost used up that he suddenly used shadow dance. Why was this?!

Third, the total time of both games was about 20 seconds. Originally, this wouldn’t matter, but when combined with the first two points––had Lord Four deliberately waited until they were almost at 20 seconds before he suddenly pulled out shadow dance?

The male commentator felt like he had suddenly seen the whole picture. He was enlightened!

Also, he felt like he was about to be popular!

.

The male commentator was incomparably excited. He opened up Lord Four’s official page as soon as he got home.

This page had already been updated with a vast amount of information. The GNA’s evaluation of Lord Four had risen, and then risen again. He was already fully regarded as an A-list player.

After today’s game, the War God’s personal technique column had been updated again: [ Multiple flash, Shadow dance. ]

This technique column had once had many other things, for example ‘speed burst’ and ‘aerial combat’, but they had been removed later on. ‘Speed burst’ was now considered as part of ‘multiple flash’, and ‘aerial combat’ was more of a feature rather than technique––these things, suddenly seemed a lot less surprising when compared to ‘shadow dance’ and ‘multiple flash’.

The male commentator quickly skimmed over the information before entering the comments section. He speedily crafted a post:

[ Heaven-shaking Secret News! War God deliberately releasing water in the individual competition! Supported with pictures and truth, be careful when entering this thread! ]

The male commentator was really delighted as he uploaded the photos. He felt like he was really about to become a hot topic. He would become famous in the War God’s comments section!

However, when he flipped through today’s posts, he became completely muddled.

Today’s comments on Lord Four’s comment section read like this:

[ How very~ lonely is it to be invincible~ Lord Four started pouring water again ]

[ Feeling sorry for Maple Leaf who still doesn’t know his opponent was releasing water ]

[ Come on, it’s a new handicap. Exactly how many more things can Lord Four pull out? ]

Male commentator: “……” Ah, mom, it seems like I won’t become popular… QUQ

A male commentator who just had his dreams of stardom shattered.jpg

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The male commentator’s hand trembled as he clicked open a post.

Lord Four’s fans had already written these kinds of short posts:

[ A certain team game, 19th second. The enemy: Bring it, break into our formation if you can.

20th second, Lord Four silently pulls out a flash.

……

A certain team game, 19th second. The enemy: Bring it, drag us down with a 1v6 if you can!

20th second, Lord Four silently pulls out an upside-down killing ambush.

……

A certain individual game, 19th second. The enemy: You can’t kill me, you just can’t kill me~

20th second, Lord Four silently pulls out multiple flashes.

……

A certain individual game, 19th second. The enemy: Bring it, come chase me, I’ll give it to you if you catch me…

20th second, Lord Four silently pulls out a shadow dance. ]

Male commentator: “……” Sure enough, I really can’t get popular. This world has so many talented people…

.

He tremblingly opened up the next post, and saw that the netizens had even already analyzed the video of the game:

[ … Individual competition, second game, second match, at 11.02 seconds. Everyone should watch the playback carefully.

It can be seen that the sorcerer’s teleportation is already thoroughly chaotic. In the previous half second teleport, he appeared right next to Lord Four.

[ A static screenshot that showed Maple Leaf appearing just to the side of Tyron, less than 0.5 meters away ]

… Maple Leaf’s expression is blank. He doesn’t realize that he appeared right within Lord Four’s melee attack range. Of course, it’s possible that he’s already dizzy from the teleports~

Next, everyone should look closely at what Lord Four does when faced with the enemy that has sent himself very close to him like a sheep to the lion’s mouth. What does he do? Does he go over and hit him? Slice his throat? Apply silence or stun?

––None––of––it!

Lord Four used his hand to push Maple Leaf away!!!

[ A blurred screenshot ]

This speed was too fast and it was hard to take a screenshot, so everyone will just have to make do for a bit. Take a look at the place circled in red, Lord Four directly tossed his weapon into the air, then used his empty hand to push Maple Leaf away! He then caught his weapon and continued to pretend to chase Maple Leaf…

This is really the most painstaking performance of ‘You run, I’ll chase you’ that I’ve ever seen 233333333. I really feel for Lord Four, this is probably already the peak of his acting skills, hahahaha! ]

At the bottom, amongst the replies, someone had tried their best to obtain a better screenshot, adding, “Look at Lord Four’s expression, hahahahaha he’s about to die from helplessness! What do you guys think Lord Four was thinking at the time?”

“He was probably thinking: ‘Little fool, can you try a little harder when running’…”

“From War God’s godlike acting skill, I can tell that he has really worked hard 2333333”

“Exactly who was it who told Lord Four that he needed to wait 20 seconds before he could kill people? I really have to respect that person. I’m manually crying and laughing at the same time hahaha…”

.

Male commentator: Ah, there are really so many experts amongst the common people. They were even able to come up with this kind of analysis.

He deleted the draft of his own post and dejectedly slipped back to see the new information that had been updated on Lord Four’s site when he suddenly discovered that Lord Four had logged on to his own site.

Oh! Big news! The low-key and mysterious Lord Four was finally willing to come out and say two sentences! What did he say?

The male commentator excitedly clicked it open and saw that the War God’s first blog post had already received over ten thousand replies and countless likes. The content consisted of a single cold and arrogant sentence: [ Missing person notice, a certain person has already been missing for 1 day, 7 hours, 26 minutes and 48 seconds. ]

Male commentator: “???” What kind of situation was this?!!

The comments below were also full of confused expressions. They didn’t know who the War God was looking for, but they were all eagerly trying to come up with suggestions.

The male commentator had discovered this blog post quite late, so a certain popular response had already been pushed up to the top:

[ Victor (v): Sorry, sorry, I was too busy yesterday QUQ ]

[ Odin replied to Victor (v): Apologizing face to face is considered basic courtesy. ]

[ Victor (v) replied to Odin: Scramming over right away! ]