Awakening the Shadow Element

Mo Fan stepped into the Awakening Room, its interior lit entirely by luminescent stones. When he reached the Awakening Stone, he quickly noticed that the large central stone was ringed by a cluster of small beads glowing with a vivid purple sheen.

The energy radiating from those beads was unmistakably Lightning Element — which left Mo Fan puzzled.

"I'm here for a Dark Element awakening — why are there Lightning Element Guidance Stones set up?" he called out to Guo Liyu, who was just about to close the door.

Guo Liyu's mind was entirely occupied with how to purify the expensive Guidance Stones he'd been working on. He couldn't be bothered to waste even a second on this pampered rich kid, and didn't ask a single follow-up question. He simply turned to his apprentice and said, "He wants Dark Element? Give him Dark Element."

"Oh." Xiao Mian nodded obediently and went straight to swapping in the Dark Element Guidance Stones.

Guo Liyu paid no further attention to the matter. As he buried himself back into his technical problem, he muttered under his breath, "Trying to awaken Black Magic as your very first element — a bit ambitious. Oh well, Lightning and Dark Element Guidance Stones cost about the same anyway."

With the new Guidance Stones in place, Mo Fan was shut inside the room.

The Awakening Stone was the same familiar kind, but it was clearly a cut above the cheap, mass-produced ones the school handed out.

Awakening Stones were restricted items. Each use required real-name registration, and they were almost entirely controlled by the Magic Association, which distributed them to schools, the military, the Hunters' Alliance, and other designated organizations.

Half of the tuition high school students paid went toward the cost of Awakening Stones alone.

Guidance Stones were even more expensive — and while they could be freely bought and sold on the open market, schools had no reason to provide them to students free of charge.

Mo Fan wasn't sure he would succeed. He stared at the small Shadow Element Guidance Stones arranged around the Awakening Stone, and his heart began to pound.

He closed his eyes and gently pressed his palm against the ice-cold Awakening Stone, every nerve trembling with anxious anticipation — like someone reaching out for the very first time, half-terrified, half-desperate.

The smooth, cold stone sensed the warmth of his touch and responded at once, a soft glow blooming outward from its very center.

Just like his first Awakening, Mo Fan — eyes still closed — felt a strange energy surge from his palm, coursing through the blood vessels of his body before vanishing in a flash into his Inner World...

Somewhere in the formless expanse of that mental cosmos, it was as though tiny new lives were being born, slowly reshaping the space around them. With painstaking slowness, they staked out a small territory to call their own...

Fine as motes of dust, they carefully took root — yet carried a hint of aggression, hungering for more. Unlike Lightning Element, which was fierce and domineering, and unlike Fire Element, which was lively and restless, these presences embodied a stillness and aloofness no other element had ever shown him. And yet they watched everything around them with a cunning, deliberate intelligence.

*What is this?*

For a long moment, Mo Fan couldn't place it at all.

In terms of color, this thing nearly blended into the fabric of his Inner World itself...

Dark. Yes — dark!

But could darkness have a color? Could it have a sheen of its own?

It could. His Shadow Element Stardust had its own hue, its own luminescence — so subtle that a careless observer would miss it entirely. But it was there. Unmistakably, quietly there, radiating a deep, shadowy light all its own.

*Guidance successful!*

Teacher Tang Yue had said that Guo Liyu was one of the most renowned Awakening specialists in the country, with a success rate for Guided Awakenings far exceeding anything a school could offer. Mo Fan hadn't dared assume it would actually work — but it had!

Shadow Element!

So this was Shadow Element — mysterious, cunning, dangerous!

*Excellent. With Shadow Element, I can use Shadow Fade just like Teacher Tang Yue. Never mind how useful the movement ability is in a fight — on pure coolness alone, it's a solid five stars.*

*At a university — a place brimming with romance and beautiful people — without something as dashingly cool as Shadow Element to your name, how do you turn heads? How do you stand out from the crowd? How do you impress all those bright-eyed female classmates and female professors?*

*Ahem. Getting sidetracked.* All that aside — with two hard-hitting offensive elements already in his arsenal, gaining a mobility skill was critically important. Wind Element might have been a decent option, but Mo Fan had always felt it lacked a certain mystique, a certain tactical depth.

Now he'd finally awakened Shadow Element. Give himself some time to master the entry-level skill — Shadow Fade — and he'd never need to go to such absurd lengths just to sneak a peek at Xinxia... ahem, that is to say, he'd be able to face Demon-Beasts with absolute composure.

*Three elements in hand — the world is mine!*

Mo Fan was practically floating when he moved to pull his hand away from the stone — and then a new burst of information shot out of the Awakening Stone like a thunderbolt, catching him completely off guard.

He shuddered from head to toe. Before he could even process what was happening, a new mysterious force passed through his palm, melting into his veins just as swiftly as the Shadow Element had — and carved open an entirely new expanse within his Inner World!

"OH—!"

"WHAT THE—!"

"GAAAH!!!!!"

Mo Fan had completely lost the ability to form words.

He remembered his very first Awakening: Lightning Element had charged in first, with Fire Element surging in right behind it, giving him no time to think at all.

Now the same thing was happening again.

After his third element awakened, yet another new energy came crashing in — each one refusing to give him even a moment to savor the last, slamming his emotions to an even greater peak!

This was exactly like a man who'd spent years longing to be a father, finally cradling his newborn in his arms — only to discover another one suddenly appearing right behind it. Buy one, get one free? A two-for-one deal? No analogy quite captured it. All he knew was that he was going absolutely insane with joy.

A fourth element!

He had a FOURTH ELEMENT!!

Other Mages at the Intermediate Level typically had at most two elements. From what he understood, you'd have to reach Advanced Level or beyond before a fourth element was even possible...

But he'd barely crossed the threshold into Intermediate Level, and he already had four!

This was heaven-defying. Completely, utterly, impossibly heaven-defying!

*Calm down. Calm down.*

*Oh hell — I can't calm down—*

Mo Fan was so excited he felt ready to burst. Riding that surging wave of elation, he finally forced his attention to the color of this fourth element's Stardust.

What had he awakened this time?

Right now he felt exactly like someone who'd hit the lottery jackpot — and sure, whether it was this prize or that one wasn't the single most critical thing in the world, but the payout pools were very different!

The color of this Stardust was...