The laugh thundered across the entire hall—there was no way Shin couldn’t have frozen.
He stood motionless—three of him, actually—stood rigid, studying the distant dais with an expression that reeked of caution.
"Remarkable! That golden A-class talent of yours that makes an S-class seem worthless."
The crow sighed heavily.
"Oh, Shin, you just waltzed in here and bombarded me with a torrent of memories. You shouldn’t do that to your brother. After making me suffer all these years, making me bear the weight alone? Is this all you’re going to do yet again?"
Shin gulped and scowled.
"So... I’ve only been fighting an illusion this whole time?"
The Crow snickered.
"Naturally..."
He paused briefly, his voice shifting to a surprised tone.
"Wait, did you actually think you could stand toe-to-toe with me, Shin?"
Shin was speechless for a moment. He had to ask himself the same question. He wasn’t stupid—his brother was a Patriarch. The only qualification for becoming one was complete mastery over the Clan’s heritage.
He was a Paragon too. He had his own talent; it might have been less useful than Advanced Cloning, but it had went on the wonderful journey to becoming a Paragon with him. And it was S-class, no matter what.
Shin had never doubted for a second that his brother had long ago surpassed him.
But the man who would stop at nothing to protect those he loved was an incredibly foolish and reckless man. He could be a pebble facing a mountain, and he would delude himself that climbing was possible.
Shin simply didn’t care how much of a mountain his brother was. He would let no one harm his family.
He could hear scraping as the enormous crow shifted—like metal clawing the ground and a massive rug dragging across stone.
Shin gripped his shoulder and rolled it. His gaze remained fixed on the crow moving within the darkness, across fallen columns that littered the floor.
He had a basic understanding of Suho’s ability. It was darkness itself. When his brother first awakened, what Shin knew was that Suho could manipulate darkness. But it operated on such a molecular level that their father had considered it utterly useless.
But of course, even a frog, left alone, could eventually grow to the size of a dragon if it tried hard enough. Northern had spouted the wildest comments as a child.
The hall’s space was vast and uninterrupted by columns. The ceilings hung a tremor away from collapse, and the silver moonlight barely penetrated the darkness through the massive windows that sprawled around.
If anything, the darkness seemed to be devouring the light.
The crow observed him. It was a colossal bird with crimson eyes and an elongated black beak. Its head was twice the size of a human’s, and its entire body, with wings spread wide, resembled a carpet of darkness that consumed the entire room.
Shin didn’t realize when he had drawn breath. His hand trembled, but he gripped his sword even tighter.
"What in the world... is that you, brother?"
The crow chuckled.
"Many Paragons call this their alternate form, but I prefer to call this my true form—while that fragile body you just fought is merely an alternate."
Shin gazed up in awe of his brother.
’I’d heard that Paragons were special for a reason... could this be it?’
His brother could transform into an actual crow.
The Patriarch chuckled.
"If you’d ever cared enough to study the Clan’s history, you would understand the meaning of Essence Manifestation—its power and why our clan was able to climb to such heights of strength and recognition without merging to become a nation."
Shin looked on melancholically.
"Yeah... I really didn’t care about those things..."
The crow laughed eerily, spreading his wings even wider.
"This is the beginning of true power, brother. Let me give you a taste."
Shin crouched low with a steely glare etched on his face. His eyes blazed crimson.
"No, Suho... you forgot one thing."
He exploded forward at even greater speed, his clones surging simultaneously. All of them hurtled toward the crow, striking in unison before rebounding and diving back into the darkness, unleashing a barrage of attacks from every angle.
The crow merely swept a wing, and the entire darkness shifted from one side of the hall to the other, allowing the silver moonlight to actually pierce through.
The crow paused momentarily, then chuckled with sinister amusement.
"There are four of you now... so what? You’ve grown? Is that what I forgot?"
The hall trembled slightly.
"In the end, it’s just four worthless dotards."
With several whistling sounds, spears of darkness erupted from the shadows, streaking straight at Shin.
The four moved with hypnotic precision—all four maintaining the same pace, the same lethal flow. As each spear collided with their blades and was deflected, it shattered into fragments of darkness. Those fragments morphed into razor-sharp knives that curved back and lunged at them.
But Shin was razor-sharp in his thinking. He twisted in mid-air, evading the daggers by a hair’s breadth. All the clones mirrored him in perfect synchronization.
By the time they landed, a wall of blackness slammed into all of them. They hurtled backward and crashed against the stone wall.
The crow slowly pivoted as the darkness flowed back to its original side of the hall—where they were.
"Your efforts are primitive, pitiful, and embarrassing, Shin. Even Chen, who worshipped you for the longest time, couldn’t be so pathetic."
The massive crow gradually folded its wings, dragging them across the ground with that grating scrape.
When it fully turned to face his brother, there were three figures that had crashed against the wall, leaving spider-webbed cracks in the stone.
However... there were four sets of cracks. And one Shin was missing.
The crow couldn’t express a grimace of fury as a facial expression, but when his voice thundered across the hall, it was evident that rage had consumed him.
"Shin Kageyama! You FOOL! How DARE you flee from me!"
He lashed out with one wing at neck-breaking speed, driving the razor edge into the clones and crushing them deeper into the wall.
The entire palace convulsed violently, and the ceiling that had barely endured this long began to collapse.