If Raven had a choice, he'd rather Ellison continued to underestimate him until Ellison went down.

  This is a self-consoling extravagance.

  What really comforted Raven was that he had actually gained experience from the slaughter. It wasn't clear whether it was because of his own hands-on killing, which prevented the Shadow Festival from taking away all of Raven's experience. Anyway, Raven received a series of system prompts, and in fact, since no one on Erisen's side was a professional assassin, they didn't understand what skills Raven had used. Earlier, Raven had used more than two skills:

  "Due to your soul having an extremely high affinity for shadow energy, you have gained recognition of the shadow energy around your body. You can now temporarily use shadow energy without opening a shadow energy slot. Your total shadow energy is determined by your shadow affinity, and the recovery speed depends on the density of surrounding shadow energy."

  "Your temporary shadow energy is 365/365, recovering 10 points every 5 seconds."

  "Thanks to the soul memory of your past life, you acquire the Assassin's Shroud ability. This dark magic from the shadow world flows through your veins, corrupting your soul, but granting you an ability: making your enemies wear invisible shrouds, exposing their weaknesses. The more layers of shrouds that envelop a target, the more lethal your strike will be."

  "Put an invisible Shadow Garb on Dark Knight."

  "You have layered 4 layers of shroud of eternity on the target. These shrouds last until you use this power or until the encounter ends. Before making an attack roll against the target, choose to activate all shrouds on the target or none at all (either strip them all off or leave them all on). If activating the shrouds, on a hit remove all shrouds from the target and each layer of shroud deals 4d24 extra damage. On a miss there is no extra damage and one layer of shroud is removed. These extra damages do not gain any benefit from the attacker's damage bonus."

  "You activate [Shadow Strike]: You emerge from the enemy's shadow before they can react, your blade already plunged in. You deal 22 sneak attack damage to the target."

  "You have activated [Assassin's Strike]: You launch the most precise attack at the most precise moment, immediately dealing an additional 45 points of lethal damage."

  "You choose to activate the shroud on all targets, dealing an additional 81 total damage."

  "Your agile use of the dagger causes your target's throat and neck to take an additional 75 points of damage."

  "You dealt (22 + 45 + 81 + 75) × 2 critical hit damage to the target, totaling 446 points. The target has died."

  "Due to the target soul being extracted by a powerful ritual, only partial soul energy was obtained. During the conversion of killing experience, you gained 8700 points of killing experience."

  The harvest from killing a White Silver enemy in two stages was rich enough to be frightening, if not for the Shadow Festival deducting the bulk of it, Levin would have made a fortune this time. Of course, firstly, this was an enemy in a weakened state, and secondly, this was a special gain that only Levin could have while being in the Shadow realm. Back on the mainland of Au, Levin was still just a poor Black Iron assassin.

  Despite this, the huge harvest still shone brightly in Raven's eyes, and so much experience was enough for Raven to upgrade his assassin profession to level 14.

  Unlike the previous upgrade without new skills, in the shadow dimension, even if Raven hasn't activated the Shadow Energy Slot, based on the Assassin's 10th level and above, every two levels can add one ring of Assassin exclusive skills. Now, the extra two profession levels can temporarily bring Raven an additional ring of Assassin skills.

  Raven can currently use the following Assassin exclusive skills: Assassin's Shroud, Assassin Strike, Shadow Step, Executioner's Noose, Leaping Shadow, Sure Strike, Shadow Storm and nearly ten other skills.

  It's worth mentioning that Raven still can't unlock the skills related to fear, soul, illusion and throwing weapons. Either the prerequisites for these aspects are not met or there is no equipment.

  Even so, Raven was very satisfied.

  A novice assassin suddenly acquired such abundant shadow energy, he was probably unable to imagine how to use it. Even if he was a hereditary assassin, he couldn't master so many skills in such a short time.

  Only Raven, who has experienced countless trials in his past life, can bring the effect of this temporary shadow energy to its limit.

  Of course, Raven now has so many assassin exclusive skills, and he doesn't plan to use them all up in one breath.

  A trump card is only called a trump card if it can turn things around.

  The cards will definitely be opened one by one, ensuring that each card can play its due role.

  After killing a Dark Knight, Raven stopped his attack. Calculating it, he should also be entering the third stage soon.

  Back to Elrond's side, the loss of the High Priest is no trivial matter.

  The once-massive team of forty is now down to just these few: Ellison, Dark Knight, Catrell, and Old Thief.

  One can count on one's fingers.

  It's pointless to regret now. Ellison has only two goals: kill Raven and take the Shadow Pearl.

  Rest is necessary for this.

  He couldn't be stingy with the divine magic and supplies either, so he gave each of them a healing spell. In the previous battle, every survivor had more or less been wounded. As a magical beast, the Hell Hound could occasionally make magical attacks that ignored armor, and even though its body armor hadn't been penetrated, it still suffered some claw wounds.

  Eriol treats Dark Knights.

  The old thief then walked over and said to Catrike: "Do you want me to help you deal with the wound on your back?"

  Originally, Old Man Thorne was a stranger, and Catreick didn't want him to help treat his wound.

  Catrike got two claw marks on his back, the wound is not deep, but one of them went down and there are three tight balanced wounds. The paws of canine magical beasts have the most bacteria. If this kind of wound is not treated beforehand to remove dead flesh, paw fragments and clean the wound, using divine magic directly will consume extra divine power and leave the fragments in the body.

  The current situation is bad enough, Carterick doesn't want to add more burden to the master. Moreover, with Raven as an external enemy lurking nearby, and a bunch of Shadow Steel Golems near the Shadow Pearl that haven't been dealt with, the old thief's combat power is necessary. Having excluded this old man from the shadows until now, it's good to ease the relationship a bit.

  After considering for several seconds, Catrike finally nodded in agreement.

  Agreed, but Catrike was still on his guard in his heart, his left hand quietly grasping his curved knife, posing as if he was vigilant of the distance, actually he was defending against the old thief.

  The old thief didn't mind, he skillfully removed Cartick's leather armor, took out a small medical knife and wiped it clean.

  "It can't be sterilized with fire, so it's just had to make do."

  "It's okay, don't worry about it."

  The old thief began to pick out the rotten flesh, mud and dog hair that had stuck together on Catrike. The frequent and continuous stinging made Catrike frown.

  Eriol glanced this way and Ketric could only return a stiff, bitter smile.

  The Dark Guardian's injuries were much more severe, and Elrond didn't look this way again, focusing on treating the Dark Guardian's wounds.

  "Actually, Catrike, you noticed, didn't you? When Hait was killed just now, Raven's movements were very abnormal."

  "What? Why is it not normal?"

  "That agility is probably already at the White Silver level, right?"

  "Ah, that's what I thought. That kid is clearly a Black Iron, but he has such high agility. This is absolutely abnormal." Katrik nodded in agreement.

  The old thief dug out a piece of the mastiff's broken claw while continuing to say, "I once heard a legend about the Shadow Pearl, now it seems that it might be true."

  Eryndor looked up, somewhat displeased: "You should have spoken out earlier. I told you to tell me everything about the Shadow Pearl, whether or not I believe it is my judgment."

  "Honorable Poison Needle, this is my mistake. Because the Shadow Pearl is too rare and the rumor was too vague and far-fetched, I didn't dare to speak it out."

  "Let bygones be bygones, you speak." Ellison ordered and continued to treat his wound.

  "It's like this, the Golden Rank or higher Shadow Pearls will start to have their own will. Although not intelligent, they will instinctively choose the strongest Shadow Energy user, so they would be delighted to see a bloody festival of contenders killing each other."

  "What!?" Cartwright jumped in surprise.

  The old thief continued, "The Shadow Pearl not only selects the strongest, but also hopes to select a master with the most potential and talent. It will reward candidates who kill their competitors, allowing them to temporarily acquire the strongest physical quality of the opponent they killed, in order to test their use of shadow skills under sudden improvement of their physical quality."

  "Ah!" The other three people present also let out a low cry of surprise.

  If it's really like that, then it's too bad. This means that Raven will get the power of White Silver Dark Guardian or Strong.

  Having sufficient shadow energy allows wanderers to acquire a large number of advanced skills ahead of time. This is not terrible. Because there is no physical quality support, even the most advanced skills are just useless decorations.

  It is well known that in the world of Ao, every 20 levels are a stage, and each profession will get a leap in physical quality when they step over that threshold, so it's normal for high-ranking players to beat low-ranking ones.

  Now you're saying that Raven can ignore this gap for special reasons. How can Ellison and the others be at peace with themselves?

  Just as the three fell into contemplation, Old Thief comforted everyone: "Don't worry too much. Firstly, this is just an unreliable legend. Secondly, if a baby suddenly turned into an adult, could he adapt?"

  The old thief said, and the three of them felt at ease. Indeed, the power and agility that surpasses ordinary people by several times is not something that a lower-level person can imagine. That Raven, no matter how talented he is, will still need time to adapt to this power and his body. Even if he has the power and agility of the White Silver level, being unadapted would give him more openings.

  As he spoke, the old thief reached towards Cartwright's left rear shoulder: "There is still a piece of shrapnel here, I need to use a bigger knife to dig it out, it may hurt."

  That shard of claw had been making Katrik super uncomfortable for a while, until just now he was just gritting his teeth: "Dig already. I can take this much pain."

  It hurts... it really hurts! What is this?

  －－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－

  Thank you for your generous and painless reward