The Lady's Butler: I Reincarnated To Serve The Villainess-Chapter 23: Breakthrough [2]: Success

"Whimper..."

The beast let out a pitiful sound as it watched Adrian slowly approach it.

No matter how far it ran, this monster was still behind it, calmly walking toward it as if the distance between them meant nothing.

Adrian’s steps were unhurried as he walked towards the beast with both his eyes now open.

Although he still couldn’t see through them, he now knew enough about [Shadow Sense] to keep it active even whilst he had his eyes open.

Unknown to him, his eyes were producing a dim grey glow which was very visible in the darkness, making him seem even more terrifying.

To the beast anyway.

It was finally cornered, with nowhere else to go, and Adrian stopped a small distance away from

"Now now, don’t tell me your only plan was to rely on hiding in the darkness whilst attack," he started, and although his face couldn’t be seen, it was obvious enough that he had a smile on it, "and now that you’ve lost that advantage, you plan on running away?"

Grrrr

The beast let out a threatening growl, its stance was low, ready to pounce if Adrian made any sudden movements.

"Is this all the challenge a rank breakthrough presents?" Adrian took a short pause, his eyes glowing a bit brighter, "..... disappointing."

«Ohh?»

It seemed those were not the correct choice of words because the wolf’s form suddenly started distorting, growing larger and larger by the second.

Before he could react, the pitiful, trembling wolf he had cornered started spliting into two, then three, then four each identical, identical to the first and they seemed a lot stronger.

"...."

Those were definitely not the right choice of words.

One of the wolves suddenly launched itself at him, with its maw wide open but before it could clamp shut on his head, Adrian immediately jumped out the way, successfully avoiding the attack.

Only problem was, there was a set of claws coming at him from behind.

Fortunately, his body was athletic enough to allow him to twist himself midair and cross both arms in front of him.

BANG!

The wolf’s paw slammed into his arms, sending a wave of pain through them

The force knocked him off balance and he was sent barreling across the dark ground before quickly pushing himself back up.

The wolves did not give him time to breathe.

Two more lunged at him from opposite sides, their claws slashing at him from different angles.

Adrian ducked under one strike and pivoted, his heel slamming into the other wolf’s jaw.

The creature slid across the ground but quickly regained its footing, growling as if the attack barely done any damage.

"...You’re kidding me."

The wolves slowly circled him again.

Yet something felt... strange.

Adrian narrowed his eyes, despite there being four wolves, the pressure he felt from them wasn’t four times stronger.

If anything... it felt almost the same.

But the wolves were uninterested in allowing him to figure out what that anamoly was as they suddenly lunged at him

Adrian bent backwards, claws barely missing his face as he jumped back.

Two more rushed him immediately after.

He stepped back, then to the side, barely slipping past their attacks as he continued focusing on the strange sensation their presence gave him.

And that’s when it suddenly clicked.

"...So that’s it."

The wolves weren’t truly multiplying their strength, they were splitting it, each duplicate was merely a portion of the original, a shadow divided into several bodies.

How very clever.

But that also meant it’d get weaker the more it duplicated, but that wasn’t important right now.

After all,

"If you can split yourself using the shadows..." Adrian muttered, "then why can’t I?"

One of the wolves lunged at his back, aiming to catch him off guard, but something suddenly slammed into it, sending it flying to the side.

[Shadow Clone]

It was the technique the wolf had used and Adrian finally understood it. It allowed the user to create clones from shadow, ones that held around 40% of the original’s strength....at most.

The reason why the beast was getting weaker while cloning itself was because it, unlike him, was actually made of shadows and it was actually splitting itself.

Adrian didn’t have that problem, all he had to do was worry about mana, and if there was one thing he had a ridiculous amount of...

It was mana.

Anyway, standing behind him with its hand extended was a duplicate of him, made entirely of shadows.

"So that’s how it works," he said with a smile.

The sensation was weird as he could ’see’ and heat whatever the clone did but that wasn’t too much of an issue, as he could choose to cut off those signals.

The clone was also completely autonomous, but he could could also choose to manually control them.

He then turned to the remaining wolves, "this should even things out...right?"

***

[A few hours later]

Adrian slowly opened his eyes, noticing that sunlight had stopped spilling through the windows and it was darker than before.

It took until nightfall, but he had finally broken through, he was now officially a C-rank.

«You really are a much bigger monster than I initially anticipated,» Noctis, who had also been laying on the bed, spoke up.

The kid was seriously making it wonder if its abilities were really that special, with how easily he had handled a breakthrough.

Instead of a reply, Adrian just looked down at his palm, flexing it a couple times as he got a feel for the power flowing through him.

It felt truly different and the bloated feeling was now gone.

His mana had become stable and its capacity had gotten a lot lot larger, that, added to the fact that he had unlocked a few more skills made him a lot dangerous than most C- ranks.

And the feeling was exhilarating... or maybe that was just a remnant of the old Adrian’s habits.

He then got off the bed, and walked towards the bathroom.

His breakthrough was important, yes, but he had an even more important matter to attend to tonight.

The royal ball.