Chapter 2084: Insane Battle Instinct!

The moment the figure finished forming, Max felt its gaze settle on him, even though it had no visible eyes, and the atmosphere shifted.

The shadow didn’t speak or give any warning. It simply moved.

Its foot pressed against the arena floor.

Bang!

The stone beneath it cracked slightly, and the shadow vanished from where it stood.

Max’s eyes sharpened as the spearhead appeared right in front of his throat.

Clang!

Dragonheart appeared in his hand almost instantly, and the blade intercepted the spear. A sharp metallic ring echoed through the dark space, and neither of them gave ground. Max could feel the strength behind the attack right away.

The shadow twisted its wrist, and its spear changed direction. Instead of continuing to push forward, the weapon slid along Dragonheart and then suddenly swept toward Max’s ribs.

Max turned his sword.

Clang!

He blocked again, and the shadow stepped in closer, driving the butt of its spear toward his chest. Max slipped half a step back to avoid it, and the spearhead immediately came back at him from another direction.

Max’s expression grew more focused, but he still didn’t use any powerful ability. He didn’t open the Seven Divine Veins or use the Ten Void Sealing Art, and he didn’t call on the Primordial Flames or even a pseudo cosmic path. He wanted to understand exactly what the First Shadow Trial was testing.

Dragonheart moved in his hand as he slashed at the shadow’s shoulder.

The shadow rotated its spear and blocked, but Max changed the angle halfway through and brought the slash downward. The shadow reacted instantly, shifting its spear shaft just enough to catch Dragonheart again.

Clang!

Max attacked again, and then again. Sword light flashed across the arena from every direction, with strikes coming from above, from below, and from both sides. Some of them were direct, while others changed course in the middle of the motion.

He deliberately kept changing his rhythm. Sometimes he attacked quickly, sometimes he slowed down without warning, and sometimes he left an opening on purpose to see whether the shadow would notice.

It noticed every single one.

The shadow didn’t just defend; it countered. Whenever Max’s sword came in from an awkward angle, the spear moved to exactly the right place to stop it. Whenever he left even the smallest opening, the spearhead went straight for that weakness.

There was nothing flashy about the fight. No enormous techniques filled the air, no laws shook the arena, and no pseudo cosmic paths appeared. Even so, the exchange grew more and more intense as sword and spear collided again and again.

Clang! Clang! Clang!

Max’s eyes gradually turned more serious, and after several dozen exchanges, he finally understood something.

’It’s at roughly the 3rd level of the Divine Lord Realm.’

That was about the level of power the shadow was showing. Its cultivation wasn’t overwhelming, and if Max wanted to, he could crush raw power at that level easily. Its cultivation wasn’t what made it dangerous, though. The danger lay in the way it fought.

The shadow’s combat instincts were extraordinary.

Max had fought plenty of powerful opponents since beginning his cultivation journey, including geniuses from several races whose techniques had been polished over countless years.

This shadow was different from all of them. It never hesitated, it never panicked, and it never overcommitted. Every movement seemed to have a purpose, and its spear was always exactly where it needed to be.

If Max attacked from the left, it was already prepared to defend. If he struck from above, the shadow adjusted almost instantly, and if he changed his sword’s angle in the middle of a strike, it reacted without ever losing its balance.

It felt less like fighting a cultivator and more like fighting something that had been created purely for battle.

Suddenly, Max sped up his sword, and Dragonheart became a blur. Three slashes appeared almost at once. The first aimed at the shadow’s chest, the second went for its neck, and the third came up from below.

The shadow’s spear spun.

Clang!

It blocked the first slash, and then its body shifted so the second passed beside its head. Its spearhead struck downward and redirected the third, and it immediately countered with a thrust toward Max’s abdomen.

Max turned slightly and let the weapon slide past him before striking the spear shaft with Dragonheart. The shadow used the force of the impact to spin its body and attack again, and Max blocked once more before the two of them broke apart.

For the first time since the fight began, Max stood still for several seconds, and a faint smile crossed his face.

"So this is the First Shadow."

Now he understood why so many geniuses failed even here. The shadow didn’t rely on cultivation alone. Its greatest strength was experience, and its instincts had been honed to a terrifying degree.

For an ordinary newcomer at the 1st or 2nd level of the Divine Lord Realm, facing an opponent at the 3rd level with instincts like these would already be extremely difficult. Even a genius at the 3rd level could easily lose if they leaned too heavily on powerful techniques without the skill to use them properly.

Max had learned enough, and there was no reason to keep testing it.

His grip on Dragonheart tightened slightly, and the aura around him changed as a strange pressure spread across the arena.

The shadow reacted immediately, and for the first time, its body went completely still.

Max’s eyes turned colder. "Emotion Severing Path."

The moment the pseudo cosmic path appeared, an invisible force spread outward. It wasn’t violent, and it didn’t cause any enormous explosion, yet the entire atmosphere of the arena seemed to shift.

The shadow moved at the same instant, and dark energy erupted from its body.

Max’s eyes narrowed slightly, because the shadow had a pseudo cosmic path of its own, and surprisingly, it had nothing to do with its spear.

The darkness beneath its feet suddenly spread, and black mist crept across the arena floor. The shadow’s body turned partly transparent as countless afterimages appeared around it, and a strange pressure bore down on the arena.

The pseudo cosmic path was clearly built on the Shadow Element. The darkness seemed able to distort perception while letting the shadow slip into different positions around the arena.

Even Max had to admit that it was strong. A pseudo cosmic path of this quality in the very first shadow went far beyond what most newcomers would expect.