SSS Transmigration: I Can Extract And Evolve Overpowered Shadows

A sparkling cliff that looked like the starry night on a cool Friday. Autumn wind that made one shiver and sent the feeling of nostalgia up their lungs, and an endless clear blue spring beneath the valley that glittered with the glow of the starry sky.

Hinata felt like he had been transported into another reality as he gazed upon the beautiful scene before him.

His eyes were wide, jaw slack. Throughout his years, nothing he had seen had come even close to this.

Step. Step. Step.

One step after another, he made his way to the edge of the cliff. At that exact instant, glowing golden stairways appeared in front of him, stretching into the entrance of a massive cave covered with glittering diamonds and heavy gold.

Beneath him, the spring seemed to flow endlessly with no place of origin and no discernible stopping point.

"Beautiful..." he couldn’t help but mutter.

He glanced towards the shore of the spring. The one closest to him was only dry beach sand that had a faint sparkle to it; however, the one opposite where he stood was a large lush forest with flowers and trees that bore different colours.

’Has no one been here before?’

Hinata glanced around once more, noticing that the space seemed to have been untouched for years. As a human, he could tell when other humans had passed through a place. Had any come here, they would have taken the gold, the diamonds, or perhaps everything.

Hinata’s gaze lowered to his gauntlet, which had blood smeared all over it. A sharp strain tugged at his chest for an unknown reason, though he quickly pushed it down.

Yes, those wolves might have had a family, and this might have been their home. Yes, he couldn’t deny that to them he was a villain — but the truth was that even knowing this fact wouldn’t change anything.

If he wanted to survive, he needed to kill his enemies even if he became a demon to them. At the very least, he wouldn’t try to deny what he had done or be a hypocrite about it.

He lowered his head slightly in a bow, hands clasping together. "I’m sorry for killing your kin, but I do need to kill them for my own good, so don’t be mad."

Hinata raised his head to total silence. With a sigh, he turned away. "What did I even expect?"

However, the moment he was about to turn, he felt something tug at his sleeve.

His head snapped quickly to the side. There was nothing there.

"Was it my imagination?"

Even though he said this, Hinata didn’t lower his guard or try to turn again.

One step at a time.

It wasn’t a mantra meant for moving backward.

He took a small step forward, then a bigger one, slowly closing the gap between him and the golden light stairs.

Step. Step. Step.

The moment he reached the cliff edge, Hinata felt the cold autumn wind blow at him from east and west at the same time.

A breath — then release.

Hinata raised his foot hesitantly and placed it atop the stairs of pure light. His face was squeezed tight, eyelids shut.

The hesitation and tremor in his feet grew the further he stretched his leg. Just as he was about to reach his absolute limit, he felt his leg touch a surface.

Slowly, Hinata opened one eye. In front of him was his outstretched leg, now resting on the edge of the golden stairs.

He took in a sharp breath, then leaped lightly onto the stair, wobbling as he tried to find his footing.

Once stabilized atop the stairs, his face brightened and he let out a rather childish laugh. "Ha, I did it..."

He lowered his gaze to the water some distance below and gulped.

If he were a squire, perhaps he wouldn’t have been so scared — but at his current strength, falling into there was courting death.

He exhaled through his nose before jumping onto the next stair. "Haha, this is actually easy!"

Immediately he tried to jump again, only to slip at the last moment.

Now hanging by his arms, Hinata couldn’t help but curse his rotten luck.

He stretched his arms out further and crawled his way back to the stairs, albeit slowly.

"Fuck! I would have really died."

He sucked in several breaths, cleared his throat, and let aether and lightning flow through him.

In the next instant, even before he could move, an oppressive force fell upon him, causing him to withdraw his aether.

The moment he did, the weight pressing around him vanished instantly.

Hinata was beginning to understand things about these stairs.

The first was that whoever created them was either a very strong awakened or someone who could wield aether; the second was that the stairs seemed to suppress all types of abilities, perhaps regardless of rank. Taken together, what this pointed to was that something incredibly dangerous or valuable was waiting inside the massive cave.

Hinata calmed himself and leaped towards the next tile, this time making sure he didn’t miss his step.

From the third tile, he could make out more of what lay above. Not only were there more than fifty tiles, but the space between each one seemed to grow the higher one got.

He wanted to turn back at this point, but he knew he shouldn’t.

Whatever was in the cave above would definitely prove helpful towards his strength and overall growth.

With that, he took another leap forward towards the next tile.

Tile. Rest. Another tile.

That was the rhythm Hinata had settled into by the twelfth step — not leaping with bravado as he had at the start, but reading the space between each tile before leaping.

The space between them had grown wider, and what had once been manageable hops had become something closer to running starts.

His boots scraped against the surface of golden light as he landed the thirteenth and pushed off immediately into the fourteenth.

He panted heavily, his breath coming out in foggy plumes.

Hinata was growing curious about how high he was, though he didn’t dare look down.

Looking down was an open invitation for fear to take up residence in his heart for the rest of the climb.

Step. Breath. Jump.

By the thirtieth tile, the cave mouth was close enough that he could make out the formations along its rim — diamond clusters that caught the golden light from the stairs and broke it into colourless splinters across the ceiling.

’Who the hell even created this place?’

Hinata had no answer. What he did know was that they were complete psychopaths to make such a test.

Higher and higher. The autumn wind that had pushed at him from below had quieted somewhere around the twentieth tile, replaced by a stillness that pressed against his ears.

Fifty tiles.

Sixty.

His thighs were beginning to register the complaint his pride had been refusing to file. The gaps between tiles had stretched to the point that each leap required his full momentum, and the suppression on his aether meant every ounce of that momentum had to come from his body alone.

Even through the pain and the hopelessness, there was something else churning within him... satisfaction? Maybe, or perhaps he was simply developing a strange new fetish.

Seventy.

"I really miss Goku in times like this."

Eighty.

Ninety.

"Ha... ha... here we fucking go!" Hinata breathed, glancing up from his slouched position toward the last tile, its gap wider than anything he had cleared so far.

He chuckled breathlessly. "I’m so fucking high, aren’t I?"

He took four measured steps back on the tile, rolled his shoulders once, and shook his wrist.

"Okay, Hinata. Let’s do this."

Whoosh!

Hinata rushed forward with as much momentum as his body could produce.

His boots scraped against the light, sending the sound of soft bell-tolls ringing rapidly behind him — then he leaped.

For one suspended moment the world held its breath. The last tile hung above him, the spring glittered somewhere far below, and Hinata was perfectly, completely airborne.

Then his entire momentum vanished and he began —

Falling.

"Shit! Shit!"

Hinata flapped his hands wildly like some prehistoric bird that had just remembered it couldn’t fly.

For one full, horrible second he was staring down at the spring from a height that made his stomach fold completely in half.

He shut his eyes tightly as he plummeted, only to stop just a few meters short of the tile he had missed.

The sensation of the catch didn’t feel like the typical cliche of the hero’s master snatching them back from the edge. It felt like... cotton?

Hinata opened his eyes and found himself cradled in the embrace of large clouds; or rather, smoke.

He raised his still-tense body and glanced toward the cliff’s edge.

Standing there, panting heavily with a tobacco pipe in hand, was none other than Tamara.

Her complexion was pale and horrified, and even from that distance he could feel the dark vibe radiating off her.

Hinata swallowed hard, then produced what he felt was a reasonable smile given the circumstances, slightly too wide, and a little awkward.

"Hahaha..." He struggled to even chuckle. "Hey, Tamara — I can explain, okay?!"

Tamara clenched her jaw, then screamed at the top of her lungs. "Nishikawa Hinata! Do you want to get yourself killed!"

Hinata scratched the back of his neck, his expression sheepish. "Sorry."

Tamara’s face turned red as she whipped her hand furiously through the air. "Do you think a ’sorry’ can cut it?!" A laugh that didn’t quite sound like one tore out of her. "Why don’t I tie you up and lock you somewhere? Won’t that be good? At the very least, you won’t pull such a stunt again."

Hinata’s eyes went wide at Tamara’s sudden shift in demeanor. "What?"