Bzzt. Swoosh. Kick.
Eren was busy fighting it out with city residents.
***
The city residents were nothing but human dolls made from the shadow element. And since they were made from such an element, they could mimic the properties of other elements depending upon the participants they were fighting.
It was clear to Eren that the Sansara Sage was a shadow-element user. He had created various shadow-element arrays and subarrays that supported the functions of these shadow-element human dolls inside the testing ground.
The human dolls had human-like bodies and features. But they were genderless, clothless, and faceless entities. It looked like a shadow had turned solid after looking at these human dolls.
At its foundation, the shadow element mimics other elements. The Sansara Sage used that property of the element as a foundation to create these human dolls. And the results he obtained from doing something like this were outstanding.
Eren figured out that the participants had already been scanned by various inspection arrays. The Sansara Sage's arrays converted the information about the participants into their concept avatars. The human dolls were then given these avatars, serving as the appropriate counter to the participants.
What Eren was fighting were his own two avatars that had been attacking him persistently. The other human dolls did their best to support the two damage dealers, attacking the butcher whenever they could at the right time.
The butcher had to say that it was a pain in the ass to fight his avatar. Fighting two of them at the same time increased his difficulty.
The human dolls were almost as good as him if not better. Plus, they had a number and variation advantage. They could match him in speed and agility. What's more? They moved just like him, leaving very few holes in their offense and defense that could be used against them.
Shadow beasts were also among the city's residents. These beasts moved like their real-life counterparts. Plus, their shadow-element mana bodies granted them enhanced resilience. Most of these beasts were nimble on their feet and quick to attack the participants as soon as they saw them.
Additionally, the shadow creatures knew how to attack the participants using team play. The human dolls and beasts would come together and launch various battle tactics on the participants as if they had been training this their whole lives.
Each attack by the shadow creatures was specifically designed for the person they were fighting. As a result, these attacks were highly effective against participants despite their exceptional battle prowess.
Eren was no exception to one-sided bullying either.
He soon figured out that fighting these shadow-element city residents was a waste of time. Even if he could kill them after an intense fight, there would always be more from where they came.
So it was better to fight these shadow creatures only when it was absolutely necessary. The most effective strategy was to explore the city without using any strategy. That's because the shadow creatures could recognize the patterns of the grid search operations carried out by the participants. They would lie in wait for the participants to come to them before attacking them with all they had.
The ambush of shadow creatures was no small matter. No one could come out unscathed after experiencing such an ambush. They had to learn about shadow creatures the hard way as they explored the city for the array key.
The only saving grace for Eren and most other participants was the fact that he could use soul sense. There were only three more participants who could use their soul sense inside the event, which set them apart from the rest.
The soul sense didn't help Eren or the other three rankers locate the presence of city residents. The Sansara Sage must have predicted that his test would be attempted by the exceptional rankers of their generation. He could guess that because of the way he had set up the Sansara World. Therefore, he used techniques to make city residents immune to soul sense detection.
However, it wasn't like the soul sense wasn't useful at all.
The butcher's soul sense had saved him from falling prey to several array traps. It also helped him identify faux constructions and hidden spatial channels. These strategically placed traps could be used against shadow creatures to gain an advantage.
And that's what the butcher used to get rid of the shadow creatures attacking him.
***
Bzzt. Swoosh. Kick.
Eren kicked the human doll, who was attacking him from the front, right on his chest. He grabbed his inky-black hand and pulled him to his side before he could fly away from him. The butcher directed the trajectory of the shadow creature's flight to the second shadow coming at him from behind.
Eren blocked the attack by the first human doll using his Blitz Shield-coated arm and dodged the elemental arrows shot by the second human doll using Sedated Perception. He then charged his leg with some more lightning mana before kicking the first shadow creature in his face once again.
Time seemed to have slowed down for the butcher as well as the shadow creatures.
All of these actions were performed in such a manner that they looked like one seamless move. In the next moment, the first shadow creature flew towards the second one. The in-flight shadow creature's back served as another line of defense for Eren as the elemental arrows the second human doll had shot landed straight on its back.
The second human doll was dragged away from the butcher because of its in-speed collision with the first human doll. The two shadow creatures passed through a faux construction behind them as if it didn't exist before disappearing into thin air.
Eren forced the two shadow creatures out of the city by forcing them to enter a spatial channel hidden inside the faux construction. The creatures' shadow element bodies dissolved into nothingness as soon as they appeared outside the boundaries of the city.
AN: Shadow-element's properties have been explained in chapter 719.
