Waiting patiently by the trees, the group watched as each team challenged the boss. While there was a 95% mortality rate, there were times when they would see groups that pass.
The key to passing the test was to survive long enough. Once the time is up, the boss would retreat back into the water. Following this, a silver glow would encase the challengers.
Once it was finally their turn, the girls didn’t say anything but sit on the boat and travelled towards the island.
“Wow…”
“Anyone know of these ladies?”
“Could they be from a famous sect?”
“Shouldn’t we stop them? It would be a waste for beauties like them to die.”
Hearing the chatter around them, Shiro frowned before releasing a sliver of killing intent. She couldn’t have them distracting her party members before an important fight after all.
After being exposed to the killing intent, the surrounding spectators felt like Shiro was much more dangerous than the actual boss’s and shut up immediately. As for the more powerful cultivators, they snapped their eyes open and looked at Shiro in surprise as well as jubilation.
‘If a young girl like her has such a powerful killing intent, that means she’s experienced. If I can recruit her into my team, I should be able to conquer the bosses easily.’ They would think along these lines. Each of them started to formulate a plan to recruit her and while they were doing this, they kept their eye on Shiro so that they could evaluate her potential.
‘Let’s see if her potential and experience matches up.’ They thought to themselves.
Upon arriving on the island, Shiro found that the space available was surprisingly large. Each of them had enough room to spin in a circle with a sword and not hit each other.
“Trial of the water serpent. Bury your sword into the ground to reinforce your sword. Once that is done, survive the onslaught of the water serpents for 10 minutes. Failure means death.” Shiro muttered out whilst reading the sight.
Tapping her necklace, Shiro summoned her Ascendant Dream and buried it into the ground.
Lyrica, Madison and Silvia did the same even though Silvia only had two daggers.
A commotion instantly erupted seeing Shiro summon four floating swords.
“She has a Divine Relic!!!” Someone shouted out.
“But I’ve never heard of a divine relic in the form of four floating swords.”
“Maybe they’re individual relics? Which could mean she is controlling four divine relics.”
Greed started to surface in their eyes.
Frowning at the different stares, Shiro eventually ignored it since she had bigger concerns.
[Conditions met: Challenge starts in 10 seconds. Please prepare yourselves.]
Looking at the system notification, they looked at each other and nodded.
“As planned as before, Silvia will be in the middle of all of us since she’s not too proficient with daggers.” Shiro said seriously and pulled out her swords.
Holding a blade in each hand, she let the other two float around them as an extra layer of protection.
*RUMBLE!!!!!
Seeing the five serpents appear, Shiro couldn’t help but whistle at how big they looked up close.
*HSSSSS!!!!
“Eh?” Shiro muttered in shock seeing her vision started to blur. Stumbling around in a drunken state, Shiro found it hard to focus her mind on anything.
‘This is bad.’ She thought with a frown.
Meanwhile, both Madison and Silvia was experiencing the same thing. Lyrica on the other hand, was able to somewhat focus her mind.
*DANG DANG!!!!
Parrying two of the bones, Lyrica then grabbed one of Shiro’s floating swords before slashing upwards at another bone.
*CRACK!!
‘Damn that’s sharp!’ Lyrica thought in shock.
While she did know that Shiro’s swords where orange grade weapon’s, their quality far surpassed her expectations.
While Lyrica was trying her best at defending the party, both Madison and Shiro were struggling.
Even though Shiro’s situation was slightly better since her instincts were top notch, Madison wasn’t as fortunate.
Protecting her body with her greatsword, she gritted her teeth in pain. Due to her drunken state, she wasn’t able to parry the strikes meaning she could only resort to resisting against it with brute force.
“Come on!!!” She shouted out whilst kicking her greatsword upwards in order to force the bones back.
As for Silvia, since she was being covered by the trio, she could only use her healing spells to try help the party out.
‘This can’t go on.’ Shiro frowned after seeing the current situation.
‘Right now, I’m barely hanging by using my instinc-‘
*DANG!
Quickly parrying two bones with her swords, Shiro flicked her wrist and send them back.
“Motherf*cker! This miss is trying to think here!!!” Shiro cursed out towards the water serpent.
However, the serpents gave her no respite since the attacks intensified.
Shiro who wasn’t even given a break to think clearly, gritted her teeth in anger.
Taking a deep breath, she erased the emotions on her face and tried to push her focus to its limit. Even with the serpents forcing her into a drunken state.
‘She’s changed!’ The more powerful spectators thought, seeing a change in Shiro’s aura.
“Silvia, Madison, stay close to me.” Shiro ordered seriously.
The duo nodded their head seeing how serious Shiro was right now.
Flicking her wrist, Shiro sent one of her swords up into the air. With only one sword in her hand and three floating around her, she recreated her dual layered defence that she had employed back in the trial to obtain her sword.
However, due to the fact that she also needed to protect Silvia and Madison, her defence had to be spread out. This caused several holes to appear which the serpents took advantage of.
*DANG DANG!
Twisting her body in the air, Shiro deflected the incoming bones.
“Tsk! This miss isn’t the defensive type. LYRICA! Are you able to help Silvia and Madison for a bit?” Shiro shouted out since her defence was the weakest. She was a pure attack type that followed the principle of kill them before they hit you.
“Yeah I can. Just go do what you need to do.” Lyrica nodded since her current state allowed her to deflect the incoming attacks without too much strain.
Hearing her response, Shiro flicked her wrist and retracted her swords so that they floated around her.
“What is she doing?! Isn’t this just sending her teammates to their deaths?!” The spectators shouted out in shock.
From their perspective, all Shiro needed to do was survive for a little longer and they’ll pass. For her to suddenly retract her defences was completely suicidal.
Ignoring their questioning gazes, Shiro couldn’t help but want to slap everyone one of them that was staring so intently.
‘This miss is trying to focus in a drunken state! Can you not stare so blatantly!’
Crouching down on the ground, Shiro jumped up towards the first serpent.
*HSSS!!!
Shooting out more bones from its body, the serpent glared at Shiro, wanting nothing more than to kill the person in front of it.
However, Shiro twisted her body gracefully in the air and dodged the bones. Flexing her fingers, she controlled the swords to help reposition her body on the bones and dashed towards the serpent’s head.
Grabbing two of her swords, she controlled the other two to rip open the serpent’s jaw.
*CRACK!!! HSSS!!!!
The crowd suddenly had the urge to flip a table when they saw Shiro dive into the serpent’s mouth.
“IS SHE SUICIDAL!? CRAZY B*TCH!!” They cursed out in shock.
*RIPPPP!!!!!
Before they could even digest this feeling, they saw Shiro slash her way out of the serpent’s back, snapping the spine in the process.
This scene caused the other serpents to widen their eyes in shock.
‘Chance!’ Shiro thought, seeing a perfect chance to kill another one.
Stepping on one of her floating swords, she catapulted her body towards another serpent.
“HAAA!!” She shouted out whilst stabbing both its eyes.
*HSSS!!!!
Switching her grip on the sword into a reverse grip, Shiro twisted her body clockwise and ripped out a chunk of the serpent’s eye.
“Go!” She commanded as all four swords dived into the eye and started to wreak havoc inside the serpent’s body.
Looking at their fellow serpent brother convulse in pain before dying, the remaining three serpents retreated hastily back into the lake.
‘OH MY GOD!! Mother! She’s too scary!!!’ The serpents wanted to cry. The thought of revenge didn’t even occur since she could easily kill their brother while in a drunken state. If she was fully focused, would she erase them in an instant?!
Little did they know, THEY WERE COMPLETELY RIGHT!
Landing back on the centre island, Shiro sighed at the fact that her Hanfu was stained with the serpent’s blood.
“What a waste.” She lamented since she quite liked the look of the Hanfu.
“Mn? What’s up?” She asked seeing Lyrica, Madison and Silvia look at her in disbelief.
“What’s up my ass!!! Did you just kill two of the test conductors?!” Silvia felt like she wanted to hit Shiro in the head.
“And?” Shiro tilted her head in confusion.
“Aren’t we supposed to survive? It never stated to kill the conductors.” Silvia replied.
“But I mean, it just told us to survive. It never said HOW we should survive. If there are none to threaten us, doesn’t that mean we survive anyway?” Shiro shrugged.
Silvia didn’t what to say since Shiro’s thought process was infallible. It was as she said, the tablet only told them to survive for 10 minutes. There was no mention of if they could attack the attackers or not. They just assumed they had to defence due to the key word ‘Survive’.
A short moment later, a silver glow encased their bodies, signifying their success in the test.
<_>
‘It bloody worked!’ The crowd thought in disbelief.
When they saw Shiro kill two out of the five serpents, they were sure that she would fail the test. But reality thought different.
“Well, let’s go onto the next test site then.” Shiro smiled and led them away from the area.
Watching the group of girls leave, the spectators didn’t know if the test would continue.
The next group looked at each other before making their way to the centre island.
Burying their swords, they waited for the test to start.
When they felt the familiar rumble, they sighed in relief.
‘At least we can still continue with this test.’ They thought.
The rumble continued for a bit longer before stopping. One of the serpents poked his head out warily and started to look around, making sure that Shiro wasn’t in sight.
It sighed in relief before looking at the next group.
However, when it saw a woman, it widened its eyes and plunged back into the lake.
Not too long after, a tail with some ink on the tip started to write something badly on the tablet.
“The hell!” The woman shouted out in anger.
Meanwhile…
“The next spot shouldn’t be too far from us. It’s in a cave behind some foliage.” Shiro said, pointing at the map.
Arriving at the location, they were surprised to see that no one was outside.
“Hmm… maybe the test is inside?” Lyrica suggested.
“Might be.”
Leading the group into the cave, Shiro frowned seeing the visibility drop massively.
It was as if they walked through a realm and entered a plain of darkness.
“Everyone stay close to each other.” Shiro called out.
However, when she got no reply, she started to worry.
Moving around, Shiro tried to look her for the girls but she couldn’t feel anything. One of the strangest aspects in this area was that she couldn’t feel the walls either. The longer she stayed here, the lower her eyesight became.
Eventually, she couldn’t see anything but darkness. No shades of black, no nothing.
‘Seems like the trial has started already.’ Shiro frowned.
Tapping her necklace, she summoned her swords once more. Holding one sword in her right hand, she allowed the other three to orbit around her.
Suddenly, a dense amount of killing intent assaulted her senses. The density rivalled her own much to her shock.
A feeling of danger washed over her as she moved to the side on instinct.
“ARG!” She suddenly felt a blade pierce her left shoulder.
‘Ssss! Is this trial scaled to one’s capabilities?’ Shiro thought to herself whilst increasing the defences around her.
Filtering out the killing intent with her own intent, Shiro tried to lock on to the assailant. However, she frowned when she realised her other senses being cut off. She could see, hear or touch anything.
Even the feeling of her hand gripping the handle of her sword faded away.
During this, an idea popped into her head.
“Che, what an annoying way to cultivate one’s sense of danger.” Shiro muttered with a click of her tongue.
She understood that by cutting off the senses, one would start to rely more on their instincts.
‘Fine, I’ll play along for now.’
Relaxing her entire body, her aura started to fade. It was as if she suddenly died on the spot.
Allowing herself to sink into her instincts, Shiro waited patiently for the assailant to take the bait.
She felt danger overwhelm her from above and flicked her fingers. Two swords stabbed upwards but failed to pierce anything.
“You think a feint can mislead this miss?” Shiro said coldly, appearing in front of her assailant.
Her sword plunged into its neck, stopping it in its tracks.
Gripping its face, Shiro sunk her fingers into all the openings she could feel. The eyes, nose and ear.
‘A small head.’ She thought before slamming the pommel of her other sword into its jaw.
The result of her action was the complete separation of the upper skull to the jaw the to the two opposing forces she applied on the assailant’s skull.
Its death returned all of her senses back to her.
Looking around, she saw that she was back outside the cave with a dark purple glow that encased her body before fading away.
“Trial passed huh? Now all that’s left is to wait.” Shiro muttered, looking back at the cave. She had to wait for the rest of her party to come out.
