The moment she walked out of her room, Shiro was greeted by a hall of children who were eagerly awaiting their breakfast. Upon seeing Shiro, they ignored her as she wasn’t the lady with the food.
Ignoring them, Shiro sat by near one of the corners and started to browse through the memories that the system had implanted to help her with this trial.
From what she could understand, in order to attempt one of the trials, one must make their way to the towers. The higher ranking and more powerful the god, the bigger the tower. Unfortunately, the village of Tria was in the countryside where there were hardly any god trials so she’d need to find a way for her to reach one of the bigger cities or else her first divinity will be useless for her to attempt the Primordial trials.
‘Since I’m only allowed one divinity before attempting the primordial trials, I need to find a god that can provide me with the power to accomplish this. Heracles is definitely one of them but it’s probably hard to find his trial out of the many that fill this place.’ Shiro thought with a frown.
With the way this place is set up, she’d need to adapt to the situation and find the most suitable trial.
She had a year to find and complete the trial or else she’d lose her qualification. Next up was the matter of actually completing the trial. Most people in this world will choose a lesser deity for their first trial and complete the test.
Unfortunately, she was not given that freedom since she had to complete the five hardest trials in this realm. Since she was limited to one divinity, she had to make this one count.
Furrowing her brows, she tried to remember gods that had helpful powers but were not too strong or else she wouldn’t be able to complete the trial. Right now, she was in her base state so she had to be careful of not biting off more than what she could chew.
While she was in the midst of thought, a bowl with some gruel was laid out in front of her.
Eating it quickly to fill her hunger, Shiro was unsatisfied and wanted some more.
Glancing at the old fruit knife that she had taken from the room, she figured that she could probably hunt a wild animal and cook their meat for food.
She also wanted to take a bath since her body was filthy right now.
‘Seems like I’ll need to go steal some things from the village before I leave. It’s not like I plan to stay here anyways.’ Shiro thought to herself.
Standing up, she left the orphanage without saying anything and looked around the village.
Most of the houses here were made from simple brick and the area was quite open.
To the south of the orphanage was a small stream that had crops growing by the side.
Thinking about it for a moment, Shiro figured that she could probably give herself a good wash further down the stream so that her body wasn’t seen by the people here.
But before that, she wanted some proper clothes.
Narrowing her eyes at the back of the orphanage, she could see the same lady who had given her the food drying some clothes. Unfortunately, they were pretty much the same as what she was currently wearing.
‘Tch, just my luck.’ Shiro clicked her tongue.
Shaking her head, she decided to go for a quick walk through the village in order to find any clothes that were lying around so that she could take them for herself.
Unfortunately, the clothes in this village were all rather poor in quality so Shiro gave up on looking for some clothes. If anything, she can just use the hide from the animals that she’ll kill later.
Walking back to the stream, she started to follow along the side and left the village.
The stream led to two locations, one was a forest and the other was an empty grass plain. Choosing the forest route, Shiro walked while rubbing her stomach from the hunger. Despite having eaten a bowl of gruel, it was extremely watered down and she had essentially drunk water instead.
Sighing softly, she glanced around her and made sure that she was alone. Once she was sure, she took her potato sack dress off and set it down by the side.
Sinking her body into the stream, she started to wash the dirt off her body.
It took her half an hour to properly wash herself. But in doing so, she felt much more refreshed.
Looking at her reflection, she saw that she essentially looked the same only with slightly rough hair and her complexion was rather poor. She was quite slim in an unhealthy way and her lips were cracked.
Seeing herself in the stream, she was reminded of Achilles’ legend and figured that he was probably a good choice for one. After all, he was bathed in the river Styx and became immortal except for his heel which caused his downfall.
Shaking her head, she was about to step out of the river when she saw a pair of eyes glaring at her from the bush.
Instantly going on guard, Shiro quickly grabbed her old fruit knife and prepared for combat if it was required.
*Grrrr…..
Hearing a low growl, Shiro crouched down slowly and prepared to lash out as well. While she may be weakened right now, she could still use the monster’s own strength against him.
Unfortunately, her foot slipped on one of the rocks in the river and her guard was compromised.
‘Sh*t!’
Understanding that she had broken her own guard, Shiro quickly used her spare hand to push herself to the side so that the monster didn’t kill her instantly. Using the river stream to reposition herself, she quickly crawled out of the river and glared towards the monster in the centre who had tried to pounce on her.
The monster resembled a lynx with golden brown fur that was now drenched with water.
His golden eyes glared towards her as he slowly swam to the side and dried himself with a quick shake of his body.
Unfortunately for Shiro, unlike a normal lynx, this monster was the size of an a.d.u.l.t human and had long sharp claws and spikes similar to a porcupine sticking out of his back.
Furrowing her brows, she figured that it was probably hard to kill this thing with just an old fruit knife and that she probably needed something longer.
However, it did not mean that she wasn’t going to try.
Taking a deep breath, she dashed towards the monster and quickly grabbed a loose rock by the side.
Throwing it towards him, she took the chance hop backwards in time to avoid his swipe.
Grabbing the extended claw, she fell on her back and kicked the monster over her body.
*HOWL!
Crying out in anger, the monster quickly adjusted his body and pounced towards her but Shiro had already rolled out of the way.
Using the tree as cover, she jumped up and kicked the beast into the river.
While he was thrashing around, Shiro jumped in as well and pinned his claws under her feet as best she could before digging her fruit knife into his eye.
Giving the knife a quick spin, she pulled the knife and quickly backed off as the pain caused the monster to attack wildly.
Unfortunately for Shiro, one of his claws had managed to swipe against her outer thigh, causing a large amount of blood to flow into the water.
“SSSSSS!!” Taking a sharp breath of air, Shiro glared back at the monster and had a single thought.
‘You’re my f*cking dinner tonight!’
With her knife destroying one of his eyes, the monster’s vision was now impaired. Taking this chance, tried her best to run towards the monster but the wound on her thigh prevented her from accomplishing this properly.
However, it was good enough.
Seeing her limped run, the monster lashed out at her once more as Shiro quickly ducked down into the river.
Grabbing his hind legs, she quickly dragged him down and started to stab toward his abdominal area and chest.
The monster kicked his hind legs and scratched at Shiro in order to get away but she managed to dodge most of his attacks with minor injuries. After a few short moments, the monster fell limp as Shiro managed to kill him with a major wound on her thigh and several cuts around her stomach and chest with varying degrees of seriousness.
Most of them were shallow but a few were deep and Shiro had to quickly patch them up.
Thankfully for her, she had obtained her dinner for the night.
