Following the map to the location that Isilia marked out, Shiro read the note that she had put next to the marker.
[The entrance to the dungeon is underground. Things will get strange but continue down the path and the gates will reveal themselves.]
Reading this, Shiro looked towards her surroundings and furrowed her brows since there wasn’t an entrance at all. Activating her analysis skill, the world transformed before her eyes as she could see a path underground.
Tracing it towards the entrance, Shiro raised her eyebrow when the entrance was in front of her this entire time.
Even though analysis revealed the entrance, she couldn’t see anything in real life.
Thinking about it for a moment, Shiro tried to interact with the entrance but her hand seemed to just phase through the door.
‘Strange’
Shiro thought to herself as she activated Rift Strider and bypassed the gate entirely.
Exiting the rift, Shiro looked up at the gate that wasn’t visible to the eyes.
“Do you think that I’ll be able to touch it now that I’m inside?” Shiro asked.
{Maybe, if you get sent out, you can just use the rift again can’t you?} Nimue replied as Shiro nodded her head.
Reaching out for the door, Shiro tried to push it open. Surprisingly, her hand was able to touch the gate but no matter how much strength she put in her arms, she couldn’t open the door at all. Even when she used mana, the door had no reaction at all.
Thinking about it for a moment, Shiro set the door aside for now since her main priority was the dungeon. She’ll analyse the door at a later date. Plus, she wanted to spend some time testing out this door so that she could attempt to recreate it herself.
Continuing down the path, she could see what seems to be luminescent moss that lit up the tunnels in a strange pink hue.
Touching it with her finger, Shiro noticed that it was covered by a layer of liquified mana that fuelled the glow.
‘Hm… how strange. The mana in this place doesn’t fit the requirement for naturally accruing liquidised mana. Does that mean someone had placed these down manually?’ Shiro mused to herself while continuing down the path.
Activating analysis just to make sure that she was on the right path, Shiro continued when all of a sudden, her analysis was cut off and all that she could see was darkness.
Furrowing her brows, she deactivated it but everything was normal.
‘That’s strange…’
Walking back a few steps, she activated analysis and everything was looking normal. Once she passed a certain spot, her skill stopped working. The worst part of it was that the information she gained beforehand was incorrect. The analysis told her that the path continued left while in reality, it continued right. It was almost as if there was an invisible teleport circle which would send her to a different place without knowing.
Even when she scanned the area with her mana, nothing abnormal could be detected.
{So this is what Isilia means by things becoming strange.} Nimue furrowed her brows since this place was a little too creepy for her tastes. The fact that there is a possibility for you to just be sent to other places without you knowing was unsettling since they don’t even know if they’re still on earth.
While Shiro was strong, she didn’t have dimension hopping skills yet. They didn’t even know if her teleport marks worked in a different realm. Every time she tried to set one in the rift, it would always fail.
Taking a moment to experiment a little around this spot where the analysis skill was cut off, Shiro set down a few teleport marks to see if it worked.
Classifying the place beyond the cut off point as dimension B and earth as dimension A, the markers would always fail in dimension B 100% of the time. It was a similar case to when she tried it in her rift which led her to believe that they were indeed being teleported to a different place entirely.
‘How did Isilia even find this place? With the entrance being the way it is, it’s almost impossible for her to enter unless she managed to find a way to open it or she fell down by accident when the entrance was opened.’ Shiro thought to herself before continuing down.
The rest of the journey reminded her of the journey down from within the cave in Astral Horizon’s only this time there was a lack of mana.
Pieces of the walls slowly broke off and started to float in the air, leaving behind a window to an infinite void with no end.
Shiro did try to reach out to this void but there was a barrier of sorts that stopped her.
As she continued, the walls continued to break off until she was only surrounded by the void. Walking on the barrier that prevented her from falling into the darkness, Shiro furrowed her brows as it was rather disorientating. Even though there was no light, no walls to guide her and no directions for her to follow, there was an instinctive understanding of the area which told her that she was getting closer.
It was similar to when she unlocks a skill and the knowledge would appear in her mind.
Walking for another 20 minutes, the void broke apart to reveal an altar with a single set of gates at the very top.
“Seems like we’re here.” Shiro muttered while climbing up the stairs of the altar.
Looking at the gate, one would normally get an idea of the dungeon from the carvings but this gate was completely clean. There were no carvings or patterns.
Identifying the gate was also useless as it would only tell her that it was a level 500 dungeon.
“Well might as well give it a shot.” Shiro shrugged before pushing open the gates.
Suddenly, a blinding light filled her vision as Shiro felt annoyed whenever she saw this. Why use light when you can just use darkness to transition into a dungeon?!
Closing her eyes, Shiro waited patiently for the light to die down before opening her eyes.
Looking at the scene in front of her, Shiro was speechless as tall armoured beasts surrounded her on all sides.
“Erm… do you come here often?” Shiro forced a smile as she could see their levels.
[Guardian Beast LVL 500]
Without saying anything, the first armoured beast immediately swung his arms towards her.
Widening her eyes, Shiro jumped back before summoning ice pillars to act as foot holds and restrictions for the beast.
Checking her system, Shiro wanted to see where she was.
However, the system didn’t give her any sort of information. All it told her was that it was a level 500 dungeon.
‘Che, what a pain.’ Shiro thought with a frown.
Summoning Silvanis, Shiro didn’t hesitate to use lightning as the base element so that she not only had speed but power. With the passive of being able to ignore all forms of armour, this should be easy for her.
Twisting her body, Shiro swung her sword.
*CLANG!
Widening her eyes in shock, Shiro couldn’t believe that her sword actually bounced off the armour like it was a toothpick.
“The f*ck?!” Shiro cried out while dodging their attacks.
Sending her senses out, she tried to see where she was while avoiding their attacks that would probably break half her body.
Seeing that she was in the middle of a desert with no end in sight and hundreds of these monsters around, Shiro gritted her teeth since she couldn’t see the exit either.
‘I think I might have fcked up.’ Shiro thought, as she might miss the start of the new age if she takes too long in here.
{You don’t say. Setting that aside, with them being able to block Silvanis’ strike, it means that they have something other than armour. Silvanis ignores 80% of all forms of armour but not all forms of ‘Defence.’} Nimue reminded as Shiro nodded her head.
‘I know but situations like this are rare. I’ll give a few other weapons a try but if they don’t work, I’m afraid we’ll have to run away for now.’ Shiro narrowed her eyes.
Dismissing Silvanis for now, Shiro summoned her hand cannons and fired two shots toward the eyes.
*PING PING!!
Bouncing off of the armour, Shiro was about to click her tongue when she noticed tiny fractures where the bullets hit.
‘Wait, the guns are effective?’ Shiro thought in surprise since Silvanis didn’t even leave a mark.
It wasn’t an enhanced bullet either, just a normal bullet with no additional properties.
Just as she was about to experiment a little more, she felt danger all around her and quickly jumped into the rift.
*BOOM!!!!
Looking at the explosion that left a deep crater in the desert, Shiro frowned before glancing towards where the shots originated from.
Standing on large pillars, quadrupedal beasts with what seems to be a corrupt form of nanobots squirmed on their back as it had formed the barrel of a gun.
‘Is that my hand cannon but bigger?’ Shiro muttered in her mind.
Unfortunately for her, she wasn’t able to collect her thoughts when the beasts around her charged forth. Their arms writhed for a moment before shifting into what seemed to be a blade. Recognizing it to be Silvanis’ blade, Shiro widened her eyes.
