The second part of the dungeon required her to dodge the attacks of snipers. However, that was easily avoided with her Rift Walker skill.
Dashing through the long corridor with ease, Shiro looked around for the boss.
‘Hmm… Since this dungeon is in the shape of the heart, I should be reaching the second chamber soon.’ Exiting the rift, Shiro slid on the ground for a short moment to dodge 2 stone spears sent out by the snipers.
Making two spears herself, Shiro sent them flying towards the two snipers.
Immediately continuing down the corridor, she found the doorway that leads into the second chamber.
“Finally.” Shiro muttered.
However, the moment she entered the room, she felt a strong sense of dread.
Her first instinct was to use the rift walker skill but it was still on cooldown. Without delay, Shiro swiped her hand down as a nanotech shield formed in front of her.
*BOOM!!!!
A beam of energy collided with the shield, almost piercing it in one go.
Gritting her teeth, Shiro twisted her body and dodged out from behind the shield. Luckily for her, she managed to dodge just before the shield crumbled away.
Rolling on the ground, Shiro looked up at the boss.
[Cruel Mechanised Giant – LVL 40 BOSS]
HP: 500,000/500,000
MP: 980,000/1,000,000
The boss had a humanoid lower body but lacked a torso and had no arms or head. Instead, in place of the torso, a shiny blue core that was protected by a translucent barrier could be seen while several black metallic angel wings floated around the core.
Seeing that Shiro had avoided its attack, the boss shifted its body, controlling a few angel wings to before torso armour to protect the core.
‘So the core is the main weak point. Since the wings are floating, it means the joints can’t be abused.’ Shiro analysed immediately.
“Little Yin! Give me support and avoid drawing aggro.” Shiro commanded as she flipped back onto her feet in time to avoid a few lightning bullets the boss had shot towards her.
*Chirp!
Responding to Shiro’s command, Yin flew upwards and used Ice Chain to try to hold the boss down for a moment while Shiro recovers.
*PING!
The ice chains shattered immediately upon contact.
‘High resistance to control type skills.’ Shiro frowned as she kept her body low whilst running around the boss.
Flexing her fingers, four ice daggers appeared in her hands.
She pivoted on her left foot and threw the daggers without decreasing her speed too much.
*BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM!
Each of the daggers was infused with lightning to increase the damage potential. But Shiro only frowned when she saw the daggers deal minimal damage.
Seeing that her daggers didn’t work as well as she hoped, Shiro sent her killing intent out at full power.
The moment she stepped down with her foot, ice spread outwards as it rapidly transformed the boss room into an ice chamber.
Aiming her hand at the boss, Shiro clenched her fist, causing the surrounding mana to go berserk.
*BOOM!!!!!
Tens of ice pillars shot out from every direction and slammed against the boss’s body.
Shiro’s frown deepened when she saw the angel wings protect the boss.
‘Seems like level 40 is pushing it a little. But, it’s not impossible.’ Shiro thought to herself. While the defence was a little tough, it should be possible for her to fight it in a battle of attrition.
Moreover, unlike the previous boss, once this boss reaches 1HP, Shiro guessed that the mana barrier protecting core would be destroyed. Even if it wasn’t destroyed, it should still be within her limits to kill the boss.
The boss’s wings trembled for a short moment before bursting out with explosive power.
*BANG!
Breaking apart the ice pillars, the torso of the boss opened up once more as the core was visible.
Feeling the mana stir, Shiro knew the beam attack was being charged up once more.
Normally, the best thing to do would be to stop the boss from charging. But right now, Shiro wasn’t able to output that kind of power with her current arsenal.
Shifting her feet slightly, a pair of nanotech boots were formed.
*BOOM!!!!
Shiro had dashed to her right the moment the beam shot out of the core. Pushing the rockets on her boots to their maximum output, Shiro made sure to insert more mana in order to outrun the death laser that was currently trailing behind her.
Once she saw the laser falter, she knew the attack was about to end.
She dismissed the boots and dashed forward with her physical power.
A single gauntlet and javelin formed on her right hand as Shiro twisted her body.
Yin Style Phantom Art: 3rd Phantom – Counter Weight Phantom.
The rockets activated with a violent burst of power.
“HAA!”
Throwing the javelin with all her power, she attempted to strike the core before the wings close up and protect it once more.
*BANG!
However, her javelin was just a little short as the wings clamped down on the javelin and snapped it in half.
Frowning at this, Shiro dismissed her gauntlet and glanced at her remaining MP.
[MP: 143,500/170,500]
‘Hmm, I’ve already used almost 30k of my MP.’ Shiro thought with a frown.
Comparing the damage she caused with her MP consumption, Shiro felt a headache coming as it was most likely going to be another prolonged fight like the last boss.
This time it was worse since the defence of this boss was much higher than the rock giant.
‘Since Nanomancer takes too much MP from me right now, especially with my broken mana links, I should try fight it out with my Snow Girl class. Plus, with my passives, I should be able to reduce my MP consumption by a large margin.` Shiro thought as she started to feel frustrated about her mana links once more.
Shaking her head, Shiro stopped complaining mentally and focused on killing the boss.
###
40 minutes. It took Shiro 40 minutes to finally get the boss down to 1HP. During the fight, she wasn’t able to deal any substantial damage, so she could only rely on her passive and slowly whittle down the boss.
Cold Aura, Icy Touch and Ice Field Affinity played the biggest part in the fight. Cold Aura and Icy Touch helped reduce the MP consumption while Ice Field Affinity helps her regenerate some MP and HP over time since she had converted the entire boss room into an ice chamber that played to her advantage.
Naturally, the boss had also managed to melt large portions of the ice away due to its beam attack. There were several scorch marks on the surface of the ice since she didn’t have any need to refreeze the room anymore.
With the boss at 1HP, she just needed a good hit to end the fight.
Taking inspiration from what mages had done during the faction recruitment event, Shiro created two magic circles, one on each hand and over-layered the two circles together.
Visualising the effects of each magic circle, smaller magic circles started to form around her before being combined into the main magic circle.
Once she was done, a grand array of runes and neon patterns laid out in front of her. There were three layers to the magic circle with the third layer flickering on and off.
‘So I can’t do it without reaching tier 3 in attunement?’ Shiro thought seeing the third layer of the magic circle fizzle out.
Shaking her head, Shiro decided to activate her magic with just two layers of magic circles.
Pushing out with her palm, Shiro controlled the magic circle to expand above the boss.
*KISH! KISH!
Sparks flew as the two layers rotated in opposite directions. The first layer glowed with a neon blue light while the outer layer glowed with a neon yellow light.
Multi-coloured lights started to form above the area as the temperature dropped rapidly. Layers of ice could be seen forming on the surface of the boss’s body as the yellow magic circles started to flicker with lightning.
*BOOM!!!!!
Lightning slammed against the boss repeatedly as thermal shock was being activated constantly. The constant change in temperature caused cracks to form on the boss’s body before shattering apart and reduced the pieces into piles of dust.
Once the boss was entirely reduced to ash did she stop the magic.
Walking over to the pile of ash on the ground, Shiro raised an eyebrow before looking up at Yin.
“Little Yin! You can collect the mana stones. Since you like them so much, how about this. You take 60% of the mana stones and I take 40%. But, you have to collect them while I kill the enemies.
Yin flapped her wings while thinking about the proposition.
*Chirp!
Flying down, Yin raised 7 feathers up at Shiro.
‘$%£^!!! Scam!’ Shiro thought seeing Yin bargaining with her.
“Fine since you want to be like that. 0% shares for you and I’ll just collect them by myself.” Shiro said whilst searching through the pile of dust.
Yin ‘paled’ at what Shiro said and tugged at her robe in a panic.
*Chirp! Chirp! Chirp!
When she raised 6 feathers as to agree to the first offer, Shiro only huffed and turned her head away.
Tears started to well up in Yin’s eyes as she raised up 4 feathers instead.
Seeing that Shiro was still ignoring her, the tears threatened to spill.
“Pft! Awww I’m sorry Little Yin.” Shiro said as she gave Yin a cuddle and patted her head.
She had wanted to tease Yin a little but didn’t expect her to almost cry.
“We’ll do the first one ok? You get 60% and I get 40%.” Shiro said pacifying Yin.
*Chirp!
Yin cried out tearfully and dived into Shiro’s hood.
“Hahaha.” Laughing at her reaction, Shiro collected the rest of the loot through the system.
The boss dropped a total of 18 items with 16 of them being crafting materials, 1 weapon and 1 key.
The weapon was an axe so Shiro stored it away. However, her interest was piqued with the key. She still had the key that she received during the Frag Ant’s Burrow dungeon.
The key that she had received was a Tier 2 Trial key for a place called Silvermoon Keep recommended for level 40’s.
However, this time, the key she received was a Tier 2 Team Trial key.
[Tier 2 Team Trial Key]
A key that will send your party to the trial: (Sword Myth Springs).
Recommended level: 45
“Hmm… I should probably get a party of 5 if we want to challenge this trial.” Shiro muttered, storing the key away.
While she had confidence that their little group of three could complete this, the punishment for failure was a drop in level. Not something that she would like to experience if she could help it. Plus, it wasn’t odd that people would recruit others to help them complete trails.
And on top of this, she could also find a few friends from New York to help out since they knew of her strength. Primarily Helion or Silvia’s party.
“Dungeon, o Dungeon, what kind of time-consuming puzzle do you have for me this time.” Shiro said with a slight tune added to the sentence.
Looking at the puzzle tablet, Shiro saw a riddle.
“What can be seen in the middle of March and April that can’t be seen at the beginning or at the end of either month?”
Reading the question, Shiro frowned slightly.
‘March and April are in spring, so maybe flowers? But they can be seen at the start and end of the months though… hmmm….’ She thought while furrowing her brows.
‘However, since this is a riddle, it should be something outside of the box. Something that probably doesn’t have anything to do with the month’s themselves… the number of the month? The number of letters? The-… wait a moment… No way.’ Shiro thought as she had an idea but wasn’t sure if it was right.
“How do I even write the answers?” She muttered.
As if hearing her question, a pen of sorts ejected out from the side of the tablet.
Raising an eyebrow, Shiro grabbed the pen and wrote the letter R onto the tablet.
*CLANK!
Hearing a lock or sorts opened, Shiro was dumbfounded that it actually worked.
“Is that it?” She said as it was much faster than the lever puzzle. However, before she could even celebrate, she saw another door with a riddle etched on a tablet.
“Oh my god…” Shiro said as she facepalmed.
As much as she wanted to complete the dungeon, it simply wasn’t worth the trouble.
Giving up on clearing the dungeon, Shiro had returned early back to the campsite.
“Ah Shiro-nee! You’re back early today.” Kanae called out as she ran over to Shiro.
[Have you been waiting for me?] Shiro asked with a smile.
“Yeah. You said you were going to be early today so I couldn’t wait for you to come back.” Kanae said as she pulled on Shiro’s sleeve.
[What about the others?] Shiro asked.
“Um, Sophie and Ruby are out shopping with their mum. Lia is playing on her phone.” Kanae replied.
[Then what about you? Where you just waiting for me? Or were you doing something else?]
“Well, I was doing what you taught us before. The horse thingy. I can’t do the other one so I tried practising this one. I want you to have a look.” Kanae said with excitement.
Seeing her eagerness, Shiro smiled lightly and waited for Kanae to demonstrate.
Suppressing her nervousness, Kanae tucked her arms by her side and crouched down with her back straight. She held her breath as she tried to keep her posture but exhaled heavily not too long after, falling backwards.
Shiro caught her before she fell on the floor.
[That was very good posture. Though there can be a few improvements. I’ll help you out ok?] Shiro typed out. She could tell that Kanae had been practising earnestly, due to the sweat marks on her clothes, so she wanted to help her out more.
Reading her words, energy flowed back into Kanae as she couldn’t wait to get started in training with Shiro.
