Stretching herself away, Shiro was surprised to see Kanae hugging her inside her own sleeping bag.
'How did she get in here?' Shiro thought at first. Her next thought was; 'Sorry I don't have anything to cushion your head with.' Shaking her idle thoughts away, Shiro gently nudged Kanae out of her embrace.
"Mn…Shiro-nee?" Kanae muttered as she opened her eyes groggily.
[Shh, go back to sleep. It's still very early in the morning.] Shiro typed out and placed her finger on her lips.
"What about you? Are you going somewhere Shiro-nee?" She asked while rubbing her eyes.
[Yeah. I'll be back earlier today though ok?] She smiled.
"Ok~"
Getting her answer, Kanae closed her eyes and fell asleep.
Chuckling lightly, Shiro got out of the sleeping bag and exited the tent.
Her goal for today was give one of the dungeons in this city a try. Her second goal was to try level Yin up as much as possible.
Looking at the sky that had yet to be illuminated by the morning sun, Shiro smiled as she felt like this was a perfect time to assassinate someone. Not that she needed to.
"Morning Little Yin. Get warmed up a little now, we're going to be levelling you up today." Shiro said as Yin pushed her head out and looked at Shiro before pointing at her mouth.
"Right, breakfast."
Giving Yin a mana stone, Shiro also ate her breakfast while looking at the pamphlet.
The lowest level dungeon are level 40 and there are 4 of these dungeons around Cairosa. The first one is called 'Giant's Heart'.
Giant's Heart was a dungeon that seemed like it was inside a giant's heart. The colour of the stones made the walls look like flesh while the map layout looked like the heart chambers. Each chamber has a boss that needed to be defeated.
This dungeon was a hybrid dungeon meaning that there were puzzles for her to solve in order to progress through the chambers.
Another dungeon was a pure puzzle dungeon called Ocean's Sadness. While it was a pure puzzle dungeon, that didn't mean there were no monsters. Only that the monsters were much less frequent and it only had 1 boss instead of multiple ones.
The third dungeon was a normal floor dungeon called Blood Vale. The monsters there constantly radiated an excessive amount of bloodl.u.s.t that would hinder a lot of adventurers.
The final level 40 dungeon was an underwater dungeon called: Sea King's Labyrinth. There were small pockets of air scattered throughout the dungeon to help refile one's oxygen but it was far from enough. It was mandatory for an adventurer to bring a scuba diving set to help them through the dungeon or else they would die by drowning.
Looking at the four dungeons, Shiro eventually settled with the dungeon Giant's Heart.
That was due to the fact that she believed this dungeon to be the most efficient in levelling Yin up.
The puzzle dungeon wouldn't let Yin receive enough contribution, the Blood Vale would hinder Yin's combat prowess and the Sea King's Labyrinth was underwater so that was self-explanatory. The only option left was Giant's Heart.
"Giant's Heart. The hybrid dungeon has five puzzles and four bosses. The puzzles are not too difficult as it requires a little bit of creative thinking. The puzzles would be randomised with different functions being swapped around. However, there is a reset lever and a stone tablet that will explain the final goal." Shiro read the pamphlet out loud.
"I suppose the puzzles are meant to train the person's way of thinking." She said as she stored the pamphlet away.
The more diverse a mage's train of thought was, the more variety there were to their magic. With dungeons like these that trained up creative thought, you never knew if it would give a mage a sudden burst of inspiration and allow them to create an attack with their tier magic.
As she made her way to the Giant's Heart, she couldn't help but notice a few of the New York adventurer's heading to the same location.
'Seems like they want to continue to level up.' Shiro guessed.
Yin Style Phantom Art: 1st Phantom – Illusionary Phantom.
Making sure that no one noticed her, Shiro snuck past the crowd of people and entered the dungeon by herself.
Shielding her eyes as per usual, she frowned when she saw the inside of the dungeon.
"Tsk, it is rather similar to flesh isn't it Little Yin?" Shiro asked, looking at the flesh coloured stone walls.
Sliding her fingers across the walls, Shiro frowned in disgust as there was a thin layer of slime on the walls. She flicked the slime off her hands as she turned her attention to the first monster she saw.
[Stone Giant – LVL 40]
HP: 150,000/150,000
MP: 50,000/50,000
The stone giant stood at almost 3 meters tall with little to no weaknesses. Rather than a giant, Shiro would probably call it a golem since she couldn't see any flesh on the surface of the giant.
'Odd… I don't think I remember seeing a monster like this in my past life.' She thought to herself.
However, just a quick glance allowed her to determine the type of monster this giant was and which weapon was best suited for fighting monsters like the giant.
'Heavy armour type monsters are mostly weak to pure blunt damage type weapons. A hammer would do just fine in this situation.'
Reaching out with her right hand, metal and lightning intertwined into the shape of a nanotech hammer.
On the back of the hammer, a miniature engine could be seen as it would help give her extra momentum when she needed it.
Holding the hammer with one hand, Shiro considered increasing her strength a little more. If not, her body wouldn't be able to handle the recoil of her hand cannons.
She extended the handle of the hammer so that it became a two-handed weapon instead.
"Little Yin, I'll be the one to tank the monster. I want you to rack up as much contribution as you can ok?" Shiro said while Yin nodded and flapped her wings.
Seeing that Yin was ready, Shiro dashed forward with the hammer in tow and narrowed her eyes when she was within striking distance of the monster.
Rift walker!
Entering the rift, Shiro avoided the giant's initial attack.
*BOOM!
Upon leaving the rift, she had twisted her body and activated the rocket boost to increase the momentum of her hammer before slamming it into the torso of the giant.
A small indentation could be seen on the torso.
Yin took advantage of the moment when the giant stumbled backwards to activate her skills.
Ice Chain + Shadow Buff.
With the monster chained up, Yin folded her wings and nose-dived towards the monster.
Shadow Talon + Rift Walker!
Taking advantage of the fact that rift walker allowed her to phase through objects, Yin makes sure her speed was at max before attacking the monster and escaping without harm.
Even though the damage caused wasn't as big as Shiro's, Yin had more opportunities to increase her contribution since that was Shiro's goal.
###
Only after almost 30 minutes did the monster finally die.
*BOOM!
Collapsing from a finishing blow by Shiro, the monster's body crumbled into ash.
The moment the boss had died, Yin also levelled up, bringing her level up to 22 in one go.
[Yin – LVL 22]
HP: 42,000/42,000
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MP: 110,000/110,000
"So roughly a level 40 monster per level up huh? We should be able to get you near level 30 then." Shiro estimated as she collected the shiny mana stone from the ash pile.
Collecting the loot, Shiro sighed in disappointment. There were no weapons and only a few miscellaneous items that wasn't all that useful.
'The loot from these monsters should probably be defence and power focused. The weapons will most likely be heavy type weapons like this hammer.'
Sighing at the potential loot that won't suit her at all, Shiro proceeded to attack the next Stone Giant.
###
Meanwhile, Lyrica and Madison was partying up with a few familiar faces.
"Hey Lyrica. Long time no see I suppose." Silvia smiled upon seeing Lyrica party up with them to clear a dungeon.
"Yeah, Shiro was gone this morning. Probably trying to solo a dungeon." Lyrica replied wearily.
"Gahaha, anyone who can kill the raid boss solo can probably solo a normal dungeon just fine." Jonas laughed.
This was the party of five that Shiro and Lyrica had joined during their first raid together.
Jonas: Axe Warrior, Paul: Assassin, Erica: Fire Mage, Trace: Swordsman and Silvia, the grand healer that Shiro had wanted to recruit.
"Wait what? Shiro killed a raid boss by herself???" Madison asked with a mix of shock and surprise.
"Yeah you weren't there when we did a raid were you?" Lyrica said as she remember that they weren't too close back then.
"New friend?" Silvia asked as she looked at Madison.
The males, Paul and Trace, was looking at something else.
"Yeah. She became part of our party after the raid I believe. Also, don't even think about it. Despite how she looks, Madi is a minor." Lyrica said pointing at Paul and Trace.
"Huh? A minor? With that body!?" Paul asked, wide eyed.
"Yes I am." Madison said with a frown and folded up her arms to try to look threatening.
However, that only accentuated her bust further.
Smacking both Paul and Trace on the back of the head, Jonas smiled apologetically.
"Sorry about this. They're a little stressed since they haven't been able to unstress themselves lately." Janos said ignoring Paul and Trace's embarrassment.
"It's fine. So which dungeon are we heading to today? Should we try to do a full run of a level 40 dungeon?" Lyrica asked.
"That's the plan." Jonas nodded.
While they were talking, Lyrica, Madison and Silvia attracted a few unsavoury glances from people who were in the tall buildings at the slums.
"Shall we?"
"Give it some time. New trade partners should be coming soon. We'll get a few last minute products to jack up the prices hahaha."
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"Yeah, why don't we use them a few times first? Seems like a waste to let them go unused."
"Well, they're refugees. The main city officials won't care as much."
"Hahaha, great!"
###
Arriving at the first boss, Shiro glanced over at Yin's level.
[Yin – LVL 26]
HP: 50,000/50,000
MP: 150,000/150,000
After hitting level 25, Yin had also unlocked a new skill.
[Absorption/Redirection (Tier 1)]
Absorb 50% of the damage taken in the past second and redirect it back at 50% the power of what is absorbed.
Maximum damage absorbed is equal to tier.
Current limit: 20,000 can be absorbed. (40,000 total damage)
Example: Attack deals 2,000 damage. Absorb 1,000, redirect 500 damage.
Cost: 5,000 MP Per use.
Cooldown: 10 seconds.
This skill allowed her and Yin to half the incoming damage to a certain degree. While it was currently limited to the skill only being at tier 1, the potential this skill held was pretty high tier in Shiro's opinion.
Unfortunately, since she had been giving Yin most of the contribution, she wasn't able to level up. But from her estimates, she was pretty close. This boss should potentially help her level up.
The boss in question was much bigger and bulkier than the other giants. Measuring at around 6 meters tall, Shiro had to crane her head back just to see the top of the giant.
The worst part about this was that it required heavy firepower. Something that Shiro wasn't able to produce just yet since her heavy firepower mainly came from her hammers.
If she tried to use her ice, it wouldn't have enough momentum and power to land the killing blow.
But that didn't mean she had no options. She did have a few but she needed to be creative with them.
But before she could care about the final blow, she needed to take the boss down to 1 HP first.
*BZZZ!
Lightning and metal surged around Shiro's body as she created a pair of boots and gauntlets. The boots increased her overall manoeuvrability while the gauntlet increased her power and throwing speed.
'Seems like this is my limit for now.' Shiro thought as she could feel the massive strain on her mana links just from creating four pieces of armour.
"Well… I suppose just the boots will be fine." She muttered as the gauntlets disappeared.
Flicking her wrist, a two-handed nanotech war axe could be seen in her hands.
"This should do." She grinned.
*Chirp!
Seeing Shiro ready to start the fight, Yin fly up into the air to provide her with support. While the small fries could be dealt with, Yin knew the most she could do against the boss was help Shiro by restraining it.
With her preparations completed, she charged towards the boss.
[Reinforced Rock Giant – LVL 40 BOSS]
HP: 500,000/500,000
MP: 200,000/200,000
*URAHHH!!!
Lifting up his arms, the boss slammed his fists into the ground.
*BOOM!!!
The rocket propellers on her boots activated as she glided across the ground, unaffected by the tremors.
There were naturally advantages and disadvantages to her nanotech boots.
The advantages being better aerial manoeuvres and faster speed if she upgraded them more.
The disadvantage, however, was that she could no longer use her 1st and 2nd phantom when airborne using her nanotech boots.
"But…" Shiro grinned coldly.
"This pair of boots is more than enough to deal with you!"