Chapter 561 Collecting Artefact Pieces
"However, I'll need a bit of time to do that since I researched on how to get rid of the weapon rather than make it so that you can interact with the Soul Fragments." Helion shrugged.
"Hmm… if it's going to be too much trouble then you can just go with the first option. I don't really mind since it would be good for me to get rid of this weapon." Shiro smiled.
"How about this, give me around a week to work with these weapons. After a week, if I still haven't figured it out, we'll just get rid of Akram first." Helion suggested as Shiro nodded her head.
"Sure I don't mind. However, you might want to be careful. When I was looking for your research notes, there was someone who was controlling the head of the Faction as a puppet and he seemed to know of me. We don't know his goal or reasons so you want to be cautious." Shiro warned since it was an unfavourable position for them.
The enemy knew of them but they didn't know the enemy.
"Alright. I think I might have to go back to New York for this since it's probably safer over there." Helion nodded.
"Oh before that though, I grabbed a few high grade materials for you so if you ever want to make some high level weapons, these should suit your needs." Shiro smiled and pulled out metal after metal.
Looking at the giant collection of materials used for blacksmithing being laid out on the table, Helion was quite overwhelmed by a few of them.
"Holy… That's all for me?" He asked with disbelief as Shiro nodded her head with a smile.
"Yup. Anyways, it's pretty late into the night now so you should get some rest. Me, Lil' Tian and Yin will be leaving the city tomorrow since we got more artefact pieces to look for."
"Oh you're leaving already?"
"Yeah. You see, there's something coming up and we need to get stronger quickly. For Yin, she'll need to get pieces of this artefact in order to class up so we're just doing that for her now." Shiro nodded her head.
"I see… Alright. In that case then I won't bother you any longer. Good night." Helion smiled and started to store things away in his inventory. Giving them a small wave, he left the room.
Stretching lightly, Shiro was about to prepare to sleep when she realised that Nan Tian was still in the room.
"You know, Lil' Tian, I meant you too." Shiro chuckled.
"I know, I'm just searching for something in my inventory. Give me a second." Nan Tian nodded.
After a few moments, he brought out a small pill.
"Take this. It should help you with muscle fatigue." He smiled
"You noticed?" Shiro raised her eyebrow.
"Of course. Normally, you're quite expressive with your body language but this time, it's rather reserved and hindered. I figured that you probably used something with a backlash against the enemy so your body is recovering right now." Nan Tian explained while giving her the pill.
[Backlash Recovery Pill]
A pill to recover from the backlash received from any source. However, depending on the strength of the backlash, the effects of this pill may vary.
Smiling softly, Shiro threw the pill into her mouth as a soothing energy could be felt spreading through her body, relieving her of some of the fatigue.
"Thank you." She smiled as Nan Tian nodded his head.
Watching him leave, Shiro sighed softly before changing into some pyjamas. Since this room was a two person room, Yin had the other bed.
"Go to sleep soon ok Yin?"
"Mn. I'll go to sleep once I've finished watching this show." Yin replied.
Laying her body on the bed, Shiro closed her eyes.
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{You know… I can hear what you're thinking right?} Nimue raised her eyebrows.
'. . . .'
{'Maybe it's ok to let him stay in the room?'}
'Shut it.'
{Fine you tsundere.}
###
Waking up in the morning, they had some food before making their way to the Teleport Shrine. Helion was with them since he also needed to use it. After all, he was making his way back to New York.
"So in 7 days time, I'll give you a message about whether or not I've succeeded. If I haven't, we'll continue with getting rid of the sword." Helion smiled.
"Mn. Good luck." Shiro waved her hand softly as Helion disappeared from his spot.
"Now then, I believe it's our turn now. We managed to collect 4 pieces of the artefact so far and there are 3 more left on the map that Lucius gave us. We can probably do it in a day or so if we're fast." She muttered.
"That gives us around 4 days to do anything we want." Nan Tian chuckled.
"Mn, perhaps we should meet up with the main party in these four days. I'm still trying to find clues on the ice queen but there haven't been any leads. IF there were, I would have wanted to go look for her instead." Shiro sighed.
"There hasn't been any news from the sect members either. Except for Thiria, none of the other queens have revealed themselves so easily. At most, there were only abnormal increases of mana near a few cities that would disappear after a while." Nan Tian shook his head.
"Well… we do know how important the initial set up is for the new age. Unless they're prepared like Thiria, I doubt we'll see too many queens doing the same thing. I suppose we can spend the four days we have spare to scout out the places with sudden spikes of mana. Though… thinking of this, the ice queen did leave after her anchor was 'stabilised'. Do you think it might be hard if not impossible to destroy an anchor once it's stabilised? After all, we did catch the fire queen off guard before her anchor could stabilise." Shiro asked curiously.
"Perhaps. We'll probably figure it out once we visit a few of the spots." Nan Tian nodded.
Agreeing with him, the three of them entered the teleport shrine.
For the next few days, Shiro had both Nan Tian and Yin go to each of the artefact locations while she would spend some time with Attie and do some research on the side. After all, she needed to look for the ice queen's location.
During this, Lucius had managed to uncover where the 8th artefact piece was meaning that there were only two more to go.
On the 4th day, they managed to collect all of the artefact pieces they could. With the artefact collection partially complete, they started to make their way to the places where there had been large spikes of mana.
Similar to the frozen city that Shiro had discovered on Mount Fuji after the ice queen stabilised her anchor, there were small signs leading to the potential presence of different queens at each of the sites.
Most of the signs led to different types of queens but there were a few that were almost identical, meaning several anchors from the same queen.
However, despite all the anchors being set down by the queens, she hadn't found any that had set up a domain like Thiria had. They continued to keep their presence a mystery while the queen of the beast already had a head start.
Naturally, this head start wasn't the best choice since all attention was on her but the government didn't want to go on an all out war with her. They wanted to study the concept of 'Queens' first before making a move. After all, they still had the demons to worry about.
While on the topic of demons, Shiro did message Keiko and Keomi about how they were doing. However, their response was rather concerning since the demons were being strangely passive. Even when they stopped expanding the human army into the demon territory, the demons continued their retreat, leaving hundreds of unoccupied lands.
With most of the current world unknown to the human race, the front liners didn't want to venture too deep into unknown territory. Instead, they formed small scout teams to keep a tab on what the demons are doing but so far, nothing's changed and they continued to retreat deeper into the demon territory.
*Sigh…
"The world is changing quite quickly huh? Signs of the new age coming I suppose… Do you think the demons have a better idea on what's happening?" Shiro asked as she turned to Nan Tian.
"Maybe. There was some connection between Black Monarchy and the demons from what I know but it was never too deep. Now that we know Black Monarchy is also associated with Thiria, there's probably a chance that they used the information to finalise a few trades." Nan Tian shrugged.
"True. Regardless, let's continue with the task at hand." Shiro smiled and glanced towards the ruin that was in front of them.