Chapter 587 The Guide
Waiting by the portal for a while, Estrella appeared next to them with the key in hand along with a few of the equipment that the guardians had dropped.
"Damn, the hole must have been quite deep for you to have taken this long huh?" Shiro raised her eyebrow.
"And who do you think caused that hole?" Madison reminded as Shiro coughed and looked away.
Glancing at the equipment, Shiro saw that most of them were all strength based so Helion could probably make use of them.
"Thank you Estrella, you can head back now." Shiro smiled.
Bowing towards Shiro, Estrella's body flickered away as she returned to the mana realm.
"Right then, most of this equipment is strength based so I think Helion is the most suited. Does anyone have any objections?" Lyrica called out.
"Nope. I mainly focus on defence while Chen Yu focuses on dexterity and agility. None of us has a need for strength based equipment." Madison smiled since they were the front liners. With Helion now in the party, he could make use of all the strength based equipment that they find.
"Don't you have your attack mode where you use the axe? Don't you need strength for that?" Shiro asked curiously.
"Not quite. It's a class skill and basically, when I activate it, it allows me to convert most of my defence into strength." Madison replied as Shiro finally understood why her attack was so high despite being a tank during the first fight.
"Fair enough." Shiro nodded before passing the equipment to Helion.
"Eh are you sure?" He asked as he didn't expect all the equipment earned in this boss fight to just be given to him like this.
"Don't sweat it. It's not like we have a use for it to begin with." Shiro smiled as the other party members nodded their heads.
"But can't you recycle it to make something else?"
"Yes but I've already got the skills that are on the armour so there's no point either. I would say that recycling does increase the inherent defence of the nanobots but I've been recycling so much equipment to the point that one or two wouldn't make a difference. Just take it." Shiro chuckled.
Furrowing his brows, Helion sighed and took the equipment.
"Thank you. Oh and just out of curiosity, how many skills are you able to access?" Helion asked curiously as the others were also interested.
"Fufu~ You want to know? All of you want to know? I see I see~ Trying to dig up my secrets now are we?" So what should we do with this key?" Shiro grinned.
Before they could reply, she gestured for them to come closer.
"I'm kidding. Here, scroll through this list on the tablet and you should see the skills that I have stored. Some are better than others and I've classified them in terms of their usefulness. Of course, if you have a need for any of the skills, I can make you a ring or something and embed the skills into them." Shiro said with a smile.
"Wait is this how you gave me that really good healing bracelet before?" Silvia widened her eyes with eagerness.
Remembering the fact that Silvia is a healing equipment freak, Shiro chuckled before nodded.
"Yup. If you want, I can make a separate tablet for you with all the support spells and mana regeneration spells. Just pick the skills you want and I'll see if I can make it into a bracelet for you." She smiled.
"Sure!" Nodding her head, Silvia had an excited glint in her eyes as Shiro flexed her finger and made Silvia a tablet.
Making a tablet for everyone else, Shiro figured that she might as well make them each a ring or bracelet with some of the skills.
"Will these equipment last?" Helion asked.
"Hmm… yes and no. As long as mana is supplied to them, they will last. However, to use the skills, they also use mana so if you repeatedly use them without giving it mana, the rings will break. In addition to this, since it's nanobots, I need to be nearby to do some maintenance if you continue to pour mana into them. Because inherently, the nanobots are greedy for mana and if you supply them with a giant pool of it, they may go berserk." Shiro replied.
"Ain't that pretty dangerous then?" Helion's smile twitched.
"Not really. Because that will only happen if you're super greedy. And I mean SUPER greedy. If that happens, the nanobots will probably go out of control since you don't have the 'controller' like I do. By that point, all you can do is delay the inevitable since the nanobots will dig deep into your body and infect every part, hoping to consume everything. In other words, it's like cancer." Shiro shrugged.
"And how do you know this?"
"Because I've seen it happen a bunch of times in the labs. You see, the only reason I have nanobots is due to the experiments I was put through in my first life. I was the first success so I watched quite a few others get consumed and die. Before I left though, I grabbed all the records I could and they were quite thorough with describing how each of the experiments died so that they could make improvements." Shiro replied nonchalantly as the party felt a twitch creeping up on their smile.
To think that she could mention something like human experiment so casually was quite…. eye opening.
"Anyways, just know that you shouldn't get too greedy with giving nanobots mana since they will try to f*ck your sh*t up. Just be careful and you can use it as much as you want. Though if it gets out of hand, I'll destroy them before they can do anything to you. Only if I'm close of course." Shiro smiled.
"Wait… So the reason the bracelet broke last time is because of you?" Silvia asked as she narrowed her eyes.
"Oh look, I forgot I had this skill." Shiro quickly looked down at her phone.
Huffing slightly, Silvia shook her head before picking out some skills.
Once everyone had picked out a few skills that they liked, Shiro started to create rings with the most optimised build for each of them. Silvia's ring was naturally decked out with mana regen since that was what she needed the most.
With everyone ready, Lyrica held the key in front of the gate as a tier 4 magic circle appeared in front of them. Slowly, a swirl of red and orange energy appeared before them, lighting the room up with a hellish glow.
"Shall we enter the proper sanctuary of sin?" Lyrica smiled before gesturing to the portal.
Stepping through, their vision was clouded with a maroon hue before it subsided, revealing the burning landscape that was reminiscent of hell.
In front of them, was a blood river of sorts while bones and demons surrounded them.
"Clear out the mobs and our ticket to the third boss will appear." Lyrica called out. Since there wasn't anything special in this area except the large amount of mobs, the party had a rather easy time. The only difficulty they had was the rising heat which Shiro solved through her Icy Aura.
"That reminds me, when we were still in school, I used you as a Air Conditioner during one of the hot days didn't I?" Lyrica called out with a smile.
"Ah I remember that. Honestly, if I didn't have this skill, it would have been annoying since I was still vulnerable to heat back then."
"And yet you now have three high grade fires that almost exploded my forge." Helion reminded as Shiro only shrugged.
Clearing out the mobs, they hear the sound of a bell, ringing in the distance.
Turning towards the blood lake, they could see a shadowed figure approaching them slowly on a wooden boat with a single lamp attached on the bow.
[The Guide – LVL ???]
They could not see his body figure as he was wearing a large black cloak that prevented anything to be seen. Rather than the guide, it was probably better to call him the grim reaper since he looked exactly like how they were described.
"State your goal." A voice rang it from under his hood. The voice was almost like a whisper, hushed but loud at the same time. Not only that, but his voice was also hoarse like sandpaper, scratching against their ears.
"We've come to seek the Judge." Lyrica called out.
The third boss of this raid was the Judge of Sin. If you answer with a different answer on this part, it would take a long time to reach the judge.
"You've come to seek the Judge, yes?" The Guide asked to make sure.
"Indeed."
"Them come, I shall take you to the Judge. Be careful of the lake. Fall and you may not come back." He warned ominously before gesturing for the party to step in on the boat.
Once everyone was in, he pushed the boat off the shore.