Chapter 94 Being Bait
"Clearing the dungeon?!" They were shocked as clearing the dungeon with their current party was an insane thought.
"Shiro, you know that this dungeon is basically 15 levels above our average party level right?" Jonas said with a frown.
[Yes I do. But, rather than waiting here and risk being surrounded, I'm more willing to challenge this dungeon and survive.] Shiro replied with a serious face.
Jonas paused seeing how serious Shiro was right now. He knew that it was no time to joke around and that the city was most likely going to wait for their deaths before any rescue came.
[But naturally, we aren't going to challenge the dungeon straight away. No, what we need to do is level everyone up. Primarily Silvia and Madison. And only after that, will we focus on everyone else.]
Jonas agreed since he knew that having a high level tanker and healer would increase their chances of survival.
[Next is supplies. How much food do you have?] Shiro asked.
"I didn't think we'll be trapped here so I didn't prepare much. At most, we can ration it to around 2 meals for each of us before running out. What about you?" Jonas asked.
[I don't have any food.] Shiro shook her head. All she prepared were mana stones that were meant to feed her and Yin.
[I suppose we can harvest the monster's for food if we needed to.]
They had Erica for her fire magic so they'll be able to create a fire to roast the food. The only problem being that it'll attract the monsters which means more fighting.
Fighting means using energy and they needed to eat food for energy. And it all just loops around.
'There's also the problem of the final boss sending his killing intent towards us.' Shiro thought with a frown.
With the boss sending out killing intent, Shiro needed to counter it for the safety of the party. And yet, if she did counter it, it'll give their position away.
"Annoying." Shiro muttered.
Waiting for a moment for the party to fully recover, Shiro explained the plan of action to Jonas.
[Basically, we need to rotate around killing and moving the camp around. If we stay in one place for too long, the monsters will surround us. While I can fight the boss's killing intent off, it also means I'll be exposing our position. The main problem we need to think about is rest and stamina consumption.]
"Indeed. We can't rest if the monsters surround us, but we can't rest either if we're running away. I presume the boss would most likely send out killing intent in waves to determine our position every so often.
"However, if you don't counter it, our position would be hidden. But at the same time, it is very dangerous to keep ourselves exposed to this kind of killing intent." Jonas replied.
'Hmm…' Shiro sat down with a difficult face.
"Erm… What if Shiro directed her intent at the boss. Take the initiative?" Silvia asked.
[Explain.]
"Well, if you were to target the boss with your intent, it'll draw attention away from us. At the same time, it'll give us the room we need to kill the monsters to level up." Silvia said as she wanted to think of as many ideas as she could in a short amount of time.
"Silvia!" Jonas shouted, causing her to flinch.
"Do you know that this is basically sending Shiro to her death! If she targets the boss with her killing intent, the boss will most likely send out stronger monsters to kill Shiro. Sure we'll have an easier time levelling up but that also means that Shiro will be in more danger!" Jonas shouted with a furious face.
Silvia paled at what Jonas said since that wasn't her intention. She was just a little desperate and didn't think twice about what she said.
"Ah! I- I- I didn't mean it like that I-" Silvia stuttered.
[No you have a point. This would indeed make it easier for you lot. Not only that, I should be able to level up during this as well.] Shiro replied thinking about the suggestion seriously.
Out of the entire group, she was the most experienced and had the highest level. Not only that, she was pretty confident that she should be able to survive that kind of onslaught.
"That's insane!" Jonas rejected the thought immediately.
[No it's not and it's what we're going to do.] Shiro replied standing up immediately.
[Jonas, lead the party to kill strays while I keep the main army busy.]
Walking towards Lyrica, Shiro explained the basic plan.
"Well it doesn't seem like you'll take no for an answer. Just be careful ok?" Lyrica responded with a tired sigh.
Shiro grinned.
[You know me so well. Good luck, surprise me with your level ok?]
"Yeah, take care."
Crouching down slightly, Shiro dashing into the air and started to jump from tree to tree. A moment later, Lyrica could no longer see Shiro.
Sighing once again, Lyrica walked towards the party, ready to kill some stray monsters to level up.
Meanwhile, Shiro stopped once she made sure that she was far enough. She didn't want the party to be affected after all.
Looking around, she made sure that there was some cover for her should she need them.
"Alright… Here goes nothing." Shiro muttered and closed her eyes.
*KRRR!!!
The moment she sent out her killing intent, ice started to cover the surrounding areas, immediately turning a portion of the forest into an icy tundra.
She focused her intent towards the castle to make sure that the final boss could feel her hostility.
'Come on… Take the bait…' Shiro thought as she waited for the monsters to arrive.
*Tutututu…
She smiled once she felt the ground started to tremble.
Making herself a nanotech bow, since no one was here to watch her, Shiro narrowed her eyes and pulled back on the strings.
*URAAA-!!!
Firing her bow at the first monster she saw, the arrow exploded after it embedded itself into the monster's skull and killed the monster with ease.
Making three more arrows, Shiro jumped into the air and took aim.
*BOOM BOOM BOOM!
After firing three arrows, Shiro grabbed the centre of the bow and ripped it apart.
The two halves morphed themselves into swords as Shiro plunged the sword through the neck of two monsters that had jumped up behind her.
At the same time, a magic circle expanded out under the battlefield, causing ice chains to wrap around the monsters.
"Little Yin!" Shiro shouted out.
*Chirp!
A second set of ice chains sprang out from the ground, chaining up more monsters.
Seeing the second set of chains limit the amount of monsters targeting her, Shiro smiled.
Twisting her body horizontally, she kicked both monsters away from her.
Shadow Buff x2.
Both Shiro and Yin activated Shadow Buff as it gave her a total of 10% increase in her speed.
The other bonuses involved stealth and resistances but she didn't need that at the moment.
###
Hearing the distant echoes of combat, Lyrica looked over with worry.
"So it's started…" She muttered.
"Yes it has, now let's find some monsters to kill. We can't waste the time Shiro has bought for us. Every second counts." Madison said as she too was worried about Shiro.
###
Since she was fighting an army alone, Shiro knew she couldn't brute force it.
Mixing between both direct confrontation and guerrilla tactics, Shiro managed to kill a lot of monsters without sustaining too much damage.
The only problem lied with her stamina. Even though her stamina was huge, she was constantly performing at 120% in order to hold back this army.
Other people would have died long ago but she was still holding on.
Nocking an arrow and shooting a monster that was chasing her, Shiro could already feel her lungs burning.
'How long has it been?' Shiro wondered to herself.
Suddenly feeling a sense of danger, Shiro entered the rift and rolled onto the floor before exiting the rift.
There was a huge fist in front of her that would have squashed her if she didn't enter the rift.
The monster, who had the fist, was abnormally proportioned with the arms being twice as big as the torso.
His eyes were stitched shut along with it's mouth.
Seeing the monster, Shiro made a disgusted face before creating two nanotech daggers.
Dashing toward the monster, she stomped down on the monster's arm.
*KRRR!
Ice spread out from where she stepped and soon covered the entire body of the monster minus the head.
With the head exposed to her, Shiro twirled the daggers in her hands and stabbed it into the eyes of the monster.
Twisting the daggers, she blew the head off the monster's body before backflipping off of the monster.
"Haa…ha..ha.." Exhaling heavily, Shiro wiped the sweat, blood and flesh off her face.
"This should be the end of the first wave." Shiro thought as she retracted her killing intent and dashed towards the party.
Since they were in the same party, Shiro was able to see their icons on the map.
It didn't take Shiro too long to find the party as she had been dashing at full speed.
When they came face to face with each other, Jonas nodded and quickly finished off the monster they were fighting.
Running away from the area, they told Shiro to rest up.
Drinking some water, Shiro asked about how long it had been.
"It's been roughly 3 hours since you started the fight." Jonas replied.
[3 hours?]
"I still can't believe you pulled it off." Jonas shook his head in disbelief. Holding back a constant wave of monsters for three hours was simply unbelievable for someone around Shiro's level.
While they rested, they made sure that they were constantly on the move.
During this, Madison brought up a question that had confused her.
"Shiro, if you had that much killing intent, why don't you just release it all at once? Wouldn't that paralyse the boss?" She asked.
Lyrica nodded as she was also wondering about that.
[That's because it's difficult to output 100% of your killing intent. At that point, it is when you abandon everything just to kill the foe in front of you. You lose yourself in your own desire to kill. The other reason is because with the sheer amount of killing intent I hold; I need to keep it contained at all times. Otherwise, it'll do more harm than good for both me and you.] Shiro shook her head.
Plus, due to her passive, every time she released her killing intent, the surroundings would be frozen. She didn't want to push her luck since it would still drain her MP slightly to freeze the surroundings regardless of it being a passive skill.
Paired up with her broken mana links, she might destroy herself if she used too much killing intent.
Even though she didn't know for sure, she wasn't too keen on testing out her limits.
She'd release just enough so that it'll achieve her desired effect and nothing more.
Jumping up in the tree, the party sat down for a moment to fully rest their bodies.
Most of the party took the time to have a power nap so that they could recover as much as possible.
Shiro took this chance to feed both her and Yin without anyone realising.
Once she was full, Shiro checked her updated stats after levelling up.
[Name: Shiro
Race: Snow Girl (Evolution Criteria yet to be met)
Title: Shadow Empress, Intermediate Monster (0/50 Humans Killed), Fratricide, One Woman Battalion (New)
Level: 38
Class: Snow Girl★★★, Nanomancer
HP: 130,151/130,151
MP: 189,000/189,000
STR: 700 (+110)
VIT: 800 -> 900 (+95)
INT: 1100 -> 1200 (+240)
AGI: 750 -> 800 (+120)
DEX: 750 (+70)
DEF: 320 (+100)
= Title Bonus
Unassigned Points: 250 -> 0
Attunements:
Ice – Tier 2
Lightning – Tier 1
Metal – Tier 0
Shadow – Tier 0
Balance: 19,100,490 USD
Equipment (Tap to Display)
Skills –
Snow Girl ★★★:
Tier 2 Ice magic, Passive Regeneration, Blessed by Ice, Snow Magic, Faded Snow Movement, Cold Aura, Icy Touch, Icy Breath. Ice Field Affinity
Nanomancer:
Dagger Creation, Nano Tech Engineering Tier 1, Sword Creation, Bow Creation, Heavy Weapon Creation, Shield Creation, Armour Creation.
Other:
Mini-map, Inspection, Disguise, Mana Barrier.
Shared Skills (Yin):
Shadow Buff (Tier 1), Ice Chain (Tier 1), Shadow Cloak (Tier 1), Shadow Talon (Tier 1), Rift Walker (Tier 1), Absorption/Redirection (Tier 1)]
During her stand against the army, she had also managed to get a new title.
[One Woman Battalion]
Stand against a group of enemies that number more than 400 and come out victorious.
Effects: +2.5% on all stats when fighting against a group of 100+ enemies.
While the bonus wasn't huge, it was bound to get bigger in the future.
'I guess that the next few titles are One Woman Regiment, Brigade, Division, Corps and finally, One Woman Army.' Shiro thought to herself.
Shaking her head, she looked through the loot she had collected throughout the battle.
She wasn't able to collect their mana stones since there were too many of them. Therefore, she had to settle with just getting their loot.
The loot surprised her as it mostly consisted of weapons. However, very few were noticeable since the skills were rather lackl.u.s.tre.
The best weapons she got was a blue grade sword that would be handy should she need to use a weapon in front of the party.
This way, she wouldn't expose the fact that she was a Nanomancer.
[Blood Beast Long Sword – LVL 50 (Blue)]
Requirements: 1,000 STR
+150 Attack Damage
+150 Sharpness
+50 Life Steal
+100 Durability
+50 Attack Speed
Skills:
Blood Transfusion –
Absorb an enemy's blood to gain +50 attack damage for a short moment.
Cost: 5,000MP
Duration: 10 seconds
Cooldown: 1 minute
With just the requirement of 1k STR, Shiro was able to equip the weapon if she wanted to.
Tilting her head back, Shiro closed her eyes and rested as much as she could.