Chapter 949 Corrosive Aura

Scouting the pass for a few days, Shiro managed to spot a few tracks of people here and there but the tracks always ended in a dead-end.

However, with the tracks that she's seen, she could guess that there were more than 15 groups in this area now.

'Hmm… that's concerning.' Shiro thought to herself as the time for the relic to appear was getting closer with each day.

She had also noticed the mana in the area increase in density which is a phenomenon that may happen when a treasure appears.

Looking at the twin peaks, Shiro narrowed her eyes as she had a somewhat risky idea in her mind.

{Shiro, if you do that, there's no doubt that someone will see you.} Nimue warned, she knew what Shiro was thinking and it was not a good idea.

'Oh don't be like that, I'm sure it'll be fine.' Shiro smiled.

{What if they track your avatar back to you? If you can track people using their mana, they can do the same. And with you being injured, none of us are keen to fight them.} Nimue reminded.

'Mn… that's true. Let's see… Just a little peek.' Shiro grinned.

Crouching down, Shiro dashed towards the mountain peak as Nimue was speechless.

{Why do I even bother?} She sighed.

Walking to her side, Attie patted her head.

Making her way towards the mountain peaks, Shiro made her way through the forest nimbly as she vaulted past the large branches that collapsed on the side.

As she was running through the snow forest, Shiro noticed a few white scaled serpents intercept her despite being using her stealth skills.

"Tch, something similar to true sight then huh?" Shiro muttered.

Narrowing her eyes, two swords appeared as Shiro leapt into the sky.

Twisting her body, she grinned as she activated boundary and slashed towards the serpent as lightning flickered from her blades.

Cutting the serpent into hundreds of pieces in a single moment, Shiro was about to continue when she realised that all of the pieces started to turn into miniature snakes.

"Hou hou, that's quite an annoying ability." Shiro narrowed her eyes.

Sliding on the ground for a moment, she stomped down and slammed her hand down.

A wave of nanotech wires stretched out from her hand as spikes shot up, piercing all of the snakes.

Noticing the defence seemed to drop, Shiro smiled despite the snakes multiplying one more.

Standing up straight, a green fire roared out on the edge of her blade as she stabbed down.

Suddenly, the wires burst into flames as the snakes were burnt to ashes.

With their defences decreasing, killing them became much easier.

Glancing behind her, Shiro smiled at the horde of monsters that was forming from the snow.

"Mn. I see, so most of you are golems rather than monsters." Shiro muttered.

Cracking her neck, she dismissed her swords as wires extended from her fingertips.

Before the golems could even attack her, she pulled back on the wires as they were all cut into tiny pieces.

After all, boundary was not limited to her blades. If she wanted, she could easily accomplish the same concept with her wires.

Eliminating the group of golems, she made her way towards the mountains.

Just as she stepped past the forest, Shiro noticed a small flash of light and her control over her avatar was weakened.

Stumbling slightly, Shiro frowned.

'Seems like the further in we go, the harder it is to control this body.' Shiro frowned while looking down at her hand.

{Perhaps we should leave it here for now then. I suspect that if we go any further, we'll get found out. And with your control weakening, are you sure you're able to destroy this avatar before they track it back to you?} Nimue asked as Shiro scratched her head.

'True. Let me- huh?' Pausing for a moment, Shiro widened her eyes in surprise as her avatar had already begun corroding away. She had never seen her tech being corroded away before since it innately had a resistance. For it to begin corroding, it meant that whatever was causing this couldn't be underestimated.

Bringing her avatar out of the area and back into the forest, Shiro had a serious expression on her face.

'Something in here possesses a large corrosive aura. Seems like we won't be able to enter for the time being. Unless this aura disappears when the relic appears, collecting said relic would be quite difficult.' Shiro frowned.

{Especially since your nanotech is tier 7 in rating. This is something that can even damage demigods.} Nimue narrowed her eyes.

'Indeed. That's what I'm most concerned about.' Shiro nodded as she looked down.

Had she stayed for another minute, her limbs would have completely corroded away.

Setting down a teleport node at the edge of the forest, just before the corroding aura, Shiro destroyed the avatar.

###

After the encounter with the corrosion field, Shiro did try to return a few more times to see how far she'd go but she couldn't travel in the aura for more than 2 minutes even with all the preparation she had done.

She did wonder if it was targeted at machines specifically so she grabbed some monster flesh but it was corroded almost immediately.

Marking this spot down as a kill zone, for now, Shiro scanned out a detailed map of the entire Frost Giant's Pass.

In addition to this, she had also decided to move the city a little further away just to be safe. She had a nagging feeling in her heart that they'll definitely be caught in a crossfire from where they stood. Her instincts were normally on point so she moved it a few hours away just to be safe.

Right now, she was resuming training on Glen and Celeste since she wanted to have them train under Chen Yu and Madison soon.

Casually stepping to the side, she avoided their attacks with ease and instructed them on a few tips.

With half of her attention on this, the other half was focused on developing a skill to help her contact Ahmiya and so far, it was pretty successful. The ones hearing this 'broadcast' would only hear random sounds while the one targeted by this broadcast would hear the decrypted message.

Shiro wasn't sure about how easy it was to decipher this skill hence the extensive testing but so far it was proving to be rather effective.

Taking a break from the training, Shiro returned to the command office and sat down with a heavy sigh. After all the things she's done in the past few days, she was feeling tired again and planned to have a long night's rest tonight.

Just as she was about to leave for her room after finishing the paperwork in her office, she received a call and couldn't help but sigh heavily.

Looking at the caller, she quickly sat up since it was Nan Tian.

"Honestly, I think I may have called at the wrong time considering how you look right now. Are you sure you're resting properly?" Nan Tian raised an eyebrow.

"A little, but that's fine. I'm planning to sleep in a bit." Shiro smiled.

"Alright, I'll keep it short then. I've found a few clues that might take us to the Queen's main city. However, we've also received news that her guards are rather high leveled. Even for you and me. Also, you might want to be careful since she should be at Frost Giant's Peak now. Even though she's made quite a few anchors, you might want to be careful. She is… ridiculously confident for someone that should be weakened." Nan Tian frowned.

"Hmm… I'll keep that in mind." Shiro nodded with a smile.

"Don't worry though, I won't be actively fighting everyone here. I'm a bit injured after all." Shiro sighed as Nan Tian paused since he didn't know about this.

"You're injured?" He asked with a raised eyebrow.

"Ah… Erm. *Sigh* Yes I am." Shiro sighed, realising she slipped up. She forgot that she had hidden this from Nan Tian.

"How serious is the damage?" Nan Tian asked as he stood up.

"It's not that bad-"

"It's quite bad. Her soul is damaged, a third of it is missing. She is forced to pass out if she stays up for too long, she can't see anymore nor can she feel anything through touch. The only reason why she's even half functional right now is because she's using cameras to see for her and wires to control her body like a puppet." Nimue appeared and told Nan Tian everything.

Looking back at Nimue, Shiro face palmed since she could see that Nan Tian was not happy.

"I see. Alright. I'll have my subordinates watch over the situation for me. I'm teleporting back now." Nan Tian nodded as he ended the call.

Sitting there in silence, Shiro looked at Nimue who only shrugged.

"Don't look at me, you're the one overworking yourself. Have fun with someone looking after you." Nimue smirked as she disappeared.

Before Shiro could shout at Nimue, the door opened, revealing Nan Tian standing there with his arms crossed.

Without saying anything, Nan Tian smiled threateningly and pulled out the dreaded pink wheelchair.