Chapter 207 - Upgraded Sword

The closest dungeon to their location was the level 55 Hell Scape Dungeon. It contained a hivemind type monster that is of the magma element.

Measuring at only 1.5 meters, their stature was rather thin and weak. But one cannot look down on them because of this. Once they find an opening, their skin will rip apart to reveal highly condensed muscles. The torn skin will them embed themselves onto the target and would heat up rapidly, melting the target's skin and subsequently their body.

Shiro decided to go to this dungeon for two reasons. Number one was to upgrade her sword and two was to level up.

Arriving at the cave entrance to the dungeon, Shiro saw that they were venturing deeper into the earth. The walls seemed to have been melted over time as their surfaces were rather smooth and looked like hardened wax that was melted beforehand.

As they descended deeper, Lisandra started to pant slightly from the heat as sweat dripped down her face.

"Here." Shiro smiled, activating Glacial Aura to nullify the heat for Lisandra.

"Thank you."

Once they reached the bottom, they could see a giant door between two pillars. On the door were carvings of the monsters while the pillars contained neon red runes.

Not many adventurers would hang around the door since the heat was almost unbearable. They knew that once they entered the dungeon world, it would be much cooler.

Pushing open the doors, Shiro entered the dungeon with both Yin and Lisandra as a blinding light filled their vision.

Once it was cleared, they saw a burning landscape with not a spec of green in sight. Burnt trees and lava rivers could be seen everywhere while 'tiny' red monsters scoured the location.

Each of them had a black crystal embedded in their back as Shiro guessed that it was the device the hive leader used to control its followers.

"Can you handle them?" Shiro asked with a smile.

"Of course I can. As if they can fight against me." Yin said proudly since this was her territory. As long as the enemy used fire element, she would be able to counter them completely.

"I know you can. I'm talking about Lisa." Shiro rolled her eyes.

"Urg… I call biased."

"You tried to buy an entire restaurant menu. Anyways, how confident are you against them Lisa?" Shiro asked.

"Hmm… Until I fought one, I'm not entirely sure. Right now they feel harmless but I know that they're dangerous." Lisandra said with a serious smile.

"Well, work together with your sister. I'm going to upgrade my weapon." Shiro smiled as both the girls nodded and spread out their wings at the same time. Flying into the air, Lisandra pulled out her sword while Yin readied a Dark Star Orb.

As for Shiro, she flexed her fingers and summoned both the Divine Metal and Heavenly Runes.

Tapping her necklace, she threw all three items into the air before tapping Yes for the upgrade.

*BOOM!!!!!!

Divine mana washed over the entire area as a portion of the dungeon even started to distort. Shifting between volcanic, grass land and even glacial environments, Shiro was surprised at how much of an effect a single upgrade could cause.

"Sss!" Taking in a sharp breath, Shiro kneeled down in fatigue when she realised that all of her MP was drained in an instant. Almost 2 million points worth of mana was gone in a snap as her body felt heavy from the sudden absence of mana.

For a monster, such cases could be lethal.

*COUGH!

Throwing up a mouthful of blood, Shiro grabbed her chest in pain.

"Mum!" Both Lisandra and Yin cried out in shock.

"I'm fine, just make sure the monsters don't come near." Shiro shook her head as she quickly sat down and closed her eyes. Activating her Elemental Field Affinity, which is the upgrade of Ice Field Affinity, Shiro attempted to recover her mana.

While she was battling against the drain of mana so that it didn't kill her, the pressure being released from her sword increased tremendously the longer she held out for.

Naturally, such a phenomenon couldn't be missed as the monsters screeched before clawing their way to Shiro's location.

*BOOM!!!!

Dark Star Element rained down on the surrounding hills as Yin created a wall to stop them from advancing.

Unfortunately, the allure of such bountiful mana made it so that the hive lord didn't care about the casualties and continued to send his minions to breach a wall through the fire.

However, for those that did, all that was waiting for them was Lisandra.

*PUCHI!!!!

Cutting up the demons, Lisandra gritted her teeth as she forced herself to push back the entire horde.

Fighting against high level enemies was one thing but fighting against high level enemies when they don't care about their lives is another problem entirely.

Tracing her finger against her sword, she covered in a thin layer of mana before slashing out horizontally.

A wave of energy swept outwards as the minions were forced backwards by the hit. Unfortunately, she wasn't able to kill them in one go.

"Tch!" Jumping up into the air, she spread out her wings and tried to gather mana towards her.

"Huh?!" Widening her eyes in surprise, she couldn't believe how much mana was being taken by the sword. She wasn't even able to gather 10% of what was needed for her skill.

Furrowing her brows, she clicked her tongue in annoyance. Diving towards the enemy with her sword drawn, she was going to settle this through physical combat.

While both Yin and Lisandra was trying to hold the minions off, Shiro found herself in a familiar world.

"Isn't this the tomb?" She muttered with a frown. Looking around, she found herself in the same place where she had first upgraded her swords from purple grade to orange.

One of the tombs were open as an illusionary image of her old sword could be seen.

"Ten tombs and one is open. Could it be that the rest of the nine are different upgrades?"

Walking up to the tombs, she could feel two of the tomb's beckoning to her. This time, she decided to take a better look at the tombs since last time she didn't care too much about them.

The tomb she had opened previously was decorated with gold plating while the tomb that she needed to open this time had silver and deep red plating.

Carved in the plating were decorative patterns that somewhat described what they contained. The red one had runes while the silver had a divine palace.

Curiosity filled her mind as she glanced at the others but noticed that they lacked any designs. It was just a plain stone tomb.

"Hmm… maybe they'll only show itself when I get the materials to upgrade it?" Shiro muttered since there was no way that the sword could have known that she'll get the Divine Metal and Heavenly Runes.

Placing her hand on both coffins, a skull splitting pain assaulted her mind as she gained knowledge about the new upgrades.

Before she realised, she was back in the dungeon as her sword floated in front of her. The back of the blade was replaced by a void black that held three glowing runes within itself.

Unlike before, the dual edges longsword had essentially turned into a half katana due to the single bladed nature of the sword.

Grabbing the sword by the handle, Shiro looked in surprise as one of the runes within the crystal lit up with a soft purple light.

Mana started to enter her body as her MP bar started to regenerate.

"Oh my…" She muttered in surprise after seeing the new stats.

[Ataraxia – Celestial Sword of Elements (Red)]

Matches Owner Level – Current Level: 51

+4000 Attack

+3000 Sharpness

+2500 Attack Speed

+2300 Ignore Defence

+2300 Critical Chance

+2000 Critical Damage

+40% Elemental Damage

+30% Suppression against enemies of the same level or lower

+25% Self Repair

+20% Life Steal

+20% Sword Affinity

+10% Mana Disabler

Skills: Element Shift (Glacial, Shadow, Metal, Lightning, Dragon, Dark Star, Light), Ataraxia, Celestial Runes (Kara, Lire, Aera)

Bound: Shiro

Reading the effects of the upgraded Ataraxia skill caused Shiro to pause in surprise. Overall, the effects were increased along with the total duration while the backlash had decreased. On top of this, if she killed anyone within the range of her skill, she'll be able to increase the total duration by a few seconds.

If she used this within an army, she'll be able to keep this activated as long as she continues to kill.

As for the runes…

[Celestial Runes]

Kara: Increase mana regen massively. The lower the current MP count, the higher the regeneration. (Consumes Weapon Durability for every second it is activated.)

Lire: Increase Health Regen massively. The lower the current HP count, the higher the regeneration. (Consumes Weapon Durability for every second it is activated.)

Aera: Convert all the damage taken within the past 10 minutes into health and empower the host for 2 minutes. (Consumes Weapon Durability for every second it is activated. Warning: Do not use constantly as backlash will build up unless given the chance to recuperate.)

Only one rune can be active at any given time.

While she only had three runes, each of them could be top tier items by themselves.

It was also perfect for her since her sword had the trait of self-repair. Therefore, the fact that using the runes consumed durability didn't bother her at all.

What did bother her, however, was the fact the monsters were still charging towards their location.

Narrowing her eyes at the monsters, she decided to give this weapon a test run for now.

*BANG!

Flickering away from her location, she appeared in front of the closest monster and swung her blade.

Her mind seemed to have cleared up as her sword cut through the monster with ease. Reacting instinctively, she flowed through once stance after another.

Yin Style Asura's Path – Sword Path!

Compared to before, she knew that her swordsmanship had definitely improved a little.

[Threshold passed. New Skill Unlocked.]

[Sword Domain]

'Sword Domain!' She thought with surprise.

Skipping past the attack domain entirely, she was able to achieve the sword domain in an instant. She had never achieved a domain in her old life so she never fully appreciated it but now that she had one of her own, she truly knew the kind of difference it made in close combat.

*PUCHI!!!!

As if walking through a flower field, her attacks were casual but held a large amount of lethality.

Flicking sword upwards, she separated Ataraxia into several copies of itself and had them orbit around her.

'No wonder the guys that had this were so annoyed when they saw me. Despite never having achieved a domain of my own, my weapons were simply too powerful.' Shiro thought with a soft chuckle.

Now that she had both the domain and the weapon, she knew that she was going to reach greater heights in this life.

"Are you two alright?" Shiro asked as she walked towards Yin and Lisandra.

"Yeah… Ha… just a little tired. You know how hard it is for this baby to fight when you take all the mana?" Yin complained slightly.

"Hehe, sorry about that." Shiro scratched her cheeks. While she did know that the phenomenon was going to be big, she didn't expect it to be THIS big.

"Forget about that for now. Why don't we clear this dungeon?" Shiro suggested with a smile.

"Sure, I'll teach him a lesson. How dare he attack three beauties hmph hmph." Yin frowned while stretching her body slightly.

"I agree." Lisandra nodded since the way the minions fought annoyed her quite a bit.

"Good." Shiro grinned. Summoning a second copy of Ataraxia, the three dashed into the crowd of minions.

###

Sitting on the freshly pieced corpse of the last boss, Shiro took this chance to look at the tasks that Nan Tian had given her.

The quests were neatly grouped up into four main categories and several sub categories. Main Categories included; Assassinate, Investigate, Collection and Clear while the sub categories were just the type and the difficulty.  

Reading through the tasks, she was surprised that the families in Cairosa hadn't cleared the emergency raid yet. While they had recovered the people that were trapped, no one had been able to clear the raid just yet. Casualties were piling up and if they don't clear it soon, the monsters will funnel out of the raid and into the city.

Normally, the city would issue an emergency request but it seemed like they were intercepted since no support had arrived.

The task had two parts to it. Number one was to clear the raid and stop the approaching danger and the second was investigate who or what faction was stopping the information from leaving the city.

As for the reward, it was naturally a Phoenix Rebirth Pill.

"Hou hou~ Since the reward is to repair my body, this princess will naturally accept it." Shiro smiled.

As her current supplier for the Phoenix Rebirth Pills, Nan Tian was like the golden goose that laid out gold eggs.

She wasn't going to mess with him too much right now but it wasn't going to be the same in the future. After all, she still had a bone to pick with him for stalking her.

'Speaking of stalking, I wonder where that shadow bastard is.' Shiro thought with killing intent.

Elsewhere, Lucius suddenly felt a chill down his spine as his a**hole puckered up instantly.