Chapter 223 - Entering The Raid

Once the test ended, everyone looked at Shiro like she was an absolute monster. That was because she had finished the entire test with a perfect score and 100% accuracy. By the time it was on the tenth round, some of them could barely recognise the targets before they disappeared.

Walking back to the duo, Shiro patted Lisandra's shoulder and smiled.

"Good luck."

"Un." Nodding her head, Lisandra wondered why Shiro was much better at using the light element despite only getting it recently.

'Hmm… could it be because she copied off of the hero? Even then, you can't just perform to this extent just by watching.' Lisandra mused to herself but soon snapped out of it since it was her turn on the test.

Pulling out her sword, she looked down on her hand as she closed her eyes. Remembering what Shiro had done, she wondered if she could do the same.

'No I can't. Mum is in another league all together. BUT, that does not mean I can't take her movements as inspiration. For me, there's a limit to my control and how many targets I can recognise in an instant.' She shook her head with a smile.

"But just because I don't have the power to hit all the targets at once, doesn't mean I can't plan out my route of attack." She muttered with a smile.

Looking up into the air, she saw the location of each target and planned a route in her mind.

Crouching down, she readied her sword.

"Is she going to jump to the targets?"

"Perhaps. From what we know, she's a melee fighter isn't she?"

Smiling at the sounds of discussion around them, Shiro narrowed her eyes at Lisandra.

'I've taught you how to control your body in mid air. I taught you how to reinforce your body and I've also taught you about how you can control magic. Now what will you do with this knowledge?' Shiro thought with a soft smile.

The moment the timer hit 0, Lisandra launched herself at the first target. Twisting her body, she slashed it in half with relative ease.

But now was the hard part. Since she was in the air, there were hardly anyways she could move around unless she landed once more. She couldn't summon a sword and step on it either due to two reasons.

Number 1 was that it wasn't controlled using magic. Without this, the sword will just fall and number 2 is no resistance. If she steps on the falling sword, the only thing that it'll accomplish would be making the sword fall faster.

Smiling lightly, she summoned a sword despite the problems regarding this.

"Oh? Interesting." Shiro smiled as she realised what Lisandra wanted to do.

Tracing her finger along the sword, a row of runes appeared before she slammed her palm into the pommel and sent it flying towards the next target, leaving a trail of light behind it.

Just before the sword hit the target, Lisandra's body appeared above the sword, slashing the target in two.

"What!? She never hit the ground! How did she appear at the target?" While they were discussing several plausible theories, Shiro already understood what had happened.

'When she drew the runes down, she set up a path of light in which her movement speed increased. Once the sword was about to hit the target, she exploded a small pocket of mana under her feet, much like what I did against Isaac, stacking the speed gained from the explosion and the path of light to reach her destination. As the flight path was a simple straight line, she didn't need to worry about any deviations apart from making sure that she could stop herself from going further.' Shiro analysed with a smile.

"You should learn from your sister rather than eat all day." She said whilst turning to Yin.

"Hmph, she's a physical based class and this baby's magic based. Range isn't a problem." Yin pouted.

"Tch, but what if she managed to get close to you. If you tried to use your spells up close, there's a chance for you to harm yourself in the process." Shiro rolled her eyes and flicked Yin on the forehead.

"Ow. Hmph, I call biased." Yin rubbed her forehead.

"Biased my ass. Do I need to buy a family's worth of steak meals for her in one go?!" Shiro retorted.

"Urg!"

Ignoring the stupid bird, Shiro turned her attention back to Lisandra.

Following her technique, she was able to hit all of the targets that didn't move. Unfortunately, much like Isaac, she struggled on the target's that did move.

In the end, she was able to reach round 6 but had failed to reach round 7.

"Good job." Shiro praised since she was able to improve her body and mana control by a decent margin.

"Thanks." Lisandra nodded as she had a smile behind her mask.

After the rest of the members took the test, they were given a few minutes to rest while they looked through the results.

"Miss Nytri, if we were to give you both the roles of fodder clear and target shooting, will you be able to handle it?" The observer asked as Shiro was the most suited to destroy the targets. However, to do so, one would need to kill the cannon fodders that appear in the raid.

"Nope. I'll have to be paired up with someone since it's impossible even for me to handle so many things at once." Shiro replied with a smile. Of course, she's lying but she didn't want to think about the MP cost of needing to kill all of the mobs along with the targets. Not to mention, she still needed to help with damaging the boss too.

"Hmm… We'll pair you up with someone else so that you two will be responsible for both fodder and targets. Is that ok?"

"Well, it's better than being on my own." Shiro shrugged.

From her viewpoint, it was understandable that they wanted to have more people focus on dealing with the boss. However, she knew that Kier wanted to know more about her capabilities and identity. Therefore, she'll work with someone else for now.

When the break was over, they brought out the fourth boss. However, since everyone understood what to do, there weren't too many problems. However, where things went wrong was when they accidentally killed a fodder. Or rather, a group of fodder due to their skills.

This made it so that Shiro and her partner couldn't hit enough targets since the buff was needed.

Blame was thrown around as the party was thrown into disarray.

*sigh…

Rubbing her head, Shiro looked at the party that was fighting amongst itself and couldn't help but wonder if this will be fine.

'For this raid, as long as the mechanics don't need more than 3 people, I can probably do it with Yin and Lisandra. Of course, we'll need to be going at full power or else our damage simply wouldn't match up.' Shiro mused to herself.

Right now, if she was to go full power with her Nanomancer class, not including power up items or berserk, she estimated that she could match 3 or 4 of these so called 'geniuses' in terms of firepower. But she wouldn't be able to sustain herself for a long period should she do that.

But if she was to stay in this party, they'll have to work around their personal grudges first or else the risk would simply be too high for her to bother.

'Honestly, if it wasn't for this task, I wouldn't even be here. Nan Tian better give me 2 rebirth pills for this.' Shiro frowned.

'Hmm… Maybe I can coerce Chen Yu to give me more. Hehe~ Unlike Nan Tian, he's fun to play around with.' Shiro giggled slightly when thinking of the things he can put him through. Perhaps she could give him a little 'prod' so that he's more obedient.

"What are you smiling about mum?" Yin asked curiously.

"Nothing much, just wondering if I should pierce someone that I know." Shiro replied with a wave of her hand.

"Eh? Who?" Yin raised an eyebrow. She didn't know who was unlucky enough to find him/herself at the receiving end of Shiro's spear.

"Someone you don't know yet." Shiro chuckled softly.

###

For the next few days, the party practiced on fighting the fourth boss along with improving their teamwork.

As for Shiro, she balanced her day with going to the mana springs and practice. Ever since she formed a connection to Nimue, she noticed that both her body and mana started to get stronger everyday without her even needing to raise a hand.

After asking Nimue, it turns out that since she was a monster, her physical body was naturally a little different. With the increase in mana purity, her body was bound to experience some benefits.

Of course, Shiro also noticed the increase in mana but set it aside for now. The most likely reason would probably be because Nimue was going to be leaving with her soon. She'll naturally take all of her mana with her.

Soon, the day of the proper raid had arrived. All of the party members stood outside the raid door as they adjusted their armour.

"Let's go." Isaac called out as he was chosen to be the captain for the first raid.