Chapter 1085: What Lies At The Bottom

Watching the bullet escape the barrel of the gun, Shiro immediately noticed a small change. Not only was the bullet now amplified, it had another… unique property that was not a result of her nanobots.

As it was traveling towards the behemoth, the bullet started to gain increased momentum by absorbing the surrounding mana along with the target.

With the behemoth's mana being absorbed, its movements started to become sluggish as though a slowing field was deployed around him.

Once the bullet reached the behemoth, the surroundings seemed to collapse towards it, as though there was a void that demanded all of the mana it could offer.

*CRACK!!!!

Watching the behemoth get snapped in half by the force, Shiro widened her eyes in surprise.

The muscular figure of the monster started to shrivel up before finally collapsing to the side, now completely devoid as mana.

As for the bullet, a new crystal conductor started to sprout out from the behemoth's body.

Looking at her gun, Shiro furrowed her brows.

"This definitely needs more experimenting before I can actually use this without any worries. If this thing can somehow backfire on me, it would be quite troublesome. However, the properties of this material seems pretty handy for a weapon. If I experiment and try to make the best hand cannon possible, it might reach the level of Silvanis. Though I doubt it would since Silvanis was upgraded to rainbow after Error 'ate' it." Shiro muttered while glancing into her mana realm.

Seeing the red circuit tree silent as ever, Shiro couldn't help but wonder what was happening with Error.

Since she could still activate him as usual, she knew that he was mostly fine but it felt a little off.

Opening her eyes, Shiro glanced at her right hand and activated Error. Seeing the black material cover her arm and engrave it with red circuits, she poked at it a few times and saw that it wasn't reacting at all.

Shaking her head, she deactivated the skill before examining the crystal conductor that sprouted out of the behemoth's corpse.

Placing her hand on the surface, she scanned the internal structure and saw that it was pretty much the exact same as the previous conductors. Only this time it was also filled with life energy. She recognizes this since it was the same energy she felt from Gaia's divinity.

'Wait…' Shiro paused as she realized something.

Quickly firing another shot at the ground, she wanted to see if the conductors could sprout as well but there was nothing. Only a somewhat powerful attack that absorbed mana but no crystal was created.

Seeing as how the behemoth shriveled up while this crystal appeared, Shiro could guess that this was only created when there is something being used as a sacrifice.

'If that's the case then all of the crystals in the north pole were monsters who had their life force drained. With how big some of the crystals are, I'd estimate that some of them are higher than level 700, perhaps even 800.' Shiro thought with a frown. Thinking about it for a moment, she decided to look for another monster.

Camouflaging her mana to feel like the behemoth's, she could see a few level 600's coming out of hiding.

Spotting one that broke off from the rest, she flew over and kicked it in the head.

*BANG!!!

Crashing into the ground, the monsters struggled as vision was blurred from that kick.

Without a shred of mercy, Shiro grabbed it by the back of the neck and threw it into a portal.

She was going to turn him into one of the crystals and see where the life energy disappeared to.

Teleporting back to the north pole, she grabbed it by the tail and dragged it towards the sinkhole.

"Sorry about this but it's nothing personal really." Shiro said as she fired it, killing the monster.

Watching the crystal sprout out of its body once more, Shiro could sense the life energy flowing through the ground, towards the bottom of the sinkhole.

Narrowing her eyes, she was about to continue when she felt her heart pound. Seeing the shadows begin to distort, she frowned and glanced at the time.

"Time's up already…" She muttered.

Massaging her eyes, she flicked her wrist and summoned an avatar.

Creating a portal for herself, she teleported back to Asharia and spotted Nan Tian in the command centre.

He was currently completing the tasks that she had given him.

Without saying anything, she sat down next to him and held his sleeve.

"Are you sending out an avatar again?" Nan Tian asked as Shiro would do this whenever there is something she needed to do that might take more than 10 minutes.

"Mn, sorry about this." Shiro apologised as Nan Tian shook his head.

"It's fine. Have fun exploring, tell me if something interesting happens ok?" Nan Tian smiled as Shiro nodded her head.

Leaning back, she closed her eyes and focused on her avatar.

Moving her body, Shiro walked to the edge of the sinkhole and narrowed her eyes.

Conjuring up a drone, she had it travel ahead of her while she followed behind.

With her passive skills, it wasn't hard to see in the dark but despite that, it was still difficult to see the bottom due to how deep it was.

Surprisingly, it took her more than 30 minutes before she could actually see the bottom.

At the bottom of the sinkhole was a white jewel of sorts. While she described it as a jewel, it was better to call it a giant building instead.

With how big this thing was, she could fit several mechs inside.

As she approached the jewel, she noticed the life force being absorbed into the jewel.

"It's an egg?" Shiro muttered as she wasn't sure what kind of egg would produce something like this.

Activating analysis, she tried to look into the interior of the egg but all she could see was a swirl of mana with no distinct shape. 80% of the life force would enter the egg but the remaining 20% would flow into the ground and flow elsewhere.

Surrounding this egg were countless skeletons with crystal conductors exploding out from their ribcage.

Sensing the mana, she understood that the source was inside this egg and it was constantly emitting mana while absorbing the amplified amount back in.

This constant cycle allowed it to store up a massive amount of mana but she was unsure as to what was supposed to be born from this.

Snapping her finger, she sent out a pulse of mana so see if she could map out this area.

However, the moment she used mana, it was absorbed into the egg almost immediately.

Narrowing her eyes, Shiro tried to summon some nanobots to create a device that could map out the area using sound.

But similar to what just happened, any ambient mana is being absorbed almost immediately.

'So items that contain mana don't have it forcefully dragged out. But when they try to use mana and project it into their surroundings, it'll get absorbed…' Shiro thought with a frown.

This'll make a lot of things annoying considering the fact that she uses nanobots. If she wanted to make a base here, she'll have to piece it together with parts that are already finished.

Thankfully, this effect only happens in the bottom so she can make the parts above ground.

The same goes with flight, while she may retain her ability to fly, she can't fly too fast as the mana will be drained immediately.

Right now, she is able to match the output with the absorption so she can still fly as usual.

'I think I'll get everyone to observe this for a while, see if we can find anything out about the origin of the egg and crystals. I should also get a few to experiment with the crystals in guns so that I can make a blueprint that guarantees my safety instead of a weapon that might just kill me.' Shiro thought to herself since she didn't want to imagine what would happen if that crystal entered her body.

Flying back up took a little longer than floating down but she managed to fly up without any problems.

Setting up some drones right now, she sent them down to explore the bottom of the sinkhole while making a temporary base here. She won't make it a city just yet since she didn't know what kind of dangers may lurk around.

With some early preparation done, Shiro dismissed her avatar for now.

Since this place couldn't work as a place for Exp farming, she'll have to look elsewhere.

Spending the rest of the day looking for potential locations using her satellite, she soon received news that Yin was just outside of the volcano region with Attie. This region was being protected by Thiria so they'll need to be safe.

However, since Attie was with Yin, Shiro figured that the two of them could handle it.

Just in case, she had satellites on standby to help out if they ran into trouble.