Cracking her neck, Shiro dismissed her swords and crouched down near the boss’s corpse.

  "Well ain’t this pretty nifty. She dropped an interesting weapon along with some armour." Shiro chuckled.

  Reaching out, she grabbed the scythe and gave it a casual swing.

  *BANG!!!!

  Cracking against the ground, the material split apart like it was nothing, leaving behind a rather sizable ravine in the ground.

  The weapon was called the Devotee’s Scythe and the base stats of the weapon wasn’t anything fancy due to the fact that it was just a purple grade weapon.

  However, what truly caught Shiro’s eye was the passive skill that it included.

  [True Sight]

  After achieving a certain amount of understanding of the target, your next attack will ignore 90% of all armour.

  This is limited to one use per day and is refreshed at sunrise.

  Cost: N/A

  This was the same skill that the boss had used when they collected the motes hence the need to buff up the tanks defence stat as much as possible.

  "Do you girls want this scythe? If not, I’ll recycle it and take the skill for myself." Shiro smiled.

  "I don’t use a scythe so you can have it. Anyone else have any objections?" Lyrica called out to the rest of the party.

  Shaking their head, none of them had a problem with this.

  "Um, if you don’t mind me asking, what do you mean by recycle it and take the skill for yourself?" Helion asked curiously.

  "It’s something like this." Shiro grinned.

  Throwing the scythe in the air, nanobots swarmed around her and started to break the weapon apart.

  Once the scythe was destroyed, she used her nanobots to create a sword.

  "Check out the sword." Shiro said as she threw the sword towards Helion.

  Inspecting the sword, he was surprised to see the true sight skill with the blade. Not only that, it was also the same level and grade as the scythe. Only this time, in the form of a sword.

  Snapping her fingers, the sword crumbled back to nanobots and flowed back to her.

  "Makes enough sense I suppose." Helion shrugged.

  "Anyways, there are some decent armour pieces here so have a look to see if it’s better than yours." Shiro smiled while gesturing to the cloth armour laid out on the ground.

  Unfortunately, the only one that used cloth armour was Silvia and the one that the boss dropped didn’t provide any stat bonuses that may help her.

  Storing the armour away for now, they decided to sell it later since Shiro didn’t want to recycle it either due to the fact that the armour skill wasn’t anything special like True Sight.

  "So where do we go now?" Shiro asked with a smile.

  "Give me a second." Lyrica said as she walked over to the spot where the nun had been praying.

  Stabbing her sword into the ground, she narrowed her eyes and pushed it down like a leaver.

  *Krrrrr

  Suddenly, the floor gave way as a passageway could be seen.

  "We’re going to be taking the steps down to hell. The next boss that we must face is the twin guardians." Lyrica smiled while gesturing to the staircase leading down into the darkness.

  "Right then, care to give us another briefing?" Shiro asked as they were walking down the stairs.

  "Well it’s more like give YOU another briefing haha. You could just have researched this you know?" Lyrica chuckled.

  "Sometimes it’s quite nice to have someone else do the research for you." Shiro shrugged.

  "True. Right then, the twin guardians can’t be damaged unless they’re next to each other. During the fight, they will continuously apply debuffs to us until it gets to the point where we can no longer deal damage to them. Not only that, every 20% of damage they take, they will transport us to an illusionary plane of sorts where we have to go look for the two of them. There is something annoying about this plane though, it shows trauma’s and what we are afraid of so before the 20% damage threshold is reached, Silvia will be buffing our tolerance to make this part easier. Should one of us fail in finding the two guardians within this plain, he will heal a percentage of his health back." Lyrica explained as Shiro nodded her head.

  "That is rather annoying. Do you think I’ll be able to damage them past the 20% mark in one go?" Shiro asked curiously.

  "Unfortunately no. Since a shield will appear around them the moment they take damage equal to 20% of their health." Lyrica shook her head.

  "Hmm…… that does sound annoying." Shiro muttered before glancing at the party.

  Even without going to the guardian, she already knew of her trauma/fears. Betrayal once more, death by the light god, the fact that she might not be strong enough when the age arrives.

  However, it was also due to these fears that she decided to trust her companions. Even if there could be betrayal which she doubts. The old Shiro would have never revealed so much information about herself to people she couldn’t read completely.

  She’s essentially giving them all the information they need to devise a strategy against her but sometimes it’s a leap of faith. A gamble.

  The chances could be low, it could be rigged and it could never succeed. But if it does, the victory feels much better than what she can achieve on her own. After all, the peak is a lonely place without any companions. She knew better than anyone since she lost Isilia. Spending the years at the peak was lonely for Shiro.

  She may joke and laugh. She may poke people for fun but even that has a limit. Loneliness is quite harsh on the human mind after all. Unless they’re crazy, no one can tolerate countless years of being alone. Hence why Shiro is taking a leap of faith in her friends.

  She’ll tell them what she can, this is most likely the last life after all. She might as well try everything she can.

  "Are you alright? You looked quite…… mellow?" Madison raised her eyebrow at Shiro’s expression.

  "Nothing much. Just thinking about what the future is like for all of us. There is a world ending crisis coming in the near future. Say, Madi, have you ever thought about settling down with anyone? Silvia has Chen Yu and they’re quite the loving couple ay? Got anyone you have in mind?" Shiro joked with a smile.

  *COUGH!

  "Where did that come from." Madison coughed in surprise.

  "Just a random thought of mine. What about you Aarim? Anyone in your mind?" Shiro turned to Aarim.

  "Nope. Just me and research haha. Plus, I did run a s*x toy store you know? I’m pretty sure I can keep myself busy." Aarim replied with a lick of her lips.

  "Oi, don’t be so open like that." Helion said with a blush since he didn’t exactly want to imagine his childhood friend ’keeping herself busy’ during a raid.

  "Hou hou~ Thinking of something R18 now are we?" Aarim chuckled with a hand over her mouth. Seeing the smugness on her face, Helion huffed and looked away which caused her to laugh.

  "Pft, the hell is this strange atmosphere." Lyrica laughed as Shiro shrugged.

  "Just relaxing everyone before the fight I suppose. Though to be fair, a few or us are still young despite our appearances. My current body is not even a year old ya know?" Shiro chuckled.

  "Speaking of which, when were you born again? As a snow girl." Lyrica asked curiously.

  "Well after I searched through the guild records, I found my very first file that was classed under Shino. They dated it to be the 24th of January so my birthday should be a few days before that." Shiro replied.

  "Heh~ Then it’ll be your first birthday in a few months then. What should we do for it?" Lyrica asked.

  "Oh? It’s Shiro’s birthday soon? We should host a party with everyone then." Silvia suggested with a smile.

  "Don’t get too hasty now girls. Who knows, the new age might arrive before my birthday." Shiro shrugged.

  "Don’t be like that, you might jinx it." Lyrica pouted as Shiro only grinned and poked her cheeks.

  "It’s fine. Plus, a birthday isn’t anything important for me. If I had to think about birthdays, I’ve already gone through quite a few of them back in Aria and in this world as Kuromi." Shiro laughed.

  "So mum’s probably gone through more than 100 birthdays then. No wonder it’s nothing special to you." Yin said while looking around the walls of the staircase.

  Suddenly feeling a glare on her, Yin shivered and hid behind Lisa.

  "Big sis, why are you hiding behind me?" Lisandra asked with a twitching smile.

  "It’s a siblings job to share the burden." Yin coughed as Lisandra only sighed with a soft smile.

  Ignoring Yin who had just said that she was over 100 years old, Shiro kicked open the set of doors at the bottom of the staircase, revealing two giants that kneeled in front of what seems to be a portal. They were in a giant room that stretched as high as the eye could see with dim orange orbs of light flickering in the air.

  Summoning Athera, Shiro stepped forward into the room with a smile.