Slashing at the Hippogriff every time it tried to attack her, Shiro managed to peel back quite a few feathers in the process, leaving several bald marks on the spots where she wanted to cut.

  Should the Hippogriff lunge in for another attack, her next slash will hopefully draw some blood.

  However, that was rather hopeful considering the fact that the Hippogriff was completely wary of her now. Who wouldn’t? If an opponent could dodge your every strike and stab you near the vitals, it would be dumb to keep trying to attack that opponent.

  Narrowing its eyes at Shiro warily, the Hippogriff stood up on its hind legs and flapped its wings.

  Recognising that movement to be the actions required for Wind Blades, Shiro quickly jumped to the side and summoned her bow.

  Cracking against the ground, Shiro could see the Wind Blades destroy a part of the platform. Understanding that a single hit of the Wind Blade could severely injure her, she had to be careful whenever its Wind Aura was cancelled.

  Pulling back her bowstring while still in the air, she fired at the Hippogriff’s eye without hesitation.

  *PUCHI!!!

  *KIIII!!!

  Crying out in pain, the Hippogriff didn’t expect Shiro to react so fast and a single mistake had cost it its eye.

  Glaring at her with its remaining eye, the Hippogriff decided to just lunge at her with everything it’s got in an attempt to overwhelm her. As long as it can get a single hit in, it’ll be able to kill her.

  Smirking slightly, Shiro observed the Hippogriff’s movements carefully and dodged its attacks at the last moment.

  Since it wasn’t as strong or as powerful as the Minotaur, dodging the attacks was rather easy for Shiro to accomplish.

  However, as it was currently unleashing a flurry of attacks, she had to be patient about her counter. She needed to wait until it exhausted its stamina before she could deal the killing blow.

  Seeing as things weren’t going its way, the Hippogriff flapped its wings and soared into the sky. Since it didn’t activate the Wind Aura, Shiro could guess that it wanted to kill her with the Wind Blades.

  Spreading out her own wings, she chased after it. Unfortunately, she was just a little slower so she started to lag behind the beast as time went on. Narrowing her eyes, she could see the beast glancing back every so often to check if she was still behind it.

  Frowning slightly, Shiro summoned her bow and started to fire arrows at its back.

  Reactivating the Wind Aura, the Hippogriff deflected the arrows but it prevented him from attacking Shiro which was good.

  ’I would try to circle around or predict where he’ll be to catch up but with the speed difference, I doubt it’ll work. I should head back to the platform while keeping it busy with arrows.’ Shiro thought to herself and started to retreat.

  Since there wasn’t a fail condition in regards to the Hippogriff escaping, she wasn’t afraid of that. Instead, it would be more troublesome if she started to run out of stamina thanks to using the wings. To maintain flight was rather stressful and her body was already starting to ache.

  Landing back on the platform while continuing to shoot arrows at the beast, Shiro made sure it didn’t have the chance to send Wind Blades at her.

  Looking back, the Hippogriff was annoyed that Shiro was back at the platform. It couldn’t hit her with any of its attacks so it wanted to use its superior speed to kill this c.o.c.kroach of an enemy but she gave up and went back to the platform and shot arrows from hundreds of meters away.

  Since that was the case, it wanted to see how long she can keep this up.

  Little did it know, Shiro was probably one of the most tenacious people it would ever meet. She was someone that fought a Minotaur for several hours just so that she could annoy it to death due to her low attack power.

  Shooting arrows at a Hippogriff was much easier than trying to dodge attacks from a Minotaur for several hours as even a close miss could shatter her bones. Between the two, Shiro would definitely prefer to use the Hippogriff as a practice tool.

  ###

  Quite a long time had passed as Shiro understood the Hippogriff’s tactic. In her mind, not only was this Hippogriff a giant coward, it was also the most annoying kind of enemy that people can fight against. One that kept delaying and delaying and delaying because they couldn’t kill the enemy.

  It was like a little kid who kept trying to annoy you because you couldn’t hit him since he was a child and you were an a.d.u.l.t. God knows how many people just wanted to kick the annoying kid across the field like a football.

  As for Shiro and the Hippogriff, she was the a.d.u.l.t and he was the kid who kept annoying her.

  However, two can play that game as Shiro didn’t stop firing her arrows.

  All she had to do was fire her arrows while the Hippogriff needed to constantly fly and keep its body in the air. Once it got tired and had to come down, she was going to torture the crap out of him.

  And as she predicted, the Hippogriff was beginning to feel extremely tired as its body swayed in the wind. The only place for it to rest was at the platform as it was within the boundaries of the trial. If it was to leave too far, it’d be killed automatically due to the nature of this trial.

  Try as it might, it could not fight against the limits of its body and had to descend towards the platform.

  Seeing this, Shiro almost looked like she had a crazed grin on her face as her torture target was finally coming down. The moment it did, she could finally relieve her anger that had been building up.

  Feeling her malevolent glare on its body, the Hippogriff couldn’t help but feel fear creeping into its heart.

  The moment its claw touched the platform, Shiro lunged towards it like a rabid animal that had found some prey.

  "Come here you little sh*t!" Shiro shouted out while grabbing her dagger.

  The next few scenes could only be described as horrific as the cries of the Hippogriff never stopped.

  Blood splattered everywhere, dying the white platform with blood as the organs were thrown aside. By the time the Hippogriff’s cries ended, there was not a piece of its body that was whole. The beak was ripped out along with its tongue and the limbs were bent in strange ways as the tendons had been cut apart.

  Looking at her dagger that was on the verge of breaking, she threw it aside since the next attack would definitely break it in half and she’d rather not use a weapon that’d break the moment someone breathed on it.

  Cracking her neck, Shiro sat down and waited for her to be teleported back to the white space with the stone tablet.

  After waiting for a few moments, she could feel her fatigue fade away once more as she was now sitting in front of the stone tablet.

  "See? You didn’t need to rain down the might of the sun into my eyes every time you teleport me." Shiro complained since it happened suddenly without light burning her eyes.

  Glancing towards the stone tablet, she watched as words started to materialise on the surface.

  [You have completed the Trial of Flight.]

  [The next trial is the Trial of Strength.]

  [As you have completed two trials, you have the choice of stopping here and obtaining either one in the form of a divinity. However, should you continue, you may obtain the full divinity but doing so may disable you.]

  "That’s fine. Continue." Shiro nodded her head since the full divinity was her goal to begin with. Both the Divinity of Victory and the Divinity of Flight were good in their own regard but it was only when all three were combined would the Divinity of Nike truly be worth it. Plus, once she completed the Trial of Strength, she’d be allowed to participate in the demi trials which represented Nike’s Siblings, giving her that extra boost.

  [The next trial is the Trial of Strength.]

  [Trial of Strength]

  [Defeat the Champion of Strength. A weapon will be provided for you.]

  Raising her eyebrow, Shiro blinked and found herself in front of an armoury of sorts.

  There were weapons lining the walls of this armoury and she had to pick one for her to use against the Champion of strength. Naturally, there was only one choice that would fit this occasion and that was the spear. After all, the Champion of Strength was someone with an unnatural amount of power behind each attack and the spear was perfect for using his own momentum against him.

  Grabbing the spear, she twirled it in her hands for a short moment before stepping out of the armoury. Finding herself in the middle of a Colosseum of sorts, she could see a muscular figure walking towards her with two large axes in his hands.

  Entering a stance with her spear, Shiro didn’t say anything since the final trial was simple. There was no fancy gimmick or anything to learn. She just needed to kill the Champion of Strength.