After killing the guardian for five separate occasions, Shiro had found out that the first key belonged to the fifth pillar.

  Marking down the first key as the fifth pillar in her mind, Shiro looked towards the second pillar for the second key.

  [Guardian of the Second Pillar – Corvik]

  [Restriction of Close Distance]

  Pressing her palm against the pillar, the pieces transformed themselves into a bird roughly 200 meters away from her.

  The moment she tried to walk closer, the bird would flicker back.

  "So I can’t get closer than 200 meters? Tsk, troublesome." Shiro frowned but this was fine since she could fire her sword from her bow.

  Summoning her bow, she felt danger as the bird flapped its wings. Widening her eyes, Shiro quickly ducked behind the third pillar.

  *BANG!!!!! KRRRR!!!!!!

  Watching the sharp of ice slam into the pillar and attempt to freeze it, Shiro furrowed her brows. If the third pillar wasn’t close enough then she would have been frozen into an ice statue.

  Summoning both her sword and bow, she peeked around the corner and drew back on the bow.

  Firing the sword/arrow, she watched as the sword stabbed into the bird golem’s leg without any problems. While it wasn’t a deep stab, it was much better than the shallow wounds that she could only inflict into the golem.

  ’Compared to the last golem, the bird’s defence is definitely weaker. Though normal arrows from this bow might not be as effective as the sword.’ She mused to herself while ducking back into cover.

  *BANG!!!

  Right after she ducked into cover, another blast of ice collided with the pillar.

  Furrowing her brows, Shiro saw that there was some ice already wrapping around the pillar so she should probably look around for some more cover.

  Checking around her current area, there were only a few one time use covers that would be destroyed with a single hit thanks to the bird. To make matters worse, she’d only be able to use them once meaning she couldn’t use them when she fought the bird again for the right combination.

  Meaning her most reliable source of defence was probably the pillars.

  Narrowing her eyes, she decided to find out how many shots the pillar could take.

  Just as the hem of her dress touched the ice, a part of it froze up and broke off in an instant.

  Widening her eyes, Shiro understood that even touching the ice is a problem.

  "Tsk, why does every one of you f*ckers have to try to kill me in one hit? This lady is offended." Shiro muttered while guessing that the pillar can only take one more shot before the ice wraps around to the other side.

  Firing her sword, she ducked back into cover as an ice blast followed soon after. With the ice closing in on her, Shiro dashed to the second pillar and fired her sword on the way there.

  Repeating this process until the final pillar, Shiro had acc.u.mulated 27 stacks so far. One more stack and she’ll be able to have a 6% chance of Soul Steal along with a 10% increase to her physical parameters.

  After a few short moments of firing and dodging, Shiro finally reached 30 stacks but most of the covers had been frozen so unless she can kill this one in one shot, she’ll need to be careful of her next steps. Taking a deep breath, she consumed all the stacks and shot the sword at the bird.

  However, just before the sword flew off the bow, Shiro felt Error 403 stir and latch itself onto the sword.

  "Ah wait! You stupid element don’t waste yourself on a weak mob monster!" Shiro shouted out but the sword was now halfway towards the bird.

  Slamming her foot against the cover, she dragged the chains and tried to bring it back to her.

  *BANG!!!!!

  Feeling the tension of the chain shoot up in an instant, Shiro gritted her teeth and tried her best to pull it back to her.

  Thankfully, she was successful, and the sword returned to her.

  Looking at the Error circuits which seemed to be pouting with its arms crossed, Shiro felt like a vein was about to burst.

  "Listen here, you can go for big boss but that is not big boss. It’s a mob enemy, you don’t waste yourself on mob enemies." Shiro lectured as the Error flickered for a moment before retreating back to her hand, clearly upset.

  Shaking her head, Shiro decided to talk to this Error of hers at a later date.

  Notching the sword once more, she was about to fire when she felt resistance from the blade.

  "You complain too and I don’t mind pulling you off the chain and breaking you in half!" Shiro warned as the blade settled down instantly.

  "Tch!" Clicking her tongue at the two disobedient children, Shiro fired the empowered shot at the bird and managed to kill it in one go.

  Jogging over, she claimed the key before glancing back at the towers. Now that the bird was dead, the ice had now thawed and the pillars returned to normal.

  Sighing in relief, she was worried that the ice would remain. If they did, it would have been a pain to have to find new covers.

  Trying the second key on the first she watched as both the keys were reduced to ash.

  *Sigh……

  Sighing deeply, she massaged her shoulder and challenged the pillars once more starting with the first pillar.

  ###

  After hours of combat with the occasional rest in between, Shiro was now starving as her stomach was running on empty. Even with the help of her stacks, she was only able to get a small burst of strength which only makes her hunger worse.

  If anything, the good news was that she had been quite lucky with some of the pillars, allowing her to find their spot quickly.

  So far, the sequence is as follows.

  First key in the fifth pillar, second key in the seventh pillar, third key in the first pillar, fourth key in the eighth pillar, fifth key in the second pillar, sixth key in the tenth pillar and the seventh key in the third pillar. With three more guardians left, Shiro sighed and rubbed her stomach. Taking a moment to look around the place, she wanted to see if there were any sources of food that she could potentially use otherwise she might have to become a herbivore and eat grass.

  It was much easier to find food back on Earth since she could just kill a monster for its mana crystal. She didn’t need to bother about the meat if she didn’t want to. Another bonus was that the crystal was rather sweet too so it was essentially eating candy that would fill you up.

  However, despite her searching, she couldn’t find anything so she gave up in the end and returned to the pillars.

  Steadying her mind, she challenged the remaining guardians on an empty stomach.

  ###

  The last few keys could only be called hell as she struggled fight after fight but she had finally finished the combination.

  The eight key was slotted in the fourth pillar, the ninth’s key in the sixth pillar and the tenth key in the ninth pillar.

  Just as she inserted the final key, she watched as each key cracked in two before more slots appeared on the pillars.

  [Reconfigure the keys and place them in the new slots. For each wrong configuration, a golem with the merged restriction will appear and ’consume’ the shards. Kill it to reclaim the shards.]

  Raising her eyebrows, Shiro was glad that she didn’t need to kill the ten guardians all over again otherwise she’ll truly die.

  However, there was now the worry of what combinations she should do. If she combined the ranged and the close ranged together she wouldn’t be able to defeat the guardian at all since they’ll be impervious to attacks.

  But there was no absolute as even gods can die so there must be a trick to this.

  Setting that aside for now, Shiro worked at figuring out the combinations of the keys.

  ###

  After a while of tests and fighting, Shiro noticed a small pattern. For the configurations, the first piece used would determine its spot on the pillar meaning she only had to move the second pieces around.

  With this new information, it was much easier since it was essentially the first half of this test only slightly harder.

  After a few more gruelling hours, she finally completed the sequence and watched as a portal opened up in front of her.

  Sighing in relief, she wanted to cry tears of joy but that should be saved for later since if she cried now, it’d be tears of hunger!