After an hour or so of training Kanae, Shiro stopped as too much training would be bad for her. 1 hour was just right to increase her stamina along with her core foundation.
She was also planning on teaching her a few routines that will help out with her flexibility during combat. That was because being flexible could give you more options during a fight.
However, before she could show her the routines, Shiro saw Lyrica and Madison return from their dungeon venture.
[Take a short break ok? I'm going to talk to Lyrica and Madison for a short moment.]
"Alright." Kanae nodded and sat in the tent.
While Kanae went to rest for a while, Shiro walked towards the duo.
Seeing their levels, she was quite surprised at how fast they levelled up.
[Lyrica LVL 30 – Elven Bladedancer]
[Madison LVL 28 – Demon Knight]
"Shiro, you're back quite early today." Lyrica said.
[Yeah. I tried out Giant's Heart but the puzzles took too long so I gave up.] Shiro shrugged.
[But what about you? You levelled up massively since I last saw you.] Shiro asked.
"Well, we partnered up with Jonas' party from the raid before and we challenged the level 40 dungeon, Blood Vale. With Silvia healing us and giving us buff's, we were able to fight longer and harder. I think we spent five or six days inside the dungeon. Right Madi?" Lyrica said, turning over to Madison.
"Yeah, we spent six days in there. This battle freak here didn't stop at all." Madison rolled her eyes. With the amount of fighting they've been doing; it would freak anyone out.
[Well, your levels had shown massive growth so I'm not surprised.] Shiro complimented.
After the dungeon, Shiro still wasn't able to reach level 38 which only caused her to sigh. If there were percentages to EXP, she guessed that she would be around 99% right now. She could almost feel the thin wall between levels, ready to break at any moment.
"Oh right, Shiro, I've created a self-made skill and got a title for it!" Lyrica said with excitement.
However, hearing what she said, Shiro widened her eyes in shock.
'Self-made skill?!'
Self-made skills weren't something a level 30 should have. Not to mention, if she gained a title for her skill, it meant that the system recognised the skill to have great potential.
While it can be explained that her Bladedancer class is a rare one so any combination would become a self-made skill, the title couldn't be explained the same way.
Titles for skills were only acquirable when the system determined the skill potential to be at least above a B rank skill.
For Lyrica to create a skill that reached B rank in potential, Shiro only had one word for her.
Genius!
[Are you able to show me the skill?] Shiro asked with visible anticipation and curiosity.
"How about you join us tomorrow for the dungeon run? We're stuck on the boss right now since our damage per second is a little limited with our party. The defence of the boss is too high for us to bridge the gap and having bloodl.u.s.t suppress us didn't make things any better." Madison said as beating the first boss not only meant rewards for the team, but also them getting access to the second part of the dungeon.
From what she had read about the dungeon, the second part had more monsters which also meant more EXP.
'Hmm… I suppose having a pure combat dungeon is the best way to help Yin level up. But the biggest question is how they're supposed to resist the bloodl.u.s.t.'
[How did the lot of you stand against their bloodl.u.s.t?] Shiro asked.
"Well Jonas gave us a few potions that increased our willpower." Lyrica said as Shiro nodded.
[Indeed. But also try not to use the potion when you can. Forcing yourself to stand against bloodl.u.s.t can train up your willpower which is very important later on.] Shiro smiled.
While she understood that drinking potions helped out massively, it was still bad for your body later on in the line. The only reason as to why she was drinking potions before was due to the fact that A, she needed to. And B, her MP consumption was many times higher than others due to her broken links.
Otherwise, she would not use such low ranked potions.
"Jonas told us that to stand against bloodl.u.s.t, we need to have our own bloodl.u.s.t." Madison said.
"Shiro, I know that you have bloodl.u.s.t yourself so how do you increase it in a short amount of time?" Lyrica asked.
She remembered that Shiro had told them that drinking low ranked potions were bad. Therefore, she wanted to cultivate a large bloodl.u.s.t to counter the dungeon.
[It's simple. You just need to commit genocide. Preferably by your own hands so you understand the feeling of cutting someone down. During this, when you start feeling the emotions of wanting to cut the next person down, that's when you know your bloodl.u.s.t is starting to affect you. Grasp onto this feeling and control it. Once you do, you'll be able to direct your bloodl.u.s.t/killing intent at people to try to weaken them.] Shiro explained.
Lyrica and Madison paled slightly at the mention of genocide and remembered that Shiro had a huge amount of killing intent as demonstrated during their negotiation with Winter's Grace.
"Erm Shiro?"
[Yeah?]
"How did you cultivate your killing intent?" Madison asked.
'Ah, I did it again.' Shiro thought, realising the fact that she had just blatantly told them that she committed mass genocide to cultivate her killing intent.
'Then again, they'll know about it sooner or later.' Shiro thought and decided to play it off.
[Well I'm not too sure. From what I remember, I've always had this killing intent.]
Lyrica and Madison looked at each other before back at Shiro.
"So… is there any other way other than committing genocide?" Lyrica asked.
[I suppose constantly exposing you to killing intent would work as well, albeit at a much slower pace.]
"Why didn't you say that at the start!" Madison complained.
[Well you asked for the fastest way did you not? The fastest is not always the best.] Shiro replied, taking this chance to educate them.
"…" The duo didn't have any words to refute her as she was right. They did ask her for the fastest way to cultivate bloodl.u.s.t.
[If you want, I can expose you to directed and concentrated killing intent for a little while so you can get a feeling for it. While the Blood Vale does have bloodl.u.s.t, it's not concentrated on you so it's harder for you to grasp the feeling if you know what I mean by that.]
"I know. So, are we going to do it here or should we go into a dungeon so we can train for longer?" Lyrica asked.
[Baby steps. You need to first grasp onto the feeling of concentrated killing intent. Only after that will we start giving you long term exposures.] Shiro replied.
[Prepare yourselves, I'm just going to give you a quick taste first.]
Lyrica and Madison nodded at her words and took a deep breath to prepare themselves mentally.
During the dungeon, even with the help of the potion, they could still feel the pressure that bore down on them. Now that Shiro was going to focus her killing intent on them, they had to prepare themselves.
[Ready?]
"Yeah."
Seeing that they were both ready, Shiro narrowed her eyes.
'Only a small sliver…' She though whilst controlling her killing intent. Just enough that a small amount could be felt by both Lyrica and Madison.
While it was a small amount to Shiro, for the duo, it felt like they were staring up at a behemoth.
Their eyes widened as they now knew what the feeling of killing intent was.
Withdrawing the killing intent immediately, Shiro waited for the duo to recover.
The feeling gripped at their throat, preventing them from breathing.
"PUAH! Haaa haa haa…"
It was after a short moment did they snap out of it and collapsed onto their knees.
Taking deep breaths, they tried to calm their rapidly beating hearts.
'Ah… Was it still too much for them?' Shiro thought to herself a little worried about their state right now. She had tried to limit her killing intent as much as possible because she knew what a huge amount of killing intent can do to a person.
They only needed a short moment as Lyrica was the first one to recover.
"How much killing intent was that?" Lyrica asked, her voice still a little shaky from the experience.
[If I had to put a percentage on that. I'd say less than 1% and for a short moment.] Shiro replied after a short moment.
"Less…than 1%?" Lyrica asked hesitantly.
[Yup. Less than 1%.] Shiro nodded.
[You two take a moment to calm yourselves. I'm going to help Kanae out a little more.]
Lyrica nodded while she watched Shiro walk away.
"My god…" She muttered whilst sitting down.
During this, Madison had recovered slightly.
"How many do you think she had killed to get this kind of killing intent?" Madison asked.
"A lot? Well she's got amnesia so she doesn't remember anything from before New York. Nothing that gives her a hint of her identity and what she had done before anyways."
"Do you think she could be those type of secret soldiers that had their memories wiped when they're not on a mission?"
"… You watch too many shows." Lyrica dismissed that thought and focused on recovering her mental state.
"Maybe." Madison agreed as it was just a random thought.
Meanwhile, when Shiro entered the tent, she smiled softly seeing Kanae fast asleep, laying face down on her sleeping bag.
Patting her head, Shiro tucked her inside her sleeping bag.
"Mn? Ah Shiro-nee. I'm awake now." Kanae replied groggily.
[Nope. Go to sleep and rest your body. Since you fell asleep in the short time that I wasn't here, it means your body needs rest.] Shiro typed out.
"But-"
Shiro placed a finger on Kanae's lips to stop her from speaking.
[Sleep.]
Pouting slightly, Kanae nodded and went to sleep as Shiro had said. Shiro chuckled to herself and imagined that this is what it'll be like if she had a younger sister.
'Cute…' Shiro thought, patting Kanae's head.
Since Kanae was resting, Shiro thought about Lyrica and Madison's levelling speed.
'While I aimed to have Lyrica and Madison fight hard battles while being rewarded with EXP, it seems like the more effective way was still to have a party slaughter through a crowd of monsters.'
With a healer like Silvia, who not only had a great area of effect healing but also support spells that buffed one's status, it was no wonder that their levelling speed would be incredible. Adding on the fact that the monsters were level 40 and that they were only in their late 20's, the EXP they got was much higher than what they should normally be able to earn.
'Seems like I should start preparing to recruit more people to the party.' Shiro thought as she was currently level 37, about to hit level 40 soon. With Lyrica and Madison catching up, they will soon have the right to try to recruit people like Helion and Aarim.
The only problem was Silvia since she didn't want to leave her party.
'I suppose I'll give it one more try tomorrow and if she still doesn't accept, I'll try to look for another healer some other time.'
If she failed in recruiting Silvia, she would need to look for two people instead. One to heal the party while the other to buff the party.
Scratching her head slightly, Shiro sighed in fatigue just thinking about needing to search for people with decent talent like Lyrica and Madison. Not to mention, the need to recruit them as well.
The next morning, Shiro woke up once again to Kanae hugging her body in her sleep.
Smiling wearily, Shiro gently put Kanae back into her sleeping bag. Since this had happened before, Shiro had more experience and was able to put her back without waking her up.
Looking at the time, Shiro left the tent to have some breakfast first.
Namely Mana Stones with a side of Mana Stone.
Chewing the D ranked Mana Stones, Shiro made sure to feed Yin as well.
After waiting for around 10 to 15 minutes, she saw Lyrica and Madison walk out of the tent.
[Ready?] Shiro asked as she landed softly in front of them.
"Yeah. We're going to meet up with Jonas' party at a café in the city centre first before we go to the dungeon." Lyrica replied.
Following behind Lyrica, Shiro saw that the city centre was rather empty due to how early they were.
Since she just went straight to the dungeons, she never saw the city centre early in the morning.
"Since we're technically refugees, Jonas suggested that we have an early meetup time so not many Cairosa adventurers' see us. We don't want unnecessary trouble after all." Lyrica said as she could see Shiro looking around the city centre.
Shiro nodded at her statement. It made sense since they were the 'intruders'.
Arriving at the cafe, Jonas' party was shocked to see Shiro's level.
'Level 37! Even with a healer like Silvia the highest we got was 36. Yet she's level 37?' Jonas thought with shock.
Last time, when they saw her, she wasn't even level 30. But despite that, she had managed to surpass them in level.
'Without a healer like Silvia, I doubt we would have had the same kind of levelling speed.' He thought with a frown. Levelling up as a group and levelling up solo was different. When solo, you needed to focus on everything whereas in a group, you had more leeway regarding this. Plus, with a healer like Silvia, stamina and healing wasn't a problem at all.
But right now, it only meant that she was a very dependable teammate for the dungeon.
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