Chapter 495 Pandora's Box
Making their way across China, they had to traverse quite a few mountain ranges which wasn't too hard considering their level. Whenever Shiro discovered a potentially dangerous entity, she would either send a flaming arrow to deal with it or warn the party, allowing them to take it out swiftly.
This allowed the journey to be relatively relaxed as nothing too serious had happened due to the satellite system scouting out everything around them.
Deciding to camp out for the night, Shiro opted to take the third watch while Keiko and Keomi took first and second. Naturally, the final watch went to Nan Tian who didn't have any qualms with it.
"I doubt anything would happen but take this just in case." Shiro smiled and handed Keiko an orb of sorts.
"what's this?" Keiko raised her eyebrows curiously.
"It's… something I've developed on my own. Should you be in a dire situation, just throw this orb at the enemy and it should wrap around their body, cancelling all of their mana for a short period of time which should be just enough for you to deal with them." Shiro smiled.
"Well damn… I don't even want to know what it'll be like if this was mass produced. Assassinations would be a breeze all over the world." Keiko shuddered to think what kind of chaos this could cause in the world.
Looking at Shiro, who gave her this murder tool with ease, Keiko thought of two words that describe her perfectly.
Pandora's Box.
She was a box containing knowledge and power but the price for this would be the chaos it causes in the world.
Not only did she have the blueprints of her twin hand cannons that could kill people with ease, but she also had an orb that cancelled out a mage's most powerful tool.
"Shiro, are you sure you're a mage? What kind of mage carries things like this?" Keiko asked jokingly.
"Well, if I was a common mage, I would have died quite a few times in this current life." Shiro smiled while walking back to her own tent.
Opening the tent flap, she was half expecting to see Nan Tian laying on her bedroll with a pose or something but her worries were for naught.
'Damn, hanging out with this guy has made it so that I'm being cautious around every corner in case I'm caught off guard by his advances.' Shiro thought with a frown.
Shaking her head, she tapped her glasses a few times and had her satellites roam the surrounding areas, scanning further and further away from camp.
Once that was done, she rested her body and went to sleep.
The first few hours of the night were relatively peaceful as the satellites didn't detect anything major so Shiro could sleep with ease. The same happened with Keomi but she had to deal with a few monsters that got a little too close but they were dealt with ease.
However, on the third shift, Shiro saw that her satellites seemed to have detected something big within the outskirts of its detection range.
Furrowing her brows, Shiro activated a camera function on the satellite and tried to get a closer look. Hoping that it wasn't one of the three level 500 monsters in the area, she controlled the satellite carefully.
Thankfully, the monster that the satellite picked up seemed to be a large turtle that had a small forest on its back.
Looking through the camera, she could see the turtle crawl out of the ground and move away from their location.
'Fu… it's nothing too big.' Shiro sighed in relief since fighting here was not an option. Once they fought, the mana fluctuations would no doubt draw more attention, causing hordes of monsters to charge towards them. Should that happen, escaping would be very hard since they could probably just track where her rift opened up once more.
'Though it's quite strange… The satellites should have picked up on the turtle much earlier than this. How come it only discovered it wh- wait a minute… Why are the fluctuations different.' Shiro narrowed her eyes as she noticed a small inconsistency in her scans. The first fluctuation the satellites detected was much sharper while the turtles was rather mellow. Meaning there were two monsters rather than one.
Standing up, Shiro had a serious expression on her face.
"This monster must be adept in stealth." She muttered before quickly waking up everyone in the tent.
"*Yawn~ What's going on?" Keiko asked while rubbing her eyes.
"There seems to be a monster adept in stealth near here. I barely detected it for a moment before they replaced themselves with a different monster to mask their presence." Shiro said as they all sobered up and quickly packed their things.
"Then we should probably move through the night. Fighting would only make matters worse." Nan Tian suggested.
Agreeing with his suggestion, the party started to travel through the night while making sure to constantly keep a watch on their surroundings.
###
"Oh dear, seems like you've startled the queen." Estrella chuckled while glancing at the gorgon that she had forcefully dragged into her dimension. In order to try pulling off a bluff, she had summoned a different monster in her place but it didn't seem to work.
The gorgon, clearly enraged by her actions, hissed at her while mana surged.
"You wish to fight? I can keep you company. However, you have bigger uses for me. You are to test my queen to be and see if she's qualified." Estrella smiled floating towards the gorgon gracefully.
"Like hell I'll take orders from you." The gorgon replied as her hair lashed out at her, only to phase through without doing anything to Estrella.
"This is my realm, as the guardian of realms, merging two realms into one so that it seems like I'm here is quite a simple task." Estrella chuckled while swiping her hand.
Suddenly, the realm around them seemed to twist and stretch as hundreds of eyes snapped open in the shadows.
"Do you want to keep my cute beasts' company or conduct the test for me?" She asked once more.
Without swaying anything, the gorgon only swept her gaze at the eyes as she tried to petrify them.
Unfortunately, this only caused Estrella's smile to turn into a mocking grin.
A faint veil of white seemed to wash over the beasts' eyes as the magic was reflected back at the gorgon. Her skin, which was resistant to her own petrification, started to solidify much to her confusion.
These beasts were quite special as they had an innate skill which allowed them to either reduce or completely nullify an entity's resistance to a certain element or magic. For the gorgon, they were able to weaken her resistance to petrification and reflect the magic back at her with a simple spell.
Their physical potential was quite weak but they were the perfect counter to entities that like to send out curses or status ailments.
"Tsk tsk tsk, seems like I'll need to be forceful. I'll be honest though; I would have had a harder time if not for the queen's ascension. Her presence really boosted my powers over dimensions. Perhaps she has a similar skill? Regardless, I still need you to test her, little snake. But you being level 500 is a little high for my liking. Why don't we… Cut you down a little." Estrella's gaze turned cold as her chuckle echoed in the realm.
Dread filled the gorgon's heart as she grits her teeth and prepared to fight back with everything she's got.
###
Continuing their journey through the night, the party made quite a bit of progress as they soon reached what seemed to be a rural village.
The village itself was in rather good condition much to Shiro's surprise since the surrounding area was fraught with danger.
Deciding to take a short break so that they could have some breakfast, Shiro allowed Attie, Nimue and Iziuel to come out for a bit.
Walking around the village, they soon found a small family run restaurant that sold noodles and ordered a few bowls.
"Excuse me." Shiro called out, wanting to get some of her questions answered.
"Yes?" A young girl that looked around 16 replied with a cheerful smile.
"I'm just curious about this village. The surrounding area is filled with high level monsters yet everyone here is quite carefree. Are you able to tell me why?" Shiro asked.
"Ah, a lot of people that come by here are curious too. It's mostly due to the monster wards that the martial hero had placed here. It allows us to live here in peace as we're not able to travel to the big cities." The girl replied with a smile.
"Plus, we've also got some defensive measures in case someone wants to cause trouble. We know it works since we've been under attack by some bandits before but they were driven away." She continued.
"I see… thank you." Shiro nodded.
"You're welcome, enjoy your meal." The girl waved and went back to work.
"So Keiko, are you able to tell me more about this martial hero? I'm quite curious." Shiro asked.
"Sure." Keiko nodded as she started to recount her time with the martial hero during one of the world conferences.