Spending the next few hours to study the runic language, Shiro would drink her potion and create the runes herself to test them out for a moment before dismissing it. Constantly updating her library in her mind, the runes slowly made more sense to her.

"Hmm… if I do this, that should make my ice condense its power into a short burst rather than slowly freezing people." Shiro muttered, combing a few of the runes related to time with her ice attacks.

Tracing a rune in the air in front of her, there was a flicker of blue light when half her room was frozen in an instant.

"Yes! First breakthrough!" Shiro jumped up in joy before pausing and coughing lightly since Nan Tian was still in the room. Acting childish like that was still a little embarrassing.

"Pft haha, don't mind me." Nan Tian chuckled since he didn't expect her to cheer out like that.

"Cough. Right…" Shiro scratched her cheek before thawing the ice in her room.

Ticking off a few runes, she had their meanings completely deciphered so using them in combat should be easy enough. There was also the problem of how many runes she could fit in a low tier spell.

Each rune has its own 'weight' that draws magic from the spell circle and the host. If the magic consumption of the rune outweighs what the spell circle could provide as the catalyst then the spell would collapse.

This was also one of the reasons as to why it was so hard to activate time stop with her current capabilities. Not only was her mastery over the runes not good enough yet, her tier 6 magic circle was having a hard time sustaining the weight of all these high tier runes.

Regardless, once she fully understands the runic language, she'll be able to condense them down so that the weight is reduced. By reducing the needless expenses while keeping the balance, she'll be able to cast tier 8 spell disguised as tier 6. Its effects will be something that only tier 8 can achieve but the condensed version would have its powers weakened so that even a tier 6 could use it.

She needed to reach level 1000 before being able to fully become a tier 7 so this was going to be her trump card for a long while.

If she is able to complete it, Shiro had to make sure that the others aren't able to figure out what she's doing. Though, even if they knew, trying to combat stopped time was going to be tough regardless unless they were a diamond turtle that focused only on defence and 0 attack.

However, if that was the case then all she needed was to use Silvanis.

'With Helion working on etching a scaffold for this magic circle, casting this spell should be easy enough.' Shiro thought with an excited glimmer in her eyes.

As she continued to work, Nan Tian glanced at the time and saw that it was now approaching 2am.

"You should sleep now. It's getting quite late." He reminded as she glanced up at the time before pouting lightly.

"But I feel like I just need that extra push then I can decipher this one too." Shiro complained as she wished she could just stop time now and continue her studies on the runic pages. Feeling the joy of progression along with being able to experiment with new runes brought her a great amount of enjoyment and ending that now felt annoying.

"Yes but the book will still be there. You have to look after your body first before anything." Nan Tian chuckled as Shiro sighed and nodded her head.

"Fine~ I'll work on this tomorrow then." Shiro sighed before storing the book in her inventory.

Standing up, Shiro did a light stretch before glancing back.

"I'm going to get a quick shower first. I was a bit too close to blood today. Sleeping like this would be annoying."

"Mn."

Entering the toilet, Shiro had a quick shower before changing into her pyjamas.

Climbing back into her bed, she yawned for a moment before closing her eyes.

Making sure that Shiro had slept, Nan Tian did the same.

###

Standing on a floating building that seemed to drift through the empty space, Shiro could see herself sitting above her with a frown while a space station floated in the background.

"You're back." Her clone scoffed disdainfully as Shiro shrugged.

"Hmm… wasn't my intention but this is fine."

Closing her eyes, a chair and a book appeared near her as she sat down and started reading again.

"???" Seeing this, her clone blinked her eyes in confusion as Shiro normally came to this place unconsciously because of her guilt. But today she was here… to read?

"Do you even know where you are right now?" Her clone asked as Shiro nodded her head.

"Yup. That's the space station where Isilia was taken away wasn't it? Where I couldn't do anything to the watchman. I'm still guilty but I can't keep dwelling on that when I'm hindering the chances of me getting stronger and taking Isilia back for myself. The gods have already injured themselves for me, Gaia's missing half her body, Nyx is unconscious, Tartarus lost his arm with a mysterious corruptive power and there's a 'me' that I don't recognise from Aria's fear. There's too much going on for me to run away and hide in a corner. I'm not saying I have completely gotten over it but I need to look forward. And that starts with doing what I can to improve. I had wanted to continue to study the runes in my sleep but if it brings me here then there's nothing I can do about it but do what I had intended to do. As long as you don't distract me then I'm fine." Shiro waved her hand dismissively before giving the space station another glance.

Sighing softly, she looked back to her book and continued to study the runes.

Watching with disbelief written all over her face, her clone looked at Shiro in surprise before shaking her head and kept silent through the entire moment.

Throughout the entire playback of the events, Shiro never gave the scene a second look after the last glance. She would focus entirely on her memory of the book and continue to decipher the runes. Unfortunately, she wasn't able to push past that final small hurdle for her to finish deciphering the rune.

Waking up in a groggy state, Shiro yawned before taking out her book and double checking to see what she had missed. But her memory of the page was exactly the same as it was in the dream.

"You must be quite interested in that book for you to ready it first thing in the morning." Nan Tian chuckled.

"Mn, I'm just double checking to see if my memory is correct. I was trying to finish deciphering it but I can't cross that last hurdle." Shiro sighed as Nan Tian paused for a moment since he was sure that she didn't wake up during the night. If she did, he would have woken up too but if that wasn't the case then…

"You were trying to decipher the rune?" Nan Tian asked after a small pause.

"Yeah I was de- !! Cough I was dreaming of deciphering it in the morning just now. That's why I woke up early." Shiro corrected herself but she had already confessed that she tried to work even in her sleep.

Since her mind didn't rest at all, she was still tired.

Looking at Shiro with a neutral expression, dark clouds seemed to loom over him as Shiro scratched her cheek.

"I'll sleep on the way to Vrish' Lir ok? I was just curious." Shiro compromised since she wasn't able to make any progress which just made things worse. There was no benefit to her staying up at all. She should have just slept peacefully!

"Haa…." Sighing out heavily, Nan Tian massaged his eyes before getting out of bed.

"How will you sleep? We're going to be flying there unless you can sleep-fly, I doubt you'll be able to get any sleep. Just rest up for the rest of today. People will need to prepare for the trip so you don't have to wake up this early. I'm giving them till afternoon to register so you can sleep till then. And please sleep properly this time." Nan Tian sighed as Shiro pouted for a moment before nodding her head.

"Fine I'll sleep properly then." Shiro said as she laid back down on her bed. Closing her eyes, she slept for real this time.

Shaking his head, Nan Tian couldn't help but smile.

'Workaholic even in her sleep. At least she's getting better.' He thought to herself as he sent out a message for his subordinate to help him with a few tasks so that he didn't need to leave the room.

Looking at the book that Shiro forgot to put into her inventory, he thought for a moment before picking it up and reading it. He wasn't sure how much help he would be but he wanted to see if he could provide her with some help.

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