Nanomancer Reborn - I've Become A Snow Girl?

When it was Shiro's turn, Kuromi was going to wake her up but paused after seeing her peaceful expression.

'A little odd to see my own face like this but it's not bad I suppose.' Kuromi thought with a soft smile.

Just as she was going to continue her shift for a little longer, Shiro's eyes slowly opened.

*Yawn~

"I think it's my shift now?" Shiro muttered while rubbing her eyes.

"Huh… Your internal clock is pretty accurate." Kuromi said with a smile.

"Mn, it's just something I picked up after having quite a few enemies in the world. Anyways, you can rest now, I'll take my shift." Shiro stretched while scratching her head a little.

"Got it, in that case, good night Shiro." Kuromi nodded before making herself comfortable on the branch.

###

The night passed rather quietly as there were only the occasional howls here and there. None of the animals had actually come close to the camp so she wasn't too worried.

The first thing Kuromi did when she woke up was to go back to the lake for a quick drink.

"Fuah…. That's better. Say, do you want to try to hunt another snake so that we can make some water bags?" Kuromi asked while turning to Shiro.

"Hmm… maybe. We can probably use some of the leftover snakeskin to make one now and we'll keep an eye out for another snake." Shiro nodded.

Making a water bag by tying up one of the ends so that it wouldn't leak, Shiro filled it with around a litre's worth of water.

"This should last us two for around a day or so. We'll use this time to explore and when it is almost dark, we'll make our way back here. Since the lake is our only source of water, we don't exactly want to get too far from it without any guarantees." Shiro replied while fastening the water bag on her waist.

"Got it. Now then, I found the snake towards the north of this lake. Do you want to scout out towards the north or should we choose a different direction?" Kuromi asked.

"I'd say let's go north for now. We'll travel for around 2 hours give or take, then we'll start making our way back." Shiro nodded.

Agreeing with her proposition, Kuromi followed behind Shiro as they made their way north.

Walking through the forest, the girls had only found a few small critters that couldn't even be called a meal.

However, around 1 hour into their scouting, they heard a loud roar in the distance.

Looking at each other, they instantly went on guard and tried to look for a good vantage point.

Thanks to Kuromi's help, Shiro was able to climb up the tall tree despite her injured hand.

"Holy…"

"Sh*t…" Kuromi finished off since they could see a giant dragon lifting itself out of the forest in the distance.

Judging its size with her own eyes, Shiro guessed that the dragon was around 300 meters tall with wings that seemed to block out the sky. Even from this distance, they could feel the gusts of wind hit them in the face.

Breathing out a torrent of flames into the sky, the dragon was currently battling against what seems to be a giant.

The giant had a huge axe a little larger than its own body and seemed to be around 250 meters tall since it was smaller than the dragon.

Wrestling it with his spare hand, the giant swung his axe in an attempt to cut off the dragon's wings.

Unfortunately for him, the dragon swiped its tail and knocked the axe out of the way before biting down on his shoulder.

Breathing out fire once more, the giant's shoulder was burned to a crisp as he cried out in anger.

Gritting his teeth, a red pulse of energy flared out from his eyes as red marks spread out through his body.

Grabbing the dragon's throat, the giant flung its body over his shoulders and slammed it into the ground, causing a small scale earthquake from the impact.

"URAHHHH!!!!!" He cried out in triumph.

Quickly stabilising themselves on the tree, both girls frowned in a similar manner.

"I don't think we should go that way." Kuromi joked.

"I suppose not unless we want to be crushed under the two of them. I doubt they'll be kind enough as to let us pass." Shiro replied.

Just as they were about to retreat, the skies suddenly darkened as huge boulders formed above the area.

Setting themselves aflame, meteors started to descend towards the giant as the duo quickly looked at each other in panic.

"Sh*t!"

Quickly jumping out of the tree, Shiro hopped from branch to branch in order to land safely.

Once both her feet touched the ground, she instantly sprinted as fast as she could away from the area while Kuromi did the same.

*BANG!!!!!!

The ground split apart from the impact as deep craters were formed. The shockwave of the impact instantly knocked the girls off their feet.

"God damnit!" Shiro shouted out in annoyance.

Quickly flipping her body, she landed safely before using the added momentum to increase her speed.

"Less talking, more running!" Kuromi retorted quickly while focusing on not smashing into anything face first.

As the duo continued to run, the battle behind them seemed to intensify as there were flying debris and meteors landing near them every so often.

After running for around an hour or so, they looked back to make sure that they were more or less safe.

"Haaa…. Oh my god…" Shiro panted while sitting down near the base of a tree.

"I suppose it's no wonder that anyone that chose this difficulty would fail quite quickly huh? In just two days, we've almost died twice. The first was the cliff fall. If it wasn't for you, our bones would have completely shattered upon impact and the second is this pair of dragon and giant." Kuromi muttered.

"I know. Annoying thing is that I didn't even want to choose this difficulty. I only wanted the Celestial Ruler difficulty but it was changed to immortal." Shiro replied.

"Hais, forget about that. Just talking about it is making me depressed since I'm in here with you. Anyways, where are we right now? Since we were focused on running, I think we might have ran away from the lake." Kuromi asked while looking around.

"Ah for f*cks sake." Shiro sighed since things were becoming harder. Not only have they lost their main source of water, they don't even have a benchmark for where they are right now. With mountains and forests surrounding them from all directions, everything looked the same.

"Say, Shiro." Kuromi called out.

"Mn? What is it?" Shiro asked.

"Since you said that the description said that we were knocked unconscious near a river before waking up in a falling motion right?"

"Yeah. What about it?"

"So if we had made our way back up the cliff and followed the river, we would have arrived near a city right?"

Pausing in realisation, both Shiro and Kuromi face palmed.

"Why didn't we realise it sooner?" Shiro muttered.

"I… don't know. Since we're not too sure of our surroundings, why don't we just pick a random mountain and use it as a watchtower of sorts? We'll try to locate the lake we landed in and try to back track to the city. Sure our enemies are still in the city but it's better than dying out here right? Who knows, we might be able to salvage some things from the ruins of our fallen household." Kuromi suggested.

"Alright, how about that one then? It's not too far from where we are right now." Shiro nodded before pointing towards their west.

Making their way towards the mountain, they ignored the earth-shattering battle that was happening in the distance as their focus was on trying to find the lake.

While the two were trying to get a better vantage point in order to see the lake, they had no idea that a search party was sent to the forest in order to find them.

Despite the family crumbling due to its enemies and financial reasons, the head of the house had made a few preparations to keep his daughters safe. Unfortunately, the initial escort team had been killed so the two girls were chased by a group of enemies while the secondary escort team was protecting the lord.

After sustaining lethal injuries, the lord had ordered them to find his daughters and keep them safe with the first escort team.

However, after finding the corpse of the first escort team, the secondary escort team quickly dashed into the Teriu Forest after finding some footprints.

"Spread out! Try not to get close to the goliath and the dragon since you'll be caught in the crossfire." The captain ordered seriously as he could only hope that the two misses are still alive.

'Please be alive, you two are the only ones alive in the family.' He prayed silently as he searched around the forest, hoping to find traces of the girls.