"Where were you?" Shiro asked curiously as she watched Nan Tian return to this area.

"I was dealing with a pest that had arrived in the area. Unfortunately, he's like a c.o.c.kroach so I wasn't able to deal with him completely. However, now that I know he's here, I want to warn you to turn back. The site may have more dangers than what we've anticipated." Nan Tian warned as Shiro could sense that he was frowning behind the mask.

"If you're going to talk to me seriously, at least take off the mask. Otherwise it's like talking to a brick wall." Shiro shrugged.

". . ." Staying silent, Nan Tian eventually nodded and took off his mask.

"Anyways, seems like you have quite the history with this guy." Shiro said with a smile.

"Yeah, and it's not a pleasant one." Nan Tian nodded and sat down next to her.

"Feel free to tell me anything that might be of use I suppose. Since you look troubled, I'm guessing he said something rather shocking to you." Shiro asked since she had seen this situation a few times in her life. She wasn't a stranger to the look people would have after experiencing this.

"Shocking? I suppose so. He did mention something that you will definitely need to know."

"Oh? What's that?" Shiro glanced towards him as she was quite curious.

"He called this place 'one of the anchors.' Since the demons are moving and even that guy has interfered, it probably has something to do with the queens." Nan Tian replied.

Pausing in her movements, Shiro narrowed her eyes and frowned slightly.

"I figured as much." She sighed.

"You did?" Nan Tian raised his eyebrows in confusion.

"Yeah, because I'm beginning to recognise why I found this magic circle familiar." Shiro sighed.

"I never told you about how my memory works huh? It's like a database. As long as I've seen it, I'll store it like data and access it whenever I want. If I find something similar, I'll start to reference it and eventually, I'll get to the source. For something as obscure as this, it took quite a while to browse through all of my files ya know?" Shiro chuckled.

"Wait… Then that laptop…" Nan Tian glanced over.

"Yup, it's a temporary 'host' of all my knowledge pertaining to magic circles. I was referencing every single one that I knew. However, with your recent information, my suspicions were confirmed. You see, even after going through all my memories pertaining to magic circles and double checking, I only found 1 file that was remotely similar. The totem incident in New York when the Black Monarchy summoned the otherworldly monsters. There were parts of the magic circle that slightly resemble the one we see in this wasteland. However, after you mentioned the word anchor, I understood that I was looking at this with a wrong approach so I searched for a different file. One that involved my first meeting with one of the queens." Shiro narrowed her eyes and turned her laptop towards Nan Tian.

"What's this?" He asked.

On the screen, he could see a city of ice and snow women were walking around while looking towards the 'camera' and bowed in order to not attract attention to themselves.

"This was the site of the Queen of Ice's anchor. Her frozen city. After you mentioned the anchor, I realised that I felt the scene in the wasteland was familiar due to the layout. If I was to make a 3d model of the frozen city using all my knowledge and shrink it down, can you see the similarity despite a few missing information?" Shiro smiled.

On one hand, she had the hologram of the frozen city and its infrastructure while on the other, she had the hologram of the wasteland and the visible parts of the magic circle.

Overlapping the two, Nan Tian could clearly see how they were filling in the blanks and the connection points were identical. The only thing that was different was the centre.

"If I'm not wrong, this is where one of the avatars of a queen will be since they are always near the anchors. Though that is just a theory so it must be taken with a grain of salt." Shiro shrugged while glancing towards the magic circle.

"Are you able to decipher the meaning of the magic circle?" Nan Tian asked.

"Unfortunately, no. I'm missing too much information to even begin to cross reference with other rune languages. This is beyond me." Shiro sighed as there was nothing she could do. She didn't want to tamper with the magic circle either since it could lead to some disastrous consequences and tinkering with something she didn't know was very risky.

"Regardless, seems like we've gotten all the information we needed from the outside of this place. Shall we head inside and see what this place has to offer?" Shiro suggested with a smile.

Naturally, neither Nan Tian or Yin disagreed so the party started to make their way to the site. Of course, the members of the Ruin Investigation Team noticed this and sent a message to Nim. Her only reply was to keep searching but assign half of their current numbers back to the main party within the site.

###

Arriving at the edge of the site, Shiro could see the blood coloured sand continue to sink as more and more of the site was revealed.

Currently, it looked like a small temple that had sunken into the ground but Shiro knew that this was just the tip of the iceberg. In the most literal sense.

Activating her Analysis skill to see the components of this 'temple' she could see a huge extension of buildings and rooms beneath the ground, yet to be revealed.

Unfortunately, it seems like the skill was limited since everything past a certain point was obscured by mist and couldn't be seen through.

Thinking about it for a moment, Shiro called out to Estrella.

"Make a checkpoint here so that we can return if anything goes bad inside the site."

{Of course my empress.} Estrella responded without a moment of hesitation.

Appearing beside her, Estrella waved her hand and a tier 5 magic circle was branded into the air before fading away.

Creating a second magic circle, she imprinted it onto a rock and handed it to Shiro.

"Crush the rock and you'll be teleported to this checkpoint." She explained as Shiro nodded her head.

"You may return now." Shiro ordered.

Nodding her head, Estrella faded away once more and rested back at the island within her mana realm.

Looking at the spot with a slightly complicated gaze, Nan Tian glanced towards Shiro.

"What? She wanted this treatment. It was either this or I kill her for her actions against me. Naturally, I'll be making use of any resource I can obtain." Shiro replied. Of course, after Estrella made an effort like what Nimue had done, she didn't mind giving her a small leeway. However, since she was so insistent on being punished, Shiro wasn't going to try to persuade her.

"Well I was just curious since you are quite lenient." Nan Tian shrugged with a smile.

"I'm being plenty lenient. She still has her uses and disposing her would be stupid. If we didn't have her, it would be much harder to survive the encounter with Duan Hand Ying." Shiro replied as Nan Tian nodded his head.

It was the truth since Estrella's help was tremendous during that fight.

"Anyways, enough about that, let's entire the site." Shiro shook her head and jumped down into the expanding 'pit.'

There were four visible entrances to the current site, each with a different symbol but Shiro knew that they all led to the bottom.

Thinking about it for a moment, Shiro decided to enter the east most entrance and received a notification.

[You have entered a special dungeon that has been fused with this world. Due to your attachment with the Yin Kingdom, a portion of the truth will be revealed to you.

[Current Location: Temple of the Fire Queen.]

[Chosen Entrance: Entrance of Calamity.]

While the difficulty of this entrance is high, the rewards are higher. Complete all the tasks presented to you and the rewards will be at the end.

Narrowing her eyes at the description, Shiro felt like something was off. It wasn't a situation like the magic circle in the wasteland but more like a fly that is about to wander into a venus fly trap.

However, her lips soon curved into a grin.

She was extremely interested by the current situation. Depending on how she played things out, there was a chance for her to learn more about the anchors and queens. A golden chance.

"Let's go." Shiro grinned as she walked through the entrance.

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