Maria crashed into her enemies as she unleashed a full force [Full Burst] and unleashed an insane amount of sword strike all within an instant. A furious blade storm appeared around her and her enemies were all sliced into mincemeat as she continued to plow forward.

  “Die!”

  This time around, Maria didn’t only use her swords to execute her slashes, but she also used her wings. For some reason at this very moment, she somehow gained enlightenment on using her entire body as a sword and not just the two weapons she was holding.

  Maria wanted to try something the moment she saw the mimics transform their arms into her weapons. Thankfully, her gamble worked and she was able to perform her sword slashes with her body and not just her weapons.

  *DING*

  Maria’s eyes widened as she cheered mid-fight but her elation was cut short because she was knocked out of the sky by a few of the mimics that took advantage of her being distracted.

  “O-Ouch…”

  Even though the mimics were weakened by the trial dimension’s [Mortal Coil] debuff, a lot of them had struck Maria at the same time with their copied [Zantetsuken] skill so it depleted a large chunk of her health bar.

  “They're still my clones even if they’ve been weakened. Let’s not get distracted from now on.”

  Maria raised her weapons and activated her new skill, [Bladestorm], as a furious aura wrapped around her body. Her MP was slowly being depleted but she could keep this skill activated thanks to her natural mana recovery.

  Maria noticed that the skill was the [Sundering Sword Art]’s third form but if she recalled correctly, the third form was the [Dance of the Iron Valkyrie].

  “I’ll figure it out later. Let’s deal with these mimics first!”

  She charged towards her opponents with the blade aura wrapped around her body and she struck out with a storm of aura-infused attacks. She sent sword aura after sword aura at her enemies and slowly began killing them one after the other.

  Any mimic that approached her would receive damage just from being close to her so they had to attack her at their own risk. Right now, Maria was like a porcupine whose bristles were standing on end and the effects of her skill allowed her to attack her enemies with reckless abandon.

  If her enemies stayed close to her for too long, they’d be overwhelmed by her aura and receive the knockback effect of her skill so on top of being an offensive ability, [Bladestorm] was also a defensive skill as well. Not only that but in battle, Maria learned to infuse [Bladestorm]’s unique aura into her weapons so now her ranged attacks also possessed a knockback and an AOE effect. It was a type of aura so with her [Aura Mastery] skill, Maria learned how to manipulate it freely during the course of her battle with the mimics.

  “Hahaha, I love this game!”

  Maria was a genius when it came to fighting because she learned how to use her abilities in the most unique ways and learned how to fight against her opponents in the midst of battle–whether she did it by studying their movements or by copying their abilities. Since she was fighting against mimics that had copied her battle style, Maria was able to learn more and more about her own flaws and in real-time developed ways to patch them up.

  At the end of her long fight, Maria was the only one left standing but she wasn’t exhausted at all. Instead, she had a wide smile on her face as she was completely excited to face the other mimics inside of the trial dimension.

  Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  “I’m growing as I fight so this means my mimics will also grow along with me. I’ll use this chance to see my flaws and gaps and then improve on them!” Maria sheathed her weapons and deactivated [Bladestorm] before flying away in search of more enemies. “I’ll milk this trial dimension dry of all its benefits!”

  ********

  A few hours later, Maria finished clearing up the last group of mimics within the trial dimension. She sat down to recover her SP while she checked her [Status] menu. Unfortunately, she didn’t receive any EXP from the monsters so despite killing so many, she didn’t level up a single time. However, this didn’t matter. Levels were just a number and what Maria gained instead of that was something even better. Her combat ability had taken a sharp rise in level after she observed and learned of her own battle style and the flaws they had.

  During the course of her fights against the mimics who had transformed into herself, she constantly improved, and through the continuous use of her skills and abilities, Maria’s skill levels and ranks rose. The largest change was definitely the [Sundering Steel Sword Art] that she gained an understanding of which she deduced was likely Odin’s true sword style.

  "That old geezer, he taught me those 'training wheels' techniques and not the actual thing. I bet he'd be so surprised the next time I meet him and show off his true sword style," Maria said with a prideful grin.

  After reading through the skill’s newly updated [Skill] menu, Maria was quite delighted but at the same time was also disappointed. There were a total of 9 sword skills from Odin’s [Sundering Steel Sword Art] but she only knew how to use 5 of them. 4 of them were still unknown to her so she needed to learn them in order to bring out the maximum effects of the [Sundering Steel Sword Art]. It was too bad she couldn’t go back to the Void Sea Realm and ask Odin to teach those sword arts to her.

  "It won't be easy but it's more fun this way~" Maria said as she stood up.

  For now, Maria decided to put learning the rest of the sword skills on hold because her top priority was clearing the trial dimension. She had completely wiped out all of the mimics in the dimension so all that was left was her main target, Sin Devil Pride.

  Maria already had eyes on the devil and to her surprise, Pride was actually already released from its seal. It hadn’t made its move and was only waiting in the area where its seal had been even though Maria had been going around hunting the mimics.

  This didn’t make sense to her but after thinking about it, this Sin Devil was called Pride for a reason. It likely had an enormous ego that trumped even her own so it was likely that Pride allowed Maria to clear the dimension of all nuisances so that when their battle came, no one would interfere.

  “One versus one, just how I like it,” Maria said as she flew towards Pride who was waiting for her with its arms crossed on its chest. “Sorry to make you wait, I had to clear out all of the pests first.”

  {Human, you are the first to come into the realm…and you will be the last.}

  “Hmm?”

  {I’ve been watching and waiting for you. You have the Origin Sins of all my younger brothers and sisters so as the eldest, I’ll take them back from you.}

  “Ah, so you’re their big brother, huh? That’s nice, but don’t think I’ll be returning it just because you asked so nicely~”

  {I wasn’t planning on just asking nicely.}

  “Hehehe, then let’s fight.”

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