Author's Note: Okay, not a heck of a lot to say this week. Just got some maple syrup the other day. *drools.* Read, Review, Favourite and Enjoy!
Chapter 45: Video Game Logic
Raphtalia and Rifana were initially having a hard time against the fox woman. She consistently proved to be vastly more skilled with her illusion magic then what Raphtalia was and they already had some severe hits in to prove it. Then Raphtalia did something her opponent didn't expect her to do and she learned. Raphtalia had taken to the illusions around her like a fish takes to water and soon started mixing in her own into the magic. Also, Rifana spitting out a lightning barrier to protect her while she made her observations helped. Their opponent consistently demonstrated a spectacular talent for wasting magic, erupting lava, storms, floods, explosions, doppelgangers were they actually suppose to believe she could do any of this? Raphtalia closed her eyes while she tuned everything out, a vague memory from Ikki explaining to her how to fight when she couldn't rely on her eyes.
"There will come a time when your opponent tries to blind you. It's a common enough tactic and they won't even need magic to do it. To catch them though, what you need is the understanding of what the people of my world call the rolling ball theory."
Rifana noticed that Raphtalia was leaving herself open on purpose, not understanding why but she complied with her wishes and rearranged the lightning barrier so that Raphtalia wasn't in it. Barely. She could see the electricity frizz a few of the hairs on her tail.
"Rolling ball?"
"Observe." Ikki rolled the ball he made out of balloon skins across the bench and a young Raphtalia caught it. "Now why did you catch it?"
"It was going to fall."
"Precisely. If you can predict something that's going to happen then you can stop it. If you know what your opponent's personality is like then you predict their actions and prevent them."
"And if they know what you know so that they can do differently?"
"That's the beautiful thing about your area of expertise..." Raphtalia spun around and cut her blade through the lightning barrier in the exact way that instead of being punted away the blade would instead be sent sailing through, for her troubles she was rewarded with the environment going back to normal and a severed fox head. "You can control the flow of information."
"She sneaked into my lightning barrier?" Rifana was still processing the flow of events while Raphtalia prepared to re-sheath her sword. "Wait but how did you-"
"Gah." The invisible fox woman appeared behind Raphtalia. She pulled out her blade from the other illusionist dropping her in the process followed up by a series of vicious stabs to the head until Raphtalia succeeded in taking her head off.
"...so she feinted. You feinted her feint, and then predicted as she sneaked up on you and put the blade through her guts."
"Put the lightning barrier back up, I'm not receiving XP notifications with the Spear around so I have no way of knowing if that was really her or not." Raphtalia stated ears twitching as she hunted for anymore signs of the fox woman.
"You just took her head off!" Rifana shouted confused.
"Second time tonight, I have no intention of banking on a third." While Raphtalia and Rifana were preparing for a third attack the fighting between a katana wielding Keel and the harpoon wielding shark woman was intensifying, Sadeena took the liberty of outright cancelling any water magic the other shark attempted to use on them.
"Little Keel! You need to be more careful, pace yourself when you att-"
"Don't call me little!" Suddenly Keel punched the other woman away and sent her skidding across the ground, she bought herself time and room as she flared her power and made spirit energy and magic flood her veins with a vicious snarl and grew over thirty feet. The Shark woman could only gap in horror at the appearance of a forty foot long demonic wolf that was looming over her, before Keel promptly made her into a light snack.
"Okay. Never mind then." Sadeena was trapped in a state somewhere between wondering how she could do that to 'what the hell has that woman been feeding Keel!?'
The tag team of experienced Hakuto Gladiator and half-wave boss half demon dog made for a effective team up. Fohl didn't understand how that machine worked, he correctly deduced that it was roughly spear shaped and the dangerous part came out of the end she had kept pointed away from herself. So Fohl applied the rules of spear combat and closed the distance smacking the weapon out of her hands and kicking it away after it landed on his foot.
"A word of advice. When fighting against two opponents..." One of the heads of the three headed monster in the Spear Hero's party flew by and took the woman's head along with most of her spine away. "Keep an eye on both." While the Monster mutt was finishing their meal Fohl looked over to the mechanical contraption, and it would be useful to shoot down the dragon, if he had a single fucking clue how to use it! Fohl threw the useless hunk of metal away as he looked up to the air to see how the fight with the dragon was going for the other one, if they can bait the dragon into landing then maybe-what the hell is she doing!?
Atla had jumped onto the other three headed dog monster's back and was using him to jump between the castle ruins and the dragon in the air. Once again Atla's size proved a source of consternation for her, she was flat out too small to properly wield any of the numerous axes or swords lying around the ruined palace, she wasn't even big enough to wear the armour that Mr. Naofumi had gotten for her. She was so incredibly frustrated in fact that she slammed her fist into the castle wall, and to her shock watched it collapsed. Then Atla experimented, tapped on the next section of broken wall and watched energy bounce around inside of it making it crumble.
"I might be able to work with that." Thus Atla jumped onto the back of the dog monster and took to the air. She always saw the world differently from others, but it had gotten more... clear..? after Mr. Naofumi's medicine. She saw outlines, sparks of energy as they were given off in waves, she could see the dog monster clearer then the dragon and wondered if that meant the first was stronger than the latter. She saw the energy being produced by her body mix with that being produced by the dog monster and become something stronger. She reached out and grabbed the energy before throwing it at the dragon and clipping it, sending it cartwheeling through the air. "Okay... Think we can get closer to her?"
The dog had no idea what Atla had just done but she liked it. The three headed monster lowered it's upper body into a spring and jumped, it could no long cast support after the change, but in exchange she no longer needed such trivial things. Her muscles coursed with power and she was intent on putting it to use, like her master she jumped up through the air and soared. The heads barked and released the Master's offensive fire magic at the dragon in at least three different directions. Two were intercepted, as they were suppose to be, distractions while the third was used to propel them through the air and land on the dragon's face. The eyes were the only place soft enough to get a grip, much to the frustration of the dragon whose face they were borrowing, but the dog demon's stats weren't strong enough to gouge them out.
"You need a nap." Atla slammed her fist down on the dragon's head, the energy bounced around the brain and the concussed dragon fell out of the sky. The two jumped off about a mile off of the ground and landed safely, the dragon crashed into the ground landing on her wing breaking it in the process. Down but not out, and after a moment not down. The dragon rose onto her back legs and roared provocatively at the pair, breathing in deeply as she loosed a massive ball of fire at the pair. "Nope." Atla reached out and grabbed the fire ball. Yes you read that right. Atla could not see the fire, only the energy, just as real and solid to her as say her brother's hands, and she squeezed. Her energy mixed into the fire, wrapped around it and compressed it down until it was the size of one of the burgers Mr. Naofumi gave her earlier. By the time the dragon had stopped their fire breath attack a gob smacked look of awe was on her features as she saw Atla holding her fire attack in her hand. "You can have this back now." The Ball streaked across the space between them and slammed into the dragon woman's arm with enough force to blow it clean off of her body. That the beast was familiar with, her mistress ripping open wounds on prey with her spear and the three of them teaming up to harass the injured monster, claws, teeth and beak reaching into the opened wounds and pulling out flesh and organs. She had her opening and took it bounding after the dragon jumping through the air and reaching for the wound. Atla smacked aside the attempt to swat them out of the air and separated as the dog climbed into the wound and started tearing out flesh and organs.
"Impossible! Beaten by a dog and a brat!?" The dragon's complaints fell on deaf ears as Atla pounded on her enemies chest while the three headed dog tore out organs. "GACK!" The dragon let out a death rattle as Atla and her partner climbed out, Atla climbed onto the dog's back and posed as the latter barked in triumph.
"Victory is ours!"
"ATLA!" Fohl shouted out as he came to reclaim his reckless little sister.
That just left the battle in the air, Filo and Yuki made for a effective tag team if nothing else. Yuki was manipulating air currents and creating temporary platforms of ice to keep Filo in the air. Filo used her brute strength to deal some devastating attacks against the bird, though she didn't realise it she had an instinctive affinity for Ki, burned through her body by every growth bonus and correction Naofumi gave her that flooded her veins with his power, enhanced by the effects of Aura even if only at the basic level. The consequence? Filo's attacks bounced around her enemies insides like she were made out of rubber until blood started to drip from her mouth and she went down.
"Yuki calls upon the origin of power! Combine wind and water together and freeze Yuki's target under a mountain of ice and snow!" A huge mass gathered beneath the bird cat while the still alive but not for much longer griffin could only look up with the understanding that she was about to die. "Zweit Hail!" The mass of densely packed ice approximately the size of a fully loaded carriage fell out of the sky and crushed the other bird cat.
"Is everyone okay?" The others gathered together on Raphtalia, to her pleasant surprise she saw that Atla was walking which was a mild improvement over a couple of hours ago, the blood covering her body though? Less so.
"We're okay, but I think I'm going to have to have a long chat with this Setsuna person." Sadeena stated eyeing the spot where the shark had been moments earlier. "Keel needs to learn how to be more... discriminating with her diet."
"Brah!" Keel's burp spat out a shark's fin.
"Correct me if I'm wrong, but weren't we supposed to take them..." Fohl looked down at the Whip hero's companions as the dogs started to snack on them. "...Alive?"
"You didn't get the memo did you?" Raphtalia asked after she took the liberty that the person she killed at least had a real corpse. Curious, Fohl checked the length of text that was suppose to confirm recent stat changes and confirmed the presence of a new set of orders: 'Kill em all...'
Naofumi jumped down the hole after Setsuna, though what he found made him wish he hadn't.
"What the hell?" Tubes, easily a dozen oversized tubes each of them with a blonde haired person inside of them. He looked handsome, if not a touch scrawny looking. Of vastly more concerning note was the four or five identical brothers he had in the others and oversized fetus that was in the tube at the end of the room.
"Can this planet pick a genre we're living in already?" Naofumi asked glaring at the tubes. "I've had enough fantasy world bull crap to deal with I don't need any science fiction in my life!" If Naofumi didn't have such abysmally poor offensive power he'd rip open these tubes and snap the necks of everyone of them. As it stood he just settled for cutting their life support, thus Naofumi started breaking important machines until the lights in the tubes went out.
"Hey what are you doing!?" Naofumi looked down to see, much to his disbelief, a child playing at doctor. A dark skinned little girl in a lab coat was glaring up at him angrily.
"I'm destroying all of these machines, afterwards I think I'm going to have a chat with your friend in the tube over there of exactly what is going on here." Naofumi stated darkly.
"You will do no such thing! You stupid Heroes have already messed up enough of our facility already!" The little girl snapped making it quite clear that she was in no mood for this.
"And what purpose does this facility hold? If you are performing some sort of legitimate research here I will gladly spare this facility any more of my shenanigans. But unless I get a answer on what your friend did to piss off mine so badly he and I are going to have words!" Naofumi at the very least thought that Setsuna wasn't the type to get into a fight with someone for no reason.
"I have no idea! Now leave our respawn facility!" It took a minute for the little girl's words to sink in.
"Re-spawn facility? What do you mean Re-spawn Facility?" Naofumi did not enjoy hearing someone spitting out video game logic in this world. Not only should no one know what a video game is, but if his memory serves re-spawn means...
"Whenever Tact-sama dies his spirit travels down here or to one of his several international facilities to one of his spare bodies to be revived!"
"Oh shit!" Naofumi could only curse as the situation sunk in. That guy Setsuna is chasing thinks this world is a video game, if he puts this little value on his own life then what does that say about the people of this world?
"Hey are you listening!?" The irritating little girl shouted, for now Naofumi resisted the urge to iron shield her into submission.
"What has he been doing about the waves?" Naofumi specifically recalled leaving the Faubrey waves and quite possibly several others to this guy, heedless of what his actual personality was like.
"You mean the updates?" The little girl stated spitting out another video game term to Naofumi's mounting displeasure.
"Sure."
"How about you leave our faci-" Naofumi tripped the little girl up as he switched over to his excessively spiky buckler and pressed one of it's spikes up against her throat. "...He lets the updates run, spilling new kinds of monsters into the world while increasing it's supply of XP."
"Oh Fu..." Naofumi cursed for about thirty seconds before he used the rope shield to tied the girl up and carry her with him and he went to find out where Setsuna and Tact went. After he took a fire axe to all of the equipment in the lab of course, he made sure the spares were dead before he continued the chase.
Setsuna was many things, subtle wasn't one of them. The cursed flames were but embers as he followed them before he eventually ran into a dead end.
"Something's not right here." The little girl stated as she glared up at the entrance the just left through.
"Nothing about this place is right you brat." Naofumi stated the conversation he had earlier still fresh in his memory.
"No I mean we should have just passed through the ware house!" The little girl snapped. "Look up at that sign!" Naofumi looked up at the sign and both human standard and what he presumed was the language of Shield Freeden were the words 'warehouse 4.'
"We just passed through a store house...?" Naofumi mulled the information in his head for a moment before he quickly came to the only conclusion he could. "Damnit Setsuna, have you figured out how to use that thing to warp space now?" Setsuna had locked herself into a cage with whatever monster ran this place and there was nothing any of them could do to help her. Well that wasn't entirely true, Naofumi sent a new order to his slaves. "Kill em all! Leave not a single one of these video game cookie cutter NPC people alive!" Naofumi snapped simply done with all of this for the day.
"Overreacting aren't you? If you have slave seals on them then you should probably just kill them with it: I assure you it'll be a much kinder fate then what's waiting for them." The little girl had a nasty grin on her face, She's always wanted to dissect a Hero.
"Not nearly as bad as what's waiting for you!" Naofumi shut the blabber mouth up with the iron shield.
Inside of the ware house black flames clashed against black flames as one cursed weapon of wrath fought against five.
"Air Strike Throw! Chaos Thrust! Brionac!" The newly upgraded three skill combo flew through the air dumping violence in a bombing raid against the miserable regenerator.
"Dark Throw! Cursed Quake! Fire Tornado! Vaizin Claw!" The first skill blew up Setsuna's combo causing her spear to return to hand. The second made the ground shake while spreading around the fiery flames, the other two were flying straight at her.
"Dark Burning Curse!" Setsuna fired off another attack at the flames consuming them with her own and making them mix together. The curses were mixing together clashing in a war of Aura's, which meant...
"Fire Scar!" Setsuna released a pulse of Ki throughout the room, causing a series of detonations throughout the room wherever the two fires clashed.
"Stamp!" Tact brought down his hammer and cleared the flames out from around him in a pulse.
"Grab!" Tact swung around his whip and wrapped it around Setsuna's spear doubtlessly planning to pull her to him. She instead yanked him to her and followed up said yoink with a punch to his face sending him bouncing across the ground through the warring flames, funny how smug someone can look when they're on fire.
"And what are you so happy about?" Setsuna's spear started glowing before it flew out of her hand and into the rat bastard's. "Huh? So that's how that works I was wondering about that." Setsuna commented as her mind suddenly felt... peaceful? No calm. Very Calm. So that stupid spear was affecting her more than she gave it credit for. That would have to go as soon as she got it back.
"Hahahaha! Your Powerless without this aren't you?" Tact laughed holding the spear out mockingly.
"Interesting theory. Let's test it out shall we?" Setsuna's body changed, unleashing her beast within as she turned into a forty foot long wolf and approached the impostor hero.
"You have a ability too? Tch whatever! Air Strike Throw!" Tact flung the spear and throwing knives at the giant demonic wolf and for his troubles the attacks were smacked aside with the backlash wave, in fact the fires were being punted away through a similar force was really starting make things hot in here.
"Backlash Wave!" Setsuna growled slamming a wave of fire over to the false hero eliciting screams of pain from him.
"Foolish Sinner! I sentence you to be bound in chains and kneel before your betters as your head is parted from your Blasphemous body!" Chains of SP wrapped around Setsuna's body muzzling her and binding her legs as a blade materialised above her head. "I Cast Guillotine!" Setsuna turned back into her human form and the blade missed her completely. Instead Setsuna just used the backlash wave to fling more of the cursed flames at Tact until the idiot decided that whatever he was spending to try and maintain that body wasn't worth anymore and let the body be turned into ashes. Setsuna smirked as she walked forward while the disembodied spirit attempted to escape.
"That isn't going to work..." The thing that came out of Tact, a spirit she supposed, turned around and gave Setsuna a horrified look. "...thanks to our battle so much Miasma has been dumped into this room space has been completely warped away from the rest of the world."
"You can see me?"
"I'm a priestess it's my job to see you." Setsuna grabbed hold of her spear, it and the other weapons the fool stole were floating around him. "And to destroy you." Setsuna's spiritual power gathered as she began purifying the cursed weapon, the spirit attached to it screaming in agony.
"L-lets talk about this! I can give yo..."
"No." Setsuna stated as the miasma inside the weapon was purged. "You can't."
"GGGYYYAAAGGGHHH!" Tact's screams of pain echoed throughout the enclosed space as his spirit burned. The weapons he had in his possession lit up as they shot through the ceiling taking the miasma with them in a massive pillar before shooting off in four separate directions. Setsuna had her spear back in hand, but she had something else in her other hand too. A white spirit ball, which looked like it was being forcibly dragged away by a purple light, or that the purple light was trying to forcibly drag it away. Setsuna pulled it over to her mouth before she bit down on the purple light shattering the accessory. 'Thank you.' Another notification appeared in Setsuna's vision before the spirit flew off, attached itself to Yuki and formed a set of familiar claws around her hand.
"Nee-chan are you okay!?" Keel shouted looking down at the hole formed by a very scary pillar of flame.
"Never better!" Setsuna genuinely felt better without the influence of the cursed spear barking in her ears, which was a good thing as she suddenly collapsed, a content if not happy look on her face.
Author's Note:
RonaldM40196867: Pretty? Well sure I guess, words like terrifying and demonic comes to mind too but lets go with pretty. If she did she would've taught them by now.
Necrogod: Thank you for saying so.
MarauderPrime12: I appreciate knowing that. It's sometimes understated but author's enjoy hearing that they're doing a good job from their readers.