Author's Note: So any one who was looking forward to Maple getting a chapter this week: the next one I promise. But in the mean time please Read, Review, Favourite, Enjoy and Stay Safe!
Chapter 7: The Sword Hero's Guide to Level Grinding
This tunnel had been dug in a cooperative effort between Siltvelt and Melromarc, secretly of course, otherwise the underground railroad for smuggling former demi-human slaves across the border into Siltvelt would be rather pointless. Lemo's were a type of Mole Demi-human, well known for their extreme proficiency for earth manipulation magic. They had been working both sides of the mountain in shifts under the protection of the lord of Seatto. Now the lord was gone, eaten by a three headed monstrosity during Melromarc's first wave.
"Apologies Milord." The Mole foreman, Tollykenia he called himself, Tolly for short, was currently kowtowing before the Genmu and Shukaku who had arranged Kuro's kidnapping. "The Slavers and the monsters halted construction on this side." Kuro pulled the legendary blade out of one of the slavers bodies. Others had been taken alive, rendered unconscious by Kuro's sneak attack before they could put up the resemblance of a fight and were now tied and branded with slave seals thus neutering the threat they represented.
"How long until it's completed?" The Genmu questioned fully aware of the fact that they were working on a time table they simply did not have.
"After the monsters are cleared out?" Because fighters the moles are not, and they can not work until after the monsters are gone. Not to mention the fact that their brother's are currently on the other side digging their way through, inevitably about to knock down a wall into a nest of two headed monsters and they have no way of stopping them.
"I hate to interrupt." But Kuro did so anyway. "I understand that this is kind of a big deal and all that but why don't I just, yah know, legendary hero them?" Kuro asked pointing her sword at the entrance to the cave.
"Hmm." The Genmu looked at her and then the hole the moles had been digging. "Risky. I'd rather not lose a second Hero." The old man concluded after a long pause.
"What are we suppose to be chopped liver?" Welt asked looking down right indignant at the current situation that was unfolding.
"Well until you can get your stats up." The others glared at Kuro resentfully.
The fact that she has some massive arsenal of super powerful weapons lying around in some pocket dimension had become known to them. No Kuro's explanation that the world seemed to be actively rejecting any of the top tier stuff dramatically increasing the mana cost to a absurd level did not do anything to quell their resentment, doubly so since most of what she has access to in the unlimited blade works are swords that she already copied. No it doesn't matter that everything is above the sixties in level requirement thus locking out all of her good stuff for at least two months' until she can get her level up to a absurd height.
"In any case, that means killing monsters which leads back to the previous point." Kuro indicated the tunnel and the baggies of XP waiting for them inside.
"Just be careful, there's a lot of dangerous things in there." Werner stated indicating the hole in the mountainside, might as well be the gates to hell as far as he was concerned.
"That's cute you think we're going down there." Kuro stated letting out a hearty chuckle.
According to the Moles, the tunnel was relatively straight forward, bends forming whenever they hit a vein of rock that would be easier to go around than it was to punch straight through, the entire thing should be relatively at sea level, mind you this wasn't a factor when the two headed wolves decided to nest here. No this was some place relatively secure that the mutts had taken over when they were dumped into this world and spread out in all directions. Clearly someone never heard of the phrase, let sleeping dogs lie, because these sleeping dogs were awakened when inch high water flooded the bottom of the cave enough to annoy the dogs to get up to investigate, the water being more inconvenient then actually harmful. Then the lightning came. Outside the sound of dogs howling in pain and the smell of burnt flesh and hair was drafting out of the cave while the members of Kuro's party kept their eyes shut as they held four lightning blades to the pool of water that had formed at the entrance of the cave.
"This is cheating isn't it?" Welt asked as he watched the trickle of XP points appear in his notification log.
"Did you think that I wouldn't cheat just because I'm a legendary hero?" Kuro asked scoffing as if she was talking about some ridiculous notion. "I was a magus first: we cheat the law of physics for a living."
Simple Cave Clearing Plan, by Kuro.
Step one: use cheat like original world Projection power with limited knowledge of current world's knowledge of water magic to flood the entire cave with water.
Step two: trace several lightning swords based on one from the Black Smith Erhard's store back in Melromarc, which in comparison to the closest Noble Phantasm that could do the job, Mjornir, could be done on the fly for super cheap, and give them to companions in order to light the place up.
What? Didn't Kuro say that she wasn't going to make any duplicates of the old man's weapons aside from what she copies into the legendary sword? So what? She's a projection specialist: she lies for a living.
"Oh gods this smell..." Faerie, the group's resident mage, had her nose plugged as she desperately tried, and failed in spectacular fashion, to cope with the smell wafting off of the cave.
"What is it? Chicken?" Kuro asked in a mocking tone before she indicated the cave proper.
"Oh please don't mention chicken..." Tersia, the group's rogue, begged not wanting to think about food right now.
"Need I remind you, the brave members of my party, that we still need to go in there and finish carving a back door into Siltvelt?" Kuro asked looking greatly amused. Then the sound of growling came from within the cave. "Huh? We must-"
Kuro was suddenly cut off my a simply massive paw that swatted her through the air and sent her bouncing across the floor of the forest before she forcibly righted herself. Someone was having a bad day. As if to emphasise the 'Gates of Hell' metaphor from before the Gate Keeper of hell was present: old Three Headed Cerberus. Credit where it's do: this was one nasty piece of work. Swords, arrows and spears were sticking out of it's back, a glance at their history told Kuro that they were not just set dressing already present when it came here from whatever hell wave monsters are born in. She didn't know who Lord Morgan Seatto was but he got mad props for going out pulling the whole 'foul beast I strike at thee' routine: ten bucks says he'd make a halfway decent lancer but that was beside the point.
"It's the boss of Melromarc's wave! Retreat!" The Genmu wisely chose to get the hell out of this situation immediately. Aside from making it massively pissed off the Cerberus had taken plenty of damage from the lightning bath Kuro gave him, with the spear aimed at it's heart making a pretty good lightning rod the bugger should be on it's last legs. But Kuro was still too low level for any easy to win heroic phantasm to finish the ugly monster off. Fine then.
"Here doggy. Here doggy doggy!" Reinforcing her body to it's limit, Kuro bolted past one of it's legs taking a swing at them using the strongest blades she currently has: the lightning sword that her companions were using to do so much damage earlier. With the three headed monster recognising the crackle of the weapon that put it into such as state in the first place he took after Kuro. "Now than, the moles mentioned that the hardest rock should be at the turns so..." As she ran Kuro spread ice beneath her feet making the ground slippery as she ran, reinforced so that the mutt couldn't get any traction, meanwhile the Cerberus was running as fast as he could and losing control of his own momentum for it eventually culminating in slamming head long into the wall of rock and cracking open all three skulls in the process. "There's what I was looking for." Kuro ran over and stabbed the middle and left heads with the swords directly through the head wounds and followed that up with more lightning frying the bugger's brains in the process, even as the third head futilely tried to bite at her before she ripped her swords out. "Interesting, you're having a hard time trying to move on your own now aren't yah?" Kuro asked watching as the beast dragged it's half dead body over to her trying to get one last hit in. Kuro rewarded it's determination with a quick death. "Now than what's this skill called again? Oh yeah. 'Lightning Slash!'" Kuro swung her sword and carved a electrified trail through the final neck taking it off of it's shoulder. "And now loot." Kuro pressed the jewel of her weapon against the monster's corpse and absorbed it into the blade, soon after transform one of the weapons into a sword with three dog heads for the guard. Collecting the burnt out husks of the other two headed dogs along the way.
"The dog saved us some time." One of the Lemo's noted looking at the blueprints and their initial estimates on how long it was going to take to carve out this section and the result they came to was 'too long' after hitting a seam of metal ores.
How nice of the little pooch to make itself at home here and put it's claws to work tearing out this section of the wall for their benefit. Kuro couldn't help with the work less one of the more destructive heroic phantasm's cutting the mountain in half alerted Melromarc that this tunnel was being dug in the first place. Even if they were ostentatiously at peace with Siltvelt the king would not be happy to know his old enemies were being given a way into his country. So instead Kuro had spent that time lazing about playing with the functions on her sword testing it's functions. Or so she claimed.
"I know you're there, 'shadow.'" Kuro was highly amused by the ninja woman's poorly thought out attempts to hide from her, merely glancing in her general direction telling her everything she needed to know to troll the blatant spy. "'I dare say' that you must try much harder to sneak up on me."
The woman in the shadows emerged, clearly not amused. She would have escaped by now but Kuro lodged ten foot long swords on either side of the cave in a makeshift barrier. Also she covered the ground in water again, and the shadow still clearly remembered the lightning sword nearly electrocuting to death the monster that killed Seatto, and that Kuro had out the weapon that produced that lightning.
"So I know you don't work for the King, or the church, you don't have any demi-human animal bits so you're not from Siltvelt either. No you work for the Queen of these fine lands don't you?" Kuro's smile was all troll and smug. "So what has she been up to?"
After the Dragon hourglasses across the world started their count down a meeting of world leaders had been called together, the religious texts, all of them, clearly indicated that this was the sign that the Waves of Catastrophe were about to hit. In response a meeting of world leaders was called to debate the impending series of natural disasters and how to best respond to them but most of the leaders didn't take the threat seriously or didn't think they were coming, the Queen was part of that camp. Then the dogs ate Seatto, and everything was now on a downward spiral straight to hell. With rumours of Maple's death being spread, in no small part by this woman's colleagues and Kuro's 'kidnappers' in Siltvelt tensions were starting to run high with various countries threatening to take what they need to survive the waves, perhaps prompted by the kidnapping show Kuro and Siltvelt had been putting on. And then Katarina attacked the peace summit, outright threatening Faubrey if the rumours could be believed.
"Huu." Kuro had to process that fact with her hand on her face. "Will I have to corner you again if I want a update on the international situation?"
"I'll inform her majesty of what's going on."
Kuro dismantled her cage and the shadow disappeared. The sound of collapsing stone indicated that the mole people had finished carving a path through the mountain and so Kuro and company resumed the march towards Siltvelt.
"We were able to shave off a couple of days by going through the mountain." Werner commented as their convoy began making their way to the capital.
"If that's the case I'd like to take a bit of time and expand my UBW." Kuro explained languidly stretched out in the carriage. "And get some proper armour." Kuro's chain mail had seen better days, even with her constantly patching and reinforcing it so that it can take a beating from the monsters she kept attacking, and by now it was no secret that what she had been wearing when she came here didn't even cover her entire body let alone provide decent protection. "Hmm. Maybe if I see anything good." Or if she got the chance to rip off all the best enchantments. Don't get her wrong Erhard's shop had some good stuff in it, but she wants to have a second opinion before she's confident in making a proper suit of armour, she already had all the supplies from the cave after all.
"When we do get there try to keep things low key." The Genmu stated, his tone of voice like some stern grandfather. "We don't want to provoke the more fanatical of the shield worshippers." Which was understandable, since someone already took a shot at Maple, and no matter how much Kuro reinforced her body she sincerely doubted that she'd win in durability up against a dedicated tank.
"So I should disguise myself as a demi-human then." Towards this end Kuro snapped her fingers and suddenly a white cat's tail and ears appeared sticking out of her rear end and head respectively. "Well?" Kuro's new animal ears and tail wiggled in a manner that they weren't sure if she knew was provocative. "Well?"
"If you're trying to make yourself look like a Hakuko you should add black stripes to those and your hair." Werner stated pointedly trying to ignore how cute Kuro looked right now. By the time that Kuro was finished making herself look like a White Tiger Demi-human the group had already arrived in Siltvelt, as added precaution she also slapped together accessories and clothes to make the rest of her party look like demi-humans too.
"Oh great. This guy." Werner glared at someone outside the window like the person in question stabbed his puppy.
"Problem?" Kuro asked brow cocked in the air.
"Not one for trifles." The Genmu stated bluntly. "Better let us handle him, and keep your pranks to a bare minimum."
"So what you're saying is that I can prank him once?" Kuro asked her smile all teeth and malice. The two actual demi-humans ignored her as the carriage stopped in front of the church, and the lion man that was in front of it.
"Is what the king said true?" The lion asked mouth twisted into a snarl. "She's alive Jaralis, but wounded and in no shape to fight." Which was true, but Kuro got the distinct impression that he was omitting important details.
"So she is a female." Jaralis the lion seemed to ponder the implications for a few moments. "That has it's pros and cons."
"Oh do please pretend you have a little respect Jaralis." The Genmu got so annoyed that he turned into his Therianthrope form, growing a couple of inches in the process. "It's bad enough that you pulled this crap with Kearu."
"What about the other one?" Jaralis asked brow raised in blatant suspicion against the turtle man in front of him.
"He escaped from us on the way over here." Now Kuro knew that he was lying.
"Put up quite a fight too, if not for these adventurers we wouldn't be alive right now." The Genmu stated indicating Kuro's group.
"Pity, a male would've been more useful to our plans." The Genmu rolled his eyes in blatant disgust.
"In any case I have my own work to attend to, so if you excuse me." And so Jaralis left and the Genmu and Werner led the group away into his own personal estate, where Kuro had questions to put it mildly.
"Who's Kearu?" Kuro asked brow cocked in the air.
"The Shield Hero prior to your friend Kaede." The Genmu stated as he had one of his servants bring over a pot of tea. "It's not possible to restrain a hero with a slave seal, so Jaralis settled for turning him into a addict for the sake of fulfilling his own mad ambition."
"And that would be?" Kuro asked questioningly foot tapping against the floor of the carriage.
"It is possible for Demi-humans to cross breed, has it's fair share of advantages and disadvantages like anything else." The Genmu inhaled the aroma of his tea as he breathed in a sigh of relief. "It usually depends on what species and gender is involved, but side effects can include infertility, organ failure from incompatibly sized body parts, severe neurological disorders and sterility." Which to Kuro's knowledge carried the usual risks of trying to breed mix and match critters in her own world. "Unless of course the partner is a hero."
"Oh I'm not going to like this am I?" Kuro asked recoiling from the use of the term.
"One of the more well known patterns about your lot is your tendency to, frankly speaking, breed like rabbits. Usually because the people summoned are male and tend to end up taking multiple partners. Strangely enough, with the exception of Faubrey's excessive inbreeding, hero DNA is oddly resistant to developing these negative side effects." The Genmu put his teacup down while leaning back into his chair and looking at Kuro knowingly. "Now take into consideration that Demi-humans mature at an accelerated rate as they level up." Oh none of this was good. "Imagine if you will someone that could one moment fly through the air raining balls of fire down at the enemy and then dive into the ocean and coat in electricity as a Sakamata can." A selective breeding program with the entirety of Siltvelt's population of Demi-humans as the baseline.
"Isn't the issue of inbreeding going to pop up again?" Kuro asked aware of how mad this plot was going to be.
"Can it be called inbreeding if the two partners are not of the same species?" The Genmu asked brow cocked in interest.
"Yes." Because that is not how genetics works. "Well that only raises the need to add more stock to the program." The Genmu stated shrugging his shoulders. Okay so new plan, first sneak into the church with the hourglass when no one's looking and get registered, kill the second boss monster of the week, then find Jaralis and chop him into tiny little pieces. "In any case, I have a meeting at the royal palace, that should be your opportunity to start copying weapons." The Genmu stated prompting Kuro to nod her head in understanding.
The meeting of Siltvelt's ruling council had a variety of different species present. In addition to the familiar Genmu, Shukaku and lion representatives there was also dog, Minotaur, snake, hippo and Dragon the Aototsu. As Kuro understands it, Shukaku, Genmu and Aototsu are considered the 2nd through 4th strongest species of Demi-humans, with the others being various figures of influence such as wealthy merchants and generals. Kuro was acting in the capacity as a guard for the old man, but she wasn't the only one there. There was another child behind Jaralis, as for what species he was it would be incorrect to say she had one in the first place, because he was sitting on a long scaly tail, had hooves for feet, the large wings of a Shukaku, round fuzzy ears not unlike her own and long horns sticking out of the top of his head. Kuro looked to the Genmu and back to the creature sitting behind Jaralis as if to ask if that was what she though it was and the Genmu nodded in the affirmative. Kuro repeated the motion this time awkwardly scratching where she had hidden her ears and the Genmu nodded again. Damn, that Jaralis creep looked to be partaking in his own experiment.
"The wave is in two days and we no heroes to fight with." The Genmu started bringing the meeting to order. "What preparations are you making to deal with it?" The Minotaur stood up, his time to speak.
"Most villages have a underground store room, most homes a basement, several villages were founded specifically because a vein of ore had been discovered. For now as many villagers and supplies as possible are being moved below ground and barricaded." Good, that meant they were taking the wave seriously if nothing else. "The army has been distributed for containment and reaction." A map was presented, flags indicating armed forces positioned at villages in a grid. "No matter where the wave strikes we will have four units of fifty men each ready to strike less than a day's ride away."
The Genmu nodded his head in the affirmative before turning his attention to the hippo man.
"Our mage division has been read on the situation, and positioned here." The hippo indicated a mountain. "Here." The capital and more specifically a overly massive tower. "And here." Another tower. "From these three areas we will have full view of the country, and each location has enough mages to fire off ritual class magic judgement in whatever area the wave spawns hopefully wiping out the boss in the process." The Genmu nodded in satisfaction before turning to the snake woman.
"We've ssstockpiled sssuppliesss in preparation to relieve the disssassster area, we essstimate that we have enough food and clean water to lassst five villagesss three month'sss." The snake woman explained looking at the roads. "Provided they are not blasssted into sssmitherinesss we ssshould be able to provide adequate relief to mossst of the area's that'll be affected by the wavesss." Finally eyes landed on the dog man.
"Nothing to report." So the boarders with the other countries were quiet then at least. Well at least Maple doesn't have to put up with all of this foolishness.
"And you Jaralis?"
"The Chimera are ready to move at a moments notice, each of them are as strong as ten men, if only we had a legendary hero to deploy with them." The Genmu wasn't even going to touch upon that one just shook his head in derision.
"So then, Jaralis is going to be useless as usual." But they didn't have much to expect from the person who got the last shield hero to step foot in Siltvelt killed.
"Watch what you say turtle." The lion man snapped. "My Chimera can fly through the skies faster than your foot and calvary can cross, their magic can spread death and destruction beyond your pitiful levels of imagination."
"Then this meeting is dismissed." Oroko stated clapping his hands in the air.
Review Section:
RonaldM40196867: I think the series has hit a proper medium of violence.
REiNozomi: Always good for a laugh. Try to be patient please? Katarina didn't even learn that she could do dark magic until after she had graduated in her world. Me too, and yes, screw Faubrey.
ptl: In real life people often don't take children seriously, or take well to being threatened with intercontinental ballistic missiles.
Captain Imaginat: You seem to have misunderstood something, the one Katarina was angry with was the Shieldfreeden Delegate that she had been talking to a moment ago. So far the King's only crimes has been bringing her here, and unlike in canon he states clearly here that he's no intention of trying to hoard them all.
drmcgraw186: When the stupidest person in the room tells you your being stupid you should probably take three minutes and think about your life choices.
fenix102: Katarina and her unique relationship with dark magic will come into play, along with the cursed series, soon enough.
grimmouse197: It is the sound you make when you let out a sigh, or at least the sound I make.
Kweh Viola: Is it diplomacy when all you're doing is threatening people with a ICBM?