Author's Note: I'm beginning to regret posting the April Fool's chapter here, it keeps throwing me off.
Chapter 53: The Country of the Heroes
"RRRAAAGGGHHH!"
Setsuna let out a frustrated scream as she repeatedly slammed her legendary spear against Naofumi's shield who for the most part was laying down on his back presenting the shield for the purpose of being beaten on. Setsuna was trying, and failing, to crack the legendary weapon open, mostly because she was trying to figure out some secret of how it works. Tatsuya, Ikki, and herself had all taken a hard look at them and each found something familiar. Tatsuya stated the H.U.D. reminded him of the computers of his world, mostly brain to machine interfaces occasionally with a keyboard attached, some had even perfected the technology to send information directly to the brain. There was also the elements of C.A.D.'s there as well, a system designed to forcibly augment a individual's affinity for specific forms of magic, some of it's design, particularly the jewel, resemble a C.A.D. in terms of design. These facts were the mostly keenly observed through Setsuna who before coming to this world has never used fire magic in her life instead making use of something like decay implying the Health/Attack affinity she had with other Inugami.
Speaking of Setsuna was the one to point out the similarities of the Legendary weapons to the Demonic Weapons of her world with their power to eat magical material and gain their powers, the way that the weapons were able to eat literally anything though implied that everything in the world was some how innately magical, luckily the demonic katana Raphtalia was now carrying around with her wasn't able to absorb the material in the same way as the legendary weapons, which thankfully implied that where-ever the legendary weapons came from they weren't demonic.
Which now brings them to the main topic of this evening, the information Ethanobolt had shared with them, again Ikki had never heard of the idea that planets could spawn devices, he did however state that weapons reflect the people who use them and the culture they come from. If it was someone from say Tatsuya's world it would likely reflect their obsession with C.A.D.s and take the form of one, but their personalities would also change the design as well. Someone with a professional detached demeanour like Tatsuya would probably get a gun, while on the other hand Ikki who was more straight forward and passionate got a weapon for close quarters, Intetsu.
"Are you finished?" Naofumi asked cocking a suspicious brow at the Dog woman, he had quite enough of being a punching bag now.
"Not nearly enough." None the less Setsuna clamped down on her frustration and picked Naofumi up and put him on his feet.
They both had better things to do. It was a promising haul from the wave, the boss, bosses, had yielded vast amounts of materials. The 'Ghost Ship Series' has the power called 'Raise Undead' presumably how it kept reviving the skull captain and healing the Kraken, which actually synergize with existing legendary weapons that could turn fallen foes into undead, and with the equip bonus of the 'Skull Captain' weapon you get the ability to take control of existing undead monsters. The 'Interdimensional Kraken Series' would grant the power of flight, albeit flight at the cost of SP. However their budding career as necromancers could wait, for now the biggest prize of the evening went to the 'Soul Eater' weapons that allows them to take SP from people they strike with them. The other three heroes were already reinforcing the weapons, Setsuna had taken their combined supply of soul healing water and used it to max the reinforcement of her Soul Eater spear turning it into a SP restoring machine.
"I'll take the car and my party members and drive to Faubrey." Setsuna explained as she returned to the warehouse all of them had been using as a base of operations, and where her new hot rod had been stored.
"I'll take everyone and go ahead to Cal Mira." Naofumi stated as he and his group were already heading for the docks.
Naofumi had the largest group, they'd need their own ship. Besides Tatsuya and Ikki had their own trips to take too, Tatsuya was off to infiltrate this Q'ten Lo where Tact had stolen the Seven Star Hammer, Ikki was going to hammer down in Zeltoble in search of the Seven Star Axe, Setsuna would be looking for the whip while in Faubrey. That was how it worked apparently, according to the Queen whenever one owner dies they either pick a new one out on the spot or go back to their own dedicated temples to wait for someone to pull the sword out of the stone and become king.
"What's the Queen going to do next?" There were a lot of dead bodies out on the field, and monsters that needed taking apart and taking away. "At least last time Tatsuya had taken care of that by turning all the monsters into ashes." And destroyed the fields, and the grass plains, and a chunk of the forest. No wonder the Queen decided that she'd handle crowd control this time.
"She simply told us to leave that matter to her." With that last statement Naofumi let out a sigh. "Good luck in Faubrey." She'd need it.
The four heroes left abroad that day, Setsuna smelled Faubrey before she saw it, choking on smog and fumes, like the entire country was set on fire, and was burning poison. It got to the point where Setsuna had to stop and find something to keep the smoke out of her face which she ultimately accomplished by having her spear make a relatively thin face shield using the spider's silk. Arriving in Faubrey proper Setsuna learned the reason why: Smoke stacks like the ones found on a black smith's foundry stretched into the sky producing enough smoke clouds to blot out the sky.
"Spread out. Rifana, Keel split up and start looking for any trace of where else the whip could've landed, both of you take the dogs with you. This entire country smells wrong, where I come from that's a bad sign. Yuki you're with me." Setsuna stated as they found and paid for a place to park the car, some kind of large rectangle shaped building as ugly as it was pragmatic, just layer after layer of one story tall flat surfaces stacked on top of one another purpose built for cars.
"Understood Mistress." Rifana replied though the tone of concern in her voice was just as prominent as this ugly tumour of a building.
"You got it nee-chan!" Keel on the other hand seemed like she would be approaching this situation with vastly less pragmatism.
"Meet back here in twelve hours. If I'm not mistaken I'm going to be quite busy for most of the day." With that the three pairs of two went their separate ways.
Setsuna had two reasons why she was here, to find the blasted whip, and to register with Faubrey's hourglass. It seems that Faubrey's church had a significantly expanded religion in comparison to Melromarc. In place of it's weather veins the Faubrey church main building had a singular massive clock with a shield based face, a spear minute hand, sword hour hand, Bow Second hand, and in place of numbers there was a depiction of a set of Claws, Staff, Axe, Hammer, Whip, Projectile and Gauntlet. Setsuna didn't give a crap about the warped perception of time this country had, the army she found waiting for her outside of the hourglass on the other hand? That was mildly more concerning.
"Good day miss hero our..."
"You're in my way." Setsuna informed with blatant disrespect and gesturing with her hand to move away.
"...King has invited-Ack!"
Setsuna picking up the nobleman by his neck and putting him off to the side out of her way said literally everything she had to say about what he thought about his opinion.
"So I'm the person who killed Takt, any of you were sweet on him?" The fact that all of the 'soldiers' that had gathered in front of the church were female said everything about the people that have come to fight against them. "Good to know." The familiar cube of fire balls appeared around Setsuna and knocked all of the women away with rocket thrust. "Now if you all don't mind." Evidently range was where the women were the most comfortable, as made evident by all of them immediately whipping out guns to fire at the Inugami. "Oh please."
"FIRE!" Setsuna was soon met with a wave of projectile magic propelled metal balls. Those were only moderately faster then the black powder muskets of her world. If this was how far fire arms had progressed in the four hundred years between her's and Naofumi's time periods or worst the roughly five hundred years between her's and Tatsuya's time periods then she weep for the future of war technology.
"Peace has made you people soft. Back Lash Wave!" Setsuna caught the projectiles with her spear, flipped it around, and fired them back the way they came.
The laws of offence vs defence were turned on it's head because they were effectively attacking themselves with a bit of Setsuna thrown in for good measure. Well even if it was just Setsuna's stats being used against them it would still work. Takt had used his fancy hundred level cap break only on his elites it seemed, none of these women would stand a chance in a real fight.
"As for you." The Nobleman watched Setsuna beat up all of the elite soldiers he brought for his protection and was now doing his best to run away, even without outstripping his level by a entire digit Setsuna would still be faster then this slow poke. "Tell your King that I do not know what he wants with me, and I do not care to find out. I came here for wave, not for the 'pleasure' of his company."
Setsuna threw the portly man away who in turn fled in terror as she walked up to the Dragon's hourglass and registered with it. There was a day left in the city to look for the Whip before the wave hit, a fact that was not helped when yet more people were waiting for her inside of the hourglass chamber.
"You're the 'demon' right?" Tanned skin, comfortable loose fitting clothing that left way too much skin exposed for Setsuna's tastes most notably ample breasts.
"Whatever you're selling lady I'm not buying." Setsuna turned around to leave but was stopped by what the woman had said next.
"Even if I can tell you about where that Takt ass hole sent his whip before he died?" Setsuna turned around to face the woman narrowing a glare at her. "Ha. That got your attention didn't it?"
"If you're just trying to get my attention without anything of actual substance to show for it then this conversation finishes now." Setsuna was not in a mood for games, she was already ambushed by these foolish people once already.
"First is my offer. Been hearing a lot of good things about you Heroes in my circle." The Woman stated as she started leading Setsuna away.
"What kinds of things?" Setsuna asked not happy about people spreading rumours about them.
"'The Hero of the Shield is a saint of animals, beasts and merchants. He possesses the power to bend monsters to his whim and empower them to fight off the creatures which threaten this world.'" Sounds about right for Naofumi, given his unpleasant relationship with the churches of all kinds though it was doubtful that he would be appreciated being adopted as a saint of this world.
"What about the other two?" It would be good to know if Tatsuya and Ikki had been up to something.
"Nothing of interest to me. Though on the subject of which the one that I've been the most interested in has been you." That raised so many red flags it stopped being funny.
"And what interest do you have in me?" Idly, Setsuna traced her finger along her spear, as if she were checking it's blade for sharpness and trying to see if it had picked up any cracks or dents, the kinds of things that would make putting the blade into soft flesh slightly more difficult, or cause the flesh to rip further when you rip it back out.
"'The Spear demon is a monster without peer, commanding monsters of the wave against their comrades and mutating those she comes into contact with into creatures like herself.'" Setsuna felt like someone was bad mouthing her behind her back.
"That's just the class up process and a little of my blood." Setsuna countered narrowing her eyes in a glare.
"'The Spear Demon has the power to transform herself into a monster without peer. I saw her pick up the wave's boss in her jaws and throw him around like a rag doll.'" The woman smirked clearly hoping to rile up the demon woman.
"I don't know what you're talking about but I don't recall ever doing that to one of the wave's bosses before." Setsuna calmly retorted pointedly not denying her capacity to do the thing the woman described.
"Oh? So that's what a demon is then? A kind of super demi-human?" The woman was looking Setsuna up and down in a way that made her slightly uncomfortable.
"Miss a word of advice, if you live long enough to witness the destruction of this country, the extinction of your people, until everyone you have ever known or cared about has been reduced to dust, in all of that time you never find out 'what a demon is' you will be extremely fortunate." Setsuna had enough of this conversation already and opted to leave.
"The Royal family has a magic item that lets them track the legendary and Seven Star weapons." The woman once again got Setsuna's attention. "Shame you have no idea what it looks like or where it could be."
"Your name, unless you would rather that I resort to shouting 'hey you' when I want to talk to you." Setsuna had a certain resignation in her voice as she rolled her shoulders and prepared for the day to come. Mad scientists with designs on eventually taking her apart to see how she works, grossly overweight, inbred, most likely clinically insane king with designs on her virginity, so much toxic smog being thrown into the air that she could barely breath, fuck she hates this kingdom!
"Doctor Ratotille Anthreya. You may call me Rat..." Doctor Rat as she called herself looked up and had a mild feeling of pure horror as she saw what was above her.
"Yuki you can come down now, we're going to round up the others!" At Setsuna's command the griffin disabled the two air strike claws transformed into Chimera dragon head weapons she had prepared to utterly destroy the church if Setsuna gave the order.
"A royal griffin? And it's the Hero of the Claw? Is this...?" Rat saw the displeased look on Setsuna's face which amounted to shut up and get on.
"We're rounding up my party members first, then you will lead me to this tracker that you speak of and in exchange you may examine one of my dogs after our business in this kingdom is done." Setsuna brought up the party screen and activated the function where the rest of her party was brought up on some tracking menu. It didn't take into account the buildings but between Yuki's power of flight and their destructive power neither would they.
Not even five minutes since Rifana had left the parking structure had she been ambushed a group of palace guards surrounded her armed with shields and guns.
"Yah know, Mistress Setsuna saw this coming." Rifana petted the back of the three headed dog beside her, snarling menacingly at the palace guards and making itself as obvious a threat as possible. They didn't even notice the weasel girl muttering under her breath. "I call upon the origin of power, generate a current of electricity to paralyse my targets in a current. All First Thunder Strike!" Although only first tier magic, with Rifana's high stats the paralyzing magic still did it's job, maxed out level of the soldiers be damned.
"You wanna do the honours?" The dog let out a howl, it still amazed her the idea of a monster casting magic, but the sickly green smoke of decay still dripped off of teeth and claws as the monster stared menacingly at the royal guards. "Now than, you are going to tell me precisely what this is about or my friend here is going to eat you, which one is it going to be?"
A soldier, the last in his unit, loosed a panicked salvo of ammunition into the face of the monster.
"GGGYYYAAAHHH!" The Monster's head reached through the alley way and snapped her jaws around his foot and dragged him back in screaming.
"Hmm. Maybe I over did it?" Keel shrunk back to her normal form and hoisted the soiled body of the unconscious soldier over her shoulder and went off else where to find somewhere private she could wake him up and interrogate him. Then she saw the fire reaching into the sky from the parking structure that Setsuna told them to meet her back at earlier in the day.
"Huh. It's your lucky day." Keel left the soldier with his comrades and began making her way to the parking structure along with the Cerberus that she ended up interrupting before and went over to meet Setsuna.
The pair didn't recognise the brown skinned woman who was sitting in the back seat of the car, her eyes went from dull and uninterested to alight with predatory joy the moment her eyes landed on the two dogs.
"So these two are the pups of the wave boss eh? The improvements that you made are plain to see. What're their names?" Rat proved herself a expert in handling monsters from the simplicity by which she pinned one of the dogs to the ground and began her examination, leading to the other three header to growl at her.
"Stand down." Setsuna stated and at once the dog proved his obedience by lying down on his belly. "They have no names, we don't need them to tell them apart, and neither do they."
"Setsuna, is there a reason why we're letting this woman molest our attack dogs?" Rifana looked like the woman who was getting uncomfortably familiar with the one she and Keel had taken to calling Cerbi while comforting the other one, Beru.
"Because she's going to lead us to the Whip, aren't you?" A warning and a threat, to keep promises made or to feel the bite of her spear.
"The royal family has the magic item that will let you track the location of your fellow legendary and Seven star Heroes." Rat explained as she finished her examination.
"So what you're saying is, I will find what I need after tearing apart the royal palace?" Setsuna felt like she had been cheated.
"Well..." The Inugami turned her attention to Rifana who looked like she had something she wanted to say. "You've been sent a... invitation."
Of course she had been, it be a shame if the royal family had to go through yet another generation of inbreeding in order to maintain their otherworldly genetic purity. Based on what she's heard about their king they might not survive the process.
"Where's this bloody contraption you keep speaking of being kept?" Setsuna snapped having never seen the King of Faubrey and already feeling like she had more than enough to last a life time.
"Inside of the royal palace of course." Rat stated sitting back down in the car. "It's not on display if that's what you're wondering, don't need to use it that often either so they can afford to keep it inside of the vault below the palace."
"That's all that I need to know." And thus Setsuna's plan was hatched.
She walked up to the front gates of the royal palace, informing them that she had gracefully accepted the king's invitation for a meeting, having to claw out and grow back her eyes later would be a small price to pay.
"Miss Higurashi! Welcome to our humble abode!" The king's description had not done him justice, rather than a oversized fat pig he, if that truly was a human being and not some kind of heavily mutated homunculus, was more along the lines of a giant mass of indiscriminate flesh. Setsuna didn't bother with correcting him about her name, the mere thought of him saying it sent a chill down her spine.
"Let's get this over with you ugly mass of flesh." Knowing what people thought about him was one thing, but actually hearing someone call him it was enough to cause rage to begin filling his form. "I have no interest in becoming your sex toy, bearing your child, working for you, or anything that involves staying in your presence for a single moment longer than I have to as I have a infinite list of things I'd rather be doing, like saving your world from the waves so that I can return to my own, or trying to bleach my brain of the memory of you. You have something I need and I came here to take it from you."
"You do not seem to understand how this works, my pretty, in this country only my word reigns supreme, and if I want something..." The flesh thing snapped his fingers and the guards acted as one to suppress the dog woman. "...then I take it!"
"You don't seem to understand how things work where I come from. It's dog eat dog over there. Me...?" Setsuna's fur started to grow out as her clothes disappeared into her form and she slow assumed her full form. "Dog. All of you? Dog food!" Setsuna only needed a excuse, her video crystal spear had been out since before this meeting had begun and recorded their entire conversation, she had what little justification she needed to put the king down.
"Bring in her companions." The King stated and a few moments later a familiar pair emerged from the side of the room, Rifana and Keel tied up for Setsuna's viewing pleasure. Setsuna donned a genuine look of concern in her eyes, visible to the entire court in the form of her impression of a kicked dog, even as she held down the pain button for Rifana and Keel and noted that the newly revealed impostors weren't them.
"I can assure you that we very much have the power to bind your companions will to my own, not that the soft hearted heroes of your world would ever resort to such things." With a wave of his hand the familiar sparks of slave magic started to zap both of the demi-humans. "So then if you don't mind..." The King started to undo his belt buckle but Setsuna interrupted him by slamming her paw into the two impostors shattering their bones and sending them flying. And not a single point of health was lost in their status bars.
"See, now I'm mad!" Setsuna roared as she went onto the offensive, breaking bodies with her paws, snapping down on entire grown men with her jaws, smacking groups aside with her spear, before turning her attention to to the king who was looking vastly less confident then what he was a few moments ago.
"Cute... now what?" Credit where it was do, being a massive lump of meat he was hard to read, couple that with the speed chess politics that he's been playing all these years and it was annoyingly difficult to read the fear on him. But it was possible, and satisfying enough to be worth the effort.
"Now?" Setsuna shrunk back down to her normal form, seeing how much easier it was to cast magic in it. "Now I cook my supper." The smell of bacon frying filled the halls of the royal palace along with the king's screams.
While all of the palace guards were called over to suppress the rampaging hanyo hero Rat led the rest of the group into the underground vaults.
"How long is this gonna take?" Rifana had been watching the alchemist woman messing around with the controls of the tablet for a few hours now, attempting to discern the functions of the magic item they had found.
"This branch of alchemy is not my area of speciality girl." Rat replied in a scathing tone of voice.
"Then perhaps he can help." Setsuna appeared in the doorway of the vault, dragging along with her a man who looked like he could be a minister but looked like he had been scared half to death.
"How'd it go with the king?" Rifana asked genuine concern on her features.
"Better then I expected, he browned up rather nicely in my opinion, must have been all the fat." Setsuna was using a toothpick to pluck the meat from her her teeth while she placed her prisoner on the chair that Rat had been setting on a moment ago.
While the two demi-humans processed this turn of events the minister was bringing up the locations of all the weapons. Three of the weapons they had been looking for showed up, one was in Q'ten Lo, one at Cal Mira, one in Zeltoble but one had disappeared.
"So, the others are already on their way to the other weapons, good to know, I'll take it." Setsuna pressed the jewel of her spear to the collection of magic items that made up this handy contraption and absorbed it into her spear and made it into a weapon transformation. "We're going to deal with the wave, afterwards we're going to leave and come back in a month to deal with the next one. Clean up your country by then. I will keep killing whoever is in charge until I find someone who can run a country as opposed to a brothel." And thus, Setsuna finished the wave before she went to Cal Mira to level grind.
Review Section:
RonaldM40196867: Little weird, but if the world of the summoned Hero's is supposed to be a fusion of four worlds as it was stated to be in the web novel I find it to be totally believable.
superpierce: Pretty much yes.
MarauderPrime12: True. Thank you for saying so.