Author's Note: Okay so now another week down, before you all ask no I don't plan on doing a Halloween chapter, I learned my lesson already. Read, Review, Favourite and Enjoy!
Chapter 31: The Bow Hero's Defensive Battle
Melrith was dead. The massive pile of explosives The Queen of Melromarc, may she forever rot in hell, had shoved into her dummy was subsequently enhanced by his own ludicrously high stats and when the explosives went off his latest body was outright vaporised and Melrith was killed. When he gets his hands on those two he's going to rape the Queen's youngest right in front of her. Which now led to the next issue at hand.
"What do you mean you can't find them you incompetent fools!?" Malty snapped, eye twitching as if she had gone mad, and in truth that was probably the case.
"We meant what we said." The palace guard who had been leading the search stated brow cocked and angry. "If we knew the reasons why we couldn't find them then we would've corrected the issue at once."
Takt closed his eyes and his face twisted into a angry snarl as he thought over the implications.
"Master!" Ashil's voice sounded from the communication device he was keeping at hand for this very reason. "There is a wagon that's heading straight for Melromarc now." Which was strange since all of the trade with Melromarc should have stopped by now.
"Be careful." Takt stated remembering the painful lesson he already learned the hard way. "The Queen is not above stuffing decoys with explosives and sharp objects."
Ashil nodded her head looking at the carriage that would soon be crossing the border. It was by all means rather fancily built, rare woods and gold inlays with the crest of Melromarc printed on the side. She choose to ignore it, eyes instead focusing on the second much lower class looking carriage that was being pulled along and opted to pounce on it ripping open the door and was immediately treated to the sight of a giant pile of sharp objects and explosives. Melty watched the ball of fire that emerged from the carriage from a not too insignificant distance away. To answer the question on the minds of many, neither carriage had Melty on it. Both of the first two had been rigged to explode, not that Ashil had been made aware of that immediately taking off after the first one after suffering the explosion of the second. While Melty had been prepared to take the third carriage straight back home she and her coachman had instead been diverted by their suddenly very uncooperative Filolial. Why, she had assumed, had to do with the person who was currently standing before her. White hair and white angelic wings in a pink on white dress.
"Who are you?" Melty asked looking at the girl confused.
"Someone who is growing tired of telling you the answer to that question." Fitoria stated as she let out a sigh.
Melty blinked.
"But we've never met before." Melty stated clearly confused as to what was happening right now.
"Hence my problem." Fitoria stated as she had two of her subordinates bring Melty and the coach man into her own carriage.
"Where are you taking us?" Melty asked even as she was startled to see Fitoria assume the form of a giant owl like Filolial.
"Across the border, where I intend to deal with that griffin."
Katarina's unhealthy obsession with unlocking earth based spears was starting to pay off, she single handily dug enough trenches and fox holes on the border between Melromarc and Faubrey for the entire army, before she went off to her own tent. As for what she was doing there, that much was made obvious by virtue of the concentrated aura of of sheer unpleasantness that could be felt coming off of the tent in waves. For now Tanya opted to ignore it.
"When Faubrey's monster does get here it is imperative that it be put down at all costs." Tanya stated indicating the clearing before them. "These... people-" Tanya refused to call them a 'harem' purely because she wouldn't be able to take them seriously. "-are going to be hard enough to put down by themselves, let alone if we let them form together into a group." Mages of every element had already been readied to launch a counter attack, whatever element she used would be met with it's natural counter. Lasso's had been prepared to rope up and tie the creature down, each of them being held by hundreds of men so that their combined stats might be able to restrain it. After that would be Judgement. As many times as they had to, or whatever curse Katarina was working on would be the one to do it. They would kill this creature at any cost that they had to. Tanya looked at the hour glass that had been prepared for them and closed her eyes as the sand inside of it ran out. "The wave in Melromarc has started." Tanya announced even as the soldiers tightened their grips on their weapons. Neither she nor those under her had been summoned, having de-registered with Melromarc as soon as the second hourglass had been made available. "Rightfully, we would be putting our training to use fighting it's monsters and slaying it's boss." For which she could feel the anger that they felt that the wave had to be ignored. "Instead we are here! Defending these lands from those who would claim to be our allies!" The soldiery began stomping their feet and slamming the butts of their spears into the ground. "So when our 'Allies' from Faubrey get here how will we welcome them!?"
"""We will Welcome them with a Smile and Greet them with a Laugh!""" The Soldiers shouted trained fanaticism loud and clear.
"And so what will we Tell them!?" Tanya asked again raising her voice.
"""That we were honoured by our orders!"""
"What are your orders!?"
"""Hold the Border! Resist and Bite!"""
"What will we do!?"
"""We will hold the Border! We will Resist, and we will Bite!""" More foot stomping and slamming of the butts of spears indicated the celebration of the oncoming battle.
"Merciful weapons what has she been feeding these people?" Elena exclaimed wiping off the sweat on her brow. She didn't know which one she should be more scared of, whatever Katarina was doing or the Bow Hero.
"Assume your positions!" Tanya shouted as the soldiery entered the trenches and covered themselves with trap doors and foliage, and then the entire area was covered in fog as a Filo shaped mountain emerged into view, before then turning into a Filo shaped girl.
"I'm without the time to deal with you today." Tanya stated bow drawn.
"Deal with me will you?" Fitoria stated and so flicked her finger at Tanya, leading to a loud snap of Tanya's arm. "How exactly will you 'deal with' me?" Tanya nearly screamed as she reset her broken bone and healed the damned thing with a potion.
"What do you have against us so badly?" Tanya asked glaring at the bird girl.
"I despise you for what you are abomination." The Filolial stated in no uncertain terms and Tanya glared in response.
"And what is that? Please elaborate." Tanya's vision was already being made fuzzy. "Is it because I am an atheist? 'God.'" Tanya spat the word like a curse, she's had enough of gods to last her ten more reincarnations and a hundred more punting between different worlds.
"Because you are a reincarnation." Fitoria stated in no uncertain terms. "You are a servant of one of those creatures, and you were brought to the world you came from for no other purpose than to drive it into ruin." Fitoria stated making her opinion clear. "To me there is no difference between you and Takt." Tanya ground her teeth as she did her damnedest to keep herself from loosing her temper.
"I am a servant of no one!" Tanya snapped glaring hatefully. "Especially not to 'gods' like you!"
"Four Weapons sake you two are like two peas in a pod!" Elena snapped getting in between both of the massively pissed off god like figures before they started tearing into each other. "We've got better things to do than sit here arguing!" Elena turned to face Tanya first. "I'm not fond of the idea of attending to Faubrey's Pig of a King are you!?" Then she turned to face Fitoria. "As for you did you really come here just to antagonise us!?" Fitoria's carriage opened revealing the form of a small child who was helped off by a coachman.
"This is the person the griffin came through this road to capture. She won't retreat as long as she is here." And with that Fitoria left taking the fog with her.
"Wait you're using me as bait?" Melty exclaimed looking at the Filolial Queen's retreating form.
"Tsk." Tanya had no time to waste on matters such as this. "Take her to the shelter!" Elena did so, as the rumbling of the first decoy carriage that was rapidly approaching them was interrupted by the griffin firing off a burst of wind magic tearing off the back off of the wagon and sending it skidding off for several feet before halting.
"So the bird uses wind magic?" Tanya noted as the creature took notice of her.
"Bow?" To this question Tanya shifted the form of her legendary bow several times. "Grr." Bringing her master one of the legendary weapons would help to restore some of his old power, if not exceed it. This was a far greater prize than the little brat she was chasing before.
"You're not going to come to me?" Tanya asked brow cocked in interest. "Then I'll just come to you! Tri-shot! Meteor Shot!"
The combination of skills released against the bird cat exploded in her face and left her dazed and confused for several moments. However upon realising that the attacks are effectively harmless the bird instead continued it's forward charge in a effort to tear Tanya apart. As intended.
"Acid Rain!" Tanya fired off the skill at the griffin, coating her entire body in a thick layer of the purple poison.
The Griffin attempted to shake the purple liquid off of her, the liquid rolling off of her body like water off of a duck's back for all the good it did against her but then again, it wasn't meant to damage only blind and distract. Lasso's were released into the air and guided in place via wind magic, before Ashiel could realise what was happening each of her six limbs had been lassoed by Tanya's ground forces.
"Heave ho!" Tanya commanded as so the Griffin's execution had begun.
Winches operated by transformed Therianthropes, said transformations further enhanced by the Staff's magic point power up method, known for their brutal strength and under the influence of strength enhancing buffs began to reel the bird in while human soldiers tugged on the ropes. The six group's combined stats were enough to actually make the bird struggle to get back into the air, so instead she attempted to take to the air again.
"I, the Hero of the Bow, as source of thy power order thee. Decipher the laws of nature and weigh my target down! Driefach Gravity X" A thick aura of debuff smacked into the griffin now making her dramatically heavier under the influence of Tanya's high level earth magic. Of course it attempted to make itself lighter with wind magic but...
"""We, the Army of The Bow, as source of thy power order thee! Decipher the laws of nature and cancel our opponent's magic! Driefach Anti-Wind Slash X!"""
The counter spells were released to dispel the cutting wind magic. Instead Ashiel attempted to bite and claw at the lines trying to break free, and suffered for that hubris when lightning was conducted through the line and into her body causing her to become electrocuted, that wasn't good enough so Tanya also stated to pelt her with her own attacks as well. The constant beating she was getting along with the desperate struggle she had been putting up and the constant biting resistance being put up by Tanya's forces was slowly causing her to be lowered to the ground. Instead of being drawn and quartered Ashiel opted to assume her much smaller human form to escape from the bindings and punt herself away.
"Tire!" A wave of cursed energy brought Ashiel down to her knees. Katarina walked over spear resting on her shoulder as she looked at the griffin. "You tore off my friend's arm." Katarina stated as she looked down on the griffin monster before her. "I imagine it must have made it easier to keep him restrained."
And on that note Katarina slammed the butt of her spear into the monster's body. She was tied up and restrained using razor wire applied across her entire body. Apparently it was a trick frequently employed to restrain therianthrope prisoners during the war twenty years ago, knock them down to their usually smaller humanoid form, bind them with the wire, and when they try to break free by changing form, instant giblets. Least that was how it usually works, if the flesh was stronger than steel it might be a different matter.
"I'll leave arranging guards for her to you." Tanya stated looking at the Slave Dealer who had accompanied them out here, set to provide his slave sealing expertise to the restraint of prisoners. "No half baked Seals this time little man." Tanya stated, Beloukas opting not to point out the irony of her calling someone little. "High grade slave seal. And I'm going to want to talk to her later too, so no selling her off as the play thing, attack dog or high grade labourer to some nobleman."
"I will see it done Sir Hero." Beloukas stated with a smile.
"Katarina, go with him." Because thus far their most effective tactic against the griffin had been simply using Katarina's Cursed weapon to suck the will to resist out of the little piece of work. Besides the point Katarina can't be there for every battle, though at the moment she had proved that she is extremely necessary for picking off elite forces, if this was part of their elite forces that is. Which now led to the next issue at hand.
"It would appear that they've noticed we've been bullying their griffin." Tanya noted as she saw a swarm of navy blue machines flying through the air.
If this was a night time raid they'd be hard to pick out in the night sky, she imagined it was that very kind of tactic that made it so easy for them to sneak across borders and pluck young women from their homes and feed them to their king.
"Orders?" Eli, reunited with Tanya on her orders because he was a prince among soldiers, asked walking up behind Tanya wearing his new Griffin King armour.
"Fall back to the second ambush site." Tanya stated as, after having taking the liberty of methodically preparing the slaughter ground's for this exact occasion, she decided to use them.
It was a smooth two hour flight to Melromarc, the Magic thruster meant it was possible to crack the sound barrier within twenty seconds of take off. Squad leader Rulina was starting to get tired of carpet bombing wave monsters anyway, which don't get her wrong she enjoyed being able to solve the matter fast and dirty and then getting back for some post battle coddling with Takt but her lack of growth in comparison to the others was plain as day. The monsters from the waves had all been weaklings thus far, every last one of them, and her snail pace growth was proving that, she hasn't even gained a single level since the second class up ceremony. Well that was going to change now, hopefully the Melromarc army has a bit more to offer than the wave monsters.
"Arm guns!" Rulina shouted as she and her unit got their wing mounted rifles ready to fire. "Locking on." The cowards were fleeing with their tails between their legs. "Firing in 3. 2." Rulina never got the chance to finish her orders after she had a run in with a invisible spider thread at two thousand feet in the air.
The illusion spitting Raphtalia and the trap making Aranaya had made for a viciously effective combination, especially after Trash had them move a gravwalk ore mine, basically giant chunks of floating rock, into the air above the border and had them connected together with Aranaya's silk and made invisible through Raphtalia's illusion magic. Poor suckers didn't even know what they hit in part because most of them were dead, one of them however had managed to run into the section of the trap that was less solid than the others. Most of them had the common sense to use whatever emergency ejection system had been built in to get out of the way before they crashed, then they had been turned into a shooting gallery for Rifana and the eight rail-gun like crossbows she's been carrying around ever since Zeltoble. This situation helped to highlight some of the issues that this fighter plane like technology had, in this case it wasn't that the guns couldn't be fired above the damned thing as the pilot had attempted after Raphtalia had knocked on the hatch the pilot had presumably tried that from the fresh swerve of swivelling that had ensued and when that failed instead opted to try and kill her through the ejection system. As a direct consequence of that they now had a mostly intact flying machine which they then lowered to the ground.
"So this is their flying machine?" Tanya commented looking over the machine. "Is it functional?"
"Hard to say." Ake noted observing the inside of the machine. "I mean I'm no expert in magic."
"Everything appears to be able to snap together." Elena stated as she took two halves of the dismantled wing section and put them back together. "It appears that they are designed to sort of just fall apart around the cockpit when the pilot needs to get out in a hurry."
"The enemies vehicles are made out of Lego breaks." Tanya stated rolling her eyes as she looked up to the air around her. "Snap it back together. Let's see what this thing looks like up close." The end result of Tanya's efforts was what could best be described as a cross between a mermaid, a knight and jet. They found magical inscriptions all over it's body. Hydraulics were augmented through the use of water magic, the wings had wind magic designed to increase the lift they would get out of soaring through the air, the tail thruster a mix of water, to draw in and magically produce water, lightning to split that into hydrogen and oxygen, and fire to light it up in a controlled explosion pushing the whole thing forward. "It's just like I thought." Tanya stated walking over the entire thing. "Good at moving fast but not a lot of manoeuvrability."
"Did you use to fly machines like this in your world?" Victoriya asked looking at the contraption in awe.
"No. But I was thoroughly educated in how to take them apart." Tanya explained as she climbed into the cock pit to get an idea of what it's like inside of this thing was like. What Tanya found when she climbed inside though made her just a touch surprised.
'Weapon Copy Activated. Syrphine Level Locked 100'
"Syrphine?" Tanya asked as she looked around at the machine she had climbed inside of, and after sticking her head out came to a sound conclusion. "Did I just weapon copy this fantasy fighter jet?" Mind you she wouldn't find out soon, she was currently six levels short of getting to actually use the thing, not to mention the fact that she didn't even know how she had managed to copy it. "What about this exactly is a bow?" Tanya asked looking around at the contraption she had been looking at.
"Maybe these?" Ake asked as he disconnected one of the guns from the machine's wing. "I mean it's a weapon that fires projectiles that are not magic right?" Ake asked while he was holding the thing out to Tanya who reluctantly took it.
'Weapon Copy Activated. Winchester Level Locked 100'
"Well looks like Takt was useful for something after all." Tanya commented as she heard the distant beat of rather large hooves.
"Alright everyone get ready, we have our third killing field to tend to." Tanya stated as the others nodded their heads. The third enemy of the day was a group of centaur like machines that were towing chariots, more strange machines inside these ones being connected to a large double barrelled staffs which were being aimed directly at them. They had at some point in time learned their lesson about charging at them blindly as soon the chariots were disconnected from their Science Fantasy tow trucks and through the use of several pistons moored directly to the ground so that they could use those large cannons to blast at them.
"Well... I suppose that would do it." Tanya commented and the others agreed as the enemy wasted no time in unleashing fiery bombardment through the air.
"""We, the Army of the Bow, command the origin of power! Decipher the laws of nature and cancel our enemy's fiery blast! Driefach Anti-Fire Spear!"""
The wave of anti magic went through the air and ended the attacks before they could connect. The enemy seemed to have gotten wise as now they were preparing to switch to a mix assault of Spells but by that point Tanya already had all of her preparations in place.
"Light em up." Rifana picked up the cables of spider silk and conducted lightning through them into the explosives causing the entire area underneath where the enemy had encamped their gun turrets to get blown sky high.
"Well that seems like enough damage for one afternoon. Let's go and see if we can provide Clean up for the wave." Tanya stated as she walked back to their temporary base where they were keeping their mirror back to Melromarc.
"RRREEAEERRR!" The screeching griffin was currently trying to do everything in her power to try and escape from the binds keeping her there and if her frustrated screeching was any indication was failing miserably. Consistently.
"The painful shocking you are feeling right now is a high grade slave seal." Tanya stated recalling the explanation given to her by the slave dealer. "The one you had on you before was inadequate for keeping you corralled, assuming that Takt ever used it on you before in the first place." The words kept repeating in her vision.
'Tell us everything you know.' 'Tell us everything you know.' 'Tell us everything you know.'
"The painful, painful shocking you are feeling is only going to get worst until you tell me what I want to know." The Griffin snarled in anger until a flash of magical power went through her body until she unleashed the final act of defiance. The subsequent squirt of blood covered Tanya's face, but how unfortunate for the griffin that the cage's bars had been specially enchanted to release healing magic inside on command putting her butchered body back together again before she had the chance to bleed out even if she did lose most of her blood in the process. So now she was anemic, with the razor wire laced throughout her entire body in the process, which was now nailed to the floor of her cage. She wouldn't be a threat any time soon.
"What's the situation with Maple?" Tanya asked noting the appearance of a messenger from the castle town that appeared behind her.
"She's been attacked. Again." The messenger stated letting out a sigh.
"The church again?" Tanya asked brow twitching even as her H.U.D. glitched. "Yes." The messenger stated bluntly. "Among others."
The lowly bastards. '4rE U aNg7Y?' Tanya breathed deeply, too disciplined too let her anger show on her face. 'd0 YOu F33l (oN+eM9t?' She had not forgotten that argument she had with that self proclaimed goddess already. 'dO u W4n+ 2 w1p3 +hEm 0uT?' The accusation that her of all people would be on the sides of the gods, when it was the gods who dragged worlds like this one into ruin through their churches. It was her own fault really, she should've finished wiping out the church and the liability that it represents before she started picking fights with other countries. Instead she's been so busy that they've been free to scheme. 'Conditions Met: Bow of Wrath and Pride Unlocked!'
Thus having completely mastered her face, as she's been doing since the day she was born hiding her unparalleled and utter contempt for the divine Tanya stood up and adjusted her cap.
"Alright. Let's go see the damage."
Review Section:
RonaldM40196867: Probably.
drmcgraw186: Glad you liked it. Assassination is still assassination no matter who you get to do it.
Kisame Hoshigaki: Naofumi used mirror skills when he was using the staff weapon.
Captain Imaginat: Well Maple is still a kid at heart, albeit one who has had a enormous responsibility thrust on her. As for the other things, I don't plan on disappointing anyone.