Author's Note: Nothing comes to mind, Read, Review, Favourite and Enjoy!
Chapter 35: Faubrian Invasion: Second Phase
"So how are we going to explain to her what happened." Katarina stated watching Maple as she played with the various children in Riyute village inside of her dragon Kigurumi.
"Assuming that Raphtalia doesn't explain it first?" Assuming that she hasn't already, given the fact that she was instrumental in dismantling Faubrey's army when it attempted to cross the border. Then again Maple looked to be in a relatively good mood today not that she usually wasn't, except for when she was and in turn gave the impression that she was slowly going insane. While thinking about all of this Kuro and her party suddenly appeared from mid-air and landed in front of them.
"Well everyone's here now." Tanya stated as she cracked her neck. "We should probably discuss what we're going to be doing going forward now."
Kuro apparently had a productive time in Shieldfreeden. Apparently the sight of their former deal broker with Faubrey, Tulina, severed head on a table made them seriously rethink who they called on to defend them from the waves. With that in mind there was the usual exchange of material from the wave's monsters and boss.
"Um... I got something new too but I don't think you guys are going to like it." Katarina turned her attention to Tanya. "Especially you."
Oh Lovely. Outside of the village proper Katarina whipped out the cursed spear of Greed and Sloth and let it shine.
"I, the Demon of the Spear, have read and understood the origin of power. Decipher the Laws of Nature and summon dead monsters of the past." The Girl's shadow extended outwards and formed a large pool of black sludge from which a familiar figure had begun to emerge. The others had only ever seen it from the weapons and material Katarina had given them, a huge body like monitor lizard while it's entire back had been covered on a ridge of dark emerald crystals just like the monster Katarina killed in Shieldfreeden. "First Summon!"
"So you can summon monsters that you've killed now?" Kuro asked brow in the air cautiously.
"No not quite." Katarina explained as she rubbed the creature's jaw, and it responded like it was her pet and not a monster she killed in cold blood before some how necromancing it as her slave.
"According to the king this is the... XP I got from Crystalak." Which had all sorts of terrifying implications the least of which was how she did it. "Apparently it's a branch of dark Magic."
"Dark magic?" Maple asked looking at Katarina brow in the air. "Curses, demons, undead that sort of stuff?"
"That would seem to be the case." Kuro commented as she looked at the creature and the implications it represents.
"Yeah. It's suppose to drive you crazy like what the cursed series does." Which also point of interest doesn't, at least it wasn't to Katarina.
It was the first thing the King had confirmed after Katarina had calmed down, that though she would still suffer the lingering effects of whipping out the full power of the cursed series, destruction of anything of value that she touches and a massive reduction to Mana and SP regeneration, her head was clear the entire time.
"Is it because you're reincarnated?" Kuro asked highlighting the elephant in the room. "Takt didn't seem to have a problem back when he was using the cursed series, and he had all seven of them."
"Takt is a bloody lunatic picking a fight with the keystones to trying to keep this world from falling into the waves while he plows every woman he can get his hands on." Tanya replied in harsh tones. "Paragon of mental health he is not."
"So what else are we planning on doing?" Maple asked looking at the others and what they were planning now.
"Faubrey." Tanya replied bluntly. "Between Katarina's dark magic and your dragon costume all of our combat power should be shored up."
"So even if we're attacked by that crazy king or that lunatic who keeps going after Kuro we'll be okay!" Maple noted finger in the air, to wit Tanya let out a sigh.
"The Lunatic killed the crazy king." Tanya stated letting out a sigh. "During the period of time that I visited their hourglass to register for their wave but before I rescued the various diplomats that they were holding hostage the Lunatic dropped his king's severed head in front of me."
"That's a good thing." Maple looked around at the others who seemed to not share her opinion. "Right?"
"Trading one deluded psychopath for another one who is on top of being a delusional psychopath is also stupid is not a good thing." Katarina stated in a sympathetic tone of voice. Speaking as someone who nearly ended up as said delusional stupid psychopath running a country she had some experience with the matter in her honest opinion. "Keep in mind how people as a rule think of Faubrey." Faubrey is run by a sadistic psychopathic monster who gets his jollies by raping and torturing women to death and uses his army as a means of acquiring said women. "Now let's think about how Faubrey sees the rest of the world." Our army is the strongest in the world, able to easily cross vast distances in a single bound high in the sky where most cannot reach us and no one can compete. Under the threat of our army the heads of state are more than willing to hand over anyone ranging from the lowliest peasant girl to their own first born if it means that they do not have to fight us. "Now think about how they see Takt." Takt is the genius inventor and wielder of one or more of this world's demi-gods in the form of a weapons, through his technology we have a very real chance of taking this world and under his benevolent rule everyone will get the benefits of his advance technology.
"He's going to attack us isn't he?" Maple asked with a resigned look on his face.
"He already did. That's what we needed Raphtalia's help with." Tanya stated prompting Maple to rub her temples.
"I know what you guys were planning by not involving me, but please at least tell me these things." Maple asked with a exhausted sounding tone in her voice. "What are you going to do now."
"Didn't I already mention that?" Tanya stated distinctly recalling mentioning what she went over there to do in the first place. "We're going to fight Faubrey's wave."
"RRRAAAGGGHHH!" Takt kicked a chair with enough force to make it hit the wall and smash apart. He has been made a fool of, stripped of allies one by one, all of his bargaining chips had disappeared into thin air. On top of all of that...
"Takt sama!" One of the soldiers stated saluting the table that Takt just stormed by, because saluting Takt would require looking directly at unnaturally rippling flesh as tiny machines moved beneath skin and psychotic madness that he both hoped entirely originated with said tiny machines as it meant that the man they were calling hero for the past decade was not secretly some kind of insane lunatic and dreaded the very concept as it also meant that his looming madness was going to get infinitely worst. "A matter has appeared! The wave..." Takt's lip twisted into a snarl as he glared hatefully.
"Where is it, I'll get it out of the way immediately!" Takt demanded having no patience for this bull today.
"Sir, the wave has brought Melromarc's army with them!" Oh gods damnit!
Trash's strategy for bringing low a nation. First and most important is send one of the Heroes, Tanya in this case, forward to register with their dragon hourglass. Step two, portal back to Melromarc, preferably with a few former hostages in tow and register the entire army, and the other three heroes, as party members. Step 3: wait for the wave.
"Huh. I think I fought this one before." Maple stated noting the appearance of what she could best describe as a huge humanoid demon that was flying through the air and futilely shooting at them.
"In the game that you played?" Kuro asked as she got one of her swords ready to fire at the thing.
"Yeah. There was this whole quest and I had to find a magic spring-" A sonic boom sounded as Kuro fired the damned thing rail gun style directly at the boss and scoring a glancing hit before it, over charged with mana as it was, blew up and turning the demon king into pieces on the ground. Then the portals in the sky closed.
"Alright everyone let's clean this up!" Tanya snapped clapping her hands together. "We only have a limited amount of time before that psychopath shows up to kill us all!"
Maple looked down at her shield and the explanation that it had given her.
'Soul purging completed. There are no more rogue entities inside of the Legendary Shield.'
So turns out that when you suck a living being inside of one of the legendary weapons it's not just their body that you're getting but also their soul, as Kaede has done, several times, occasionally to people who don't like her very much. Leaving the consciousness her legendary weapon had developed busy trying to keep them from getting her killed up until the equip bonus from the Soul Eater allowed it to well... eat their souls. Also given how that process restored her spiritual power they should probably question the use of skills in the future.
'The Hero is over thinking things.'
"Am I really though?" Kaede asked her tone of voice filled with lots and lots of blatant suspicion. Course Kuro and Kaede weren't the only ones who were chatting with their weapons now a days. After it became apparent that Katarina and Tanya unlocked their own cursed weapons Kuro reluctantly let them finish off their own virtue series.
"Emiya what's the 411 on the enemy position?" Tanya asked seated in the cockpit of her bow's Syrphine transformation, speaking directly to the Bow of Charity and the consciousness therein.
'The fake Hero is approximately thirty miles north. Twenty Miles.'
"Arm the army." That was the power of the Bow of Charity in a nutshell, the power to 'give' her party members skills through the bow.
'Acknowledge.'
Hundreds of bows landed in the grasps of the army, not the same bows for everyone, because that seemed to be impossible, but at least every weapon transformation she had access to had been covered.
'Ten Miles.'
They could see him now, the mass of dust on the horizon.
"Cancel the countdown." Tanya established a connection to the rest of the army through the many bows. "Aim at the centre mass of the enemy. Do not worry about aim until he gets closer, numbers will compensate for that." And so they fired. Meteor shot. Fire Shot. Thunder Shot. Crystal Spike. Every manner of monster turned into a power imaginable was released against the one that was coming after them. And it barely slowed him down.
"I hate this part." Kuro stated as she got swapped out her two sword forms for ones that she had cranked defence on as high and as hard as possible along with reinforcing her own body to the maximum limit before a twisted amalgam of metal and flesh slammed into her.
"Not trying to steal my sword anymore!?" He was however doing a half decent job of trying to crush her head so kudos for trying.
"Die!" The thing that use to be Takt stated in a gravelly distorted voice.
"You first!" The Thousand sword/thunder sword combo went into effect, launching the mostly metal monster through the air like he was a bullet, the massive friction being put on his body evaporating him.
"Maple." Katarina stated simply.
"Working on it." On that note a familiar combination of shields activated as Maple assumed the form of a fifty foot tall monster. Takt quickly reassembled his body, now no trace of flesh remained, but between his god given immortal soul and his scientifically crafted body of nanoflesh he was effectively invincible, nothing that they had-
"What the hell is that?" Takt was so stunned stupid from the appearance of the Tyrant Dragon wearing Maple's shield armour to worry about the spiky buckler that slammed into his body spike first and slamming him across the landscape.
"I don't like fighting people." The creature cracked four knuckles while she glared down at the fool with contempt. "But you aren't a person are you?" While Takt was still processing the situation Maple followed up with another attack. "Shield Prison." The familiar ball of shields appeared around Takt. "Change Shield: Soul Eater Shield!" The ball changed form into the fish head of the ghostly fish monster that Maple killed in the skies above Melromarc, course it would be pointless if Takt didn't attack the shield ball for it to start eating away at his Soul. "Air Strike Javelin!" Or if Katarina attacked it for him. The eyes of the ball of fish head glowed as Katarina's attack bounced off of it and quickly opened up it's jaws to bite down, at which point in time Takt was able to escape.
"Fire!" Directly into another ambush as Tanya had another hoard of skills dumped on his head. After the wrecked body of the Takt emerged from the smoke Maple, still in her Savage form slammed the back of her hand, spiky buckler equipped, directly into him causing his body to smash directly into the ground and followed up by stomping her foot into him on him repeatedly. Then his body sprouted blades at the last moment and Maple somewhat comically had to stop herself at the last moment and back away instead opting for fire breath. Course by that point in time Takt had already taken some distance and had the guns out to resume his attack. He should've stuck with sharp pointy things.
"...Driefach Chimera Garden X!" Katarina had her hands clasped together as a massive wave of shadows and gold emerged from beneath her feet and spread out until it covered the entire area and then Katarina collapsed in Kyurie's arms. Balloons, Kobolds, fish monsters, birds, dogs, slimes, the squid from before, worms, Crystalak, the Chimera, perhaps if that was all then there wouldn't be any real reason to be angry. But most powerful of all of the monstrosities to emerge from the shadows to attack him was a familiar griffin. In their defence they had tried to keep their prisoner alive, but unfortunately she wasn't very cooperative in being a prisoner and it was Katarina's turn to watch her when she finally did break free. Now here was Takt made to fight off tooth and nail the empowered clones of her lover.
"Tanya. Do you feel like we might be the bad guys here?" Kuro asked watching the insane monster fight against the shadowy duplicate of his former lover, the curse of Greed causing his spikes to rust away and fall apart while the curse of Sloth empowered the magic that animated them in exchange for Katarina not doing literally anything.
"He attacked you. And he started a war with Siltvelt and Melromarc." Not to mention all the things that they didn't know what he was up to, killing Heroes and stealing their weapons. "He has this much a beating coming at the very least." Which reminded her. "Weapons lock and prepare to fire." And so a third volley of projectiles was unleashed raining down explosive skills on top of Takt's head. And then another round of long spear like spikes was loosed only to be intercepted and destroyed by Maple and her even hardier than usual defences, which allow her the chance to grab him without having to deal with a million spikes being shoved through her hand.
"Raphtalia Sadeena! You're up!" Something notable about the 'Shield of the Beast King' and it's Skill 'Enhanced Beast Transformation' was that firstly it dramatically augmented both the transformation that therianthropes can use and the subsequent stat increase that follows, the second was that it plasters Maple's stats onto the one being transformed, which in this case was Maple herself. Now those dramatically increased stats were being applied to two other people too. As it turns out all of Maple's companions have Therianthrope forms, including Rifana who had taken the form of a giant Weasel and Raphtalia the form of a giant Raccoon. The two of them made chittering animal noises as a mass of magical power gathered above them and Judgement X fired down from above, with Maple throwing the psychotic mass of nano machines into the light beam that followed.
"AAAUUUGGGHHH!" Takt had been vaporised in the blast, together with the pounding that they had been giving him they had finally made him use up all of his nano-machines so that he couldn't fix this body anymore. Sadly said beam of death from the sky had also made it so that he could escape into the ground with relative ease and go get another one.
Well the nano-machines need some work, that much had been made obvious. The idea was to repair his body without relying on the Bitch was highly appealing but madness and having his fleshy bits replaced by metallic weapons instead of being repaired was not what he had been aiming for. No matter, he would be getting plenty of field tests in against the four heroes. Takt finished programming in the latest batch of nano-machines and injected them into his new body before he travelled up the stairs leading outside. Trash had been surprised when he arrived in the city, all of the guards he encountered were, in a word, weak. His intelligence network told him the majority of Faubrey's soldiers were level one hundred, he was thusly curious where these level forties, which were by all means were stronger than civilians and might be adequate for forcing rebellions of normal people to halt in their tracks, had come from. No matter, he would learn about that matter later.
"The King is dead?" Trash questioned he noticed that the mirror portal he left behind in Melromarc Castle slide back into the slit in the wall that had been put in place for that exact purpose and locked there just for good measure. "Takt-sama had seen to that." The Civilian stated recalling the image of Takt kicking the fat bastard's head down the stairs of the royal palace and into the streets. And nothing of significance was lost. Well that's not true, Trash lost the pleasure of getting to torture his fat pig of a brother to within a inch of his life several times but for the time being they had other issues of note to address. "And where is the new king now?"
"He went out to fight the wave." The Civilian stated, a tone of relief on his face.
What Takt was doing in his free time was slowly becoming more and more apparent the deeper into his madness he went. For starters there were rumours that he had been using some kind of brainwashing magic to pick up any woman that struck his fancy, that would be the curse series, provided that the theory that Reincarnators are immune to the cursed backlash was true then he could use them as much as he wants without consequence. Course considering the fact that he was one of the reasons why they had that theory in the first place it seemed extremely likely. Also there was a bombardment of rail gun like shots that slammed into the barrier Trash had set up around the area while he enjoyed the afternoon tea.
"Yah know..." Takt's brow was twitching with irritation and madness. "You people have a bad habit of sitting around here like you own the place."
Technically speaking Trash was the rightful prince of Faubrey by the standard set by it's myriad of succession rights, doubly so since his brother had never established a proper heir let alone this lunatic, less said heir feel inclined to kill him to claim the throne.
"And you have a bad habit of not dying when people feel inclined to have mercy on you." Trash replied as he stood up, using the cane to help himself along. "At a peak of curiosity would you mind telling me where my daughter is before you start flailing uselessly trying to defeat me?"
"Eat Shit and Die old Man!" Takt had opted to follow up his insult/death threat and in addition to that sprouted several guns and firing them all off at once, to wit Trash just let out a sigh as he blurred out of the way the projectiles slamming into the building behind him.
"Fine then. I'll just extract the information I want from you after we're finished." Trash began speaking so fast that his voice was just a indecipherable squeak, more magic was cast and suddenly Takt's limbs felt like they had cement weights attached to them.
Trash had many benefits from his long life, he has either fought with or against all four of the heroes of the past generation and as such he has learned. Aura, Down, Absorb, Enchant, the four magics of the legendary heroes, and Liberation the Hero exclusive tier of magic. The argument could easily be made that he was the most powerful Staff Hero who has ever lived, he was certainly more powerful then this little punk.
"WWWhhhaaattt dddiiiddd...?"
"There's no point in telling you. Your perspective of time has been slowed down by such a incredible margin that you wouldn't be able to tell anyway." A brief explanation, Aura was a magic that dramatically increases ones stats, at liberation tier and fully enhanced by the staff reinforcement method he was looking at a well over 10 000% increase to his own stats, one cannot comprehend how much time he has spent on learning how to talk this slow. Similarly Down, the magic whose incantation he spoke that was so fast that his voice was little more than a mouse burping under a pile of pillows, was magic that dramatically reduces ones stats, which again at the liberation tier and enhanced by his reinforcement method reduced Takt's stats to less than 0.01% of his stats. As if emphasising the difference in stats Takt fired off a round from his gun that looked like it was moving through molasses for how slow it was. "This is just embarrassing." He saw lightning spark too, was this suppose to be a projectile from a rail gun? Whatever. Trash just flicked the source of his consternation out of the way and through Takt's shoulder.
"Aaaahhhh...!" Takt's pained shriek sounded more like a moaning wail of pain to Trash's ears.
"What's that Sonny you're going to have to speak up, I am a old man after all." Trash stated as he took his cane and slammed it into Takt's waist over and over again like he was trying to break open a pinata. He hated him, and this country. This place takes decent human beings and it breaks them, the constant inbreeding that the royal family glorifies that destroyed any chance his sister ever had at a normal life, the power struggles that broke the two of them up, he himself who was driven to a murderous rage that killed his sister and nearly killed her children. And this little punk too, the minion of a false king whose favourite hobby is to break people mind body and soul, the fact that he lies dead at his hand does not excuse years spent as a accomplice. "I do hope that your healing power is still working, my fun will run out if you die too quickly!"
Author's Note:
RonaldM40196867: Probably.
Captain Imaginat: I recall hearing a verse in a song about the one who does the job no one wants but keeps everyone alive, mind you that was about the healer class in video games but I think it still applies. Yeah, Faubrey really is full of a lot of stupid people, too much inbreeding. I have no plans for her.
Halo: Either that or the guy who choose them was just drunk at the time.
Onishin Tsukitenshi: Probably.