Author's Note: Okay minor inconveniences this morning, all worked out now, Read, Review, Favourite and please enjoy the Holidays responsibly.
Chapter 84: The Cursed Country
Malty, Ikki noted, was faster then she looked. For one thing she seems to have unlocked a slew of curses for that thing.
"Prideful Throw! Dagger Rain!" Malty ran through yet another crowded street and threw the projectile weapon above the enemies heads letting the blades rain down and place the crowd under her control.
Or at least, that's what would have happened if Ikki hadn't stopped to parry the blades away harmlessly into the ground. What Ikki wouldn't give for a mana potion right now, if he could at least do Ittou Shura he could have chopped her head off and destroyed the weapon stealing accessory before any harm could be done. Speaking of which, since they weren't being used for anything other than maintaining his supply of Ki, the combined form of SP and Mana, Ikki called down the 'Ki Potion Blades' he turned thousand sword's into earlier to serve as road blocks for the princess.
"Greed Throw! Rapid Throw!" So Malty's next dagger turned them into rust blowing away on the wind.
How many of those curses does she have? Well. The real question he supposed was how many vices did she have? Pride made sense, considering how much she looked down on them. Greed too, if what Trash said she did to the treasury made sense. Should they assume that she has all of them? Might as well, though the only they've yet to see is...
"Wrathful Throw!" Malty had turned around to chuck another of the cursed daggers at Ikki, this one filled with black flame.
How was she not paying the consequences for all of these cursed skills? Does it have something to do with not being the weapon's rightful owner? Whatever. Might as well squeeze in some practice while he's trying to make sure she doesn't burn the empire down. Ikki concentrated Ki into the tip of his blade and formed a mitt with it which he then used to catch Malty's attack and fling it back at her, or at least tried to, what actually happened was that the mitt exploded forcing Ikki to back off less he get caught in the burst of cursed energy.
"Well that isn't going to work." Thankfully all this running around was helping him to loosen up a little bit, though it would probably be several instances of exercise and hot and cold bath's before he got his body back the way he wanted it. In the mean time though he'll just have to settle for chasing her all around Q'Ten Lo and bank on his stamina being greater than hers.
"Don't you ever quit!?" Malty stopped in front of a crowd as bore her twisted abomination of a blade at them. "Lust Dagger!" A pulse of green energy went out into the crowd of men, Malty's natural empathetic powers mixing into the effect of the soon they were head over heels for her. "That man is trying to Rape me!" Cue Ikki sliding into the market just in time for Malty's finger to land on him, then she took off again and they were coming on him out for blood.
"Is that the only thing you know how to do!?" Ikki shouted irritated as the people Malty had just seduced all dog piled onto him.
"Oh I've learned quite a few new tricks! Take this for instance!" Malty pointed her dagger at the enemy as she prepared to show off a new trick. "Dagger Bind!" Malty's next dagger chucked at Ikki left him and the crowd tied up in spirit chains, though he worked to break free Malty was already working on the next attack. "Let this foolish sinner be burned to death for his crimes. Writhe and scream in anguish under the wrath of the raging bull!" Not too coincidentally something like Naofumi's Shield prison started to form around the lot of them. "Phalaris Bull!" A huge metal statue of a bull had formed around Ikki and the people Malty had brainwashed to fight for her. Black flames appeared as the entire thing was lit on fire, ah she meant to cook him to death.
The loud screeching of metal on metal echoed out as Ikki used his sword like a super powered turkey carver to hack his way out of the skill followed up by using water to dose the flames, and when that failed secured more success by smothering it with ice. Malty was already gone, the people outside of the bull at the time she ran away weren't, yet another benefit of the Pride Sword. Malty was catching her breath now that she finally got away from Ikki, Ikki hacked the top off of the stall she was hiding inside, singed and pissed.
"Oh come on!" And so Malty gripped the twisted mass of animals in dagger form that was her weapon once more. "Sloth field!"
Ikki had been gripped by a crippling status debuff that made him slow down dramatically. Malty wasn't affected, but then again she usually wasn't. She choose to try and stab him again instead of running away. A mistake. Malty leaned over Ikki to stab him, Ikki stood up swinging his sword directly in order to chop her in half. Then the hammer came down through the stall forcing them to separate.
"I find myself suspiciously disappointed by your seeming lack of usefulness." Said hammer returned to the hand of a old woman who walked through the hole she punched through the mass of wood and canvas. "I admit I expected... more than a mass of curses blindly dumped through the streets of our Capital City."
"'Capital City?'" Ikki had a look outside through the shanty town and market place that he had been chasing Malty through, which seemed to now be riddled with Curses which admittedly might be partially his fault.
"He's one of the Heroes The Garbage King summoned." Malty stated prompting Ikki to nearly be knocked over by the shock. Princess Bitch/Adventurer Whore actually has the balls to call someone the Garbage King? No more importantly wasn't it her idea to bring them here in the first place? Ikki would applaud her audacity if she wasn't trying to kill him and he her. "If we don't kill him then the rebellion will only go on!"
"Oh hardly, Naofumi's been looking forward to killing you for month's now, and he's much harder to put down than I am." Ikki regained his composure long enough to mock the pair, because some times the best way to get a bold face lie across was to tell the honest truth, especially when dealing with a chronic liar and a sociopath schemer.
"We can't kill him until we find out where the other three are." The old crone stated ears flicking.
Hakuko Ikki noted, not common in Q'Ten Lo near as the Sword Hero could tell, and Ikki was finding it to be quite ironic that Malty was currently aligning with someone that she considered a mere animal a few month's ago.
"If we don't kill him then he's just going to escape again and rip apart all of your forces!" Malty stated with emphasis. Ah, so she is capable of making sound tactical decisions after all.
"I'm not honestly sure whether I should be disappointed by this revelation or not, though a bad one racism is still a principle, but it seems you really don't have that much do you?" Ikki turned his attention to the older woman. "As for you Makina? Based on what I heard it does not surprise me one iota that you would align yourself with someone who considers your entire species little more than wild animals in need of putting down, considering how poorly you've been treating the people under your control."
It wasn't hard to put two and two together in regard's to Malty's ally in the Q'Ten Lo government. Even without his former captor name dropping Makina's estate before he bit his own tongue off all Ikki would really have to do is ask the rebels who the biggest most cutthroat and influential ass hole in Q'Ten Lo is. The fact that Q'Ten Lo has employed exactly the kind of irresponsible management and spending that he would imagine Melromarc would if it actually fell under the control of the Bitch Princess only confirmed Ikki's initial conclusions. In retrospect it wasn't surprising at all that they hooked up, Makina was just a older Malty with Hakuto ears. It was only after Malty saw that Ikki wasn't moving to attack them that she clued in to what was really going on.
"He's stalling." Malty stated with horrified realisation. "Yes I am. It took longer than I expected for my mana to recharge. I have to wonder if I broke something with that stunt I pulled a little while ago." A storm of blades tore through the tent and proceeded to stab into the pair of monsters before their master. Malty slinked away after spitting out skills to block the majority of the bladed attacks, while Makina simply tore them out and regenerated. Great. "How many of you people are there?"
"For you? More than enough." Makina snapped her fingers and armed assassins leaped out of Ikki's shadow to try and stab him.
Shadows, fanatical Tanuki Shadows to be more specific. Armed with the ability to cast illusions, move around within shadows and blind people with light, that was ignoring what kind of damage they could do with the Water Dragon's blessing or the Emperor's blessing that they seem to pass out like candy around here, and any number of the super weapons this country is famous for on top of that. This is like if someone stuffed Kirihara, Alice, a bundle of steroids and a mental asylum patient into a mixture and set it to whip! This is a fine fuck up you've gotten yourself into Kurogane.
"Hack off his limbs if you have to: but I want him alive." Makina ordered unknowingly making Fatal mistake number 1. Ikki used his swords to parry the blows meant to chop off his arms and legs, the blows that he could see had fatally stabbed him through his heart and belly, but they were after all only illusions. From the hits of the blades Ikki was able to determine angle and location: ah so the ones that popped out of his shadow were illusions too? And since they aren't likely to pull a contortionists act while they're invisible...
"Raphtalia is a billion times better at this then you guys are." With a single swing of Ikki's dual swords he parted both of the two bit creeps head's from their bodies, before they could hit the ground sucked them both into his sword for a little bit of interrogation at Tatsuya's hands later on.
"I have far more from where they came from!" Ikki detected the killing intent of dozen's of more invisible assassins entering the area around them.
"And The Demon Lord of the Shield isn't the only one with support skills!" Malty whipped out the staff that had been her device. Was that thing always so twisted looking? In either way Ikki felt his own feelings disgust and repulsion against the other woman intensify dramatically.
"Dagger of Lust! Dagger of Envy! Rage Robe!" Ikki felt the temperature in the room sky rocket from the cursed flames. Seriously? What's the point of having invisible minions when you make it easy to figure out where they are?
"Huu. Ittou Shura X." And thus Ikki made the executive decision to put an end to this nonsense at last as the movements of the enemy was stopped dead in their tracks. Ikki didn't bother attacking the invisible shadow's at this point in time, merely nudging their blades out of the way as he cleared a path to Malty. He noted the sword he was using to do so, after pulling the Legendary Sword away from invisible blades, was on fire. Mind you only the tip, though that will probably change as soon as time resumes. Just how strong is the curse attached to that thing? Do the level of general unpleasantness stack together with every new curse attached or something? Or does one particular emotion need to accumulate. Normally he would leave this kind of question up to Tatsuya but he wasn't here, and considering he was already on Pride II this seemed rather important, and it wasn't like he was going to get the information he wanted out of Malty.
"Should've run." Ikki stated eyeing the throwing dagger in the woman's hand. "You would've lived longer." Ikki's tone of voice carried no remorse as he used the legendary sword to smash through the accessory hanging off of the Seven Star Projectile and cut through Malty's wrist at the same time.
He never broke the skin. As if solving the mystery of where the sheer unpleasantness that should have been the backlash of the curse series had gone the accessory exploded unleashing as massive wave of Miasma across the entire country in the process.
"Sword Prison! Change Blade: Spirit Tortoise Shell Sword!" Ikki did his best to spit out a impregnable fortress from the weapon that is least suited to doing that among all of the Legendary Weapons and found only moderate success. Black flames crawled up Malty's body, alongside rot, and a black substance that was clearly not blood, and she felt every moment of it as she was reduced to a mangled corpse that was still somehow alive. Of course she was: what was the point of cursing her if she wasn't alive to suffer. Makina's body was destroyed in the blast and her soul laced with malice as she took off with the hammer through the sky, the Projectile followed suit though no longer bound to the whims of mad men it was free to go choose it's own wielder. But more important than that, it needed to get help, for it knew more about what kind of hell was just unleashed then the rest of them. Ikki wasn't as fast with the draw as he would've liked to have been, slamming against the back of the barricade of turtle shell swords he had built hard enough to knock him clean out. He would be out for much too long.
"You look like you've taken a tumble." One of the lesser known facts of miasma is that in sufficient concentrations it can manipulate the flow of space and time around it, and what was released from that accessory was very concentrated. Creatures started to come down from the portal that had formed from the release, most notable among them a single black scorpion, snakes, worms, and other things best left to the imagination.
"I don't know what you want from me." Malty smiled bitterly. "I'm dead."
"Only if you don't get a new body." The scorpion pointed out. "So what do you think? Course if you do get a new body: then you won't be using the one that you got right now will you? And if that's the case why not give it to us?" Malty's smile got bigger, or maybe the pieces of flesh hiding it just fell away, it was hard to tell. "Sure. This rotten body is no good to me anyway. You guys might as well have it." And so the demons swarmed.
"Ha ha ha...!" Rishia tried desperately to suck air back into her lungs, having just witnessed the last few moments of Malty Melromarc and the birth of... something else. She didn't know what end of the world crisis is going on right now but whatever it was based on the efforts taken to tell her she assumed it was bad, much like she assumed she was suppose to tell Tatsuya. Which was bad since it had become apparent that he had set up a nest inside of the Spirit Tortoise while he unleashed all manner of horrors upon the area around it. The Sniper Type Para-Mod Bio-Plants scored another kill against the reincarnators, though this one escaped in time for the cloned Soul Eaters to come after the left overs to finish them off, rather nasty hunting dogs they were but flawed, highly visible with no true way of securing their prey to prevent them from escaping, he will have to correct that going forward. One more for the to do list.
"Is something the matter Rishia?" Tatsuya asked as he noticed the Bio-Plant Elevator he had installed bringing the only person he trusts enough to have access here up.
"A situation has appeared." Rishia stated as she stepped free of the elevator as she entered the lab. "Bitch has been found." Rishia stated having had to practice calling the former princess that. "She's in Q'Ten Lo."
"If that was all then she will be dealt with soon enough." Tatsuya stated as he returned to his work, he need to come up with a way of improving the Soul Eaters to the point that they can effectively and reliably deal with the reincarnators.
"Bitch exploded." To Rishia's statement Tatsuya paused, turned away from his work and faced her.
"Explain."
"Ikki cut something off of her, it was capping all of the... i don't know general nastiness all the curse series weapons that she had managed to unlock were building up. Now that's been spread all over the country, we need someone who can fix it." Rishia looked Tatsuya in his eyes pleading him for help.
"No." Tatsuya's statement was crystal clear, filled with venom and more than a smidgen of contempt. "I'm busy." And so Tatsuya got back to work.
"May I ask why?" Rishia asked closing her eyes for a moment.
"Because I have reached my limit." Tatsuya stated no longer even making eye contact with Rishia. "The closest metaphor I can think of regarding this situation is a story from my world. To save their people from a flood a village built a dam. And it worked, until it sprung a leak, so a naive child stuck his finger inside and saved the village." A good story, about how no matter how bad thing's get you can fix them if you just try, no matter if it's a fool idea or not so long as you act decisively and immediately. "Except we both know that wouldn't work in real life, because erosion, and water pressure are things that exist, and fingers are appalling crack filling material. That is what you have done by summoning us, kidnapping people from the next village over so that they can stand in front of the dam desperately sticking their fingers inside hoping to keep the dam from bursting, even though it won't. There are the waves, other world invaders, reincarnators, directional beasts and most recently gods that mean for the dam to burst. And I have run out of fingers. Now if it was just a matter of a few extra people who are going to be swept away by the flood I might be able to accept that." Tatsuya stared at her now, not as a friend either. No that's the kind of glare you shoot a enemy. "But some of those villages you kidnapped people from were in the middle of important tasks that needed their attention. What's worst is that now the designated finger plug people are all gone now. And so their villages are to be potentially destroyed by the same flood." Tatsuya's voice grew in intensity as he spoke, there was a light in his eyes, the same she saw in Malty's before the curses killed her. "He who desires but acts not breed's pestilence." And so the monster who sentence a country to die returned to his work to protect another monster. "You have your own finger now. Go find a god damn hole to plug." And that was the end of Tatsuya's affairs within the realm of mortals.
Review Section:
RonaldM40196867: To each their own. I always found it strange that Takt was considered the bigger threat of the two, yes they both hoarded weapons but Kyo was a lot smarter about how he used them. Flying. I think there's something on the IOS already.
ReviewerDJW: Glad you like it.
1736248319: Because he know's that the cursed series is affecting him, and he doesn't want to take the risk of getting any stronger and going on a rampage like the others until he's 100% certain that he won't be doing that.
Nightshadegirl: Always nice to have a new reviewer, specially someone whose single handedly driving up my Review per chapter average. If you still have any questions by the time you read this feel free to ask them and I'll answer to the best of my abilities. I also recommend that you check out my profile and the other Shield Hero crossover on it, Rising of the Cute Heroes, if my April Fool's chapter appeals to you.