Author's Note: Okay so approaching our final story arc for this story now. I have a clear idea of how I want the story to end and how long it will take. Don't get me wrong I've loved this story, but it's been almost a hundred chapters already. Read, Review, Favourite and Enjoy!
Chapter 96: The Hero of Chains
The introduction of the return Dragon vein dramatically augmented the travel capabilities of the people of the world at large, which of course also increased the amount of trade going on, and made it possible to go deep into the monster infested territories. Setsuna expected a repeat of the Nero issue, of the monsters that hunted the waves and whose use of the barrier like territory technique would limit how the enemy could act in the wild, being hunted for sport and XP. Fitoria compiled a list with the assistance of the surprisingly studious Midori and a notice was sent to the guilds, the armies and the nobility that somethings were off limits. Of course there are those who just don't listen.
"So I take it from your hunter's tool kits and the fact that you are in his territory you intend to help the..." Setsuna had to actually check the cheat sheet for this one. "'Wise Forest King.' The alternative you understand is that you came here specifically to hunt a monster on the Kingdom's ban list."
"Ah... yes that's right."
Red flag one: the presence of advance technology, they had some discount gun but those were getting pretty common since Faubrey's evacuation. Red Flag two: the presence of a abnormally large amount of women with the only authority figure being a man, check that wasn't to say the rest were incompetent though. That one with white silvery hair wearing a chain mail of some kind? Setsuna felt a predatory glance from that one.
"What a coincidence so was I." Setsuna still gave them the benefit of the doubt, she sincerely doubted that even if they were to take her spear from her they would be able to beat her considering how high her base stats were, the number of ability and skill points she had sunk into things unrelated to the spear, amount of growth bonuses she had already received and made the best use she could, her advance training with Ki manipulation and dragon pulse. But that didn't mean that she was going to give them the chance to try. "Shall we team up to hunt the troublesome monsters then?" Setsuna asked brow cocked in the air suspiciously. "Or would you rather that we split up to cover more ground?" The adventurer snorted.
"We've no intention of dividing up our bounty with the likes of you." He looked much more cocky, now that he thought Setsuna didn't intend to kill him. "In that case you can consider this nothing more than a friendly drop in from a fellow adventurer." Setsuna waved the gaggle of women off while she took her own associates and went in another direction.
"Well?" Rifana asked looking at Setsuna brow cocked.
"Nothing but small fry around here." Setsuna replied with a shrug of her shoulders. "We split up, clean this mess up and head back to the village."
Rifana nodded as she understood what Setsuna really said through the double meanings she just let out.
"I'm going by myself for a bit, hide in the treeline and follow me, wait for them to strike first and then we take them into custody, or failing that we kill them and feed them to the soul eater."
Red Flag number three: abnormally structured soul indicating that someone had tampered with it in order to facilitate it's transfer into a unlimited supply of fresh bodies. Hard to spot she will admit, but after Tact and Kyo and Makina in Ikki's case they had some reference points: and thanks to all their training in Ki manipulation they had plenty of people who could spot the abnormal Ki flow too: Individuals that were now being preoccupied with helping the other nations clean out their own Reincarnators, the ones that are left after Tact, may he rot in hell, started hunting them, and training their personnel in how to spot them. It says something about their enemy that they managed to sabotage themselves but they were getting off topic now.
"Kyah!" A mosquito jumped out of a bush and slammed her weapon into Setsuna's head, bouncing off pointlessly as she started to roll around the ground in pain. It took a few moments for Setsuna to process what happened, largely thanks to the fool shrieking like an indignant child.
"Miao! What did you do to her!?" The leader of the other adventurer party growled pointing accusingly at Setsuna.
"She doesn't even have a scratch on her." Setsuna stated rolling her eyes and turning around to face the fool. "I can assure you if I had attacked her she would not be rolling around on the ground like that."
"Arrogant prick! A monster like you who just lets her-" Setsuna stretched her arm over and flicked the tree next to her, it snapped in half and fell with a great and mighty thud. Does she even have to bother levelling anymore at this point? "Ah-ah ah..." The reincarnator regained his composure with a startling amount of speed. "Don't worry everyone! We can beat her!" Red Flag four: a reckless disregard for his own life, understandable when you live under the impression that you can die and be revived however many times are necessary to defeat a opponent.
"Why do I even bother?" Setsuna opened the fight, if you could call it that, with a familiar three part combo. "Air Strike Javelin, Chaos Thrust, Brionac!" An oldie but a goodie, and it laid waste to everything that was in front of her as a added boon. Well except for the Reincarnator, he was healing quite quickly.
"Huu. Alright that confirms it." Setsuna switched over to the Spear of wrath.
Hack off his limbs and burn the stumps so that they can't grow back? Hell no. The fight with Tact had been a educational affair: do not let the bastards under any circumstances touch the weapon itself. So instead Setsuna used her Fire Scar attack to cleanly sever his arms and legs and leave behind charred stumps behind.
"Alright you, I still have some monsters I need to find so you wait here..." Setsuna was sent flying through the air by the hit and for a moment she thought she had jumped because this was little over a mile in the air. "Reflect Spear: Rope Spear!" The Overly sinister war Scythe had a black and red rope sprout out of it. "Air Strike Javelin!" Setsuna chucked the spear at the ground and proceeded to yank herself back down to ground level leading her to lay eyes on the silver haired woman who had punched her. Notably no longer wearing chain-mail anymore. She did however have a rather large chain wrapped around her fist in a set of crude brass knuckles which is presumably what just hit her. Oh and their was a familiar jewel too. "Another one?" Setsuna stated picking herself off and brushing the dust she picked up during her landing away. "What are you supposed to be the Vassal of Bondage?"
"Chains wise ass." The silver haired woman stated while she picked up her ally by the scruff of his shirt.
"Get me out of here if we-GUH!" The woman's arm sparked familiarly as she chucked the idiot through the air at Setsuna.
"Reflect Spear: Soul Eater Spear!" The fact that the War Scythe now had the sinister grin of the Soul Eater Spear to accompany it's already red, black and blatantly evil design from earlier did not help make it look any better, like at all. The fact that the blade of said incredibly evil looking weapon split it's face open and ripped the soul out of the body of the Reincarnator also did nothing to subtract from it's look.
"You seem pretty attached to that spear there." The woman stated as she looped one end of the chain around her finger and started to spin it through the air idly playing with it. "Cursed energy is a pretty fine double edged sword you know."
"Oh this? I was just thinking that it was making me pretty nostalgic for home, considering the same energy flows through my very veins." Setsuna stated as she gave a crack of her neck, she was not afraid of cursed energy, she was born of it, her entire species was born of it, her entire country was bathed in it for four hundred years! "What about you though? You didn't seem to be very attached to your companion over there." Setsuna stated noting the dissolving remains of the man that she already torched a few moments ago.
"What about him?" The woman asked overall giving a very unpleasant and extremely familiar feeling.
"Bitch the Second it is." Setsuna decided in that moment concluding that Naofumi and the others would agree with her flawless conclusion. Bitch II no doubt had a witty retort prepared but before she could spit it out Setsuna had floored her opponent and followed that up with a kick to her ovaries sending her flying through the air. Another like Glass, a well meaning extremist who meant to kill this world to save her own? Unlikely given the company she kept and casual way she disposed of him. One like Kyo, a lunatic who means to eat worlds for the sake of personal power? Good possibility.
"Might I take the liberty of being impressed with your little scheme?" Setsuna leaped into the air and grabbed the woman by her hair and chucked her at the ground and followed up with Air Strike Javelin just for good measure. "The westerners say that if you want to hide a needle you should use a haystack, I would just set the haystack on fire personally." The woman caught the thrown spear, and the multiple Brionacs that followed up as the spear returned to Setsuna's hand. "You on the other hand chose to hide your needle in a pile of needles."
The majority of these reincarnators were male, there was Makina but she seemed to be the exception and not the rule. Without exception these idiots seemed to round up personal fuck toys. This one took advantage of that, hid herself behind a figure head, albeit one that she didn't seem to have any long term plans for, or if she did have long term plans they lost out to the idea of taking her on. On that note the smoke cleared from the cluster of Brionac's boosted by the flames of wrath and the woman didn't have a scratch on her.
"The actual...?" Regeneration? All the reincarnators had it so it wasn't unlikely. This wasn't that though. The flames stalled healing, while Tact was able to overcome that eventually the key phrase to that was eventually, and carried the implication that it would A take a bite out of whatever resource he drained to do it and B would consume time to do it. Even ignoring her theoretically potent healing power that shouldn't extend to her armour and clothes which wasn't even singed! Curse nullification? The replica apparently had that power stemming from it's immense holy energy, which carried the implication that she had something on her that knocked it out. No the answer was something much simpler and infinitely more terrifying. She was just that strong. "Funny I didn't know there was anyone else who can just walk off a beating like that." Setsuna stated as she watched the Bitch shaped creature brush cursed soot off of her person.
"You are the last person someone wants to called a bitch by you do realise this yes?" The creature tapped the side of her head and it took Setsuna a moment to figure out that she was talking about her ears. "You know. Considering that you are a literal female dog."
"I'm honestly surprised people haven't made that crack before." Setsuna stated, the fact that she would likely tear their head off if they did likely accounted for that fact. The two got in for close quarters brawling, The woman making her chain into a pair of nunchucks as she deftly avoided Setsuna's attacks and struck with her own attacks. Monstrously high defensive power meant prime schmuck bait for point, so that's what Setsuna used and in the process proved herself a schmuck.
"Thank you for the meal." Ki flowed out of Setsuna's body like a river and she found that she couldn't remove her fist from her opponent's body. In the end they didn't break the connection because Setsuna managed to pull her fist free but rather because her enemy hit her too hard and sent her sailing through the air as a consequence until she was stopped by a tree.
"Okay." Said tree snapped in half as Setsuna kicked it away. "Now I'm pissed." And so Setsuna turned into her demon wolf form, flames of wrath coating her paws as she gripped the spear in her mouth. "RRRAAAWWWRRR!"
"Well that's moderately impressive." The woman commented as Setsuna charged over, and she responded by taking off like a rocket at speeds achievable only by Ikki, or so she had thought anyway.
"Reflect Spear: Destiny Stone Spear!" The Wrath Spear ditched the rope in favour of a winged shaped blade and a lighter shade with the added pinkness. The woman was suddenly met with reduced stats after she was cut off from the power of her chain and subsequently smacked by Setsuna's paw: hard. Several more trees were subsequently smashed to pieces as the woman was severely inconvenienced by her sudden lack of stats.
"Okay, I'll admit that was mildly impressive." The woman wiped the blood that came out of her mouth on her sleeve as she raised up her other hand to reveal a ball of Setsuna's black fire that she had scooped up. "My turn!" The mass of cursed fire had been enhanced and grown using Ki, and then somehow compressed down into as tight a package possible, if Setsuna didn't jump away and turn back into human form at the last moment she would have been swallowed up in the quarter mile radius that was that ball's blast zone. One of the unfortunate down sides to this was that the woman was no longer within Setsuna's pacification field, another was that she now had a huge mass of cursed ammunition to work with.
"I hate this one." Setsuna stated watching as the woman strung a number of burning hunks of wood with her chain and then threw them at Setsuna. "Chaos Thrust! Brionac!" Setsuna ended up having to destroy the pieces of cursed charcoal with her spear as she ended up crashing back into the ground while the chain wielder proceeded to start tearing through the woods. "Well this plan has gone pear shaped." Setsuna noted as she held her hand over her mouth in order to not breath in cursed ashes. She's better at Ki manipulation, stunting her stats isn't doing much, and magic is going to take too long. A tactical retreat seemed in order.
"Wow cursed weapons really are a pain in the ass aren't they?" The Bitch stated as she waved the ashes out of her face like she was warding off something foul smelling, which was also probably a good metaphor for how much this actually bothered her. "Are you done yet?"
"Yes actually." Setsuna stated cracking her neck with her fist as she began noticing the change in the air. "It took longer then I expected for my companions to make with the ritual magic." Fire burns the earth and is scattered by the wind making sand. Sand is melted by fire and cooled by the wind to make glass. Fire shines through glass to make light. Light mixes with lightning and makes holy. And when you attack with holy...
"""Driefach Judgement X!""" To the shout of Setsuna's party members shouted prompting Bitch 2 to have a look around as the chard surroundings started to glow gold and light up with energy. "Clever Girl." Is all that she could really say as Setsuna swapped out the Wrath spear and portal out of there as the area detonated.
Tatsuya's Magic networking wasn't giving Naofumi as much of a headache as it was the rest of the students, Ikki theorised that the same power that keeps him from getting drunk also helps manage abnormal statuses. That and if it did hurt it would be a attack and Tatsuya would have to get through his defences for that to work. So abusing this phenomena to it's fullest Naofumi was now manipulating the former contents a pot of water swishing it between his hands absent minded. So he could use Dragon pulse now, which opened up his options quite a bit.
"Ikki." Naofumi stated as he switched over to one of his stronger shields.
"Are you sure man? That's going to hurt like hell." Ikki readied one of his weakest blades to attack with.
"I've maxed out health and regeneration, I can take it." Naofumi stated knowing that this was still going to hurt like hell when this was over. "The more that stuff bounces around inside of me the faster we're going to figure this shit out."
"Alright I warned you." Ikki raised his sword in the air and swung it down, the blade being caught by Setsuna who appeared using the portal skill along with the rest of her party. Upon grabbing the blade Setsuna spurted blood and collapsed. "Well that's not a good sign." Ikki commented looking down at Setsuna's pooling blood. "Tatsuya if you wouldn't mind." The magician in question whipped out one of his silver horns and did an analysis on Setsuna.
"She's been using the wrath spear again, probably someone that she didn't want to get away before she could kill them." Tatsuya sighed as he prepared to cure Setsuna. Again. However Naofumi stopped him.
"Since I'm just gonna have to heal you after I'm done with her how about if we see if I can cut out the middle man." Naofumi took the water he was playing with a minute ago and pumped it through Setsuna's body, soaking up cursed energy, mending wounds before she started coughing and spat out black sludge born of the mixing of cursed ash and water.
"Ough... I do not like her." Setsuna stated wiping cursed sludge from the corner of her mouth.
"Who is her?" Naofumi asked brow raised in blatant suspicion. "Our newest problem, working name Bitch #2."
"That name makes her sound like she's in Mal..." Tatsuya said and Naofumi glared at him. "In Bitch's league."
"She's a lot tougher then Bitch. For one thing she actually knows how to fight, and how to use a weapon." Setsuna stated as she let Naofumi start treating the rest of her wounds.
"Normal, Vassal or Legendary?" Tact briefly made off with Setsuna's spear once apparently. It wouldn't actually surprise him to learn that someone had already stolen the other world's legendary weapons.
"I want to say legendary, it could change forms at whim so at the very least it should be vassal." And if that was true Setsuna didn't want to imagine what kind of damage she could do with a legendary. "That's on top of the ability to use Ki, and to my continued frustration she can do it better then me too." Oh this situation was just getting worst and worst by the moment. "That's on top of the fact that she was working for a reincarnator, before she used me to dispose of him before we could get any useful information out of him once he proved fucking useless in a fight."
"Aw Shit." Naofumi summarised their collective feelings. "I'll go let the princess know about the latest shit storm to drop on our heads. In the mean time we were just about to put Tatsuya and Naofumi here through the School of Hard Knocks for Ki manipulation."
"Good." Setsuna cracked her neck as both Naofumi and Tatsuya braced themselves for a beating. "I have some misplaced aggression that I need to get off of my chest right now." On a side note, Setsuna wasn't quite as gentle as Ikki.
Review Section:
RonaldM40196867: True. I have no plans for new monsters. I don't think they should, I'll just put it that way.
ReviewDWJ: Glad you enjoyed them.
Nightshadegirl: Oh they're so much worst than that.
Dakota Bruder: Without going into too many spoilers, the dream sequences are foreshadowing an up coming event that's going to be happening to the others before it happens to Naofumi.