Author's Note: Little bit distracted today. No matter. Read, Review, Favourite and Enjoy!
Chapter 64: The Machine Dragon
Trash was on his way to the site where the Phoenixes was sealed away via airship. The plan was that the other heroes would portal back and forth to Melromarc carrying as much personnel as possible to suppress the phoenixes. However much of a threat they might be they still needed them alive if they wanted to stop the waves. With luck they can physically restrain them and transport them to places with high XP, starting with the locations that still had it stockpiled in the ground and air to be drained directly, then the ones with excessive monster populations, making people give up their XP is better then sacrificing them, with luck it should be a easier sell with the Whip Power up method. That was the plan, but for some reason Tanya and the others had yet to return. Now approaching the site where the battle would be taking place the King had his answer: another battle was taking place though not against the phoenix.
"General." One of Trash's officers addressed the man himself and indicated what was happening below them. "Does that look familiar to you?"
A creature that looked suspiciously like Maple's monster form in a Faubrian exo-armour was running on all fours across the battlefield being propelled along by the explosions that the armour was spitting out behind it via rear facing guns. That wasn't all that was going on either, a excessive fighting force already had their boots on the ground blasting the monster with magic and Tanya's bows while their main fighting force attempted to restrain it. Attempted to. At some point in time it had erected a powerful barrier to protect itself and was using it's guns to violently respond to the magic being use against it.
"Contact the Heroes." Trash commanded and so the matter was done, a crystal ball illusion soon appearing with Tanya's face on it positioned at an awkward angle, which was understandable considering she was using it to fight.
"It's huge! Make sure the ropes are rooted firmly into the ground so that they aren't uprooted!" Tanya barked presumably to the person who was using her Rope Bow. "Kuro where's our taser at!?"
"You try putting a sword through that barrier see how it works out for you!" It seemed to work on a principle of spatial expansion, nothing could get close to it because they didn't have anything that can cross the distance, well cross it and keep it alive in the process.
"Then let's trip it up!" Katarina loosed her earth manipulating skills to create a thick wall of stone, crystals and other things that the monster ended up smashing it's head into while it was running around blindly.
"What are you three doing?" Trash asked looking at the situation on the ground with a incredulous look. "Where did all these people come from?" A good sized chunk of them was the familiar Shukaku which he understood had a decent presence in this area but the rest? They looked human on first glance, but some were too short, some were too tall, and some were in the air blatantly transparent.
"The world on the other side of the wave! Maple sent them over!" Tanya snapped prompting Trash to make a confused face. "She apparently chased Kyo over there trying to get back what he stole from Ost, and if we have any hope of getting our own mess in order we need to keep this living door stop alive long enough for her to get back here with it! Help us catch that thing!" Trash took one look at the situation and looked down at the monster as he made a violently rational decision.
"Debuff the boss." And in that moment the man called Trash decided the course of his world's history. The next question became a matter of how to bring the boss down without killing it. It was after all for lack of better term Maple, in her strongest possible form armed with near impossible offensive and defensive power. Course when you consider that it basically has the same strength's and weaknesses as the girl in question the answer becomes simple.
"HHHIIIYYYAAAHHH!" Falling out of the bomber bay door of the airship Granny landed a drop kick on the lizardy cyborg's nose, causing a loud crunch noise to echo out and blood to start gushing. Course now it was pissed, and worst yet still armed to it's big sharp teeth and so it got it's guns ready.
"So you didn't protect your head with that weird magic? That's good to know." Atla followed up with landing a slashing attack taking out one of it's eyes in the process. Made sense in it's own right. If it expanded the distance away from it's head it would probably affect it's ability to see or understand it's surroundings.
"HHHAAASSSKKK!" Letting out that loud hiss the boss switched gears on it's magic, instead of the super defensive Expansion Barrier Magic, it instead suddenly started zipping around the battlefield trampling the formations of the otherworldly warriors.
"Is it using support magic to make itself faster?" Katarina asked as she continued to fling spear skills at the creature trying to keep it from fixing it's eye with healing magic.
"Worst. It's using the spatial magic from before to shrink the distance between two points." Tanya stated as the monster locked it's guns, which might as well be firing at point blank range now.
"Oh so it's dropped that annoying barrier then?" Kuro's question was followed by a thousand floating blades generating a bolt of Ki enhanced lightning through the air to come crashing down directly on the creature's head. "That's very good to know."
"Kuro! We need it alive remember!" Tanya shouted watching the monster that they were fighting collapse.
"Keep you panties on!" Kuro changed the lightning blades into chain blades and proceeded to use them to pin the vaguely Maple like monster to the ground and now that they didn't have to worry about it getting back up for a while.
"I, The Hero of the Spear, have read and deciphered the origin of power! Cauterise my targets wounds in a storm of fire! Driefach Phoenix Sear X!" Katarina unleashed a wave of fire magic against the creature sealing up all of it's wounds as they welded closed. "There's one problem solved. Now than." Chimera's, Soul Eaters, Hydra's, Stone Giants, Giant icy birds, and there were others too. "What do we do about them?" The three girls lined up with their parties as the boss monsters surrounded them intent on freeing their leader. Suddenly two more figures dropped down from the ship.
"Did you punks think that those three were the only heroes here!" Trash snapped to the crowd of monsters, wearing his tight fitting clothing with high defensive value and brandishing a golden bejeweled cane.
"Hello test subjects!" Rat greeted from the top of her latest experimental subject, a huge armoured beetle like monster made mostly out of Bio-Plant and some monster that she did a lot of tampering with the size to. That said there were not the only seven stars down there.
"Goat kick!" With his left arm Fohl called out the name of a skill and delivered a upper cut that sent one of the Chimera's flying. "Snake Bite!" With his right arm Fohl sent out a length of poisonous snake to grab a Cerberus around by it's foot and swung it over and slammed it into another monster. "Who else wants some!" The newly revealed Hero of the Gauntlet shouted as he switched out the goat and snake heads for lion and dragon.
"Chimera Weapons? I thought those things were suppose to have a bunch of transformations left over from past heroes!" Kuro snapped at Fohl. "Where's the A material!?"
"I'm working on it!" Fohl snapped in response even as he sucked two more attacking monsters into his gauntlets. "But my level isn't high enough for it!"
"The past Gauntlet hero was suppose to have fought the Phoenix before! Where are those weapons!" Tanya asked and in response Fohl did a quick search for weapon transformations.
"Found it!" Fohl switched out the Chimera weapons for a pair of crimson with orange gauntlets. His next upper cut produced an explosion that sent the monster he was fighting flying.
"Cathedral X!" Trash shouted and suddenly a church like building made out of light and magic came down on top of the boss cutting it off from the other monsters.
"What's his reinforcement Method?" Trash asked and spread a wall of fire to push back more of the monsters.
"Skill point. We're able to put the same points you put into magic into skills now!"
Trash nodded his head as he proceeded with the next step in his plan.
"Beast King weapons now!" The three girls did as they were told. The three of them have since further upgraded their Beast King weapons with Ki potions in order to manage the ludicrous Ki cost behind using the potions. That said they also made use of another new ability as well.
"Reflect sword: Ki Potion Sword!"
"Reflect Spear: Ki Potion Spear!"
"Reflect Bow: Ki Potion Bow!"
Suddenly the three familiar weapon transformations changed as if they were having another weapon super imposed over it, a potion bottle with liquid floating around inside of it. This was the effect of the Spirit Tortoise weapons that Katarina had brought back for the three of them to copy, the ability to allow one weapon to combine together two forms. In this case it was them taking further steps to manage the already high cost of Ki that the weapons ability used up because they already had a guess as to what the king was planning. And indeed he switched out his staff's current form for Voice Gengar Staff so that he could address the army.
"Shukaku and any who are able! Use your beast transformations immediately! The Heroes have prepared a method of further augmenting your power!" And with that, a entire army was being supplemented by the effects of Enhanced Beast Transformation as red phoenixes took off through the air to torch the falling monsters.
But they weren't the only ones: a giant spider soon appeared and used her thread to tie down the invading monsters, a giant otter savaged the ground forces mercilessly, a huge green Filolial sprayed poison gas all over the enemy forces, a giant white tiger wearing phoenix gauntlets soon began running around the battlefield, a vampire bat soared in the sky and began spitting laser beams through the enemy forces and the piece de resistance, was the Orca that soared through the sky raining lightning and swinging skills from a harpoon.
Through the effects of the enhanced beast transformation not only was the various demi-humans stats dramatically enhanced by their enlarged form but Tanya's, Katarina's and Kuro's stats were also added on top of them. Elena, grouped together with the other human party members, looked up to the sky and blinked a few times before putting away her crossbow and walking away.
"Where are you going!?" Rino shouted as she watched the carnage breaking down around them.
"I'm going on the Ship! Does it look like we're needed here!?" Elena snapped back in reply gesturing to the battlefield. In front of the Cathedral gunshots were going off as the creature inside was fighting to break free of the barrier, and was thus far succeeding.
"Guys!" Katarina stated as she heard the sound of something pounding to get out of the barrier.
"Go support the army." Trash stated looking at his slowly failing barrier.
"Are you sure that's a good idea?" Tanya asked looking and sounding concerned.
"King of Wisdom remember?" Trash mocked them as if he had been insulted before gesturing for them to move along as if the adults had work to do. Then one of the guns successfully stabbed through the barrier.
"I hope you know what you're doing old man!" Tanya stated before she and the other Legendary heroes repositioned themselves so that Trash could go to town. "I never thought I'd use this one again." Trash stated as he transformed his staff, silver, topped by a wolf's head.
The Fenrir Rod. Some nonsense about a god eating wolf as Trash understood it. It was both one of the most powerful weapons in his arsenal and one of the most useless, as it was a weapon designed to put down heroes who have lost themselves in their curses and for nothing else. Trash took one look at the abomination based on Maple and shrugged his shoulders thinking 'close enough' and so set to work.
The self-proclaimed Sewing Kit hero was looking at the unfolding chaos as the monsters coming down from the sky were getting butchered. You see one wave you see them all. Once the mere concept of a wave filled her with dread, a army of monsters falling from the sky with seemingly no rhyme or reason dead set on killing everything they came across. Now though? She feared them no more than she fears a open door in a locked prison cell, an opportunity to flee one sinking ship for another. If she didn't already have a look at the world on the other side it would have been awfully tempting, but she's been there before and it was even worst off than this one. Besides she already had her marching orders. The Hakuko boy with the flaming feather gauntlets crashed down a few moments later having pounced on one of the wave monsters and was now in the process of snapping it's neck with his jaws.
"We can use some help over here." Fohl growled even as he delivered a side slap to one of the monsters.
"Psh." S'yne responded with a snort of contempt as she spread out her fingers. Knitting needles connected to something resembling spider silk spread out from her hand, sometimes the needles shot through enemy heads, other times the silk wrapped around the vitals of the enemy units. Then once all the enemies for several yards around her had been completely immobilised, S'yne clenched her fist and the battlefield was covered in blood and giblets.
"Carry on." Fohl left for his next target leaving behind little more than a gulp and a annoyed Hero whom he now understood outstrips him in vastly. Without the pest to annoy her S'yne could get back to work. Remove the organs, process the monster's leather, use the ashes from the volcano as stuffing, and tada, a whole new bunch of monster stuffed animals ready to go on the offensive.
"Hmm." Rat observed the appearance of the stuffed monsters as they rampaged against their one time comrades. "Mikey, the ground forces have received reinforcements. The time has come for the second stage." The main monster that rat used as a base for this tank monster was a caterpilland, a large caterpillar like monster. But when it grows up, it can assume another form. "Flight mode activate!" Unlike the others who were using the Beast King weapons to augment the beast transformation of the entire army, Rat was only interested in one individual. Mikey blew the bio-plant shell off like it was a cocoon and from that emerged a bright orange Butterfly like monster, with a Bio-plant machine gun. "Give em hell Mikey!" With a spray of machine gun fire the mutant insect unleashed a spray of attacks into the crowd of enemy monsters. Under normal circumstances it would be impossible for such a low level individual to use a weapon like a machine gun, however this was a Bio-plant, the only limit on the stats it can spit out is how much time and magic you invest into upgrading it. "I want at least one of each of them alive! Our stock of experimental material has just shot through the roof!" The boss picked that time to stumble through the enemy forces, a chain tied around it's neck like it was some unruly dog.
"What an unruly monster. Even though there's a good chance that you might survive this, you are still being this unruly." Pulling on the chain tying the monster to his staff Trash slammed the monster's head into the ground as he prepared a magic attack. "You need to learn obedience!" Trash took the staff in hand and used lightning magic to send a taser shock through the chain and directly into the body of the boss. The boss in turn retaliated by taking both of it's guns and aiming them at Trash at point blank range. "Mirror Cage, Float Mirror, Second Mirror, Transfer Mirror." A box of mirrors appeared around the boss's head and two more floating mirrors appeared directly in the gun's path. With a loud bang the two floating mirrors intercepted the attack and fired them directly into the cage with the bosses head inside as it was forcibly pulled out bleeding. "You should've been shot non-fatally but there's still significantly less damage than I had anticipated. I suppose I should expect nothing less from a abomination cut from the Shield Hero's Cloth." Trash observed before he disconnected the chain around the bosses neck and used it to pull himself out of the way of another punch from the six armed monster.
"RRRAAAWWWRRR!" Mechanical grinding noises echoed out as the armour on the monster's arms transformed, not as a legendary weapon does from one form to another, but rather as a machine alters it's shape to unlock a new function in this case the armour on the arms turned into a pair of spinning charge blade-esque axes.
"Oh come on! It's already bad enough it has guns!" And fire breath. And had Maple like Durability. And could heal itself. And was already big and strong enough that it could flat out trample over everything that got in it's way.
In any case Tanya was noting that just because their enemy had suddenly got more dangerous doesn't mean that they didn't have ways of dealing with it. Aranaya, still in the form of a giant mutant spider, spat a glob of webbing at one of the spinning axe heads getting the blade all mucked up and forcibly drawn to the ground where Aranaya had anchored her web, and when it attempted to cut the webbing with the other axe Aranaya gave it the same treatment firmly anchoring the two weapons to the ground. At least that was the idea until it's high defences started to snap the threads Aranaya had set up to bind it.
"You're not Ascalon!" Kuro stated as she swapped out the Swords of the Beast King for a pair of Dragon Slayers. "But you'll do!" Kuro sped past the legs of the dragon Cyborg slamming into the tendons. The Dragon Slaying power was mixed with point and proceeded to bounce around inside of the leg armour dealing multiple hits with the anti-dragon power.
"Reflect Spear!" Katarina had already swapped out the spear from before for the Cerberus spear. "Voice Gengar Spear!" The trident headed like dog heads were transformed into something resembling a cross between dog heads and bat heads as Katarina ran over to the bowing head. "Huuuu! HHHIIIYYYAAAHHH!" And using the spear as a megaphone Katarina screamed as loudly as possible directly into the ear of the monster which if the fact that it's ears started to bleed it would appear Katarina had done some damage.
"It's been a long day for all of us." Tanya was holding up the bow of Wrath/Pride as she aimed at the monster before her. "Stay down!" Tanya fired directly into the monster's head letting the mind controlling magic take over the beast's mind as it was forced to do as ordered and stayed down.
"Well that was a thing that happened." Katarina stated as she breathed a sigh of relief at the battle having finally ended. Kuro walked up to her, tapped her on the shoulder a couple of times, and indicated the field that while it had been strewn with corpses was still mostly filled with monsters that were still very much alive, growing in number, and approaching them. "Huu." Katarina switched out to the Svardstav Spirit Tortoise blade the old man had made for her, arguably the strongest weapon in her arsenal at the moment, and using Reflect Blade combined it with the other strongest weapon in her arsenal, the Svardstav of the Beast King Kuro had made for her. "I hate days like these the absolute most."
Tanya dropped down in front of Katarina to stop her, a smile on her features that was all teeth and malice though not aimed at Katarina, but behind her.
"Heal it." Katarina looked behind her at the monster they just spent the better part of the past three hours fighting and pointed at it as if confirming what Tanya had just said. "You heard me."
"But we just made it stop!" Katarina whined pathetically.
"And now it's going to do all the work for us." Tanya replied maliciously, more than a little of the red of Wrath and gold of Pride in her eyes. "Katarina. Our guys are worn out, wounded and scattered, we need to give them a break for a while."
"Huu..." Katarina didn't even bother with a chant and just swung a silent cast at the cyborg T-Rex, healing up it's wounds in the process. The monster immediately tore free of it's binds and opened fire on the monsters that were once under it's command with it's cannons.
"Well this is going smoothly." Tanya used magic to take to the air and flew up to the wave crack.
"C'Mon, C'Mon." It had been almost three hours since the wave started, if Maple was going to come through then now would be the time to do it. More than Maple's life was at stake right now: without the energy from the Spirit Tortoise there was nothing to delay the Phoenix from waking up to finish what the Spirit Tortoise started which while yes an objectively good thing, she had no intention of becoming one of the sacrificed to let it happen. Tanya held her hand up to the crack trying to force her way though. 'Heroes cannot invade other worlds.'
"Yeah. Thanks for letting me know that." Tanya stated, the hole leading to another world might as well have been a brick wall for how solidly it resisted her presence. Looking at the world in question Tanya drew her bow and fired. The arrow passed through where Tanya herself could not, and that had implications. Tanya switched over to the Crystal Ball Bow and spoke. "Maple. Can you hear me?" The timer in the corner of Tanya's vision slowly counted down as 'Please, Please, Please' echoed in her mind.
"Tanya? Is that you?" Maple's demonic voice echoed indicating that she was in her savage form.
"What's the situation? I don't mean to pressure you but if you can't get back here in the next ten minutes then you're going to be stuck over there with the thing we need to save this world from the waves, and us from the Phoenixes." Tanya stated eyes on the ever ticking clock. "That's going to be tough considering I don't have the energy right now, this guy does!" Maple stated making her exasperation clear.
"Listen clearly and do what I say, odds are good that we can kill it."
Review Section:
RonaldM40196867: That's where she came from, so it should. I do. At times it feels like the protagonist coming from earth makes absolutely no difference to the plot, like if you just set the story in a fantasy world without the main character the plot wouldn't be different at all.
Captain Imaginat: Thank you for saying so.
Galeon82: No time for a good plan unfortunately. Absolutely. Not at this time no.
Nightshadegirl: I wouldn't say it's a deal, more like a warning. "You're situation is bad yes, but it can also be vastly worse too."
Maglad: Sorry if I disappointed you.