Author's Note: I would apologise for the late posting but honestly? You all sleep through hurricane Fiona and see how long it takes you to post a chapter. Read, Review, Favourite and Enjoy!
Chapter 78: The Army of the Damned
Seven Elementals each of them a different element, over two hundred fixed Bio-plant turrets spliced with a variety of monsters and magics for long, close, wide and AOE Range, 100 demi-human slaves each of whom were under the influence of growth bonuses, all commanded by one master tactician.
"Ah I see, one of those annoying Sitera destiny weapons again." Trash made light of the weapons wielded by the enemy.
Make no mistake for he was far from underestimating the enemy, he simply understood their weaknesses very well. To begin with the enemies weapons only affected the stats of those who enter it's range of effect, and towards this end Trash had the slaves learning archery and long range magic. Ah but would that be enough? The Seven Elementals might be classified as a skill of the staff which would be nullified by the Destiny stone weapons, so instead Trash used them to do things that the enemy wouldn't be able to nulify, re-shaping the battlefield, creating a maze out of earth and stone and filling it with pit-traps, traps that were filled with water, oil, spikes, and other unpleasantness. Of course the Slaves had brought Trash one of the sitera weapons quite a while ago but he had yet to use it for one very simple reason.
"You're enjoying this way too much." Melty let out a sigh to the sounds of yet more of the enemy forces burning to death.
"Of course I am!" Trash replied back with laughter like he had gone mad. "I haven't had a time like this since the war with Siltvelt." Without the awkward 'filled with enough homicidal rage to unlock the wrath series' part. "Come Q'Ten Lo! What are you planning now? Are you going to come by land, sea or air?" And her father claims that her mother is a sadist.
"I hope you'll have cleaned up all your toys before the Heroes get back." Melty couldn't believe she just said that to her own father.
The group of Heroes and their companions looked over at the horizon in surprised shock where they saw a army shambling towards them. There wasn't any of the purplish flesh unlike their current undead associates, but there was plenty of monster and machine parts stitched onto their bodies, and Jiangshi tag's attached to their foreheads.
"What's going..." Maple asked watching the army shambling towards them.
"Hang on." Kuro saw no shortage of weapons before her, and so applied her magic eyes. "Oh wow that's messed up." Kuro stated as she took a step back from what she was seeing. "So those tags on their faces? Those are the various reincarnated that Takt had picked off, yah know after their souls were butchered and stuffed into those bodies, which look like they've gone through a bastardization of growth corrections or bonuses too." Which made sense in Kuro's honest opinion, if they've already studied and dissected the crafting bonuses and how that works then logic would also dictate that they've studied and dissected other kinds of bonuses as well. "Then on top of that they grafted those monster parts and machine bits onto them as well, also after having put them through a bastardisation of hero bonuses."
"Sounds like what Kyo did back in his world." Maple piped up and Kuro nodded in assent.
"For growth corrections to work they require a constant supply of Ki, where from I do not know." Bason stated which gave Kuro an idea.
"Hey little heavenly emperor." Kuro brought up a pair of binoculars and held them up to the bars of the pet carrier Eli was holding. Ruftmelia audibly swallowed his spit.
"Those are the animals from the palace!" Kuro didn't know which ones specifically he was talking about, she assumed that it had something to do with the random critters like rabbits, dogs and other cute and small creatures stitched into various places for seemingly no reason. "I-I-I gave them the Heavenly Blessing!"
"Which Makina took advantage of to supply those things down there with Ki for growth Corrections: well that's one mystery solved." Tanya stated as she looked to her companions. "So do one of you guys wanna trample them or should I?" Tanya asked as she looked to her companions.
"There must be like a thousand of them!" Katarina pointed out with her spear. "I'm pretty sure there's enough trampling to go around!"
"Not for long." Tanya transformed her bow into the tungsten ballista, activating the gravity and mass manipulation magic she fired a tungsten spear into the sky above the enemy forces, and then the magic activated. The Mass of the Spear increased several fold, the gravity increased it's weight to 12 tonnes while the protective 'Wind Shield' magic that strips away friction that would both damage the rod and slow it down activated. The rod would strike with enough force to shatter the ground below it, any under ground structures would be crushed, any structure on the surface wiped, any people unfortunate enough to be standing in it's blast radius reduced to atoms and scattered in the wind. That would be what would happen should Tanya's attack be allowed to connect. As the rod ripped through the sky at ten times the speed of sound a giant whale zipped through the air and slammed into it head long pushing it aside and throwing it into the ocean.
"Does anyone else see a giant whale flying through the sky taking shots at our skills?" Kuro asked her face making a screw and the others nodded their heads while their mouth's hung open.
"That looks a lot like what happens to Sadeena when I use enhanced beast transformation on her." Maple commented having recovered from her shock.
"A Sakamata with your Enhanced Beast transformation skill." Tanya stated while she turned around to face Sadeena. "I wonder who that could be?" Tanya's question was nothing of the sort, it was marching orders as good as saying 'You know who that is' and 'It's your responsibility.' Sadeena agreed on both of these points.
"Maple Sweetie, Aura please. I want to perform some cooperative magic with you." Maple held out her hand for Sadeena to hold. "We, the Priestess of Slaughter and the Hero of the Shield have read and understood the origin of magic." They've never cast this magic before, there was no skill points sunk into it to reduce cast time, this was just how good at magic Sadeena was.
"Separate and Reconnect the principle of heaven and spit up blood." Maple's training in magic was showing through too. She's learned support and healing magic mixed with every element that she knew of, and which ones were more efficient depending on circumstances, all part of her training in using the dragon pulse style of magic.
""Draw out the power of the Heavens and give it unto my target!"" The sky swirled, as if it was announcing the presence of a mighty warrior descending from the heavens. ""Descent of the Thunder God!"" A bolt of lightning struck down from the sky and hit Sadeena, but no harm was done to her, rather her body swelled with power as she assumed her Therianthrope from, a layer of lightning wrapping her body like armour, coursing through muscle tissue and repelling everything around her.
"I will be back in a moment." Sadeena cracked her neck, and then jumped, the ground rocked and dust was shot up into the air.
"Right then." Fohl stated as he cracked his neck. "Oi. This sacred gear thing you talked about before." Fohl stated as he turned his attention to Bason's general direction. "How long will that take to make it into something decent?"
"Oh if you start right now..." Bason indicated the army of the dead and damned before him.
"Right then." Fohl's gauntlets assumed a familiar white and red as he jumped off the balcony going straight into his therianthrope form.
The machine men acted first, whipping out guns from their arms as they took a knee to fire, the slowest bullets that Fohl has ever seen.
"Boost!" Fohl's Red Gauntlet cried out as he ran. "Boost!" The bullets started to approach him. "Boost!" Fohl implemented a familiar trick, he moved the jewels of his gauntlets to intercept the flying bullets and throw them directly into his weapon's storage space, Maple wasn't quite as nimble as he was so he could do things different than she did. "Boost!" An times four charge, that's 16 times his power, more powerful than even Driefach Aura for a single moment. And Fohl was in striking range. "Screw off!" Fohl slammed his fist with 16 times his attack stat into the body of one of the machine zombies hard enough that his limbs were torn off of his torso and sent him flying.
The Red Gauntlet came from Ddraig the Dragon, it holds the power to support and attack, to increase his own power to ludicrous levels before letting off his devastation, his weak area was defence, if he was so much as tapped on the shoulder while charging then all would be lost. Dozens of machine and monster limbs came flying at Fohl all at once, Fohl held out the white gauntlet as if he was intercepting the attacks.
"Absorb!" Half of the Ki flying through the limbs disappeared into Fohl's reserves. "Boost!" "Tiger Break!" Fohl doubled the stolen energy and fired it back in the form of the munching jaws of a tiger, ripping apart the nearest Jiang-Shi. "Absorb! Absorb! Absorb!" Half, a quarter, a eighth.
The White Gauntlet came from Albion the Dragon, Ddraig's arch-nemesis, his power was de-buff and defence, to strip down the opponents powers and reduce them to spitballs harmlessly bouncing off of his hide, his weakness was offence, his own power would destroy everything it came into contact with if used to attack, including him, so Fohl could only absorb and weaken the incoming attacks, perhaps things would be different if he can evolve this power to unlock greater heights but for now, boost and divide as his two hit combo.
"Come!" Fohl shouted, demanded, like a master at the dinner table hungry for seconds. A centipede responded, ripping out of the ground with a thousand stabbing knives for legs. The insect wrapped around his body and stabbed poisonous legs into his body before he could react like a iron maiden. "You don't know much about heroes do you?" Fohl Clinched his fists and sucked the centipede into his gauntlets from where they were wrapped around him. The borrowing zombie had to sever it's own arm less it get sucked inside as well. Fohl was in a bad spot, poison in his veins and stabs all over his body. "Boost!" But he had already unlocked the Gauntlet for poison immunity, and hundreds of others with passive effects that increase his stats.
"Hey there you undead freaks!" "Boost!" Fohl's wounds slowly started to close as the passive regeneration effect kicked in, now doubled. "C'mon already! I can't even feel my heart racing!" Fohl didn't notice, but his gauntlets had fingers now, course the massive flood of beast type zombies dog piling on him might have something to do with that. Boost would not apply so long as Fohl was in contact with the enemy that was striking him, instead he struggled with all that he had. He absorbed the chimeric monsters into his gauntlets, he bit down on rotting flesh with cat like teeth, he punched and ripped with all his might. And he cleared a spot for one of the machine type zombies to press the barrel of his shot gun directly to the temple of his skull.
"First Tornado X!" Suddenly a mass of wind kicked up the air around him blowing away the air around him and knocking back a group of zombies, smashing some of them against each other. "You arse!"
"Boost! Boost! Boost!" Another group of zombies got ready with the big guns, literally, as they prepared weapons worthy of being the main weapon of one of Takt's Tanks. "Boost! Boost! Boost!" Others took to the air ready to drop bombs down on top of him from the sky. "Boost! Boost! Boost!" They all fired at the same time, unleashing their magic and weapons with the intention of annihilating the enemy. "Boost!" Each 'Boost!' last's ten seconds, and can be done once every second each 'Boost!' doubling his attack power, two times two ten times over equalled one thousand twenty four times the power. The subsequent beam of Ki that was fired out of Fohl's gauntlet was based on a technique Atla had come up with, mimicking Kuro's rail gun to deliver a beam of raw destructive power. Course that was closer to a single shot, not a wide beam of concentrated Ki that casually swept aside enemies like a giant magical leaf blower.
"He's really letting them have it." Kuro commented to wit the others nodded their heads in agreement.
"Tch. I really need to get a legendary weapon." Atla was looking at her brother enviously.
"Now, now Atla, I'll just make one for you, so don't get impatient." Already Kuro was deciphering the gauntlet's latest transformation with her eyes. Most of it's power was still sealed away under the might of a god so she wouldn't be able to access all of it, she did however have a huge number of Maple's shields locked away in her memory that she was actively remaking into Gauntlets for Fohl to use but she didn't mention that.
"Boost!" The latest attempt to charge up had been interrupted by a blow to Fohl's face, a anaconda arm wrapped around his torso and threw him to the ground causing him to bounce for several feet before slamming head long into a heavy set Jiang-Shi who slammed Fohl into the ground. From there a group of Chimera and Machine type Jiang-shi surrounded Fohl and began stomping on him. "Absorb!" Energy was flowing off of undead bodies in waves but there was still only so much to do with only half of their energy being siphoned. "Well if that's gonna be how it is." Fohl did his best to protect his face while he tampered with his H.U.D. and went about redistributing some points. Sinking skill points into passives might be good for a brute like him but right now he needed something a bit... more. "Absorb X!" Suddenly the Jiang-Shi felt like their attacks weren't having any effect any more, especially since Fohl was standing up right now. He would've preferred to have wait longer before he did this but, beggars and choosers and all that good stuff. "Did you all have fun trying to bully me?" Fohl's injuries healed up as he read the description of Absorb X.
'Absorbs ninety percent of energy directed towards the user.' Spitting blood onto the ground Fohl looked to the enemy before him and growled, raising up one of his arms and clenching his fist the metal gloves extended from his hands down to his elbows before glowing menacingly.
"BOOST X!"
"Well I suppose I can't blame you, that sounds like it would be pretty fun too..." Fohl's punch obliterated one of the Jiang-Shi in front of him. Taking several deep breath's Fohl appeared to have entered a zen like state. For about five seconds. "RRRAAAWWWRRR!" That was when the one sided rampage began.
"Absorb X!" One Gauntlet reduced the power of the enemy to about a tenth of their full power. "Boost X!" The other increased the power behind his own blows ten times over.
"Well I suppose he's really is a hero after-all." Tanya admitted she doubted him for a while there. "How long until he's ready for the next step?"
"When the gauntlet's split open and expose their secondary jewels. After that is merely a matter of triggering the balance breaker and the training that comes afterwards to control that power."
"Will he be useful in time for the Phoenixes?" Tanya asked looking down at the massacre taking place.
"Do you mean to imply that he wouldn't be useful now?" Katarina asked looking at Tanya incredulously.
While the girls were having a conversation like that, the dead was stirring on the battlefield. While Fohl had been given a weapon for destroying reincarnated souls before he entered the fight against the undead he wasn't using it. Consequentially the soul fragments belonging to the reincarnated were now in the process of pulling themselves back-together, and they were bringing extra's with them, taking the hunks of smashed machinery and broken animal bodies with them. The corpses 'healed' together, intestines stitching while machines repaired themselves and combined together with other machines all with very little in the way of rhyme or reason.
"Well this is new." Kuro commented looking at the creatures that were forming, fat hulks of machine, animal parts and doubtlessly other grotesque things in the form of a giant fat hulk of Voltroned zombies. Fohl took one look at the nearest creature as it walked up to him, raised up his arms, and spat out to the side.
"Absorb X!" Even at only a tenth of it's power the corpse hulk's fist approximations still weighed hundreds of pounds. Each blow was like every bone in Fohl's body was being cracked down but at the same time bits of flesh were being ripped off and absorbed into the gauntlet's jewels. And then the two weapons split open.
"Alright. Back to trampling ladies." Each of the girls had their own mech transformation for their weapons, and one of them had a dragon transformation to stack with that.
Sadeena and Shildina were like two archnemesis locked into pitched combat. Something that people weren't aware of, it's possible to 'Freeze' energy. Take a piece of super conductive material, freeze it solid, and place it near a strong magnetic field. The Frozen super conductor will stay in the exact spot that you put it, not drop it but put it, in relation to the magnetic field. In the air, on the ground, if you move the magnetic field two inches to the right the super conductor will follow two inches to the right. Google it. Now keep in mind that one sister had turned herself into a giant super magnet while the other sister was freezing every around her, then end result of this combination was the two sisters moving through the air riding on Sadeena's magnetic field.
"Rawr!"
"Zweite Lightning X!"
A block of ice from Shildina was hit with lightning from Sadeena which then went ahead and struck Shildina to no visible effect and the ice chunk hit Sadeena to no visible effect. Only one person that she knows of who can take a fully upgraded zweite lightning.
"So you are borrowing little Maple chan's skills." Sadeena commented tapping her harpoon on her shoulder. "We'll have to talk with her some time about her being a little more cautious."
As Sadeena said that she looked down to see Maple in monster form picking up one of the corpse hulks and slamming it into the ground, beating on it several times before firing a gun into it at point blank range, before sprouting even more guns to slaughter more monsters. Tanya was wielding the tungsten ballista in all of her weapon slots to rain tungsten all over the battlefield. Katarina had summoned Galleon and the other shadows, the dragon was carrying Katarina around while her curses empowered the shadows to fight. Kuro was sucking mana out of the air as she summoned her Noble Phantasms and combined them into the 1000 swords skill, in some places she had Maria the Ripper turning the enemies into serrated porcupines, in others she used holy weapons to wipe out the undead nature of the enemy, several of the blades were hanging back providing Ki, Mana and Spirit to Kuro to propagate the rampage of her blades. In comparison there was Filo swooping down on whatever enemy they some how missed, Midori was spinning around delivering hurricane slashes, Atla was chopping down anything that got close to her still recovering brother.
"...maybe I'll wait until later."
It was a sad day when you feel bad for a army of reincarnated, she didn't even feel like that after their souls were chopped into pieces and stuffed into these abominations of machine and monsters.
"RRRAAAWWWRRR!"
"You can't win you do realise this correct?" Sadeena asked and the whale monster she had been fighting looked at her funny. "Each of those four came here with abilities that make them an unstoppable force on the battlefield, and that's before they received legendary weapons." Sadeena turned to her sister and stated for emphasis... "You. Have. Lost." Shildina turned around and flew away before this situation turned any worse than it had, in the mean time Sadeena just watched the monsters rampage below as they massacred the undead army.
Raphtalia in the mean time was directing the flow of civilians out of the the surrounding area, muttering something about 'bloody war crimes' as she did so.
"First Maple and her bloody poisons." Tanya's raining spears of Tungsten dropped several feet away while Katarina's shadows tore apart some of the still small sized Jiangshi. "Now you people and... this. Is there going to be anything left of the country after you people are done saving it?" Raphtalia kinda doubted it.
While the Heroes parted reanimated corpses of their soul fragments the original five Jiang-shi were working towards the new capital. It wasn't much to look at, a large scale army camp that had been built around a large mansion which by the looks of things had also doubled as the lab where those third rate hacks had been mass produced before being sent out. Shildina flew over capital and crash landed as the Maple Soul fragment she was working with burned out. Maple's soul tag was a double edged sword: yes she was virtually invulnerable but Shildina also had to deal with her desire not to fight any of her friends. For now she had to get back to Makina with the information that she was able to collect on the heroes and their allies.
"Mistress." Shildina found Makina standing in front of a familiar weapon, to be more precise it was a weapon which was familiar to anyone who knows anything about Q'Ten Lo, a large bejeweled war hammer as tall as most people.
"No doubt you've come to inform me about about your rousing success in defeating the four heroes and their parties." Makina's voice was mostly sarcastic with a pinch of hope, which unfortunately made her sound even more sarcastic. True to her predictions Shildina said nothing out of shame. "That's what I thought." Makina turned her attention back to the hammer, she didn't know what magic the Heroes cast on the damned thing when they separated it from Takt but it wasn't responding to her commands, luckily she had some loyal smith's working to subdue it.
"Are you going to summon a hero with that?" Shildina understood how the weapons work, if that thing hasn't chosen someone to be it's hero already then it means that none of the people around it are qualified. However Makina snorted at the question.
"No." She already had more heroes than what she could deal with. "No I think not." Makina held up a familiar accessory. "It's ridiculous. The people of this country worship, of all things, a hammer, a weapon or a tool like it's supposed to be some kind of deity." But wasn't it? Is what Shildina would have asked a long time ago. No the more immediate question of concern was 'this country' like she was talking about someone else's problem. "Weapons are instruments meant to be wielded, tools are meant to be used." Having attached the accessory Makina picked up the hammer and held it in her hand. "They aren't supposed to have a say in who gets to use them."
"You're the Hero of the Hammer now?" Shildina stood up with joy at the sight, however Makina shook her head, smiling sinisterly.
"No my little pet." Makina took out a short sword she had hidden in her robes. "You are!"
Review Section:
RonaldM40196867: It was just Naofumi and occasionally other people going over all the recipes they made in the main story.
Saif Omar: He probably wouldn't be much better than Canon Trash if not for the early realisation of 'I killed my sister' and 'I raised a monster.'
Captain Imaginat: Melty the Wise. Tanya is technically second in line at the moment, Mirellia is already planning her marriage to one of the Nobles of the Progressive faction as a way of strengthening the royal bloodline.
Nightshadegirl: I would say spoilers but honestly, just go read my other Shield Hero Crossover. I am Canadian! I know we've been over this before. And before you ask Canada is still a part of the British Common Wealth.
coolkid0806: Medea, the ultimate enemy in the Web Novel, is a god who increases her power by sucking the life out of worlds and has done this thousands of times over. Medea attempted to cast a 'erase you from existence' attack on Naofumi. Naofumi, wielding the Zero Series, was able to block an attack from Medea and deflected it back at her erasing herself from existence instead. That Paradox, together with the sudden change to history of the universe from all of the worlds. This resulted in a paradox along the lines of going back in time to kill your own grandfather which caused a huge blow to the fabric of reality, which then took another hit from all the worlds that Medea destroyed suddenly coming back into existence at the same time. So now Naofumi has been working to bring Medea back and kill her correctly so that all of that doesn't happen. Read the Legendary Heroes, this is all explained in the last few chapters.
Galeon82: Don't worry, Trash is a responsible dad, now at least.