Author's Note: Okay so going on Vacation in the near future, hopefully that helps get the creative juices flowing. In the mean time Read, Review, Favourite and Enjoy!
Chapter 81: The Last Dungeon
Thankfully it didn't seem like they had anything to fight inside of the final of seven dungeons, but rather they were soon met with a more insidious opponent: math.
"Castle." A rook symbol, which had a plus sign followed by... "Circle maze thing." A large rounded maze was the second of the symbols which together apparently equalled... "Easter Island Head thing." Having read through the symbols Maple turned to face her companions. "Do any of you know what this is?"
"This Symbol..." What Maple had described as a Easter island head. "Looks like the icon that's next to Earth Magic in my H.U.D." Tanya explained bringing up her H.U.D. just to compare the two.
"So what does these two refer to?" When they thought about it, they're only able to enter this one dungeon by entering all the other dungeons, such as the Labyrinth beneath Faubrey. "Duh." Kuro smacked herself as she realised the answer. "This one is talking about the Floating Castle in Shieldfreeden, and this one is talking about the underground maze in Faubrey."
"Is it saying that the Earth is equal to these two places combined?" Katarina asked but Kuro had a different theory.
"I think it's referring to something we got from those two places. Gravity + Creation = Earth magic."
No reaction to words being said, instead Tanya put her hand on the Earth symbol and imbued her earth magic which caused the symbol to light up. Naturally she then followed this up by adding in Creation and Gravity in their appropriate places with her other hand causing those symbols to light up too. Then the headache hit them.
"Use creation to connect together the two inorganic masses and then gravity to repel from one location and attract to another." Someone spoke. Someone Kuro remembered hearing the voice of before.
"What was that?" Katarina asked looking concerned. "Our Mad god." Kuro stated as she smacked her cheeks.
"I get the feeling he wants to tell us something." For now though, the slab of stone with the equation split open and with that their next puzzle.
"This one is mine." Kuro stated as she saw the familiar waves within a circle symbol for water magic. The other two symbols had a tree and a jar.
"This one must be talking about the forest dungeon in Siltvelt, and this must be talking about the jar from Zeltoble that Katarina found." Maple commented and Kuro agreed with her.
Most living creatures were actually mostly made up out of water, so Metamorphis magic was mostly about manipulating water as well, by some stretch of troll logic, Space was a harder explanation to make, it could be because water had to be pulled from a wide area to get enough of it to do anything with it. None the less Kuro put her hands on the symbols and the three symbols let up as they received another message.
"Space creates a bridge along the connection while Metamorphosis maintains the user."
Yet another message from Kuro's 'Mad God.' They still had no idea what he was talking about though. And the third door wasn't providing any better clues either with the three swirls symbol of wind, and the same blue print of metamorphosis tree and jar's space.
"Well, air is mostly just things like oxygen, nitrogen and carbon dioxide right? Those are all the things found in a living body isn't it?" The others nodded to Maple's assertions as Tanya once again put her hands on the wall and infused magic opening it up once more. The fourth door this time ended in fire, and for the symbols there was a cross and no other symbol. "Maybe this cross is a grave stone so... this is talking about the magic from Q'Ten Lo?" Maple suggested while shrugging her shoulders. Near as they could tell from processing reincarnated the soul was a form of energy, as was fire, albeit fire that seemed to burn nothing but energy itself. Thus the two seemed to have something in common as Katarina provided both fire and soul magic. The stone slab chimed in and opened up once more.
"Soul will keep yours from getting ripped out of your body and scattered across the cosmos." The voice continued to explain as the girls started to put the pieces together.
"This is about more then just power." Tanya stated as she slapped herself in her face. "The place is giving us a walk-through on how to travel between worlds." An ominous thought.
The fifth door had a symbol Maple recognised, healing magic. And to no one's surprise both the symbols that they had associated with Metamorphosis magic and a symbol of a clock was present, time magic. So naturally that's what Maple fed it. The rock split apart and a new message was received.
"Time will make everything happen instantly, so that the dilation doesn't rip you apart as well as lock onto the specific era of that world you want to go to."
The voice explained as the group was allowed to pass one final door. The chamber had a hint of familiarity to them, in fact it was so familiar that Tanya suspected they would see similar chambers just like it in all the other countries as well. The summoning room. But things were different as a large jewel hit their weapons and confirmed their presence. The entire room was plunged into another illusion, and a man unfamiliar to almost all of them was sitting in the centre.
"That our mad god?" Tanya asked indicating the person in question.
"Aye." Kuro stated as she raised her tension.
"Naofumi?" Maple on the other hand had seen him from elsewhere.
"What?" Katarina asked a bad feeling upon her.
"That's Naofumi! He was the Mirror hero of the world on the other side of the wave!" Maple exclaimed as some more familiar faces walked through them. "He was bossing around all of the legendary heroes over there and hunting down all of the reincarnated." And evidently, was somehow older than most nations too. This was demonstrated by the people who were confronting him, Tao Ren the Spear Hero, Ernesti Echeveilier the Sword Hero, Hajime Nagumo the Bow Hero, and Mamoru Shirono the Shield Hero.
"You have a lot to answer for you ass!" Hajime snapped aiming his gun at Naofumi's face.
"Smile for the crystal boys!" Naofumi replied indicating the direction in which the four girls were standing.
"No." Hajime fired a black gun with red lines running through it at Naofumi's head, which then harmlessly bounced off.
"A for effort boys. But in the mean time I need to finish this conversation." And so Naofumi turned his attention back to the recording he was making.
"Since you're seeing this girls this means that you've collected all the pieces." That legitimately shocked the four heroes of the modern era.
"Did... he just address us directly?" Katarina was scared. Very scared. She wasn't looking at a recording, she was looking at the ancient ghost of a monster.
"I'm... well not right there with you but I know what you're saying when you say it."
"Who the deuce are you talking to!?" Tao Ren exclaimed pointing his spear accusingly.
"Zip it Extra. You know very well who I'm talking to!" Naofumi snapped glaring blithely. "You lot got to meet them during the wave in Cal Mira, so you already know what you're going to do, now shut up!" Naofumi turned his attention back to the people he wouldn't be talking to until thousands of years later. "Sorry about that. Got a little impatient there. All seven of the divine magics are necessary if you want to kill a god. As you should've figured out on your way over there all magic in the world originates from the seven divine magics, the most important being the one inside of that cave: Evolution." Evolution is the process of mating, combining different characteristics, eliminating others, gradually changing something into something else over the course of several generations. Magic was math, and what they found at the bottom of this pit was the plus and minus signs. "As I explained already while you were on your way in here, Creation, Metamorphosis, Soul, Time, Space, Gravity and evolution are vital to getting you lot to the other world's that are being threatened by the waves and back to your worlds. You can take the easy way out if you like." Naofumi's cheerful grin turned into a vicious glare. "So long as you understand that I. Will. Find. You." The group gulped at that. So in other words they couldn't take 'the easy way' at all. "You should have if not all of the vassal weapons then most of them. As this guy's Guardian Ghost has already explained to you already your weapons should've already stolen part of the system of another world to make things a little easier on you." The group looked collectively surprised at that.
"Is he talking about the Boosted Gear thing that Bason talked about back in Q'Ten Lo?" Maple asked as Naofumi provided confirmation.
"The more general term is Sacred Gear: but yes. The Sacred Gears, particularly the Longinus class such as the Boosted Gear, were made by a god chopping up other gods and sealing them away into weapons. Your Legendary weapons are the gods of that world in the form of weapons." Oh. They should've seen that coming. "Well to be fair they are more accurately 'everything in the world in the form of a weapon' but we're getting off topic. I'll leave rigging up something to break the seals on those things up to these losers, or failing that the teleportation array I've installed in there should bring you somewhere you can find what you're looking for. Though that little miss over there should know plenty of god crafted weapons that should work. At the very least Kuro should be able to rip off the Sacred Gears you lot already ran into and make something you can copy."
"You talk too much." Ernesti snapped as he raised his sword into the air and swung, chopping Naofumi's head off as the illusion from the past and lights hit their weapons giving them access to Evolution magic. But given what they knew, the sight of Naofumi's head being sent flying did nothing to reassure them. On the contrary...
"So he's already been killed before." Tanya gulped as she processed the implications.
"As far as 'die' goes chopping the head off is pretty much the gold standard." Kuro piped in and she would know, she's seen more people die horribly than anyone else.
"He used the whole... hop between the world's thing to save my life, what if he's doing the same thing to keep himself going all this time?"
"So if he really is behind the waves...?" Katarina started but no one needed her to finish.
"We're never going to get rid of him. Not unless we do what he wants us to." Kaede stated the same realisation having hit her as the others.
Thus the four of them went somewhere private that they could ponder their existential crisis, they couldn't find the teleportation array he was talking about, either it was some how destroyed already, or they didn't meet some mystery requirements to use it.
Raphtalia's stay in Q'Ten Lo was a bottomless pit of paper work. Rebuilding the damage done to the country would be a lot easier with the hammer Kuro had made for her for this exact purpose but that didn't seem likely at this point, instead Raphtalia focused her attention on weapons that she could actually use, specifically she was looking through her Monster book on information on hammers that fit under a very specific category in between sorting through stacks of paper work. Finally, having spent most of the day sorting through finances, she found the weapon that she had been looking for.
'Mjornir: A hammer wielded as the primary weapon of the Northern God of Thunder Thor. It is said to strike as heavily as the wielder wishes, and when thrown it will never miss it's target and return to hand immediately afterwards.'
"Sounds like the right one." Suddenly the entire palace shook as if a great and massive weight had hit the ground. What Raphtalia had turned her hammer into was so blatantly massive that it crushed her entire desk into the ground, the slab of metal came up to her waist from the floor and was easily twice as wide, the rest of the distance was in the handle as thick and wide as a tree with a loop of leather at the hilt. There was only one question that came to Raphtalia's mind as she looked at this weapon which was easily big enough to have functioned as her desk. "How big was this guy?" Raphtalia exclaimed her eyes still not ready to believe what she was seeing.
One of the Advisors demoted to secretary ran and and showed no look of surprise at what he was seeing.
"Ah Mijolnir. That takes me back." The ex-advisor stated looking on in nostalgia.
"I was looking through the weapon transformations. How the hell does someone even use a thing like this!?" Raphtalia lifted the hammer up and was surprised to see that she actually could do it but also that it felt as light as a feather in her hands. It was still basically trying to lug a desk around with her.
"That generation's Hammer hero was quite large. He claimed his mother was one of the Jotun, the Giants."
"Only his mother?" Raphtalia asked for the sake of confirmation. "Meaning that he was 'only' half giant?" How massive was a full blooded giant then?
"Your majesty the work is continuing to flow in. Is it really necessary to continue with this pointless conversation?" The advisor asked as he steepled together his fingers.
'Only bother me with the important stuff.'
As much as Raphtalia would like to say that and run away she still didn't trust Makina's former lackey's enough to decide for her what the important stuff was, but at the same time...
"I'm one of the Vassal Heroes of this world now." Raphtalia stated matter of factly as she walked out of the office. "I have been tasked with defending this world from the waves, what are we going to do if a wave drops on us and I can't do anything because I am stuck inside of this office buried in paper work?" Raphtalia turned the hammer into a more reasonably sized one as she walked out of the office. "I am going to go stretch my legs, do not disturb me until I get back."
It wasn't hard to find Fohl, he and his sister had engaged in several sparring matches already supervised by Bason. The Boosted Gear's chief ability was that it gradually releases it's power in direct proportion to how much danger the wielder is put in while using it, eventually resulting in a so called 'Balance Breaker' state. The solution they reached was to put Fohl into a position in which his life would be in danger in a controlled manner, which was to say have someone try to kill him for a few minutes before breaking to rest and recuperate and then do it again.
"Hail to the Empress." Bason stated as he gave Raphtalia bow, followed shortly there after by Atla and Fohl.
"What's the problem? Those pencil necks giving you a hard time again?" Fohl has on more than one occasion offered to 'sharpen their pencils' if Raphtalia felt they were getting out of line.
"I just needed a break." Raphtalia brandished her weapon as if ready to go on the offensive.
"If that's the case I'll break for a while too." Atla stated as she left for other areas. Raphtalia once again turned her weapon into the surprisingly light weight Mjolnir as Fohl used the Sacred Gear he had been training with all this time.
"Begin." For the next ten minutes the two fighters attempted to kill each other using their weapons, and to be more specific only their weapons, under Bason's orders neither Raphtalia's magic nor Fohl's martial arts was implemented in their training, only the sacred gear. So Instead Raphtalia wrapped the loop of the hammer around her arm and swung it at Fohl, crushing the area wherever she struck, Fohl maintained the combination of the Boosted Gear to strike and the dividing gear to absorb the power of incoming attacks for the next ten minutes.
"That's good for now." Bason stated clapping ghostly hands together. "You two can resume after you've had a rest."
"How long until that castle skill comes up again?" Fohl asked as he looked at his own monster book.
"What are you talking about?" Raphtalia asked looking at Fohl suspiciously.
"Kuro modified one of her shield Noble Phantasms for me. The big stone cross shield that spits out a castle, the Lord Camelot MK II." Fohl explained while he checked the weapon in question. "Oh good it went down ten levels since this morning." Raphtalia's ears twitched. "What did you just say?" Raphtalia asked glaring at Fohl suspiciously. "I'm abusing how this thing's seal unlocking power works to wear down the level requirements for the weapon transformations I can't get yet." Fohl explained as he stood up. Even though they can acquire a new weapon transformation by copying weapons they pick up or feeding materials to their weapons there were all sorts of transformations that they couldn't make use because their levels were too low, to put it another way they were sealed. "Bason explained that the unlocks are tied to our levels for our safety, anything we're not supposed to be strong enough to be able to handle is locked. But we have growth bonuses, and the equip bonuses from our weapons, so even though most of them are still currently sealed away we should still be able to use them." As Fohl was explaining Raphtalia got ready to go on the offensive with her hammer again. "Well this is a little reckless of a method I will admit." Raphtalia tapped her hammer against her hand. "It seems to on average lower level requirements by about 1 level every ten minutes of combat."
"Right then." Raphtalia stated hammer hoisted in the air. "Breaks over."
The ensuing battle of Raphtalia vs Fohl lasted for almost 21 hours. The Hammer of the Beast King had been raised over to 250, Raphtalia was 126 meaning she had another 124 levels left to go before she re-unlocked that weapon, which by Fohl's estimates would take over twenty hours. The entire training grounds had been destroyed, the field was pitted with craters, trenches had been dug with beams of energy, the surrounding buildings had been demolished. A healer had to be called in 3 hours in to keep the two of them from falling apart at the seams. A second healer had been called in after Fohl had been beaten into a pulp. A third Healer had been called in after Fohl snapped and let loose with a 10 consecutive boosted attack and blew away most of a nearby mountain and a chunk of Raphtalia's arm.
"GUH! GUH! GUH!" Currently the fourth healer was bearing witness as Raphtalia sat on top of Fohl's chest continuously raising and dropping her hammer on top of Fohl's head over and over again.
"Haven't you taken this... too far?" The healer questioned as Raphtalia stood up from delivering her one sided beating to Fohl.
"Finally." Raphtalia swapped out the Mjolnir for a much smaller hammer wrapped in leather from the world's largest and most unruly house cat. "Heal him." Raphtalia stated as she leaned on a nearby wall with her hammer in her arms while the healer worked on fixing up Fohl.
In the meantime a somewhat angered official approached Raphtalia.
"When you told us you were taking a break I didn't expect you to take the entire day for... whatever this was." The official stated indicating the ruins around the area of Raphtalia's and Fohl's fight. "I seem to recall that you were complaining about not being able to fix the infrastructure of the country. I find your decision to demolish it then rather confusing."
"Observe." Raphtalia stated by way of reply as she pointed her hammer to an empty space dramatically. Of course in reality Raphtalia went through the manual process of taking some wood from the storage space of her hammer, choosing what she wanted to make with that and picking a location in her vast country from there so in reality her theatrics be damned it took a minute. As the official was about to complain again a bench seemed to grow for lack of a better term out of the ground. "That is from the weapon I just spent the day working to unlock." Raphtalia stamped the butt of the hammer into the ground as she smugly continued. "With enough raw materials I can start pumping out buildings. Luckily for you punks I've read enough of the reports from the rebellion and from Makina's stash to know which one of you fools I can trust. Those people will be assigned to positions as needed until I'm finished getting this country back into decent shape." A piece of building collapsed and landed a few feet away from Raphtalia. "Admittedly it might take longer than I expected."
"We will arrange for the procurement of raw materials Empress, though I do warn that our funding is limited." The Advisor stated reminding Raphtalia that this solved only a few of the many problems they had to deal with. She responded by yawning as she observed a displeased Fohl finish getting healed as Bason was applauding Raphtalia's work.
"I'm very impressed." Bason stated as he indicated Fohl and Raphtalia. "If you two can maintain that pace for about a month then you should be able to reach Balance Breaker."
"That hammer was a Sacred Gear too?" Raphtalia asked her brow cocked suspiciously.
"The original wasn't. But after the Introduction of the Sacred Gear in the gauntlets the system which governs your weapons... updated, for lack of a better term." Bason was hesitant to use the game like terms that the Reincarnated were so fond of but he could think of fewer more appropriate terms of phrase.
"I don't think I can handle a month of this." Fohl stated as he fell backwards, loud snoring indicating that he had fallen asleep.
"Is there anything other than threat to life and limb that we need to use Balance Breaker?" Raphtalia asked noting that sleep sounded like a good idea.
"Yes, you'll have to induce a sudden and dramatic change in yourself. It could be mental and emotional, the original Boosted Gear wielder apparently achieved enlightenment through women's breasts." A fact which made Raphtalia loose literally all of her respect for the Original Boosted Gear user, and also thankful Fohl wasn't awake to hear that. "The Easiest and most profitable though is a physical change made through sacrifice." Bason explained but Raphtalia was only left more confused.
"'Sacrifice?'" Raphtalia asked not liking where this was going. "The Original Boosted Gear wielder stated that it was possible to sacrifice a piece of your body to the weapon to induce the shift into Balance Breaker, and once transformed your weapon will remember how to do so. This boy has a dragon inside of him: Maybe he'll be able to sprout wings and fly, or he might gain a dragon's lungs and learn how to breathe fire." Which Bason admitted were both extremely tempting concepts.
"While mine is a giant?" Raphtalia asked indicating the weapon in question. "It was a weapon wielded by a half-Jotun, a race of shape shifters. Some would assume the form of wolves, others of birds, but when the fighting and labour started the most popular form was that of the giant." Which would explain the hammer's size. "Perhaps you will sacrifice an arm and gain their brute strength." Bason had suggested while shrugging his shoulders.
"What are you talking about to a girl!?" Raphtalia vetoed that option immediately however.
"Then maybe their proficient shape shifting abilities." Bason indicated as he floated away. "Rest and nutrition are also important for a warrior. I suggest you tend to both."
Raphtalia's stomach growled by way of reminder. She'll pop over to the village for a stat boosting meal of Spirit Turtle meat, and make a proper reception area for the first wave of adventurers who would be coming to purchase the right to help manage her countries monster problem, she'll tell the girls about the Sacred Gears in the morning.
Author's Note:
RonaldM40196867: True. The Sacred Gear System originates from 'Highschool DXD' the basic idea being 'god's system of miracles' which takes a critter threatening humanity, seals them away in the form of a weapon, and through that process empowers humanity. The God from the Bible died half way through the process of making the system leaving the system unfinished and full of exploits and glitches, such as Balance Breaker. Post Curse Motoyasu.
Nightshadegirl: Answers your question?
Dakota Bruder: Little bit yes.
