Author's Note: Remember that Remembrance day was yesterday people, if any of you still have your Poppies on your coats or other clothing take them off immediately. Read, Review, Favourite and Enjoy!
Chapter 85: The Spear Hero and the Demon Dragon
Katarina and Maple were eating together today as well. Katarina had few options available to her for improving her strength but grinding levels was one of them, that and the food bonus that Sadeena's Harpoon could give to her party members. In short: Katarina could level up by eating so long as Sadeena was around. The two's weapons also turned out to be cross compatible as well: By simply holding out the far end of the Harpoon for Katarina she was able to copy all the Harpoon weapons unlocked from the other world's monsters. Similarly, Katarina turned her Spear into a harpoon and Sadeena was able to copy it and a harpoon version of all the weapon transformations Katarina already had in her spear, Noble Phantasms included. Sadeena was someone who knew how to repay gratitude, so she was working with the others to get the meats that Katarina brings in cooked up.
"Delicious~!" Katarina was in a good mood as she ate a multi course meal consisting of Beef Stew for encouraging growth, metabolism raising foods, weight control and of course regularity.
"Until you guys can unlock your own Sacred Gears, this is the best way to level up." Maple replied as she worked the kitchen and got the meals flowing.
She could cook as long as she didn't try to use poison to spice the food. Raphtalia could do a great many things with the Hammer of the Beast King, harvest crops was not one of them, some problems could only be solved by numbers alone so people were working the fields, becoming prime monster bait in the process, which in turn allowed Katarina to farm for XP and food that could then converted into food for everyone to eat.
"I heard a rumour somewhere that this is prime hunting territory!" Kuro had appeared from the village proper smirking cheesily while acting all cocky. Maple threw her an apron.
"So you were able to unlock a sacred gear too?" Maple asked as she dissected the animals while Kuro chopped and reinforced the vegetables.
"The Forger of the East." Kuro explained while she produced a blade from the air. It wasn't like the ones that Maple had been familiar with up until now, emitting a holy sort of power so she assumed it must have been a powerful Noble Phantasm.
"What's this one called?" Maple asked looking at the sword curiously.
"Doesn't have a name, I made it on the spot." Kuro thusly dismissed the blade. "It seems that it's merged together with my power to create a new effect. Now I can create original works too instead of just copies or modified copies." That had potential. "Well to be fair, it seems this thing is deeply rooted into my Infinite Sword Sea." There were so many Noble Phantasms that had been linked into the Sword of Chastity. Still she was getting a stream of notifications demanding that she give her sword new weapons. "Still I think we should probably try to preserve the rest of our supply of Dragon cores for the Dragon Emperor in case we have to put the other two down."
'The Hero's hypocrisy knows no bounds.' Kuro's sword was sassing her again, but she didn't want to hear any of that from the reason most of them couldn't use most of their weapons to begin with. Then a mass of monster were slammed down in front of them.
"Well that's good for you guys." Katarina stated sitting on top of the monster, pointedly ignoring a black and purple version of said monster that was dragging over more corpses. "That's really good."
'The Demon Dragon Shield asks if that child is a user of Dark magic.'
"Oh you mean Katarina? Well I suppose you would know." Maple stated as she talked to her shield.
"Who're you talking to?" Katarina asked looking at Maple questioningly.
"The other world has it's own Dragon Emperor, she's a expert in curses and black magic. I fed some of her core to my shield." Maple explained bluntly before her shield started talking to her again. "I'll tell her. 'That kind of black magic isn't much of a problem for someone like you. Black Magic normally exacerbates the darkness in people's hearts, but if there's none there then there's nothing to worry about.'" Maple indicated the scar on Katarina's forehead. "She says 'I assume because of that head injury.'"
"What about the price? Isn't there suppose to be a curse eating away at my soul or something?" Katarina shouted waving her arms around in panic.
"She says 'That's not an issue. Broadly speaking dark magic can be broken down into two categories, that when you are the one paying the price, and when others are instead.' Oh okay I'll ask her." Maple turned to face Kuro instead. "Do you mind if we have some of the Dragon Emperor core Kuro?"
"Sure." Kuro waved her hand over her sword jewel which spat out a dragon emperor chunk and handed it over to Maple. "For one thing this was originally part of your stash from the Tyrant Dragon."
Maple fed the jewel to her shield, which then swished around under the demon dragon's influence before it was spat back out as a dark purplish black crystal which she then handed to Katarina. Katarina fed the crystal to her spear.
'Conditions Met: Demon Dragon Spear unlocked. Equip Bonus: Attack Support' That wasn't all though.
"Why's it absorbing the bits from my cursed spears?" Katarina asked sounding concerned.
'Compensation.'
"Compensation?" Katarina liked this less and less.
'When the world's connect again I will absorb your cursed power to make myself stronger.'
"Should we be concerned that your dragon friend is eating our cursed series weapons?" Katarina asked sounding concerned.
'You're not using them.'
"Well I guess that's true..." Katarina won something but it also felt like she lost too. "In any case, if they're not going to try and eat my soul I'd like to try that monster summoning Trident Raphtalia found."
"Oh. Lemme." Kuro had to replace the dragon core to the weapon in question as she pulled it out of her weapon, gave it to Katarina, before putting it back into storage again. The Alternative was giving Katarina yet another weapon she couldn't use because it had been crammed full of her reinforcements.
"Alright I'm off!" Saying that Katarina took off on Midori's back.
"Well these Directional Beasts feel funny to me." Kuro stated as she got back to cooking.
"What do you mean?" Maple asked looking concerned.
"Do you know about the five directional beasts in Asian Mythos?" Kuro asked and Maple indicated for her to continue. "There's the Black Turtle representing water and winter, the Blue Dragon representing spring and wood, the Vermilion bird representing summer and fire, the white tiger representing metal and Autumn and finally the Golden Dragon representing Earth and Mid summer." "So there's two Dragons?" Maple only got more confused. "And why does summer have two monsters?"
"Aye. There's a lot of things different here than in our worlds." Kuro explained making her opinion known. "The Spirit Tortoise is suppose to represent water, but your turtle has nothing to do with water but with the forest on it's back. The Dragon is supposed to be wood or earth, but mine manipulates metal instead. Following this logic the others should be different too." Kuro thought about it more.
"What kind of relationship does the directional beasts of our world have with one another?" Maple asked looking curious.
"Each of the elements they are supposed to represent have the effect of strengthening or weakening each other." Kuro started tracing symbols in the air. "Fire Nourishes Earth, Earth produces Metal, Metal condenses water, Water nourishes wood, Wood is burned to produce fire. Conversely, Fire melts Metal, Metal Chops wood, Wood Pierces Earth, Earth dams and absorbs water, while water extinguishes fire."
"Some of the bad relationships sounded good while some of the good relationships sounded bad." Maple stated making her confusion known. "Isn't it bad for the wood if fire burns it?"
"In order to strengthen one something has to be taken from the other, but mixing one into the other makes the other stronger than what it would on its own. Like Ice Cream, it's good by itself but I bet you're the type that likes to add syrups and extra flavours." Maple nodded her head in understanding. "Well, you're right about them being different though, we can't go after them based on half baked information from our world." What they needed was an intelligence capsule, and she knew just the cat to talk to.
The Banging of a Gavel indicated a meeting of the council of Katarina's.
"Today's topic is about counter measures against the Phoenix." Chairman Katarina stated as she brought up an approximation of what their target was.
"Basically..." Intellectual Katarina adjusted her glasses as if she was going to say something profound. "...we need to leave the strategy stuff to the people suited to it. For now we just need to focus on getting stronger." Well... she wasn't wrong. "Increasing our level is the most obvious method, but at the same it's the most difficult." Using Cal Mira as a reference point, levelling starts to drop off in efficiency at around the seventies and almost completely stops at the eighties. She was over a hundred right now but that was all moot anyway. Q'Ten Lo would still be the most efficient hunting ground for the time being, so for time being it would just be something she'd do on the side.
"These are the real prize here though." What Excitable Katarina was referring to was a long list of Harpoon type transformations that had appeared in her H.U.D. "They're not as strong as our spears, but they're loaded with the reinforcement techniques of another world, so when we layer that with our own reinforcement techniques we'll get super strong!"
"Yeah but there's an even better method of increasing our power!" Hotblooded Katarina pointed out and all five of Katarina's brain cells rubbed their bellies in sync. As long as Sadeena is hanging around their stats will increase just by eating food, that was something that they excel in.
"Are we going to talk about the elephant in the room?" A image appeared before all of them of a monster made out of bones that had been following them around, producing an entire army of shadow creatures where ever it went. "We have an expert, so lets just ask her!"
Katarina arrived at a clearing, according to what the adventurers were saying one of the biggest monster nests in this area was here so it was time to do some grinding.
"Everyone come out now." Katarina stated as all the shadows appeared, bringing out the trident she summoned the familiar three headed dragon from the river, Mizuchi was it's name according to the spear. "I've sulked for long enough. I need experience points and monster corpses! Go get them!" And thus her will was done.
The first nest of monsters belonged to giant hornets, but they were no match for Galleon's flames. The second nest was full of giant worms but they found the Shadows of Q'Ten Lo too hard to swallow. For the third area Katarina sent Mizuchi into the water. The Other Shadows just dealt with any monster they found along the way. Katarina also tried out the Demon Dragon Spear too, imbued with two curses and quite powerful for it. Attack support acted as a sort of temporary Debuff, after you've landed a attack the next hit will double in damage output, Sloth acted as a debuff allowing Katarina to slow the enemy down while Greed acted as a anti-armour debuff. When she asked her mentor in the dark arts the reply was: 'Don't worry about it. The part of your mind they could affect has already been destroyed, and you bathe regularly in the hot springs so your curse resistance is strong too.' So Katarina continued on, using the shadows to hunt monsters, accumulate experience points, collecting and storing monster corpses in her spear, she quickly ran into a new problem.
"Maybe I went too far." What Katarina was referring to was the variable hoard of monster shadows she had collected which now stood before her like an army awaiting orders from its general.
'If there's too many, then sacrifice some to strengthen the others.'
"I can do that?" Katarina asked as she looked down at the sword in confusion.
'Quite. I will show you.' The Whip reinforcement method sacrificed levels for extra stats, by absorbing shadows into own she can sacrifice them and their experience points and improve or own stats, and improve the stats of the Shadows across the board as well. To begin with, Katarina was uncomfortable with the human type shadows so she started there and she could see improvements already with Galleon's skeleton starting to have flesh, she continued sacrificing small fry shadows levelling Galleon up as she went until finally she had a full bodied dragon again, and all it cost her was every other shadow but the bone dragon's.
"I might've gone too far again." Katarina stated as she noted that hauling back the monster meat might be more difficult now. For now Galleon just tossed everything into her spear and she returned to have it processed into stats for them, whatever they don't eat they'll use to reinforce the harpoons. When Katarina got back she was treated to the sight of Raphtalia and Kuro who were hiding from something in the general area, what it seems became apparent when Katarina could swear she saw something that looked like Godzilla with guns and other weapons looming in the back ground.
"Come on guys." The Monster had a vaguely feminine but heavily distorted voice as she scrounged around the area looking for something. "It's not that bad!" Maple's latest act of loosing her humanity had her grow even larger than she was before, and with a lot more muscle, her features hardening and turning greener, her previously vaguely T-Rex like form was still heavily armoured with something resembling Maple Leaves going down her back. The guns looked different than before too having turned purple, while the pair of Charge blades being kept on her primary set of hands had a bronz-ish tint to them.
"That's easy for you to say." Kuro muttered darkly as she watched her H.U.D. and the level requirements for one of her weapons going down one level. "You're not in danger just by looking at you."
What was going on here some may wonder? Kuro had asked if Maple could help with unlocking the power of their Sacred Gear and so replied with 'sure' before assuming the form of this monstrosity. This was apparently Maple's sacred gear, it knew exactly how Maple uses her legendary shield and so towards that end it took that and gave 'More.' Sadeena and Fohl were apparently out here somewhere getting hunted by this Godzilla reject with their own Sacred Gears while Bason watched on amused.
"She is formidable." Well, that's probably what you get for going at it for the equivalent of five months. "You aren't going to join in as well?" Bason asked noticing Katarina's presence.
"I would love to, but I haven't unlocked my own Sacred Gear yet." Katarina stated as she let out a sigh.
"You weapon copied the whale woman's weapon correct?" Bason asked and Katarina nodded. "She has a Sacred Gear why wouldn't you?"
At that moment Sadeena and Raphtalia riding on one of Raph-chan's hammers flew up into the air and slammed their respective weapons in Maple's nose, Raphtalia of course was sporting the Hammer Mjornir, while Sadeena had a large three pronged barbed golden trident and was riding on a current of water. Maple smacked them both into the ground with petulant ease though Katarina had been focused on a entirely different point. She was zipping through her list of recent unlocks and true to her predictions...
'Trident of Poseidon. Level locked 100' Well that's what she gets for sacrificing most of her levels.
"Excuse me I have to go level grind for a bit."
Later that evening the lot of them had returned back to the Onsen that Katarina had been going to try and remove her curses, in this case though it was because several people needed to have their injuries treated.
"I said I was sorry!" Maple was sitting down apologetically in the seiza position. "You Stepped on me!" Fohl was not having a good day, but then again his mummy cosplay probably carried that implication. Course Maple was actively healing him, it was just that they had to put his bones back into place first, all of them.
"The Illegal Move Trianna." Bason commented lightly.
"What are you talking about now?" Fohl asked looking at the ghostly being who enabled all this pain and suffering he was in.
"A theory. Maple can you use your Sacred Gear again tonight." Raphtalia and Sadeena both moved to defend themselves.
"Ah yes, but..."
"I understand." Bason stated simply. "For now focus on using part of it." Maple extended her arm and a familiar gun appeared, the purple shield turret. "As I thought."
"Care to enlighten us?" Raphtalia asked suspiciously. "Issei Hyoudou, the Hero of the Gauntlets whom you have to thank for your sacred gear and by extension the sacred gear system in general was not exactly human by the time he got here." The others stared at him blankly. "It was called the 'Evil Pieces system' which turned him into a being you know as a devil, and given his predisposition towards sex and long life span chances are good his blood related descendants are running around somewhere." They didn't need to know that. "Part of the benefit of his transformation was the ability to switch between four 'Modes.' High Defence and offence Rook." Not unlike Maple's savagery form. "Massive speed Knight." Maple probably didn't have a shield like that. "The Incredibly potent magical power which primarily used to break things Bishop." Which was probably her guns. "And all three combined together the Queen." Which was probably the source of the beating they got earlier.
"The Earlecumber has a knight Icon next to it." Maple explained as she looked through her various different modes.
"Your Mech suit?" Raphtalia asked looking confused by the revelation.
"The same one that she straps with guns and fires backwards to shoot herself through the air like a fighter jet?" Kuro asked and a look of revelation crossed their features.
"Bishop probably refers to her affinity for healing and support type magic." Bason intoned helpfully. "Or failing that her affinity for the wood element. Currently, the Balance Breaker is unstable, like how a full trident has three prongs the 'Queen' Form has three pillars on top of which it is built, for best effect she should take each individual form of the Trident and work on their powers individually before trying to combine them together." Maple beat each of them into submission in that monster form, if that's her being unstable then what's she going to be like when she peaks?
"I think one of my shields ate the Bio-plant shields, well the Bishop Icon is there. I think." Maple hasn't played a lot of chess in her lifetime. "They ate Shield of the Beast King too. Lord Camelot and the Nine Lives has got bits of it now." Maple stated and then suddenly went silent.
"Maple. What did you do!?" Raphtalia asked knowing full well what that look on Maple's face was.
"Oh look at the time bye!" And Maple zipped off.
"Kuro." Raphtalia turned her hammer into the Poki hammer. "What is The Nine Lives? Does it do what I think it does?"
"Kinda, yeah. This one is kinda exactly what it says on the tin." Kuro stated as she silently prayed for Maple's soul in the afterlife.
"So if she reacted that way when she saw it...?" Raphtalia asked again as Kuro continued to dig Maple's grave deeper.
"Odds are good that she's already burned through one or two lives, probably during that whole '5 month's turned into 12 hours' thing that she did." Little did Kuro know that Maple burned through all the lives of the Nine lives.
"If that's the case then she's a lot farther along than just 5 months." Bason explained making his opinion known. "Physically dying is a far stronger stimulus to the sacred gear than mere sparring." Issei Hyoudou's Boosted Gear received the strongest possible stimulus when he physically died, generating a miracle to preserve his life until his body could be rebuilt. "If that's the case we're already looking at years of progress."
"Good." Raphtalia changed her hammer to the Mjolnir. "That means I can go and vent my rage a little bit right!?" It was one thing if Raphtalia knew that Maple was in danger in advance, she would have time to worry about her and feel relieved when she turned out to be okay. As it stands in her point of view Maple had recklessly put herself in danger for no good reason and didn't tell anyone about it, who wouldn't be angry at her?
"So what do we do about these?" Katarina asked indicating her own and Sadeena's tridents.
"In all honesty, I don't think the trident is a good match for you." Because of the Legendary Spear Katarina's affinity for magic had been turned into fire, even if it wasn't her natural affinity was earth: both of these had horrible compatibility with water which is what the Trident was suppose to manipulate. "Well, as I understand it there's nothing stopping people from having more than one Sacred Gear, that little cub there with the white and red gauntlets is a good example."
"Which means, I have to work twice as hard to reach Balance Breaker?" Fohl asked sounding dejected. "More than one Sacred Gear means more than one Balance Breaker." Bason corrected as Fohl just shrugged his shoulders.
"Well, I guess I should go find Raphtalia and Maple then." Fohl thus stood up, Maple having treated his injuries, and so went out to find some more. "In the mean time you all should consider trying to unlock as many weapons as possible, the more the Sacred Gears have to work with the stronger they will get." Every Longinus, every god slaying weapon, was a Sacred Gear but not every Sacred Gear was a Longinus, reaching the power to smack down gods would take time and resources, and at the moment the biggest resource that they needed was strong opponents.
"Let's get started." Kuro led Katarina to a large open field, where she wasted little time on pleasantries, instead she produced one thousand green glowing blades, and from those blades one thousand legends of swords that had taken physical form.
"I hope you weren't expecting the same weakling you've been dealing with up until now." Katarina summoned Galleon from her shadow.
Just because she was curious she looked at the effect of the Spear of Loyalty, after all Kuro's and Maple's own 'Virtue' series of weapons had served as the core of their own home made Sacred Gears. Loyalty gave a massive Growth Correction to her party members depending on their feelings towards her, and with a short experiment it was working with the dragon too so she reflected it with the trident. Katarina had a dragon, Kuro had Dragon Slayers. The fight went about as good as you'd expect it to.
Author's Note:
RonaldM40196867: Quite a while ago actually. You too. I like dragons, so my opinion is biased. I don't know what you mean by 'Expanding.'
Maglad: I don't recall including Dragon Ball Z in my crossover, so I don't know why you would assume that. Sherlock Holmes too, but don't forget that wasn't how the Holy Grail System was designed, and all the examples I can find has serious fudging done to the system to accomplish that task. Thank you for the Praise.
Nightshadegirl: They need Sacred Gear transformations for that to happen.
Saif Omar: Drying rack implies Kuro can get ten feet away from it.
Captain Imaginat: Kuro is when of the few individuals with the capacity to make Motoyasu, pre-insanity that is, say 'Dude, tone it down a little bit.' Right now Trash is just enjoying getting to Torture Faubrey's nobility and inflict a constant stream of unreasonable demands one after another.
Pokemonever1994: Glad you like Trash, that mostly has to do with me speed running Trash's character development off screen to the point that he's a actual human being instead of a one dimensional hate sink who only exists to shit on Naofumi. Glad you like my milk. It's one hundred percent all natural organic Anime/isekai/shonen goodness. When Ainz did get summoned he was reduced to Level one skeleton inside of a room full of decently high level magicians who just realised they summoned an undead monster, he didn't last long. It would be more accurate to say that the Staff summoned the Staff of Ainz Ooal Gown than Ainz himself, Ainz would've just been dragged along for the ride, and if you think it's petty of a weapon to summon a hero just for a weapon, look at Kuro's and Byakuya's relationship.