Author's Note: Not a lot to say right now. I'm off to write some more. Read, Review, Favourite and Enjoy!
Chapter 87: Breaking a Vassal Weapon
Maple had received a commission for crafting, not an accessory as is usually the case, but rather a weapon. Or at least, Tanya claimed that it was a weapon. However spending a hour carving down a piece of wood into this stick the length of a fore arm with a V-shaped cup at the end she had her doubts. Finally Maple was finished and so she went to find her customer. Everyone was gathered in the village again, the Four Legendary heroes Maple, Kuro, Katarina and Tanya and the Seven Star Heroes Trash, Rat, Fohl, Blitz, Midori, Raphtalia the most recent addition Risha and finally their hero of the other world Sadeena for a total of twelve people in total. Katarina had pumped her arm excitedly, holding the handle of Midori's Axe having been turned into a halberd for her to weapon copy.
"Thank you everyone for coming." Tanya stated as she stood in front of everyone and watched as Maple arrived with her commission, with that the last piece she needed for her plan had fallen into place. "Firstly allow me to offer my sincere congratulations to Rishia, our new hero of the projectiles."
"We finally managed to find a use for those stupid things." Wyndia breathed a sigh off to the side of the tavern relieved.
The Helping Hands Accessories, otherwise known as the 'make creepy ghostly hands that follow you everywhere you go' accessory. She thought that she got rid of them in Q'Ten Lo when she pawned them off onto Raphtalia's familiar, only for the despicable rodent to give them back to her because it now had Raphtalia's. Instead she smoothly pushed them into the hands of the biggest wuss she had ever seen, who had now become a seven star hero. Maybe those things just have poor taste, at least this time she wouldn't give them back. The Projectile weapon was a weapon that created as many of itself as you had hands to throw them, they had gleefully taken to the girl with the extra hands and now knives were floating around her.
"For the first order of business we will be helping Rishia to upgrade her weapon a little bit." Tanya held her hand out expectantly to Maple.
"I don't know why you want it but I got it." Maple in turn handed Tanya her stick.
'Weapon Copy Activated: Oak Atlantl Unlocked.'
The Equip bonus was simply a relatively small increase in her status, she'll have to check with Kuro to see if she could upgrade it later but for now she turned the bow into the new weapon, with a javelin attached to it.
"Hey. How'd you do that?" Katarina asked confusedly.
"I ask you this by way of answer: what is a bow?" To the weapon system, Bow's counted as bow's, guns counted as bows, bows were two part projectile base weapons consisting of ammunition, and the means to send it over a distance. So if a Gun is a more advanced bow then what happens if she goes in the opposite direction? What Tanya had Maple make was the world's earliest two part distance oriented weapon, the Atlatl. But why was the question that needed answering. "Now then, the four of us have our own throwing weapons right?" Tanya watched as Maple produced the frisbee shield, Katarina a Javelin, and Kuro a throwing knife. Then they all remembered that Katarina just weapon copied Midori's axe and enlightenment hit them all at once.
"""Ah..."""
"Good. Rishia hold this." Tanya asked and Rishia complied taking the end of the transformed Legendary 'Bow' that Tanya had offered her. A massive flood of notifications flooded Rishia's senses as Tanya's bow took all the data it had to offer on millions of weapon transformations, filtered them through the Atlatl, and 'Atlatl Weapons' appeared one after another in Rishia's H.U.D. unlocking a few different milestone skills in the process of doing so, things like 'Rapid Fire' 'Projectile Rain' and 'Areal View' all being skills that Tanya has used before. Rishia Blinked stupidly as she came to terms with the new weapon.
"This is cheating isn't it?" Rishia simply concluded as the flood of notifications showed no sign of stopping.
"Kuro, if you don't mind." Tanya simply stated as she indicated for Kuro to step forward.
"This is a bad idea." Kuro stated as she held out the throwing knife for Rishia to hold for a moment and so Rishia picked up the knife in Kuro's hand. Risha's weapon list did a good approximation of a areal view as a repeat occurred of the 'Atlatl' series and a second bomb of new weapon transformations went off with Kuro's new additions, Mile stone skills like 'Hundred Blade,' 'Thousand Blade,' 'Ten Thousand Blade' Etc went off in her vision going all the way to 'one million blades.'
"How many swords did you feed to this thing!?" Rishia shouted her mouth gaping in shock and horror at the even bigger wave of weapon notifications that had appeared.
'The Legendary Sword has been very diligent.'
"What have you been Diligent about?" Kuro received both the answer to her question and a shock to her system by way of answer. "Oh right, that."
"Here you go." Katarina ignored the antics of Kuro and her sword as she handed Rishia her javelin as the third wave of weapon notifications appeared. The first one had yet to stop and the second hadn't even slowed down yet. But for her efforts Rishia received 'Air Strike Javelin,' 'Second Javelin,' 'Third Javelin' and the like, notifications of 'Arst Pierce' 'Second pierce' etc and notifications of 'Air Strike Chop' as well as 'Second Chop' probably side effects of Katarina weapon copying the harpoon and axe.
"Fue... More throwing type skills." Rishia let out a pitiful sigh, lamenting the lot of the future Projectile hero who would have to sort through all of this. Then Rishia's eyes went to the one that scared her most of all.
"Why are you looking at me like that?" Maple asked as all eyes landed on her ominously. True Maple had not done things like weapon copying the other heroes weapons nor the sheer number of weapons of Kuro who by the sounds of things had been bullied by her sword into stuffing it full of blades, but it was universally agreed that she had unlocked the most abnormal skills, to the point that Rishia legitimately feared for her Humanity if she were to copy Maple's skills.
"Here." Fohl simply gave Maple a look of pity as he held up his Gauntlet transformed into a lantern Shield. "Compensation." Maple took the Gauntlet in hand and unlocked a new mass of shields from the Gauntlet weapon using the Lantern Shield as a point of reference. Then an epiphany hit Maple.
"AH!" Regret, shock and realisation welled up inside of Maple all at once. "I should've traded weapons with the mirror Guy while I was over there!"
Maple just turned her shield into a Lantern Shield and allowed Fohl to Weapon copy it as she got down to business. Her shield turned into a large wooden Frisbee, and Rishia reluctantly took it in hand. A fourth ripple went through the weapon selection screen this one by the flavour of 'Frisbee.' Then Rishia's H.U.D. froze in the middle of the unlocking wave.
"Fue...?" Rishia made a confused face as a bad premonition hit her. Suddenly the H.U.D. split and blurred as if it was a computer hit with snow, before it all finally crashed and shut down. "Fue!?" Rishia made a panicked and confused noise as she attempted to bring the screen back up. Nothing. "I think... we just broke the Projectile Weapon." Everyone looked at Rishia and blinked stupidly for a moment.
Inside of the thought sea where the weapons store the data that they need to do their jobs, the projectile was cursing. It was desperately trying to manage the flood of incoming weapons, sorting through it's data as it attempted to undo the damage to it that had just been done by the reckless heroes, and was failing. What just happened to it was the equivalent of a computer getting hit with a bot attack and filled up with so much useless information that it could no longer function properly. Who the hell needs a 'Usapil Bone Frisbee,' 'Usapil Bone Throwing Knife,' 'Usapil Bone Javelin,' and 'Usapil Bone Atlatl' anyway!? Getting this out of the way right now: yes the weapons are able to copy weapons of the same type as itself but the preferred and encouraged method to unlock new forms as feeding materials to the weapons, this is because weapon copies are ultimately data while actual physical material is a place to put data. It was the same reason why most of the reinforcement methods consume material as well. Now it had to manage this mess before something broke. With the flood of information the Vassal Projectile made use of the reinforcement methods given to it, black smithing, and so began rapidly breaking down the weapons that was rapidly filling up it's mental sea and combining the ensuing raw materials together. Of course there was a limit to the number of times in a day it could do these modifications, but luckily the Vassal Projectile weapon had its own reinforcement method: Money! By spending copper, silver and gold coins it could bypass and upgrade the cool down process, luckily the stupid bastard that had stolen the weapon had foolishly used the weapon as his own personal wallet and now as much out of spite as necessity it was consuming this massive stockpile to rapidly reinforce weapons. And it wasn't the only one, from the sea of weapons emerged the consciousnesses of hundreds of Noble Phantasms that soon began to rapidly consume and modify the millions of weapons before them into tight manageable packages. These huge numbers of internal changes were taking only seconds.
In the real world the Projectile had yet to respond to Rishia's prodding.
"Fue!?" Rishia let out a whimper of despair. "I broke it! Millions of Heroes in the world's history and I'm the first to break a weapon!" Rishia slumped over and broke down in despair. Everyone quietly backed away from Rishia as they worked to address the next issue presented to them.
"Well the number of heroes we have are odd now." Maple stated as if this was the take away of the situation.
"No it isn't." Tanya stated making her opinion known. "Your sacred gear is already unlocked, you're training with the old lady to manage that thing!" Yes sacred Gears get stronger the more danger that you're in. No that does not mean that any of them want to fight against Godzilla.
"Guys it's not that bad!"
"""AS IF!""" The 'Guys' in question vehemently disagreed with Maple's conclusion.
With Maple out of the way each of the ten heroes they had available went with the Sacred Gear grinding plan they had worked out. In five separate area's surrounding the village each of the heroes will engage in one another in one on one battles to the death taking place over the course of ten minutes with healers on standby to save their lives if they actually managed to hurt each other.
For the first fight, two individuals whose deep and profound hatred of each other had been rooted into the very core of their being by millions of years of conflict.
"Blitz Won't Lose!" The Sacred Gear of the Vassal Claws took the form of two sets of claws equipped to Blitz's hands and feet, able to alternate between fire and lightning seemingly at will, the Claws of Kali.
Kali was an ancient Demonic Goddess of Death and Destruction who had one thousand arms. Similar to many other Sacred Gears Kali had been hunted down and defeated, not by another god but by a powerful Fallen Angel turned demon lord by the name of Rodin, and brought to this world by one of his favourite customers turned vassal hero. The Kali Simultaneously wields the power of fire and Lightning, giving equip bonuses of Fire Claw and Lightning claw, but more important than either: Limitless magical energy. And that was just it's base form.
"No! Midori won't lose!" Midori on the other hand was armed with an axe, smaller than the halberd he had earlier though no less impressive having been engraved with gold and runes: the Leviathan.
The forgers of the war hammer Mjolnir were said to look at their great work one day, and despair, for what they had created had become a instrument of genocide. With Great reluctance they created it's anti-thesis, the Leviathan Axe, the dying breath's of twenty frost trolls and five impossible frozen flames were harvested and once the axe was completed it was given to Thor's rival, Laufey in the hope that two negatives might make a positive. The Axe's powers with 'Return to Hand,' 'Frozen Hack' and finally 'Troll's vitality.' Return to Hand was self explanatory, with Frozen Hack each swing of the Axe will hit the enemy with freezing might, and if thrown could even 'lock' the axe in place where it lands for several seconds immobilising the target, as for Troll's Vitality, the axe fills the wielder with the legendary regenerative power of a troll.
One increases ammunition and gives variety to attacks, the other increases survivability and offers immobilisation, perfect for two hated rivals.
"Let's GOOOO!" Blitz zoomed forward striking with lightning speed and lion like claws, Midori returned fire with a mist combining poison and frost!
"They sure seem lively." Trash looked at the battle taking place between a high speed pinball and a cloud of poison mist with great amusement.
Trash carried the Staff of Ainz Ooal Gown, a legendary item said to be forged with the blood, sweat and tears of Forty Supreme Beings. The Staff contained within it seven unique elementals, beings that live by feeding off of elemental energy in the air around them, and hunt by ripping it out of their enemies.
"Not as lively as me!" Fohl stated as he grinned ear to ear, in one hand a red and yellow gauntlet set with a green gem, and in the other a white and silver gauntlet set with a blue gem.
The Boosted Gear and the Dividing Gear, containing the sealed forms of two legendary dragons whose power was said to be such that they forced a truce between heaven and hell in order to deal with their rampage, one contains the power to multiply strength, and the other to steal it away.
"I've been waiting to kill the Hero of the Cane my entire life old man!"
"Oh you don't have enough lives to pull that off boy!" Trash waved the staff forward and the elementals around him went on the offensive.
Maybe, but perhaps after this fight is over Trash will have a few less. On a island a short distance away two sisters, though not by blood stood.
"Last Chance to back out Sadeena." Raphtalia stated giant hammer bigger than she was at the ready.
Mjolnir was a weapon built for a god, it's core a great cosmic storm and it's wielder a giant of a man, it's swings boom like thunder and it's strikes fly like lightning, as is only appropriate for the god of thunder.
"That's funny." Sadeena was not looking at her adorable little sister now, not with that face that loves carnage. In her hands was a trident, belonging to the god of the sea Poseidon, forged by giants for the purpose of being plunged repeatedly into the chest of Poseidon's hateful father Chronos. With that the Sea and the Sky clashed against one another.
"So. I drew the short straw then?" Tanya had no Sacred Gear, not until she can steal one from Rishia whenever her weapon decides to function properly again, technically there was no point in her participating as being in danger meant nothing to her without one. But Rat was another story, her Tanya could torture relentlessly and by doing so rapidly build up whatever it is that a sacred gear builds in order to obtain the offensive power it requires.
The Chains of Andromeda were elegant in design, originally meant to bind the goddess they would ensure she would never escape, even in death, towards that end the chains were not only her jailer but also her protector, if any threat dared to approach her then the chains would violently lash out and attack seeking the life of the one who was responsible. So Naturally Tanya was attacking at long range.
The harshest clash was also being had by the two strongest combatants on the battlefield. On one side Katarina was dual wielding two weapons, the first was Poseidon's Trident, and the other was Laufey's axe refashioned into a shortened halberd, behind Katarina stood a monster straight out of nightmares, a black shadowy dragon.
Kuro was no less formidable though, for she had the soul of the strongest of the four Directional beasts under her belt, and the legacies of a million heroes behind her, in front of her, and off to the sides floating around her via the million swords skill. Needless to say with all this raw power floating around it was quite a sight to behold, but Maple's concerns laid elsewhere.
"Speed is the area where you most severely lack in." The Old lady stated watching as Maple was circling around her in her mech suit, being propelled by explosions. Paralytic, Toxic, Acidic and Explosive. Maple sure knew how to pick em, for now she had set the poison spewing gun to 'explosive' as she flew around the battlefield. "Yes you are capable of great speed when you utilise the explosive propellant of your weapons." The Old lady kicked a rock at Maple, she saw it coming but couldn't react in time to keep it from hitting her face and causing her to spiral out of control. "But you lack manoeuvrability."
"I think I see your point." Maple was left dizzy inside of the wall crater where she had landed. Was this the so-called difference between agility and speed? Come to think of it weren't Takt's air-planes flying around like this and had the same weaknesses? "Maybe I need to go unlock some-" The old lady kicked another rock at Maple's head. "Right right. Train." For now Maple had to practice, not only firing her make shift thrusters to go forward but also using arm mounted guns to go side to side too.
Aside from the 'knight' form Maple also had two more parts of her own personal triana, Rook with it's monstrously high defences was wear she was strongest, and while she was familiar with the bio-plants associated with the bishop form she had yet to get use to this new plant based magic. So Maple spent the day flying around the village while everyone else was training until it was ultimately time for food.
"We need to take time to think about what we're going to do about the Phoenixes." Trash explained as he indulged in the meat dishes that Kuro had made for him.
"The Gauntlets fought against the birdies before right?" Katarina asked as she pointed out Fohl. "Can't they tell us anything?"
"For one thing, there's two of them." Fohl explained as he made a peace sign with his red gauntlet. "One monster in two bodies, if one body dies the other one will explode and split into two again. Secondly they've sacrificed part of their defences to augment the other part. One will be resistant to magic at the cost of physical resistance, so it will attack us from as high in the sky as possible, while the other one is resistant to physical attacks at the cost of being weak to magical attacks, so it will be swooping down on us with it's beak and talons."
Trash nodded his head as he already got the countermeasures planned out.
"So I really do need to learn how to fly..." Maple stated as she let out a sigh.
"I still can't believe you figured out how to turn your turrets into rocket thrusters." Tanya explained looking at Maple in surprise.
"It wasn't something I did, my shield did that on it's own." It some how combined together the Yew Wood shield and it's tendency to make poison explode, the poison shield that spews out poison, and then modified her turret shield to spew out that combination in a constant stream so that she could use it as a rocket thruster.
"Meaning that the weapons can make combinations out of our weapons now too?" Tanya asked as her eyes narrowed into a glare of 'fantastic.' Tanya held out her hand expectantly, it took Maple a minute to think to hand over her shield turret for Tanya to copy.
"Think that's what's going on with her?" Kuro asked indicating Rishia, whose projectile was still unresponsive throughout all the day.
'The Vassal Projectile likely lacks material.'
"What does that mean?" Kuro asked her sword as a vein popped up in her forehead.
'Weapons require raw material to augment their functions, the Hero understands this yes?'
"Yeah. Unlocking new weapons, the Spear Reinforcement method and the Bow's. Most of you guys just get us to do things like increasing our level or repeatedly using the skill though." Kuro shrugged her shoulders as if asking 'so what?'
'Additional raw material is required to increase weapon's capacity.'
"What about all those weapons and Noble Phantasms you made me make for you to copy?" Kuro asked looking at the sword suspiciously.
'The Heroes use the Legendary Weapons as a convenient storage space, so there's no shortage of materials to process.' Kuro wanted to punch her sword now.
"So even after using up all that material Rishia's projectile still doesn't have enough material for all those weapons?"
'Correct. It is possible though to use the Hammer method to reduce the number of transformations burdening the Projectile weapon.'
So right now that thing was trading millions of weapons that it couldn't use for super powerful ones that it could.
Having spent an entire day sorting through and shredding weapon transformations the Vassal Projectile weapon eventually lit up it's jewel with a bright shining green.
"Oh I think it's working a-"
'DON'T DO THAT AGAIN!'
"FFFUUUEEE!" Rishia fell backwards off of her chair from the angry shouting of the projectile weapon.
'Does the Hero have the slightest comprehension of how many millions of weapons that the Projectile has had to dispose of? Why does the Sword Hero even have so many weapons? Does the Sword Hero really like collecting swords so badly?'
It would be one thing if they had brought individual transformations, but all of the Iron Swords, Bronze Swords, Platinum Swords and the like all turned into throwing daggers in the end. How many times has it disposed of a weapon only for another one just like to appear again out of the blue? And why were all of them so powerful? The Projectile weapon was crying from destroying so many powerful transformations.
"Rishia are you okay?" Maple looked down at Rishia as she helped her to her feet again.
"I think we traumatised the Projectile Weapon." Rishia stated as she continued to listen to the complaints of the Projectile weapon.
"So even your weapon is pitiful." Kuro commented as she smirked knowingly at the flashing blade.
'Pitiful!?' The projectile was shining even brighter now, as if enraged. 'PITIFUL!?'
Suddenly something like Maple's Air Strike Shield appeared, only round and shaped like a disk, then three more just like appeared. Not only the disks but Katarina's javelins and Kuro's million swords both also appeared, the later shaped more like throwing blades than anything else, notably without any of the hero's associated with them having said anything.
"Kuro, I think you might've teased the wrong weapon." Maple commented as a thought occurred that the projectile might blame Kuro for it's trauma. The projectile cast it's own version of the 'reflect' skill and combined all of the floating projectiles together with another weapon in the projectile's arsenal.
Poseidon had two brother's, when he commissioned the trident his younger brother Zeus commissioned a weapon appropriate for the god of lightning: Lightning bolts. Actual, Literal, Lightning in a physical form that can be picked up and thrown like a javelin, combined with Frisbees, other Javelins, and throwing blades ready to visit violence at a moment's notice.
"Bye~!" And so Kuro waved goodbye with her fingers as she portalled away.
A minor inconvenience at best: After absorbing the information that Tanya's bow had to offer the projectile acquired an Atlatl that let's it track the various weapons. So with this the projectile accessed another of Tanya's skills that gave it a bird's eye view of the world and pin pointed Kuro's exact location before it took aim with one of it's projectiles and fired at the sky above Kuro's location, and then another of Tanya's skills activated, arrow rain, causing a storm of lightning bolts to come down from the sky directly on Kuro's location. Oh Sure Kuro had ways of dealing with that weapon, once or twice, but how about a million?
"Well I guess we've settled on Kuro's training partner for the day." Maple made a note to light a stick of incense for Kuro.
"Fue!?" Rishia squeaked in surprise as she saw something.
"What is it?" Maple asked looking concerned.
"Why is my level going up!?" Rishia questioned looking very concerned.
"Well I'm sure it'll be okay." Maple's face wasn't quite so sure about what she just said. "I'm sure that Kuro wasn't so irresponsible to pop over to a populated area in order to run away was she?" That could be a very real possibility. Well she had a convenient 'skip cooldown's' ability so she could spam portal in order to run away and defend herself.
Author's Note:
Captain Imaginat: I don't know, look at the kinds of third world countries we got and then tell me if a backwards blatantly corrupt dictatorship wouldn't be able to function.
Pokemonever1994: Really he just ran away, so Rishia couldn't finish him off. Considering who his boss is though he might've preferred getting fed to a soul eater.
RonaldM40196867: True. Not when a return to Boot Camp is on the line. I think it's a bad idea, you're snatching up people, teenagers to young adults no less, kidnapping them from their homes and families to act as weapons of mass destruction and expecting them not to turn that power against you. I have some ideas.