In order to get over the whole episode which occured at the throne room , Ben took his time wandering around the castle, talking with a few castle guards who were completely starstruck nonetheless and after sweetening the deal by offering them a few silvers, he managed to leave with a rough map of the town and surrounding village, alongside some helpful tips. Overall, Ben's day had been relaxing and stress free, at least compared to back home. There were no rampaging time beasts to deal with, There was no Incursean army ready to invade earth and there was no evil scientist with grudge kidnapping little children with intent to use them as guinea pigs for his inhuman genetic experiments so that he could take revenge on him. And it took him a while but he chalked up the whole thing as a side effect from spending time on undead planet and surviving from that.
He refused to believe it could be anything apart from a mere hallucination from his PTSD and trauma.
Enjoying the quiet moment of peace and tranquility he held up the sack containing silver coins, testing their weight.
I wonder how much that means in terms of real money.
Technically the heavy sack contained one thousand eleven hundred ninety nine coins. One accidentally brushed against the Legendary Bow's gem, The Bow not only scanned it but completely devoured it
[Treasurer's Bow Unlocked]
[Treasurer's Bow (0/10)- Rarity-: Common- Base Power:1-Unique ability: [Calculation Proficiency(small)], [Fortune Up (small)], [Void Bank Storage (MAX)] ]
Ben couldn't help but blink in confusion as the bow transformed into a gauntlet of sorts with a small rectangular chest on the top of it's forearm, Bow's gem shining on the top of it. He could open the chest and look inside it, which didn't seem anything out of ordinary at the first glance. He found the previously eaten coin inside though. Taking the name of this weapon's current bonus skill in stride, he put a handful of coins inside the box, all of them fitting in quite nicely.
The bearer of Bi-Omnitrix let out a small chuckle, this was just like the Charmcaster's enchanted bag. He clearly remembered how many years it took for Gwen to reverse engineer it and even then she only managed to finish it with some assistance from Hex.
To be honest, that was quite amazing. He would have loved tinkering with his bow and skills only if he didn't have another pressing matters to tend to. After a quick walk through the merchant streets, he finally managed to reach his first destination, Hourglass of the Dragon's Era. Which happened to be situated inside a gaudy looking church of sorts. The first thing he saw was a huge symbol displaying a sword, a bow and a spear on the front, in plain view for everyone to see. However, the shield was nowhere to be found. Which was more than enough to set off alarm bells inside his brain, especially after what transpired in the castle ever since they were summoned.
Also using his enhanced senses he could see that Motoyasu and Ren had already arrived there beforehand. The young plumber pretended to be in marvel of huge ornately carved item as the heroes continued their own conversation with one of the nuns. Now what irked him about those two the most was the fact they seemed to have some in depth in regards to this world, but they were reluctant to share with him , even with each other. It was as if they were treating this entire thing as some sort of tournament and wanted to outdo each other, just to get some kick out of it. While he could understand towards some extent, as gamers were naturally competitive
That still seemed...utterly ridiculous.
They weren't taking the hero business seriously as much as they should. Which was going to bite them in their arse sooner or later. Ben just hoped they wouldn't end up doing more harm than good.
Now I understand what Azmuth might have felt all those years ago
He heard Motoyasu telling one of the nuns in charge to bring them a small amount of sand from the hourglass. Apparently, it was a very important ingredient for unlocking something inside the legendary weapon. He made a mental note to ask for some more stock so he can give it to Naofumi some time later. It didn't took a genius to figure out that Shield hero wasn't exactly welcome in this cathedral and perhaps in the Melromarc as well. Ben just needed to explore the reason behind it.
After making sure that the two heroes and their parties had left, Ben walked towards the hourglass himself, the gauntlet on his right wrist morphing back to its original state, making it easier for everyone to recognize he was the bow hero. Without wasting any further moment, he approached the nun.
"Excuse me!" Ben said, gaining her attention.
"Ah, Hero of the Bow-sama, How can this worthless one be of serves to your lordship." The nun asked, bowing deeply at him as if he was physical manifestation of Jesus or something like that, which absolutely creeped the hell out of him.
"I was wondering if you would be able to get a small bag of sand from the hourglass. I might need it to add some enchantments to the legendary bow." Ben spoke out in a casual tone.
"Of course Hero of the Bow-sama! You are absolutely necessary to save us. We are your humble servants here to help you in any way we can." The sister said, bowing once again as she ran off to fulfill his request. Meanwhile Ben stood in silence, observing the huge ornate piece in front of him, which was filled with bloody red sand. The young plumber wondered what that meant as he walked closer, the moment he did so, the metallic emblem situated in the middle of his chest and covered through the usage of a highly advanced "Notice me not" spell whipped up by none other than Gwen Tennyson herself emitted a small bolt of green bio electricity which hit against the thick glass walls of hourglass before getting absorbed by the yellow gem of the legendary bow .
Ben's eyes widened in confusion and awe as the gem shined bright and buzzed, displaying the familiar green black hourglass symbol before resuming its original color
However before the bearer of Biomnitrix could ponder upon what actually happened, The nun had already returned with two small bags of magically charged bloody red sand.
"Thanks again for your cooperation." Ben remarked with a faux smile, taking some of the sand from the pouch, he put it in one of his utility belt's pockets, just so he could provide Naofumi with some. If he didn't have any knowledge about the usage of magical sand, there was no way hell Naofumi would have any idea about it. Besides he couldn't bring himself to trust that red haired girl, there was something really off about her and it wasn't just due to his recent panic attack. She never once called Naofumi by his given name. It wasn't like she didn't know it though, she might have heard his name more than enough times to remember it now.
She also tried to be overly flirtatious to him, something he couldn't let it slide. Beside thanks to his prior experiences with the likes of Charmcaster and Attea, he was no stranger to women who had some ulterior motives of her own. However everything was just a hunch at this point, Naofumi seemed pretty taken with her (He was most likely thinking with the member between his legs) and there wasn't much he could do apart from leave it be for the time being.
Ben placed the sand on the top of the legendary bow's gem. As expected, the jewel quickly devoured everything into it
[Bow of the Dragon's Passage Unlocked ]
[Bow of the Dragon's Passage (0/50) - Rarity:Rare-Base Power:1- Unique ability: [Teleport Bow ] , [ Reminder Bow] , [Class Promotion Bow] ]
[Teleport Bow (0/20)]: Teleport yourself and upto 3 party members to areas you have already visited and set up a bookmark.
[ Reminder Bow(1/1)]: Displays the remaining time until next [Wave]: Current: 29 Days, 21 hours, 15 minutes, 9 seconds
[Class Promotion Bow (0/20)]: Allows up to 2 party members to promote upgrade to an advanced class once level cap is reached.
Teleportation? That's kinda cool.
Teleportation spells were kinda tricky to master and required a lot of efforts and concentration. Which had been the reason why Ben never managed to learn it like Gwen did. He never paid much heed to that though as he was perfectly content using his pugnavore alter ego Portler. A green skinned humanoid alien which could read minds and feed off of the conflict and aggression of its opponents. Though the fact that Ben couldn't stand boredom while using this transformation, made it sorta inadequate for battle.
Class Promotion wasn't something he needed to think much about. It wasn't like he was planning to recruit anyone to fight monsters for him. He was an army of monsters himself, after all.
This didn't really give him a weapon which he could use during a battle, but for someone who couldn't travel interstellar distance in moments, this seemed like an important ability to have. No wonder Ren and Motoyasu didn't waste any time in getting their hands on this magical sand.
"Is there anything else this worthless one can do for you , Hero of the Bow-sama!" The nun asked again with a bow.
Alright! This is gross. I am starting to feel like an imaginary deity worshiped by a fanatic cult.
Ben sweatdropped, she had so much devotion in her voice that nearly made him flinch. Hack, he had been a superhero famous throughout the galaxy and no one ever talked to him in this manner.
"Actually yes." Ben admitted with an awkward smile, "I would like to know a bit about my predecessors and this kingdom in general."
"Of course hero of the bow-sama!" The nun declared with a smile, creeping him out with her devotion once again. "Anything for the savior of our world."
...xxxxxxxxxxx...xxxxxxxxxxxxx...
Opening the double glass doors, Ben felt the stale air of archive brush over him, grimacing in distaste as the smell of paper and old parchment made itself apparent. He hasn't been a huge fan of libraries ever since Charmcaster absorbed powers of Bezel, a powerful being known as father of all magic and nearly killed him, Hex and Gwen in the University's library. Moving quickly, he wanted to spend as little time as physically possible in here. Quickly approaching the reference center, he stopped near the half circle of the wood, his presence was quickly noticed an attractive, green haired girl who looked no older than eighteen.
"H-hero-sama! Is there anything I can do for you?" She asked politely as a bright flush adorned her cheeks.
"Where can I find the information about this kingdom and my predecessors?" Ben asked, using his best "Morningstar" look. It was complete with a cheesy confident grin.
"Of course. Right this way, Hero-sama!" The girl said with a smile, blushing a bit in the response. This was the hero of the bow, an individual who was considered almost a literal god in her country, smiling down at her with the most charming expression she had ever seen, "This one lives to serve you."
Seemingly a bit used to this treatment after his encounter with nun, Ben wasn't as much creeped out by that as he earlier would have been. He followed the girl to the middle of the library that had been marked and designated as "History" . From what Ben understood about this archive, the information he was about to receive was far from sensitive and open to all general public. There was a chance that everything here was heavily edited to serve the agenda of a select few but even then he might end up getting some small tidbits of genuine information. Enough to form his opinion either way.
He quietly thanked the assistant who had led him there, instantly receiving an offer for any future help he may need. Her name was Aurora
Tentatively opening the book assistant that assistant had gotten to him, left him promptly confused. The history book like all others, started at the beginning. It was a general book dealing with some information on adventures of previous Sword, Spear and Bow heroes, though not much. It came as quite the surprise to see Shield hero strangely absent from the history book altogether, not even getting a simple mention in the footnotes. Granted that being restricted to only using the Shield must have made dealing blows to enemies much harder than the other heroes. But still the shield was a legendary relic and in the hands of someone who understood its mechanics well enough, it might have proven to be a formidable tool to possess. Perhaps the shield heroes tended to be a lot less knowledgeable about how to use their weapon unlike the other three heroes and died in the early waves before making any sort of contribution. May be that's why everyone had been ignoring Naofumi like a plague and didn't want to join his party. Still that didn't explain the intense hatred he saw in Aultcray's eyes everytime he looked at the shield hero.
One of the things jumped out for him was the fact that the previous heroes strangely had prior knowledge of sort in regards of this world. Even the heroes of the first generation, who were summoned basically a thousand years ago. Ben had an inkling of sorts that they were hardcore fans of MMORPG games just like Motoyasu and Ren were. However, he couldn't tell for sure but as he knew from his adventures in parallel dimension, more often than not, time flowed differently between the two worlds. Ben wondered if any of them were from the same timeline as his. The games like that started coming out since last seven years. So if an individual from his home dimension was summoned here after playing such games, it was safe to assume that 1000 years in this place could be equal to seven years in his home.
That sounds ridiculous. Only Paradox can make some sense out of it.
Eventually reading the records of the past heroes made him question the reliability of both the author and the editor of this book . Cause at this point this seemed more like a propaganda tool for church rather than a narration of events which happened in the history. All three great heroes were portrayed as all knowing and benevolent beings, who were completely perfect. There was no mention of any hero having flaws of any sorts, making mistakes or even getting scratched or bruised by a monster. He couldn't find not even single line remotely pointing out about a fuck up anywhere to be found.
Ben knew better than anyone else that being a hero wasn't the easiest job in the world. As despite having superpowers, heroes themselves were inherently flawed beings. Sometimes their desires got better of them and they ended up doing stupid things, making a lot of people suffer in the process. Even those who genuinely wanted to help people made mistakes. He clearly recalled how once he was called on a distant planet to put an end to a bloody civil war which had been going on since last few years and ended up causing a lot of collateral damage when he was caught in a crossfire. Which made both parties put an end to their conflicts and wage war against him instead. More often than not he let his past achievements cloud his judgement and became short sighted , which allowed his enemies like Vilgax and Malware to outsmart him in the battlefield , resulting in a painful and humiliating losses which humbled his inflated ego.
The Biomnitrix bearer sighed heavily. He wasn't getting much out of it and decide to move on to other things. Which meant reading about this kingdom he was summoned into.
Melromarc was actually an absolute matriarchal monarchy. In this country the queen was the true ruler so she held power over everything. The king was basically a mere figurehead who was only given the authority to rule in case the queen was away dealing with more sensitive issues which required her attention. Surprisingly there were mentions of past queens having multiple life partners, forming a reverse harem of sorts. Though the current queen , who was called Mirellia only had Aultcray as her consort. It wasn't his real name though as according to Melromarc tradition, queen chose the name of her husband.
Interesting, in that case where was the queen when four of us were summoned? I am pretty sure she would have at least liked to see the individuals in person who were supposed to save her kingdom/queendom from a horde of monsters in a month. What could be possibly more important than the threat of the waves.
Aultcray himself turned out to be an interesting character though. He was not only considered war hero of sorts due to the part he played in what seemed like this world's version WW2, though he needed to learn more about this place called Siltvelt before comparing them to Axis powers, He was also younger brother of the Faubley's current monarch, which happened to be largest and most influential nation of this world. Faubley mostly resembled a city of the steampunk era and was said to be in possession of car like vehicles which ran on steam engine. Their royal family had a long tradition of marry in the summoned heroes and their descendants, allowing them to monopolize of their fame, power and knowledge . Right now, they had friendly relations with Melromarc.
Zeltoble was basically the country of mercenaries. Thus it was referred as the land without laws . It had a dark history involving constant warfare but remained aggressively neutral as far as all political matters were concerned and Ben could see why. The government of Zeltoble was an oligarchy power structure with powerful merchants and nobles bidding to keep in the favor with the Merchant Council for power and influence. Trade was basically their lifeblood.
Now when it came to Shieldfreeden and Siltvelt, things became rather convoluted and narration became unreliable on a whole new level. Aside from humans another group existed in this world. Humans with...beautiful features. Who were referred as demi humans or beastmen. According to these books, they knew nothing but war and destruction. They have constantly been a scourge on human kingdoms, since before the records of the history. A paragraph even claimed that they arrived through a dark portal many years ago and brought the waves with them. An author also put a lot of emphasis by drawing out the similarities between the beastman and demons that spill from the waves.
The ability to gain energy by slaying a life hasn't been an intrinsic part of human nature but when our world was theatertened by the waves of calamity, we gained that ability by the grace of gods. These grotesque animals, they were inherently born with it. Their whole existence revolves around killing us humans and draining our life essence to strengthen them even further. A young in the clan age as they grow levels...just like a monster. They are nothing but a product of the Devil's work.
One hundred and fifty years, Three great heroes joined forces with the human kingdoms in order to get rid of those bloodthirsty animals. Many adventurers put aside their differences and worked together for the great cause. However, they couldn't gain advantage due to interference of someone they once thought as friend, but in reality he was sent by the waves to protect the demons and ruin this world, the wretched shield monster Salazar, who fought for demi humans and murdered the three guardians in cold blood, exhausted Melromarc and Faubley out of their resources, pushing the mankind on the brink of slavery. It was only thanks to the efforts put up by the Church...
Ben shook his head with a sigh. Slamming the book shut.
The Shield hero of the past killed his fellow heroes in a battle? Demihumans were...monsters? Work of the Devil? Shield hero being an avatar of a dark god the waves sent to ruin the world?
The author was making all these big claims but couldn't explain why these monsters set up a nation and practiced commerce with their neighbouring countries. Of course, he could see that the country he was summoned in had a long history of bad blood with the demihumans. The current King was a war hero who had taken part in a large scale between between Siltvelt and Melromarc. And as the young plumber knew pretty well, during such wars people often tended to demonize their enemies in order to reduce their own guilt. Ben had to judge people beyond their race or their rapid age growth. He wasn't some hired muscle of Melromarc's royal family or the church of three heroes. He was the wielder of Ultimatrix, an advanced version of the device Azmuth created to show a member of one species how it feels to step in someone else's shoes. Symbolizing the true unification of all. In his rulebook, everyone deserved to be saved.
Ben stood fluidly, stretching his tight muscles. A glance at his status menu reminded him that it had been three hours since he arrived here. He brushed an errant lock of his messy brown hair as he moved to the front of archive. Capturing a picture of the map using an advanced plumber's badge, He returned all four books to the attendant, it wasn't the same girl as before. He noted. Too bad. He would have preferred a starry eyed fangirl over a creepy nun who looked like follower of some fanatic cult.
Deciding that he had already learned much more than he wanted about the cult fanatics, now there was only one thing left to do, he motioned the young librarian to come over.
"This is a church right? bring me the bottle of most potent holy water you can find." Ben asked
"Certainly, Hero-sama!" Aurora replied before bowing deeply once more and running away to fetch the item. She returned moments later with a bottle of holy water which appeared to have an invisible aura surrounding it.
"How much is this?" Ben asked, taking a bunch of coins out from his very own personal void storage.
"There is no need for Sir Hero to pay for this." Aurora answered in a voice filled with devotion, surprising Ben.
"Ummm...thanks I guess." Ben replied as he stepped out of the grand building with a friendly wave. All of sudden a window popped up in front of him, displaying in large letters.
[Protection of the Holy Bow has been activated]
[True vision- Passive skill]
[Reveals knowledge about hidden, invisible and unknown objects to the wielder, while increasing your party's Attack Strength by 15% for 12 seconds.]
So this works as an upgraded version of appraisal skill? That sounds cool.
Highly condensed dispelling holy water (Pure)
Quality- Rare
After mentally confirming the quality of the item, Ben opened the bottle of holy water and poured a small amount of it on the jewel of the legendary weapon.
[Cleric's Bow Unlocked]
[Cleric's Bow(0/40) - Rarity:Rare- Base power:+25- [+30% damage to dark attribute units] (Massive) (Unmastered), [+30% damage to undead units] (Massive) (Unmastered) , Curse removal (small) (Unmastered), [Channel power of light to restore your entire party's HP by a large percentage of your weapon damage plus an additional amount as bonus restoration] (Passive- Only available upon slaying 10000 monsters using the selected bow)]
His bow relatively increased in size, growing upto five feet strikingly resembling a longbow, now completely golden in color with four prongs holding on a while glowing crystal appearing in the middle, containing the gem of the legendary weapon. Glowing white feathers appeared on it's both ends, giving the weapon rather angelic appearance, As expected from a holy weapon, that also emitted a divine aura. Rather than regal, it looked like a treasure of sorts, something that would not look out of place in a treasury.
Ben shook his head, taking in the stats and appearance of his new weapon.
"This was just at Rare rank? I wonder how powerful the higher ranked weapons are. Then again even Diamondhead and Heatblast couldn't go over uncommon."
His eyes automatically observed the crowd moving back and forth. He shook his head. Feeling the weight of the monumental mountain that had been dropped in front of him. It wasn't like he was new to such situations but he always had help. Plenty of it, in fact. The path to his grand journey had always been clear cut, his friends and family had always been there to help him out. They scolded him when he made mistakes, they cheered him up whenever he hit the slumps and they were willing to lay their very lives on the line if the situation required.
Now though, he was truly on his own. And there was nothing he could do to let them know about his whereabouts. Which hit him harder than it originally should.
Closing his eyes, he took a deep breath. His entire life was ahead of him. As a game, And he had no other option to play it like a true player. He didn't have time to dwell on mistakes of the past or dangers of the future. He must play this game , The game of his life, with the greatest of his ability till its end.
He would finish this quest just like he did the last one and no matter how many tasks like that he received in the future, he would successfully finish them all. He will beat this game, no matter how hard or dangerous it may get in the future.
For his name was Benjamin Carl Tennyson,
And his race against time had just begun.