===CH 9===
SS+ Mission at the Guild
AN: Special thanks to sebku ssj3 for the first Review. I don't speak Spanish, only English and German, but Google translate works well enough.
a few days later
Neptune, Adult Neptune, Alpha Neptune and Nepgear were gathered in the living room area of the Basilicom playing a fighting game together. Histoire and Alpha Histoire were dealing with the paperwork that was flooding her own and Neptune's office.
Alex meanwhile was sitting restless on a chair watching the four other Planeptune CPUs.
This went on for another hour until Nepgear broke the somewhat silence. "I lost again..." she stated Defeated and got off of the sofa.
The three Neptune's just continued playing the game, acknowledging that Nepgear left the party but not giving any comments on the topic.
"What's wrong, you look nervous?" asked Nepgear upon spotting Alex on a chair.
"Nothing, that's what's wrong." replied Alex, confusing Nepgear with his statement.
"I don't understand what you mean." stated Nepgear, showing her confusion.
"For the last 250 years I was fighting at least 10 hours a day... the condition of having nothing to do is new to me."
"If you are bored we could go and do a few quests at the guild." offered Nepgear.
Alex got up and walked over to her. "better than nothing. Let's go."
Planeptune Guild
Alex and Nepgear arrived at the guild hall a few minutes later. The streets were a little bit less busy than usual.
"Hello Lady Nepgear!" greeted the NPC at the counter of the guild. "How can I help you and your friend today?"
"We were planning on doing a monster hunting quest. Is there anything that needs to be taken care of urgently?" asked Nepgear friendly.
"...Preferably extremely difficult..." muttered Alex while browsing the holographic displays around the guild.
"Nothing of that sort at the moment, sorry. But there are a few new S rank quests that came in just this week." apologized the NPC
Alex walked up to Nepgear, who was looking at all the S class quests.
"I'm not sure if this class exists here in Hyperdimension as well, but are there any SS+ class quests available?" asked Alex
"S rank is the highest we have here." replied Nepgear.
"...That's not entirely true." stated the now sweating NPC somewhat hesitantly, and handed them a yellowish piece of paper with some blood stains on it. "This is the oldest quest we have here at the guild, it had been issued during the prime of Tari, but was never completed."
"Slay the 200 Ancient Dragons roaming the VM hills on the PC island. Difficulty: SS+/Suicide. Reward:" Alex read the fragile Quest paper. "The reward part is covered in blood and unreadable. But 200 dragons, sounds like fun! We'll take it."
"The guild won't be able to offer a reward for this quest since the person who issued this quest has most likely passed away by now." warned the NPC at the counter.
"Not a problem for me. I just hope the dragons are still alive." stated Alex with a bloodthirsty smile as some black scales momentarily appeared on his hands.
Nepgear took a careful step away from Alex before she spoke up. "T-that's fine. I'm the CPU candidate, I'm not doing it for the money anyway. It is my duty to keep the citizens of Planeptune safe, these dragons could pose a threat to their safety."
"That's great. Now I just need to see your Guild cards to register you for this quest. And you'll have to sign-" she bend down to fetch two documents from a nearby drawer. "- this paper. This frees the guild from all responsibilities should one of you not survive this quest."
Alex and Nepgear both signed the document and summoned their guild cards from their Inventory.
Nepgear's was printed on a brown plastic card with an light purple outline.
Alex's card was engraved into a card shaped black crystal. The engraved letters were filled with a shining metal to provide better readability.
The NPC at the counter took both cards and held them against a card reader. Nepgear's card worked flawlessly but Alex's card got rejected. "I'm sorry, but it appears that your guild card is invalid."
Alex accepted his card back. "This is a standard issue guild card from Alphadimension. Could it be invalid because I'm from a different dimension?"
"That is possible if your system and ours differ too much from each other." she gave a quick glance at Nepgear. "I could offer to register your card for our system, that is if Lady Nepgear gives me permission to do so."
"Of course! please register his card to the system, I can confirm the validity of his statement."
The NPC quietly pressed a few buttons on her holographic display before she spoke up again. "I just need a reading of his raw power level to complete the registration. Please follow me to the testing area."
A hidden door opened up next to the counter and both Alex and the NPC walked inside. The door revealed a long staircase that led both of them underground into a large white chamber with a grey crystal in its centre.
The NPC summoned a holographic tablet into her hands and the Crystal emitted a faint glow. "Please focus as much of your raw energy as you can into the crystal."
Alex gave a shrug and placed one hand onto the crystal. A double layered black magic circle appeared beneath his hand as Alex narrowed his eyes at the crystal.
The room momentarily shook and the crystal instantly turned pitch black and had large cracks running through it.
The magic circle vanished and Alex faced the, now terrified, NPC again. "was this enough?"
The light blue glowing screen in her hands had multiple red exclamation marks flashing all over it and displayed a large red "999999" in its centre. a red X-Button was shown in the bottom left corner and a green tick mark in the bottom right.
"I can still transform a couple of times" offered Alex
She absently pressed the green button and silently left the room with Alex, looking a little bit pale.
"Done already?" asked Nepgear when she saw the two return from downstairs.
"Yeah, I just had to focus some of my energy into the crystal downstairs for the reading." explained Alex
"oh. What score did you get? I reached a score of 89000 when I first registered." asked Nepgear
"I don't know. I broke the crystal." replied Alex casually and kept watching the NPC behind the counter.
"You did what!?" shouted Nepgear shocked.
"It wasn't that hard, she-" Alex points at the dumbly smiling NPC behind the counter "- told me to release as much of my raw energy as I could into it. That's what I did... Not my problem if it can't handle it." He then began walking towards the Guild's door.
"Let's get going, I don't want the dragons to die of old age."
"R-right!" Nepgear stammered out and fell into pace
PC island; VM hills; 2 hours later
Nepgear and Alex landed on the large mountain located on the western edge of the island.
"These are the VM hills as far as my N-Gear's GPS goes." stated Nepgear and send her N-Gear back into her inventory.
"I can feel a few moderately powerful presences deep inside this mountain. Let's split up and look for a cave or alike. Just flare your energy if you find something, I'll sense it. I'll do the same if I find something, you'll see my energy." with that the two CPUs split up and flew in opposite directions, circling around the mountain in their respective HDD forms.
Both of them were already searching for an entire hour and Nepgear decided to take a break near the peak of the snow covered mountain.
"There has to be an entrance somewhere around here..." Nepgear wondered and looked down the mountain's side.
The entire upper half was covered snow and ice while the lower half was covered in bushes and some trees.
A small tremor went through the mountain followed by a weak shockwave the managed to blow her hair away.
This caused Nepgear to jump up in alarm to find out what caused the disturbance, only to stare with wide eyes at the source.
A thin pillar of pure black energy was being shot into the sky on the other side of the mountain, accompanied by streaks of purple and red twisting themselves skywards around the beacon.
It didn't take her long to find Alex once she flew higher and around the mountain.
"Did you find an entrance?" asks Nepgear while the energy around Alex dies down.
"I don't have an exact position, but I know that it is deep beneath the Ice. That's why I called you over here. Now that you're out of the way I can enter Dragon force 2 and melt all of the Snow and Ice away." Alex explained his plan and gathered his energy.
"You can't just melt an entire mountain!" protested Nepgear at the ridicules idea.
"I beg to differ. Dragon Force, Stage 2" Alex countered and his entire body got covered in black dragon scales. Two dragon wings joined his HDD's wings and caused two of them to disappear.
"Shadow Dragon Inferno!" a huge stream of black fire was shot at the mountain, coating the entire thing in the black hellfire.
The heat radiating from the black flames was intense enough to completely vaporize the ice and snow, char the nearby forest and boil a good portion of the nearby sea water.
countless enraged roars echoed from within the deafening inferno, prompting Alex to stop his attack.
"Goodness!" shouted Nepgear over the roars beneath them while multiple streams of orange fire approached them.
"I've got this. Splitting Void" a see though barrier sprung to live mere moments before the fire impacted, creating a giant wall of fire in front of them.
"There're so many of them... should we call the others for help?" muttered Nepgear after spotting 20 dragons approaching them from beneath.
"call for help?" Alex reverted his transformations and stood on a black magic circle, now only in Dragon Force 1. "The real fun is just about to start!" he laughed madly and jumped towards a dragon, breaking the sound barrier.
His unlucky target exploded into a large cloud of blood mist and other tiny fragments of the once large creature.
"I don't even have to transform for these weaklings!" he laughed and tore apart another dragon.
Using the creatures lower half for support, he launched himself through another dragon.
The speed of the slaughter gradually picked up and the dragons fell left and right every second. It took all of Nepgear's self-control not to review her lunch at the gruesome sight made possible due to the unique nature of the pc island.
On this island, monsters and adventurers won't break down into pixels imminently. Instead they can get mutilated and consequentially bleed out before slowly breaking down into pixels.
"Come on!" Alex screamed madly as he tore through another dragon, already thoroughly drenched in dragon blood. "Give me a challenge!" he shouted and another dragon fell.
Multiple of the remaining dragons gathered their energy and released a powerful blast of fire towards Alex, who took the attack head on.
"heh. Time to step up my game as well I guess. Access, Shadow Drive." a pillar of blood red energy shot into the sky, pulling the fire around Alex along with it.
The sky took on a deep orange tint and looked as though the clouds themselves were on fire. Alex motionlessly hovered in front of the apocalyptic scenery, one hand extended to the side and a black and red Scythe slowly assembled itself out of pixels.
In the next instant he was gone, and ten dragons fell to the ground beneath. Their bodies cut cleanly in half from head to tail.
"It was fun while it lasted..." ten more dragons fell from the sky, chopped into tiny pieces. "...But let's end this." he pulled his scythe behind his back and charged more and more negative energy into it.
dozens of dragons shot their roar attacks towards Alex in hope of avoiding their ultimate fate.
"Red Death" he swung his scythe into their general direction, a thin line of energy followed his blade until he ended his swing.
The fire from the dragons was only millimeters from striking him when his attack discharged and the world turned red.
Everything got consumed by the blinding red light, a byproduct of the finishing move that was just released.
countless dying screeches could be heard for a few seconds until everything went silent.
The light itself contained enough negative energy to cancel out Nepgear's transformation. now blinded and without wings, she could soon be heard making a hard contact with the scorched earth of the island beneath.
The light eventually died down and revealed the sky cleared of all the dragons and most of the few remaining clouds. Partially pixilated bone fragments were raining down from the sky, sounding like a hailstorm was hammering down on the island.
Alex landed close to the spot where Nepgear crashed into and reverted his transformation.
"You're... insane" panted Nepgear, exhausted from having her shares neutralized.
"I don't remember ever claiming to be sane in the first place... So... now that the warm up is over, where's the rest?"he asked with a murderous smile.
"Goodness..." muttered Nepgear, regretting ever accepting the quest in the first place.
"I think we should head back to Planeptune. Are you alright or do you need a break?" asked Alex and helped her up.
AN: Another Chapter finished! Took me a while, but here it is.