Author's Note: Not a lot to say right now, just finished the 20th volume of Shield Hero with my brain now fresh with ideas for my stories. For now please Read, Review, Favourite and Enjoy!
Chapter 13: The Spear and the Red Haired Princess
"Malty did you have Maple killed?" Katarina stared across the woman that was standing before her, blocking her way to Shieldfreeden but that was the furthest thing from her mind at the moment as the vaguest feeling crossed her instincts.
"What of it?" Malty asked in a mocking tone of voice.
"...I'm going to beat you up now."
The gavel echoed against the table as the council of Katarina's was called to order.
"This psycho tried to have Maple killed!" Hotblooded Katarina snapped pointing accusingly at the red head in question. "And now she's taking a crack at us now too!"
"This is it girls!" Intellectual Katarina stated glasses shining as she led their strategy meeting. "Our Moment of Doom has arrived!"
Against someone that they have made next to zero preparations against and have no idea what they were dealing with.
Katarina tightened her grip on her legendary weapon even as Malty was laughing at her.
"Oh is the little girl throwing a temper tantrum?" Malty laughed at Katarina in a voice of dignified arrogance. "I should introduce you to my sister. She's a spoiled little goody goody too."
"Elena. Tell me everything you know about her." Katarina stated eyes never leaving Malty.
"She's a bitch." Elena stated and Malty glared daggers at her with a look of 'I am going to murder you so hard.' "She uses fire and wind magic, aside from that I can't tell you much." Elena smirked knowingly at Malty, aware of the fact that what she was about to say was a lie but not one she has told. "As I understand it her daddy has had under guard for over a year after her last boyfriend raped her."
"Hmm." Katarina scrutinised Malty with doubtful eyes. "Is this what a rape victim acts like?"
"It's what she has told everyone. Either way I cannot testify what she has been doing in that year." Elena stated as she prepared to get her cross bow ready but Katarina stopped her.
"You three get somewhere safe. I'll handle her." Katarina stated glaring in anger as she put together a plan.
"If you insist." Elena shook her head as she and the rest of the party opted to take the long way around.
"Where have we seen a person like this before?" The five Katarina's wracked their brain for anyone they could use as a reference point and eventually came to a conclusion concerning the other 'Katarina.'
"""""Fortune Lover!""""" Katarina's five brain cells immediately concluded that they were thinking about a sixth Katarina, one from a game that until a couple of weeks ago had been the basis of their life.
"Yosh! What do we know about the old Katarina?" Excitable Katarina asked looking to her fellow idiots for confirmation.
"She got killed by George without a fight, so no martial fighting ability." Timid Katarina stated mustering her courage.
"And she didn't bother to learn magic either." The others nodded their heads in agreement but Intellectual Katarina piped in.
"This world has the convenient magic crystals that allow you to learn magic instantly though." Intellectual Katarina stated hand on her chin. "But the downside to that though is none of the improvements that skilled casting can provide you with, such as silent casting, or chant shortening and anything higher than Zweite."
Middle ranked long range fire and wind magic that needs to be spoken aloud to be of any effect. In short: close the distance and keep her mouth shut.
"What are we going to use for weapons?" Chairman Katarina asked looking around at the group.
"We've reinforced three weapons for defensive, offensive and speed power." The Spear came complete with methods to make it even more powerful. Enchantment: extracting the unique properties of a material and adding them to a weapon transformation. "The first is the Hoe, it's equip bonus 'Earth wave' moves the ground around us allowing us to reposition ourselves or our enemy and scales with our speed. The second is the halberd which we've sunk more offensive power into and is perfect for hit and run attacks. The third is the Two headed dog spear which will allow us to grab onto her and hold her in place." Intellectual Katarina explained adjusting her glasses and making them shine.
"If we're going to be using Earth wave a lot then should we prepare a SP solution too?" Excitable Katarina asked looking at the three spears in question.
"Not necessary." A fourth spear, like someone had taken a potion bottle and shoved a spear through it bottom to top. "The Equip Bonus 'SP Regeneration' should cover our needs there." Intellectual Katarina stated. The others agreed with the plan of attack as Katarina finally started to move forward.
"Help I am under attack by the Spear Hero!" Malty sneered as she got her magic ready to attack. "I, the Next Queen-"
"Air Strike Javelin!" Katarina shouted turning her spear into a mass of SP as she threw it at Malty who interrupted her casting to roll out of the way. She wouldn't get to finish it. Katarina started running at that point, delivering a running strike to the downed princess straight to the face.
"You da-" Another blow to Malty's chin. Around then she got the message that she should be defending herself so she reached out to try and wrap her hands around Katarina's throat. Sadly for Malty around that time Katarina's weapon reappeared in her hand and she shoved the head of the farm tool into the ground.
"Earth Wave!" Katarina called out the name of the skill as the dirt and ground around the blade started moving to drag it, the hero it was attached to, and after being ripped out of Malty's grasp the Red Haired Princess after Katarina grabbed her by her read hair.
"GAH! Let go of me you stupid brat!" Katarina ignored Malty in favour of dragging her along the road watching as she bounced along failing uselessly while trying to attack Katarina again. "I, the next Quee-" Before the skill timed out Katarina took a corner hard and chucked Malty across the dirt field causing her to roll in a undignified manner while Katarina threw aside the bloody clump of Malty's hair. "How dare you miserable little-!" Malty should've finished her chant, she would've gotten a hit in against Katarina if she had. Instead Katarina slammed the butt of a new weapon transformation, the halberd, into Malty's face hard enough to knock her teeth in while the stun effect activated. Katarina had plenty of time to work with, breaking Malty's arms and legs before she switched over to the two headed dog spear, it's two heads growling menacingly under Katarina's control.
"I asked you a question earlier." One of the heads snapped nearly taking Malty's nose off. "I would like an answer now."
"Go to hell!" Malty snapped, which was impressive, considering her current lack of front teeth. "I, he next-!" One of the heads snapped down, sharp white teeth wrapping around Malty's head as teeth started to dig into soft flesh.
"Test my patience further. I dare you." Malty wouldn't be doing that right now, not for any threat mind you.
"And cut." One of the knights who came with Malty shouted prompting Katarina to look at them suspiciously, Katarina was throttling Malty this entire fight, she understands that she's not much a fighter, banked on it in fact, but why hadn't any of her minions moved to intervene? Cut, as in...
"Is that crystal ball there suppose to be a camera?" Katarina barely had time to comprehend her situation before Malty suddenly turned the tables on Katarina as if the beating she had been taking just now was a complete lie where they rolled for several moments before Malty had Katarina pinned down and started wailing on her, much to the cheers of her subordinates.
For the record the past few minutes had been a lie. Anticipating that they might've been ambushed on their way out of Melromarc Katarina had instructed Kyurie to cast a illusion spell at the nearest convenience, in this case when Malty was captured during the fight, so that they can obtain intelligence on what was going on, or secretly provide aid for when for when Malty's guards attacked them, which they didn't and now they had a understanding of why.
"That is a recording crystal, which is typically used to make a visual record of events as they are occurring and replay them using illusion magic." Elena stated as she indicated the knight who had the recording crystal.
"So they made a recording of me beating up the King's daughter?" Katarina asked looking very concerned. "Ugh, that's doom flag written all over it." Katarina looked down at Malty who by now had fainted thanks in no small part to the mixture of the beating she received, intense fear and a sleeping potion Kyurie had given her. "Do we take her to Shieldfreeden with us?"
"That's a bad idea all around." Elena stated looking to Katarina like she was completely crazy. "If we go there and explain what happened they'll wring out all her wrong doings with a slave seal, including taking a swing at the shield hero. Then they'll get all high and mighty and rally for a war with Melromarc, which is one of the things that we're trying to avoid doing right now." Elena pointed out foot tapping with impatience.
"So we go back to Melromarc and explain what happened." Katarina stated as she now began thinking about how they should be trying to deal with the rest of the mooks here.
"By now the King has been shown the most unflattering cut of your clash with Malty, assuming that they didn't heavily edit it first producing a even more unflattering end result in which case we still won't get back in time." Rino stated having come to a perfectly sound conclusion. "That looks like the long distance communication type crystal they use at the Adventurers guild." She then added as an amendment.
"Lovely." The enemy finally noticed that they were there around the same moment Katarina switched over to the weapon she got from feeding a earth crystal ball to her spear. "Earth Hole." A hole suddenly materialised under the knights feet causing them to fall in as Katarina switched back to the hoe. "Earth wave." Katarina's second use of the skill filled in the hole burying the fools up to their necks with their hands sticking out in the air, crystal ball gripped firmly. "Yoink." Which Katarina then took with a petulant level of ease and proceeded to feed to her spear.
'Conditions met, Crystal Ball Spear unlocked. Main Bonus: Record.'
"Where do we go from here?" Rino asked as she proceeded to shield bash the idiot knights into submission. It took a few moments of discussion before they decided on a plan, but it was all so satisfying.
When Malty next awoke she had been stripped of her armour which was replaced by raggedy clothes.
"Oi you new meat!" The owner of Melromarc's prisoner farm shoved a hoe into Malty's hands. "Get to work!"
Malty's reply was interrupted by two things, the first the painful discovery that she had been branded with a slave seal, and the second the realisation that someone had cut out her tongue. Malty scrambled to figure out what was going on and in the process learned that someone had burned off all of her hair, between those and the beating she took during the fight and no one was able to recognise her. Malty gave a terrified glance around the farm like a lamb who realised she had been left alone with the wolves as her rags failed to hide either her gender or her well proportioned curves. Perhaps this place would help her with her rape victim act.
"Are we sure that was something we should've done just now?" Katarina asked looking at Elena like she was some kind of monster for doing something like that.
"She deserves far worst." Elena stated with a scathing glare. "Believe me."
"I'm having a hard time believing she did anything worst than that..." After unloading their cargo the girls stopped by at a road side rest stop to shower and wash away the smell of dung before they continued on their way to Shieldfreeden, while some difficulties were going on in the castle town.
The king watched the footage of the 'battle' between Malty and Katarina and in particular took note of the gleeful psychotic smirk that Katarina had as she easily smacked around Malty though clever use of skills. The King turned to look to the group of knights that the wall patrol had taken the liberty of digging out of the ground and glared at them in contempt.
"Would one of you mind explaining to me why I see none of you in this footage?" The king asked looking at the group of knights with a inquiring voice, because if they were able to make this recording then they clearly hadn't been buried alive yet. "Allow me to guess. Malty attempted to prove that she should be on Miss Claes party, and they had a duel to decide the matter which she lost. So then she had you all alter the footage so that she could get back at the spear." The soldiers were about to pipe up again but the King stopped them. "Save it!" Probably for the best considering they were really kind of bad liars. "Where's my daughter?"
"She disappeared after the fight. We assume they took her with them they buried us alive and knocked us out." The Knight stated prompting the King to make a fist.
"To Shieldfreeden. Lovely." For now he'd have to wait until Katarina came back to fight their wave until he could get a proper explanation for what actually happened.
After arriving in Shield Freeden the group was promptly rushed over to the dragon's hourglass to register, and after that were left to grind for XP and Materials until the wave arrived. Katarina explained how Growth bonuses work so Kyurie reluctantly decided to reset his level for a chance at improved health. When the wave did hit it sounded like a gong going off as reality shatters around you. The members of the Spear's party fell down a familiar golden corridor and were promptly dropped into open landscape. Holes had appeared in the sky, from which creatures were dropping out, small lizard like creatures roughly a foot high wielding halberds, and a big lizard like monster with a back lined with crystal that had been acting as their commander.
"So how are we going to get through all of that?" Elena asked looking at the vast number of lizard monsters that was currently standing in their way.
"We don't have a lot of monster clearing abilities." Katarina noted as she looked off to the side. "And there's a village over there that's going to come under threat soon too." Katarina looked at the mass of monsters that had started heading towards the nearby village. "Fuu. This would be easier if we had Maple with us." They didn't really have a plan for how they were going to deal with this did they? As they thought about that fireworks like noises started to pop out at the village indicating the crackling of magic. "They're able to look after themselves for now. Rino and Elena you guys go help them out with their defence. Kyurie do you think that you can fly me over that hoard of monsters to the boss?" The best way Katarina could think of to defend the village was to defeat the boss as quickly as possible so that there would be fewer monsters that they would have to fight while sending her allies to defend said village, largely because as part of said kill the boss quickly plan she was going to have Kyurie carry her the rest of the way over so that they could hit the thing from above. "When the fight starts cast a illusion magic around us. I don't want any of the monsters to interfere while we're fighting." Kyurie nodded his head as both of them prepared to cast some magic.
"I have read and understood the origin of power, decipher the laws of nature and fool my targets with a illusion. Zweite Mirage!" While Kyurie did that Katarina was dropped from the air.
"I, the Hero of the Spear, have read and understood the origin of power, decipher the laws of nature and envelope my target in a mass of flame! First Fire!" The fire ball made the lizard flinch when it slammed into the lizard's face but aside from that didn't do much against him. Katarina's second attack on the other hand. "Earth Wave!" The hoe struck the back of the lizard where hard crystal had formed and was made to move, being flat out torn off of the monster's back making it roar in pain and anger.
"RRRAWWWRRR!"
Katarina switched over to the halberd in time to stuff it into the charging mouth of the boss, the mouth getting a crude Glasgow grin carved into it as the sharp three prong weapon was wiggled about inside of the creature's mouth. Then the creature lifted up his head and took Katarina with it intending to slam Katarina about, and probably would have succeed to, if Katarina didn't turn the end of her weapon into dog heads to protest the mistreatment she was about to go through.
"This has been a long couple of weeks! So I'd appreciate it if you'd just chill out!"
The creature seemed to ignore Katarina, even as it struggled against the two dog heads that thanks to a abnormal amount of defensive power had more staying power then the lizard, and already had a lot of open wounds to work with. Luckily Katarina's main goal was to make the creature work for it, for it's back a open wound it was bleeding crazily even more so as it struggled to stay alive. Eventually the bleed out had done it in, for the holes in the sky closed up as the monster finally collapsed under it's own weight.
"Huu. It's over." Katarina breathed a sigh of relief as she looked around at the mass of monsters that were still lollygagging about being a generalised pain in the rear. "It's not over."
Luckily the Kobolds, the little lizards according to Katarina's spear, went down easier in comparison to Krystalak, the boss according to the spear. One hit was enough for one of them with most spears, when she found groups of them a skill was usually enough to do the job. Eventually they learned to take a wide berth, or to run away, and after a while the first group of Shieldfreeden soldiers arrived to have a go at them.
"If we leave now we'll have a few days before Melromarc's wave hits." Elena had been drinking from a cask of water as she tried to loosen up her shoulders, stiff from repeatedly firing off her cross bow at the enemies that now sat idly outside of the wall, pinned to the ground by the arrows that had been shoved into their skulls. Rino was in better condition, but then again she was also in better shape a mass of midget lizard monsters that had been split in half to show for her efforts here today by the looks of things, or which had their skulls crushed by her boots.
"No arguments here." Katarina stated cracking her neck.
"Sir Hero a word if we may." A individual with lizard scales and cat ears approached them though Elena was having none of it.
"The sooner we get back to Melromarc the faster and more effectively we can screw over the Three Heroes Church." Elena stated cutting the country representative who doubtlessly wanted to use Katarina for some political scheme off. "Is there anything you're going to ask us to do that takes priority over that?"
"A gift then for service rendered, from us to the four heroes as compensation for your troubles." Katarina was handed a bag full of familiar red sand.
"From the hourglass?" Katarina asked looking to the man for confirmation.
"Quite. You will find it a rather useful Equip Bonus when you reach high enough a level. For now though." The man stepped aside to reveal a wagon that did not smell like crap that the group gratefully took back to Melromarc with them.
Queen Mirellia Melromarc looked down at the scroll detailing the report from her shadow concerning Katarina's actions.
"It's good to see someone finally able to give Malty a bit of discipline after all of these years." Mirelia wouldn't pretend that she was guiltless in how Malty had turned out, but after years of trying and failing to correct her someone else had taken measures that she herself wasn't capable of. She was content to leave Malty in that camp for a few more days, let her mature a bit, hopefully. "The report for the sword Hero?" The Queen asked looking at the shadow and noting the scroll seemed to be rather light.
"We assumed that you did not want a report on the contents of her nightly activities, at least not in full." Well she has reached that age after all. Maybe she should introduce her to Melty, help cure some of her shyness. "We have only a loose understanding of whatever magic she's been using, but we suspect not nearly as loose as her own. She nearly killed herself when she dropped a lake on a forest, and we do not know how."
"Hmm. Flat out asking her is probably a no. No matter." It would be good to see how Siltvelt was treating the young Heroine, especially in light of the blatant attempt to kill the shield in Melromarc made by the Three Heroes Church according to the implications she read from her husband. Though to her surprise and delight she found out that they tried something much worst instead. "So Jaralis you stupid lion. Ruining one Hero wasn't enough for you, now you've attempted to sink your claws into a second one as well."
Well they were in for a bad day. The Queen had been receiving reports on Kuro, the feeling of her her shadows got concluded that she was a fundamentally alien entity in a way that literally no other before has ever been. Riling that would be a mistake, though not a mistake that would be to Siltvelt's detriment, answering for the last of Kearu's legacy was the correct course of action, even if the man himself was already long dead by now courtesy of her husband.
"Should we inform the Sword Hero of where to find the facility?" The Shadow asked looking at Mirellia with interest.
"No. The scars of the battle against my husband are still flourishing there after all." Mirellia thought about something for a while before looking to the shadow once more. "I think I've read enough reports for the evening. I'd like to see my daughter before I go to bed." The Queen stated as the shadow left to fulfil her whims.
That left Mirellia alone with the view of Faubrey with it's smoke stacks and drifting clouds of pollution and death. Never liked this country, contrary to popular belief it wasn't just the mass of depravity and lard that sat on the throne, though the lustful look he keeps shooting her during the meetings never failed to send a chill of blatant disgust from deep within her core. No it had much more to do with all this 'progress.' Children choking in the streets on smog, stars, the sun and the moons no where to be seen through all the smog, nature ripped up and processed into a steel and stone labyrinth. If this was what the Heroes world's looked like then she wasn't surprised that so many of them didn't end up returning, though why they would take measures to do... this was personally beyond her. Aw well. Couple more weeks of this fruitless negotiations and they'll let her return to her country.
Author's Note:
RonaldM40196867: Aside from the Waves? That's probably the psychopath with a very real possibility of taking over the country, followed by the Three Heroes Church.
Captain Imaginat: That was the effect I was going for. I too am enjoying that. Keel might be wrong about her Earth, but Maple isn't so pity as to correct something said in grief. That is probably always going to be my divergence from Canon, that if Trash is suppose to be some kind of Tactical Genius then he needs to act like one a lot more often. I have some ideas. Glad you like it.
Halo: Good to know.
drmcgraw186: Good to know. As someone who has had to deal with a lot of mental health issues I know this much for certain: healing demands discussion and time. Maple maybe not, but it's totally the kind of name Keel would come up with. Glad you like it.