Author's Note: Okay so didn't get as much writing done this week as I would've liked, new games out this week. So with that said please, Read, Review, Favourite and Enjoy!
Chapter 22: The Seven Star Hero
The wave continued the theme of undead that was started in Melromarc with ghostly abominations raining down from the sky, ghastly torso's with hands, Zeltoble's nets and spear guns did absolutely nothing to contain them, only magic to outright eliminate them.
"Those of you that can use magic keep buffing the berserkers!" Tanya shouted while using her arrows to cut down the ghosts. It was the economical strategy, for every Zweite level spell they could spit out they could coat three of the weapons of the Berserkers in magic and each one would last for about seven or eight swings. Compare and contrast blasting them with magic outright "Someone get me the 411 on what Kuro's doing!"
As it turns out, Kuro was slaughtering the enemy. Her natural ability to soak up magical power sucked the essence out of the ghastly creatures causing any that got close to her to turn to dust. And yet that was not even her most destructive ability on display here. Kuro once again turned both of her blades into the dual lightning swords, and summoned two thousand steel blades through the combination of Thousand Sword and Steel Butterfly Sword. Magic was a matter of creativity and application, so the magus who watches enough science fiction to know how to magic a rail gun into existence wins.
"Now what's the best way to do this?" Kuro wondered and so opted to hold both blades above her head in a stabbing position. "That looks about right." The first of the blades were lowered between the arching lightning and fired off like a makeshift rail-gun instantly vaporising the blade and everything in it's way. One down, 1999 left to go, and dozens of dead monsters for it, in comparison to her earlier rain of swords this seemed much more efficient, though it would be more problematic if she has to look out for others too.
"And they call me a cheater." Kuro looked to the self proclaimed hero of the projectiles and was left... surprised. Oh there were projectiles alright, and claws, and a hammer resting on his shoulder. "You're shooting harder and farther then what the bow hero is even capable of!"
"It's call imagination." Kuro stated not even pausing in her monster slaughtering as she continuously wiped out everything around her. "And while we're on the subject those do not look like projectile weapons to me." Kuro commented looking at the weapons.
Not that she's one to talk, having already memorised the forms of those weapons and in all likely hood very capable of shooting them out of her reality marble like a bullet.
"No." The human shaped abomination smiled as he stepped forward for a charge. "They're not."
Well he was a fool if nothing else. Kuro responded to the straight charge by turning one of her blades into the giant great sword she copied back in Siltvelt, lowered it into the path of his charge, and then used the other one to conduct lightning through the blade to fry the miserable bastard from the inside out. And yet he continued to walk forward, lightning in his veins and giant blade splitting his abdomen be damned, until he grabbed Kuro around her throat with both of his hands and proceeded to squeeze. Light flashed through the two of them and the sword icon disappeared from Kuro's vision at the same time the sword in the multi-weapon hero's abdomen disappeared while the lightning sword transformed back into the default of the legendary sword and flew into his hand. Well that was new. Kuro snapped the remaining hand after enhancing her grip strength and sucked in sweet oxygen as he turned around and laughed. Her stats had dropped too, it took a unreasonably large amount of mana right now to strengthen herself until she was strong enough to break the fool's bones.
"Impressive isn't it?" The cheats continued to appear as the broken arm reassembled itself and the hanging entrails of the bleeding stomach wound were slurped back up. "But then again, that's what happens when you're chosen by god."
"To do what?" Kuro chose to interpret 'chosen by god' as 'oh this is going to go down hill isn't it?'
"Not your concern." The man looked at the storage function for the sword and spat out a corpse Kuro was keeping inside. He inhaled sharply, boiling rage rolling off of his form, the weapons he had on his person changed form covering themselves in cursed symbols as approximations of animals appeared on them. Scorpion, Snake, Boar, Fox, Bear, Dragon, Lion. Chimerical abominations from the deepest depth's of hell, he turned to face Kuro, a whole rainbow of unpleasantness wafting off of his form in waves. "You're kind of cute. In a few years you'd be a absolute knock out. On top of that your looks are pretty exotic, even by the standards of other worlders. What I'm saying is I thought I would simply add you to my collection back home." There was no smile there any more, just a suppressed look of rage on his features. "But now I'm going to kill you."
"Good speech." Kuro spawned two of the magic potion swords and grabbed hold of them, letting their mana regeneration flow into her. She had no option to skip the process today, considering the sheer amount of power this one would cost her, instead she had to sink it in one by one exhausting and restoring magical power so that she could do it again. Course he wasn't content to let her do as she pleases.
"Foolish Sinner!" The creature wearing a human face snapped accusingly sword raised into the air and pointing accusingly. "I hereby sentence you to lose your unworthy head before the eyes of the gods you serve! Guillotine!"
Barbed wire wrapped around Kuro and tightly spooled around her body as the falling blade of a Guillotine appeared above her head. Huh. So that's what that does. Kuro pondered the implications as she manufactured a giant's blade beneath her feet and used it's spontaneous entry into creation to push her way out of the way of the falling blade, much to the confusion of the man who attempted the execution.
"You have a blessing too?" The eldritch thing with half a dozen weapons hanging off of his body asked his grip tightening on one of them.
"Oh I got stuff you can't even imagine." Kuro laughed as she let the madness she felt come through. "Come on now! Show me Excalibur! The Nine Lives! Ascalon! Gram!" The man's face cramped up as he started realise what he was dealing with. "Do you have any idea how many swords I shoved into that thing and I don't have the levels for!?" Oh Kuro was fighting against a inhuman monster, but she was a monster made out of other monsters, armed with other monsters, and she would not be taken lightly. "Come on now! Show me! Show me!" The thing's teeth ground as he spat out another skill.
"Foolish sinner! Within the this virgin of cold ore, who shall swallow even your screams with her embrace, suffer in anguish as your entire body is stabbed and skewered! I cast the Iron Maiden!"
The barbed wire wrapped around Kuro's body again as she was lifted off into the air as something else came down from the sky, a massive Iron Maiden, which was then lowered down to be on the same level as the rising Kuro with a clasp of his fist the weapon thief slammed the doors shut on Kuro.
"Don't get me wrong or anything big guy." However the doors could not close, and soon Kuro, and the giant battle axe she made manifest, fell back to the ground with Kuro using the weapon, now lodged in the ground, as a chair. "The torture attacks are good and all, but I really wanna see the good stuff now. The Nine lives have more free revives than a cat and Excalibur could split this entire battlefield in half with one swing of it's blade!"
The Noble Phantasms could be copied into the legendary sword, but as existences that were not native to this world they could not be sustained for any reasonable period of time. But if she could make copies of the Legendary Sword's copy's? That would be different. The Man's face cringed again, come to think of it he hasn't used anything other than the Guillotine and another torture like attack.
"Oh I get it, you can't use anything other than those torture like attacks can you?" The man crushed his teeth hard enough to make them shatter and then regenerate.
"Dark Burning Curse!" The Draconic claws released a slash wave of black fire at Kuro who opted to block with a overgrown shield. "Greedy Strike!" The hammer and Axe swung out one at a time, the hammer slamming into a shield spat out and with a shock wave completely covered the thing in rust and making it fall apart. "Devour!" Kuro got out of the way of the axe strike in time for it to hit the ground where she was standing and swallow the ground in the area that he hit. "Control!" He then followed up by whipping out his whip and lashed out with it and missed again. "Stop moving!" The increasingly frustrated thief of weapons snapped as he finally started to have enough of the girl.
"Why would I do this?" Kuro asked hands to the side as she shrugged her shoulders. "After I get my sword back I'm gonna take you prisoner as I torture you and figure out who told you how to steal weapons and where all this raw power is coming from." It couldn't have been cheap.
Guillotine's description from when she still had the sword told her that it would automatically use up all of her magic and spirit, the fact that this was his opening move and he was still going strong told her that there was more going on here. She was going to enjoy extracting that information.
"You and what army?" The Thief asked teeth and malice on full display.
"I don't need a army." Kuro stated smiling as the fool left himself wide open. "I have a knife." It landed smack dab in the centre of his scalp when she let it drop, it cost her enough mana to make three lesser Noble Phantasms but it was oh so worth it as his stolen weapons started to glow from the effects of the world's most shoddily designed dagger.
"What did you do?" The Thief's face made a variety of funny shapes as he tried to keep his grip on his stolen weapons and failed spectacularly even as the dagger faded and the wound healed.
"Rule Breaker, personal ritual dagger of someone else who was chosen by the gods, to betray everyone and everything she knew and loved and be rewarded by scorn and pain. The ultimate shatterer of oaths and contracts handed down by blood and gods. Enjoy, you stupid git!" The accessories he attached to his prizes shattered, the sword flew back into Kuro's hand, the other weapons turned into light as they flew off into the sky and scattered, whispers of '...thank you...' passing through Kuro's ears.
'That was unpleasant.' Kuro felt a phantom of a shiver crawl up her sword, through her arm and her spine just from the second hand violation that she felt in the process.
"Now then. I have questions, and you answers." Kuro said, and then the thief suddenly fell over, if it wasn't obvious why he then proceeded to melt away taking all of his clothes and armour with him. "What is with today?"
Maple and her party, along with the Berserkers, approached the boss for the wave. At first Katarina was about to volunteer to take it but upon seeing what the boss was Maple stated that she would be the one to handle it, and here they were, three headed snake monster dripping ominous fluids from it's mouth as it walked forward.
"Time to test this one out! Dedicated Affection!" Yet another skill from New World Online, this one unlocked by the Shield of Compassion.
And as is appropriate for the weapon called Compassion, Maple is made to feel what ever her allies feel because whatever attacks that land on them instead gets transferred over to her, provided the blows exceed her appallingly high defence anyway, the downside to that was that her health was suppose to constantly drain away but honestly, Maple's health regeneration negated most of that. It also synced well with another shield she had unlocked, the Charge Blade and it's offensive power in exchange for taking hits but for now there were other things to worry about. Case in point.
"Maple, how did you beat the hydra when you fought it before?" Raphtalia asked blade ready to strike in response to Maple's earlier claim.
"I ate it." That comment made the rest of the party face plant. "It's meat was really peppery at first, but it's poison really helped to tone down the pepperyness."
"Let's call that plan B." Keel stated while quietly screaming in his mind 'my god what was this kid doing before she came here!?'
"Or Plan Z." Rifana followed up with similar thoughts screeching in her mind.
"True. But onto the main point. The necks are a massive weakness, so first we're going to bait it's heads into attacking and restrain them, then you guys and the berserkers can start taking swings at them until they break." Maple stated spitting out something that sounded like a actual sound strategy as opposed to the incarnation of madness and so the others nodded their heads.
"Just remember to get those trap's shut." Eclair stated looking at the mouths spewing poison. "Even if you, and with that skill us, are immune to poison that doesn't mean we should still be breathing it in."
"That'll be the easy part!" Maple activated the pseudo devour of her shield as she walked towards the hydra, the monster spat out a stream of poison at Maple, who responded by hoisting up her shield and sucking the cloud inside. Then three shields transformed into rope shields and tied themselves around the snake's three faces and necks forming a intricate knotted muzzle. Unfortunately, Maple hadn't taken any precautions to keep her feet rooted on the ground, so the heads started to swing her around slamming her into the ground repeatedly. "It's okay!" Maple's sentence was interrupted as she was slammed into the ground again. "They can't damage me!" On a side note Maple decided that she was going to unlock something to recreate heavy body as soon as possible.
"Can't get a clear shot!" Rifana cursed as she tried to manoeuvre her cross bow to take a shot and found herself failing miserable. "Maple you need to stop it's movements somehow!"
"I got an idea!" By now the monster had gotten predictable, the indents her body was leaving in the ground demonstrated the area's where the Heads would be swinging, so Maple employed her own three headed monster. "Air Strike Shield! Change Shield: Cerberus Shield!"
The mass of Sp in question appeared and the heads slammed into it, the heads glowing their eyes menacingly and growling audibly as they came to life. What followed was a battle of three snake heads against three dog heads as the heads of the Cerberus stretched out and clamped down on the ropes and necks of the Hydra. The Berserkers took advantage of that, with axes, and hammers, and clubs they moved to break limbs and cut necks and there was nothing the Hydra could do to stop them. Keel and Raphtalia jumped on it's back like mad men while Rifana lined up her shots and tore through the poor bastard. The severing of three heads indicated that the monster had died and the sky reverting to normal.
"Huu. Glad that's done." What Maple said next though would haunt their dreams for years to come. "Dinner's on me! We'll have lots of Hydra for dinner tonight!"
Thus the Girl's all agreed never to eat anything the Shield Hero makes for them. Moving on. Maple succeeded in feeding the hydra's corpse into her shield and getting a new skill, 'Hydra Bite.'
"Come on guys it's not that bad!" Maple stated holding out the Hydra shield for the others to attack and no one moving an inch to take a swing at her shield, just the opposite in fact.
"You use to spice your meat with poison!" Raphtalia shouted while she was hiding behind one of the hairier of the berserkers. "Your opinion of 'it's not so bad' is invalid!"
Tanya touched down in the area a few moments later.
"Good you're here." Eclair stated notably hiding further back then what Raphtalia had been. "Maybe you can talk some sense into her."
"What's the situation?" Tanya asked looking around at the mass of poison that was left lying on the ground. "She wants to test the skill she got from the boss. Big scary snake, lots of poison." Eclair stated staring at the girl from the corner of her eye like she was looking at some mad person. "Maple wants to grill it using the poison as a spice."
"Maple, do you still have the rest of the snake?" Tanya asked while she choose to ignore the last part of that statement.
"Sure here you go." Maple stated as she handed over one of the heads from her shield's storage space, and Tanya absorbed it into her bow.
The weapon that was unlocked was like three snakes twisting themselves into a braid that had ultimately been shaped like a bow. Tanya pulled tight and fired the the skill into the air over a distant group of ghost monsters, Ghasts as her bow had informed her.
"Acid Rain." Appropriate name, for the skill created a cloud of purple poison that rained on the ghosts and outright melted them into nothingness.
"What was that?" Katarina and Kuro arrived a few moments later, eyes on the rapidly depleting cloud of poison that was seeping into the ground.
"The boss's skill." Tanya stated indicating the corpse. "The one from the Ghasts is pretty good too!" Katarina stated looking mighty proud of herself.
"Intangibility?" Tanya recalled the skill as a huge SP drain that caused her to sink into the ground for a few minutes before forcibly expelling her matter back to the surface.
"No I mean the other one from the loot drop!" Katarina explained as she gestured behind her. Midori was pulling along Filo's carriage, to Filo's protests, not with his hands which were currently on a pair of oversized war hammers, but rather with the bony hands of a Ghast behind him. "Check it out! The Amulets unlock a skill called 'Helping hands' that lets you equip extra weapons!"
Something suddenly clicked inside of Maple's mind.
"Everyone listen up!" Maple climbed onto the shoulders of one of the Berserkers. "We need to round up as many Ghast corpses as possible!"
Like in New world online it was possible to equip up to three accessories, one for the head and two more for the wrists. So with this in mind Maple had Midori wear one of the amulets around his neck like the necklace it was supposed to be and two more around his wrists like bracelets. Six Ghostly hand's came off of Midori's body and Maple had the Berserkers surrender their hammers, they offered no resistance, for what they saw was the most beautifully theoretically violent thing they have ever laid eyes on.
"Eight war hammers?" Elena stated looking at a smiling Midori who was twirling eight war hammers around like they were batons.
"I hope you have more of those things." Raphtalia asked looking around at the howling Berserkers who had gone out of their way to show their approval to the concept of getting to dual wield eight hammers at once.
"Maybe if it was possible to breed Ghasts." Kuro commented as she looked at the Ghast entry on the monster book.
'Ghast: Although called ghosts it would be more accurate to think of them as being fragments of souls that have passed on. They feed off of the spiritual energy of others and when they've reached a critical mass they break apart into several smaller Ghasts.'
"They eat spirit power." Kuro stated having finished reading the entry.
"Does that mean that we have to raise these things ourselves if we want them to procreate so that we can harvest them for amulets?" Maple asked noting that there were still a few of the Ghasts that were left on the battlefield.
"Um... something called SP just popped up in my help screen." Midori stated hand raised in the air. "And it seems that helping hands is draining it some."
"So everyone has SP then." Katarina concluded head tilting to the side. "I wonder why most people can't use it?"
"No idea." Tanya stated shrugging her shoulders. "It does warrant the question of what SP is though. Some how I don't think these things are here to inconvenience Heroes on their way to fight the boss." Even though they had ultimately only been a inconvenience in the grand scheme of things.
"While we're trying to figure that out though, we should probably talk about our ally the Hero of the Projectiles and why he is dead now."
Out in Faubrey a clear tubular chamber opened up and out spilled a young handsome man in the nude with short blonde hair.
"I take it things didn't go so well in Zeltoble Takt?" A short girl in a lab coat asked approaching the man in question.
"That miserable Brat! She took them!" The man called Takt held out his hand as if calling something to him, and forced to acknowledge that he didn't have any weapons to use as a makeshift cane he could only curse and use the girl to help him up.
"Which ones?" The girl of course need not ask what he was referring to, only how many they needed to get back now in addition to the ones they had yet to acquire.
"All of them!" Takt snapped as he grew increasingly angrier.
"Then we had better get a substitute ready. He wants to see you." After Takt got dressed he equipped himself with a silver whip before going to meet with the king in his chambers, less his formerly heroic visage is impacted.
The king exceeded every description made of him: 'hideous greased pig' did not even begin to cover it. He was not with any of his 'toys' at the moment, though the presence of one of his more reliable mouth pieces indicated that there was more serious matters at play then another hunt for more of the deranged king's play things.
"What is it? I'm not in the mood for games today old man." Takt stated clearly still expecting the privileges of his station even though he could no longer technically call himself the Hero of the Whip, let alone any of his other titles.
"It has come to our attention that a unusually high number of legendary heroes have been summoned on this particular occasion." The mouth piece stated hands folded together.
"Yeah. I met them in Zeltoble." Takt stated still having a painful reminder of the so-called 'Dagger of Betrayal' that triggered the rebellion of his weapons. "All girls."
"But not women?" The advisor asked, smiling all the same at the implications at hand.
"The oldest, the shield, looks like she's in her early teens. The second oldest, the sword, should've just entered breeding age. The other two are still too young for that." The adviser smiled knowingly at Takt's statement.
"More than enough. As you know in spite of his frequent... activities in that regard and the many, many years of doing so he has yet to produce a heir to our empire." Perhaps he should keep one of his 'wives' alive long enough to give birth. "Course this is not entirely his fault, for the child must be born of the blood of other worlders." Ah and two currently viable wombs for that purpose, plus another two more only a couple of years away from being viable. "The Spear has refused our invitations on the behalf of the rest of the heroes." Yes, he remembered that. Quite amusing considering the spear nearly skewered him. "They seem to be of the opinion that we are more than capable of handling our own waves."
Which while factually true also made them wholly irrelevant. The real issue here was that with no clear heir, let alone one of age, the ensuing civil war for when the King inevitably does die do to circumstances of his advancing by the day age and perpetually unhealthy lifestyle finally kills him will rip their country apart. The king might not care about what happens to the country that has been shaped into little more than a mechanism to perpetuate his fetishes after he dies but the rest of them have to live here.
"So you mean for me to acquire them?" Takt asked hands gripping empty air where weapons should rightfully be right now.
Author's Note:
RonaldM40196867: True. Unfortunately Tanya's plans rarely go well... as planned. Hard to say, they seem equally dysfunctional and bad. No.
Kisame Hoshigaki: I have no idea what F means in this context.
Captain Imaginat: I repeat, Maturity and Cunning. Or a explanation was given to her by someone else that summoned Heroes would understand to use to explain things to them. Very. That is something you'll have to wait to find out.
Halo: Well didn't go up his ass but I think this is just as good.
xerad: Fitoria is the one who has been fighting all of the waves that the Heroes don't deal with, both in Shield Hero canon and in Cute Heroes Canon. Hope I didn't disappoint.
drmcgraw186: Sorry. She's had a long time to learn. So yes, butt will be kicked.
Steppe14: Because I despise the ass-pull that was secretly making that idiot a genius, so I made him a genius from the start.