Author's Note: Nothing to say right now. I don't want to make a Christmas Special. Read, Review, Favourite and Enjoy!
Chapter 37: Cal Mira Part 1
The girls met with Trash even as Faubrey was slowly sliding off into anarchy looking for their next ruler. Seven dungeons, one of which they already raided, all across the world each of them containing some great power, one of them as it turns out was in Merlromarc, as there were also places in Siltvelt, Shieldfreeden, Zeltoble and some places that Trash identified as Q'Ten Lo and Cal Mira. The latter most of those places were of the greatest significance less so for the dungeon and mostly because of what it inherently was. Cal Mira had a once in every 10 year activation event which can dramatically increase XP gains allowing forties to easily reach the eighties in almost no time. It was irrelevant when you considered that most of them already exceeded the nineties but then there was the fancy new reinforcement method they got from Rat that would let them level down and gain boosted stats in return. So off to Cal Mira they went.
"GUH!" Kuro had been punched across the deck of the ship, and not for the first time that day either. Everyone found their own ways of passing the time on the long boat ride, Kuro was sparring with Atla, Maple was trying to practice the dragon pulse with Sadeena, Katarina was focusing on rounding up some fish for their supper that night and Tanya was trying to figure out their next move.
"Cal Mira doesn't have a dungeon on it?" Tanya asked as her group looked at the texts on the subject they had assembled.
"The only structures that we know about are those belonging to the resort proper." Aranaya stated holding several brochures on the subject with her many arms.
Cal Mira was a vaguely Hawaiian chain of islands mostly dominated by forested jungles home to giant monsters that made it difficult to set up anything more complex than a game reserve. Course it was those same game reserves that made Cal Mira such a ideal place to level grind during it's once every ten year activation period but now they were getting off track.
"By definition the dungeon isn't 'on' anything." Tanya recalled the ten story hole in the ground that Maple had made and made the logical conclusion that what they were looking for was in fact deep, deep below the surface, but not below the ground. Because as it turns out in the middle of the island chain was not a island at all but the mass of ocean in between them. "Otto, take Sadeena and whoever we can cram into your Kigurumi's and investigate this area." Otto nodded his head while others were getting to work.
The bang of a gavel indicated that the Council of Katarina's was now in session.
"The topic of our discussion right now is our time on the Cal Mira islands." Chairman Katarina stated looking over at her counterparts.
"C'Mon you guys wanna work!?" Excitable Katarina was anything but sprawled out on the table like she was. "We're going to fantasy land Hawaii and you wanna work!?"
"If we spend all our time relaxing though Tanya will yell at us again!" Timid Katarina stated nervously wiping her hands on top of each other.
"Well killing monsters is fun anyway!" Hotblooded Katarina stated fist in the air. "And exploring the Dungeon." Actual exploration this time, not just Maple tearing her way down through the maze like some gluttonous demonic parasite constantly siphoning off the mass of the planet.
"This is what we know about the magic we picked up in Faubrey." Intellectual Katarina opened up a H.U.D. for all five of them. Creation: Manipulation and infusion of inorganic materials through magic. "Inorganic material? Like stone plastic and stuff?" Timid Katarina asked looking at the section of information that Intellectual Katarina had brought up.
"I don't think they've got plastic here." Hotblooded Katarina stated looking at the information.
"What do they mean by infusion?"
Katarina had taken a stone that she had collected at some point in time and experimentally held it in her hands and concentrated her magic into it, at which point in time a list of her skills and magic appeared in front of her face. She settled on the Soul Eat and soon noticed that her SP was being rapidly drained away.
"Well this has implications." Katarina went off to find someone to talk to about this new revelation.
Kuro's turn sparring with Atla was over and now it was her brother's turn to receive a pounding while Kuro started to have a look through her supply of swords and see what she would copy next. Then Katarina showed up.
"Catch!" Katarina tossed Tanya the stone she had been tampering with earlier who quickly dropped it when she noticed that her SP had started to drop. "Creation magic!"
"That thing that Hajime guy was talking about?" Kuro felt like she missed out on some important details between talk of the universe self destructing so she went looking through the list of different kinds of magic that she had learned. "Lets see what happens when..." First Kuro traced a copy of your average steel sword, then she infused it with lightning that she took from the thunder-sword, predictably the legendary sword gave no response to trying to copy what was basically already one of it's forms. So instead Kuro infused it with her own water magic.
'Weapon Copy Activated. Hydrogen Sword. Main Ability: Flammable Gas.'
Which while it did have potential it also wasn't what she was going for so instead she dismissed the trace of the sword and replaced it with another one, the Chimera Dragon Sword. And got no response for her trouble.
"So you can't affect organic material you cheap bastard?" Kuro asked as she dismissed the blade and instead got another blank steel blade. "If I take lightning from the Thunder Sword, my own water Magic and fire from one of my skills then..." Suddenly the blade erupted in a jet of blue hot flame. Kuro didn't even need to read the notification to figure out what the Plasma sword does. "Oh this has potential!"
Stacking together multiple skills from her blades into one needlessly nasty package with ludicrous offensive power. She was going to have fun with this.
Maple was currently struggling with the magic Sadeena had been teaching her. She understood the part where she's suppose to put pure magical power into something and then mix it together but that was where things were getting difficult for her. Whenever she tried to connect her power to that of the water this weird... jigsaw puzzle for lack of a better term would appear in her vision. But she couldn't get all the pieces to fit together which was apparently a good thing, since according to Sadeena she didn't need all the pieces of the puzzle just a few between her pieces and the waters, which was even harder. Now instead of trying to fit together one puzzle this had been the equivalent of all the left over pieces of various different Jigsaws that got lost or broken back in elementary school being dumped into one box and being told to make something out of it. What Maple was trying to say in this broken metaphor was this is hard.
"There you go." Sadeena stated as she was watching Maple. The girl in question opened her eye to look at the bucket of water she drew from the sea.
"I don't see anything." Maple stated looking at the still lifeless and unmoving bucket.
"Not yet, you're not that good sweetie." Sadeena stated as she lightly patted Maple's shoulder. "What you're doing, and improving on, is rapidly cycling through the connection points between your magic and that of the water. Once you can do this fast enough you'll be ready to start casting for real." Maple idly nodded her head as she continued to sort through the pieces until they all simply scattered when her magic ceased being hers and just blended into the water.
The old lady was fighting with Raphtalia and the others in the mean time, taking on Raphtalia, Filo, Keel and Rifana all at the same time, the addition of Maple to the mix wouldn't improve their chances either as she was ironically enough the most vulnerable to the old lady's attacks. The description of point was similar to the attack that Glass woman used to traumatise her and she'd like to be able to defend against it.
"Granny!" Maple dismissed the shield armour and instead switched over to her weakest shield while going over to meet with the old lady, however she was instead called in for a meeting with Tanya and the others.
It was a curious thing, the random rock that Katarina had found a way of infusing with the skill from the Soul Eater that Maple had killed. Curious and scary in many ways. She saw first hand the weapon that the Church Wielded and though it wasn't enough to defeat her in her savage form the fact that the Church felt confident enough to try spoke volumes.
"So what do we do with this?" Maple asked tossing the rock away. "Do we start mass producing weapons with skills embedded in them?"
"That's probably not a good idea." Tanya stated bluntly. "Like many other things there's a lot here that we do not precisely understand to do something like that." In other words research and experimentation. "We also don't know what's waiting for us in Cal Mira's dungeon too, which is the reason why I intend for us to spend the full time there grinding up levels and experience with the whip Hero." Rat herself was busy in her laboratory conducting research. Currently she was comparing tissue and DNA samples from Filo and Midori to that of a normal Filolial, her goal here being to produce similar results without input from a legendary Hero. "In any case until we do get there and get our hands on some more material that we can experiment with we should put the experiments with Creation on hold for now."
As Tanya said that news came in from the crew: a massive storm appeared on the horizon they were going to be in for a bumpy ride. Maple got the idea to use Sadeena, Otto and the Shield of the Beast King to power their way over to the island they had been travelling towards through the storms and rough waves. They made it there in record time.
"The water's red." Maple noted looking over the side of the ship and down at the waves below. "Does it have something to do with the activation event?" Maple asked while she was looking down at the water.
"Most likely. The water wasn't like that approaching the island." Tanya stated noting the clear blue waters further away from the islands. "The only other logical explanation is that someone, for some reason, decided to dump a massive quantity of red dye of some sort into the waters off the coast of the island." Which while a good point also meant they had other things they needed to do today.
Count Habenburg greeted them as the representative of Cal Mira and soon explained to them some basic rules of etiquette for grinding on the islands.
1. They are not the only ones there, hundreds of other people have come to these islands in order to grind for XP so while it is okay to kill monsters by the dozens it's not okay to interfere with other people's gains, in short if someone else is already fighting a monster leave them alone and they will show you the same courtesy.
2. Protect the environment, though Cal Mira's monsters reproduce and grow at an accelerated rate during the event it's plant life and topography does not, thus it would be appreciated if they didn't do things like dumping destructive AOE magic on the trees, making barricades and makeshift forts, or swallowing entire chunks of the landscape into their weapons.
"You accidentally eat one city." Maple complained when everyone shot her amused knowing looks. "It wasn't even big enough to be called a city, and most of it is still standing!"
Moving on from Maple's trauma. The main island is home to a five star resort with anti-curse hot-springs, a eatery filled with exotic foods from around the world, world class blacksmiths, alchemists, accessory merchants and a message from the Heroes of the past in the form of a local tourist attraction. While adventurers had come for the monsters there was a huge demand created for services that would be catering to them.
"What do you know about the Dungeon?" Tanya asked while her associates read the magic on the totem pole that was left for them from the past Heroes.
"Dungeon?" The count asked looking at Tanya suspicious. "Ancient ruins, or possibly underground and or underwater structures."
"There are ruins of past civilisations on the islands." The count helpfully informed prompting Tanya to roll her eyes.
"Good enough, thank you for your information. Now take us to our rooms." When Tanya and the others did arrive back in the resort she was outlining a game plan to her fellow heroes that would then be relayed to their respective party members. "Each of the islands is a potential site of the dungeon entrance." Tanya stated bluntly.
"So each of us will investigate the islands while we're out grinding while Otto, Sadeena and Chem go into the water to investigate the possibility of what's going on below." A map had been drafted up for visual purposes. "For the sake of efficient grinding we will decide upon which island we will go to in advance. Katarina you'll go to the dog island." Suddenly Katarina was quaking in terror.
"Allow me to guess, you're scared of dogs?"
"Y-y-yes! I've never met a dog that hasn't chased me up a tree!" Katarina snapped eye twitching.
"Maybe that's the reason why you're so good at it." Maple commented while Tanya just face palmed.
"As I was saying. Katarina will go to the island full of Squirrels, I'll take the one with the dogs, Maple will deal with the Penguins and Kuro can go rabbit hunting." Katarina let out a truly relieved sigh at Tanya's instructions. "And Maple: try not to break the island's back."
"What exactly do you guys think I do with my free time?" Maple retorted glaring at the three of them. "Press my shield to the ground and just soak up entire area's into my shield?"
"Isn't that exactly what you did in Faubrey?" Kuro asked and Maple received a severe blow.
"I seem to remember stumbling across a chunk of the forest that looked like all the trees had been ripped out." Katarina stated causing Maple to get another hit.
"The last order of business before the night's out is our levels. Efficiency demands that we level down ourselves and our parties before we go out and harvest XP in the morning." Tanya stated as she pulled the group's attention away from Maple's questionable regard for the environment. "I intend to go down to level one, my party down to forty." Which was about as far down as they could go thanks to the class up ritual. "With the growth bonuses and high Relationship Meter with my party they should be more than capable of tearing through the enemy ranks. For now I will be increasing offensive power, with my other stats getting attention as the days progress." Everyone nodded their heads in agreement. "Good. I intend to go pay a visit to the hot springs." Tanya stated prompting Katarina to suddenly stand up straight and shoot her fist into the air.
"Yes! Finally time for some vacation!" Katarina stated feeling more than a little haggard after nearly two month's of work with no vacation.
"So that I can feed some of the curse breaking water to my bow and hopefully suppress the negative effects of the cursed series before it eats my soul." Tanya stated taking the wind out of Katarina's sails.
"Enjoying the hot-springs for the sake of them isn't a bad idea Tanya." Maple scolded prompting the girl to let out a sigh. A night of relaxation to bleed out the horrors of the past two month's wouldn't go unopposed.
Their three aquatic demi-humans took a dive beneath the water while boats were chartered for the four islands.
"So we're doing this again?" Welt asked fresh from a level down to forty by Kuro and holding the thunder sword she traced. "Yep." Kuro stated as she ate some of the fruit she stole from the resort before clapping her hands together.
"I feel compelled to point out that there are other people on this island who would neither appreciate being electrocuted to death or be very forgiving about being nearly electrocuted to death." Welt stated tapping his foot impatiently.
"Not the whole island obviously, just where the juiciest fruit hangs." Clapping her hands together as she finished her snack Kuro used her magic to pick up a chunk of the ocean around her and proceed deeper within. Poor little rabbits never stood a chance.
Mass manipulation magic was among the first things that Tanya had learned back in Germania's military academy, making objects heavier, the area that they affected, or making them lighter for flight. Ironic then that now that she had nearly been reduced to zero that this would be the magic that she made use of in crushing the enemy forces. She found that it had a great deal in common with wind and earth magic. Disturbingly so in fact. But that was neither here now there.
"Does it count as using weapons other than your bow when you do stuff like that?" Vicktoriya commented watching several boulders float through the air.
"Technically they're the products of her magic." Rishia commented causing Tanya to become annoyed.
"Quiet both of you." Tanya stated as she awaited confirmation.
"Aranaya, the enemy locations?" The spider woman had been serving as lookout as she used webs and telescope to search the area and track the presence of monster packs and people who were suppose to be fighting them.
"All clear!" The spider woman gave the signal, Tanya applied the weight and size increasing magic to the stones and dropped them, each crushing dozens of monsters beneath them as the XP proceeded to flow into Tanya's and her companions bodies.
Katarina didn't have any fancy training or abilities that made it possible for her to unleash large scale AOE attacks at low levels. Luckily though she knew people who did.
"WWWHHHOOOAAAOOO!" Katarina was doing her best to hold onto Midori as she rode on him piggy back style while six of his hammers worked in tandem to obliterate monsters around them while Kyurie seemed to use illusion magic to weaponize the sun and slaughter monsters with focused beams of light.
What exactly were they showing all this enthusiasm for? It was like they were competing with each other.
"Those two have way too much free time on their hands." Elena stated watching the death that was spreading throughout the jungle as the two boys competed for Katarina's attention.
"Shouldn't we be doing something?" Rino asked and in response Elena gestured to the dust clouds that had been kicked up.
"And what exactly are going to do with your puny mortal legs and non wide scale mass slaughtering magic against that?" Elena stated indicating the death and destruction throughout the island. Midori claimed that in comparison to Filo he was actually extremely slow, she pitied Maple right now.
"Ramming speed Filo!" The next Queen of the Filolials was using her master as a battering ram against the monsters of the island sucking them up into her shield, though that was only a secondary benefit.
'The Legendary Shield has requested the Hero to stop doing that.'
The Notification flew by Maple's vision as she made her way to the island ruins, using provoke to lure groups of Monsters as she went along. Raphtalia and the others were already there as the penguins had already been lured into a ambush. Raphtalia's illusion meant that they didn't even notice the razor wire that they had pulled taught after Filo ran by. The penguins decapitated themselves on the wire, and since Keel and Rifana had been holding onto it at the time it counted as their kills so that was soon over with rather quickly.
"Well we're here at the ruins." Maple stated looking at what she was reasonably certain had something to do with the dungeon they had been looking for: on account of the mysterious black orb floating in the air.
"What does that do?" Maple asked as she reached out to touch the orb only for Raphtalia to stop Maple's hand forcibly.
"Something that we probably shouldn't try to provoke." Raphtalia suggested in a way that made clear it wasn't really a suggestion at all.
"Maybe you're right." Maple stated as she moved away from the mystery orb. Then again maybe it didn't matter what they did because the orb sent out a pulse of something and it was like the monsters never died as they rose up alive and pissed.
"Well that's new." Maple stated as she got her shield out.
A few moments later resurrection was made impossible as the monsters had all been fed to her shield.
"We definitely found something like the dungeon in Faubrey." Maple turned to Raphtalia and nodded her head, Raphtalia held up her hand and shot light magic into the sky, the signal for the others. "Now all we have to do is set up camp." Maple and the others nodded while they did so and did some exploring around the ruins of the island. When camp was finished though it was not their fellow heroes they ran into but rather two unfamiliar faces.
"Is everything alright here!" A man with a scythe asked looking around the area for the battle that clearly did not happen here, joined by a blue haired woman wearing a tiara.
"Yes why wouldn't it be?" Keel asked looking genuinely confused.
"The distress flare?" The scythe man asked as he started realise that they were now on the receiving end of a joke of the universe.
"You mean the flare we sent up to signal our allies on the other islands that we found something?" Raphtalia asked indicating the black orb that they found earlier.
"What is it?" The Scythe Wielder asked looking between the lot of them.
"No idea." As Maple said that she found her way into a open room inside of the ruins, with Raphtalia following closely behind her.
"Careful Maple, we don't know that much about what is going on in here." Raphtalia stated looking at the magic circle suspiciously.
"This ruin has been open for god knows how long. It's practically a tourist attraction. Any trap here has long since been tripped." Que a light hitting Maple's shield, the magic circle activating and Raphtalia and Maple suddenly disappearing into thin air.
"Okay. Now it's a distress flare." Rifana stated having seen what just happened and having bugger all that she could do about it before Raphtalia and Maple disappeared.
The first red flag that came to mind was the state of the ruins that were around them, namely that they weren't. Long gone was the ancient ruins turned Cal Mira tourist trap that had taken them here and instead was a pristine building that couldn't have been ten years old. The second red flag they encountered was a monster that crashed through the roof top of the building that they were in which they quickly had to put down. The destroyed chunk of building however revealed a familiar portal swirling in the sky. Singular, as in one massive one that was dropping monsters from the sky, large enough that the planet on the other side was highly visible.
""Oh damn it!""
Review Section:
RonaldM40196867: If you say so. A dungeon is by definition a underground prison. So yes they are still in use. I think singularly pushing blame onto the three of them is wrong. That isn't to say they shouldn't be held accountable for their actions, only that they are not singularly responsible.
.1302: Seemed like a good pick for bow hero to me.
Captain Imaginat: Noble and Wise? He just tossed a bucket on top of a frenzy of sharks so that they would eat each other, he intends to drive the country into the ground one bloody massacre at a time if he has to.
IsekaiFanBoi: Yeah, pretty much.
Onishin Tsukitenshi: I don't see how.
Halo: Why do you bully Maple?
reinDank: It wouldn't be the first time Hajime built a gun in a fantasy world. No he got isekai'd after he got de-isekai'd.
Kisame Hoshigaki: He who fight's monsters and all that jazz.