Author's Note: Merry Christmas everyone! No holiday specials but you can still consider my gift to all of you!
Chapter 39: The Bow Hero of the Past
"Ow-Ow-Ow!"
"Well what did you think was going to happen?" Mamoru, the Shield Hero, asked as he wrapped bandages soaked with antidote and imbued with healing magic around his companion's arm. Poisonous, acidic and explosive, a rather nasty triple hit combo that even with the limited power to manipulate the forces of the universe would still take some work to heal.
"They were kids! How was I suppose to know one of them could turn into a flipping dragon!" The Mutilated Tanuki woman stated defensively.
As painful as it was for him to admit it they had lost the waves. Their last best chance at stopping them were dead, at his hands no less, well his and Hajime, that guy didn't seem to have much of a interest in fighting the waves himself, claiming that he was targeting the root of the problem. That unfortunately left only himself, Fitoria, Natalia and Wendelin to fight the waves while that guy attempts to find a way of putting a end to the situation that they were in permanently.
"Natalia and Mamoru!" The two of them spun around to face two children that were looking at them while seated in a tree, the one with brown skin and pinkish hair was holding a familiar silver with black stripes shield.
"Where did you get that!?" Mamoru snapped ready for the offensive but was surprised when Kuro simply made the shield disappear into thin air.
"I made it." Kuro emphasised the point with three more identical shields just like it. "The original is still where ever you left it in this time period." Kuro stated dismissing the shields.
"Ugh. Another time Traveler." The injured Tanuki stated grunting in pain. "Sorry, I'm afraid I'm not in fit state to entertain today."
"I heard. What did they throw at you to do all of that?" Kuro stated examining history behind the woman.
Ah. The Yew bow with a excessive amount of Hydra poison: that would probably do it. The fact that Tanya was in the 200's at the time probably put the odds in her favour though the level of this lady... They were lucky she wasn't trying to kill them.
"So then, have to wait until tomorrow until we prove our worthiness or whatever you like to call it?" Kuro asked as Katarina shot the other girl a scathing glare.
"Kuro, try not to challenge the hospital patient to a fight!" Katarina snapped as she rubbed her temples.
The Banging of a Gavel indicated that the council of Katarina's was now in session.
"She's clearly Raphtalia's ancestor." Intellectual Katarina stated indicating the woman in the Miko outfit. "It's bad enough that Tanya and Maple already maimed her, what would happen to Raphtalia if this mutilation keeps her from having kids!?" The others Katarina's nodded their heads in agreement.
"So what do we do now? Do we have to fight against that shield guy?" Timid Katarina asked indicating the person in question.
"Well for reference point we should ask ourselves how do we fight against Maple." Cue multiple screens appearing featuring monsters being sucked inside of the shield, a giant four armed heavily armoured dinosaur and most recently a block of machinery with guns sticking out of it flying through the air with explosive force. "Forget about Maple." Hot Blooded Katarina stated putting the screens away. "What do we know about the Shield Hero in general?"
"Healing and Support Magic, counter attacks from the shield and a absurd amount of durability." Intellectual Katarina proceeded to list off while adjusting her glasses.
"So he's a sand bag." Lots of health and durability but no offensive power. It'll take her a while but she could handle that, especially with Kuro backing her up.
"Should we be fighting him instead?" Katarina asked indicating Mamoru.
"No one is going to be fighting anyone here." The Shield Hero of the past stated giving a scathing glare at both of the girls. "This is a field hospital, there are wounded here!"
"Well that's not entirely true." Natalia the Hammer Hero stated as she took a crutch and proceeded to hobble away from this situation before it officially went south.
"What do you mean?" Mamoru asked looking at Natalia suspiciously.
"As soon as a I realised his accursed divine Magic was involved in this mess I called over Hajime so that he can clean up his own mess." As Raphtalia the First explained that there was a suddenly tremor.
The Mountain that was in the centre of the island had a huge dust cloud appear it, which gradually cleared away to reveal a newly formed crater in the side of the mountain. This wasn't teleportation magic or the portal skill. He just ran here, across the ocean! Suddenly both Katarina and Kuro had their faces grabbed before a sonic boom sounded off and all three of them were in the air. Then Katarina and Kuro were in the dirt faces first and only narrowly rolled out of the way for the man who threw them to not land on them producing another crater in the process. Metal arm and black clothing belonging to a nobleman, white hair and a single red eye, the other covered by an eye patch.
"Hello edge lord the Bow hero." Kuro stated looking at the familiar form of the man who built Faubrey's labyrinth in the far off future.
Hajime Nagumo's one good eye twitched as he glared stabbing Kuro with his vision.
"Kuro what did we say about antagonising them!?" Katarina asked as she pulled out her spear and defensively held it up to defend herself.
Hajime on the other hand looked at them both assessing, Kuro recognised that look on his face, it was the same one she gives enemies when she's gauging their power, the same one she was giving him. His level was coming up as a series of question marks which she had learned by now was the world telling her 'ludicrously out of your league.' Perhaps even scarier than that was when the question marks disappeared and was replaced by a mere 100.
"There. I wouldn't want to be accused of bullying a bunch of weaklings." Without further warning Hajime whipped out the gun he was keeping on his side and began firing, the weapon cackling with purple electricity as a loud boom was sounded repeatedly, projectiles vaporising under the sheer friction of the speed they were being put under as Kuro ran out of the way of the familiar attack.
"Thousand Swo-GAH!" Kuro had been punched in the face by the man's mechanical arm and thrown a significant distance.
"Speaking them aloud might make them stronger but it's also as good as telling your enemies what skills or magic your going to use." Kuro had been pushed back a couple of feet but Katarina had bit into that opening rushing forward and ramming her spear directly into Hajime's body, only to run into what felt like a solid mass of rock instead.
"Nice armour." Kuro completed the pincer attack coming off from the side for a slash only to be stopped by the same rock like mass that Katarina had run into already, both girls were subsequently pushed back when Hajime lit himself up with a coat of lightning.
It was then that Katarina and Kuro saw the damage that they had done to Hajime, or more accurately to Hajime's coat their rush backwards having torn open the coat in the process exposing bare flesh.
"Try harder." Hajime stated as he proceeded to fire off his weapon again causing the two girls to have to move out of the way as the shots tore through the forest behind them.
The two girls nodded to each other and transformed their weapons, coating themselves in the thick armour and massive bodies of the Guaylinda and Tzendribble after but a moment. Of course the two of them hadn't come straight for picking a fight after just getting there. They went looking for the weakest monsters they could find and killed them, which true to what Maple had told them instantly put their levels at over two hundred even after splitting up so that they wouldn't interfere with each other. Kuro had a easy time of it, sucking the magical energy out of the local monsters and then summoning the strongest Noble Phantasm that she could to slaughter them. Katarina less so, having to stack together several skills so that she could combine their offensive power together in order to crush a monster in a pit trap she had created using Earth hole and even then it took several tries.
The Guaylinda was a four armed war machine with blades for legs and hands, the default for the legs used the chainsaw swords which Kuro could use to ride along the ground like they were some kind of demonic roller blades. For arms though she made use of the plasma torch like blades she created using the very same creation magic that this same man would teach her a incalculable amount of time into the future from now.
Katarina's Tzendribble on the other hand didn't have four arms but rather four legs as she took the form of a huge mechanical centaur, albeit a centaur whose arms and legs were made out of the same stabbing pistons that she took from the Machine god in Faubrey. She didn't have talent she knew this for a long time, so she'd just have to make up the difference in knowledge.
The gavel banged, indicating that the meeting of the council of Katarina's was now in session.
"When you think about it, there's only really one kind of magic that we've got that would stand a chance against him." Intellectual Katarina stated as she presented the results of their study for the group to see. Cursed magic, the cursed series, the shadows.
"That's super dangerous magic though!" Timid Katarina stated as she vividly recalled the sight of Takt's mutilated soul hanging off of the end of Kuro's blade.
"If only we knew how to fix that part we'd be good!" Hot Blood Katarina snapped slamming her fist into the table. "What kind of items do we have to work with?" To intellectual Katarina's question a list of items in their inventory appeared and the locked onto one in particular.
"When you think about it this one feels rather suspicious." Soul Healing Water. Commonly called Spirit Potions due to it's similarity to it's magical equivalent mana potions, and by commonly they mean that they and their fellow heroes are the ones who call it that, because for literally everyone else the potions were effectively useless on account of the fact that no one else can use spirit energy. "Instead of a Spirit potion it's called a Soul Healing potion, which makes absolutely no sense unless of course..." What it really did was repair damage to the soul as the name would imply? "We've been carrying this super useful stuff around with us all this time and never realised it..." Excitable Katarina was beginning to think that all those looks of 'why is this person so stupid' that they kept getting was actually justified. And then they were all sent crashing over to the side because talking isn't a free action nor is standing around stupidly thinking to yourself while a fight is going on.
"Are you done staring off into space now?" Hajime asked having managed to punch Katarina hard enough that the torso of her mech had a noticeable welt in it.
"You're the Hero of the Bow right?" Katarina asked and in response Hajime took his gun and made it transform into a bow. "How does that not qualify as a weapon?" Hajime looked to his metal arm after a moment and just shrugged his shoulders before he resumed blasting.
Katarina took her mech and ran, every step a leap as the pistons in her legs sprung her forward and smashed down into hard lava cooled and turned into stone material. The legs were shooting the stones at the Bow hero of the past each of them imbued with cursed magic. Stones of Greed dissolved into dust and came into contact with the the surrounding area dissolving anything they came into contact with, including bits of Hajime's armour and clothes, stones of sloth began building power until they exploded. But nastiest of all was when stone was swallowed by shadow and assumed the form of a monster with four heads, if you counted the snake tail that is.
"A chimera?" Hajime asked looking deeply confused.
"And only a small loss in XP, so that's a win for me." When you think about it it makes sense, since you have to be born with some XP to begin with, the balloons would probably be the best measure of that in her time period. "So let's go with the real stuff now!" Jack hammer limbs continuously churned out stones for Katarina to imbue her curses into continuously summoning and producing various monsters that she's killed over the months. They didn't last long. Hajime took aim and started blasting his gun evaporating the chunks of stone that Katarina had been using as the cores of her cursed abominations that had been swarming Hajime, and he was starting to put them down faster then she could raise them.
"Good tip about keeping your mouth shut." Which was about all the warning that Kuro gave before she started to fire off rail gun blasts using summoned swords as ammunition and the lightning arching blade mounted arms on her back as the firing mechanism. Just for added fun the blades she was currently firing had been the steel butterfly blades given the plasma blade treatment which of course made the explosion they produced when smashing into the ground all the bigger. Hajime had quickly taken up to fighting at range as a consequence creating a invisible platform of air underneath his feet while he prepared his own countermeasures to use against them.
"I'll summon some birds to harass him! You use the rail-" Katarina was interrupted by Kuro taking her and running, and good thing too because suddenly everything in the surrounding area had been crushed.
"I didn't think that you two had already acquired one of the divine magics." Hajime stated as he cracked his neck. "I can take you a little seriously now."
A little seriously? Crushing everything in sight like aluminium cans had been 'a little seriously?'
"Now than." Hajime infused magic into one of the bullets and fired, the gravity magic having made it super heavy and thus all the greater bite when it crashed in between the two girls like a meteorite. "Frustrating isn't it?" Katarina, now outside of her mech transformation, grunted as she looked up and slammed her palm into the stone in front of her, watching as Crystalak took form to put up some barriers between them. They were vaporised in a single blow. "Knowing that there's something stronger than you out there that wants to kill you." Kuro flung the Dagger of Betrayal at him next. He crushed it into the ground with another bout of super gravity. "That no matter what you do it will always be stronger than you are." Kuro manifested the Shroud of Turin on herself and Katarina and healed both of them before trying to take some distance. "Oh please." Hajime waved his hand and suddenly both of the girls were running towards him instead of away from him. And he was still walking forward.
This they understood is what he meant when you talk about someone having overwhelming power. How long has he been here? How long has he been doing this kind of thing? Didn't someone saw he had been yoinked off to other worlds before coming here? How many secrets has this man stolen, bought and bargained for? Katarina was like that too, and Tanya, but that was a lie wasn't it? Tanya was a soldier, professionally trained and raised. Katarina was just a dinky little noble lady with a vegetable garden. Well if it's hard ball you want to play for...
"Hey, Hajime was it?" Katarina asked as she started to stand up, something having gone mad inside of her. "Did you know that they think these islands were formed from a volcano?" Katarina punched the ground, mixing in creation magic with the mass of fire she just sent flying off into the ground along with the essence of Earth wave. Then the ground started to rumble, the mountain lit up as smoke and ash rose up from a explosion. "If you can't win the game then break the board." The corner of Hajime's lip went up as he grinned nastily.
"Now you're starting to understand how this works."
And so the dance of close quarters began, Katarina switching over to a demonic red spear Gae Bolg who carries two powerful curses, the first being that it always strikes the heart, and second that the wounds it inflicts cannot be healed. They can however be made completely irrelevant as Hajime's flat out insane defence made any and all attempts to break his skin utterly irrelevant. But that was not the only Noble Phantasm she had copied.
"Spear Wall!" The Noble Phantasm of Leonidas the 1st was not just a shield, it was also paired with a spear. Thanks to his legend Leonidas could summon three hundred warriors, Maple three hundred Shields, but Katarina? Three hundred Spears now floated in the air waiting to stab the other man. "Change Spear!" The other man tried to punch her again but she pushed the fist away with the butt of her spear. "Gae Dearg!" More blood red spears took the place of the spear wall before Katarina fired off the name of one last skill. "Air Strike Javelin!" Suddenly all the spears were fired forward. Katarina retreated on another earth wave while Kuro made ropes to immobilise the hero of the past. Gae Dearg was one of the spears wielded by the Irish Lancer Daiarmuld Ua Duibhne, don't ask Kuro to pronounce it, it was the longer of the two but it's purpose was not to strike the killing blow but rather to make the enemy fight in the way it's wielder sees fit, for the long spear has the power to ignore any and all magical defences, like say for instance video game like mechanics artificially introduced to the world. "Oh wow." Katarina held nothing back, not a single spear, Hajime had done his best to shoot them all down but that only meant that there were fewer than three hundred spears run through him right now.
"Katarina." Kuro stated delivering a scathing glare at the other girl. "You do remember that we need him alive right?" A look of horrified realisation hit Katarina's features, especially prevalent given the way she attempted to scold Kuro earlier.
"Whoops." A pulse of magic came off of Hajime's corpse as Katarina's spears were made to be dissolved. Time's flow altered around him and his wounds never happened let alone healed. The two girls immediately got ready to fight again but Hajime instead put his gun away and rolled his shoulders.
"Been a while since I've gotten skewered like that."
"Meaning that this is the kind of thing people do to you regularly?" Katarina asked looking at Hajime the same way you'd look at some kind of eldritch horror.
"Well it use to be." Hajime conceded inclining his head. "Actually surprised at how I've kept myself in one piece ever since loosing my arm and eye." And this was from someone who could unmake wounds simply by reversing the flow of time.
"Well in any case." With a wave of his hand magic flew off of his hand and entered the two of their bodies, dumping knowledge into their skulls while making tweaks to their bodies so that they could successfully use the magic in question before they were sent off. Hajime smelled something appear in the air in that moment. Alcohol, not particularly light either.
"Even for a divine there's such thing as a limit you know." Hajime stated turning a scathing glare at the man who had appeared in the tree wine skin in hand.
"People told me that all the time back when I was human." The man in the tree stated as he stretched out his neck.
"Still trying to get heroes to pull swords out of stones to kill me?" As if a sword would work on this thing.
"Is there something that you actually want you screwed up lunatic?" Hajime asked putting his hands on his hips and cocking back the hammer of his pistol.
"I was wondering if you'd be willing to entertain some liberties with your dungeon building?" The man with the wine skin smiled, like a devil at the cross roads trolling for clients.
As soon as they got back to the present Maple and Tanya went through the level down process, bringing them back to one. Both of them were easily able to slaughter the weak monsters that inhabited the islands, though they came to disagree on where they were putting the growth up gained from that.
"Why are you putting everything into defence again?" Tanya understood doing it the first or second time, but by the third time it was reaching the point of being redundant. There was already no force on this earth that could land a scratch on her, aside from the use of the Hengen Musou style and even then Maple was getting around to learning in between lessons with Sadeena and grinding for experience.
"Have you not met me?" Maple on the other hand knew first and foremost that her job was to be on the front line taking attacks so that her allies wouldn't have to, besides she was also starting to a get a grip on time magic too and that was giving her ideas. "Why aren't you putting any points into defence?"
"Because I can fly out of the range of other people's attacks." Tanya stated as she let out a sigh.
There's no point in putting on heavier armour when no one can touch you. She'd rather sink it into attack, speed and mana/spirit, an important three part combo of being able to hit hard, hit fast and hit lots that was pivotal to Tanya's status as the hero of the Bow. Truth of the matter was that if Tanya didn't need speed to fire off her bow and not have her projectiles move as fast as a snail she would disregard speed as well because unlike some third rate elf from a cheap fantasy movie actual archery doesn't have you running around performing needless acrobatics and throwing your aim off in the process. Only make use of what you have to, don't waste resources on other things. Kuro and Katarina appeared a little while later, the latter downing SP potions like they were going out of style.
"You're gonna make yourself sick on those." Kuro commented as the others turned to look at them.
"How'd it go?" Maple asked looking genuinely curious.
"Katarina turned the bow Hero of yore into a pin cushion." Tanya commented indicating Katarina with her thumb. "Didn't even slow the bugger down." It seems that for some reason everything was a lot tougher before the worlds merged together, the next question here would be why that is.
"When we were in the past the wave portal was a lot bigger, and there was another planet in view." To be more accurate Maple was probably referring to half of this world. "Maybe the world's fusing together had something to do with it?" Maple asked and the others all nodded their heads in agreement with that assessment, though they didn't know how that worked.
"Byakko." Kuro stated catching the others attention. "The Shield Hero from long ago, Mamoru, said that killing Byakko was the straw that broke the camel's back." Well that's nice to know.
"Who's Byakko?" Tanya asked brow cocked.
"No idea." Kuro produced the shield of the beast king again. "But this was carved off of his back." Okay, that's a bit of a clue.
Author's Note:
RonaldM40196867: True. I know their's airships in this world. Absolutely. Some of them.
Captain Imaginat: Thank you for saying so.
Kisame Hoshigaki: Little different. Not by much