Author's Note: Stay. Indoors!
Chapter 41: Is There Any Point Left To This Grinding Arc Anymore?
Every time Maple nearly clears out the islands she holds a massive smorgasbord for everyone on the islands, which then leads to a lot of trips to the bathrooms and a lot of fertiliser being dumped back on the islands to feed into the plants and grow up plenty of food for the monsters to grow fat on, which then makes it possible to go back and clean them out again the next day. In between levelling, cooking, growing and slaughtering though they were also learning. Magic and it's various configurations first and foremost, learning the shapes of the puzzle pieces while they try and figure out a way of putting them together. Sparring with the old lady who was teaching them how to add extra bite to their attacks via the Hengen Musou style. The first was proving to be a far more lucrative affair than the latter, for one could be done in the course of a week and the other a month, if they were lucky. But that was precisely why they were giving it a try anyway, because if they didn't just because they were too busy then they would never learn this very important piece of information that was needed both to protect them and attack their enemies. So they simply resorted to sitting in front of the people whom they were giving a power boost to while the old lady stood behind them with a paddle.
"Guh!" Maple coughed out blood, not for the first time that day either, for the extremes of her defensive power went a long way to prove that she would be the most powerful of those getting attacked, and so eventually took Tanya's advice to start boosting Mana instead. "Healer." The still deeply confused mage they hired to fix them up complied with her instructions and healed Maple up again and so the old lady gave her another whack breaking the paddle and leading to the old lady to get another one from Kuro.
"They're starting to get concerned." Katarina stated speaking as much for herself as she was for the people who had to watch this.
"I don't blame them." Kuro stated before the paddle came down on her head. "Next time I'm giving her a poki hammer."
They were starting to run out of adventurers here any way, the next step would be sending one of them out for reinforcements, Siltvelt would be preferable specifically for the amphibious and the water breathing, Shieldfreeden would be a good idea too. Since it was unlikely either side would be bringing along ships that just left one for Melromarc's army, which unfortunately meant that roughly half of them would be preoccupied with empowering troops until the wave proper hit. So yes, the old lady was paddling them while she still could. Course empowering people only demands the bare minimal of attention so in the mean time the girls continued to practice magic and grind for levels in the ocean. After three days worth of grinding like this...
"Is it time to go get the armies yet?" Kuro asked sitting on a massive ice flow.
Her tracing magic wasn't just about creating matter out of thin air, given the raw material's, such as water, she could make things out of those materials, such as ice. How she got here, sitting on top of a ice flow that contained the frozen corpses of hundreds of monsters, was what she was doing now, sitting around bored. Kuro's magic affinities in this environment made her basically invincible and while accumulating experience points, levels and Mana points was good when you reach the point in time where you were a level one who could wipe out entire school's of seventies continuing on that path started to look kind of pointless.
"Oi Maple how's the grinding coming?" Kuro asked looking off to the side as she saw a mass of thick brown fur peek out of the water again. Kuro wasn't even sure how Maple can eat in that form and then turn back to normal without her belly bursting. Did turning yourself into a kaiju sky rocket your metabolism or something?
"Smoothly but..." Maple let out a burp before she could finish.
"It's getting kind of pointless isn't it?" Kuro asked as she was aware of the Magic points that were starting to gather dust off to the side of her menu.
"Yeah, it would be different if we could just properly accumulated different kinds of magic like Sadeena but as it is." Maple stated reluctantly.
"You properly increased you magic like Tanya told you to?" Kuro asked brow raised into the air with mild interest.
"The attacks from the old lady was so painful..." A tear came to Maple's eye as she remembered getting hit by the old woman over and over again, More magic to heal herself was a vividly good idea after that. To be fair unlike before where she had the option of sinking all of her stat points into defence in this case it was just that she couldn't, or at least shouldn't, be able to increase her attack power. Now she was forced to acknowledge that she needed to increase her magic power and had done so the last time she levelled herself down, at the moment her limit was about six people being simultaneous subjected to Savagery, 18 if they can max out their beast transformations with Mana point. Still enough to wipe out the waves, for now.
"Should we tell Tanya that we're leaving early then?" Suddenly the image flashed through their minds of Tanya forcibly levelling both of them down and throwing them back into the ocean to rack up more skill points and stats.
"You wanna grab our parties or do you want me to?"
A banging Gavel indicated that the Council of Katarina's had been brought to order.
"The topic of today's meeting deals with the upcoming wave." Chairman Katarina stated while the rest of the group narrowed their eyes in concentration.
"It's impossible to know what kind of monsters is going to pop out of the sky next, it's pointless to try and build a strategy around that. Instead we should be improving our spears for the battle." Seven Spears appeared in their vision. Fisherman's Spear, Water Crystal Spear, Squid Spear, Squid Tentacle Spear, Shark Spear, Water Spear, Ice Spear and Pekkle Spear. "Similar to the Earth Crystal Spear the Water Crystal Spear keeps changing it's equip bonus depending on what we feed to it." Hot Blooded Katarina stated as she listed what the weapon's equip bonuses were.
"Fisherman's spear equip bonus is called 'water stab' which seems to be the water version of the Crystalak Spear producing water spikes instead of crystal spikes. Squid Spear makes a jet of water to propel us along or strike offensively. Squid Tentacles use water to wrap and grasp enemies. Shark lets us breath under water. Water Spear creates a wave of water while ice Spear freezes things. Water Spear seems to empower all the other water using spears as well." It appears that they had been even more thorough in unlocking water magic than they had in unlocked the spears related to manipulating earth, a thoroughly unpleasant situation that would doubtlessly lead to many complications when they do finally get back home if anyone ever found out. However they had yet to talk about the most special spear yet.
'Pekkle Spear. Equip Bonus: Pekkle Growth Correction +5%.'
They actually had to look that one up, growth correction means that Pekkles get a extra 5% to all of their stats for each of their levels, on paper it's less than useless: unless you account for the Pekkle Kigurumi which turns those who wear it into a Pekkle and thus the spear's effects would be applicable.
"The contest here is between the Pekkle Kigurumi and the Kushtaka Kigurumi." Timid Katarina stated bringing up the options for both of the costumes in question. "Both have their pros and cons." First was the Pekkle Kigurumi. "The penguin costume will boost our stats and combat power, but it's hard to work with." A fact that Miss Aranaya attributed to the automated process of the Legendary Spear only able to spit out mediocre quality workmanship which made sense. "The Other is the Otter Kigurumi which is easy to move in but we don't have growth corrections for." Which was problematic considering that everyone was reluctant to butcher Tanya's close party member and feed him to their weapons. "Miss Aranaya said to let her figure something out with the Pekkle Materials but for now we have other subjects to address."
"Where are we on magic?" Excitable Katarina asked as she pulled up another Screen on the H.U.D. A list of magic they had learned, when it became apparent that they had run out of material to unlock weapons with earth manipulation power Katarina started looking at what Earth magic they could use by mixing in fire and healing magic. The end result was hot rocks from First level Fire-Earth Magic and the ability to fix broken bones with First Heal-Earth magic. Which was completely useless and nearly useless on the oceanic battlefield they were heading towards so instead they had been focusing on Fire-Water and Heal-Water.
"It seems that Fire-water creates explosive pockets of steam while Healing water allows us to directly manipulate flesh for magic surgeries." Which was potentially useful and more damaging than anything else unless they got some serious knowledge on anatomy.
"For now lets focus on steam." Chairman Katarina stated as she steeple her hands together, deeming that one to have the highest offensive power. "What should we do about the spears?"
"For the ones about moving or moving things we should reinforce them for speed. When it comes to attacks or binding power attack seems to be the one to work with. That leaves the all important defence wide open though... the Ice spear?" The other Katarina's seemed to think about it for a moment, if they use the ice spear to set up a large defensive barrier. "If we're using the Pekkle Spear what kinds of reinforcements should we give it?"
Back in the real world Katarina returned to reality face hovering over a magic book she had been reading.
"Back to your senses now?" Elena asked looking at Katarina brow cocked. She seemed to recall Katarina mentioning that she suffered some kind of head injury a few month's before she got summoned to this world, she wondered if that had something to do with this? "Please don't tell me that you just randomly stare off into space like this during battle?"
"Umm..." Katarina had no counter to this question. "Let's go check on Miss Aranaya." Having anything but smoothly changed the topic Elena could only sigh as Katarina had her lead her away.
The Arachne woman prepared a nest inside of the Melromarc ship where she was currently working with the Karma Penguin material that had been brought to her.
"How's it coming?" Aranaya presented the product of days of work, far from the cheap looking suit that the legendary weapons would churn out one after another this was more like a high class product.
For one thing they looked like two different species, with the crest of bright red feathers that was sticking out of the top of the head and the bright red around the chest area. The white was brighter and the black more a navy blue too, but that had more to do with Aranaya's silk than anything else, as Katarina recalls Tanya's explanation the silk was at least as strong as steel, made stronger thanks to Aranaya weaving it thick into tight bonds. Most eye catching though was that in place of the teddy bear like button eyes that the Legendary weapon Kigurumi's had that she could still some how see through were a pair of dark amethyst eyes.
"It looks cool for a penguin. Is it finished?" Katarina asked looking at the toy like thing Aranya had made for them.
"It is suitable for use." Aranaya stated simply. "I've no further way of improving it at this time, less we have someone willing to use it and serve as a guinea pig."
Towards this end Katarina picked up the high class cloth armour, dressed herself in it and proceeded to make her way outside.
"It feels easier to move in now." Katarina noted while doing a few stretches, she half expected herself to start waddling while she walked but that didn't seem to be the case. "Here I go." Katarina jumped into the water and soon took off like a rocket, stats having skyrocketed while wearing the penguin suit as she used the extreme charging speed in combination with her spear to slaughter monsters.
"Huh?" Rino was watching what was going on from a distance as Katarina zigzagged through the water. "Guess those penguins were tougher than we thought they were."
"Anything would be 'tough' while being supported by a legendary weapon." Elena retorted, one should not mistake divine intervention and quality craftsmanship for natural ability.
"She can control that right?" Rino asked wondering why Katarina had been moving around in such a erratic fashion, and then had her answer confirmed when she had a head on collision with the rocks of another island.
"No." Elena replied as she went to find Otto.
"It hurts..." Katarina whined while Elena applied ointment and bandages to her many wounds. The two girls could only look to the penguin shaped imprint Katarina left on the rocks when she smashed head first into the stone like some adorable missile.
"Until we figure out a way to control it that costume needs to be sealed." Elena declared while tolerating no argument. "Katarina, you've got healing magic, quit whining and use some of it." Katarina nodded her head.
"I, The Hero of the Spear, have read and deciphered the origin of power. Decipher the laws of nature and summon a flame to weld my target back together: Driefach Phoenix Sear X!"
Katarina summoned a flame that swirled around her in a fiery typhoon, with all of her broken bones held in place by Elena's work her body was soon spic and span again as like the spell said her wounds were either welded together or cauterised shut.
"Still though." Katarina's eyes were on the costume that nearly killed her. "That's just way too handy."
"If you can't use it without nearly killing yourself then it's less than useless: it's a liability." Elena on the other hand sharply disagreed.
It would be one thing if like other reincarnators such as Takt Katarina's reincarnation came with some convenient regeneration ability but that clearly wasn't the case, a Legendary Hero, one of four individuals tasked with saving this world from ruin, was not a crash test dummy to test out experimental weapons. She was however going to max out healing on one of her spears for the up coming fight, Elena would personally see to it, so that at minimum if she wasn't going to listen she would be safe.
"Thank you for worrying about me miss Elena." Katarina proceeded to kowtow before Elena in deep gratitude. She hadn't realised it, but she puts this lady through a lot of stress day in and out, being a little less rambunctious in the future might be good.
"Huu." Elena could only sigh and move on with her business.
"So skill points do apply to Creation then." Tanya stated as she looked up at her H.U.D. Creation was the power to apply magic to inanimate objects, it's versatility and potential area of effect meant that it had the potential to be the singularly strongest tool in her arsenal, but towards that end she needed magic, lots of magic, not raw power but versatility, which was difficult for her because everything she did either manipulated earth or wind, so she also needed skills which usually amounted to producing a projectile weapon of some kind. Don't get her wrong though, the ability to mass produce turrets was extremely useful, her problem though was that she was limited to working with inorganic material and the next wave would be in the middle of the ocean. "I, the Hero of the Bow, Call upon the origin of power. Decipher the Laws of Nature and mix wind and water to Freeze my target. Zweite Freeze X!" At Tanya's command her wind magic mixed with water and produced a glacier, into that glacier she then tested the viability of inserting magical effects. "If I take the skill from that bow I got from the King after the Church was arrested..." Some kind of shape changing holy weapon, gave her a convenient auto lock feature, which she was now combining with... "...and the meteor shot skill." Because it was on the lower end of the kind of fire power she could spit out so the potential damage should be minimal. "And throw in the SP regeneration to fuel it." Like that the ice chunk she created started randomly spitting out Meteor Shots that were locking onto any living thing that they could catch hold of and blowing them up. "Hmm." Tanya checked her notifications, no XP, maybe she should come up with something else instead.
"Eli what do you think?" Tanya asked looking to her associate for his opinion on the magic that she had been learning for the past little while. "Perhaps young Rishia should be the one we ask instead? She is the one with the rare magical affinities." Eli asked with a shrug of his shoulders.
Tanya seemed to nod her head in agreement with the suggestion. What the two of them found when they went looking for Rishia was a giant stuffed otter getting the stuffing beaten out of her by a little old lady.
"Rishia." Tanya asked while the hapless person dressed in a fuzzy costume in question ground to halt in front of her. "What are you doing?"
"Um..." Rishia was feeling a little awkward right now. "Training."
"In a large and heavy Kigurumi, when it's a hundred and twenty degrees outside?" Tanya stated as she shook her head side to side. "This would at least make sense if you were in the water right now. Not only is that exactly what this was made to do but you would also be cooler while soaking in the water."
"The kid likes the costume Sir Hero." The old Lady stated as she was walked over and pulled Tanya aside. "You remember how you two met?"
"Vividly." But of course who wouldn't remember such a sight, rather would someone please tell her how she could bleach the memories from her mind immediately? "Your point?"
"Given how uncomfortable that it is making you just by thinking about it imagine it's lingering effects on her." The old woman stated brow cocked in the air. "Now imagine the effects of the suit: it increases her physical stats, makes her appear less like a attractive young girl and more like some giant animal, allows her to hide from the world."
"Huu. Maybe she can join Maple's support group." Speaking of aside from some kind of bizarre uncontrolled spurt she saw earlier she hasn't seen any sign of Maple for a while now.
Getting out of Cal Mira was harder than it should have been, with all the ships going into Cal Mira there should've been just as many that were going out, but that wasn't the case. These ships were the same ones that would be getting the visiting adventurers off the islands, meaning that there was no point in any of them leaving until their clientele left too.
"I'm not giving up yet." Maple had already decided what to with this situation. Maybe they could rent a row boat or something.
"One of the shields I gave you has the ability to turn into a boat." Kuro piped up. "It's probably too high level for you to use but as long as we're not fighting anything I can still manifest it, or failing that simply give it to one of my party members." Kuro stated with a shrug.
"I've no idea what you two are plotting." Both girls jumped with Tanya having sneaked up on the both of them. "Maple there is a matter concerning your party and mine I would like to have a word about."
"Umm okay." Kuro nodded to the other girl and the bow and shield hero's went off to somewhere relatively private for the two of them to talk. "The circumstances under which I met my most recent party member were not the most pleasant. I won't speak of it, that is her trauma to deal with."
Rishia hadn't been willing to talk about it, ignoring it basically while putting on a strong face, or rather a strong otter costume. Tanya had made a mistake not finding a way to talk about it, the truth was that she was the last person that should talk about it with her considering her low EQ and distant demeanour. But Maple should be having regular therapy sessions with at least three other members of her party members, more depending on how Eclair felt about the death of her family or how much Sadeena was willing to support them.
"What happened to her?" Maple asked looking concerned.
"Not my place to say." Tanya stated again for emphasis. "When can you hold another group session?"
To help out a friend? No time can be too soon.
"Um..." Rishia was looking around at the campsite Maple had set up, she and the rest of her party had set up four logs around a open pit fire that they had dug out in the middle of the woods on one of the islands.
"We'll handle the monsters for tonight girls." Sadeena said before she, Eclair and Filo went off hunting while the remaining five girls were left behind.
"Why are we here?" Rishia asked looking deeply confused by all of this.
"We are going to talk, you can just listen along." Raphtalia stated before their regular meeting began.
"Hi everyone I'm Kaede."
"Hi Kaede."
"Hi Kaede."
"Hi Kaede."
"Wait I thought her name was Maple."
"I am starting to feel better, about everything that happened when I first got here." Kaede looked to Rishia, noting that if Tanya refused to tell them about what happened to Rishia then she in all likelihood didn't tell her about what happened to them either. "I've thought long and hard about the people that I killed back in the castle town."
"Wait what are you talking about?" Rishia asked looking at Kaede confused. The others looked to Kaede and she nodded in consent, when it is difficult to talk about something it can be better for someone else to just rip the bandage off.
"She's talking about the time that someone attacked her out of the blue resulting in a cursed weapon popping up on that thing and half the castle town getting demolished and a dozen people losing their lives." Keel stated prompting Rishia's mouth to go wide open in shock, so now that she has the bluff notes...
"Not a easy thing, realising someone wants to kill you over something that you have no control over." Maple stated shaking her head sadly. "Most people aren't like that I know. I can't bring myself to hate them either, well that's not true." The first one she had no sympathy for but the others? For all she knew everyone of them were in on the conspiracy to kill her, or they all could have just been guards there trying to stop the obviously dangerous person going around turning people into meat tubes and eating buildings. "It'd be easier, if I just knew, if they were just the well meaning guards or the members of some anti-shield conspiracy but because I don't know I'm stuck going back and forth." Kaede could only let out a sigh. "Is that wrong?" Raphtalia could only pat her back with that last statement. "Thanks. You wanna go next?"
"I hear Tanya's been going around looking for our people from the village." Raphtalia stated causing the others to perk up. "And that she's using the village as a base. It won't bring back what we lost to the wave, but then again nothing can do that. We aren't the same as we were before either."
"You guys are from Seatto?" Risha was vaguely aware of the first wave and the others nodded in the affirmative.
"I'm feeling a lot better these days." Rifana stated letting out a smile. "The sickness feels like a distant memory now."
"I feel unstoppable these days!" Keel piped in flexing his muscles. "If we ever run into those monsters from the wave again I could just pow straight to the moons!" Raphtalia pulled Keel over to her and gave the gender confused lad a noogie.
Watching them, listening to them airing their trauma's, laughing together as they shared their pain and happiness, she started breaking down crying.
"Rishia!?" Kaede asked concerned but it was hard to get a word in over the girl's blubbering.
"I was kept for weeks as a prisoner in my own home!" Rishia had snot coming out of her nose. "He beat me! And Drugged me! And... and... why did no one come for me why!?" Kaede suddenly found herself used as a shoulder to cry on for the much older girl as she eventually fell asleep from the constant sobbing that she was releasing.
Author's Note:
Captain Imaginat: Couple of breather's, at least one more before we get to the exciting actiony bits again.
RonaldM4019867: Your welcome. Low tolerance for stupidity, I know that it's not considered a positive trait but it's one I agree with. I've no plans thus far.
Onishin Tsukitenshi: Who do you think created their dungeons?
Nightshadegirl: My condolences for watching Redo of Healer but honestly, if you willingly subject yourself to that then it's your own fault.