Author's Note: Sorry about that. Read, Review, Favourite and Enjoy!

Chapter 55: Hunt for the Phoenix

Killing the slime monster seemed to have a relatively simple strategy. Since it was basically stuck in whatever form was most suitable for the environment it was in, then Kuro just trapped it in a ball of water to make it assume it's dragon form and Katarina finished it off with a dragon slaying spear. With that matter done a thought occurred.

"Hey guys." Katarina asked causing the others to look at her suspiciously. "Remember when it turned into a turtle earlier?" Katarina stated indicating the now watered down ball of goo that was their opponent.

"Yeah?" Tanya stated slinging her bow onto her back.

"Do you think it has something to do with the monsters that are suppose to save the world?"

"It seems possible." Kuro stated as she looked up to the air remembering a lecture she received before. "The top four demi-human species in the world are Genmu, turtles, Shukaku, fiery birds, Aototsu, water dragons and the Hakoku or white tigers." And here we have a monster that can shift forms between a turtle, a phoenix, a dragon and a tiger.

"One problem." Tanya however was quick to counter.

"Four forms. Three monsters we need to lock away." Needed to. Ost was dead and she wasn't coming back, that just left two more they needed to track down and keep from waking up and slaughtering the world's population. "Let's ask them." The duo went down the hole in the ground to the chamber where they would find the answers that they're looking for. The chamber in question, once appropriately lit, revealed four walls and four murals on each of them, and a familiar jewel in the roof. The jewel in question produced a illusion revealing the presence of a child like person with white hair. The Sword Hero of the age.

"Hello! My name is Ernesti Echeveilier, the Hero of the Sword of my time." Ernesti explained while he started walking around the chamber. "You probably have a lot of questions, well I'm not going to be able to answer most of them. So from the top." Ernesti gestured to himself. "Why am I here? Siltvelt isn't exactly very pro-sword hero. Look you're probably the Shield Hero, I know it's difficult but you have to work with the other Heroes, if the fact that I'm here is proof that it can happen, I don't know what is." Which would be sound advice if it wasn't built entirely on a faulty premise. "If you are the other heroes or here with the other heroes, good for you!" Ernesti clapped as they moved on. "Next question, the critter you fought on your way over here. Well in all honesty I figured that if we're going to have guard dogs readied to protect these places we might as well put them to use, so I made this one in the image of the four directional beasts you're gonna have to fight." Now that was actually relevant news, because they only knew about three of them. "There's Ost the Spirit Turtle, Ho oh the Phoenixes, Kirin the Tigers and Ouryou the Dragon Emperor. Starting with Ost, Ho oh and Kirin should wake up one after another. Ouryou is a little trickier though. He's sort of the world's hail mary pass. His descendants, the dragons, have all got these cores inside of them containing bits of his fragmented consciousness inside of them. Hunt the dragons, round up their cores, stuff it into one and boom, Dragon Emperor." Which was rather crucially useful information. "If you have killed one or more of the directional beasts well, you're gonna have to replace them I'm afraid. We should've given out enough scientific information that you can clone it, like we had to do. It should help to stabilise the barrier separating worlds." Well they knew what Rat was doing for the next month or so. "That said you're gonna have to gather up all the XP falling from the sky from the waves eating away at the barrier." And that wasn't even the worst of it, or so the quickly concluded. "Now for the part Hajime wants me to talk about. Look all these scary monsters we got wandering around the dungeons like a bunch of junkyard dogs? We can't afford anyone but you to have these magics, and we can't afford to let anyone destroy them either. You have a chance, as close as you are to when everything started to go wrong to fix things before everything breaks down again, or your one of the hundreds of times someone summoned a hero and didn't need one in which case I'm handing you some very dangerous magic." The crystal beamed down and hit each of the weapon jewels present imbuing them with a new magic, Metamorphosis. "So don't mess up with it okay? It would be bad to be caught up when reality breaks twice." The girls took the material from the boss and divided it between them, getting new weapons that upgraded their mile stone skills in the process though they were less than enthused about the situation.

"He didn't mention where the other three directional beasts were located right?" Katarina asked knowing where this was going.

"No he didn't. He did however bring up a lead that we can follow." Tanya bluntly summarised, Four directional Beasts, four related demi-human species.

"Now that I think about it weren't there a lot of Genmu Living in that mountain village?" Katarina stated vaguely recalling the people that they now had in the old Seatto territory. "Which isn't a coincidence. Kuro you have a relationship with these people, you deal with them. Katarina we need someone looking for the rest of these Seven Star Weapons and I need to go look for more leads on the other dungeons."

Melromarc, Q'Ten Lo and Zeltoble, lots of ground to cover, claws. Hammer, axe, Projectile, claws, gauntlets lots of weapons to find and find wielders for. Ho oh, Kirin and Ouryou, lots of monsters to lock down.

"I do understand that you may doubt my sincerity." Oroko stated as he along with his counterparts in the Shukaku tribe, Werner and among the Hakuko tribe worked to sort through documents related to the directional beasts, which was both incredibly difficult and ridiculously easy because there were no such documents relating specifically to any of the directional beasts and instead had to look at area's considered important to the tribes.

"She was your political pawn, but she was my friend." Kuro stated bluntly as she sorted through Shukaku documents. One spot looked pretty promising, partly because it's apparently the sacred ancestral land of the Shukaku, mostly because it was also the location of one of the few weapons that Takt didn't manage to steal: the Seven Star Gauntlets. "Well here's a two for one deal, might as well take it." Kuro stated as she noticed a map leading to the area in question. "Only barely enough time to make it there before the birdies wake up. And still no idea on how it's seal is supposed to work."

Would the one used on Ost work? Impossible to know. Need to get boots on the ground over there. Like right now. Among the many benefits that stemmed from the brief war with Faubrey was that a large portion of Tact's engineers, may he rot in hell, had abandoned the country for greener pastures, and brought with them all of his knowledge of technology. Number one among the technologies he 'invented' was the air ship, augmented by magic as it was it would be able to make the trip through the air in a amount of time only slightly longer than Rat's own take on the concept. That isn't to say that Kuro was being idle during that time, as during the whole trip the ship was constantly passing over monster territories that Kuro subjected to bombardment with her swords and collected the material below, unlocking new forms and steadily growing stronger the longer it went on. The down side to this was that she was burning through mana at an enormous rate, even with mana recovery blades and absorbing energy from her surroundings, which was also giving her practice with the Dragon Pulse style of magic. Mind you she could just skip the difficult puzzle like step, but the whole point of using the Dragon Pulse style was to conserve mana, and it wasn't like it was a bad opportunity to practice.

"Alright. Out of mana again. I'm off for a refill." Kuro stated as she was about to go back inside of the ship again.

"Got a minute?" Fohl however had made his presence known as he lounged about on the entry way of the airship.

"Something the matter?" Kuro asked looking at the elder brother suspiciously.

"I was just thinking that it was a good thing you and Atla met one another after all." Fohl stated as he looked down at the latest path of destruction Kuro had carved. "Atla was never going to have a full life, before she met you." Fohl stated as he looked up into the air. "Even Mom had to chug potions by the gallon just to make it as far as she did." Old enough to give birth to Atla, before she was murdered by the Hero of the cane.

"That man is your uncle you know." Kuro stated bluntly.

"A fact I choose to ignore." Fohl replied bitterly. He wasn't sure what was worst, the fact that the man who murdered his mother was her older brother or that according to Atla he and Fohl have the same aura. "And is not part of my point." Fohl stated in a slightly less bitter tone of voice. "I am happy, happy for both of you for finding each other, and happy for her for finding something I couldn't give her."

"I sense a but coming." Kuro stated bluntly.

"I'm going to get the gauntlets when we arrive in the Shukaku's territory." Fohl stated in a matter of fact fashion.

"I'm pretty sure that's not how it works." Kuro stated bluntly. "The waves have been going on for nearly four months, a giant monster whose singular purpose is to kill as much as it can and then die as the final resort has already woke up and been killed and we are less than a week away from another just like it popping out of the wood work. When we arrive there, there will be a massive line the length of most countries full of people saying 'I will take the Gauntlets' and another line the length of a country saying 'I have failed to take the Gauntlets' I won't even begin to mention the number of times they probably tried to summon someone." Though that in turn left open the question of why haven't the Gauntlets chosen anyone yet? Something felt kind of fishy. "Hmm. Something's wrong right now. Keep an eye out when we get there."

"What is it?" Fohl asked brow cocked suspiciously.

"Takt was put here to accomplish someone's goal right? What if they had a back up plan put into place?"

"Like this... Kyo guy you mentioned when you saw the Otherworlder's armour?" Fohl asked scratching his head suspiciously.

"Yes but that guy came here from another world. What if somewhere in that massive line up I just mentioned there's another reincarnated waiting to snatch the gauntlets?" Kuro stated coming to a perfectly logical conclusion.

If Takt could simply take any weapon just by touching it then there's no way the Gauntlets would still be there. The conclusion therefore can be reached that some condition must be met first: the weapons must be stolen as opposed to being claimed, which means that some one else must claim them first.

"If you're going to go and do something like claim the Gauntlets then you should go and slaughter some monsters for XP." Saying that Kuro went off to complete her business.

Between the bits Kuro received from the dragon she mugged and Takt's Girlfriend they had collected a large size portion of dragon cores, the next step after that then was to find a dragon to put them in, which she accomplished while she was in Siltvelt picking up a dragon egg and stuffing it full of the cores. It wouldn't hatch by the time the phoenixes awaken let alone be ready for a fight, but if it was going to be their final resort it was better to get it ready sooner as opposed to later because apocalypse prepping was not something you procrastinate on. Atla was using her body to warm the egg, she and Kuro were planning on raising her together, and yes it was a her for reasons outlined to them by Rat. Basically, if born male the likelihood that he'd try to force himself on any available females was quite high, even humans and demi-humans are not excluded from it's blatant lust even taking into account Kuro's status as one of the dragon's masters, on the contrary the increased affection would only make her a more appealing target. So Kuro used the incubator to set the dragon's gender to female, since if it did assault in her that form at least it was the gender she preferred. There was even some left over ink from the time they registered Midori and Blitz.

"Just like I thought, you do like them bigger." Atla stated aware of what kind of body Blitz had acquired as a result of four Heroic influences on her and was now looking at Kuro with this understanding in mind.

"You'll get bigger over time." Kuro stated full of confidence even as she started to strip down.

"It's been a few... difficult years. Brother wasn't always able to bring home enough for the both of us." Atla looked away ashamed of herself, aware that not having enough to eat when still young meant that your development down the line was going to be affected.

"You misunderstand." Kuro's hand glowed with the power of reinforcement type magic. "I'll make sure of it." Because while it was true that Atla was a absolute knockout for her age as long as she is suffering from self confidence issues because of a mis-perceived failing in her looks Kuro can make a few cosmetic adjustments to correct those issues. "Now here's the real question here: why do you still have your clothes on?" Atla had taken the liberty of purchasing some risque lingerie while she was in Siltvelt, black and lacy to compliment pale white skin and leaving the rune like symbols on her skin exposed.

"I was planning on getting you to help take them off." Which was both perfectly reasonable considering that Atla's blind and intimate for the pair of lovers.

"Well then I better get started then." Kuro produced a 'wand' in her hand for the ritual. "We don't have all night after all."

The group made good time to the Shukaku's territory and arrived with a single day to spare. As Kuro had predicted there was a massive line up of people trying to take the gauntlets, and a group huddling around the gauntlets desperately attempting the summoning ritual to bring in a new hero. Kuro switched over to the Soul Eater sword and started scanning the crowd in hopes the blade will help her to locate the reincarnated among the crowd.

"See anything Atla?" Kuro by now was aware of the details of Atla's ability to see Ki. Before she mentioned that in comparison to Kuro and Maple Tanya and Katarina's Ki flow seemed off, like something inside doesn't match their outside. Interpreting this as a symptom of the reincarnated Atla was now looking for more like them though that now raised a new question.

"So we find the reincarnated that's keeping the gauntlet's from choosing a new wielder." Fohl stated bluntly as he looked over the crowd. "I understand that part but what are we gonna do afterwards? You can't just run up to people and start stabbing them with that sword can you?"

"Hmm." An light-bulb went off in Kuro's head after a moment of thought and as such turned her sword over to the 'Voice Gengar Sword.' Fohl and Atla wisely covered their ears. "Your attention Please everyone!" Kuro shouted into the voice amplifier causing people's attention to turn towards her, with their attention caught Kuro changed her sword several times while waving it around in the air before ultimately turning it back into a megaphone. "I am the Hero of the Sword come here to hunt another Spirit Turtle Class monster! We'll be going into the mountains tonight to look for it before it wakes up! Anyone who doesn't intend to fight should leave the area before the sun goes down!" Chem walked out in Monster form, more monstrous now that he had the benefit of Kuro's own version of the enhanced beast transformation to serve as a mount for Kuro's group. "How many?" Kuro asked now that they're out of ear shot of the troublemakers.

"Five in total." Atla replied without batting a eye.

"They'll be on us by the time we set down. Get your preparations ready for our guests." Kuro stated, smile all teeth and malice.

In addition to the five reincarnated they had little over two dozen people following them around, near as they could tell all or most of them were women, with the exception of the five reincarnated of course. Kuro's eyes scanned the lot of them armour sharing with her their history and telling her every dirty trick/stunt that the lot of them had been up to for the past several years. One however stood out from the crowd, a woman in a cloak, whenever Kuro looked at it she got a familiar feeling of looking at one of the legendary or seven star weapons.

"Any of you heard of a 'Seven Star Cloak' before?" Kuro asked as the group shook their heads in the negative. "Another other worlder just popped up."

"One of L'Arc's associates?" Welt asked sword ready to rip the woman's throat out.

"I know how to find out." In one hand, the Soul Eater blade ready to rob the damned of their souls, in the other, a twisted mass of scorpion, snake and blade, the sword of Lust and Envy, deploying a field of cursed miasma around the area to prevent escape via portal skills. No one was getting away from here today. "Hello reincarnated!" Kuro shouted stepping forward both of her legendary blades raised into the air. "I understand that you are under the impression that-" It happened within a few moments, some kind of extremely thin string wrapped itself around the bodies of the reincarnated and their allies before pulling itself tight, before pulling itself through the bodies of the reincarnated like a hot knife through butter, complete with liquids squirting in different directions. "Okay." Only the reincarnated were left standing, even then only barely as their bodies worked to put themselves together, well only the reincarnated and the woman with the cloak. "Care to introduce yourself?" Kuro asked directing her question towards the woman in the cloak who was silently tapping against her H.U.D.

"Excuse me!" One of the Reincarnated snapped as he reassembled his body alongside his fellow reborn compatriots. "That was just plain-!" He had no room to get angry because now there was a sword going through his chest. "What is with you people!?" The man grabbed hold of the sword and soon the legendary blade had broken off from Kuro's control and was now in his hands. Pity for him.

"Why do you still have your sword?" The man stated looking at Kuro with both of her blades in hands. "Cause just like you, I'm a dirty rotten cheater!" Kuro stated as she got the next stage of her plan ready. The Legendary sword is bonded to her soul if not her body, even if it resists her ability to analyse it similar to the Avalon and her brother she can recreate as flawlessly as she breathes. As such it was now the perfect method of confirming whether or not the person before her is a enemy or not.

"Were you given an ability too?" The man who was holding Kuro's copy asked looking concerned, especially since it disappeared.

"Given? Oh no, no no." Kuro stated looking very amused before she maliciously looked down on the rat caught in her trap. "Everything I have I've had to take!" Kuro raised her curse blade forward and shouted the name of the skill. "Temptation!" The enemy recoiled as he suddenly felt his entire body flooded with dramatically increased stats from Kuro's weapon while his sense of reason was lost to him.

"Your weapon!" A green glow appeared in the green eyed monster's eyes. "Give it to me!" An explosive force came off of the Enemy's body pushing away the other reforming reincarnators in the process. However it was not an actual explosion, rather some kind of SP based barrier skill that was appearing with explosive force after getting buffed by Kuro's skill.

"Wow that is impressive. Maybe I should give your corpse to Maple..." Kuro made a sour face as if she just remembered something unpleasant. "Never mind!"

Kuro struck the barrier with the cursed sword loaded up with Ki, the point attack subsequently started bouncing around the barrier repeatedly striking against the Reincarnated who was now receiving additional point based attacks from Kuro's combination attack. Of course since she was in the mood to follow up Kuro struck with the soul eater breaking through the barrier as she charged ahead to deliver more blows on the enemy. Course that didn't mean that they were leaving the rest of their opponents be either.

"Hey you bastard let us in too!" The reincarnated who snapped that was obliterated by Atla's blade.

"Now now, I can't have you ignoring us." Atla stated holding the Vivienne and Morgan up to hack the reincarnated to pieces, and she wasn't the only one who was angry either.

Fohl picked up one of the reincarnated and squeezed until every bone in his body had been broken and his organs were outside, and held those broken bones in place while the automatic accelerated healing function sowed his body back together, only after Fohl was satisfied did he drop the expended tooth paste tube like person with all of his insides squeezed out onto the ground twitching. Chem pounced on another and proceeded to dig in, biting off flesh with his jaws and swallowing as the poor bastard desperately tried to get away. Welt led the rest of the group in bombarding the remaining reincarnated with magic continuously blowing them away as they healed.

"I guess that they're pretty over protective." Kuro stated as she casually swung her sword again and obliterated the reincarnated again, his attempts to use his shield power to block the strike be damned.

"Just give up already. Look at your associates over there, they're already in a state like that and you guys still think you can win if you do something like get your hands on my sword?" Kuro would laugh at them if they weren't so pathetic.

"GGGAAAHHH!" Finally their bodies seemed to reach the limit of their ability to function and dissolved into black goo with their souls drifting out of their bodies, such a shame for them that Kuro wasn't done with them yet. With the cursed field up they couldn't leave, and Kuro let them figure that out on their own, then just as they were about to begin panicking.

"Damn you guys are ugly!" The group of souls slowly turned around to face Kuro. "That's right I can see you." Kuro held up the other sword, depicting a ghoulish grin. "See this? It's called the Soul Eater Sword. You know what that is right?" They most certainly did. Some begged, others fled, a few went underground. Kuro didn't care taking her sweet time in hunting them down.

"Are you sure you should be wasting so much time?" The woman wasn't speaking, but her companion, if you can call it that, was. A giant stuffed animal in the likeness of a teddy bear, complete with the buttons for eyes, was speaking to Kuro like this was normal. "The Phoenix could wake up at any moment now. We must dispose of this fodder immediately."

"Fodder!?" One of the ghost people was about to rant but was soon cut off. The woman opened up her coat revealing another stuffed animal, this one in the likeness of a six eyed white translucent worm, was released on the area and began hunting the drifting souls, eating them not unlike the Soul Eater. Fodder indeed.

"And what pray tell is your interest in the Phoenix?" Kuro asked looking at the woman suspiciously.

"Preventing the death's of two thirds of all life on this world." The teddy bear replied in the stead of the woman. "It would be a different matter if the awakening was taking place later, or if there was more XP from the waves, but now we are stuck in this situation." On what is likely a volcano, fending off lunatics, with a sleeping apocalypse monster beneath their feet likely going to awaken at any moment to kill them all.

"So we did too good of a job and now the world is about to end?" Kuro asked looking at the woman with a look one might call displeased.

"Too good of a job?" The Teddy asked as if checking to make sure it heard her right. "Need I remind you that one of the Cardinal Beasts are already dead." Kuro just rolled her eyes in response. "Now are you going to stop wasting time or are we going to have to fight first?" The teddy bear asked on the behalf of the woman in the cloak.

Review Section:

RonaldM40196867: Balloons. Aside from the Chanted and Dragon pulse magic of this world we also have the jewel and music based magic of the other world and the remaining divine magics that need to be picked up.

Captain Imaginat: Glad you liked it.

Nightshadegirl: In theory if Naofumi was never summoned as the shield hero that leaves him open to be summoned as something else.

Guest: Sadly I already have the other world's four Legendary Heroes picked out.

Kisami Hoshigaki: Good to have you back. Do you remember what Shikigami's are?