Author's Note: Not a lot to say this week, Read, Review, Favourite and Enjoy!
Chapter 62: The Hero of the Blunt Instrument
Kyo, in addition to being a miserable wretch, was also incredibly difficult to locate. That probably had something to do with Naofumi chasing him out of his country and to the literal ends of the world, to the point that he actually had to maintain several bases of operation and jump between them using his portal skill just to avoid all the people that were actively hunting him down. Currently they had gone as far as to cross the border into another country just to find him.
"Well on the bright side we're getting a lot of experience points." Maple commented looking down at the area. Four Legendary Heroes between Maple and the three other worlders, and potentially dozens of bases to sort through. They had taken their forces and divided them up for the sake of attacking more bases and earning experience points while they did so. "Still no luck with finding Kyo though." Maple was riding on Syrup's back and Raphtalia's on Filo's back in the form of a giant eagle, together the four of them were flying over a mountain top. Filo and Raphtalia were acting as their main offensive unit zipping around chopping things up with Raphtalia's sword and Filo's magic while Maple and Syrup acted as support with Syrup's array of debuff's and Maple's support skills. Then something happened that gave Maple a bad feeling, or more accurately something didn't happen. "Hey did you guys just not get any experience from the monsters just now?" Raphtalia was immediately on guard. The only reason why they would be getting experience when Maple wasn't was if another Legendary Hero had just entered the area. As if answering their concerns something slammed into the underside of Syrup hard enough that the entire floating turtle was capsized knocking Maple off before something else fell after her.
"Maple!" Raphtalia and Filo immediately entered a nose dive after her but the something else threw a hammer at her and fell after Maple instead. Naturally Filo and Raphtalia dodged the hammer, but said hammer suddenly changed directions and slammed back into them.
"Shield Prison!" Maple wrapped the ball of shields around Raphtalia and Filo as the hammer was about to curl around to hit them again. "Change Shield: Nue Leather Shield!" The ball of shields transformed in time to intercept the next blow from the flying hammer. Shadows emerged from the ball and flew over to the attacker in retaliation for her earlier hammer toss. The Hammer disappeared and reappeared in the attacker's hand taking on the form of a large white baseball bat: with the face of a soul eater on the business end.
"Soul Eat!" The SP based attack was sucked inside of the weapon and neutralised.
"Huh. I'm gonna have to remember that trick." Maple commented as she changed her shield again and her attacker lived up to her title. Thus the bat was caught up in Maple's three headed Dog shield, she was about to get hit by the other two heads too but she changed her bat into a overgrown ball and chain and jumped back putting some distance between them. Maple got a good look at her for the first time, black hair and brown eyes with white skin who was roughly the same age as she was, more significant though was the shape changing weapon that seemed to have a clear preference for blunt weapons. "Who're you?" Maple asked looking at her attacker suspiciously.
"Jade Chan, Hero of the Blunt Instrument." The attacker turned her ball and chain into a weapon that resembled a cricket bat with a flame pattern on it. "Who are you suppose to be?"
"Kaede Honjou, the Hero of the Shield." Maple replied as she swapped her shield for the Meteor Shield to prepare to get attacked again.
"Never heard of a 'Hero of the Shield' before. Do Shield's even count as a weapon?" Jade asked using her bat to scratch the side of her head.
"At least I don't have a fishing rod." Maple pointed out and Jade could only admit that she was right.
"But where did you come from?" Jade asked as while Maple had a point the fact remained that she wasn't a hero of this world.
"The world on the other-side of the wave, before that I lived in Japan." Maple explained as she lowered her shield and soon spotted Raphtalia circling around with both Filo and Syrup. "You?"
"America. Before that I lived in China." Jade replied as she noted Maple messing with her H.U.D. sending a message to her associates. "Listen, as much as I would love to stick around and talk I really need to find the Book Hero and you've got one of the monsters he was mass producing." Jade stated indicating Syrup.
"I'm not working with Kyo, I'm trying to find him too." Maple replied as she let out a sigh. "Why do you want him?"
"He stole a book full of magic from my world and I really need it back. Uncle is going to be pissed enough at me for taking it let alone loosing it." Jade stated letting out a sigh. "You?"
"He murdered my world's Spirit Turtle and used her to make off with a massive amount of XP for the barrier separating our worlds." Maple stated as the rest of her party landed. "What kind of magic book?"
"Chi magic, mostly the creation of potions and talismans that do a lot of really cool stuff." Jade replied noting the appearance of the three members of Maple's party, and at Raphtalia in particular. "So Naofumi sent you?"
"Yeah. He and most of this world's heroes are trying to hit up as many of Kyo's bases as they can. He keeps popping between them and it's really annoying." Maple commented letting out a sigh.
Jade appeared to think about the situation for a few moments before a thought occurred to her.
"You got anything that belongs to Kyo?"
After regrouping with the others hunting the book Hero Jade had them assemble together a seemingly random assortment of items which she then made into a potion of some kind.
"Are you sure this is gonna work?" Maple asked looking at some of the left over antlers, eels, bells, dried puffer fish and other strange items.
"Assuming you guys really got this thing from Kyo. Then yes." It was a accessory that Yomogi got from Kyo at some point, designed to open the way into a long abandoned base. Ironic then, that it would now lead them to where his new base was located. "And done." Jade dropped the bell into the cauldron and a few moments later it popped back out. "Map." Naofumi stretched out a map on a nearby bulletin board and a beam of light left the bell and hit the map leaving behind a distinctive green glowing X.
"That him?" L'Arc asked smirking knowingly.
"Maybe." Jade stated in reply not sounding too sure of herself.
"What do you mean 'Maybe?'" L'Arc sounded like he found out he was being lied to.
"Chi Magic is not an exact science that's why it's called magic. Something that is meant to be used with very specific ingredients in precise amounts is instead being fudged with the ingredients from another world." Jade explained as she indicated the map. "I do not however hear any better ideas."
Naofumi looked at the map. The list of locations Yomogi had been given did not line up with the new location, which made sense if Kyo didn't trust her enough to know the locations of all of his most important bases. Couple that with the fact that most of the bases had already been smashed by now and spreading out their forces no longer made as much sense as it use to.
"It's the best lead we have." Naofumi stated and thus everyone got ready to go again. "Any idea what Kyo is trying to do with your book?"
"No idea." Jade could only shrug her shoulders to the question. "The spells in that thing can do everything from making you grow into a giant to a cup of insta-army." Jade explained leading to Naofumi and company to groan internally.
"Can we prepare a countermeasure against them?" Naofumi asked looking concerned.
"All of them? There's thousands of spells in that book?" Jade on the other hand was less than confident with their chances.
"Alright let's go and see what we can do to ruin Kyo's day."
Jade's locator spell led them over the ocean and towards a at first glance deserted island which they non the less were preparing to deal with toot-suite.
"This the place?" Maple asked looking down at the island in question.
"Let's go find out." Naofumi jumped off the side of Ethanobolt's ship and landed on the island proper soon followed by the others.
"Spread out, we need to find the entrance to Kyo's layer." L'Arc commanded and with the exception of Raccoon and Naofumi everyone moved to spread out. Naofumi on the other hand just shook his head side to side as he simply went to work.
"Float Mirror." A floating platform appeared in front of Naofumi, went several feet forward before pressing itself against the ground. "Change Mirror: Phoenix Feather Mirror." The mirror changed form into a red feather shaped mirror with a split going down the middle. "Raccoon."
"Star Dust Slash." Raccoon's attack slammed into the ground with enough force to split the entire island, blow away the sand and destroyed the mirror, which in turn blew it up and putting a crater in the ground. Without the sand the island's artificial nature was revealed hard metal where stone should have been. It was testament to Kyo's engineering skills that the blast only dented the artificial island rather than punching a hole directly into Kyo's base of operations.
"Leave it to me!" Maple went over to what she reasonably believed to be the door warped beyond the point of usefulness and pressed her shield against it sucking it inside and tearing open the path leading inside. Naofumi just stared at her, open mouth, as if he had been looking at something that was blatantly impossible as Raccoon just patted him on the shoulder seemingly comforting him.
"How?" Naofumi asked using that same confused disbelieving face.
"The function that lets her feed materials to her shield. Helped a little by the Shield of Gluttony. Let's her one shot monsters too." Naofumi crouched as if someone just hit him on his head. "We fought some big huge dragon monster called the Tyrant Dragon when we first met. Maple sucked it inside of her shield." Naofumi crouched lower as if he had been bludgeoned over the head again. "Are you okay?" Raphtalia only now noticed that Naofumi hadn't been taking the contents of her story very well.
"Let's... just go kill Kyo now."
There was a long drop before the group had something solid underneath their feet again. It appeared that the island they just destroyed was part of a large elevator structure leading into Kyo's base which for added evil villain points appeared to be at the bottom of the ocean. Furthering his credentials was the room full of creatures floating inside of suspect fluids inside of mysterious tubes. What kind though was some what easy to understand, for as half formed as they were there were clearly humans inside.
"This one looks like the Harpoon Hero!" L'Arc stated looking at one of the tubes and the person whom was inside.
"This one looks like the one who tried to steal my Katanna that one time." Raccoon stated looking at another tube. "This one looks like Albert."
"Who?" Naofumi asked genuinely confused.
"The guy who was the Mirror Hero before you."
"Uh oh..." Jade was looking up directly at the ceiling and at the familiar device that was situated therein, a large clear cylindrical fish-tank like container with vine like growths wrapped around the tank, with ghostly animal like entities flying about inside and what's worst pipes and tubes connected them to the tanks with Naofumi's old enemies inside. "This is very bad."
"How bad?" L'Arc asked looking more than mildly concerned at Jades reaction, which considering the fact that she was basically a pit full of unknown, possibly eldritch in nature, things he felt was kind of justified.
"So I'm going to skip the part about how I went on planet saving adventures around the world more times that I can count. Several of those adventures involved rounding up the bad chi of a bunch of demon sorcerers that wound up being stuck inside of a bunch of seemingly random objects that were actually the medium's used to defeat them." Everyone blinked stupidly at Jade. "I swear I'm not making this up."
"You people are a pain in my ass!" Kyo's voice suddenly echoed over the intercoms. "Do you have the slightest idea how much of my research you people have destroyed in the past few days!?"
"Not as much as I would like." Naofumi commented as if he was stating the obvious.
"Well I don't need my prototypes anymore!" Saying that the 'Bad Chi' that Jade pointed out in the tank started to flow into the bodies of the various former heroes in the tanks. "Why don't you dispose of them for me too!"
"You just had to provoke the crazy guy didn't you?" Raccoon lamented shaking her head.
The tanks began to crack open as the bodies inside began to rapidly swell and mutate.
"It's one of the few joys that I get out of this job."
Maple quickly went full 'Savage' as she grabbed all of her allies and climbed out of the base tearing through until she reached the surface in the process. The base was further damaged as bizarre creatures began to emerge from within. Jade green mountains of warts and scales. Ghastly pale men with a long lizard like tongue sticking out of their mouth. Electric blue warrior's who was appropriately buzzing with electricity. Huge stony minotaur like creatures. Hunched over white toad like creatures. Dragon like yellowish green giants. Blue catfish-esque mermaid like creatures. Pitch black bat winged men. An entire army of creatures like this emerged from the ruins of the base and began to spread out as they surrounded the allied heroes.
"Jade." Naofumi asked in a slightly angered tone of voice.
"So good news. Uncle came up with a contraption designed specifically to remove the demon Chi from any hosts that it comes into contact with." Which was good news, provided one condition that is. "I however have no idea how to build one." Which was horrible news.
"You mentioned that someone or some group defeated these things before. How?" Naofumi asked looking at Jade suspiciously.
"Banished them to another dimension. Course the downside to that is that opening a portal is a two way street, if we open up a portal to their dimension we risk them breaking through into this one while the door's open." Jade stated pointedly not mentioning how she herself had to take advantage of this phenomena when she was trapped in this other dimension.
"Alright straight to plan C then. Everyone get ready to wipe them out!" Naofumi commanded as everyone got into battle positions.
"How is that Plan C? It's what we always do." Raccoon on the other hand just voiced her complaints as she got ready to fight.
"I probably should pick this moment to point out that this is literally where I got the old adage of 'magic must defeat magic!'" The fact that Jade mimicked the voice of a old man for that probably meant that she was quoting someone, probably this uncle she stole the book from.
"Fine then we'll use magic." Naofumi stated as his eyes lit up, and the demons charged. "Dedicated Affection!" Naofumi shouted the familiar skill of the Compassion series causing a protective aura to wrap around everyone present. The Demons unleashed volley's of lightning, fire, wind, water and Earth, crushing gravity waves hit the group while the black Sky Demons and the Jade Green Mountain demons charged over. "Don't mind if I do." As if he wasn't already absurdly tanky before Naofumi held out a single hand and the attacks pooled together, swirling into a giant mass of elemental chaos in the process before he raised it above his head. "Float Mirror." The skill in question appeared next to the Mirror Hero. "Change Mirror: Bronze Gong Mirror!" And transformed into the form of a bronze gong, it's surface polished until it shined with a clear reflection. Putting his hand on the gong Naofumi began to tap his fingers, starting a beautiful rhythm that sounded like he had played it a thousand times. The crushing gravity disappeared, the magic attacks were absorbed into Naofumi's body as power from deep within everyone's core ruptured outwards and filled them up. Something about the music clicked inside of Maple's head as she felt the familiar effects of the magic going through her giant body.
"Is this... Aura?" Maple asked looking at Scaly oversized hands.
"Take. Them. Down!" And so they charged.
Maple took the tackle of the Mountain Demons like a linebacker stopping a football tackle. To her immense displeasure one of them bit her as if actively trying to eat her, to the demon's surprise they didn't even get through her armour.
"Watch the merchandise!" The shield like armour that the demon was gnawing on transformed into the familiar form of the Soul Eater Shield, which then split open it's massive jaws and bit down on the poor beast. The green mass of warts and fat flabs struggled for a few moments before it suddenly shrunk some and slipped out between the jaws. "Not sure the relevance but I think my Soul Eater Shield just made mine shrink down some." Maple stated as she put the other Mountain demon she was wrestling with into a head lock and slammed it into the ground.
Above them Filo and Demon got into a dog fight with a group of the pitch black sky demons, in a manner of speaking.
"So as I understand it: you guy's only real ability is flying using your wings right?" A few moments later the demons were sent screaming into the ground: wingless. The Demon Dragon was clapping her hands off of one another in satisfaction as another group of demons approached them, the pale white demons with overly long tongues that at some point started wearing sorcerer's robes. "What do you guys do again?" A few moment's later Demon was slammed into the ground where she had dropped the sky demons under the influence of super gravity. "Oh so that's what you do."
Goll was in the midst of being chased by a land shark, several actually. The Earth demon's were tearing through the earth like they were swimming in water their long goat like horns sticking out as Goll was being chased. That said Goll was far from the defensive as she lured the monsters into the trap of her fellow Hero.
"Wood! Bind them!" It was far from the first time Sakura had brought down a earth monster. The first time was when she had to subjugate The Earthy card, and just like that time the Earth Demons were ripped out of the ground roots piercing their bodies and binding them from the inside out. "They're a lot tougher than the Earthy Card, that won't hold them for long." Sakura explained keeping a firm grip on her staff as she prepared to follow up with another card. "I'll have to give her a boost with the Watery."
"'Watery?'" Goll looked over to the shore where Sadeena was in the middle of fighting against a group of the watery mermaid-like demons. "Leave it to me!" Goll jumped onto Chris's back who then grew in size until he was big enough to be ridden like a snow board. Filo wasn't the only one to go through a change from becoming one of the four kings. Chris's appearance had changed into that of a emperor penguin wearing sleek ice armour, and with several spears of ice floating around and behind him. "Ready!" Goll's hands had four darts of attack support in her hands and she knew exactly where she was going to put them. "Aim!" Sadeena was already fighting against the sea monsters when Goll landed the darts into all of them. "Freeze!"
At Goll's command her penguin snow board released a fog of ice from his mouth freezing the water demons solid. Sadeena then followed that up with a tsunami that slammed into the horrifying fish monsters and sent them skidding across the ground and slammed into the living statues that were immobilised by the roots. As soon as the roots came into contact with the water they proceeded to suck the poor bastards up and proceeded to rampage going out of control as they went lashing out at their surroundings.
"That should do it." Sakura stated as she proceed to chase down her next prey.
"Hahaha!" L'Arc proceed to laugh as he sized up the blue warrior like demons wreathed in lightning that he had chosen as his opponents.
"What's got you so happy?" Glass asked as she prepared a 'Turtle Shell Cracker' attack.
"I'm gonna get some good souls today!" L'Arc stated as Therese backed them up with her magic.
The natural enemy of lightning was earth with it's power to absorb and neutralise lightning attacks, towards that end Therese's magic turned Glass's attack into a stone spear and L'Arc's scythe into a huge stony mace.
"Scything Pinwheel!" L'Arc released his skill turning the attack into a swirling disk of wind and stone that the lightning demons attempted to counter with their signature element. The counter attack failed and as a result the demons were trapped inside of a hurricane with dozens of swinging boulders.
"Turtle Shell Cracker!" Glass's attack on the other hand accurately struck one of the demons in the eye and she seized her opportunity. The demon's Ki was divided into spirit power and Mana. The spirit went into her body, the mana into her weapons, and as for it's soul.
"Yoink!" L'Arc had that area covered. "Lightning Pin Wheel!" Needless to say, he was quite satisfied with his new attack.
Maple looked around at the area and the mixed results with which her allies were fighting the demons. Sakura's Wood Card was simultaneously tangling with the Water and Earth Demons and winning, Naofumi gave zero damns about the moon Demon's gravity attacks and was tag teaming them with his dragon woman. Raphtalia, Raccoon and Raph-chan were currently playing a game of illusionary rope a dope with the group of fire and wind demons. L'Arc and Glass were effectively bullying the lightning demons and she herself had the two mountain demons in a headlock. And through it all the only real winner here was Kyo as they did exactly what they were suppose to do: fight the demons while he finishes doing whatever he's planning with the spirit Turtle's power.
"Tch." Clicking her tongue in dissatisfaction Maple turned to Syrup and gave him one command to end all of this. "Syrup! Can you team up with the Wood Card to restrain all of them?"
"Kame!" Barking a reply Syrup turned into his large form and floated over to the tangled mass of trees and demons. Tying together their roots, the Turtle's bio-plant spliced itself into the wood Card's wood and released it's power, causing the entire twisted mass to bloom yellow, purple and green, releasing paralysis, poison and acid in the process.
"It attacks with flowers?" Sakura asked as if she was questioning what she was seeing.
"I'm surprised too." Goll admitted though she saw Sakura pulling out another card.
"Oh I understand that part. I just can't believe I'm actually using this one in a real fight." The latest card Sakura released a spirit from was a pink woman dressed in fluffy clothing. "Flower! Spread Syrup's flowers all over this area!" And so that's exactly what they did, with all of the heroes and their allies fleeing away while the vines and flowers to proceeded to rampage and attack all of the demons.
"Anyone seen where Jade went?" Naofumi asked as the others turned their attention to the Blunt Instrument Hero, sitting cross legged meditating.
Review Section:
RonaldM40196876: True. Also True. It's a throw away monster at this point. Kyo is arrogant enough to think he can. They appeared in the light novel, and they're what Kyo used to do exactly what he did: make duplicate Hero weapons.
Captain Imaginat: She already has, or did you not hear the part about her adult proportions a while back? There's no skill to turn people into mermaids. I have no idea who either of those people are. I only know the one language and that's english, I did not dub this story in English I wrote it that way, if you cannot figure this out then I must sincerely doubt if you've actually have been reading this. I would like for someone to write
Onishen Tsukitenshi: Naofumi and his forces have been working to either flat out kill them or deprogram them when possible.
Maglad: Thank you? True. As someone who has a sister I have received confirmation that women have an incredibly high pain tolerance in regards to their ears. Hope I don't disappoint. Billions, even in non-moe focused anime. And as you might've noticed: They don't even have to be anime at this point.
Galeon82: Don't worry, Kyo will make for an excellent Chew toy, whatever is left of him anyway. Technically Sakura and all of her cards are a collection of heavy weights, which means she's not a heavy weight, she's the whole rack.
Phoenix 7 .49: It appeared in the Source Material.
Energetic Beast: Only if they can get their levels up high enough, and only if Kuro's sword stops upgrading them. Natural body might be possible but a Reality Marble would require an insanely high level to get.