Author's Note: Not a lot to say right now, Read, Review, Favourite and Enjoy!
Chapter 68: Apologies to the People of the World from Japan
Top among the group's current priorities was the directional beasts, Trash claimed to have a lead on where to find the last one, the only thing Tanya really knew about it being that it was a big honking tiger.
"What are we doing back here again?" Hence Tanya now found herself questioning why they were now back in Faubrey again.
"Deductive reasoning." Trash stated looking up at the sky. For the first time in his life he could see the Faubrian night Sky, it wasn't choked on the constant overwhelming pollution that was the death of many in the past. He was reminded about his sister and how she would've liked to been able to see it, before he remembered that she was blind and the circumstances behind that fact.
"Oi! This is no time for you to go getting mad again!" Tanya snapped as she used her magic to float up to Trash's face and snap at him again. "If you can't even come here without getting mad again then why are we even here!?"
"Ahem." Trash cleared his head with his throat and got back on track. "Forgive me my nostalgia. You'll remember that Faubrey was founded by an alliance of Four Legendary Heroes in the past correct?"
"Yes. What about it?" Tanya asked cocking a brow.
"Has it occurred to you to ask the question of why? What led to four Heroes, previously against one another, to found an alliance in the first place? And after said alliance ran it's course what led them to stay together and build a singular nation together?" Tanya blinked in Trash's response. "You think that...?"
"The Faubrian capital was built on top of a directional beast?" Trash scoffed at Tanya's foolishness. "'We have an incredibly dangerous and powerful creature that we have been tasked with guarding against, so let's build our capital on top of it so that the moment it wakes up we'll all be killed.'" An unsound argument if Tanya's ever heard of one. "That said. As the city has expanded over the centuries it could have reached the point where it has been built over the beast's burial site." An unlikely scenario, considering how this place builds down as much as up that would require that they still dig the creature up, so they instead went with a third possibility. "Assuming they didn't kill it already, then Faubrey would have had to build around it at the time, if they're smart they will have done so in a way as to reinforce and strengthen the original seal binding the creature." Trash explained holding his chin in his hand. "What this means for us is that we need to gain access to Faubrey's building records and a map of the city to obtain an idea of where the creature could be hidden."
Hence Trash brought along the Hero who is most skilled with the use of paper work to help him deal with the situation. 'Fortunately' Trash didn't have to demolish Faubrey's castle again in order to make them cooperate with them, that carried the strong risk of destroying the documents they needed. If there was something that Tanya particularly missed from Japan, aside from the common sense, it was computers. Having everything stored onto a easily accessible cloud drive and needing only type in the name of the document that you wish to access, and at most punch in a password, was the ultimate organised man's dream. Even if that was not possible with this world's crude computer approximations Tanya would have at least settled for the second greatest dream of the organised man, the Dewey Decimal system, which makes finding whatever document you are looking for among paper files as easy as opening up a miniature little cabinet and browsing the convenient little cue cards therein to figure out where in a carefully organised mass of documents and books was the one that you were looking for is. But also no, near as Tanya could tell all of the documents that they needed was located inside of a room with all the other random assorted documents randomly, messily shoved inside with every other document this kingdom has accumulated, and it was one of a thousand just like it.
"This is gonna take a while." Tanya stated cracking her knuckles.
"Then we and your party had better get started." Trash stated as he entered the room.
A thought occurred to Tanya though.
"Emiya what can you tell me about this?" Tanya picked up a sheet of paper and fed it into her Bow's storage compartment.
'The item is a form confirming the reception of new stone for rebuilding the palace. Why you do this is...'
"Ah I see. Find me the maps of Faubrey in all of this mess would you?" What followed was Tanya sucking the entirety of the five storage rooms worth of paper into her bow which then proceeded to sort through that massive pile of documents spanning five storage rooms and found the ones that they were looking for. While she was at it, and because she didn't want to haul all of this legislation around with her everywhere she goes, she also also had her bow sort the contents of the documents into convenient leather bound books to be organised into something coherent.
'This is a waste of The Legendary Bow's abilities.'
"Doing menial paperwork is a waste of mine." Tanya growled in response as she got the maps they needed organised.
Faubrey's initial expansion plans had them ignore a particular area according to this map, an area that they would later disregard when they tried to expand again, and then they apparently dug too deep and ran into something that made them bring their total fire power down to bear, and then they sealed off the area. A few generations later another such attempt was made and it resulted in another mass casualty event sealing the area off again. The latest attempt was from Takt and his level 100 women, so she gave it fifty fifty odds that the big putty tat was still alive. However at the same time if the Tiger was still alive that's where it would be.
"I feel like the body count this country suffers from would be remarkably reduced if people around here could do their record keeping better." Tanya stated, her eye visibly twitching as she looked at the document in question.
"It always looked like such a nice spot of scenery too." Trash stated shaking his head in the negative. If he keeps thinking about all the things he wishes his sister could've seen he'll just make himself depressed and unlock another cursed series. "I would like to avoid being reckless with the life of a hero. We should round up some reliable individuals and then launch a thorough investigation." Trash stated making his opinion final.
"And avoid being reckless with the life of a directional beast." Tanya added pointedly and Trash conceded her point with the point of his staff. Kyo already hijacked the Spirit Turtle and sent it on a rampage, someone made a attempt to do the same with the Phoenix, even if whatever is protecting that thing can wipe out any attempts to tame it nine times out of ten that tenth attempt is still where Tanya's concerns lie, otherwise they're just offering themselves up as sacrifices for when the time comes to throw up the barrier.
"I'll focus on setting up the expeditionary force." Trash stated as he stood up to leave.
"I'll investigate the stores then." Tanya stated as she stood up.
As a country, Faubrey was something less than useless but they picked up a lot of powerful transformations here, apparently Siltvelt has a entire temple complex filled with weapons used by the past heroes. Wholly dismissing everything Faubrey has to offer on the basis of bad past experiences would only mean bragging about her ignorance.
"This was a complete waste of time." Tanya stated, her eye twitching as she glared at what had appeared before her like she was looking at an abomination.
Maid uniforms. Business Suits. Bunny Girl Costumes. School Swimsuits. Sailor Uniforms. A variety of different School Uniforms. Kimono's. Chemise. And more that Tanya was too disturbed to see further. It was as if every single Hero who ended up living in this country all took the liberty of outlining their respective fetishes and came to this place to have them archived. When Tanya was asked to see the places left behind by other Heroes of the past she was expecting to come across a cache of weapons not end up apologising on behalf of every Hero who came out of Japan. Well not that she wanted to apologise to this damned country any way but still.
"Is there something the Bow Hero would like to say?" The Store clerk asked with a smile while rubbing her hands together, not unlike a fly who just saw a fresh cow pattie. Wordlessly, Tanya raised one leg into the air, snapped it back down as she turned around and marched outside.
"Let's go somewhere else."
This wasn't exactly what Tanya had in mind but it was marginally better than the first store.
"Thank you for the meal!" Chicken Fried Rice served with Chicken balls & and sour sauce with Honey garlic spare ribs. With a look of legitimate joy on her face Tanya took one of the chicken balls with a pair of chopsticks and raised it to her mouth.
'Warning: Presence of Heavy Metal's, high concentration of unknown chemicals, Strength Enhancing Powder, Speed Enhancing Powder, Mana Enhancing Powder.'
Tanya's morsel dropped from her chop sticks and back onto her plate. Slowly, she put her Chop sticks down and checked the notification.
'Enhancement Powder: a potent and highly addictive stimulant that augments the user's body in exchange for health losses.'
"Something wrong boss?" Otto asked as he two was also in the middle of his first bite of food.
"Excuse me!" Tanya proceeded to hail one of the waitresses as she walked by. "Might I pay my compliments to the chef directly?" Said waitress proceeded to do so, and then Tanya immediately switched to whispering conspiracies as she looked around.
"No one eat the food here." Tanya looked around at the other patrons, overly large muscles otherwise sickly looking, they're likely addicted to whatever this ass has been putting in his food which means that when they start a fight they're likely to join in on the enemies side.
"My level is high enough now." Completely unrelated to Tanya cratering the area surrounding the village of course. "As soon as we lay eyes on the chef take the guns and get ready to kill everyone in here." Tanya muttered as she saw someone walk into the dining hall wearing a chef's uniform.
"You wanted to see me?" The Chef asked eyes immediately going to the Bow in Tanya's hand.
"I was simply wondering who could possibly create a meal as insultingly atrocious as this."
Eli kicked the table over and blocked the first strike from the bar's patron with it. One of the Waitresses somehow mutated from a petite woman into a hulking ogre like creature and smashed the table but by that time Eli had one of Tanya's Shotguns in his hands and through Reflect Bow it was transformed into something resembling a poison spitting cross bow. Viktoria ended up taking the high road and whipped out a machine gun that had been reflected with Tanya's Thunder Bow and opened up on the rest of the rapidly mutating patrons with stunning electric shocks. Ake opted for a sniper rifle Icy bird combination that while admittedly was only minimally useful at close range the bayonet on the end of it made up for it's lack of close range power, and the combination of that and Aranaya's webbing restrained the stunned patrons.
"Eli the situation is handled. I'm taking your gun back." With a flash of light the guns flew out of the hands of Tanya's party as her legendary weapon assumed the poison spitting Shotgun form. During all the chaos the chef had been floored by Viktorya's machine gun fire, looked pretty well off for someone who got hit by a bolt of lightning but best to make sure anyway.
"GGGYYYAAAHHH!" Tanya severed his leg at the knee cap, the wound was left festering with acidic poison too thanks to the shot gun blast. It should be a wound that lasts a life time and yet she watched the flesh crawl as the leg pulled itself back together.
"Gotcha!" The reincarnated snapped as he grabbed Tanya's gun by the barrel and with a flash of light the weapon had gone from Tanya's hands into his turning into the form of the legendary bow in the process.
"You Heroes are useless without your weapons! And with this you've basically...!"
"Grab him." Eli and Otto both grabbed the man by his arms and held him out in a T-Pose. "Yuki put up a territory." It was a spatial distortion magic used by monsters, similar to bonus field, it sets up a dedicated hunting area for a boss monster increasing the Experience gains for those who level inside, in other words it's a bonus field that cuts off instant long distance transportation like the kind to take this disembodied mook back to whatever base he has set up to reincarnate himself.
"Let go of me!" The reincarnated kicked and squirmed as he flailed about trying to break free. Hero or no Tanya's companions were still raised on powerful growth bonuses, reincarnated or not someone whose strength is only above average wouldn't be enough. "Piercing shot!" The Bow's gem lit up for several moments before dying out again. "Arrow Rain!" Again the bow lit up, and then died out.
"By now you've probably noticed the weakness of my bow." Tanya explained as she took a string. "If it was one of the other three legendary weapons we were dealing with, I wouldn't be needlessly taking a risk like this." A horrified realisation crossed the mind of the reincarnated man. "But luckily for me, a bow requires two hands to fire." Tanya considered poring herself a glass of water but decided against it would probably be drugged. "Tie his feet down." Aranaya quickly did so. "Now I've noticed that the weapon steeling accessories you people are so fond of hasn't appeared on my bow yet. Frisk him." Ake went to work, Aranaya choked the struggling man when he offered his resistance and eventually The young soldier found the pink and silver accessory that he was looking for. "I see you already had it, you don't just automatically materialise it onto your weapon." Tanya accompanied her observation by wiggling her fingers around as if mimicking sparkles. "Let's see what happens when I attach it to the weapon then." Tanya stated as she clipped the accessory onto her bow, the two jewels, one on the accessory and one on the bow, both glowed with a pink aura.
"Hmm." Eli hummed in curiosity as he observed something. "Something you'd like to add Eli?" Tanya asked as she would like any information her companions can offer. "There seems to be a flow of Ki coming from you to the accessory."
"Is there?" Tanya looked at her status screen and indeed saw the Ki meter was slowly draining. "It's so weak I didn't even notice." Tanya broke the accessory with a knife and the bow flew back into her hands. "So the Accessories are designed to siphon Ki off of legitimate wielders of the weapons and feed them to you in order to help fuel the weapon's stolen abilities then? This has been such a fruitful encounter that I don't want it to end. I wonder what other information I can get out of you."
"Go to hell you little monster!" The Reincarnated chef spat viciously. "I'm not telling you anything!"
"Is that a fact? Let me let you in on a little secret: I hate your country and it's people." Tanya stated flatly. "You are a country of loud, selfish, ignorant, obnoxious pricks with basically no redeeming qualities whatsoever. You lot have single handedly kicked started global warming, you rape, murder and pillage for sport, Your entire history is a never ending parade of screw ups and atrocities. Without doubt this entire country is a complete and utter write off and you...!" The fact that Tanya was slipping deeper and deeper into a absolutely unhinged sounding murderous accent was only making her even more intimidating. "...You made me save it from you!"
Five minutes later.
"He told us everything." Tanya stated into her Communications Crystal bow.
"Are you sure about the veracity of his information?" Trash asked on the other end of the magical hologram.
"He has no reason to lie about the identities of his fellow reincarnated. Based on Takt attempting to hunt all of them down we can assume that they don't like each other very much."
"Does feeding us false information out of spite count. He should like us even less, and you specifically."
"Whether his information is true or false is irrelevant, so long as we agree that he has outlived his usefulness to us." Tanya stated bluntly. "Don't look to me for permission." Trash stated bluntly. "I would've just popped his soul to begin with." And thus they had one less reincarnated they needed to worry about.
By Tanya's count that was roughly one down and two dozen left to investigate. It was hard to believe that Takt would've missed so many reincarnated who had set up shop right under his nose but they knew he missed one so they had to take in several possibilities.
'Takt assumed that all reincarnated were like him, individuals who had acted as geniuses and used that to advance the world's technology for their own gain.' That was a strong possibility, partly because they were operating under the same premise. 'We are reincarnated from other worlds who came here through the waves and are now laying low, building up our power until we get an opportunity to plunder the world and then take our spoils back home.' Then what was this fool planning? 'I intend to raise a army out of the strongest army in the world by getting them addicted to my food that also enhances their already naturally high stats.' Seemed plausible, but for what purpose? World domination? Or...
"To begin with let's do something about all these people before they get loose and try to kill us." Tanya used her teeth to uncork a bottle of antidote and splashed it onto the patrons that they had restrained expelling the toxic drugs and other impurities in their bodies in the form of black smoke thanks to her skills. "I am a legendary Hero, which means that most of you should feel inclined to help me figure out what was going on here and how it relates to my existing business to begin with by default." They didn't look too thrilled by the notion. "Let me rephrase that, I am a legendary Hero, which means that I am gifted with a vast number of ways of making you all suffer horribly before I kill you." The various patrons were more than happy to help.
This chef person it seems was looking for whatever has been killing people who go looking for the Directional beast. His strategy mainly consists of getting people addicted to his food to the point that they're willing to go into the forbidden area and find the damned thing to either kill it or report back on what it is, the fact that to their knowledge no one has reported back yet has lowered their general opinion on the man to whom had blatantly enslaved them considerably.
"Clearly we need to employ a new strategy." Tanya stated bluntly as she rubbed her chin while walking down the streets of the capital's market district. And then she caught sight of a store display and she got an idea.
"I thought you kept getting mad at Maple about tampering with these things?" Eli asked as Tanya did some mixing together with the Bow of the Beast King.
"Huu. If something proves itself to be consistently Safe, Reliable, and Efficient then there is no reason why not to use it!" Tanya snapped as she watched the items she bought from one of the magic item stores combine with Bio-Plant seeds inside her bow. "Lord knows that if everyone thought the same I could've spent a lot less time in the hospital." Tanya stated as she made her final adjustments to the experimental Bio-plant she made. "Dial up the fertility rate so that I don't have to do this a hundred more times..." Tanya tossed the bio-plant onto the ground and in a few moments a large tree was grown, producing fruit that looked like it was made out of crystal.
"Are these even edible?" Eli asked as he plucked one of the fruits in question.
"They're not for eating they're for throwing." Tanya stated as she measured the weight of the baseball sized fruit. "Each of these 'fruits' can act as a communication type crystal to take a recording of the area inside of the place we want to look through and send the feed back to me after I tune each of them to the crystal ball bow." Tanya explained as she used gravity magic to shoot the thing over and into where she wanted it to go. "We will hopefully gain an idea as to what is going on here in the process." After having her party lob about fifty more of the crystals into the forbidden zone Tanya hard started to get some idea of what they were dealing with.
The Forbidden Zone was quite possibly the last forested area in Faubrey, that wasn't saying much though since do to the pollution, and the fact that before the factories started to see reforms the sun hadn't shown here in a very long time, all of the trees, with the exception of the rapidly growing bio-plants that Tanya and the others had tossed into the area, were effectively dead and were like that for years, as was anything that could lead them to rot just leaving dried out husks sticking out of the ground like grave stone markers. Which was appropriate, considering all the dead bodies. Faubrey's Pig King tried all sorts of methods to try and claim this area during his nearly a century of rule, magical bombardment, the Silhouette knights wielding chainsaw's to clear cut the land, releasing wild monsters to hunt whatever has been rampaging here, The fact that it's still here when the Pig King is not just goes to prove who was the superior combatant in that battle. That and the Dead bodies of Soldiers, monsters, and the broken remains of different knight models, something looked like it tore all of them apart, with stray limbs strewn here or there, and those were only the oldest of the bodies. Fresher ones were already on their way to add themselves to the pile.
"How long does it take to find a bloody tiger!" More men and women were already on their way to try and find the source of all this madness, the third of the Directional Beasts but thus far they were not getting very far in their search. Well that wasn't entirely true, they had gotten pretty physically deep in the forest, whatever had been killing people hadn't deigned to reveal itself yet. That changed with the appearance of a rather grotesque abomination, not even creature was a appropriate term for what she was seeing.
"What. The. Hell!?" One of the corpse piles got up, in the process revealing something that was roughly built like one of Faubrey's Silhouette Knights, except that this thing looked like it was made entirely out of spare parts and she didn't mean mechanical ones. Chunks of meat with leather sewn in on top, mechanical limbs torn off of the Knights, sharpened wooden peg legs, Large sickle like claws and a mishmash of broken bodies had been pulled and stitched together with little rhyme or reason into a giant spider like monster. They didn't even notice it among all the carnage.
"Well, we know what has been living here all this time." Tanya stated bluntly as she watched the abomination tear into the reincarnated.
"Define living." Eli felt compelled to state.
What they watched was less a surveillance video and more a horror move as the undead abomination slashed the bodies with it's claws. Some were picked up and shoved into whatever spot had taken damage during the fight something resembling wires or string popping out to graft the victim into place while simultaneously sucking the life out of them in a process that resembled the Spirit Tortoise's zombification process. Others were turned into proper zombies with large sickle like claws shoved into their bodies and used to chase down the reincarnated. It didn't even spare those who ran, sending more properly reanimated corpses out to chase down the individuals in question and drag them back. It had more conventional methods of feeding as well, as it tore open one of it's victims.
"Reflect Bow: Soul Eater Bow." The poor bastards were cracked open like eggs, and the warm yellow yoke that was their souls were dropped directly into a maw of tangled limbs and claws. Tanya took a moment to consider the blades, long and curved like a cat's claw, or a tiger's. "The Directional Beast has sufficient protection." Tanya swapped out her bow, less she continue to listen to the sound of the reincarnated scream. "Come on. I need to go bleach my brain on bureaucracy now."
Review Section:
RonaldM40196867: If you insist. No she's not. Allow me if I may to answer you question with one of my own: If Rat has attempted to do such a thing, would you really want to know? I can't really say that weapons are a thing that I am too heavily into.
Captain Imaginat: So long as we're clear on all the relevant details.
Galeon82: Begin by disarming the attacker, if wielding a knife back-step when they go to attack, grab them by their wrist, and twist to make them drop the knife, if gun grab the weapon by the barrel and immediately push it away from you. As soon as you are in striking range deliver a strike to the throat with your hand, a kick to the groin or if the attacker is female the stomach, once the attacker is doubling over in pain pull them over and begin stomping on the neck until they stop moving.
Nightshadegirl: In his defence, he was misled throughout the night by Raphtalia's illusions.