Author's Note: Not a lot to say today, Going to try and get some Writing done, Read, Review, Favourite and Enjoy!
Chapter 80: The Boss of the Sixth Dungeon
The girls had been enjoying the facilities of Q'Ten Lo, it's hot-springs mostly. They were told at some point in time that they had powerful anti-curse properties but honestly, at this point in time they really didn't care. This country has put them through so much bile that letting them relax in a hot-spring was the least that they could do. Still the mood was somewhat melancholy, Ruftmelia had been allowed only one possession before being sent to their makeshift village/slave camp in Melromarc: a cheap glass jar containing the ashes of his mother. After that was the task of fixing the country he helped to break, the homes of Makina's allies had been raided and the ill-gotten funds the body hijacker had mis-appropriated had been seized. With Kuro's help a 'Hammer of the Beast King' had been made and copied by Raphtalia, since the entire country belonged to her now she could get to work fixing the broken infrastructure and restoring the farms that had been driven to drought. With exception to the ones that directly threatened the people the monster nests were being ignored for the time being, instead word will be disseminated throughout the mainland explaining that not only was the country full of the greatest blacksmith's in the world opening up, but also that a version of Cal Mira available every year year round was also becoming available to the public. With strictly regulated hunting laws the economy should soon rise up straight through the roof. Other quality of life improvements were being suggested by the four heroes but for the most part the administrators Raphtalia had horse whipped for the public's entertainment were doing their jobs. That just left the whale in the hot tub to address.
"Bason is wondering if the Heroes are going to be finished gallivanting around the country by the morning." Shildina asked looking at the heroes as she too soaked in the hot tub.
"Still not going to just hand over the divine magic is he?" Tanya asked looking at the whale woman suspiciously.
"He does realise that we saved his country right?" Katarina asked by way of follow up.
"That is that and this is this." Shildina replied bluntly.
"He has a test to give and his own brand of wisdom to share. According to him you have yet to pass the first and have yet to understand the latter."
"Then we'll speak to him in the morning." Tanya replied as she went deeper into the water. "Now if you'll all excuse me." Tanya asked the question in a way that said it wasn't really a question at all.
"Then there's other matters to attend to. The Hammer's reinforcement method." Raphtalia stated as the weapon in question sat next to her in the tub in it's smallest possible form.
"Excuse me, I don't wanna hear this." Kuro stated as her own weapon electrocuted her. "Zap me as many times as you feel like I'm not backing down on this!" The weapon complied.
"How about instead of you two arguing with each other how about I look at the reinforcement method first and tell you if I think it's going to affect your tracings?" Raphtalia asked while she looked up her own help menu.
"Remember what Ost said? We need the hammer's method if we're going to get rid of the curse series." Maple helpfully piped in as well.
"Fine." Kuro agreed but was still glaring daggers. "Smithing. Break down weapon transformations and use them as raw material to reinforce other weapon transformations." It had similarities to Katarina's reinforcement method which takes materials to reinforce weapons but by the sounds of things it had extra steps. "When appropriate weapons are combined together new transformations with extra unlocks are acquired."
"Well that seems harmless." Kuro was filled with an ominous feeling of dread as she remembered the black smith's words. "I wonder where the compatibility comes into-"
'Carving Knife. Main Bonus: Crafting Mini-game.'
"...oh no." That night Kuro swore, for as long as she lived, she would never take in another reinforcement method.
'Usapil Bone Sword.'
It was the first of the Bone Series Kuro had unlocked, and with it her first crafting bonus. Naturally after her sword became self aware it's first response was to max out the reinforcements for this particular sword and the other nine bone weapons like it that increased her crafting bonuses. For this same reason it took several break downs for the sword to fully disappear from her list of sword transformations, only to then reappear as part of her carving knife transformation. Then two more such weapons went through the process before...
'Bone Carving Sword. Main Bonus: crafting Mini-game level two. Equip Bonus: Crafting Bonus: 100%'
"Hey I just finished upgrading the Yew wood Shield!" Maple shouted holding up a wooden shield with a nest of snakes painted on the front of it having sacrificed the Chimera Viper, Nue Adder and Hydra Shields.
"Put that thing away before you destroy the hot-spring!" Raphtalia shrieked as she put as much distance between herself and Maple as possible.
Kuro had blanked out their conversation. The good news was the hammer reinforcement method mentioned that there would be a day long cool down after she maxes out a transformation, the bad news was that thanks to the sword inheriting Kuro's power to by-pass cause and effect it could skip straight pass that part and similarly max out the Bone Carving Sword which led to...
'Bone Carving Sword II...'
With another identical equip bonus. What was worse was that this wasn't even getting rid of the original bonuses either, rather the next bone weapon in line just swapped over it's equip bonus to raising her crafting.
"Byakuya I swear if you make another one of those transformations I'll Rule Breaker myself so hard..."
'Bone Carving Sword III...'
"That does it!" It took several heroes and Maple's rope shield transformation to stop Kuro from committing seppuku with the world's ugliest knife. "I hope you're all happy about this." Kuro certainly didn't look happy, in fact she looked about as far away from happy as humanly possible.
"What's got you into a twist?" Maple asked looking genuinely confused with the glare Kuro was giving.
"That fancy Yew Wood Shield I made for you, the one that you just finished reinforcing. What level is it?" Kuro asked her tone of voice knowing. "I don't know." Maple did notice that her shield had changed forms all by itself at some point in the past few minutes, in fact if her memory was serving her right it was one of her weakest shields she had available right now.
'Yew Wood Shield Level Locked 500'
Maple blinked stupidly for a few moments.
"How high exactly has that thing taken your crafting bonuses?" Maple asked looking at Kuro in shock.
"Currently I'm on 'Bone Carving Blade XII' all with Proficiency and Rarity maxed, and each subsequent bonus increases the quality, and the level that you can unlock them by, of my various tracings." Kuro stated as the girls simultaneously came to the same realisation, looking at their stats to see there stats had dropped like rocks. Come to think of it, they got Kuro to reinforce most of their weapon transformations using her mage craft which means... "Yes! Yes Feel my pain!" They too now knew what it was like when these stupid weapons lock out your favourite implements of destruction!
"Could we re-unlock our transformations by feeding the same material that unlocked the weapon in the first place?" Katarina asked as something collectively told them the answer to that question was a resounding 'No!' Which meant that Kuro's gloating aside they were now stripped of the vast majority of their weapon transformations, their stats little other than a small fraction of what they had use to be by benefit of the massive increase in quality of what weapons they did still have access to and their existing growth bonuses. There was no sane way that they would be able to take on the phoenix the way that they are now. The truly horrifying part was that the sword didn't stop this ludicrous reinforcement rampage because it realised that effect it was having but rather it couldn't access the weapon it needed to reinforce at Kuro's current level.
"How about instead of gloating you two come up with a method to help us manage this mess?" Tanya asked glaring down at Kuro.
"Manage this mess? Manage this Mess?" Kuro broke down in laughter at Tanya's foolishness. "I keep telling you people this sword is no good and you, never, believe me!" Kuro was zapped again, and this time it really did hurt. "Ah. I see you've disposed of my pain killer too."
Looking through their list of weapons the girls saw that all of their Cursed weapons had similarly been dismantled, the various 'materials' generated in the process left off to the side unused. The girls breathed a deep sigh, come the morning they would have a lot of work to do...
When Morning did come Shildina led the group back to the shrine area, villagers were already working to restore it but work had been halted as Shildina worked.
"I trust you remember how to do this correct worthless oracle?" Bason asked as he glared down at Sadeena.
"Yes sir." Sadeena replied, lamenting.
"Do you understand now, the reasons I told you to stay away from that abomination?" Bason asked his voice shaking with anger.
It wasn't just the heroes who needed to rest and recuperate. Shildina had a hole carved into her very soul: death would've inflicted a less severe injury. Even after the soul fragment had been returned to it's rightful place she had spent days on a IV drip being fed Soul Healing potion to stitch it back into place. Now that Shildina had recovered from her soul Surgery she was ready to work again though that wasn't all there was to this situation. No Shildina had the opportunity to see inside of the mind of the one whom she had offered her loyalty, a parasite who saw her as little more than a new dress. That by itself was bad enough but she saw far worst, a monster that corrupts and destroys everything it touches, her actions not for the benefit of anyone, herself included, merely to spread rot everywhere she went. She was a creature that only existed to destroy, and however brief it may have been: Shildina had been a part of her. But there was such a thing as a healthy union of spirit and body, of the dead and the living. It was a union he and his master had made many times before in the past, he transformed into a compact ball and then shoved inside of the body that did the deed, in this case Shildina's as a familiar yellow light lit up inside of the whale woman's eyes. However it did not stop there. Shildina held out her hand and four additional spirits rose up and flew to her side, each of them wrapping around her body's limbs forming two gauntlets, and two boots.
"Dog, Penguin, Squirrel and Rabbit." Maple commented as she saw the animals in question making up the four parts of Shildina's new armour. That was on top of the yellow Chinese styled body armour that wrapped her torso and head.
"Well at least we know what happened to the animals that helped the heroes found Cal Mira." Finishing the transformation sequence off Shildina called forth the spirit refining treasure to her hand, and it assumed the form of a long spirit Katana.
"Are you done yet or are there more?" Tanya was getting impatient. They still had another dungeon raid to finish after this, and two more vassal weapons that they needed to find, not to mention the so-called god killing weapons that they had to sort out. Shildina and Bason smiled in response as they backed away and a fog filled in the area.
"Whatever it is it's about to start." Kuro's eyes scanned the fog as spiritual skeletons emerged from the fog carrying items such as scythes, hoes, sickles, rope, hammers and other miscellaneous items.
Maple looked at the slowly approaching figures and walked forward to him. Trying to tank the first hit so that she could get a counter off right off the back? Unlikely, seeing as how not only had she put her shield away, but she dismissed her armour and took off her hood as she walked up to one of the skeletons.
"You guys aren't soldiers. At least not all of you." Maple gestured to the miscellaneous items that they had been carrying. "Carpenters, Farmers, fishermen. If there are warriors or soldiers among you there are very few." The fog swept them, and indeed though grey and see through the skeletons had been replaced by the form of poor men and women dressed in ragged clothing. "What happened to all of you?"
"We were here since before Q'Ten Lo." The man with a hoe stated. "We were all killed instantly when the land suddenly formed around us." No desperate struggle, no monsters falling from the sky, one day they were just minding their own business and suddenly, they were just buried like a game glitch where you wind up inside of a wall. That was scarier than anything else. "The world's merging together, or so the hero who was on the other world explained to us after pulling us out of the ground we had found ourselves in."
"Why did he do that?" Maple asked looking at the people who barely looked like they existed by this point.
"So that we can tell those who would come here how we lived, and how we died." The sound of hands clapping echoed out as the spirits retreated.
"This is not a test of arms, despite what you tried to make us believe." Maple said accusingly as she looked to the possessed Shildina as she walked out of the fog.
"No it is not. I'm told that 'with great power, comes great responsibility' is a popular phrase across the worlds. Do you understand what those words mean?" Of course he wasn't just going to give them his secrets just because Maple was a pacifist.
"Just because we can do something doesn't mean we should." Maple stated bluntly. "Time, Space, Creation, Metamorphosis, Gravity and now Soul. We could in theory solve a lot of our problems using these six magics, plus whatever is waiting for us in Melromarc, but that doesn't mean that we should try." Maple explained looking up at Bason. "But not using them means that we don't have any idea what the person who set all this up is after. Someone out there has apparently gone through billions of iterations trying to find the right combination of people to do... something. When we need it but we don't know how to use it'll be pretty bad so... everything in moderation I guess?"
"Hahaha!" Bason actually chuckled at that, using Shildina's had to rub Maple's head which also carried the benefit of conveying new magic to her. "You'll be fine."
Tanya, Katarina and Kuro got to ride on the coat tails of Maple's success, which also meant that their work in Q'Ten Lo was also nearing an end.
"If anything happens in Melromarc's dungeon, come and call me." Raphtalia still had a bottomless pit of paper work that she had to sort through before this country was in anything resembling a fit state to receive visitors in, not to mention the massive amount of construction work she had yet to do. Kuro's 'Hammer of the Beast King' had been covered in the list of weapons that were now sealed thanks to her sword's one sided rampage so Raphtalia would have quite a bit of work to do right now.
Instead the four girls portalled back to Melromarc, which by extension meant that they appeared in the summoning room that they had first arrived in when they came to this world. Kaede had no time to review her trauma, for not they had to tell the Queen about what had happened to them.
"It sounds as if your sword is quite wilful." The Queen stated tapping her fingers on the side of her cheek as she pondered the implications laid out before her.
"The good news is that none of us were stupid enough to try and have Kuro tamper with the portal weapons." Tanya by all accounts had a pretty strange definition of good news. "Plus there's the Dragon Vein Network Maple had brought back from the other world too, so getting from place to place isn't going to be the hard part. That would be trying to defeat what is by all accounts a god with what basically amounts to maxed out beginner weapons."
They still had the Phoenix to deal with and the tiger after that, that completely ignored the fact that somewhere out in the wilderness there was a bunch of dragons killing and eating each other reassembling the pieces of another demi-god that could pop out of the wood work at any time. Though of more immediate interest was the screaming maid in the corner of the room. Kaede didn't know what it was like to hold down the pain button on a slave seal, but she imagined it would look like this, constantly screaming in pain as lightning runs through you, under normal circumstances you would feel a great swell of pity for the person on the receiving end of such a fate, under normal circumstances.
"Why is she here?" Kaede asked pointing at the person who had been a great source of pain and suffering for her.
"Listening to the screaming of people I don't like relaxes me. But yes she is a bit distracting like this." The queen snapped her fingers, and a shadow slammed a rock into the back of the head of the former princess, leaving a trail of blood as she was dragged away. "Of course I don't just torture her for giggles, the Slave seal is only set to react if she intends to threaten yourselves or my family." Funny how the Queen wasn't including her eldest daughter in the latter anymore.
Still she had to reduce it to the bare minimal punishment just to keep Malty from committing suicide through sheer suicidal aggression. She was amazing in her own way, it's like she only exists to destroy everything around her and doesn't even care about her own safety. She would be considered brave if she wasn't so bloody stupid.
"Moving on Heroes." The Queen stated as she coughed into her hand. "There is the matter of the final dungeon that has yet to be completed, are you four going to be capable of handling such a task in your current state?"
"We'll manage." Tanya explained holding her chin. "The Dungeon wouldn't let me in until I found all of the other divine magics first. We have the other divine magics now, hopefully they will be enough." Well that said, it would be easier if they had weapons they could use with divine magic. Luckily they knew just the man to talk to about it.
"Alright kid." Erhard had finished lining up shields in front of the four heroes, that's on top of the barrels of swords and spears and rack of bows and arrows. "Bon Appetite."
"Sorry for taking your shields again." Maple stated apologetically. "Are you kidding? I get weapons infused with the magic of the gods to put on display in my store: I can't buy publicity like this!" Erhard let out a chuckle at his good fortune.
For the first shield Maple used creation magic to imbue with Gravity magic. What is the job of a tank? Drawing attacks towards herself, and what was the best way to do that? Turn your shield into a black hole. Of course it wouldn't be a actual black hole, Maple valued her life too much for that, but a little bit of magic and all attacks would be drawn to the centre of her shield, to the jewel that gave her the cursed sin of Gluttony.
'Weapon Copy Activated: Black Hole Unlocked. Equip Bonus: +10 Defence. Main Bonus: Draw Aggro'
Onto the next shield. One of Maple's first and most useful skills in New World Online was called 'Cover Move' a skill that would transfer her in front of her much faster nearby allies supposedly to defend them in a emergency, though in reality it was the only thing managing her god's awful movement speed in game. Now it seemed that she wouldn't have to worry about her movement speed for a while.
'Weapon Copy Activated. Spatial Iron Shield Unlocked. Equip Bonus: +10 Defence Main Bonus: Cover Move.'
That left Soul, Creation, Metamorphosis and Time. Well she supposed they all had a little bit of Creation in them but that was besides the point, the next skill Maple was thinking about came from inside of a haunted House in NWO so...
'Weapon Copy Activated. Phantom Shield Unlocked. Equip Bonus +10 Defence Main Bonus: Poltergeist'
She didn't exactly have a laser cannon that she could use Poltergiest to swing around projectiles with to make a light sabre anymore, but her allies did, and since magic doesn't count as a weapon this had the potential for some fun. The Next one was for Metamorphosis, Savagery was fine and all but it wasn't Maple's only transformation skill from NWO. Others were like iron body and mineralise which transforms her into even tankier forms so now she was wondering if there was a way of using Metamophosis to accomplish the same effect.
'Weapon Copy Activated. Iron Shield of Hardening Unlocked. Equip Bonus +10 Main Bonus: Mineralise' So that just left one for time.
"I'm drawing a blank on what we should do for time guys." Maple said while she scratched her head looking at the final shield.
"How about something that'll decrease your cool downs for your skills." Kuro suggested a finger in the air.
"But what if that affects me too? I don't want to start ageing at an accelerated rate." Maple countered as the others thought long and hard about it.
"Then what about a boost for your healing magic." Katarina suggested shrugging her shoulders. "I mean healing magic seems to mostly just turns your body back to the way it was before it got injured right? That's the opposite of accelerated ageing." True. However Maple got an idea from that that she wanted to try, but it wasn't working right now. She might've needed something else to make it work. For now.
'Weapon Copy Activated. Restoring Shield Unlocked. Equip Bonus: +10 Defence Main Bonus: Restore'
"That's it for me. Guys?" Maple explained as she stacked all of the shields together in a neat pile off to the corner.
"Not gonna do me any good. I already made a bunch of divine magic weapons and fed them to my weapon." Kuro immediately tapped out from the prospect.
Tanya already had some ideas as did Katarina but they wanted more time to work on them so instead they put the weapons into storage, for the time being they had other things to focus on. The last time Tanya was here she was chased off by the Church of the three Heroes who had taken to squatting in the ruins like a nest of angry badgers, but apparently Trash at some point in time had taken the liberty of drowning the lot of them and mopping up the mess with his cane. So thus Tanya led the group on a uneventful adventure through the mountain and into the massive door with seven glowing stars indicating that they had earned the right to enter the secret dungeon and thus the massive stone doors ground to life.
"Everyone got their weapons ready?" Tanya asked and after confirming that everyone was ready she had their meat shield Maple take the lead as they entered the dungeon.
Review Section:
RonaldM40196867: The next twenty chapters are going to be dedicated to the latest power up method, the Sacred Gear, in order to grind up for the battle against the directional Beasts.
Captain Imaginat: Glad you liked it. I can't show them in the story, Trash getting stripped, tied up and whipped by the Queen wearing only a corset would force me to change the rating to M. Heavenly Empress will do just fine for Raphtalia, as for Maple and company they're the normal people Raphtalia hangs out with so that her regular duties don't drive her insane. A wooden chair, situated behind a desk, which is where Raphtalia is going to have to stay whenever she is heavenly empressing so that she can get the massive mess Makina left behind cleaned up. You could take three chimpanzees and lock them in a room with a type writer and you'd have the makings of a less morally bankrupt and more effective government then what Makina ran.
Aracade: If you got the chance to confront the people who ignored your family as they were being killed, would you be? I've recently had time to think about the same implications, and yes, if you don't go insane in the process then you're not human, or you're dense as a black hole like Katarina, it doesn't exactly help any that the people who are explicitly targeted for reincarnation aren't exactly the epitome of mental health either.
Xenvic: It would be different if it was the regular Rule Breaker, however it's effect has been weakened and forcibly spread out over the entire weapon, so yes it had to go fairly deep.
Saif Omar: Ainz was summoned as a Hero of the Staff, once. He was reduced to Level one in the process and the people who did the summoning reacted the way you'd expect to realising they summoned a giant undead monster to be their hero.
Nightshadegirl: And then some.