Author's Note: Okay so finished with the new game release so now I'm back to full time Writing. In the Meantime y'all can Read, Review, Favourite and enjoy!
Chapter 83: Tribulation of the Shield Hero
Katarina had been spending a lot of time grinding in Q'Ten Lo, and a lot of time in their anti-curse hotsprings. Opening her eyes as she soaked in the water she saw that the Shadow things were still hanging around her, rather they didn't even seemed bothered by the water. Letting out a sigh Katarina went to go find another nest of hornet's that needed to be kicked. When she went to meet with the old lady she saw that she was talking with Maple.
"So you think this'll boost their rate of learning?" Maple asked as she looked at the old lady in confusion.
"Without a doubt." The old Lady stated confidently. "Your Aura spell excites the Ki in the body transforming it into a more tangible form in the process and giving them something more solid to work with."
"Well as long as it'll help." Maple stated as she looked over at the training fighters. "I'm going to be using them too after all."
"Then I'll go and round them all up." The old lady stated as she left to work while Katarina walked up to Maple.
"Still struggling with removing the curse?" Maple asked looking at Katarina's sleepless features.
"I think they're going to have to rename these so-called 'curse removing hotsprings.'" Katarina had an annoyed twitch in her eye. "What about you?"
"I think I unlocked a Sacred Gear." Maple explained as she held up the shield she got a while back, the Guardian of the North.
"Where'd you get that? Did Kuro make it for you?" Katarina asked as she looked down at the shield in question.
"No it's Ost!" Maple stated somewhat excitedly.
"Ost? The Spirit Turtle?" Katarina asked her face suddenly scrunching in confusion.
"She sucked herself into my shield back when we were chasing after Kyo, then she used herself to reinforce Compassion." Maple explained as she brought up the weapon menu. "I used Smithing to combine ten Spirit Turtle Shields with Compassion and then this appeared, the Guardian of the North." Katarina let out a sigh at Maple's explanation.
"That's great and all, but it doesn't do the rest of us any good." For one thing: They were trying to avoid turning the rest of the directional beasts into weapons. Maybe after one of them sacrifices themselves to stop the waves would be a different matter but that doesn't help them fight the phoenix. "It sounds like we need to get you stronger as soon as possible because you're gonna be our ace in the hole against the phoenixes. How can I help?"
"I already talked with the old lady and I've got a plan to do this as efficiently as possible." Maple explained which was a polite way of saying that 'no not really.'
"If that's the case I'm going to go check on the Black Smith and see if he's got any of those weapons un-cursed yet." Katarina stated and Maple nodded her head.
"It would be good if we can find weapons we can actually use." Maple agreed as Katarina left for elsewhere.
The Old Lady gathered the army together and Maple had them join her party and cast 'All Liberation Aura' on as many of them as possible as well as bringing out hundreds of bottles of her highest grade of Ki potion so as to fuel the carnage yet to come. With the preparations in order Maple went to a secluded place to work, which was to say the inside of the massive forest on the mountain that the army had been training on, even though it was a forest it had a weird feeling of serenity like all the monsters just flat out ignored it or felt that it was sacred, it's close proximity with one of the Sera Lumina trees probably played a role in that. With Kuro's help Maple had managed to get several of her hammer borne shields up to V before they started to become too powerful for her current level to use them. So with this in mind Maple instead got to work.
"It's like a spider web." Maple honestly commented looking at the list of shields she had unlocked.
Shield's connected to other shields that they were related to, like a shield for a monster connecting to the shields that came from the shields that were unlocked from feeding bits of their bodies as opposed to the whole thing. It gave her a pretty good idea for smithing together shields, Kuro probably would've unlocked them by the thousand if it wasn't for her sword raising their quality to an unreasonable level. Right now the Shield for the Guardian of the North was largely connected in two different directions. The first direction was to the Shield of Compassion, and the Noble Phantasms Kuro had given her that clustered together to form it, and weirdly enough the Demon Dragon Shield, the other direction to the numerous Spirit Turtle shields she had sacrificed probably part of Ost's influence. With this in mind Maple initiated the first phase of her plan.
"Dedicated Affection!" And thus all of the point attacks the army was using against itself was turned on Maple instead. "Owowowowow!" Which was the expected result. "This hurts so much!" Maple received hundreds of Ki attacks a moment, her health increasing/restoring shields she unlocked with Kuro's help could only do so much. You could even say that her life was in danger, not just from the effects of the shield which constantly drained her health to fuel it's power, but also from hundreds of different sources that would otherwise be leaking health like a sieve. The pain was worst than anything she could imagine, quickly she moved to deactivate Dedicated affection but stopped, her eyes glowing alongside one of the Noble Phantasm Icons:
The Thermopylae Enomotia, in her field of view as if she was possessed by it. 'What pain is this compared to stepping into battle prepared to lose the lives of three hundred of your brothers and sons?'
A second Icon started to glow, the Prydwyn. 'What pain is this compared to living your entire life knowing that you are a weapon to murder your own family?'
The Lord Camelot. 'What pain is this compared to watching your lord destroy themselves?'
The Nine Lives II. 'What pain is this compared to realising that you've murdered your own family.'
The Yew Wood Shield. 'What pain is this compared to being branded an outlaw and dedicating yourself to protect the people who scorn you?'
The Demon Dragon Shield. 'What pain is this compared to fighting, killing and stuffing yourself all to become a worthy sacrifice to save a world that you will never know.'
The Spirit Tortoise Shield. 'What Pain is this compared to doing that only to fail and become corrupted?'
THIS IS NOTHING!
"I, the Hero of the Shield, have read and understood the origin of all power!" Maple started the chant despite the massive pain that she was in. Or rather she knew that if she didn't cast magic to deal with this immediately she would die. "Sever and Reconnect the Principle of Heaven! Great Forest of the land of Heroes lend me your power and cough up blood!" The plants around Maple swarmed her, vines wrapping her body, roots digging into her flesh, syrup and sap filling the ensuing pod mixing with potions released inside that had been stored inside of the shield, leaves sucking out energy from the sky and pumping them into her body. "Liberation Cocoon of Rebirth X!" It was the last thing Maple had shouted before being wrapped in a cocoon of plant matter.
If one person's worth of danger for ten minutes reduced the necessary level to unlock a weapon by 1 level then how about three hundred people who lives were being threatened? The young Shielder's body was soon overflowing with power and it was only getting started. Maple did not realise it at the time, but she had entered what was known as a Tribulation. When you take a car to a garage and order the mechanics to super charge it what steps do you think they take to accomplish that? Firstly they take it apart, examining each individual piece they find every last crack of structural damage and they set about repairing it, they take old parts and replace them with newer ones so that the car can take more punishment, go faster, have all sorts of little quality of life improvements.
What then do you do to augment the vehicle that is a human being? You break down it's individual components, its cells, and you replace them with new better ones. There was nothing to fear from this process, for it happens naturally as you age. Though there was nothing natural about this process as a new power was born inside of the cocoon as demonstrated by its occupant's bright green glowing eyes.
Although the girl named for Trees did not realise it at the time, the people in her party were becoming increasingly more brutal in their attacks. The Super high quality fuel that was the Ki potions, the turbo charge of Liberation Aura X, the constant expelling of foreign Ki through the Shield of Compassion. Though no one realised it but through the effects of these three things everyone in the army was quickly mastering Ki manipulation, and yet no one knew this as no one was taking damage. Instead Maple's broken down body was being rebuilt, the core inside of her stomach from where Ki was produce was formed, and from there was spread out through the broken mush of her body, the Ancient Practitioners of Immortality of China call these the Dantatian and the Meridians.
This qualified as a physical change as the power of the Guardian of the North was fully released into the pod and wrapped Maple's body, increasing her recovery and defensive power to a level where she could compete against the directional beasts for ten minutes, before that power disappeared having reached it's limit. Not even a Sacred Gear could protect a hero in this state from dying, but a Noble Phantasm can! One of the shields on Maple's hip transformed into a roughly hewn stone block, the Nine Lives II. Immediately the Shield was reinforced as much as possible, and then Maple died, and then she was resurrected, even more of the transformation that had been progressing through her body having proceeded, all cool-downs of her skills reset, including the Balance Breaker.
For a second time the Balance Breaker took hold inside of the Cocoon, and this time lasted for thirty minutes, for it had received a stimulation even stronger than being in danger, it had died and been reborn. New power was unlocked as the Legendary Shield sacrificed even more of its transformations to empower its shields. For the Thermopylae Enomotia, Maple had only been able to manifest a fraction of its full power for it's true strength was to defend and retaliate, for this the Charge Blade was sacrificed, and then Maple died again, the time limit extended to one hour.
The Ki produced by three hundred people was gathering inside of the cocoon concentrating inside the core and from there spread into the meridians, by now the changes to girl's body was not just internal but also external as she started to grow taller, bones snapping and muscles tearing only to be fixed with nutrients taken from the surrounding plants. The Prydwyn held the power to turn into a ship, but what use is a ship without water? For this every shield that involved the manipulation of the waves and water was sacrificed and Maple died for a third time, the Balance Breaker lasted for one hour and thirty minutes.
Maple shields contained the lives of many great heroes, all of their battle experience and the bodies forged and hardened by that process, with this as a map Maple's muscles had been rebuilt so that she could use their techniques smoothly. The Lord Camelot's power was to create a fortress, a building but there was another shield that did such a better job at it too. For this half of the Shield of the Beast King was sacrificed so that it's power could be combined with the Lord Camelot, and then she died, Balance Breaker two hours.
Fat is looked down upon by body builders but it is pivotal to the body, for fat stores energy and gives flexibility to muscle, and this fat was storing Ki that had been filtered and refined by a sacred forest. As a Heroic Spirit Hercules, the wielder of the Nine Lives, was known as a Berserker, a human being turned into a savage monster, but Maple was fully capable of turning into a even more savage of a monster, for this the other half of the Shield of the Beast King was sacrificed. Balance Breaker Limit two hours and a half.
The Yew Wood Shield was a weapon made out of poison, and had been reinforced by poison until an entirely different shield had been unlocked. However Robin Hood did not use a shield, he used a bow, and only of Maple's weapons came close so the Shield Turret was sacrificed, Balance Breaker limit three hours.
Sometimes adding things is not the best way to go about improving the body, refining also involves removing unnecessary components, case in point all the bodily pollution and subtle wear and tear that occurs to the body from living in the modern era, and through the last shield those same impurities were refined and sent elsewhere. The Demon Dragon Shield needed no time to think about what shield she wanted the most, after all her area of speciality lay in curses, and one of the finest cursed weapons she's seen in centuries was on the Shield's cutting room floor so she helped herself. Time limit three hours thirty minutes.
The Ancient Chinese people speak of five elements: Fire, Earth, Metal, Water and Wood, each element has a unique relation with one another Strengthening or weakening as they mix together their power, it was prophecy that the girl named for a tree unlocked Wood as her element, and so the Spirit Tortoise shield choose to consume the Shield best suited to the wood element, the Bio-plant Shields. Time Limit Four Hours.
Tribulation doesn't just require energy, but also material, as it stands when Maple went in she was wearing material of a monster descended from a god, the Tyrant Dragon Kigurumi, broken down and used to strengthen or replace every fibre of her being. Four Hours thirty minutes.
Finally the Nine Lives reached its limit and was out of spare lives. Through the nine lives Maple spent twenty one hours inside of the plant based cocoon being ravaged and rebuilt by her skills and magic while her shields ate each other becoming more efficient, powerful, dangerous others had noticed her absence.
"You left her alone!? Again?" Raphtalia asked exasperated as she spoke to the Queen. "Weren't you complaining a little while ago about how she sent herself rolling down a mountain inside of a ball of poison?"
"I was under the impression that she was with the ghost." The Queen replied holding her fan over her features in doubt. "It seems I was mistaken."
"If I mobilise the army and use the Hammer of the Beast King I should be able to-" Suddenly the nearby forest erupted, a huge amount of raw power was sent into the air but not just any power. This quality of Mana, this feeling of dread, Raphtalia hasn't felt this since they fought against the Spirit Tortoise. Suddenly something appeared inside of the pillar of light, something with six arms and shaped like a dinosaur, the creature roared and then immediately disappeared alongside the pillar. "Never mind." Raphtalia let out a sigh as she just found Maple.
Raphtalia crossed the distance quickly, empress she might be but unless the one pulling the carriage was Filo then she could quickly cross any distance by foot. Raphtalia arrived at the forest that looked like someone had redecorated the place, the various trees warped and mutated as they stretched roots, vines and tree branches over to a single location inside of the forest. The mass of vines had burst releasing their patient and the numerous fluids she had been covered in onto the ground. Naturally Raphtalia walked over to investigate prodding the woman with her hammer and wiping away fluids, and in the process she found Maple's shield.
"Kaede?" By Raphtalia's estimates this person was six inches taller than Kaede was, and was two cup sizes bigger, what at first looked like green eye shadow had dyed her eye lids a dark sparkling green. When Raphtalia opened her eyes she nearly dropped them, one had turned yellow with a black stripe going through it, like a turtle's eye. The eye blinked and immediately went back to normal as Maple slowly regained consciousness, and promptly passed out again.
The Heavenly Empress was set to give a speech to the incoming adventurers coming to Q'Ten Lo to massacre it's out of control wild life, she didn't disappoint either, in any sense of the word. What walked out onto the stage was a Tanuki woman of peerless beauty, the traditional Miko priestess clothes which acted as ceremonial garb albeit heavily modified for the occasion. From the top there was a top flat crown into which her had had been tied into a bun while a jeweled hairpin had been put through both crown and hair to hold it in place, a transparent red veil going along the lower part of her face starting at the nose, hiding nothing but drawing attention to her beautiful face tastefully marked by eye shadow and highlighter, aesthetically less important was that it had been imbued with magic to increase the range of her voice so that she could reach the entire crowd, the veil was connecting to her ear's via piercings which led to gold chains and flat, Maple Leaf shaped accessories. The upper part of her clothing had been lowered down exposing her shoulders, neckline and the upper part of her breasts, but trimmed with fur so to help prevent her from catching a chill, her arms had been folded into their opposing sleeves as she walked. She wore an obi, dragon skin and scaled, numerous accessories sewn into the fabric and giving out a powerful defensive barrier, woven together with a length of sacred rope tied into a bow on her back with bells hanging off of the loops denoting a sacred status, all while high lighting her narrow waist. Her red pants created a sharp contrast with her white shirt denoting the shape of her rear and had slits going down along her sides from her hips to the sides of her knees, exposing a protective wired mesh underneath while drawing attention to white thighs. Even her tail had been decorated, golden rings inlaid with bells had been tied into the hair of the tail and softly ringing as she walked. She wore golden slippers, lightly clicking and ringing as she walked drawing even more attention to her long graceful legs and beautiful figure in the process. Most important of all was the hammer, the Seven Star Hammer long since lost to the world, the Hammer of the Beast King is what it's current form was called, made with the bone of a ancient directional beast bound by tiger like leather that wrapped it's shaft as a grip, pink leaf like jewels and sacred bell accessories hung off it's hilt and head. Rumours had spread like wild fire of how she commanded the sacred power of the hammer like no other, commanding the earth, water and sky like no other and making entire buildings sprout from the ground like wheat. Finally this goddess-like person spoke.
"Greetings People of Q'Ten Lo, and adventurers of the mainland." The Heavenly Empress bowed with her entire upper body, large breasts spilling freely but the important parts remaining hidden showing the quality of workmanship of the jacket. "I am Raphtalia Honjou, Heavenly Empress and last survivor of the Honjou Royal Family." The Empress rose to a standing position once more, hands coming out from the sleeves revealing ten rings chained to golden bracelets. "On behalf of my family, let me say I am sorry." Whispers spread throughout the crowd discussing what this god like figure could be sorry for. "During a critical and dark time in our nation's history, my family was forced to flee like common refugees. We were not able to oppose the Tyrant that has ravaged these lands for these past ten years. For this same reason, Q'Ten Lo must change." The Empresses rings jingled as she patted herself on her chest. "I was not born of Q'Ten Lo's soil. I am an outsider like many of you gathered here today. If I am accepted here then everyone here is, if none of are accepted here then neither am I." The people cheered in response. "Look around you!" Raphtalia had intentionally left this area ravaged by Makina's antics specifically to make her point. "Isolation from the outside world has left us weak as a national power. No matter how many times prayers were made and no matter how many people were killed no help ever came because no one knew you needed help. I myself only learned of the damage done during my pilgrimage with the Four Legendary Heroes." The Empress gestured grandly to the ruins as she made her point. "But when I saw this, I felt a great well of disgust from deep within my core, and I will not stand to look at it a moment longer!" The Buildings around them suddenly collapsed, the rubble sucked into the ground to make room for new ones, a Temple made out of silver appeared behind Raphtalia while the road leading to it from the docks rumbled beneath their feet and transformed into Quartz stone. "The waves that have spilled into our country, the reincarnated whose whims have ravaged it, these things are happening everywhere, they are everyone's problem and we will need everyone to fix them!"
Raphtalia noted whoever they had writing this stuff was pretty good at their job, even she wanted to live here a little as she watched the speech through the window of a nearby hospital room. Raphtalia had very narrowly escaped being dragged into an abyss-like make up room with several very excited looking stylists and artists with a glittering gleam in their eyes. Luckily she had the quick reaction time to summon Raph-chan, have her assume her form, and tell the stylists to go nuts with her. That said, she would be finding those same artists later and introducing them to her poki hammer, as Raph-chan, and by extension Raphtalia herself, looked half naked up there and that was blatantly unacceptable.
Still Kuro had come by and found a way of making the little monster even more blatantly powerful: repeating the hack she had done with Atla before she drained magical energy out of Raphtalia's and Raph-chan's bodies and used that to trace hammers, which were then given to Raph-chan. Similar to Atla and the Excaliburs since the hammers are composed entirely out of magical energy they revert back to magical energy when they are not in use. Since through the Helping Hands accessories Raph-Chan could wield eight hammers she was given eight by Kuro: The Hammer of the Beast King, Mjolnir, The Spirit Tortoise Hammer crafted by the Blacksmith Priest, the Oni Club blessed by Q'Ten Lo's priests and modified into a hammer by Kuro, a Soul Eater Hammer Raphtalia had unlocked just to name a few of them. For one thing they still didn't know if they would encounter stronger weapons down the line, so just enough to cover their bases was good enough for now. As for the reason why Raphtalia went as far as to prepare her body double, the answer had to do with the reckless shielder whom she barely recognised who had her body remade from the inside out.
"It seems that the two of you were the last ones to see her before... whatever this is happened." Which led to her main point. "What. Did. You. Talk. About?"
"We were discussing the Sacred Gear she appears to have unlocked." Bason explained as he examined Maple's body.
"She unlocked a Sacred Gear?" Raphtalia was legitimately surprised by the statement. "Where did she find it?"
"She made it, combining together the soul and Flesh of the Spirit Turtle, which may even mean that she's breached Longinus class too." Bason explained turning to face Raphtalia. "She wanted to know the method of unlocking it's full power, so I explained it to her."
"Oh you mean that 10 minute brawl thing you mentioned before?" Raphtalia slammed down the palms of her hands onto the table. "HOW IN SHIELD'S NAME DID A TEN MINUTE BRAWL DO THIS!?"
"That would probably be what she did with me." The Old lady started to explain as she got a look at the Muscle in Maple's arm. "She asked me about how the training with the army was going and how she could help, I told her that using Ki potions to fill them up together with that Aura Spell of her's to excite the Ki in their bodies would've been the best way to go about it, she okay'd it but she wanted to add them to her party too." Granny tapped her foot as she thought about the situation. "My bet is that she was using dedicated affection to transfer all the damage they should've been doing to each other to herself, which explains why they weren't able to hurt each other despite going at it for twelve hours." Twelve hours! She took the Damage of 300 people for Twelve Freaking Hours!
"On the plus side the combination of the potions, the magic and the skill has caused their proficiency with Ki to sky rocket, I can probably go straight to teaching them techniques now." Raphtalia's hammer changed forms to the giant poki hammer crossed with Bason's Spirit Hammer. "Well. I don't know too many techniques myself, that Atla girl seems to have come up with quite a few her-." A loud thump echoed out as Raphtalia slammed down the Poki hammer on top of the old Lady's head, followed by a second loud thump against Bason.
"Out! Both of You!" Raphtalia was bouncing the rubber hammer against her hand threateningly. "I have to manage this mess you created!" Raphtalia was not leaving Maple's side until she wakes up, no she wasn't leaving her side period! Thanks to tribute from various countries Maple already had shields in the thousands, not to mention that because of the stunt she pulled she likely had them all unlocked, that didn't even talk about the fact that she apparently had a full blown god slayer in her arsenal now. This was the actual, literal definition of 'OP PLZ NERF' Cheat power and when Maple awoke they were going to figure out exactly what it was before she hurts herself again.
Author's Note:
RonaldM40198667: True. People seem to think so. The Dirge, the Cestus, the lantern Shield, And the charge blade of Monster Hunter, for a tool that is suppose to have no offensive power people keep finding ways of giving it offensive power. Grinding.
Saif Omar: Bow before her magnificence.
Aracade: Maple wouldn't make a good scientist, Mad scientist maybe, but science is rooted in things like reason and common sense which Maple doesn't have.
Captain Imaginat: I channelled the 'Excalibur Face' when making that scene. It's a shame that humiliation doesn't correlate to humility. Agreed.
Dakota Bruder: More trouble than it would be worth.
Nightshadegirl: I have no idea what any of that is.
Sebastien: It's not a main focus. What's wrong with that?
Galeon82: Hope I didn't disappoint.