Author's Note: Your attention please! I have my own Royal Road Account now, and have post my first non fan fiction work over there Dungeon Core City. Please any interested parties have a look! Read, Review, Favourite and Enjoy!
Chapter 90: The Other World's Colonies
The Queen had spread word about the 'Bow of the Beast King' that Tanya had unlocked across the kingdom, and the similar effects that the other 'Beast King' weapons had in Seatto and Q'Ten Lo. Rishia was managing the Ivy Red Territory, after fortifying it against invasion and restoring the land's fertility she began using Maple's cycle of converting gold into ore and back into gold coins to farm for funds to feed to her weapon. Tanya on the other hand could operate on a larger scale. As 'Princess' of Melromarc the country in part belonged to her, all across the nation the faith in the four Heroes was as strong as ever, the churches were being over crowded as Tanya visited the villages one by one alternating between fortifying them against the waves, renewing crop lands and creating new buildings to manage floods of refugees. Communities of Spirits, Jewels, Elves and Dwarfs were being built across the lands, for the Spirits bio-plants spliced with the spirit potion was being grown to handle all of their nutritional needs, the Jeweled people were cooperating with the Faubrian refugees in the manufacturing of advance technology, the dwarfs were cooperating with the Zeltobian refugees in the manufacturing of weapons, and the elves were cooperating with the demi humans in agriculture and hunting. The massive amount of prosperity was racking up worship points faster than Tanya knew what to do with them, though luckily for her she knew people who had some ideas.
"Okay that's the jewel mine finished." Tanya turned to look suspiciously at the jewels who had made this particular request. "Explain to me how this works again."
"The Jewels we gave you as material for the mine absorb souls from the land, we then harvest these jewels and refine them into accessories. In exchange for increasing stats or providing specialized abilities the jewels absorb the Ki from their hosts." Why was Tanya suddenly imagining the Jewels as leeches? "Once they've taken their fill the accessories break open and can be swallowed by a female of any race, after several month's a new jewel of the same race as the mother is born." The Jewel Tanya had been talking to gestured to their growing village and the children within.
"Does the species who eats the jewel have any effect on what comes out?" Tanya asked holding her chin in her hand.
"Quite. As you can plainly see." The Jeweled person gestured over to her left, elven, dwarf, there were even monsters present all with jewels lodged somewhere in the surface of their skin, no spirits though.
"I don't see any spirit people here?" Tanya stated bluntly. "Spirits lack a physical body, so that makes them ill-suited to act as a surrogate." The Jeweled person explained simply.
"But you don't mind if a monster eats one?" Tanya asked looking at a large black sabre tooth cat like creature.
"We can't help it if people get killed while wearing one of our accessories." The Jeweled person explained while letting out a sigh.
"Monsters just randomly eat things left lying around on the ground like that?" Tanya seriously questioned the logic here. "Was the accessory made out of leather or something?"
"In some cases yes, but just being a jewel is a significant boost to your problem solving and memory abilities and gives a significant boost you magic casting capabilities, so for the sake or producing strong offspring they will gladly eat it. There are even cases of jeweled monsters in the wild killing each other for them, or jeweled adventurers getting targeted for the same reasons." So they just massively increased the threat level the jewels represent? Lovely.
"Does the quality of the workmanship affect the resulting offspring?" Tanya asked curiously.
"Of course, High quality workmanship will always surpass low quality workmanship. Many prestigious jeweled families attract craftsmen with offers to marry into their families, course the majority of the time the victors end up as the dwarfs, of course that isn't to imply that elves and humans aren't without their own legendary craftsmen." The statement actually surprised Tanya, in that these humanoid accessories actually turned out to reproduce like normal people.
"I'm actually surprised to learn that you guys reproduce normally as well." Tanya stated while holding her chin in thought. "Does the material, aside from the jewel that is, affect the resulting individual in any way?" Tanya asked as she continued to make her curiosity known.
"Only in the abilities inherited by the accessory that gets transferred over." The Jewelled person explained simply.
"We should put them in touch with the community of Lemo's that we have at the village." Otto stated making his opinion known.
"And the Craftsmen from Q'Ten Lo." Eli followed up, both of which were rapidly shaping up to be good ideas.
"And the Sword Hero." Aranaya added which immediately prompted a rejection from Tanya.
"Absolutely not." Tanya knew when to draw the line though. "I have no doubt in my mind that if you combined a bundle of jewels with Kuro's dozen or so levels of crafting game and dozen or so crafting bonuses and whatever else we can get our hands on like from the spirit Tortoise or one of the other sacred beasts that she would create something that approaches the power of a god. Atla would then take that accessory, fill it up with Ki like the stupidly efficient Ki generator that she is and swallow it to knock herself up with Kuro's spawn." Which is a huge problem because not only was she barely breaking two digits but unlike most demi-humans she hadn't aged as she leveled up, she would crush half of her internal organs if she tried to go through with such a mad scheme.
"Understood." The others nodded conceding to Tanya's point.
"How are they coming along then?" Tanya asked looking over the warehouse nearby.
Faubrey's military inventions weren't without merit, however steeped in depravity their origins may have been, and how blatantly corrupt and destructive their methods may have been. Tanya however had found what you call a work around.
"Thanks to the young Prin-" Tanya shot the jeweled foreman a glare. "Thanks to the young Hero's legendary weapon we can mine this same area over and over again." That was a nice change from the constant out-pore of death threats and munitions coming from the Faubrey of old, so right there was a flat improvement all by itself. "Our own technology has eliminated the majority of the problems that Faubrey faced in their refinement process." Instead of being pumped into the atmosphere, pollutants are gathered by the machines of the Jewel people based off of the legendary and vassal weapons. Among their creations are containers with the seemingly infinite space of the weapons, and machines that can process absorbed materials into new items which are then break down the absorbed material and reprocessed that into new materials. Everything was very efficient and had no waste products. They even made weapon-based auto translator amulets.
"These are the products that we had you work to augment?"
The Faubrian Airfleet. The Phoenix was a sky born monster, therefore they needed fighters for the air and anti-air units that were on the ground. Towards this end the first thing on the list of things to do was to fix the main problems that had crippled the Syrphine during the fight with Faubrey, namely its manoeuvrability. Like many modern air-planes the Syrphine flies by going in a straight line, it's wings angled as such so that when it hits the air current they will generate upwards draft and cause the air-plane to take off, steering is done by flaps located on either wing that can fold up or down to create a differential on where and how much force is being applied to make the air current push the plane in a different direction. The downside to this is that the air-plane has to always be moving less it falls through the air, which led to them to crash into invisible rocks that had been floating in the air. So what has more manoeuvrability than an airplane? A helicopter, or in this world a dragon. A helicopter is a vehicle which continuously generates its own downward air current in order to push it upwards, a similar method was employed by most flying monsters through through the flapping of wings instead of the rotating of blades, the issue here being that unlike the constantly moving Syrphine this one was quite slow, and also unlike the Syrphine if a dragon got hit by the Phoenix's fire attack both the monster and it's rider would get killed in the process. The solution was the same reached by the American military in the 1980's, create a machine which can function as both. That now led to the current state, in which the wings from the previous Syrphine was now replaced by a pair of tilt rotor turbines able to fulfil both functions of manipulating air current to push forward and push up, the tail like rocket thruster remained, but there was a pair of guns mounted on the back in place of the six that use to be on the arms.
Tanya nodded in acknowledgement, she'd only nod in acceptance once she's seen it in action, for now she turned her attention to the other product that had been commissioned, the Trandorkis. Unlike the 'Mermaid Knight' favoured by Tanya the 'Centaur Knight' had seen no major overhaul aside from the exchange of outdated materials for new ones with decreased weight and increased durability, they were however hauling large trailers behind them, containing racks upon racks of Javelins with miniature magical thrusters attached to the far end of the javelins connected to cables of spooled silver. The Jewels couldn't even take credit for this one, the founding sword hero had brought yet more technological innovations from his world, this one a crude approximation of wire guided missiles, the anti air weapon Tanya had commissioned.
"I would like to see if Katarina and Rishia can copy these." Tanya stated as she looked at the weapon in question. She'd put it on the list. For now though there were other things to attend to. "Continue the manufacturing process. We'll have high level pilots for them sent over shortly. For now I find that I must attend to the other colonies."
Leaving the Village Tanya donned the Syrphine and flew to the next location, Yuki carrying the rest of the party via hot-air balloon and they soon arrived at the Spirit Tortoise corpse, the resident one stop shop for the highest quality material in the world, Spirit Tortoise Bone. It was a good thing Maple wasn't here to see this, after she got back from the other world they all heard about how Maple had befriended Ost, and how she sacrificed herself to seal off the effects of the Shield of Gluttony. Now Ost's remaining body was being chipped away at by the dwarfs alongside Zeltobles blacksmith's and the black smiths of Q'Ten Lo. Whereas the Jewels were diversified in their population the Dwarfs were short and stocky, Tanya even spotted people she could swear on her grave were children were they not working a smith with the skill of a master, indicating that they were fully grown. The group of Lemo's they had already relocated here had been getting along quite swimmingly with the newcomers. For now the Four groups of blacksmith's were given the task of making armour out of the Spirit Tortoise materials, taking full advantage of the ludicrously high defensive power to forge armour without peer from the bones of a god. Luckily for them, there were plenty of black smiths on both sides of the planetary barrier with lots of experience with this very same material. Sadly some weren't working as hard as others, and worst yet dragged them down with their blatant sloth in the process. Case in point.
"If it isn't the top blacksmith of Q'Ten Lo." Tanya had spotted the old geezer in question on both of his arms were what Tanya would think was a pair of young preteens based on their body types, however given the fact that this place was already inhabited by people who were typically short and stocky to begin with she couldn't discount the possibility that they were already adults. Tanya sadly though already had to deal with this old man's flirting once already, and thus for the second time in her new life Tanya played the 'I'm really a forty year old man in a child's body' card, and worked about as well as the last time that she had tried to use that as a reason as to why she couldn't put on a dress to the Queen. "On break are we?" Tanya turned her attention to the child like dwarfs that were on either side of the old man. "How long has this lasted for?"
"Too long." One of the child like dwarfs replied letting out a sigh. "He said he was going to teach us this world's crafting techniques but then he just got drunk and called us over like this." Tanya blinked stupidly for a couple of moments.
"Hold him down." A few short moments later the old man yoweled into the sky from the pain induced by his slave seal. "I thought I heard something familiar." Erhard had travelled all the way over to the community of blacksmith's built out of the corpse of a goddess as the Queen's representative, and who should he find but someone he's wanted to find for many years now.
"You know who this geezer is?" Tanya asked indicating the old man she just branded like common cattle.
"He's my old master from back when I was living in Zeltoble, I still have all the receipts from the mountain of bills he left me and Tolly when he suddenly took off at the tail end of our training." And thus a second identical yowl echoed into the sky as the old man was reassigned to Erhard as his slave.
"Are you satisfied yet?" The old man asked as he looked like he was about ready to double over and collapse.
"Not really." Tanya also made an amendment where the old man would get zapped if he so much as thought about women before he finished his quota for the day. Some more Yowling later and Tanya was looking at some of the people who had been outfitted with Spirit Tortoise shell armour.
The slaves had hit twenty a while ago, well actually they had hit forty but being Demi-humans they reached adulthood at roughly twenty levels in and so long as they didn't go past that when they leveled down again they would be staying like that. That said being Demi-humans they had needs that went beyond well fitting armour, for they could also transform, and with the power of transformation they would assume larger forms for which their armour would not fit. The ensuing solution was thus two fold, one was that the armour would be designed with collapsible fold-able plates, popular in places like Siltvelt, Shieldfreeden and Q'Ten Lo whose forces habitually grow two dress sizes and then shrink back down again. The other hack made use of magical thread to stitch the plates together with cloth made out of more of the same. Since the use of magic thread is only compatible with the person that created it the Dwarfs were adding their own innovation to the mix: exclusive equipment.
"Explain to me how this works." Tanya asked looking at the armour that was being lined up with the rest.
"The Hunting Tool Weapon." The Dwarf stated naming an example. "The more narrow a object's purpose the more effective it becomes." It was the same basis by which the Hunting Tool's 'Only hurts monsters' and the Shield's 'can only defend' bonuses worked off of. "If we make each of the armour pieces only effective for one singular person and one singular purpose then we can expect their effectiveness to skyrocket." The dwarf explain and Tanya nodded her head in response. She should Bring Kuro here later and have her steal the dwarf's secrets later so that she can upgrade their weapons again.
'The Hero's train of thought is correct, but unnecessary.'
"Explain." Tanya stated as she walked away from the Dwarf workshop.
'All weapon transformations are automatically tuned to The Hero in order to maximise effectiveness. The Legendary Bow's consciousness belong's to the person to whom the Sword Hero's abilities originally belonged, if it's not something that The Legendary Bow can do then she won't either.'
"I'll let Kuro know anyway, there might be something to gain from having her experiment." Tanya stated donning the Syrphine and flying through the air. "On a side note, you are particularly talkative today. Am I to assume that means that you are warming up to me?"
'The heroes' beliefs are different from my own.' The first weapon Kuro gave her to copy belonged to a man with a strong sense of justice, to the point that he ended up destroying himself. Opposite to Tanya who has a weak sense of justice and is focused on her survival.
"That is true, but we are stuck with one another, so isn't it better if we both get along?" Tanya replied as she was rapidly approaching the next location.
'Perhaps. But if the Legendary Weapon stuck their nose into the Hero's business too much we'd only end up arguing.'
A debate to finish for later, for now they had arrived at where the elves were making their home. The desert that used to be Zeltoble was long gone, in it's place a lush and verdant jungle was growing. All that Tanya could really say about it was 'damn those knife eared buggers work fast.' The Elves have a natural ability to manipulate plant life, they used explosives to carve a river from the ocean, introduced a new plant into the area resembling Kudzu to remake the soil to be more compatible with plant life, they were even using Maple's bio-plants to grow new houses for them. And a new laboratory where a certain mad scientist was working.
"The resemblance is uncanny." Tanya commented looking directly at someone who looked a great deal like Maple, a few years older, and there were antler like horns sticking out of her head. She was staring off blankly while she ate, it wasn't that she didn't notice Tanya, it was just that in her mind Tanya wasn't interesting enough to warrant looking at.
"It's weird ain't it." Rat stated as she walked up behind Kuro. "She's the offspring of a wave monster, but biologically she's like Maple's daughter." Rat explained as she examined the charts in her hand.
"And the other three are just like her?" Tanya asked and Rat nodded her head in the affirmative.
"Both in terms of physical abilities and appearance these four are identical. I'm currently working on a way for the four of them to combine together into one form." Rat stated and Tanya made a face.
"You're going to combine them together? Into what?" Tanya looked like she was having a hard time processing this.
"A bigger dragon mostly. We still need a dragon emperor after all, unless you were planning on turning it into a sacred gear like what Kuro did." Rat explained with a shrug of her shoulders.
"So you plan on voltroning them together?" Tanya asked making a confused face.
"I have no idea what that term means." Rat stated being equally confused.
"It's what Rishia's weapon did to her a few days ago, only instead of four machines combining together you're trying to combine four parasitic plants grafted onto dragon's."
That spoke nothing about the concept that the four of them might be able to do the same thing, which led to the question of what kind of mecha fanatic was this 'Ernesti' Sword Hero was to build such a thing? For one thing the Heroes are supposed to be operating independently from one another, what was this guy doing making something that basically took four weapons of mass destruction and combined them together? It's not like they would be able to grind like that.
"Are you just manufacturing discount voltrons or do we actually have something to show for all the money that we've been channelling into your's and the pointy ear's research?"
"I don't make 'discount' anything." Rat looked like she was offended by the very concept. "You've assigned me the task of raising a kind of monster I explicitly do not like, was given the nigh impossible task of making one of the atrocious mech suits favoured by that piece of garbage Takt entirely out of Bio-plants, and I succeeded." Rat finished her tirade by crossing her arms and letting out a harrumph. "Let me work and leave me be!"
Tanya left after taking a recording crystal of the four dragons going out and grinding. It was like a nightmare, four giant dragons with Maple's overall equipment load out rampaging through the countryside massacring monsters left and right.
"Nothing much to do at this point. Let's go to Q'Ten Lo then." Unlike the other Heroes, Tanya didn't possess a convenient mechanism that lets her lower the level requirements to unlock a weapon, she had to go out and do it the old fashion way, they only reason why she could still use the Syrphine was that it was too big and too complex for Kuro to make a copy out of it, so it never got upgraded, the same held true for most of her guns too. For this reason she had to go where the grinding in the world was at it's most efficient.
'There are limits to this you know.'
The Bonus field was only effective on creatures up to level eighty, beyond that the process nearly grinds to a halt. The exception though was in the case of the underwater depths, where the Monsters regularly break triple digits. And in the interest of this, Q'Ten Lo had an underwater outpost of Sakamata and other aquatic type demi-humans all living under the protection of the water dragon.
"I suppose an entire undersea kingdom is too much to ask for." Tanya thought about the situation some more as she flew over the ocean to Q'Ten Lo. If the ocean is full of monsters that break pass the hundred level limit then normal civilisations, even ones that breathed underwater, would never stand a chance. It was as that chain of thought crossed her mind that something came screaming to a halt in Tanya's head. "The monsters in the ocean have already broken through both the 40 cap and the 100 cap." The first would merely require a dragon's hourglass. They already knew that there were some deep under the ocean from Cal Mira, but then where did the second cap break come from. A question for a certain giant lizard she would have to be visiting anyway.
"I know them as the old ones." The Water Dragon stated simply lounging about inside of her cave.
"Old ones?" What was with that super ominous name. "Monsters that possess ancient knowledge of the old worlds." Thus came story time with the water dragon. "Levelling was just as easy on the first world's as they are on this one."
"You're talking about before the world's started to fuse together aren't you?" Tanya asked and the Dragon nodded in the affirmative.
"Back then the caps were only a quarter of what they are now, and after this round of fusion is over we'll have twice as much as we do now, for however long we survive that is." Aye, because they all needed that grim reminder. "The first cap was at 10, the second cap at 25. Can you even imagine that we were ever so weak?"
"But levelling up to ten back then is just as easy as it is now." Tanya seemed to grasp the situation.
"The cap break ritual. Weaklings always desperately flail about looking for ways of increasing their strength in the face of their own weakness. Eventually they learned that the dragon's hourglasses can be used to surpass this limit." Knowledge that might have a common need for back in the day where it was easy to reach this arbitrary limit but now? Now those limits were increased four times over. "I'll be needing any information you have on these 'old ones.'" Tanya was already thinking about what kind of equipment and personnel she can slap together to go chasing these things down.
"Why?" The water dragon however was just confused. "I thought you four weren't planning on raising up a bunch of people to a high level." Indeed, it was more efficient to abuse growth bonuses when levelling up in order to achieve high stats, and they needed every drop of XP they could get for the directional beasts in order to fix the barrier around the planet. "It's not for them, it's for me." Tanya stated as she let out a cruel smile. "I'm going to wrack up levels, unlock the Noble Phantasm transformations one by one, until I get my own sacred gear transformation."
The Spirit's had blended in well into Q'Ten Lo, They were basically the same kind of beings as Ghosts, and thus highly compatible with the shamans and the oracles of Q'Ten Lo, that was on top of the Spirit Potion bio-plant Raphtalia had made for the lot of them to grind up their power, which they took to great gusto, as now they no longer had to hunt monsters in order to obtain the Vital Spirit energy that was pivotal to their existence. The Aquatic type Demi-humans were the Orca type Sakamata, whale type Luca, Shark like Noid and Kusha, Dolphin type Opopho, and the Squid like Cthnoid's. Notice was sent to Rat and the Elves who in turn were able to prepare a Bio-plant Submarine for Tanya and the others to arrive at their destination.
"Is everyone prepared for departure?" Tanya asked as she sat at the captains chair of the newly minted Bio-plant submarine, the Bismark, it was a little late to say it was the maiden voyage, that would be getting from Zeltoble to Q'Ten Lo, but it was close enough to warrant celebration.
Review Section:
RonaldM40196867: The thing that you have to realise is that the bar was set to be worst than a slave owning reputed rapist, after that there isn't much room to make people worst than that and have the same characters hold actual depth at the same time.
Pokemonever1994: Kind of yeah. Maple would probably respond to that question with a cute tilt of her head in confusion while eating a brownie, probably with the burning wreckage of several armies in the background. Maple can already make a castle out of her shield, course that's because of a Noble Phantasm, not because she copied a castle. Oh, and don't bring mention of those cursed movies into my review box again, I don't need people flying off in a rant when I voice my opinions in my own Review Section.
Saif Omar: Don't forget 'and lived to tell the tale.'
Reindank: They're going to be working off of substitutes for a while yet. Maple is Compassion, which allows her to take hits landed on her party members. Kuro is Chastity, which immunises herself from mind altering effects. Katarina is Loyalty, which offers massive growth corrections. Tanya is Charity which lets her loan weapon transformations to her allies.
Nightshadegirl: Until future notice, I will be posting this story every Sunday until it is finished. Tanya's training mostly, Fixed is a poor description of the weapon, and even if Rishia can't wield the Projectile the Projectile can still wield her.