Author's Note: Okay so than, another chapter done. Writing's slowing down a bit but nothing I can't handle. Read, Review, Favourite and Enjoy!
Chapter 111: So That's Where They Came From
Maple's opening move was to flood the area of the blast with Paralytic gas, which flatly incapacitated every who was in the area and kept them from getting away, except for ironically enough the three people that she should've been aiming for, which also ironically made them pretty easy to find.
"You don't see people just flat out ignoring my paralysis poison like this too often." Maple stated the shield in her left arm turned into a 'Rope Shield' and 'Tentacle Shield' combo that produced a shield with four long ropes tipped with grapples that were picking up the people who couldn't move and getting them to safety. She also treated anyone who was injured by the explosion earlier with some healing potion she had in her shield. The three people who were still moving looked vaguely like the other elves, but their clothes were different, their armours were different, they were different. "Would one of the three of you mind telling me what that explosion just now was?"
"Shouldn't... we... ask... you?" One of the three people who were still moving struggled to say.
"If it's nothing I will apologise to you and the chief later. For now something or someone set an explosion off here and none of you are leaving here until I find out who and why." Saying that Maple noticed that the last of the people who couldn't move were already moved to safety. "Last chance, sit down, remain quiet until spoken to." Maple's empty grapples snapped threateningly, not unlike a snake who means to threaten. "Otherwise, I have to hurt you."
'The Shield Hero is a demon who can assume the form of a monster.' 'If you see her, you're already beaten, if you don't see her, you're already dead.' 'The very earth beneath your feet is at her command, completely hers to do with as she pleases.' These were all rumours about the Hero of the Shield, and there were more. Needless to say she was the last person anyone wanted to fight against, so the three of them shut their yaps and did as they were told.
"Good." With a wave of her arm Maple produced an Air Strike shield and had it transform into the 'Crystal Ball shield.' Sending a video feed directly to the shield on her right arm Maple used the floating shield to examine the ground closely while watching the footage through her arm. "What's that on the ground there?" Maple used the floating Air Strike Shield to scoop up some of the dirt, fly it over to her, and dumped it's contents directly into her shield. "Oil?" Not even vegetable oil either, this was actual from the ground oil. Maple looked around her at the lush elven environment. "Where did you punks get oil?"
"It was already here!" One of the three shouted out, and was elbowed by his two cohorts on either side.
Maple blinked and looked to the side where Faubrey use to be, and shook her head in the negative. That pit of industrialisation wasn't too far away from here according to the maps she read. Rather than deal with it she instead just opted to look down at her shield on her right arm and continued to search the ground for information on the explosion that happened. While Maple had been looking for possible containers that the flamable liquid could've been kept in one of the three people that she had cornered suddenly whipped out a blade and threw it at her, only for the blade in question to suddenly fly off and ram itself into a tree.
"Right then." Maple dismissed her summoned shield as she cracked her neck. "I should've just done this in the first place." Without warning, one of the tentacle rope/grapples Maple had lying around in the grass zipped out and struck the three prisoners in their faces leaving behind gashes, which quickly healed. "Huu. Tell me why do I continue to have faith in other people only to be rewarded with this foolishness?" The three reincarnated bolted off into the treeline. "You three are awfully fast for people suffering from paralytics!" Maple shouted after them. "So I should assume that all three of them are immune to my poisons. Should I feel honoured or annoyed that someone went out of their way to make their minions immune to my favourite tactics?" Maple didn't seem all that concerned about the trio of intelligence capsules that had run away, instead she just stuck out her left hand and grabbed a clay pot with a lit fuse sticking out of it that she quickly snuffed out.
"Damn you! What kind of skill did you use to trap us here!" A voice echoed out from every direction at once, another god given ability or a side effect of her new technique?
"It's not a skill." Maple just sighed at their foolishness. "Not everything that I can do is just stuffing things into my shield and dumping them on people like you."
"Dragon Shit!" Another clay bomb was thrown out, this time flying towards the group of people Maple had paralysed.
Maples grapple reached out and snapped the bomb up again and then stuffed it into her shield in lieu of defusing it. This was then followed by a packet that looked like it was made by tying two leaves together which the grapple then threw at the pile of downed people which then released a field of energy and cured all of them of their paralysis. Maple had months to work on developing her different abilities, skill combinations such as the tentacle hooks, the divine magics, her sacred gear training, and most importantly Ki manipulating techniques. The Granny had recommended Maple expel any foreign Ki from point attacks and she, Maple being Maple, naturally did the opposite and instead crammed herself full of so many Ki attacks that they all were forced to blend together with her natural Ki, the process boring through her body was it being remade and massively expanding her meridians in the process.
Following this Maple was left to her own devices to develop Ki techniques. Maple was taught how to blend her Ki into the air so that it could be absorbed into her body and replenish/expand her reserves, Maple instead used it to manipulate the Ki around her deflecting or attracting attacks as she pleased, or breaking up magic attacks as they come, when Maple showed Atla, herself a prodigy in Ki manipulation, one time she even made a ball out of magic projectiles and they ended up playing with it for a while. Her biggest breakthrough though was when she talked to Cian, who showed her how to create a 'territory' similar to the Bonus field that would prevent people from teleporting out, or how to break through one using the same principles. This 'Territory' was the second thing she did upon seeing the explosion going off, right after paralysing everyone at the scene to keep them from going away. As she understood it there was nothing stopping them from leaving the territory on foot, except for what was probably a army of angry elves that had decided to voice their displeasure at having bombs going off in their territory.
"I don't care if you believe me!" Maple snapped as she switched over her right shield to the one for manipulating Bio-plants. "For one thing we're in the middle of a fight." And she was reminded of that fact by an arrow that bent around her and harmlessly went into the ground. "I have no reason to explain anything to you people." Maple put the plants on high alert, and she designated the three reincarnated as targets.
"What the hell!?" The Small jungle moved as one, vines, leaves and branches moved to hunt the enemy and bring them to her, that gave Maple plenty of time to work.
"Cerberus would be best as the other shield here, but how do I sneak the first one in?" If Raphtalia was here she could just have a illusion cast, but she wasn't, and Maple didn't unlock a bonus for changing her shield's colours beyond the occasional aesthetic change for her copied weapons. While that was an idea at first it didn't pan out, how the Noble Phantasms looked was such an integral part of their identity and power that they don't actually have a colour changing feature on them. Then a thought occurred to her. "Right there's those." The next fire bomb that was thrown Maple allowed to be shattered against her shield, covering it in a sticky oil and tar solution, which was also on fire, she really didn't look bothered by it, instead she adjusted both the shield and the reflection on her Tentacle Hook combination, thus the shield on fire turned into the familiar heads of the Cerberus shield, only on fire.
"Right on time." Maple noted watching the three fools tied up in Bio-plant vines being brought over to her. "Well send them over." As if having their heads slammed into solid steel at full force wasn't bad enough, it was also on fire, and it roused the heads of the three headed dog to bite them, sinking curved snake like fangs into their bodies in the process. And Like that, the 'Shield of Betrayal' and 'Cerberus' combo severed the connection between these fools and whatever divine entity they had been serving causing the three of them to shake with their whole bodies and fall unconscious. "Well, we can interrogate them without their souls exploding now. But they should probably be reminded of their own mortality first." Maple spat out three airstrike shields, the Cerberus, the Voice Gengar, and the Nue Shield, combined them together with Winged Shield, just for extra omph she turned into her dragon form albeit without going full savage, and then had her plants slam the heads of the three idiots against it. A ghastly screech like nails going down a chalk board echoed out throughout the entire jungle, but those three idiots got it at point blank. Their minds were filled with nightmares of existential dread from a psychopathic god sending them into the maws of great beasts, and then they opened their eyes and was greeted by the sight of another monster grinning at them. "Remember to tell my friends everything about your boss okay?" It took Maple a few moments to set up a formation to ship the three fools who had been rendered catatonic with fear over to the other world.
"Alrighty then. Just gotta say the words now. I, the Hero of the Shieeeld!" The swirling magic formation was interrupted by Kaida tackling Maple from left field and knocking her to the ground. The three reincarnated screamed as they were shot into the sky in a tube of rainbow coloured light, and then the light disappeared taking the three prisoners with it.
"Mom! There was some weird screeching thing in the woods and we were all so scared!" If Maple wasn't so whelmed by the sudden realisation that she was a teen mom then she might be more concerned about the ultimate fate of her three prisoners.
The Elf chief looked ahead at the sight of Maple who was being hugged by the four Aototsu that were all sitting on his couch together.
"This is normal." Maple stated projecting an image of being perfectly fine. The look the chief was giving the five of them said he thought differently. "They're my kids." The Chief's face said he didn't believe her. "Well technically they came from a clone of me the waves made." The Elf's brain looked like it was on the verge of being fried. "After that they were fertilised by the sperm of the Aototsu chief, hatched, levelled up and aged up thanks to their demi-human genes and now here we are." Admittedly the whole ageing at an accelerated rate thing threw her through a loop for a while too.
"I am going to act like this is normal." The Elf Chief, in his infinitely wisdom, had chosen to pretend that this was normal, it was a sound conclusion many had come to after dealing with Maple long enough. "I can begin transcribing the trade forms as soon as you are ready." The Elf chief commented and Maple got out her paper and pen from before.
"While we're talking I was wondering if you could tell me about your world's directional beasts." Maple needed advise on how to look after directional beasts after all she was still new to this.
"We Elves were tasked with the duty to looking after the Bird of Paradise, so we are quite familiar with how to nurture and grow them." The Chief explained while he produced a booklet full of information about the resources his people had to trade.
"'Them?'" Maple asked looking at the chief confused. "Wait a sec..." Maple pulled something out of her shield, the petal of a pink feather-like flower. "Is this a Bird of Paradise?"
"It's the petal of one yes." The Chief wasn't really surprised, after all from what he understood she was friends with the person who had murdered their bird of paradise. "Because of the waves the thickness of the barrier was reaching an all time low, our efforts to draw in conflict into the area was also suffering quite a bit."
The Elves forest was filled with a variety of formidable beasts, many people the world over came to hunt them, and died in the process, feeding experience points to the plant as a result. Then the waves came, no one had to come over to the Elves territory to efficiently earn large amounts of experience anymore, so the Bird of Paradise exited its dormant period and went on a rampage. Even though it was a plant, it was a fully sapient monster, not only that but one that could fly too, so the range of damage that she could do was pretty wide, every time her wings flapped she'd spread seeds across whatever territory she was flying over, so every time she was killed she would randomly pop up again somewhere else and go off in another direction.
"How the hell did you guys manage to kill something like this?" Maple asked as she debated the madness that was going on here.
The Elf chief looked at Maple with dead eyes, as if he was recalling a horror story of some kind.
"The Jewel Hero released some kind of demonic tree she brought with her from her world, a Trombe is what she called it, she released it's seeds everywhere the Bird of Paradise had gone and it sucked out all the life from a area big enough to found three countries, including our own territory. The damned tree is also fire proof, so the Bird of Paradise couldn't do anything against it, aside from dying that is." Maple had no words to say about that.
"How did you deal with the Trombe?" Maple asked looking up at the elf in wide eyed horror.
"The Trombe has an unusual weakness to shadow magic." The Elf explained. "It was pivotal to clearing the infestation out, and proved pivotal to removing it whenever it cropped up, over, and over, and over again." Maple got the sinking suspicion that Myne wasn't the Elves favourite hero, it was just an educated guess but still.
"I'd like it if you have any information on looking after the Bird of Paradise plant, I spliced some of it into the plants on Syrup's back." Maple explained as she held up her finger into the air. "You might not know this but our Spirit Turtle was of the wood element. So there was a huge forest on her back." Maple decided that she needed to get the Elves into contact with the Genmu that were living in the village, if they could combine their respective expertise together it would be a huge boon for Syrup's future.
Maple was soon on her way over to her next stop, inside of her shield there were thick folders consisting of the documents for the Queen, and the manual that the Elves had whipped up for her on how to care for the Bird's of Paradise. But while on her way back to the next stop Maple was thinking about something.
"So people dying around the Sacred Beasts is not something that can be avoided if you want to avoid mass casualties. The elves had to keep luring people to their deaths, Ost had to keep starting wars. Even then it's only on the level of 'avoiding mass casualties' not 'stopping the mass casualties.'" Maple gripped her hands bitterly while she clicked her tongue.
How far in the future would this be? A thousand Years? A million? She wouldn't be around to help her when her time came, if it was only Syrup dying at the end of a long and fulfilling life that would be one thing, but the last thing she would do would be massacring two thirds of the world, and she'd have no one to support her either. The whole system was wrong, harvesting death to save the world? There had to be a better way of doing things.
"How far away until we're in Faubrey?" Payne asked excitedly. Maple had explained that depending on how things went they'd be living there in the future.
"We're not going, not right now anyway. I have to go consult with someone for a bit." Maple explained as she was already bringing up the list of preset coordinates in her shield.
In a Q'Ten Lo Tea house, Kaida, Eragon, Bertha and Payne were all wearing hakama while simultaneously drinking tea and letting out a sigh of relief, in the mean time their 'mother' was having a business meeting with one of her seniors.
"What is XP?" Bason repeated the question as Maple pored him another saucer of Spirit Potion. "That is a strange question to ask."
"Well it's important, I mean wars are fought over it, it protects the world from the waves but I don't know much about it." Maple explained shrugging her shoulders. "In the simplest terms, XP is Miasma, a type of spiritual filth that is generated as a by-product of death, environmental destruction, depravity, pollution and the like." Bason stated tapping his finger on his arm. "The System absorbs and processes Miasma into XP, preventing those who are exposed to it from... transforming."
"Transforming?" Maple did not like that one bit.
"It was more common in my time, where death and destruction was as common as morning dew on the grass. Miasma is, for all intents and purposes, essence, essence of those whom the essence comes from, animals, plants..."
"People." Maple finished in no uncertain terms.
"Yes. When nature is in balance this essence becomes blended together, diffused, and hence isn't capable of gathering in great enough concentration to affect change. But Nature is not in balance and hasn't been for a long time. Not on this world, and I'm going to bet not on yours." Humanity. Based on the description Bason gave that was the number one source of Miasma.
"What happens if you get too exposed to too much Miasma?" Maple asked sounding highly concerned by this new development.
"Your people called them Yokai." Maple gulped nervously. "The humans exposed were specifically called Oni, but that's in 'Your World.' In this one we have a system, that takes that filth, cleans it, and uses it to strengthen people without demonising them, an entire system built around harvesting as much of it as possible."
"But... why?" Maple asked extremely confused.
"Because it's incredibly useful." Was Bason's simple response. "Miasma warps and distorts the flow of space time around it, right now a great massive barrier has been built around the planet cutting off the space here from the rest of the universe and in the process preventing the likes of the interloper or her minions from coming here or attempting to merge world's together."
Maple just let out a sigh in response.
"How do you generate Miasma without mass murder?" Maple asked but Bason just shook his head. "Thank you for your help." Maple stood up and bowed to Bason before she turned around to leave.
"Well it was impossible from the beginning to get something for nothing, that's just common sense after all." Bason said that as Maple had already started to leave, she turned around and looked at him before turning back to the direction she had been going in and continuing on her way.
It wasn't until Maple left Q'Ten Lo's Bonus field that she was informed of another situation that had been brewing, via her shield flashing at her with a notice of a call on her shield.
"Sadeena? What's the situation?" Maple asked looking genuinely concerned.
"It's the weapon you gave Filo." Sadeena stated letting out a sigh. "You're probably the only one that can get close to her at this point."
It was like a sink hole, the mountain that Maple had ripped out, turned into a floating fortress and then unceremoniously dropped back to the ground was being continuously drawn into and expelled from the ground, not just the earth either, but earth, metal, water, wood and fire. At the centre of the phenomena was a massive floating palace.
"You don't have to say it." Maple stated letting out a sigh.
"You're right. We made a sign and everything." Sadeena responded by holding up the sign that she and Raphtalia made Maple hold onto during the meeting with the Queen.
Letting out a sigh, Maple turned into her savage form and ran towards the madness that Filo had unleashed in order to swim through the mess that Filo had created, her size and invulnerability allowing her to swim with the current and climb aboard the ship proper.
"Filo!" Maple shouted while looking around for her. Maple had to shrink back down to her normal size and start looking through the entire place looking for Filo, sadly like most medieval Castle's Camelot was built like a maze, Maple had to rely on instruction from the Lord Camelot to find where Filo was, in the throne room, inside a pod similar to what Maple was put inside of during her own tribulation. Naturally Maple proceeded to check the state of Filo's body and then proceeded to pull her out once she knew she wasn't in a critical state. After a while Filo woke back up.
"Ugh..." Filo sat up while she rubbed the side of her head, suffering from a headache. "What happened to Filo?"
"It looks like you triggered a Tribulation." Maple stated simply. "We can probably figure out the specifics later but first..." Maple was being continuously hit with attacks from the palace, which honestly wasn't bothering her very much but it was rather inconvenient for trying to talk through it. "Can you do something about these?" Once Filo got her weapon to stop attacking Maple the two of them were looking down at the mass of landscape that Filo had inadvertently reshaped with her weapon. "The Queen is going to kill us." Maple concluded simply and Filo gasped. "Well I'm indestructible and she really likes Filolials so she might just take it all out on me."
A few hours later the Queen arrived in the village, so that she might assess the damage, the hills of earth, metal, water, trees and ashes that Filo created with her weapon, looking at the damage done. Sadeena was flying over the affected area, using the dragon vein magic to examine the area and the warped elements inside of it.
"Well?" Mirellia asked looking at the Harpoon hero turned back into her human form as she touched down.
"I'm more concerned than anything else." Sadeena stated simply. "In the past Heroes who have done what we've needed them to do were usually sent back home, or given the choice to stay. Young Kaede hasn't been given that choice according to her, chances are good neither have the others."
"'Something as simple as the Waves.'" Raphtalia had joined them as well looking at the rings of elements. "That's what she said, the waves are something 'simple' to deal with."
"So then something more complicated is going to happen?" Mirellia asked looking at the pair with concern.
"Children." Sadeena stated simply drawing the group's attention. "At their oldest, this batch of Heroes are only fifteen years old, at their youngest nine. It's as if someone wanted to give them years to learn how to use and build up their power." Oh that wasn't ominous at all. "The directional beasts are dead, the waves seemingly stopped, and only now are the Heroes learning the power and techniques of legend. More to the point, the tiger wasn't even felled by power, she was talked down by Kaede, I find myself wondering if we would still have a directional beast if we had talked down the Phoenix as well." In layman's terms. "The waves weren't the reason why the Heroes were summoned in the first place, whoever was responsible merely used and manipulated us to do it instead. Why we still don't know, we might have a better idea when the others get back to us."
On that note a mass of Rainbow light came down from the sky and struck the centre of the Village, seven heroes inside of it. Other beams went elsewhere, places that the others had to be the simplest explanation that could be thought of. The seven of them looked up to the air and saw the massive floating palace copied from a mass of Maple's shields after she used a formation to combine together and amplify, time to compare notes it would seem.
Review Section:
RonaldM40196867: Popular enough to do what is the correct question?
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Dakota Bruder: Hogwarts Legacy for the Xbox One.
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