Author's Note: So not a lot to say right now, currently in the process of being buried in snow. Read, Review, Favourite and Enjoy!
Chapter 45: The Cal Mira Wave
Katarina arrived back in Cal Mira as the countdown continued in the corner of her vision. The count had taken the liberty of gathering together as many adventurers as possible while the clock progressed. Rat had been working on her own research to help with the wave, as Katarina understands it her job back in Faubrey had been trying to find ways of weaponizing monsters for battle, before Takt became a thing and established the superiority of machines. It seems that Rat had taken the liberty of the materials from monsters of the wave that the girls provided to give proving him wrong another shot.
"Huu..." Katarina breathed out a sigh.
1. It was hard to know what they'd be in for. They were on the water so fish of some sort was most likely, though what kind of fish was the question.
2. They didn't even know if moving so far away negated the summoning for the other heroes, or if they could bring the armies and ships through with them, which meant that they were likely sentencing a lot of innocent people to drown and get torn apart. Kind of like what would happen if the waves here go on unimpeded.
3. The gong was louder this time, louder than any she had heard before, from four corners of the world four armies were pulled together and dropped in the water of a wide open ocean. And they were joined by a fifth, raining down from the sky like droplet's of rain.
"Is everyone okay!?" Katarina asked looking around and taking in a double check, everyone was okay though currently panicking. "Okay! Someone let me know if anyone finds the..." A massive shadow had appeared directly over the ship that Katarina had been standing on, she looked up and saw both the sky and the holes opened in it blotted out as something came down above her and her eyes went wide.
"Damn." Kuro eloquently stated as she saw what she dearly hoped was the boss, otherwise it would mean that not only was it something stronger than the overgrown bejewelled Narwhal but also there was more than one of the massive monsters that could wreak mass destruction on the fleet just by landing on it. "Looks like he got Cal Mira's flag ship." Which means that they got Katarina, she was tough enough to take a hit from that thing but she still needed to be pulled out of the water, and something needed to send that thing packing. "Turtle Geezer-"
"I do not accept that designation." Oroko stated sounding offended.
"-take the swimmers and go pull them out of the water." Kuro materialised the Crown Penguin Kigurumi around her body and dived into the water.
Multiple growth corrections meant that her speed dialed way up as she zipped through the water. The girl materialised a net and using it proceeded to quickly start rounding up the people who had been lost in the water before the whale could eat them. The whale however had been intercepted, by another whale no less, who took the liberty of taking the thing from the side and ramming a harpoon directly into the creature's eyeball before ripping both it, and the eye, out. Kuro swapped jobs with Sadeena, the whale woman taking the people who had been tossed into the water while Kuro focused her attention on dealing with the whale. Ice ought to do it, she has the power to turn water into it in masse after all, and the whale would be generously provide the magical energy for it's own funeral. Kuro by now had learned silent casting, learned, stole the secrets by looking at the casting rods of dozens of magicians more accurately. The walls of the coffin of ice formed first, but it wasn't enough. The Jewels lit up and fired, beams of concentrated flaming hydrogen and oxygen spewed at jet like speeds carved through the ice and made a beeline for Kuro. Kuro summoned a sword turned bronze mirror and narrowly reflected the majority of the piercing bursts, there would have been more but a giant monster otter slammed into the thing's side and pulled out it's other eye with one of it's paws.
"Gu! Gu! Gu!" Katarina was currently busy coughing up the water from the ocean, she was coughing blood a moment ago but a potion dealt with that issue, once she could breathe again she looked off in the distance where a giant otter was wrestling with a mutant whale.
"Katarina." Tanya stated and Katarina stood up straight. "Maple is going to drive that thing out of the area. I'm going to weaken it by as much as possible, we're counting on you to land the finishing blow."
"Why go through all that trouble?" Katarina asked looking at the monster. "I know that we'd loose the XP if we kill now but..." But then Katarina won't get the XP from the whale that she needs as raw material to make the damned thing into her familiar that she can lob at people that they don't like. That rankled a little bit in all honesty, that of the four of them she was only good for the dark magic that she could theoretically use with no risk that they can't.
"Distribute weapons!" Tanya once again equipped the armies with the bow of Charity as they took aim at the wrestling monsters. "Ready! Aim!"
"O'magical jewel, your friend Therese Alexandrite beckons you, summon a whirling storm of blades to scythe down our enemy! Tearing Wind Storm!" A familiar blue haired woman fired off a magical blast at her partner, who scooped up the magical attack with his scythe.
"Scything Pinwheel!" Armed with that storm of blades L'Arc threw down his scythe and tore through the body of the whale.
Tanya lowered her weapon eyes calculating, and saw that she wasn't the only one as Elena was doing the same. A brief inquiry once not too long ago told Tanya that the primary thing that the shop Elena's family ran that dealt in was magic, the woman herself once boasted that she has seen every incantation, every combination of element, every type of magic in the world. And yet here she was with a look on her face of 'what is this thing I've never seen before?' She likely had her suspicions back in Shieldfreeden, in the very likely scenario that the blue haired woman cast magic in front of her, but with both the woman and her partner around she wouldn't have been able to bring it up with the others especially Maple and Katarina whose perceptions of such matters was at the best of times poor. Tanya suspected Elena had a likely explanation as to the nature of the magic, because Tanya had one too.
"Wow." Maple's voice was a gutteral growl in her otter form as she looked down at the monster who had been ripped ass to appetite, yet for all of that she still sounded pretty cute, like a child playing at being a monster. "I never saw one hit like that." Maple had long grown numb to the sight of such carnage, especially when she had to spit back out a monster she ate with her shield.
"You really are a good kid aren't you?" L'Arc's question sounded nothing of the sort.
"What brought that up?" Maple asked her confused otter face looking like a child that was asking a adult about something she didn't understand. L'Arc was about to answer when a volley of arrow attacks started to rain down on him and he quickly jumped away, but it was Maple who blocked the arrows with her body.
"Tanya! What was that for!?" Maple half screeched angered by what she just saw. "The Whale's already dead!"
"The wave's still rolling Maple!" The older girl looked up at the sky and saw the monsters were still raining down. "We've got otherworlders we need to be rid of!" Tanya stated as she and those under her command fired off another wave of attacks.
"What gave me away!?" L'arc asked as he once again seemed to just skip and dodge all of the attacks that were aimed at him, a amused chuckle in his voice.
"Next time try not to open with a Skill, Hero!" Tanya snapped recalling the need to call out a attack in order to activate a skill. Maple just looked confusedly between her friend and her other friend, unsure as to what she should do. Speaking of friends three more were currently having it out with Therese. Invisible blades, flying axes and lightning boosted crossbow bolts were keeping the woman from getting a word in edge wise. She was however able to silent cast and so created a barrier of fire around herself as her hair changed to red and she pulled off the headband she had been wearing in order to reveal the jewel beneath.
"If you could silent cast you should've back in Shieldfreeden." Elena had manned one of the balista's on the other ships and aimed it at Therese and fired, the woman with a Jewel lodged in her forehead having to dodge out of the way.
"Air Strike Javelin!" Katarina shouted the skill and threw her weapon at Therese, and followed up that statement with another. "Chaos Thrust! Meteor Thrust!" And cue a barrage of Meteor thrusts being rained down on the ship Therese had been on shattering it under the force, unfortunately Raphtalia, Keel and Rifana had been aboard at the time but it wasn't anything that Keel couldn't surf them away from.
"Something's got her in a bad mood." Rifana stated and both Raphtalia and Keel nodded their heads in agreement.
The fact that some other-worlders had butted in and killed the boss within the first thirty seconds of the wave did nothing to change the fact that the wave itself was still ongoing, on the contrary it was specifically because said interlopers where here sticking their noses where they didn't belong that they still had a wave they needed to deal with.
"Oroko!" The Queen shouted getting the other army leader's attention. "We intend to deploy the Lukor barrels!" The Queen punctuated her sentence with slapping aside a monster with a steel fan.
"Do it!" Oroko stated tail puncturing the head of a monster that climbed aboard the ship.
Barrels of alcoholic grapes were tossed overboard and detonated with the use of magic spreading the concentrated alcohol through the waters as transformed demi-humans jumped into the water. Maple's enhancements made for larger more alcohol tolerant bodies, made larger with Maple using the enhance beast transformation that she uses in her savage forms, mana and spirit energy was drained from their forms in much larger amounts as they assumed larger and more animal forms, Otters, Octopuses, Sharks and whatever mixture of animal and fish like monster that shieldfreeden brought to the fray, the mana and spirit drain was counteracted by swallowing large amounts of the alcoholic sea water and slaughtering the monsters.
"We, The Hero of the Cane and The Queen of Melromarc, have read and understood the origin of power!" The Queen started off the chant and her husband followed up.
"Decipher the laws of nature freeze our targets in a storm of hail! All Dreifach Iceberg X!" Several monsters trying to make a break for it found themselves rudely stopped by the spontaneous generation of ice around their forms in masse. "Where's the Whip Hero?" While her parents were looking at the water Melty looked up into the sky and tugged on her father's sleeve in response.
Rat was flying a ship, a mass of Bioplants being suspended in the air by a pair of Megalo-balloon monsters and propelled along by what suspiciously looked like the tentacle monster Maple killed during Melromarc's last wave.
"Bomb's away!" Rat commanded and so the deed was done, the bottom of the ship opening up like a pair of bomber bay doors and released it's payload.
Bio-plant seeds landed in the water in mass and quickly grew into monsters resembling fish that specifically sought out the wave monsters before lodging themselves inside of their bodies via any available orifice, forcing themselves down their throats or up their anus's, before expressing Rat's displeasure on her behalf by violently taking root and growing into mutant hybrids of plant monsters and wave monsters to express further displeasure with the other wave monsters.
"Mii-kun." A fetal creature swam up a clear tube and looked directly at Rat with a singular oversized eye. "Look after the Helm for me, I have experiments to tend to!"
And with a little too much enthusiasm Rat jumped off the side of the ship. Several loud bangs echoed out as Kuro fired her Rail gun attacks out of the water and directly at L'Arc.
The Sword Hero fights at range, the Shield hero turns into a giant monster to fight, the bow hero flies, and the Spear Hero uses dark magic and curses to fight.
"Arst Strike Scythe!" L'Arc shouted causing a second scythe to appear in his other hand using which he seemed to catch Tanya's attack and throw it back at her. "I can keep this up all day!" Maple's head jumped out of the water and tried to bite him again only getting a mouthful of whale flesh in the process. "How about you lot!" L'arc ran into a monster in the middle of his dodge and kicked it into them after putting some magic into the creature's body, and then the horrible fish monster exploded in a mass of tentacles reaching out and lashing around Maple's body binding her up tight.
"Well that's new." Kuro stated as she summoned more blades to visit her displeasure on her opponent. "Unfortunately for you we are not that easy to deal with."
Maple's body burst with green light and destroyed the binds on her person and resumed chasing down the invading hero. Speaking of which, L'Arc was suddenly saved by the appearance of several pillars of spirit energy cutting off the chase.
"Is that the one who attacked you back on the ghost Ship?" A dog fight had ensued, the Shukaku and other flying type Demi-humans job was to just eliminate monsters as they're falling from the sky to reduce the strain on the water forces but now they had gotten into a fight with a familiar woman in a kimono.
"You Will Not Pass!" Kyurie all but snarled making use of weaponized illusions to fire off a circus of laser beams against Glass. Much trickier though were the flying hammers, both the one being ridden by Midori and the others that were flying around in the gaps that his attacks were leaving behind trying to strike at Glass.
"I could use some help up here!" Glass groaned through clenched teeth and so another acted, a ship lowered itself down through the hole in the sky and soon added it's shots to the mass that Glass had been dodging for the past several moments, before the Ship Chimera Rat had her creation driving rammed into the otherworldly vessel.
"Yah know." Rat was standing on a tentacle holding a dissected monster parasitised by her plants by it's neck.
"I've gotten to experiment with Wave monsters before. Gave me lots of insight into their biology." And just as quickly she dropped the corpse back into the water with the same attitude as someone tossing garbage into a bin, as she turned to face the scholarly man with glasses and rabbit ears that had been controlling the ship.
"But I don't believe I've gotten to work on a full blown other-worlder before." Rat played her role as a distraction perfectly, for while the Hero of the whip drew attention to herself a young Hakuko girl with two swords had sneaked aboard the ship along with her elder brother.
"Unfortunately for you between me and Glass you will find her to be the much easier of the two. Case in point." Suddenly the ship disappeared, leaving the rabbit man standing on a bejewelled platform while Atla and Fohl suddenly had nothing to stand on with the ship having just disappeared below them.
"Oi oi oi..." Rat's face cramped as she recognised the jewel the rabbit man had been standing on. "Don't tell me that thing you're standing on is..."
"Ethanobolt, Hero of the Boat." The rabbit man gave a bow as he made his introduction.
"At your service." Well. Shit. Then he just had to go ahead and confirm their worst fears. "Arst Strike Ship." Suddenly a life boat with the same transparent green of Maple's Air Strike Shield appeared beside the man.
"Nope!" Rat's whip crackled to life as she slammed it down on the boat Ethanobolt had summoned. Then, of all the things the rabbit man could have done, he started to whistle, the light of magic appeared around him and suddenly Rat's whip had been frozen solid along with most of her arm.
"Second Ship!" A second of the green coloured life boats appeared next to the other worlder.
"Not if we have anything to say about it." Fohl's jump made a sonic boom as he closed the distance with the other man ready to strike though Ethanobolt was already whistling another tune, and a storm appeared around the three boats in the air.
"Third Ship!" And so another appeared.
"Go get him!" Fohl had been carrying Atla on his back, before the tornado could blow him away he chucked Atla at Ethanobolt to take his head with her two blades.
"Change Fleet: SS Destroyer!" Atla was suddenly, painfully, pushed out of the way by the appearance of three large size war ships in the air and sent flying through the air.
"You are shitting-" Tanya didn't have time to process what she was seeing before the ships fired. The majority of the fire had been focused on the biggest and most obvious target available. The giant heavily armoured Otter that had been having a row with L'Arc prior to the ships firing, mostly irrelevant because with the Shield of Compassion she still took every hit.
"Every one target and destroy those ships this instant!" Tanya snapped deciding that she had not the time to be stunned stupid.
"I'm afraid I can't have you forgetting about me." L'Arc had by now re-united with Therese who was already arming her partner's weapon with magic.
"Oh believe me!" The bow twisted in her hand, corrupted, red veins overtaking it and changing it's form, the roaring head of a dragon fighting a snarling lion, reds, blacks, whites and golds mixing together and contrasting one another as Tanya brought out the Bow of Wrath/Pride. "I. Have. Not!" Tanya drew the bow and L'Arc immediately knew he could not afford the hit. "Rapidfire! Wrath shot!" Cursed flames spewed out of the weapon and hit the water as L'Arc grabbed his partner and jumped backwards as hard as he possibly could. Cursed flames and alcoholic water. Not a good combination.
"Evacuate the waters!" Oroko was forced to order reluctantly as his and Shieldfreeden's people both high tailed it out of there as fast as they possibly could. Which became more difficult as the enhanced beast transformations suddenly wore off which left the people with a lot lower stats to work with and also raised questions about Maple, lost in the fog of the bombardment as she was, that they didn't want answered.
"Aranaya! Otto!" At Tanya's orders the spider woman made a silk bridge and Otto quickly scampered across it to another ship his long body helping to get he people put at risk by Tanya's fires out to safety. They had no way of knowing how badly they'd get hurt without Maple's skills protecting them.
"We, the Hero of the Cane and the Queen of Melromarc, have read and understood the origin of power!" "Decipher the laws of nature and protect our target with a shield of water!" ""Driefach Bubble X!""
The water swirled and wrapped around Maple's body rippling and splashing as it tried it's damnedest to block the shots from the bombardment.
"Filo!" Raphtalia shouted and a certain Filolial who had been fighting the monsters until a moment ago broke off to help pull Maple to safety killing every monster that got between her and her friend.
"RRRAAAWWWRRR!"
Maple never looked at the effects of the Shield of Gluttony, she never wanted anything to do with the damned shield again, and even if she did she wouldn't have seen the Skill 'Armour Corruption' until fairly recently anyway, for the Shield of Gluttony has grown in power as a consequence of Maple constantly using the weapon to consume monsters of the Cal Mira islands. Even after the shield disposed of the monsters souls using the Soul Eater the shield had still tasted the intense intolerable hunger of monsters that had been forcibly grown from newborns to adults in mere days because of the Activation event. A Geyser of water shot up through the bubble and the observant among the alliance might have been able to notice something riding it up and was now standing on top of it. The armour had changed, though still pitch black it had grown a thousand razor sharp thistles like the hair on a razor back boar, the brown otter fur that Maple had taken as her own hard taken on the consistency of shifting shadows. Maple's face was now nothing of the sort, for neither the kind and bubbly girl or the adorable otter like face could be seen here, just a snarling monster with long fangs, boar tusks and foaming drool like a rabid animal. And she was staring at Ethanobolt with hungry red eyes.
"Oh damnit!" Glass flew back up to try to take a swing at the girl, recognising the power she could wield at this size, though if she knew the power of this form she might be more cautious. "Turtle-"
Maple's gauntlet arm turned into shield that then sprung out into a battle axe and took a swing at the ghostly woman before she could loose her skill. The cannons on the ships finished their adjustment and prepared to fire, and in response Maple bit down on one of them when it fired going straight into her mouth and getting only a dull thud for it's troubles. Ethanobolt's rabbit instincts keenly told him to flee with all his might even as the girl climbed all over his ships trying to bite down on him.
"I'm going to have to disappoint you." Ethanobolt's bejewelled platform transformed into something green and clay like as it formed another ship around him, which Maple then bit down on and shook about like a dog who chased a squirrel into a box and was now trying to get it out, growling like a wild animal.
"Well..." L'Arc watched as Ethanobolt cancelled his skill causing the transformed child they had been trying to kill to land in the water with enough of a splash to scatter the water around them.
"You don't see that every day." Tanya watched the monster in question as she went deeper under the water. "Raphtalia." Tanya caught the raccoon girl's attention. "We don't have time to deal with both of them right now. How did Maple deal with the other-worlders last time?"
"There was only one of them." Raphtalia stated dejectedly. "She threw her through the rift back to her own world." Problematic. Tanya looked around and eventually saw something that could help them break the stalemate.
"Bring me that barrel!" Tanya ordered and Raphtalia along with Keel and Rifana retrieved the item in question. Tanya lit a length of cloth on fire from the black flames and stuffed it into the hole in the barrel. "First Tornado!" Tanya shouted and the spell picked up the barrel with cursed flame sticking to it and flung it at L'Arc and Therese, before it then exploded dumping curse flame all over the area. They wouldn't be able to escape in time, bar one method Tanya guessed.
"Well played." L'Arc stated and he and Therese disappeared back to the other-side.
"As for you two!" Tanya shouted looking up at the two remaining other-worlders. "I don't have time to deal with both of you! But I guarantee that if I have to kill my friend because of you I will be in a especially foul mood!" Which she was already on the verge of if her accent was any indication.
"If we let her live any longer than she has..." Glass snapped but was soon joined by Ethanobolt.
"We can't 'let' her do anything right now." Ethanobolt coldly stated even as he saw the otter monster getting ready to take another swing at him. "The only thing we can do now is withdraw and hope they kill each other." Not bothering to argue anymore Ethanobolt grabbed his associate and ran, the wave finally ending though now they had a new problem!
"Kaede!" Raphtalia shouted at the confused monster who was now using the same look she shot Ethanobolt to look at soldiers and monsters alike. "They're gone they can't hurt you anymore." What was said next sent a chill of fear down their spines that they would never forget.
"Not here right now!" A voice that did not belong to their friend growled hungrily.
Author's Note:
Captain Imaginat: How does any country remain functional: they point at the country more dysfunctional than them and say "Sure this place sucks but at least we're not those guys." Considering I never watched the show before, nothing more than a cameo.
RonaldM40196867: True. Also true. Probably. How about being kidnapped from your friends, family, home to fight in some other world's war/natural disaster if the understanding that you will, in all likely hood, never see any of what you left behind again because your cursed series is likely to eat you or you're gonna die in a ditch after being murdered by a fanatic. Every religion in the world started out as a cult, which makes all religions cults by default.
Nightshadegirl: There are similarities like there are differences. In this case the alternate world begins clashing with the original and they end up mutually annihilating each other. Think the time travel that appears in the Eureka TV Series.
RandomGuest: Nothing she wouldn't have been able to heal. You never watched Bofuri have you? True. I agree, having a incompetent antagonist only subtracts from the threat that they represent. If memory serves the various intelligence agencies never actually took a swing at killing Adolf Hitler because having such a idiot in charge of the enemies logistics was more of a boon than a liability for the allied forces and they didn't want his more competent followers taking over in his wake.