Author's Note: Okay so don't have much to say right now. I'm planning on transferring posts of this story over to Saturday's after I'm finished Legendary Heroes, in the mean time Read, Review, Favourite and Enjoy!

Chapter 67: The Hero of The Claws

Once again Kuro found herself in Siltvelt, of course it had nothing to do with Tanya's completely unjustified rampage back at the village, she was here on very important business. They had to investigate the Country of Q'Ten Lo, not only did it have it's own dungeon, but it also has it's own Seven Star weapon and it appeared that it was taking action against them. Why was she in Siltvelt then? Well she had to pass through the country anyway and while she was on the way she got just a little bit distracted.

"You done yet?" Kuro asked as Maple climbed out of the hole that was the location of the divine magic for Siltvelt's dungeon, between that and the pot the four of them now had five of the seven magics course that did nothing to help them actually learn how to use them.

"Okay I'm finished down here." Maple stated as she brushed the dirt off of herself.

"The turtle gramps said that he needed me to stay in Siltvelt for a little bit while he's trying to negotiate with the Aototsu tribe for help." There was still the plan to recruit the Aototsu, Maple didn't know what they needed their help for, something to do with the Dragon Emperor they were suppose to worship she guessed. "Then I'm going to go see if I can track down a lead on the claw weapon." The Seven Star Claw was historically the weapon mostly associated with Siltvelt, apparently whenever it loses its wielder it comes back here to wait for another one to pop out. The possibility of the Claws being there was high but it wouldn't matter if there was a bunch of reincarnated waiting in the wings to try and snatch it like what Tact had done, it would be pointless to pick a new wielder.

"Claw wielder's at the ready?" Kuro asked as she turned to face her two associates, Filo and Blitz.

The two girl's mana capacities were not small, on top of that they were also stupidly powerful with their growth corrections so Kuro decided to see if it was possible to repeat what happened with Atla. Course there are no Claw Type Noble Phantasms, she checked, and even if there was she wanted to avoid shoving anymore foreign thoughts or memories into other people's bodies. She simply drained the two girls mana and used that energy to manufacture claws for the two of them the same way that their magic thread made from their own mana supplies to create shape shifting clothes for them. The idea was to create a scenario where the claws would adjust with them as they transformed or could disappear entirely if the situation so demanded of them. This however carried the side effect of giving the two individuals a impromptu sex ed lesson as Kuro applied her usual methods to extract their mana. As a direct result, she presumed, both girls now stood before Kuro spacing out for a solid ten minutes before Kuro got impatient with waiting for them to respond.

Two smacks across their faces later and the other two girls were snapped back to reality.

"Are you two going to be okay?" Kuro asked looking kind of doubtful.

""Thank you for teaching us!"" Filo and Blitz both simultaneously bowed their heads towards Kuro as if they had received enlightenment about something. Admittedly, it probably wasn't the best idea for a 'birds and the Bees' lecture.

"Riiight. Well just let me know if you have any other questions." Filo and Blitz simultaneously raised their hands. "After our business is done here." The two monster girls lowered their hands. "For now though we have to do something about this crowd of people that have assembled here." A mass of Demi-humans had appeared trying to pull out the claws that were lodged blades first in a solid chunk of stone. The odds that some of them were reincarnated was pretty high, and while she had no grudge against them as a whole, being on the same side as the ones that tried to use Faubrey to go to war with everyone and hijack the Spirit turtle was a pretty major no-no. How would she know who they were aligned with? They would have the same weapon stealing accessories ready to be used to brow beat the claws into submission.

"Are we going to try and get the claws tonight?" Atla asked looking at Kuro suspiciously.

"Not at the moment no." Kuro stated as she came up with a evil idea. "Fohl, what do you know about acrobatics?"

"I'm going to hate this plan aren't I?" Fohl asked a resigned look on his face that said he already knew the answer.

"Probably." Fohl flipped through the crowd in his 'enhanced beast transformation form' and turned back into humanoid as he landed on top of the shrine that had the claws sticking out of it, with Kuro riding atop his shoulders. Kuro made a show out of brandishing her sword and changing it over to the 'Voice Gengar sword' as she addressed the crowd. "I am Chloe Von Eizenbern the Sword Hero, and I have appeared before all of you to make an announcement." Kuro stated and to her prediction all eyes in the crowd were immediately on her. "I am here for the purpose of finding the future Claw Hero and recruiting them to my party." The crowd started to whisper among themselves at the news. "I, my party, alongside the Shield Hero will be staying inside of the royal suite at the Siltvelt palace for the time being. That said our time is short, and if a suitable candidate does not appear within seven days we will have to take our leave and go on to complete other business in other countries." Kuro took a bow before she and Fohl left to rejoin the rest of the group. "They'll be all over us by tonight, between us and Maple's group there'll be no shortage of targets to work with." Kuro was already licking her lips.

"Your proposal intrigues me Oroko." Maple never met the dragon woman's brother before, Thuban was what his name is. Tall, skinny and fashionably dressed. According to Turtle Gramps they hated each other and he's now the one in charge of their tribe thanks to Kuro killing his sister. "I must admit that female Heroes are relatively rare, ones so young even rarer." Maple was not liking the way that he was looking at her, she was pretty sure that her parents instructed her to take a series of steps that starts with a throat punch and ends with a call to emergency services if someone ever looked at her that way. Unfortunately her bashful shy blushing was igniting all the wrong instincts in him.

"These are unusual times I'm afraid." Oroko replied bluntly as he prepared his offer. "For instance: under normal circumstances I would want nothing nothing to do with you or the Cult of the Dragon Emperor but the Heroes believe that an alliance is in everyone's best interest."

"I've only heard a little bit about the Dragon Emperors but if I'm not wrong, they're suppose to fight each other and reunite the pieces, the dragon cores, of someone named 'Ouryou' and he's suppose to be the one to stop the waves." Maple explained while gesturing with her hands a rough approximation of two monsters eating each other.

"You are well read." Thuban replied legitimately impressed.

"We were summoned to stop the waves, but short of showing up to all of them and killing everything in sight we have little idea of how to actually stop them." Well that wasn't entirely true, there was the directional beasts that they would be absorbing massive quantities of XP in order to ultimately sacrifice themselves to erect the barrier to stop the waves. That said they didn't know how much he knew either so it would be good if he had some convenient information.

"The answers will be revealed to us as we gather and consume the dragon cores. Through this process we have obtained insights into the distant past, learned lost magics, and have even obtained secrets of power even the Heroes cannot imagine. I sincerely doubt that-"

"Unique weapon unlocks that augment the rate of stat growth when levelling, five divine magics revolving around the manipulation of gravity, space, time, organic and inorganic matter, unique weapon reinforcement methods from both this world and the one on the other side of the waves that promote stat growth, advance technology including the creation of bounded monster familiars and access to a large scale teleportation network being set up on a world wide scale." Maple mouthed off her resources one after another having instantly cut off the dragon man and leaving him silent with the contents of her sentence. "It sounds like you're the one who should be scrambling to give me things of worth in this arrangement."

"Snrt. Hahahahaha!" The dragon man laughed at Maple's statement as he was unable to disagree with the contents of her statement. "Right you are. Alright there are three things that we've got to give." The dragon man held up one finger. "Firstly, we have the techniques for manipulating Ki lost-"

"The Hengen Musou Style? We already have the old lady." Maple stated having immediately zeroed in on the familiar term.

"Old lady?" Thuban asked suspiciously.

"I can't pronounce her real name." Maple stated apologetically.

"Elrasla Grilaroc." Oroko stated prompting Thuban to break out into a cold sweat. "If the rumours hold true the Shield Hero fed her some kind of potion of youth that managed to restore her to her physical prime."

To his credit, Thuban collected himself with astonishing speed, as he would later brag to his brothers and sisters down the line.

"Secondly we of course have the dragon pulse style-"

"Isn't that the magic Sadeena has been teaching the villagers?" Maple asked tilting her head cutely.

"Sadeena?" Thuban on the other hand went even paler then he was before.

"Is Sadeena a Sakamata by any chance?" Oroko asked cocking a brow and Maple nodded. "Then she should be the 'Priestess of Slaughter' a refugee from Q'Ten Lo who joined Melromarc's military at an young age and subsequently terrorised both of our countries through various military operations." Oroko explained prompting surprise from Maple.

"Sadeena was in the military? She was in Melromarc's, kill-all-Demi-human's-may-they-rot-in-hellfire Melromarc's army?" Maple asked still remembering the trauma that she went through because of that attitude of their's.

"Such was the Priestess's extreme power and proficiency with the Dragon Pulse style of magic." Oroko explained amused by how pale his verbal sparring partner had gotten. "You mentioned three things yes? What is it?"

"Third is the 100 level cap break." Thuban stated prompting yet another look of surprise on Maple's face. "Is this something else that you are aware of how to do?" The dragon man asked looking at Maple with Blatant suspicion.

"No but I was aware it was possible." Maple explained before a thought occurred to her. "So that's how he was doing it."

"How who was doing it?" Thuban asked looking blatantly annoyed.

"Takt, dude running around stealing weapons from a while back, dated your sister, got her killed, had a bunch of two hundred something leveled ladies with. Any of this ringing a bell?" Maple asked while gesturing with her hands.

"Very. You haven't utilised my sister's dragon core, or that of her pet lizard?" Thuban asked cocking a suspicious brow, apparently unaware of the fact that the 'pet' in question hadn't been found yet.

"You guys have your memories stored inside of your cores right? If we took either of those cores and put them into new dragon bodies then they would override any consciousness inside and try and turn against us right?" Maple pointed out prompting Oroko to nod in agreement.

"Very well, a trade then, a core for a core. The thought of transforming my sister into a obedient pet through her dragon core is very satisfying to me." Thuban stated with that look on his face that made Maple want to throat punch him and dial for help.

"Then it is agreed." The dragon Man stated as he looked at Maple creepily.

"And the other matter we talked about?" Maple immediately tuned out the conversation. Something about her being part Dragon Emperor through her Tyrant Dragon pajama's on top of her Shield Hero status and blah-blah-blah. Mostly she was just trying to escape from reality while this bloody turtle pimps her out.

"So that was how my day went." Maple stated tiredly dressed in a familiar set of pajamas, not the dragon footies that she feels like she wears day and night these days but the pink and white striped she first came to this world in. "So did you do anything interesting today?" Maple was pointedly not looking at Filo and Blitz as they were doing each other's hair on the bed, in their negligee's. "Because it looks like you did."

"Firstly to address your concerns. We got the stupid dragon man in the bag." Kuro stated as she smirked knowingly.

"That's not the concern I was asking about but I would like more details for the sake of my sanity." Maple replied her tone still filled with a lot of blatant suspicion.

"Raphtalia and Rat's got it covered." Maple reminded herself to apologise to Raphtalia for whatever it is that Kuro's making her do. "Oh don't look at me like that. Just a little illusion magic and he'll think the..."

"I don't want to hear it!" Maple snapped having reached the limits of her patience. "Just tell me Raphtalia isn't pretending to be me!?" Maple half asked and half demanded.

"She's not." Kuro stated in a insistent tone and Maple fell back into her bed exhausted. "Something wrong?"

"I just spent the past six hours being treated like a prize racing horse by a man whom I'm pretty sure thinks of me as a sex object." Maple replied explaining the source of her exhaustion. "If you don't need me for anything else-"

"I'm fairly certain I've baited an entire horde of weapon stealing reincarnated into attacking us." Slowly, Maple stood up and changed into her other set of Pajama's as she went about the process of dealing with the latest in a series of shenanigans from Kuro. "No savagery tonight please, remember you're suppose to be-" Maple chucked her Shield Frisbee at Kuro's head knocking her out with the stun effect.

The sword Hero and the Shield hero were both here at the same time! Along with the Gauntlet Hero, and others too possibly. This was a gold mine waiting to happen!

"Just don't try to take all the weapons for yourself!" One of the reincarnated barked to another.

"Do I look like that bastard Takt to you?" Another of the reincarnated snapped to the other. Takt was hated even among his fellow reincarnated, wastefully hoarding weapons for himself, hunting the other reincarnated for sport and eliminating them feeding their souls to some abomination of the cursed series.

Course they would have done the same thing in his shoes so they really don't have as much right to complain as much as they are.

"Wait do you hear something?" A distinct heavy clank of metal on stone, and something heavy being dragged across the floor. Near as they can tell it looked like a Aototsu in their Therianthrope form, that is to say that she looked like a dragon, and one who was wearing heavy armour at that. Even stranger though was that she brought two small animals with her, one looked like some kind of Raccoon and the other a turtle with some kind of plant growing on it's back.

"You should know I am in a especially foul mood tonight!" She must have been one of the Aototsu prince's consorts, they would be in a bad mood too if one of their lovers was busy getting plowed by someone else. Not that that would be saving her from any of them, none of them have any interest in sloppy seconds after all.

"Get her!" One of the men rushed forward and slammed his halberd into the opponent, at which point in time his axe came into contact with her invisible combination.

Since unlocking the Reflect Shield skill Maple had conducted a experiment to see how many shields she could integrate into one combination. So she took a Cerberus, Two headed dog, Soul Eater combination, then added in a Hydra, Nue Leather, Chimera Viper reflect shield combination, combined it all together with Winged Shield into one giant mass of violence that she then rendered invisible with Raph-Chan's illusions.

"GAHHAHAHAHAHAA!"

"KKKYYYAAAHHH!"

"AHAHAHAHA!"

Needless to say by the time the lot of them were restrained by Syrup's vine's and trapped in the influence of the Shield of Gluttony there wasn't much left to actually work with.

"I am having a really bad night!" Maple snapped in absolutely no mood for any of this. "If you don't want to become food for my shield then you are going to tell me everything I want to know about who ever dragged you people to this world and shoved you into those bodies or I swear to whatever actual god governs this world I will stuff you jerks into my shield and let whatever Eldritch horror I fed to the damned thing have it's way with you!" Maple might've been a little bit stressed out if it wasn't abundantly obvious. The fact that none of them were talking meant that now Maple had to follow through on that threat and with Syrup's help stuffed one of the reincarnated into her shield.

"Her name is-" Suddenly the second of the reincarnated eyes went white as he body started to swell up and with a loud pop his gory remains were splattered all over the hallway and all over Maple. Wordlessly, Maple wiped the bloody remains off of her face and just looked at the last of her prisoners with a stare that was just dead inside.

"I don't even care anymore." And on that note, Maple turned off her shield of Gluttony and went else where to find something to clean herself off with. Slowly, the last reincarnated blinked his eyes stupidly as he processed the events that just transpired.

"Ha, hahahahahahahahaha!" Relief came naturally. "Hahahahgugugugugugugugu!" And of course the literally soul crushing existential dread that you can only get from witnessing someone else fall into the fate meant for you. Maple didn't care anymore.

"Kame!" Syrup did though, and here he was with a new white flower imbued with the Soul Eat Skill courtesy of Maple.

When Maple came back to the room she saw Kuro sharpening one of her blades, having already dealt with her own group of reincarnated.

"Any new developments?" Kuro asked watching as Maple walked in covered in gore.

"Kuro. I understand that you are feeling stressed out, but please don't take it out on the rest of us." Maple instructed bluntly as she yawned tiredly.

Maple showered, changed back into her sleepwear and proceeded to pass out on her bed for the night. Syrup floated in a few minutes later and together with Raph-chan and Filo who had turned into her Filolial form the three animals curled up with Maple for the night.

Raphtalia had a long night. She received a sex ed class in the worst possible way watching that prick from the Aototsu tribe copulating with her illusion for hours all the way into the morning. Rat better raise up a legion of Tyrant Dragon's from this or else she's gonna be really crossed.

"The effects of Hero Genetics are well known." The Person herself stated as she looked down at the results of the papers she was able to secure on the subject. The effects of Hero Lineages were well known in Faubrey's scientific circles, and Siltvelt apparently had done a fair bit of research into the subject that eventually resulted in Chem. "Other Worlders are full of recessive genes that let the more dominant genes of us the natives make up the majority of the decisions in building a new body. But those same recessive genes consistently put out a greater output in terms of Ki flow and the like." Rat explained/thought out loud as she read through the material she collected.

"So they'll look like him but have stats like the Tyrant Dragon or Savage Maple?" Raphtalia asked cocking her brow in confusion.

"Quite. The Lung Dragon body type will be helpful for when the project enters stage two." For when she takes the shape shifting bio-plant born abominations she had been abusing her whip to breed and graft them onto the unwitting children that they had just acquired the manly seed for. Make sense, since in that scenario they would basically be a spine that Rat was intending to graph vat grown organs and limbs onto. "Basically, maybe." Rat replied not entirely sure about what was going to happen next.

"I didn't sit through six hours of watching that stupid lizard copulate with an illusion of Maple for 'Maybe.'" Raphtalia was less than pleased by the notion, to say the least.

"This is science Raphtalia, a process of learning through experimentation, trial and error with the end result of being able to produce an absolute result consistently." Rat stated scoffing at Raphtalia and her generalised feeling of being incensed.

"Do you need me for anything? Otherwise I'm going to go with Filo and get the claws." Read 'I'm going to take my party and get away from you crazy people as quickly as possible now.'

"Again with the absolutes." Rat stated feeling like the short lecture she gave just now had been entirely wasted. Raphtalia and company arrived at the site of the enshrined claws in the hopes that one of their most likely candidates, Filo or Blitz, could pull them out and take them up themselves.

Well Rat hadn't been entirely wrong, Filo had failed to take up the claws but Blitz was more successful though. It was weird, at first she saw the flow of Ki connect Filo and the claws, but then they broke off the connection like something else had been blocking her. No matter.

"What does Skill Proficiency mean?" Raphtalia was trying to decipher Blitz's child like description of the claws reinforcement method into something that might actually be useful, and was failing on all accounts.

"You use the slashes and they get better!" Blitz tried to explain again. Maybe Tanya can get something out of her.

"From what I can barely understand here, the more you use skills the stronger they get?" Raphtalia asked after a short period of rubbing her temples.

"The zappy zap too!" Blitz informed proudly.

"Zappy zap... your lightning magic?" As Raphtalia was asking about that the front door of Siltvelt's palace was blown off of it's hinges and the fully transformed Aototsu chief flew out of it, being chased down by Syrup who was blasting at him with the Kame Hame Ha. Raphtalia blinked twice, turned around and walked in another direction, shortly before the front of the Siltvelt castle was torn apart by Savage Maple chasing after the fleeing Aototsu.

Author's Note:

RonaldM40196867: Very. If we're talking 'wide spread damage' then that would be Pride, unlike Lust and Envy Pride's mind control effect not only spreads on it's own but also doesn't require constant close proximity in order to work. If we're talking raw offensive power then it's probably Gluttony with it's tendency to completely destroy whatever it comes into contact with.

Galeon82: Something like Artoria's dress/armour combination from Fate Stay Night would probably be a good compromise. Trash would make a good dad for Tanya.

Captain Imaginat: Keep in mind that Malty was born almost immediately after the siege on Siltvelt, where Trash had accidentally murdered his sister and her husband leaving their kids orphaned. He sort of just latched onto Malty with the thought of 'I am so unimaginably grateful that you are alive please don't leave us please!' which sort of resulted in him spoiling her and only really becoming aware of what her real personality is like until after she officially started dating. Tanya isn't going to be made the Queen, Melty is first in line, a fact that Tanya is completely okay with and is quite content running support for her new 'sister.'

Halo: The period of time should've been roughly the same as it was in the anime.

Maglad: You've been reading my other fic? Malty's situation is much worst than you think it is. Also thank you for the new guy.

Ultima-owner: Pleasure meeting you. Indeed. Thank you for the reviews, or rather words of praise, either way I enjoyed them very much.

Saif Omar: It was what I was going for.

Guest: I have no idea who that is or what series that is.

Nightshadegirl: Corsets are easily one of the worst fashion choices ever invented. "I am perfectly capable of forcing you into highly uncomfortable but otherwise harmless situations that you will absolutely despise so be a good girl and don't turn out like Malty."