Author's Note: Okay then, Writings been a touch slow lately, going to have to work on that. Read, Review, Favourite and Enjoy!
Chapter 74: A Confused Accidental Spy
Thanks to the expert navigation of Shildina the Oracle, the trek across the country which should've taken the team sent after the rebel empress three days was accomplished in merely five. Now that that inconvenience had been taken care that left the next inconvenience to deal with.
"Apologies." A man who was guarding the gate leading into the village stated lowering his head to Shildina who had a hood on. "But right now we're preparing a parade for the returned empress." So they are already ignoring Makina. The situation was getting worst. "If your village or family is under attack by a group of monsters then let us know and the empress and her people will be on their way shortly in order to get rid of them."
"If there's monsters rampaging the Empress will come?" Shildina asked for the sake of confirmation.
"Unexpectedly, this is like Cal Mira's bonus field." Raphtalia, ostentatiously the leader as empress, was leading Maple's party through the wilderness as they hunted the problematic monsters in the area. "We worked so hard during those days, and it turns out that there's a permanent field around this entire country." Maple complained head hung low as she walked. "What did I kill all those monsters in the ocean for?"
"They were super yummy!" Filo excitedly declared as she pulled along the carriage.
"You think we should start grinding again?" Eclair knew that it didn't do anyone who wasn't a Hero to raise up their level as high as possible, you objectively got more powerful but they had growth bonuses working for them so they were already strong enough to take someone in the upper nineties even though they were closer to the fifties. On top of that they got the same amount of skill and attribute points for going from 1 to 2 as they did from going from 99 to 100, so why wouldn't they level up from when it's easier to level from?
"It's getting hard to control our strength in a normal situation." Raphtalia stated looking down at her hand. "It feels like we have to treat everything like an egg shell."
Even Levelling down as a method to restrain their strength had it's limits, they couldn't go lower than forty, and even if they could doing that any farther than twenty for underage demi-humans and monsters like them could have negative consequences.
"It would be much more convenient if we could just fix the eco-system in this blighted country." Maple stated as she let out a sigh, of course the term 'much more convenient' held strong appeal for the group so they of course wanted to know more. "Plants acquire their nutrients from the ground and from sunlight, herbivores live in large numbers because they can eat the highly nutrious plants. Carnivores eat the herbivores but as a consequence they're fewer in numbers." Thus in a way the carnivores are the more reasonable to deal with than herbivores, because although more dangerous they are fewer in number to compensate.
"So what kind of Carnivores do we deal with?" Eclair stated holding her chin.
"Ideally that would be the people we're trying to protect." Maple stated as she let out a sigh.
"That... is a tall order." Eclair stated and the rest of the group nodded their heads in agreement. But the reason why the humans of her world hold the right to be the apex predators of their environment is that they wiped out all the other apex predators, or failing that reduced their numbers to a more manageable degree. "So the question now is where do we find a powerful monster that we can use to rack up the body count but will not attack normal people?" Well it's not as bad as it seems. Unlike in Maple's world the hardest part of the job, domestication, can be resolved by the solve all slave seal, the hard part was figuring out a monster with a convenient group pacification ability.
"It would be good if it turned out that Nue's are from this country." Maple stated as she crossed her arms in thought.
"Like that one that we killed back in the mine?" Eclair asked as a unpleasant memory came up of them all charging stupidly at a unfamiliar monster and for their troubles getting electrocuted and falling flat on their faces, and then the exact same thing happening moments later at the hands of their own hero.
"Don't remind me." Rifana stated letting out a shudder. "So what are we going to do this time anyway?"
Maple as the main support unit would use Aura and her other skills to buff the party, as the tank Maple would bait the monsters to attack her, and as the healer she would keep everyone's injuries from getting out of hand. Everyone else in theory just attacked. In theory.
"...Driefach Aura X!" Maple cast her favourite support magic on Filo and paired that with... "Meteor Shield!" Which under the influence of the Sitera Destiny stone shield grew several spikes like the branches of a tree. "Charge!" What followed is the sight of Filo speeding through the wilderness kicking, skewering and lariating monsters into the back wagons of Filo's usually letting out sickening crunches in the process. Normally Maple's skills wouldn't be quite so offensive, but whatever system this world worked on judged Filo's wagon, and everything on it, as her weapon, and she had a great deal of offensive power. "I couldn't help but noticing but the more I think about it..." Maple was holding her chin in her hand, even as the ground meat that they would be cooking started to pile up inside of the back part of the wagon.
"What is it?" Rifana asked looking at Maple curiously. "Spirit and Mana are both split off of Ki right." Everyone nodded to Maple's statement. "Skills use Spirit and Spells Magic." Another nod not knowing where this was coming from or going exactly. "After being cast the two, and their energy, can be recombined together right?" Hence a combo skill, was Maple thinking of adding something even nastier to this already horrible combination she had set up. "The Hengen Musou style recommends pulling Ki out of the atmosphere." By this point in time their attention had started to wane. "And the Dragon's pulse draws from the outside, specifically magical energy."
"Is there something you're going with this?" Keel asked levelling a glare at Maple.
"Well what if I combine all of that together?" Not good. Absolutely not good. The last time Maple 'combined everything together' they were up to their eye balls in paralytics, acids and toxins, thank the weapons she hadn't figured out how to spit that out faster, otherwise the environment would never be able to recover.
"Are you planning on covering the countryside in poison?" Raphtalia asked pinching Maple's cheek, pointlessly considering that even with her weapons she wasn't strong enough to induce any pain.
"I'm not gonna poison anything!" Raphtalia let go of Maple's cheek who rubbed it just for the sake of it. "I've got more skills then just poison. I'm using one of them right now!" Maple stated indicating the barrier around them, not that anyone cared about that.
"Oh that's how it starts." Keel stated letting out a put upon sigh. "You learn a new trick, you decide that just to be safe you'll combine a few of your least violent shields together." They weren't sure Maple wouldn't have tried seeing how far she could take combining shields now that she had Reverse Shield if she had another three shields she thought would be good in a combo together. She got one of Kuro's modified Noble Phantasms while she was still in the village, it's power so horrifying that they dare to not even speak about it. "Then we'll get surrounded by monsters, and you decide that the best way to deal with them is a wide spread AOE skill to get them all at once." Maple looked outside the window, at the monsters constantly being massacred, flung through the air, and converted into ground meat for hamburgers behind them. "The next thing we know: it's raining poison!" Keel slumped down and out of their seat. "The last time we did that we almost destroyed the environment!" The environment in question being a divine monster meant to save the world from the waves who did ultimately die between Maple tearing it apart and Kyo trying to mutate it into a monster under his command. They may have hit a sore spot.
"Right then." Maple kept a perfectly straight face as she proceeded to enact her revenge. "Filo turn around we're heading back to the village! We have to process all this meat into food before it goes bad!"
"Kay!" Filo shouted happily at the mention of food.
"Time for the Maple leaf Trading company to open it's doors for business!"
"Maple, are you planning on having us all wear maid uniforms again?" Rifana was afraid of the cheerful smile on Maple's face.
"Those uniforms aren't remotely appropriate for the area we're in. I doubt people will understand the appeal." Maple's face slowly became scarier and scarier. "I have something in mind with universal appeal!" And everyone present but Maple had slave seals on them.
"Maple!" Shrieks of embarrassment were let out from within the carriage showing exactly what those who were inside thought about their present situation. "We'll wear the maid uniforms!"
"But we're already here!" Was Maple's cheerful reply.
"Why am I the only one wearing these!?"
"Because you and me would stick out too much otherwise."
"I'm suppose to be the empress of the country!" A proclaimed fact that was only contributing to the growing crowd that was gathering in front of the carriage.
"You're wearing your vestments, mostly..."
"That just makes it worst!"
"Too bad!" Everyone was pushed out of the wagon at the same time, except for Filo who bliss her innocence was completely unaware of what effect she was having.
Everyone was wearing swim suits: For Filo she was wearing what was known as as School Swim suit, a navy blue one piece that hugged her frame highlighting every curve while drawing attention to her flat frame through the use of a white square with black Text saying 'Filo' going across her chest. Clearly Filo as both the youngest and the only one who hadn't been making fun of Maple was given the most preferable treatment. Eclair was shown no mercy, what Maple had whipped up for her, as she did for all of her victims, combined together a hybrid fabric made out of a combination of Spider's silk and the sap from some of the trees Maple had fed to her shield covered the absolute bare minimum, on account of having to divide the materials between all of them, What little was there was golden like Eclair's hair, consisted of approximately four pieces of fabric covering both nipples, groin and buttox all connected together via pieces of string, what was particularly humiliating was not the swimsuit itself but rather the golden cat ears and tail that could be connected to her in so many worst ways than what it was she didn't even bother to count. In comparison, Rifana had it easy. a two piece bikini a dark green helping to highlight her pink hair/fur and by extension her growth bonus raised figure. Keel had it worst than most of them though, in respect to their gender there was a pair of cutoff boy shorts jeans, but their breasts hadn't been tied down, to prevent breathing problems, thus the contrast was only highlighted by the black Bikini top. Raphtalia though had it the worst of all, navy blue two piece bikini which made her breasts squeeze and did nothing to hide the points underneath, and which emphasised the slave seal on her breasts, that didn't seem to be half as embarrassing as the Miko coat that she was wearing on top of the whole ensemble it's whiteness further highlighting the dark colours, of course no one believed that a slave could be their empress, or that she would be wearing this underneath her vestments, but the blatant blasphemy highlighted the appeal. Maple had apparently given them the choice between this, and basically nude and as demonstrated by the stickers she made out the same material, she wasn't bluffing.
Ironically enough the person who normally goes around in a swimsuit, Sadeena, was absent, off looking for her sister. That said given her personality she's probably regretting missing the sight of an embarrassed Raphtalia trying to cover up her shame.
"Now what's our company greeting?" Maple for her part joined in via her orange two piece swim suit and a pair of sheep horns, which she was wearing while behind the carriage's built in counter which do to her short high covered little over two thirds of her body.
"""We are the Maple Leaf Trading Company.""" The five swim suit models stated to the growing confusion of the Q'Ten Lo denizens. """We sell Medicines, Magic Accessories and food.""" The five of them all bowed in sync. """Please take good care of us, We ask that you do not physically touch us."""
The crowd blinked stupidly for a few moments. The last part was added a while back after someone had gotten grabby hands with one of them, well even if such blatant sexual harassment happened again the perpetrator was in all likelihood to wind up getting kicked into lower orbit by Filo, if they were lucky. Well that still didn't stop people from lewdly staring and in the process paying more then what they strictly should've, tips can be quite generous when you're so distracted you mistake silver coins for gold ones.
Tree's had been ripped out or snapped in two, bits of monster pulp was splattered in the area, the very ground itself had been gouged out as if struck with a enormous amount of force. Not even their oracle could get lost on this trail, is what Shildina's escort naively thought. Clearly though they had once again spectacularly under estimated their charge in all the wrong ways, following a errant butterfly Shildina arrived out of the woods and into the village proper. Eclair and Keel simultaneously locked eyes with the black haired and highly familiar newcomer and immediately came to a logical but incorrect conclusion.
"There you are!" Keel snapped prompting a confused Shildina to point a finger at herself. "Yes you! Come on get changed! If we have to suffer so do you!" The confused Sakamata was subsequently pulled into the carriage, stripped, and redressed in a white hammock swim suit with food put into her arms to serve.
"What's going on?" Shildina asked deeply confused by what she was seeing.
"Maple got mad at us for giving her grief about the poison rain." Eclair stated indicating the young girl who was half stuck out of the side of the carriage. "Apparently she can do much worst then this."
Shildina blinked stupidly a couple of times as she looked around. Spotting a person who looked a great deal like her target she noticed two things, the first being that she was almost naked despite arguably having the most clothing out of all her fellow 'Waitresses' and the second being that she had the brand of a slave on her chest. Thus witnessing this surreal sight Shildina came to a completely rational conclusion.
"Ouch!" Confirming that she hadn't passed out drunk and was now suffering from a wild hallucination Shildina came to another completely rational conclusion, the Rebel Empress had body doubles altered in ways that she remembers Makina talking about but which she had no interest in learning, which in turn made the attack on the two monsters from before make much more sense. The fighting style of Tanuki is deception layered onto deception, using the enemies preconceived notions about how they and their allies fight to bait them into making decisions that they otherwise shouldn't have and then making them suffer for their hubris, not only using magic but in this case doing something as simple as arranging for people who look like her to fight alongside her, important information that Shildina needed to get back to Makina as soon as possible.
"Oi what are you standing there stupidly for?" Just as soon as she can get away from these people.
She soon figured out that the one in the carriage who was responsible for all the food that they had been selling was named Maple, every time she came up to the carriage to get food from her she would look at her with a face of 'who is this person and why is she here?' Clearly whoever these people had mistaken her for their ring leader here wasn't fooled for a moment. Very strange people these 'Maple Leaf Trading company.' Their products covered food, medicine and accessories, everything appeared to be high quality but charged silver on the gold, together with the Rebel Empress impersonator it appeared that they were a propaganda engine for the Empress's reputation, though admittedly dressing her and her aides up like whores didn't fit with that theory, it could be as they said earlier and the ringleader of the operation was simply mad at them. That was the other thing, the poison rain, clearly they were up to something quite dangerous and she needed to find out what.
"What were you guys talking about before I got here?" Shildina asked seeing how far she could press her luck.
"We were talking about combining together my skills and magic earlier, and suddenly they started giving me a hard time about what I did to Ost." Skills? Did she refer to her training. Clearly she was quite skilled with the kind of precision ki manipulation that the temple looks for it's black smith's, she could tell just from the flow of Ki in the food, accessories and Medicine, it was a shame that she was using her skills for something this... depraved. Still for someone like Shildina who had the ability to extract memories from the Ki people leave behind in the objects they handle the lot of them basically spent the afternoon handing her intel packets that she would be happily sorting through as soon as she got her clothes back.
"RRRAAAWWWRRR!" Everyone simultaneously looked to the north where more of the trees were being torn apart.
One swing from one of the brutes threw trees into the village as the creatures revealed themselves. Shildina recognised the Horse like Minotaur and the regular Minotaur immediately for what they were: the first and Second bosses of Q'Ten Lo's waves, dubbed locally as Mezuki and Gozuki respectively, and they were backed up by a army of demonic cattle as well.
"Huh. The rebels gave us a intel report that these guys were travelling around together." Maple commented idly, as if saying 'oh that was a thing.'
"Maple we need to get into our armour!" Eclair snapped gesturing to the monsters, particularly the two giants wielding a bloody saw and a club respectively.
"There's no time for that." Maple stated calmly as she gestured to the village. "Do you guys wanna tell them that we couldn't defend their loved ones who died because you all were too embarrassed to fight in your swim suits?"
"Do you seriously think we can fight without armour?" Eclair snapped gesturing to herself that arguably had the least amount of clothing out of everyone there. Then a notification appeared in her vision saying that 'Dedicated Affection' was now active.
"That should cover armour." Saying that weapons flew out of the carriage, swords, axes, crossbows, claws and Eclair got the Tyrant Dragon Charge blade. "And there's your weapons." In other words 'Yes you can fight in swim suits because I'm here to protect you!' "Raphtalia, I need your help setting up our counter attack. Everyone else defend the village!"
Everyone nodded as they lined up for the charge. Filo's swim suit was shredded as she assumed her Filolial form, Keel quickly climbed on top axes at the ready and the two of them charged forward. Their stats Stacked together Filo sped through the herd kicking whatever seemingly faceless fat bull like monster or sharp toothed carnivorous horse like abomination got in their way while Keels axes circled around in a hurricane of blades, blood and severed limbs. Rifana made a few short jumps and was on the top of the nearby building.
"Everyone retreat into your homes basements and pantries! Lock and bar the doors and don't come out until we say so, even if you don't hear anything on the other side!" Rifana lined up eight one handed, self loading cross bows. "I have read and understood the origins of power! Embue my targets with the might of the storm and augment their power to strike true! Driefach Lightning X!"
Lightning arced between the crossbows and they began to fire, each shot landing true and dropping one of the in coming monsters forming a barricade of bodies that the enemy forces now found themselves having to go around forming a choke point, sadly Rifana's cross bows ran out of bolts before she ran out of enemies so she had to stop to reload but luckily Eclair was there to back things up. Charging up to the gap Eclair blocked the charging blow from the fat hairy bull like enemy, stabbed it with her sword, and then threw it back into the crowd making it land on and crush one of the smaller horse like monsters in the process with a crunch. Like that Eclair continued to cut down and throw about enemy monsters, one of the horses succeeded in getting as far as biting her shoulder, tearing off on of the strings of her swim suit though failing to hurt Eclair herself. The half naked on the verge of fully naked knight replied by punching the horse so hard that it sailed through the air and hit the bull monster on the head doing little but annoying it in the process.
"I'm reloaded Eclair! You might wanna fix your suit!" Rifana shouted before resuming loosing lightning and arrows into the herd of monsters while Eclair 'eep'ed realising her state of dress, and that instead of following their evacuation orders the villagers were staring at them dumb founded.
"What are you people waiting for get to safety!" Eclair shouted waving with her sword while she protected her modesty with her shield. "And you!" She hadn't however missed the fact that Shildina, whom she thought to be her sister, hadn't done anything yet. "What are you waiting for?"
Aside from the mandate from the emperor not to kill monsters?
"I don't have any of my weapons!" Shildina shouted in reply. If Eclair wasn't so embarrassed and wanted to go back into the carriage for her armour she would've asked what happened to her harpoon. As it stood.
"Use mine!" Eclair replied as took a knee. "I have to fix this stupid thing anyway!"
Shildina shrugged her shoulders as she took the ki from the weapon, put it into a tag, before slapping it to herself causing her eyes to glow brightly. Oh wow this thing was made from a Dragon Emperor's scales, and by the looks of things one of the apprentice smith's of the temple, on top of that the one wielding it knows what she's doing too, and was powerful on top of that.
"Thank you for the meal." Saying that, Shildina went to town on the enemy forces, combining shield and sword together into mechanical axe as she assumed her therianthrope form, Shildina wielded the two handed contraption like a one handed axe cleaving through enemies as she jumped into the middle of the formation while Rifana sniped the enemies in her blind spots.
"I didn't know Sadeena could use that charge blade." Rifana stated looking at the situation suspiciously. Wasn't there a rule about heroes not using any weapon other than the one associated with them.
"Well she's pretty good at it, which is more than I can say about Maple's skills as a seamstress." Eclair stated adjusting the tied up swim suit. The two monsters seemed to have enough. Recognising the uselessness of their subordinates Mezuki and Gozuki started to pick them up and threw them at the village proper.
"Oh no." Rifana quickly found herself dodging falling monsters as the house she had been on was destroyed by the carnivorous cattle, who unfazed by falling a distance that was short when compared to falling from the sky, proceeded to try and maul their long distance fighter. Rifana simply electrified herself in response, which sadly proved equally effective on her swim suit as her opponents.
"I'm gonna kill Maple when we're done here!" As if cue, Maple in her shield armour and Raphtalia both walked up to where the two boss monsters were rapidly approaching them. "I'm glad you all had fun with my friends." Gozuki slammed his club into the invisible mass of shield's Maple had set up revealing a Wooden 'Winged' shield with a swirl of serpents painted on the front of it. "Please die now." The painted cobra's, adders and pythons came to life and spewed poison into the the air where the bull had been standing, getting splashed in the face by acid, paralytics and toxins would be bad enough by itself, but Maple had added the newest addition to her long winded combo via 'reflect shield.'
"She's really doing it!" Seeing the people who had been fighting the monsters fearlessly up until now scared witless and ducking for cover everyone else finally did what they were told and went somewhere safe, which was good because the cloud of horrible substances Maple produced exploded.
To briefly summarise what had happened: Kuro, observing that Maple favoured the use of poison attacks to fight, took one of her noble Phantasms and tampered with it until it could become a shield for Maple to use. The Phantasm in question, the Yew Wood Bow, originally belonged to Robin Hood and was given to Tanya to copy, which after Maple observed it in action back in pre-historic Cal Mira and after learning that Kuro had started modifying her Phantasms to increase the number of them that they could copy she requested the one that makes poison explode.
"Wow." Maple's entire body received the impact from the blast experienced by Filo and Keel thanks to Dedicated Affection. "That stung a bit."
The entire area between the far side of the battlefield and the village had been covered in poison, the acidic substance ate away at the clothing belonging to Maple's party, with the exception of Maple herself who was wearing the shield armour, thus almost everyone had gone from nearly naked to completely naked the only thing sparing their modesty had been the same foul substance that had stripped them now drenching them from head to toe.
"Maple." Raphtalia's voice seethed with barely contained rage.
"Yes Raphtalia?" Maple had only just now come to the realisation that she might've gone too far with her prank before.
"We are getting a hot shower, you are going to use your shield to replace our clothes and armour, and then we are done for the day!" Raphtalia snapped glaring down at Maple.
"Right away. First Shield, Second Shield, Third Shield." The shields appeared above the heads of Raphtalia, Rifana and Eclair, Keel and Filo were already in their monster forms so she'll work on them later. "Change shield: Shield Armour!"
The Shield's transformed, descended, and wrapped the Three's bodies in heavy armour prompting them to glare at Maple with a face of 'You could've done this ages ago!' Shildina had just barely escaped from the blast radius and was now staring in horror at the shield hero. Dropping Eclair's weapon she fled in terror to report the latest news to her superiors.
Review Section:
RonaldM40196867: Very. Yes. Melromarc, all the countries have their share of problems but near as I can tell, Melromarc has the fewest. On fanfiction? Maybe I'm not one of them.
Captain Imaginat: Glad you like it. No Maple Tree of Bofuri will not be making an appearance.
Dakota Bruder: To shield Hero? Yes Bason is a original character, but he's actually from Shaman King, he was the Guardian Ghost of Tao Ren, whom we've already met as a Spear Hero of the past when Maple and Tanya went Time Travelling.
Galeon: It's spelt Tanuki. And Kuro, Trash and everyone else here who understands just what the throne of heroes is hopes that nothing like that is ever tapped in this world considering the kinds of monsters that have been summoned as heroes in the past. And the difference between Kyo's monsters and Maple's Shikigami: Kyo was trying to raise a monster he could control, Maple is trying to raise a god. Well yes I suppose that is something of a unwritten rule.
ultima-owner: Mostly Ost, could you imagine what would happen if Mordred had a say in the matter?
Moon of Hell: Glad you thought so.
Nightshadegirl: The Bear sized Tanuki transformation is as big as Raphtalia can get, keep in mind that unlike other Therianthrope transformations Raphtalia doesn't get bigger she gets smaller, bear is about the limit of what she can push herself. As I said in the chapter before the people that were with Ost when she went to talk to Maple are not past Shield Heroes they're the Heroic Spirits associated with the weapons Kuro gave Maple, Leonaidas, Mordred, Achilles just to name a few of them.