Author's Note: Okay Another week down and another chapter completed, Read, Review, Favourite and Enjoy!
Chapter 76: The Spear Hero's Weapon Retrieval Log
The Shadow people were still following Katarina around, even worst than that was that they were multiplying. It felt like every time she turned around they had disappeared off to somewhere and when they came back there was more of them. Aside from the magical black ops people that had appeared on the village and was continuing to pop up there were also various monsters that were being added to the shadows as well.
"Just at a peak of curiosity, is there a way to make them stop?" Katarina asked looking at the individuals who were still following her around.
"You summoned them." Wyndia replied bluntly. "Do you know how to send them back?"
"I don't know it's not like I can just tell them to go away or something!" Cue the shadows immediately disappearing into Katarina's shadow. "Why did my level just go up?" Katarina asked as she looked behind her and saw that the shadows were no longer there. "Wish I knew how to do that hours ago!" Letting out a sigh Katarina looked down at her shadow, at the glowing purple blinking eye looking back at her. "I think Galleon is different then the others." Katarina stated as she looked over to Wyndia. "He comes out whenever he wants and goes back whenever he feels like it."
"Is it because he was a undead when you brought him down?" Wyndia suggested raising a brow in thought. That was the biggest difference between Galleon and all the other monsters they've fought against, well that and he's a dragon.
"Truthfully though they remind me a little like those things Raphtalia and Kuro was fighting against earlier." Wyndia stated scratching her head. "I mean, these things keep getting back up so long as the thing that summoned them is still supplying Ki right. That's the same way it was with you?"
During Katarina's earlier experiments, read terrified waling on the shadows with her spear, it was observed that they kept regenerating and that Katarina kept loosing Ki as they did so. Similarly the monsters that Raphtalia and Kuro fought kept regenerating so long as they were still connected to the weapons that had drenched them up in the first place.
"So you think the same kind of magic that has drenched up those monsters is what is what's causing these things to follow me around?" Katarina asked indicating the purplish dragon eye that was still looking at them.
"Think those Black smith priests would know if we ask them?" Thus Katarina and Wyndia found themselves being drawn towards the temple where Katarina's black smith friend works.
"The old guy's out?" Katarina asked looking at the priests who had the weapons they piled up earlier.
The club from the giant Raphtalia knocked down was put into a containment case, most likely to keep it from spitting out another giant, but the bow and the sabre were being put through an extensive process of blessing so that they could actually be copied without advancing the curses that were inside of their weapons. Course according to what Ost told them if they can find out where the hammer is located at then they can some how or another remove the weapons that they have but don't want specifically the cursed series.
"He went with the sword hero to secure a weapon of great interest to Makina."
"Um. That's fine. We were wondering if you guys know anything about those cursed weapons that we keep finding." Katarina asked indicating the area to her side that was covered in Shadows.
"The weapons you speak of were created as a way to contain many powerful monsters." One of the lower ranking priests explained. "The Empress of the ancient times used divine magic to take the souls of the monsters and trap them inside of weapons crafted from their own flesh."
Divine magic. As in from the dungeons? So does that mean that Q'Ten Lo's dungeon has something to do with manipulating souls? It might explain a lot.
"I think we've got another clue Katarina." Wyndia stated indicating the club. The part she was specifically referring to was the hilt of the weapon, wherein place of a counter weight to help manage this ludicrously mis-balanced weapon there was a familiar looking diamond shaped jewel. "This looks suspiciously like a Dragon Emperor's core." For the sake of comparison, Katarina took out a piece of the Tyrant Dragon Core Maple had given her and compared it against the one in the weapon.
"Why does a oni have a Dragon Emperor's Core anyway?" Katarina asked scratching the side of her head. "Dragon's are biologically compatible with every type of animal in this world." One of the Priests picked this time to add his own two cents to the conversation. "There are reports of entire eco-systems being ruined because the local dragon can't control it's lust, or discriminate in it's partners." That might do it. "This same compatibility makes it possible for even non-dragons to consume a Dragon's Emperor's core, slowly mutating them into a horrific abomination."
So all of these creatures that they've been fighting lately are part dragon?
"What can you tell us about undead?" Katarina asked and the priest seemed to make a prayer to some entity at the mention of the subject.
"Undead are fundamentally broken creatures." The Priest explained in no uncertain terms. "The System as we know it is designed to funnel the immaterial filth that's generated from death and depravity into power for the killer where it is contained and harmless." Was he talking about the H.U.D? Katarina wondered why no one talked about that. "But this is not the case everywhere."
"Right, nothing like that appeared in either of the worlds I was living on before getting here." Katarina explained while snapping her fingers. "In such cases, if the filth is not regularly dealt with, then it will corrupt everything it comes into contact with, people, animals, objects, not even the dead are safe from this filth." The Priest explained, his tone like someone reciting holy scriptures.
"And that's where undead comes from." Katarina snapped her fingers in a eureka moment but the Priest shook his head in the negative.
"Not always no." The priest led them to a tapestry depicting a army of men with no legs being led by a man in ancient bronze armour. It took Katarina a moment to figure out why none of them have any legs.
"Ghosts!" Katarina jumped back in fright.
"Indeed. The ancient founder of the noble Tao Line had come from a world where the living fights alongside the dead." What kind of messed up world did he come from where that could be considered normal!? "The divine magic of the soul makes it possible to make alterations to the soul of the dead, while his own techniques made extraction and manipulation of the soul possible. Many of Q'Ten Lo's greatest warriors are immortalised to defend our lands forever." Katarina wasn't paying attention anymore, too busy cowering in terror in the corner.
"What's the connection between the soul and Miasma?" Wyndia asked looking back to the priest for clarification.
"Just that, a connection. Both the Soul and Miasma are immaterial. When Material filth builds on you it attaches itself to your body, therefore immaterial filth builds on the immaterial, your soul." Then that thing that's hiding in Katarina's shadow could be Wyndia's father, in some form. "I sense from your expression that you have found the answers you seek." And so the priest concluded that his business with these two was finished and thus bowed to them both. "May Bason guide you." The party walked outside of the temple while they debated their next move.
"So aside from you trying to unravel the secrets of dark magic what's our next move?" A alarm sounded indicating that a situation that might need a hero's help had just appeared.
"That." Katarina led her party to a watch tower where the alarm had sounded. Looking through the telescope Katarina saw the thing that the alarm had been sounded about. Something black was flying in the night sky, stars appearing and disappearing at whim, it might be considered a more natural phenomena, were it not for the length of familiar rope tied around it's waist. "Looks like one of the monsters have been turned loose again." Katarina observed as she pulled her face away. "And this one looks like it can fly too." Katarina sat back on a stool as she went deep into thought.
The banging of a gavel indicated a meeting of the council of Katariana's.
"What the hell is going on here!?" Timid Katarina shouted while pulling on her hair. "There are ghosts wandering the country side, apparently filthy ghosts following us around, and now there are giant ghost dragon monsters chasing after us!" Timid Katarina slammed her face into the ground after burning out. "Just plant a Doom Flag in me already..."
"Absolutely not!" Intellectual Katarina snapped glasses giving off light as she adjusted them. "Giving into hopelessness helps no one, especially us! What we need is a real solution to dealing with this mess!"
"If we can just find where all of these monsters are buried then maybe we can haul off their sealing weapons before the Makina or whoever she's called manages to unlock them?" Hotblooded Katarina stated raising her hand up in the air.
"You want us to go out and fight more monsters?" Excitable Katarina asked a disbelieving look on her face.
"With Galleon we can cover the most of the territory in and around Q'Ten Lo, if we have a map then we can plot a course to hit all of them in one go. If we're lucky we can catch whoever is releasing all these monsters to come after us!" Excitable Katarina stated fist pumping through the air.
Wyndia snapped her fingers in front of Katarina's face a couple of times.
"So is this just a thing that she does, stare off into space while important decisions need to be made?" Wyndia asked looking up at the rest of Katarina's companions.
"Usually." Rino replied simply. "The lady is a deep thinker." Kyurie chose this time to offer his two cents. "At times like this she carefully considers all the options available to her and chooses the option that suits the situation the best."
"I have a idea!" Katarina suddenly shouted as she stood up finger pointing to the sky. "We're gonna round all those guys up before they can hurt anyone else!"
Katarina's opening move was Galleon. The dragon flew up to the air and fought against the monster in the sky, a giant three legged crow, while Katarina and her party moved with the priests on the ground.
"Is this were the map says that bird made it's nest at?" Katarina asked looking to the priest to her side.
"Indeed Lady Claes." And thus the group went in, absorbed the corpse of the giant three legged crow into Katarina's spear, and the priests safely removed and took away the bow and arrows that was made from the thing's wish bone and feathers.
After that Galleon flew Katarina over mountain path's, rough forest terrain and raging rivers and arrived at the burial grounds for the next monster. Fear of disturbing the monster's tomb? Fear of waking it up? Katarina is a Legendary Hero. She was the one who killed the Chimera that threatened Ryute Village. She defeated the wave boss that attacked Shieldfreiden. She was there on Cal Mira when the four Heroes were attacked by the four other worlders. She fended off the hoards of the Spirit Turtle's Familiars and Kyo's mutated abominations armed with Maple's skills. She was there when the god who would massacre two quarters of the world's population was put down like a wild animal. She commands a legion of 100 immortal shadow soldiers. Her Legendary weapon contains the power of dozens of heroes. What does she have to fear from these weakling monsters?
Claw weapons. Swords. Spears. Bows. Shields. Hammers. Katarina flew from place to place, sometimes she caught the government in the middle of trying to wake the monsters up. Sometimes she didn't get to them in time before they started to rampage in which case she would use Galleon to pin them in place while she removed the weapon that was their source. However There was a big fish that they managed to pull in as he was trying to bless one of the monsters in question.
"Do your worst!"
Katarina wondered if Raphtalia looked like this when Maple first found her. The boy was a little bit shorter than her with the same mousy brown hair and raccoon ears and tail. "I will not betray my country!"
"Huu." There was that fanatical sense of loyalty too, but sadly it was directed towards the wrong person. "What are you doing out here?" Katarina asked looking at the bow legit curiosity on her features.
"As if I would tell you!" The Emperor snapped glaring.
Katarina would have to apply her years of experience in her vast knowledge of interrogation and torture in order to extract the information that she needed to know from this twerp.
"Rino, can you help me prepare a pitcher of water for the young emperor?" Katarina had a evil smile on her features.
A few moments later Katarina's spear had produced a pitcher and a glass while Rino went to collect some water from a nearby stream.
"What are you playing at?" The Emperor asked looking at Katarina suspiciously.
"I'm just making sure that you stay hydrated." Katarina replied honestly.
The boy accepted the water while he looked at and maintained his suspicions of Katarina and her party all the while. For the record no Katarina hadn't drugged or poisoned the water, she had a much more evil idea then that. Then the time had come.
"I have to pee." The Emperor stated after a few glasses of water, which made sense as small bodies also meant small bladder.
"Hold him down!" Katarina shouted as she produced the most evil torture device modern humanity had ever developed: The feather duster, courtesy of Midori's feathers.
The Emperor was grabbed by both of his arms and pinned to the ground, socks and sandals were pulled off as Katarina Mercilessly tickled his feet with the feather duster.
"Buah hahahahaha! Stop it! Stop it! I'm-! I'm~!" Katarina showed no sign of stopping her blatant torture, her techniques learned from her elder brothers of her original world and then perfected with Keith as a subject.
"You better hurry up and tell us before you pee yourself!" Katarina stated continuing her merciless assault with her evil device. Only amateur torturers tickle the person. If your smart then you fill their bladders to bursting and then you tickle them.
"NO! NO! NO! PLEASE I DON'T WANNA I~ HAHAHAHAHAHA!" Several hours later, the emperor was looking into the sky with the eyes of dead fish a smile on his face, his trousers damp and wet.
"'Blessing of the Heavenly Emperor.'" Katarina repeated the term as it was explained to her into her crystal ball spear and looked to the members of her party sitting next to her for confirmation, who in turn only shrugged their shoulders by way of response. "What's that supposed to be?"
"The Blessing of the Heavenly Emperor facilitates a direct connection with the land itself, making it possible to replenish Ki faster and facilitating control over it to assume more powerful Therianthrope forms." The Priest on the other end of the transmission explained prompting a look of confusion from Katarina.
"You can use Ki to assume stronger forms?" News to her. Maybe that was how Beast King worked. "Hey kid." Just cause now they went ahead and made her curious. "Can you assume a therianthrope form too?"
"Why would..." The Emperor asked as he breathed heavily still exhausted from his earlier humiliation. "...I do that?"
"Midori, where's my feather duster?" The Emperor quickly assumed his Therianthrope form.
Unlike Raphtalia when she fought the giant, or literally any other Therianthrope for that matter, the Emperor actually shrunk down and out of his clothes assuming the form of a small Raph-chan like creature. For a creature such as a Tanuki is who specialised in the use of illusion magic it might actually make sense. How often does Raphtalia shrink down to this cute and compact form, turn herself invisible while her illusions and floating swords do all the actual fighting? Even if someone thinks to try and take a swing at the invisible Raphtalia their first instinct would be to go for their organs or their neck, they wouldn't think of trying to hit her at ankle height.
"CUTE~!" Was the summation of Katarina's opinion on that particular form as Kyurie gathered his clothes up.
The emperor wasn't sure why his spine was tingling but some primitive, prey part of his mind told him that he should probably turn back as soon as possible.
"Um... I'm going to need those back you do realise this right?"
"They're dirty and soaked with pee." Katarina countered executing flawless logic. "Just stay in your therianthrope form."
"I can't maintain it forever you do realise this right?" The emperor's level wasn't all that high, and on top of that he's barely received any formal training in the subject either. Katarina looked at him, half glared really, tapping her finger as she thought about what to say next.
"You're the one that made that silly declaration of all life being sacred right?" Katarina asked as a new plan was forming in the corner of her mind.
"It's not silly!" Ruftmelia snapped.
For a good few solid moments Katarina didn't reply, her in the middle of her deep thoughts as Kyurie put it earlier.
"The H.U.D. do you know how to work it?" Katarina asked as if expecting a response and having not yet received it.
"The what?" The short transformed child asked in blatant confusion. "The H.U.D. The icon in the corner of your vision."
"I still don't understand." Katarina smacked herself in her face as she pulled her hand down and away.
"Look and concentrate on the bottom left of your line of sight." The Emperor turned his head in that direction. "Keep your head where it is but look in the direction I'm telling you." Finally the Emperor's eyes went wide as he seemingly tripped over the solution that Katarina had been guiding him to, and the party request that Katarina had sent him before this entire mess had began. "Good now concentrate on the 'Yes.'" The Emperor had done so, and thus his name, Ruftmelia, had appeared in the party list for Katarina. "Good." Katarina dismissed the rest of her part. "I have to go and teach this stupid child how the world works." Something screeched to a halt inside of the minds of Katarina's party.
One she, the stupidest person that they know, just called someone else stupid, secondly she's going to teach him 'how the world works' which was a concept so terrifying in of itself that they had no words for it. Taking the small furry animal their group had taken prisoner Katarina went into the woods.
"So this is the first time that you've actually opened up your menu?" Katarina asked as she carried the emperor on her shoulder.
"I don't know what that is but probably." Ruftmelia replied shrugging small shoulders.
"So then you don't know about XP and levels either?" Katarina asked as she eventually found what she was looking for.
"Not really. What is this about?" Ruftmelia asked looking around to try and find what Katarina had brought him to see.
"It's why everything you believe in is wrong." The thing that Katarina had found was a wolf, there were other animals that they had encountered along the way but they were not suitable for making her point for her. "You believe life to be sacred, but not all life appreciates your insights." The wolf leapt at them, and in that moment Ruftmelia understood what it was like to be small and helpless in front of someone who doesn't care about how highly you think about them. Katarina's spear expertly went into the chest of the monster before her, and a great swell of XP went through the veins of Katarina and Ruftmelia. In the case of Ruftmelia he climbed up a few levels, nothing great enough for him to start his growth spurt, but the H.U.D. non the less the effect was clear before his eyes as numbers increased in value before him but he understood neither their effect or their meaning. "That is your reward." Katarina stated pulling off the wolf's corpse and putting it into her spear for later.
"My reward for doing what?" Ruftmelia asked looking in confusion at Katarina.
"For killing." That night Katarina and Ruftmelia both received many more such rewards. Katarina of course managed Ruftmelia's intake of XP very carefully ensuring that he didn't mess up his body do to being undernourished while levelling, yet despite that his 'status' kept growing more and more, as he slowly accumulated his rewards.
Life is not sacred, it's not sacred here, and it's not sacred on any other world as well. Plants grow from the dirt, animals eat the plants, the animals are eaten by other animals, then everything, everyone, rots away becoming part of the ground in the process, and then the cycle repeats itself. Here the you're rewarded for it, your body absorbs what the other lost, their strength becomes part of yours. And no one exemplifies those facts more then this little girl strolling through the woods with carcasses of monsters skewered on the end of her spear.
"Did you two enjoy hanging out in the woods?" Rino asked having returned to the temple where the Black Smithing Priests worked, watching as Katarina walked out of the woods with their prisoner.
"I think I've managed to broaden the horizons of our 'Heavenly Emperor a bit.'" At some point in time Katarina had used her spear to fashion the animal skins she had gotten into pants for Ruftmelia so that he wouldn't be wandering around the woods naked but that was arguably the most normal thing about him right now. The Emperor's eyes had gone empty, as if he had everything he had ever believed in ripped out of him, put on display, criticised and mocked.
"Is he gonna be okay?" Rino asked indicating the prisoner in question.
"He'll be fine, he just needs some time." Katarina passed Ruftmelia into the priests custody.
"Time we might not have." Rino stated as she relayed to Katarina the latest intelligence they had received.
Useless creatures every last one of them. She should've known not to relay on creatures that had already been beaten into submission by heroes to defeat heroes. Given the choice she'd rather make use of the ones who originally did the beating, and she knew exactly where to find them. There were many reasons why Makina had the capital moved, least among the personal or pity was the laboratory built by one of the heroes of the ancient era inside of the hollow of a mountain, that has since become his tomb. If the royal family ever feels as if their lives are in danger, then all they need do is release the seals on these chambers, and creatures more powerful then what few will ever realise will act to protect them.
"Get up you stupid corpses!" The chambers released steam of cold as they opened to reveal five nightmarish amalgams. "Your emperor is in danger." Makina stepped aside so that the hell she had just released wouldn't brush against her on the way out. "Go get him back!"
Review Section:
Aracade: It happens every time Kuro and her sword gets into a argument. If violence hasn't solved your problems yet then you are using it wrong. You're Welcome.
Dakota Bruder: Oversoul isn't the next power up I have planned. Filo is Ziz, a giant mostly bird but vaguely Griffin like monster who acts as the direct counterpart to the Behemoth. Atla refers to the Oracle of Delphi, she mostly stays the same but her vision gets expanded on. Malty is Medea, something that I should hope needs no description.
Captain Imaginat: I have no plans to.
RonaldM401966867: You're welcome. The Majority of them are petty, short sighted and one dimensional, if they have the slightest characterisation beyond that then they are inevitably redeemed somehow and brought over to the side of the heroes which is not realistic.
Galeon82: You do realise Kuro's a girl right?
Energeticbeet: Muramasa is a good idea.
Illya Emiya: Chapter 59. Myne's the Jewel hero, she largely uses jewels, sets them to shoot at anything that moves while she sits around reading being literally carried by her party member Roderick.
Nightshadegirl: He'll need some convincing first.