Author's Note: Okay, getting this ready to publish took a little longer than I was planning for. Read, Review, Favourite and Enjoy!
Chapter 89: Gods of the Modern Era
Katarina looked up at the creature Maple had bred using the Bio-plants. Various see through bulges, a children's toy suspended between two vines that was pulling it apart and together at a rapid pace, the stomach of a monster churning and processing chemicals. All of this after several hours of this process a sap like substance eventually flowed out of the spoke hammered into the base of the tree and into a bucket that Maple had prepared to catch the liquid in question. Once the liquid had been gathered Katarina took the bucket and poured some of the liquid into the legendary shield as she awaited the results of Maple's work.
"Well?" Katarina asked the tension thick enough to cut with a knife.
"Yes!" Maple happily reported. "Yggdrasil! And it's the highest quality too!"
While developing her Bishop powers Maple had spent months thinking of the method to best use the Bio-plants to support the army. The Phoenix apparently had the power to hack plants that were raised on its ashes, so weaponizing them to fight was a no. Instead she turned to the other big part of War that's often overlooked: Logistics! Mass producing supplies for the battle against the Phoenix, the solution she reached was creating a way to mass produce the Yggdrasil potion. She hit upon the idea while reading the description of the potion her shield gave her.
'Yggdrasil: said to be sap from the tree of world's Yggdrasil, possesses an unrivalled power to treat the sick and wounded. This potion is but a crude recreation only capable of unleashing a fragment of the true Yggdrasil's power.' However the new potion gave a different description after entering the shield.
"'Highest Quality Yggdrasil.'" Maple briefly skimmed over the origin of the name as she read the important part. "'This sap was extracted from a plant that is the closest existence to the world tree known, the potency of its healing power cannot be compared to anything known before.' It seems that we were successful." Maple suddenly fell backwards, an exhausted but satisfied look on her face. Running all over to find the materials for this thing, long hours spent going through the process of learning how to manually craft the potion, and then using Metamorphosis to impart the necessary skills onto this thing, slowly increasing it's intelligence until it was actually smart enough to understand the process it was being told to complete. Finally. It. Was. DONE!
"Are you good?" Katarina asked looking down at the exhausted Maple.
"Yeah. I think I've had enough achievement for a while. I think I'm just going to take a me day." Suddenly a bolt of lightning cracked in the sky which they knew came from Rishia's projectile weapon striking at the target of it's immeasurable hatred. "I'm just going to ignore that." Maple stated making her tiredness known.
Kuro had been thorough with her preparations. Using the Balloon sword and it's resistance to lightning as the base Kuro proceeded to upgrade it by as much as possible using every reinforcement method at her disposal, then she looked through her collection of swords until she eventually found one that she hadn't recognised at first.
'White Tiger Clone Claw Sword. Main Ability: Parry'
When asked it was explained that the Khopesh shaped blade was unlocked from some of the material that Maple had gathered while she was in the other world and subsequently given to the others. Kuro had maxed out it's qualities via the same steps that she had used for the Balloon sword, combined them together via 'reflect blade' and summoned a hundred of them to float in the air. The rubbery blades resisted and deflected the attacks from Rishia's weapons, as a extra measure Kuro also cast 'Absorb X' on the blades while she continued to work, and even used the dragon pulse style of magic to suck the energy coming down from the sky to add to her own reserves of power. What she was doing is simple, using a patch of land that she now owned she was using the Sword of the Beast King to continuously manufacture materials to upgrade her weapon transformations. How was she receiving the worshipping points you may be wondering?
"Why are we dressed like this?" Kuro had taken her party, and a large number of the village slaves had them actively worshipping her, nude except for Hawaiian styled grass skirts and when necessary coconut bras.
"I'm making you pray for this to be over." Kuro replied as she non-chalantly deflected an incoming bolt of of lightning.
"Trust me. The Lightning was plenty enough incentive for that."
Gold coins, various ores, occasionally wood, all of these materials sprouted out of the ground one after another only to then be absorbed into the sword and put to work reinforcing one of Kuro's weapons. Thus while Kuro's stats were rising, they weren't rising in the way that she had been hoping.
'It would appear that this tactic isn't as effective as we were hoping it was going to be.'
The Sacred Gear Seal Breaker ability required that it's wielder be in danger, and with one hundred swords zipping through the air deflecting, resisting and neutralising thousands of the bolts of lightning that were continuously firing down from the air that is exactly what she was not in.
"Hmm. Maybe we should switch sparring partners." Then an ominous feeling encompassed Kuro from head to two as the lightning did something unexpected, it stopped.
Rishia had a feeling of danger as she watched her weapon rapidly scroll through millions of weapon transformations as if looking for a solution to break the stalemate. Finally a solution was found. In retrospect it was obvious that the Projectile weapon would have something like this, each of the Heroes who had shared their unlocked weapon transformations with her had one, so why wouldn't she get her own mech suit? This one was notably different than the Legendary Heroes though.
"It's... a little... snug!"
A discount Syrphine at nearly a quarter of the size of Tanya's mechsuit had wrapped around Rishia's body, it squeezed down on her like wrapping her entire body in a corset and she could barely, stiffly move her limbs, she didn't want to think about how close her legs must be to the rocket thruster that made up this flying mechanical mermaid suit, vastly less useful than Tanya's guns were the six or so Atlatl's that were attached to the wings like minature catapults. It made sense in it's own right, each of the transformations she unlocked from the Legendary Weapons were a smaller version of that weapon's transformation, so it made sense that the suits were so small too.
"I... don't... think... this'll help!"
The Projectile was not yet done with it's prisoner however. Blades appeared in three of Rishia's six ghostly Helping Hands and morphed as they transformed, assuming miniature forms of the Guaylinda, the Earlecumber and the Tranzdorkis or to put it another way, Kuro's chainsaw wielding armour that now sported daggers at the end of it's much smaller limbs, Maple's four armed armour that currently sported frisbees, and Katarina's centaur like suit that was admittedly pretty spider like with it's javelin legs, all in a similarly smaller form.
"If... you... want..." 'me to pick between them' before Risha could utter a line like that, the weapons started to change from again.
The torso of the Transdorkis, hollowed out for a pilot to ride in, compressed down it's size until it was a circular platform making it even more spider like than before. The miniature Earlecumber folded it's legs into the torso while the arms adjust their position, forming a disproportionately long arm in the process. The Guaylinda performed a similar action only resulting in arm that had a too large fist ending in claws instead. Rishia was forced to curl into a ball while the other three suits attached to the one she had unfortunately found herself inside of. When she had regained her consciousness Rishia had no longer felt trapped inside of the suit, perhaps something had happened that made it decide that it wasn't worth the effort of whatever it was doing to her, chiefly her loss of consciousness.
"Fue..." Rishia stood up, and immediately fell over. "That madness back there must have..." Rishia froze in horror. She was rubbing her hand against her head but she couldn't feel it. Finally looking at herself Rishia screamed in horror. "FFFUUU-!"
'Silence mode initiated.'
What Rishia was screaming about was the sudden realisation that she had turned into some kind of mech armour. She had a roughly humanoid torso, but four mechanical spider like legs, the extra armour from the other three suits had been reconfigured into arms, eight of them to be precise, while the additional armour had been dedicated to her torso and helping her to stabilise her legs. It was hard to say where one began and the other ended, as the weapon used the colour change function to select white to permeate her body, only broken up by the weapon slots where Ki potion weapons and Lightning weapons had taken hold with 'Change Projectile' and 'Reflect Projectile' respectively resulting in clear glass and sparking lightning respectively. Rishia tried to maintain her balance while she processed the horror that she was going through. Frisbee's in her right hand, daggers in her left, and a row of javelins going along her back. Yes she had extra hands from the Helping hands accessory but that was that and this? This was an abomination.
"WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO MMMEEEE!?" Rishia's despair saidly could not escape the confines of the metallic twelve limbed contraption she was stuck in.
'Inbuilt Magius Engine insufficient for this unit. Connected to wielder for additional processing power. Health and vitals remain optimal with life support functions. Situation optimal.'
"This isn't optimal! This is far from optimal!" Rishia's panicked flailing didn't look less amusing with extra limbs to flail with. "TURN ME BACK! TURN ME BACK! TURN ME BACK!"
'Preparing to find target.'
The Projectile ignored Rishia's desperate flailing as it instead used Tanya's top down skill to lock on Kuro's location.
'Engaging thrusters!'
"What do you mean by thrusters!?" Risha's pathetic pleas fell on deaf ears. The Yew Wood Atlatl was paired with a poison javelin and thus a crude approximation of a thruster pack was created. "FFFUUUEEE!" Rishia's muted screams echoed throughout her suit as it took off through the air seeking to hunt Kuro down like a dog.
"Well you don't see that every day." Kuro commented idly while she watched a twelve limb monstrosity fly through the air with clumsy efficacy and slam down at her location. Without so much as a 'how do you do' Eight limbs went on the offensive, four stabbing blades striking at Kuro while blocking her retaliatory strikes with four shields, occasionally spitting a Javelin of lightning down at her as it stepped forward trying to stab her. Kuro only had the Forger blades to defend herself, wrapped in sheath's of reinforced balloons and reflecting the White Tiger Clone Blades to help parry the attacks. "You've brought the thunder did you?" Kuro smirked as suddenly the twelve limb monstrosity was trapped inside of a ball of water, which then proceeded to electrocute itself. "No thanks, you can keep it!"
Kuro probably should've paid more attention to the way that the lightning was being channelled into the shields. Suddenly all four of the shields were flicked out of the water by the mech directly at Kuro who promptly parried them away, unfortunately the frisbees seemed to have a homing function that made them zero in on her anyway. Cue Kuro almost danced around in circles as she continued to smack aside the cross between Maple's Charge blade and Frisbees with her swords. It also didn't help that the twelve limbed contraption also decided to move in and attempt to stab Kuro with several sparking blades just as an extra F you. Kuro had to admit that it was getting a little hard to block and deflect all the blades, their eight vs her two and the seemingly random spear throws and boomeranging shields on top of that. Yes initially it was a matter of her being a small target with too many of the blades trying to stab at her and consequentially getting in their own way in the process but it's timing was getting better.
'The weapons appear to be unlocking at an accelerated rate now.' Well the argument couldn't be made that Kuro wasn't in danger now!
"Is there one that'll help us deal with this crazy thing!?" The list of weapons scrolled past Kuro's vision as the sword looked for one to help them before eventually settling on one of her Noble Phantasms. "HOW IS THAT HELPING!?" Kuro seemed to disagree with the conclusion her sword drew.
'Do you want to live or not?' The weapon's petulant response made Kuro groan.
"Fine! Do what you want!" The White Tiger Clone Claw blade was replaced by a much larger weapon blending into the draconic sacred gear, easily much bigger than Kuro and made out of stone. The much larger blades were a lot more difficult to swing around but in compensation covered a wider area allowing Kuro to buy herself more time from fending off the constant attacks from multiple angles. And yet a spear thrust found it's way through anyway, going through the side of Kuro's head in what was no less than a lethal hit. And yet as soon as the weapon left her skull the weapon she had appropriated from her arsenal glowed and Kuro was all fine and dandy, mind you she wasn't stupid enough to stick around and expend another of her limited lives so she booked it instead. "So apparently dying sent a strong enough shock to the Sacred Gear that it accelerated Maple's Sacred Gear growth by a huge chunk right?"
'Correct. A large number of weapon transformations just unlocked, though not the transformation for the Sacred Gear itself.'
"Let me see my Noble Phantasms." A list appeared before Kuro's eyes as she scanned through the blades in question. "So finally upgraded this one did you?"
'Of Course.'
Kuro turned around to face the mechanical monstrosity chasing her. She took one of her swords and through change and reflection turned it into a small white throwing knife that she then chucked at the weapon possessing Rishia. The white throwing dagger was lodged in one of the weapon's shoulders though it paid the obstruction no mind, but it really should've.
"Allow me to introduce you to some friends of mine, that is Byakuya!" The hundred blades in the air transformed into black and red through change and reflection, the latter the Phoenix feather blade in all it's glory, but the first... "And this is Kanshou!" The twin blades Byakuya and Kanshou, forged as weapons of a god from the willful sacrifice of a human, the blades recognise each other, and hence will always be drawn back together no matter what. All of the blades flew at Rishia at the same time, the hundred Kanshou's pulled towards her by the singular Byakuya, hitting and bouncing off of armour, which made sense since Rishia had all of Maple's defense equip bonuses, but she was also better with Ki than Kuro was so she wasn't going to use point against her, however there's more than one way to skin a cat. The blades clicked, split apart, and imploded the force of the explosion and the blades drawn back into the point of origin. "Think that did it?" The throwing weapons the mechanical abomination threw back at Kuro in response felt inclined to disagree. Luckily her other blade was still the 'so large it might as well be a wall' Nine Lives so she had an easy time blocking it. Ah well.
"Gather power in the air..." Thanks to Kuro's stunt with the Phoenix blades there was plenty of fire magic left over in the air. "...add a little pinch of Ki to it..." Kuro didn't have the time to go through with the whole chant today, not with this thing Rishia had turned into barring down on her. "...and let the Feather's fly!" Kuro's eyes were glowing a bright orange as she cast 'Liberation Super Nova X' On Rishia.
A grand inferno of fire erupted around Rishia, Kuro kept tracing oxygen and hydrogen gas into existence in order to feed the conflagration with the intention that eventually Rishia, or whatever was possessing Rishia, would just go down already.
'Suggestion. Balance Breaker.'
"Alright lets go!" Kuro smiled sinisterly as she felt the familiar feeling of a ritual taking place. Kuro's Balance Breaker could have manifested as a set of armour as the ancient Gauntlet Hero would, or as a giant monster transformation as Maple was one to do, but neither of these were what Kuro was best suited for, no there was something from far deeper within the very core of Kuro's being. This body was created to complete a ritual, to serve as the vassal of a power far greater than a mere monster. Around Kuro seven golden aura's appeared as Kuro fulfilled her function, now supported by the raw power of her Sacred gear, bringing forth a Sword, A Spear, A bow, a Vehicle, A knife, a wand, and a monster. "Holy Grail Army!"
Trillions of micro-copies of Kuro's blades appeared in the air, mimicking flesh, bone, blood, skin and internal organs as they slowly formed around one of the seven crests in the air.
Kuro recognised the faces that she placed to the classes, in the 'lancer' category was one Artoria Pendragon, instead of wielding her more well known Excalibur she was instead wielding the Rhongomyniad, a spear said to be a wieldable reflection of the tower which crosses the layers of the world, capable of throwing reality and illusion on it's head.
In the Archer category was one Nikola Tesla, not a mage, at least not while he was still alive, but rather a genius inventor and scientist, one who was chiefly responsible for 'stealing the power of the gods' in this case electricity 'and giving it unto man' in other words, a modern day Prometheus, one of the chief architects responsible for raising up civilisation to the standard it's known for today.
In the sabre category was one Diarmuld Ua Duibhne, the adoptive son of the fairy kings Aengus and Mannannan, wielder of two cursed blades Moralltach and Beallgatach and two cursed spears Gae Buidhe and Gae Dearg, though unlike the version of him recorded as a lancer he has more confidence in himself and wields multiple weapons considered the hands of god.
In the Rider category was Manfred Albrecht Freiherr von Richthofen, the Red Baron, the greatest Fighter pilot who has ever lived, hailed as a modern day god of war, together with the eleven squadron's of fighter pilots under his command is able to achieve feats of aerial acrobatics that should be impossible.
In the Berserker category was a monster, to be more accurate Frankenstein's monster also known as Eve Frankenstein, a human being built out the parts from eleven people and several animals given life by a bolt of lightning, what better opponent could there be for fighting a lightning spewing monster.
In the Castor category, Kuro summoned a final ace in the hole, Medea the mage of betrayal, the woman who was made by the gods to betray everything and every one that she cared about for a single man, and then betrayed him as well. She wields the power of Rule Breaker, a knife that severs the bonds and relationships bound by magic and the gods.
Finally in the Assassin Category was Emiya, not her brother upon whom she was based, but rather her father pulled into the same cursed system, armed with the power to manipulate time and 66 bullets made from his own rib cage designed to cripple the magic casting potential of his targets.
While that would be all well and good, someone else was intervening on Kuro's behalf.
"Liberation Absorb X!" Katarina shouted as she vacuumed up the lightning into her spear, Maple's usual armoured dragon fist slammed down on Rishia and pinned her down while Down was cast on Rishia reducing her stats to a fraction of her previous self. "Rishia, stand down!" Tanya snapped in a growl.
Rishia, or the mechanical abomination possessing Rishia, attempted to push herself up and Maple's fist off of her. Maple grabbed her, raised her to the air, before slamming her back down into the ground and following that up with a pounding from her overgrown fists. By the time Maple was done the mech suit had been utterly smashed, Rishia crawled out of the ensuing crater hyperventilating as she looked around fearfully, rubbing her hands all over her body as if checking to make sure everything was still there.
It took a little while for her to calm down enough to talk, longer still to describe how her weapon formed a mechanical abomination around her body using their various mech-suit transformations eventually resulting in that twelve limb abomination that they saw before.
"Your weapon hijacked you?" Maple asked looking confused, which was far cuter than what it would've been in her monster form from earlier. "You hijacked me before right?" Maple asked looking down at her weapon with blatant suspicion on her features.
'Only to save your life. What that weapon did is a perversion of the Weapons mission.'
"Still it's a little disconcerting that you guys can just do that." Maple stated as she crossed her arms.
"Perhaps the Noble Phantasms are to blame for this situation?" Tanya stated as she looked at Kuro like she had did something.
"What'd I do?" Kuro didn't like the implications that this was her fault, partly because it once again meant that she was the root of her own suffering. But mostly because she had been doing this with everyone and they had at least two instances of weapons who could hijack their heroes.
"Take the consciousnesses of thousands of different people who don't get along with one another and force them into a death match inside of our weapons, then we took the survivors of those and put them inside of that to do it again." Tanya stated indicating the throwing knife that Rishia had been trying to distance herself from, and failing considering its tendency to reappear in her hands. "You yourself stated that most of the personalities inside of those things are already insane to begin with, is it any wonder we've ended up with some pretty twisted personalities?" The more Tanya talked the more Rishia seemed inclined to curl up and start leaning back and forth in fear. "For now. Rishia needs to return to her village. For one thing if there really is a Beast King weapon in there then that means that she can use it in the same way that the rest of us have been using it." Hopefully a few million gold can help sort out that thing's twisted personality. "In the mean time, I'm going looking for the last of the directional beasts." Tanya stated as she crossed her arms.
"Where are you going to find that?" Kuro asked looking at Tanya like she had been sitting on some intelligence capsule all this time.
"Faubrey." Tanya stated bluntly. "It was founded by a group of Legendary Heroes around the same time that the gauntlet hero was supposed to have beaten up the Phoenixes, the most important thing that was supposed to be active around that time other than the Phoenix is the other directional beasts, and there's only one left that we haven't accounted for."
"You think those dumb-asses are stupid enough to build their city on the back of a directional beast?" Kuro asked looking at Tanya incredulously.
In the distance, Maple looked at the mountain of bone where what was left of Ost's body was located after the other hero's stripped it of flesh and other bits that could rot away and poison the surroundings, as she understood it was being mined by the slaves who were living in the ruins of the village on it's back.
"It's not the first time." Maple explained and the others nodded their heads conceding the point.
"Then it's settled, I'll be back after I finish in Faubrey."
Author's Note:
Captain Imaginat: Recent social revolutions does not change what weapons people prefer to and are trained to use over night. As for where she got her own laboratory she's basically borrowing Rat's equipment while she's out. I have no plans concerning philo-whatever, I can barely even pronounce the name. It's cute that you believe that. Not really no.
RonaldM40196867: True, probably, both I'm going to go with both.
Pokemonever1994: The Church isn't wrong for calling her that when you look at the kinds of things that she does on a regular basis. Yes but they're not designed to be thrown they're designed to be shot, the closest thing that she can probably throw would be Musket balls.