Author's Note: Okay so not a lot to say this week. Read, Review, Favourite and Enjoy!
Chapter 91: King in the Deep
Tanya didn't exactly have the ability to manufacture a infinite number of weapons on the fly out of raw magical power unlike a certain someone she knew, they had to be fabricated first. As a start Tanya began with a bow made out of a combination of giant spider silk and Slime lacquer, light weight and stronger than steel, using metamorphosis magic she imbued the bow with space magic, granting it the ability to instantly embed it into a target, and at the low, low bargain of being unlocked in another 200 levels.
"Sadeena. How's the power ups coming?" Maple was no longer the only hero who could stack together enhanced beast transformation with mech suits.
Katarina's Tranzdorkis transformation had been combined with Sadeena's Whale form, the rope of the Emperor's blessing tied around her bloated neck. The machine's armour was wrapped around Sadeena's body while six spear tipped arms were sticking out of her sides, some the black and white of the Beast King Svard Stav, some the pink of the Sitera Destiny Spear, some clear and filled with liquid like the Potion Spears, but all of them had the tentacles and swim bladders of squid like monsters squirting her forward.
"This is like trying to swim with six extra arms I didn't have before." Sadeena's echolocation had to be caught and filtered through the legendary bow's innate translation abilities for Tanya to understand what she was talking about. "We're approaching the first of the targets Sir Hero."
They had gone through quite a bit of work to find suitable prey. The Water Dragon's intelligence reports explained that schools of monsters roam around the oceans typically picking each other or any hapless ships they come across mostly in the name of food, levels just weren't worth the effort after a while. Tanya disagreed though, partly because with stat growth bonuses the 'effort' would bare more fruit, but mostly because unlike them she had convenient XP baggies to pop open with greater efficiency.
"Sadeena, if you would." Sadeena zoomed forward to the nearest monster, six masses of tentacles and swim bladders turned into golden three pronged tridents as skills were promptly unleashed on the monsters through waves of ultra sound.
Said Ultra sound had Ki pumped into it, so in addition to augmenting the power of her spells that ultra-sound that was already doing damage to the monsters was also carrying the effect of point with them, and all the while Tanya was gaining XP from partying with Sadeena.
"Time to test this out." Among Tanya's weapons there was one specific category that Kuro hadn't traced and upgraded, that being guns, too complex for her to make a copy out of. This as it had inadvertently turned out was a blessing, as now Tanya armed her ship, a graft of parasitic bio-plants attached to a monster, with her weapon, which in this case took the form of a cannon.
"Fire." The bang ripped through the water, causing a sonic pulse that ruptured organs of the enemy monsters, course they were also thousands of feet under the ocean so even with her high stats her bullets didn't get very far. "Clearly I need to get some new weapons." Tanya stated simply as she indicated for the crews outside to start bringing in the monsters Sadeena had killed, but while she was waiting... "Someone tell me about some of the Aquatics that we're working with."
"First and foremost we have the chithon." A Demi-human that looked like a humanoid figure with a beard of octopus like tentacles coming off of his face dived into the water, at which point in time he turned into a full blown humanoid squid and swam over to one of the carcasses that Sadeena had left behind in the water and dragged it onboard.
"Squid Type Demi-humans?" Tanya asked looking vaguely interested. "They look a little like Cthlulu."
"I don't know who that is." Eli stated bluntly as he continued the report. "Their affinities are for light and water magic so they are somewhat good at illusion type magic, unfortunately they're literally boneless so they aren't very useful on dry land."
If it's illusion magic then odds were good that they were really cuddle fish type Demi-humans. However Tanya's take away from that situation was...
"They're Cthulu!" Tanya immediately opted to change this particular train of conversation before it went any deeper in the numerous implications.
"Moving on." A couple of different shark type demi-humans shot out of the ship and went to nab more of the carcasses Sadeena had been dropping. One variant looked a little like a mermaid, in that they were a human torso attached to a long shark like tail, but the grey skin, sharp teeth and clawed webbed hands certainly created a sharp contrast with the Disney version. They other case was the opposite, a shark head strapped to a humanoid body with webbed hands and feed, also this one was orange and black like a tiger shark.
"The Noid and Kusha, Shark type Demi-humans, excellent hunters with affinities for water and electric type magic and water and earth type magic respectively." Eli explained indicating what was going on outside.
"I think I got those already." Tanya stated as she started looking through her list of weapon transformations.
"Indeed. It seems that one of Takt's companions was a hybrid of the Noid and Kusha races." Eli stated simply as he continued his explanation. Sadeena apparently killed her during the mess with Takt via freezing her in a block of ice, after Katarina calmed down Sadeena went back, diced her body to pieces, and had all of them feed her to their weapons. "The next ones are the Apopho." Finally there was a group of muscular humanoid dolphins.
"They look like dolphins." Tanya commented in surprise.
"Why is this surprising to you?" Eli asked cocking a brow suspiciously. "Dolphins and sharks are considered to be natural enemies in my first world, so it's weird to see them working together." Tanya explained waving her finger in the air like a lecturer.
"You didn't comment about the cuddle-fish." Eli pointed out, another ancient enemy of the Dolphins. "Either way the Apopho have a reputation towards brutality and affinities towards water and wind magic, so if we have to deal with anymore incidents in the ocean like what happened at Cal-Mira they should be able to help."
"I thought wind and water were supposed to be Shildina's affinities." Tanya stated while leaning in her chair and resting her chin on her hand.
"They are. Apopho and Sakamata are closely related to one another. As are the Luka." The last group to dive into the water resembled small humanoid whales, small, but they were still bigger than most fully transformed demi-humans and looked to be in Sadeena's weight class.
"While it's good to know about our allies for this situation of a vastly greater concern to me right now is our enemy." Tanya stated while she rested her chin on her fist.
"The Dragon Emperor." Eli stated and Tanya nodded.
Tanya could confirm from the levels she was gaining that almost all of the monsters they were killing lately were indeed 100+, none of these people would stand a chance against these things without Tanya loaning them her weapons and they all knew it. But when the Dragon emperor shows up, the strongest one of them all, she'd have to be the one to deal with it. She didn't have a lot of means to do that at the moment, with all the levels she was gaining she was re-acquiring her strongest weapon transformations and was now in the process of sacrificing those to acquire new stronger forms, with the money that she had brought along with her she was in the process of unlocking and upgrading those forms using the projectile reinforcement method. If she was lucky she would be able to get something strong enough to bring down the dragon emperor by the time they found it.
"I believe you're looking for me!" Once again Tanya was reminded of the simple universal truth, she is not now nor has she ever or will ever be 'lucky.'
"What the hell!?" Tanya asked before a biting headache was shoved directly into her skull again.
"It has been a long time since surfacers have entered my domain, and never so weak." Tanya had no idea where the words were coming from. It was like they were standing right next to her but the only people here were Eli and the rest of the submarine crew. She did know one fact for certain though...
"Hit the deck and hold onto something!" They were under attack, by someone they didn't stand a chance against.
Teeth penetrated the ceiling and floors of the submarine as the entire thing buckled in half. Aquatic Demi-humans attempted to hold back the water that was quickly trying to rush its way inside as Tanya felt her nose start to bleed. Pressure was building up inside of the submarine since the air had nowhere to go. Tanya knew that if she portalled them out now they were all good as dead. In order to go into the depths in the first place they had to gradually adapt to the pressure difference, and gradually adapt back to the surface, if they popped back to the surface now they'd all pop was balloons. That was just based on the assumption that this thing hasn't already set up some kind of anti-portal ability to prevent them from escaping anyway. But it was already becoming too late, because Tanya saw the gauges and realised that this thing was carrying them to the surface.
"Everyone spam healing magic now!" Tanya screamed as loud as she could.
"On who!?" Eli shouted in response.
"EVERYONE!" Tanya screamed in pain, stabbing sensations ripping into her brain, lungs, up her spine in her ears, her joints felt like they could snap at any moment from the sheer amount of pain that she was in. Immediately she reflected with the Yggdrasil potion bow, letting it's healing effect work to hold her body together and sucked in air, the effect spread through each one of her bows as Tanya sucked in densely packed air. "Get... that... thing... OFF!"
Pressure. They had been gradually adapting to the greater pressure of diving so deep beneath the water, ideally they would have to adapt back to the lower pressure of the surface just as gradually. All around them magic began to be cast, and was nullified, by something ancient and unfathomable that had been practising it for longer than all of them combined. Affinities? Compatibility? Does something meagre like that matter to a Dragon emperor?
"Foolish mortals, How dare you defy me?" Whatever this dragon emperor was, it was massive, ancient and massive, and this deep into the ocean beneath the depth's the sun's light can reach no one can see, so while they had a vague idea of what it looked like since they could see the outline of it with their collective sonar abilities the most they were able to get thus far was 'a mountain of flesh moving underneath the waves.' "How dare you defy me!" Sadeena however was not just staying still during all this time. She had a sacred gear, the Trident of Poseidon, and she had all of the slots of her mech armour that she got from Katarina equipping it, she's been fighting against the kinds of monsters people tell legends about all day. Oh sure she was gaining XP, but the levels were going both ways too, and right now the greatest danger for her sacred gear to evolve was right in front of her. "I may be a monster! But the blood of Gods flows through my veins!"
"Then let's spill it!" Sadeena surged forward, propelled by every drop of water around her as with the power of six Tridents she was the Queen of the Sea! She zipped around the Emperor, lancing the creature's flesh with six tridents as she swam in circles around the Leviathine creature spitting skills one after another. "Let's see what colour the blood of a god is!"
The harpoon is a weapon designed for aquatic combat, stabbing motions that attack in a straight line is the most ideal for fighting underwater, swinging motions like that of a sword, or of a giant trying to push through the water with wild swings significantly less so. That didn't mean that those blows weren't deadly only weakened, dispersed. Sadeena imagined the surface must be in chaos right now. Five Tsunami's probably had formed since this fight started and more will appear before it will ended. No matter. Tanya will never argue with healing magic being shoved into one of the Bio-plants, not as long as she lives. Without the toothy spikes being rammed into the ship, and without the ancient sea monster having grabbed hold and refused to let go, the submarine was able to repair itself, heal more accurately and expelled the sea water from within.
"That thing is not going down easy." Eli stated as he watched Sadeena fight with whatever it was.
"Then neither will we. Get a tube ready, I'm deploying the Syrphine." Tanya swapped out reflect bow again, this time she wasn't going for the healing effects of Yggdrasil but rather instead she had spread the Syrphine transformation out across the entire group of Aquatic Demi-humans that she and the others had assembled together. Kuro once made a bet with Tanya that if she could find, read not pull out of thin air, a water gun, as in a actual, legitimate, made out of plastic water gun, then Tanya would weapon copy it into her legendary Bow. Well, Tanya lost that bet. Which legendary hero of the past they have to thank for this embarrassment Tanya had no idea, but she swore that she would befoul their grave if she had ever found them. It was even made out of the same disposable mass produced crap as the ones back on earth too, so it was super low level, until Kuro shot that level up to the nineties with a single act of mage crafting. Now the jets of water that it produces are strong enough to cut through solid steel, and Tanya was using that propulsion power to zip through the water, and so was everyone else. Tanya's current load out was: Syrphine, Six Reflected Water Guns, The Bow of Charity, a bow which had been reinforced with Yggdrasil to accelerate her healing, plus four of another bow transformation with huge boons for aquatic combat, the harpoon Gun. And in a single act it was all rendered meaningless.
"Freeze!" Tanya, and the majority of the army that she had been charging in to attack with, were all soon encased in a solid chunk of ice the size of a small nation by the titanic monster. "This feels like an inconvenience." Tanya muttered while the newly adapted for underwater combat Syrphine was rapidly sinking to the bottom of the ocean in a giant chunk of ice. Normally an iceberg like this would float, but at these depth's the water pressure was so intense that when frozen it was too gods-be-damned dense to be able to float. Well Tanya would just have to do something about that wouldn't she?
"Tanya sweetie, do you have a minute?"
"I am in the middle of something Sadeena!" To be precise Tanya was in the middle of a giant block of ice.
"I can see that, which is why you're in the perfect place for my idea so here's what I need you to do." Sadeena explained her plan and Tanya smirked sinisterly.
"I the Hero of the Bow have Deciphered the Law of the Depths!" The ice around Tanya started to glow, as if some kind of energy was passing through it roiling around in the process. "Sever and reconnect the principle of heaven and drop my target into the darkest depths of the Traitor's Hell!" The Ice shattered and swirled around the Dragon Emperor that everyone had been fighting against. "Liberation Cocytus!" Cold surged into every pore of the Dragon Emperor's body, it was use to cold though, it lived at the bottom of the ocean after all, no what this was every fibre of it's being frozen solid all at the same time. The Effects of Tanya's 'Hero Magic Down' was that it drops the stats of whoever it's cast on down to a fraction of what it use to be, at the liberation tier that's 1/100th of what it use to be. Impressive by itself, but now take into consideration that Cold is the absence of energy in a given area, what Tanya's spell just did was take away all of the Dragon Emperor's stats, and took the energy needed to support itself at the same time. From there the hammering proceeded. The Various Demi-humans shrunk down to their much smaller base therianthrope transformations breaking free of their icy prisons in the process.
"Lets try this again." Tanya stated as she and the Maxed out Demi-humans around her all took aim at the same time. "Ready. Aim. Fire!" And Like that a barrage of Harpoons continuously struck against the body of the monster until it finally just died, all of it's experience going to Tanya and to Sadeena as a consequence.
"Tanya, I love you sweetie, but if we run into another dragon emperor down here because of you..."
"Agreed." Tanya swam her mech over to the corpse of the dragon emperor and sucked it into her bow. "Everyone back into the ship. We're going to the surface." It took a short few hours before Tanya and her army were back on the surface once more. Tanya was inside of her mech suit flying over the corpse of the dragon emperor she had just spat out of her bow. Even now it was simply too massive to ever figure out what the hell this thing was supposed to have been. No matter it made decent weapons anyway.
"Are you planning on turning it into a weapon?" Sadeena asked lounging about on the corpse of a god. "Something's off." Tanya eventually stated while she saw down and looked over the corpse's body. "Is it just me or did the whole thing feel... easy?"
"That was easy to you?" Eli asked as he distinctly recalled nearly dying three or four times during the course of that engagement.
"She's right." Sadeena stated as she was sitting off to the side, on a length of monster flesh. "That thing was pulling a pretty good 'mightier than thou' speech a while ago. Going down after only that much makes me think that it sort of just gave up."
A thought suddenly occurred to Tanya.
"'The Dragon Emperor Ouryou is different from the other directional beasts.'" Tanya suddenly quoted while she ground her teeth. "'Even if it is killed, all that needs to be done is for it's core to be consumed by another dragon and he will be reborn, as many times as needed, in order to defeat the waves.'" Eli went to calm down Tanya before she started on another tear. He did not Succeed. "Were you so bored living in the water all this time you shitty gecko that you decided just to off yourself and go play on the surface!" The air around Tanya's body had started to hum with magical power, magic power and sheer indignant rage. "The rest of us are out here struggling with everything we have just to get by and you're so bored that you throw yourself on the first blade that pops up down below in your inky abyss you bastard!"
"Suicide?" Eli asked looking over the corpse.
"Maybe. Do we know where the core is?" If they can just stuff the bastard's core into one of their growing Dragon Empresses bodies then maybe they can figure out what happened the easy way. Sadeena eventually found the hardened section of flesh that indicated the presence of a dragon core and so proceeded to split open the side of the beast, the damned thing as it turned out was bigger than the castle back in Melromarc.
"It's huge." Eli commented bluntly. "Did Kuro really shove something this big into a dragon to raise a Sacred Gear?"
"Size is not everything." Sadeena replied bluntly. "What matters most is not having 'the biggest core' but rather 'the most complete core.'" Ouryou's consciousness was fragmented, divided between his descendants who only ever received a fragment of his inheritance and his own broken core from when it had been shattered in the past. "Trying to collect the pieces of the original is the most important task, towards that end getting a bigger core is a by product not the end goal." Sadeena indicated the giant core with her weapon. "Even in the quite possibly very likely event that this core contains all of the pieces of Ouryou's consciousness we would still have to sort through it all and put him back together again."
Sort of like finding out that the files on your hard drive had been broken up and spread throughout a massive server farm and you had to go and sort through it all to get them back. In that way it would be quite a feat if you could just narrow down the list of dragons who could possibly be carrying the cores that they needed and just hunt those specific ones but naturally that was next to impossible.
"Takt made two nearly complete Dragon Emperors! How hard is this to do!?" Tanya snapped looking at the massive core.
"For now, there's already been enough damage done today without a giant rotting corpse being left out in the sun." Sadeena stated indicating the dragon's body.
"Yeah yeah. I'm on it." Saying that Tanya pressed the jewel of her bow down against the corpse of the massive giant of a beast, rapidly absorbing the mile long monstrosity back into her weapon. Rapidly, but the fact of matter was that it's sheer mass meant it was taking a while.
"I believe you want to talk to me." Then a deep chill went down Tanya's spine. "I wouldn't react if I was you, it's not good if you have to tell your friends that you're speaking to a ghost. Instead I suggest you listen." And listen Tanya did, with rapt attention. "I am tired, of all of this. Something more ancient than you can imagine is responsible for your waves." The so-called god that was behind all of this. "You can't beat him. I know because I've seen those in your shoes before, not during the waves of the past, but during this one." More time travel stuff going on. Just how powerful is this bloody lunatic that he can just... casually remember the details of the past versions of what was going on like this? "But then, you knew that already didn't you? Gravity, Space, Creation, Metamorphosis, Evolution, Time. Looks like he filled you in on everything."
"Who is 'he?'" Tanya asked as she audibly gulped.
"The Hero of the Shield, or at least it's first pick. If you don't know him already, then that means he's on the world on the other side, as it's Hero of the Mirror." How disturbingly ironic.
"As in..." Tanya remembered Maple and Raphtalia talking about him when they talked about the time spent on the other side. "Naofumi Iwatani?" As in the guy whose basically taken over leadership and mentorship for all the heroes on the other-side of the wave.
"Aye. That's the one." The Dragon Emperor seemed to be amused by the revelation. "I'm not surprised that he's managed to take such a role, he in all likelihood has known those heroes their entire lives, and yours, and already knows everything that is going to happen to you and them. After all, he is the one responsible for all of this. Speaking of which, when you find him, do me a favour." Tanya could feel the voice, the spirit of the Ancient Dragon Emperor as it started to fade away. "Shove his head up his ass for me would you?"
Tanya stood up at a normal rate, stood for an appropriate amount of time as she waited for the corpse to disappear into her bow, turned around and walked away in a manner that was completely in line with her behaviour as she looked through weapon transformations for Noble Phantasms that she can unlock and set her bow to do so.
"Set course for the Village." Tanya stated as she did everything that she possibly could to keep her true feelings from coming to the surface. "I need to have a word with Maple when we get back."
Review Section:
RonaldM40196867: No less fancy than Shield of the Beast King. I don't think he's a character at all, merely an impossibly inhumane monster that only really existed in the back ground, and not a even well written one either.
Kuma Bear: If I ever write about the Armour hero, yes.
Pokemonever1994: Keep in mind the incident where Maple took on the life threatening danger of over 300 people for a day and died several times before being revived by her Shield's Nine live's transformation, that's pretty damn strong stimulation there. Kuro already remade Avalon and the Excalibur into a charge blade for Maple. All is forgiven.
Coolkid0806: Probably, I'm not a expert on the fate series either.
reinDank: I have no plans to.
Nightshadegirl: Indeed. And my apologies I meant Saturday before, I publish every Saturday.