Author's Note: Okay so onto the new year it is! Read, Review, Favourite and Enjoy!
Chapter 94: The Virtue Series
Raphtalia was at least feeling better since Maple applied her lunatic tier potions to her augmenting every cell in her body. Trash had taken her, Kuro, Atla and Fohl as they were now looking through the library of the royal palace where Trash and the Queen had complied vast amounts of information on the heroes.
"Your wife is obsessed." Kuro stated as she looked at one particular branch of the Queen's personal library. It's one thing to compile history books and journals of heroes past, but the entire wing dedicated to children's books of heroes gone by?
"Tell me about it." Trash stated as he let out a sigh. "Information about the cursed series is a dime a dozen, but information about the virtues?" Trash just shook his head in the negative.
"Is it really that difficult?" Kuro asked looking at Trash suspiciously who just glared in response.
"Tell me do you know how a weapon normally acquires one of the virtues?" Trash asked looking at Kuro with a lot of blatant suspicion.
"Weapon copy a Noble Phantasm." Kuro stated without fanfare.
"That's how we did it." Fohl nodded agreeing with Kuro while Trash just shook his head.
"The requirements for unlocking a Virtue Series is a weapon acquiring self awareness." Trash stated making his exasperation clear. "You lot cheated by weapon copying all of those phantasms into your weapons." Kuro thought about it some more but it was Atla who made the suggestion next.
"Then is it the spear reinforcement method?" Atla asked, as being blind she couldn't contribute much to reading the books. "The spear lets you extract energy from objects inside of the spear's storage space. Shildina does something similar with the objects she extracts energy from to make her cards, and she gets possessed by them half the time."
"Theoretically, if you had the spear's power up method, and you were willing to take the time and the effort to extract the energy in question over, and over, and over again then yes that could work." However that process was not what Trash was talking about. "The most common way to do so however is to feed a willing and still living person into your weapon." Kuro and the others blinked stupidly.
"Didn't Maple do that a while ago?" Fohl asked while he walked over to the window overlooking the city, a couple of month's earlier you could still see the hole left in the city from the incident Fohl had been talking about.
"I said willing individuals. A person who makes the genuine decision to sacrifice themselves to aid a hero that they are close to." Trash explained while scolding his nephew.
"No offence to the people of this world..." Kuro let the implications do the rest of the talking.
"You're not wrong." Trash replied letting out a sigh. "Which is why there is so little documentation about the virtue series, even less when you take further matters into consideration."
"What further matters?" Kuro asked looking at Trash Suspiciously.
"The closest comparison to a legendary or vassal weapon in your world is a Weapon of Mass Destruction. Each shred of information about how they function represents a massive and extremely valuable edge one country could hold over another." To use Trash's metaphor, it's like countries swapping their blue prints for intercontinental ballistic missiles, good if you're an ally, bad and nigh impossible to reverse if you stop being an ally, even worst if you're an enemy from the start. "At least that's the most benevolent explanation I can think of." Oh Kuro did not like where this was going. "Alas the reincarnated exists, and hence we must consider the possibility that the information was deliberately destroyed for the simple sake of keeping heroes from learning pivotal pieces of information for strengthening their weapons and fending off the waves." Terrific. "Instead we must go with what we've learned of the heroes virtues series we have already unlocked, and to my knowledge only the five of us have acquired our own virtues." Trash held up his hand fingers spread. "Chastity is over there with young Kuro." A sword that clears Kuro's mind of negative mental status effects, which help immunises her against the most severe effects of lust and envy. "Maple has compassion." A shield that transfers all of the attacks suffered by her allies to Maple herself. "Katarina has Loyalty." A spear that increases the stats of her allies in direct proportion to their love and devotion to her. "Tanya has Charity." A bow that lets Tanya allies borrow her weapon's transformations. "And I have wisdom."
"Not the effect I would expect from copying a couple dozen versions of old Gilgamesh's consciousness into your weapon." Kuro admitted while her chin was resting on her fist.
"Gilgamesh?" Raphtalia had found a book and started reading, after all that was the plan here. The Virtue Series sounded like support type skills, she didn't want to unlock an ability that the others already had after all, the redundancy might not stack.
"The first hero, and oldest of the Heroic Spirits." Kuro explained while she let out a sigh. "The Version of him me and my family are used to dealing with is a huge jerk."
"'The Version?'" Raphtalia sounded even more confused to wit Kuro let out a sigh.
"He's a jerk, and a rather greedy one. If I thought it was possible for Noble Phantasms to unlock the curse series then Trash here would've probably unlocked greed to the tenth power by now." The others looked genuinely surprised at that.
"Was he that bad?" Atla asked sounding genuinely concerned.
"He was the king of the first civilisation of my world, Babylon, and thus in his mind every other civilisation that came after is rightfully a part of his kingdom, in layman's terms he considers himself king of the world and everything in it belongs to him." Kuro straightened out her neck as she further explained. "Heroic Spirits are organised into different classes, a spirit can belong to more than one class with the understanding that they would be different from each other. To use Gilgamesh as a example archer him is from when he was still a young, arrogant and ambitious man, Caster him that I stuffed Trash's staff full of is from after he built Babylon and grew into a wise leader."
"Huu. Lovely, it seems that we have something in common." Trash got a bizarre feeling of embarrassment from his staff all of a sudden.
"What does wisdom do anyway?" Kuro asked looking at Trash suspiciously.
"Provides me with information on everything that is happening for a fixed distance around me." Trash explained while he began making a list.
"As I recall heroes of your various worlds describing the seven heavenly virtues they are Chastity, Temperance, Charity, Diligence, Compassion, Patience and Humility. They are supposed to correspond to each of the seven sins, Lust, Gluttony, Greed, Sloth, Envy, Wrath and Pride." They already have Chastity, Charity and Compassion, but Wisdom or Loyalty weren't mentioned in the list at all. "Not all of the Cursed series necessarily correspond to what you traditionally attribute to sin, rather their appearance is a result of a hero falling into the depth's of despair, which might not elicit feelings associated with the sins. Usually they are far weaker than and thus far more poorly known than the main seven, or their activation conditions are so hard to meet, let alone accidentally, that you'd never see them but if you do manage to unlock one of those rare extra hard to unlock ones..." Trash shuddered as if imagining some unimaginable horror.
"Is it that bad?" Kuro asked tilting her head in concern.
"One of the shield heroes of the old era was known as the demon king. I believe you four met him on your time travelling expeditions, Mamoru." Trash explained causing Kuro to become legitimately surprised.
"Mamoru? Are we thinking of the same person?" Kuro asked and even the mostly silent Raphtalia looked up from her book in interest. "I saw that guy's history when we went back in time, he was no demon king I'll tell you that much."
"The curse series is something that can drive a man to murder his own flesh and blood in a feud state of hot blooded rage." A fact no one in this room needed a reminder about. "That's just a normal cursed series, I dare shudder to imagine what horror that thing could unleash."
"We're getting off topic." Raphtalia stated as she put her book down.
"Yes you are right. Chastity, Charity and Compassion are already known to us. Of the 'common' virtues we still have Temperance, Diligence, Patience and Humility." Temperance is willingly holding yourself back, since Kuro already got the one that keeps you level headed they could instead interpret this a de-buff ability. Diligence was sloth's opposite, as opposed to taking a break to stop working you instead work harder, Raphtalia was already working too hard though. Patience on the other hand sounded like it was the closest to sloth, a reward for waiting for the opportunity to strike. Humility was Pride's opposite, the willingness to underplay yourself instead of putting yourself on the top.
"Of them Diligence and Patience sounds like they have the most obvious and easiest to use abilities." Raphtalia stated making her thoughts known.
"Didn't Maple already give you a hard time about working too hard?" Kuro asked looking at Raphtalia suspiciously.
"Which is why I believe that patience is the virtue for me." Raphtalia stated having come to the same conclusion as Kuro.
Fighting as a hammer wielder was different than fighting with a sword, it was heavier, unwieldy even, every strike needed to be calculated, or you would over compensate and over extend yourself leaving you open to retaliation.
"Now which Spirit fits the bill?" Kuro's face screwed as she held out her hand and produced a familiar item, instantly recognisable to anyone on earth, and yet completely alien to the people of this world. Micro tracing a lightning sword, Kuro made the light bulb light up. "There once was a man named Thomas Edison. Those who were responsible for him when he was young said he was 'too stupid to learn anything.' Perhaps deciding to prove them wrong, he set out to trap lightning in a bottle. 1000 times, that's how many times he failed. Until one day his little glass tube lit up." Kuro threw the bottle of lightning away. "Thomas Edison to this day is known as one of the people responsible for shaping my world, aside from his light bulb his own inventions were few, but people kept coming to him with their own ideas and creations, Tom took them, figured out how to mass produce them and funded their mass distribution. To this day, almost every piece of technology we have is a result of innovations built upon innovations that he made." A man whose legendary patience and Diligence bordered on the edge of insanity, and through that madness he was able to shape the world.
"You make him sound like a god." Raphtalia asked taken aback by the explanation.
"Edison's power is to bring light to darkness, capture sound that would've disappeared and bring the past to present." Kuro stated smirking with the knowledge of the light-bulb, the Gramophone and the projector. "As far as the system governing the Heroic Spirits is concerned, he is one of a handful of mortals who neared the power of the gods, and the nature of how he did it presents a hard counter to the others who achieved their successes through more magical means." Trash nodded his head as he thought about the implications, he hoped his world never played host to a holy grail world, if it did odds were good it would be torn to pieces. "The issue here lies in how Old man Edison's powers actually work." Kuro stated scratching her chin.
"I knew there was a catch." Raphtalia stated letting out a sigh.
"Edison doesn't actually wield a weapon, certainly not one tied down to his powers anyway." Kuro stated as she crossed her arms and sunk some thought into the matter. That made making a Noble Phantasm for Raphtalia kind of difficult. "No matter. Where there's a will there's a way." Kuro activated her own balance breaker, and from it summoned a huge figure from the memories of the Noble Phantasms in her collection.
"I thought your world didn't have Demi-humans." Fohl stated as he looked at the giant of a man.
Edison appeared to be a Lyonel type Demi-human, that is to say that he looked like a eight foot tall humanoid white lion wearing a blue, red and white jumpsuit with light bulb paldron's on his shoulders.
"Edison was human when he was still alive, but his summoning is a little wonky. It doesn't matter for our purposes." Kuro's Noble Phantasm was the forger, the one that takes the things in her Infinite Sword Sea, the materials and skills inside of her sword, and the multiple divine magics she had learned and turns them into weapons for other people to use. "Come on Edison." Kuro smiled nastily at the lion. "It's time for us to make a light bulb!" And then the two disappeared.
The inside of the Infinite Sword Sea was as Kuro remembered it, a giant sea of blades. But inside of a bubble at the centre of that sea was a forge, it's smelter a volcano, a forest for kindling, it's anvil a mountain, it's cooling vat a canyon filled with water, all of them filled with weapons but the ore? The ore was the world. Raphtalia's recent episode of having her hammers copied into Kuro's collection, after all Kuro could work with Raphtalia's crafting Bonus hammer much easier than what she could with her own sword's bonuses. You don't forge a blade by hitting it with another blade after all. With that Kuro took the essence of Thomas Edison and his most well known inventions, his tireless spirit of patience, diligence and innovations and his great intellect and she forged them into a shape gradually taking the form of a hammer. Not a war hammer, as might be convenient for a warrior like Raphtalia, no Edison wasn't a warrior, that would contaminate his essence, something smaller, easier to wield, suitable for precise precision craftsmanship.
Kuro left for a few hours, with nothing better to do Trash, Fohl and Raphtalia sparred with their respective sacred gears in order to grind up their respective stats until Kuro eventually returned late into the evening with her creation and Atla brought her to the others.
"Presenting the Spirit of Innovation!" Raphtalia took the hammer in her hands. Small, smaller than almost every hammer that she had wielded thus far, and delicate looking. The entire thing looked like it was made out of glass, electricity sparking inside of it's barrel shaped chamber glowing with unknown power, the handle wrapped in Red and white stripes while the head was blue with a white star in the middle. Raphtalia took the 'weapon' in hand.
'Weapon Copy Activated: Spirit of Innovation Unlocked. Equip Bonus: Modify.'
"Modify?" Raphtalia asked while her face scrunched in confusion and Kuro smiled in response. "What does that mean?" Raphtalia looked up the description in her hammer for further answers.
'Modify: add or subtract to or from a object to change it into something similar.'
"Huu. How appropriate for the world's greatest innovator. Kuro tell me, did you make this thing for me or for you?" Raphtalia sincerely had her doubts that Kuro was being selfless with her actions.
"I made it for both of us." Kuro stated smirking knowingly while she gestured for Fohl to come over. "Shoot an attack at her, but don't get into striking range." Fohl could only look at Kuro in confusion. "You'll ruin your arm." Kuro stated smiling nastily and Fohl gulp by way of reply.
The familiar 'boost' sound reverberated in the courtyard as Raphtalia got ready to counter, there was no need to go the full X10 x3 should be more than enough for Raphtalia to prove her new power. "Boost Shot!" Fohl threw a punch at Raphtalia, releasing a concentrated orb of green power that moved at Raphtalia at high speed. Time slowed down for Raphtalia as she looked at the orb, options appearing in her field of view. "I see." Raphtalia swung at the orb of power at the side after choosing a option, suddenly it changed colour and lit up more as Raphtalia threw the attack into the air and detonated the ensuing flower of fire works in the night sky.
"Your hammer is for crafting, but I can also modify a enemy's attack into something harmless and neutralise it that way right?" Raphtalia asked as she smirked up at the drifting ashes from Fohl's attack.
"I wouldn't call that harmless exactly." Kuro stated shrugging her shoulders.
"But yes, you got the idea. Well I'm tapped for my sacred gear for the day anyway." Kuro stated while she traced another blade. "I guess I'll just make do by preparing some Noble Phantasms for Raphtalia to copy."
"I need to go to the village and have some bonding time with my new daughter." Tanya only recently acquired enough levels that she could use the Sacred Gear Equivalent Noble Phantasm that Kuro had given her, so she needed the grinding most of everyone else. "You two stay here with your own gears." Raphtalia and Fohl both nodded as they got ready to fight each other.
Like that the two of them fought for some more hours, breaking every so often so that Kuro could Present Raphtalia with the latest Noble Phantasm that she had modified for her. Once it was the middle of the night...
'Conditions Met: Hammer of Diligence unlocked. Equip Bonus: Combo Meter'
Raphtalia took a stance with the hammer, her opponent Fohl, and swung, the first strike hit Fohl and Raphtalia's stats rose a touch, and a timer from 10 appeared in her vision, a second strike reset the counter to 10, and increased Raphtalia's stats even more.
"So it works the way we thought it would then?" Raphtalia nodded satisfied by the result waiting for the timer to finish and watching her stats drop back to normal. She was hoping that she would unlock Patience but there was only so much she could do to counteract Kuro's inherent selfishness, besides it's not so bad, if what she thought was true was. "C'Mon Raph." A smoke cloud appeared next to Raphtalia's head as a familiar ball of brown fur appeared. "Attack."
"Rafu!" Raph-Chan produced her hammers and then went on the offensive striking at Fohl with multiple weapons, and Raphtalia's stats were increasing with each blow from the hammers that Raph-Chan landed on her opponent. Raph-Chan was created from Raphtalia, she even got a entire hammer built around the various ways to manipulate and alter her like she was one of Maple's Bio-plants, therefore in her own way Raph-Chan was one of Raphtalia's skills. The two of them shared experience as if they were one entity, so it only made sense that they shared the effects of the skill too.
"I'm so glad you figured that out." Fohl stated as he rolled his shoulder where Raphtalia had hit him. "It's late and we need to sleep."
"It is late, we should get back to the village soon." Raphtalia shuddered as if she just had a thought. "I shudder to imagine what Maple is doing unsupervised."
"Well she's with the old lady right now right?" Kuro asked shrugging her shoulders.
At the same time that night, back in the village, Maple had been flying around the village for a couple of days now, shooting at boulders tossed into the air by the old lady and the village slaves. She has adjusted to the G-Forces and to the various turns. With the Yggdrasil tree she's managed to master the bishop form, and there could be no doubt as to her proficiency with rook. Now there was only one matter left, that to crown the Queen.
"Looks like you've covered all of the important parts." The old lady stated nodding her head. "Show us the fruit of you training!"
"Right! Balance Break!" Maple dismissed the knight armour and guns, instead her body transformed, growing larger and larger as she went. The Tyrant Dragon Savage form currently looked more dark green than black, Osts influence no doubt. The familiar mech suit covered Maple's transformed body, the Shields taking the form of a familiar looking tortoise shell as her entire body was armoured with the shields made from Ost's body. From Maple's back a single large tree grew from the shields located there, the Bio-plant shields, taking the familiar form of the Yggdrasil Tree. In this state Maple had the dramatically enhanced stats of the Savage Tyrant Dragon transformation, the extra armour and guns of the mech suit, and the source of the strongest healing potion in the entire world being pumped directly into her body. Truely a form suitable to be called the 'Balance Breaker Queen.' The Old lady nodded her head approvingly, keen eyes able to see the flow of Ki through her body, suit and weapons and deeming it flawless.
"You seem to have mastered this form." The old lady bowed to Maple as one master would to another. "All that is left to do is train." Maple nodded her head in agreement as she dropped back into her human form.
"Thank you for teaching me!" Maple stated giving a bow of her own head.
"When Raphtalia has finished her business at the Castle town the two of you need to return to Q'Ten Lo." The Old lady stated as she pondered her next victim. "The Sword Hero has unlocked her own Balance Breaker too correct?" And she was the only one. Katarina and Tanya needed to get the lead out if they were still going to be useful when the time came to fight the two directional beasts, as would the various vassals. Of them Raphtalia should be the only one who has her balance breaker unlocked. "Reckless action maybe advised, but that is for all of you to figure out, not me."
Maple nodded her head as she returned to the village once more, sucking the latest mine into her shield and processing it into coin for her to reinforce her various shields with.
"Feeling better yet?" Maple asked watching Raphtalia appear next to her via portal.
"Much." Raphtalia stated as she let out a stretch. "...thank you. I have been working too hard lately."
"The hard work isn't stopping anytime soon." Maple stated as she prepared another round of converting the worshipping points she was receiving in the village into upgrades for her weapons. "Now that you've got a Sacred Gear we're going to be expanding on what you can do with it and practising with it so that it's actually useful for us. Just..." Maple looked for the right words for what she had to say next. "Moderate it a bit?" Raphtalia smiled in an understanding tone.
"That might be a little difficult." Raphtalia explained the new power to Maple. "Don't you know it's rude to tell someone who's been working hard to work harder?" Maple asked looking at the hammer as if it were some incredibly rude person.
"Also there's a bunch of Kuro's Noble Phantasms inside of this thing now, after a few tweaks that is." Because Hammer's were literally the rarest transformation inside of Kuro's vast arsenal of transformations.
"Cool. The Old lady says I got my various different forms down pat now so all that's left to do is grind up my base stats. You wanna do it here or in Q'Ten Lo?"
"As much as I would like an excuse to avoid being dragged back into the office I don't think my old home town is big enough to contain two Balance Breaker's sparring." Raphtalia looked around the village that was her home and all the things that Maple was doing to it. "Yet. So Q'Ten Lo is probably the best place to train."
It's not like Raphtalia wanted to separate Maple from her home town as soon as possible to prevent her home from being consumed in an unstoppable tide of progress. With that Both of the young women turned in for the night, and come morning they were both off to Q'Ten Lo.
Review Section:
RonaldM40196867: She fulfilled all the purposes that he needed, and as it turns out a whole lot more too. I've got some plans.
reinDank: Wait and see.
drm186: Can't say I blame you.
coolkid0806: I repeat, Naofumi probably genuinely hates himself, if you've been paying attention to Legendary Heroes the Cusp of the entire plan was to basically reverse engineer the person he hates the most and reintroduce her into creation. It is genuinely possible that Kaede's craziness is his own punishment. It wasn't so much 'I don't know about it' than 'Explain how this affects me' type of situation. That and I forgot about it when I wrote it.
Yu Narukaze: Going straight for the important questions are you? The difference between Raphtalia after Naofumi was done with her and after she slimmed down through her own abusive training style is the difference between 'Huge' and 'Large' if you don't know the different I suggest going on a porn site and punching in Large Breasts and Huge Breasts.
Nesthor: I have not, and considering the fact that I've repeatedly said that I am not a kingdom hearts fan, in the review sections of this story no less, I wouldn't think that anyone would I assume that I have read such stories regardless of their level of quality.
Zaceron: Okay, good to know.
Nightshadegirl: It's okay you didn't, thank you for saying so.
Pokemonever1994: Godafumi is a dick to everyone, including himself.
Galeon82: Been a while since I saw yah. A huge source of frustration for Naofumi, He can lead a horse to water but he can't make them drink, 90% of the timeline's he's gone through have been because he couldn't make the horse drink, and even in the timelines he's kept there's been problems he couldn't avoid because he couldn't make the horse drink.
Guest: Goll was thirteen when she was isekaied, immortals mature at a normal rate but effectively stop ageing after a period of time.