Author's Note: Not a lot to say right now. Going to go work on some of my other stories now. Read, Review, Favourite and Enjoy!
Chapter 97: The Axe Hero's Power
Tanya landed in front of the huge building that had suddenly appeared in Q'Ten Lo's capital. She already flew over it, it's basically a giant block of stone from the outside, no openings anywhere that she can see.
"Not one of yours I take it?" Tanya asked the person who has been growing buildings all over Q'Ten Lo for weeks now.
"Can't say it is." Raphtalia replied as she tapped her hammer on her shoulder. "At this rate my Balance Breaker is going to remake itself for growing buildings out of the ground."
"I want to blame Maple. This is exactly the kind of Crazy nonsensical thing that she would do." Tanya tapped her finger on her arm while looking at the block-like building. "How would she even do something like this though?"
"Maple has the original Beast King Weapon doesn't she?" Raphtalia asked just for the sake of confirmation.
"Yes, and if this was Seatto then it would make perfect sense." Tanya replied as she tapped her foot.
"Doesn't she have a Shield that makes a castle or something?" Raphtalia asked having thought of a possible explanation.
"Does this look like a castle?" Tanya asked by way of response.
"No but it is close." Raphtalia held her chin while she thought about it more. "It might be possible if she combined together one or more of the Noble Phantasms with the divine magics."
"Aside from Maple, the most likely candidate is Kuro. There's no possible way of knowing what kind of Crazy is inside of that sea of blades of hers." Tanya stated while she held her chin.
"It's called Chaos Labyrinthos." Both of the people who were having the conversation turned around to face Kuro, who was joined by the ever enigmatic S'yne.
"So this is your fault then?" Raphtalia asked indicating what was the temple district of the capital.
"It's supposed to be a Reality Marble. I don't know why it's out here like this." Kuro stated while she shrugged her shoulders. "Maybe she has some idea?"
S'yne produced a Raph-Chan plushie to talk with.
"The lady says 'I was guarding the Phoenix but I came here when I sensed a massive distortion in space.'" The Stuffed Raph-Chan explained indicating the box-like construction. "'It's similar to one of my abilities. Rather than creating a new structure, the existing structures have been warped with Spatial magic.'"
"So rather than having crushed the temple, this is the temple?" Tanya asked while indicating the box in front of her.
"'Correct.'" The Giant Raph-Chan explained bluntly.
"Why do you have a giant stuffed Raph-Chan?" Raphtalia asked looking horrified.
"The Lady explains 'I made it to help cheer up your cousin, he really likes it.'"
"I thought you said that you were guarding the Phoenix?" Raphtalia asked looking at S'yne dubiously.
"'We were. Your cousin visited us along with the little princess girl. They're going around to the various other-worldly camps on diplomatic visits.'"
"Let's back Pedal to the apparently not a giant random block for a minute. Can you get us inside?" Tanya asked before they were up all night talking about S'yne's mouth pieces.
"The Lady explains 'I said I have a similar ability correct? I should be able to force an opening.'" S'yne held out her weapon in the form of a ball of yarn to the wall. Space was warped like ripples in the surface of the water as the wall was slowly twisted open and a hole was formed. The Four Heroes entered through the hole and S'yne closed it behind them, preparing to return to guarding the Phoenixes.
"There should've been more people around here than this." Now that they were in the broken space Raphtalia was using light magic to investigate the surroundings. By bending light around the walls she could project illusions of what was happening inside of the maze. "And we still haven't found Maple and Katarina yet. They were looking for Midori for some reason."
"Midori could've done this." Kuro piped up. "I gave him the Noble Phantasms corresponding to the Chaos Labyrinthos." Tanya, Raphtalia and S'yne all looked at Kuro with a dead pan glare. "What they're axes."
"What other kinds of Axes did you give him?" Raphtalia asked looking at Kuro suspicious.
"GGGYYYAAAHHH!" One of the men let out a terrified scream.
"Oh... this and that." One of the apprentice priests was scrambling to run away, before a massive golden axe bisected him with a toss, and then when the axe disappeared returned to Midori the man's severed body parts reattached themselves and he ran off. "Berserkers mostly." The other heroes smack themselves in the face.
"I'm not sure how, but a Reincarnated managed to sneak into the workshop." Raphtalia would have to drag off the old man for a scolding later. No he'd probably enjoy that too much. She'll just lock him inside the workshop for a hundred weapons then. "I'll deal with that later, for now what exactly has Midori turned into?"
"If I had to guess? An unstoppable out of control rage monster." A giant green figure ran by a few moments later, it looked like a giant bird who lost a good chunk of their feathers leaving rippling muscle exposed, in lieu of wings there were instead a pair of thick muscular arms with taloned hands holding twin axes while the vulture like head crowed. Even though they could see the green feathers it looked like a giant out of control gorilla.
"Is that Midori?" Tanya asked looking horrified.
"Hmm. Too much Berserker." Three fists simultaneously came down on Kuro's head. "In any case, we have to go chase him down before he does any permanent harm."
"That'll be a little difficult." Raphtalia followed Midori with her magic and watched as he went through a solid wall in order to continue to stalk the reincarnated. "Anyone got any ideas on how to catch him?"
While the other heroes were chasing down Midori a group that had been caught up in chaos were trying to figure out a way to manage the situation.
"Well so much for trying to eat our way out." Maple stated having just tried and failed to tear out a chunk of the wall with her shield. "It must be some kind of spatial barrier." Maple's first response to seeing someone punch a hole out of the smithing temple was to spam dedicated affection and drag Katarina through.
"Maybe we can break through with spatial magic?" Katarina suggested having already hit the wall with her combat shovel, sadly neither Earth Hole or Earth Wave were very effective against a barrier made out of space itself.
"The only thing Spatial magic is letting me do is make barriers, and the skill I got from it is just cover move." Maple stated as she let out a sigh.
"We've been so busy lately I don't think I've had the chance to try and unlock the corresponding weapons." Katarina let out a sigh.
"I can fix that." The head priest gestured for the girls to follow him.
"I don't think you know where we're going anymore than we do though." Maple stated as she let out a sigh.
"This place can only expand, warp and shrink space. It can't create openings and it can't destroy them either. More to the point I have something we can follow." The old man held out both of his hands for the two heroes to take.
"You can find a way out of here?" Maple asked looking confused. "I damn well know what my own Ki looks like." The man stated pridefully. "I can at the very least lead us to my weapons."
Which they will then be able to modify with the Divine Magics and Katarina will be able to copy them and hopefully find a way out of here. The two girls sighed as they took the old Man's hands, as they were about to walk forward and screaming priest ran out in front of them, and followed up by a giant gorilla monster with green feathers in place of hair.
"Is that...?"
"Midori?"
The two heroes looked around at the corner at the man being chased. The green monster was slamming down his axes at the guy forcing him to dodge the attacks, as he desperately scrambled to get away Midori was hacking away at bits of his body.
"I don't get it? Why doesn't he just use the Soul Eater?" As Katarina asked the Head Priest rounded the corner.
"He's lost his sense of reason, it must be an effect from those weapons that he's wielding." The Priest could see a powerful curse coming off of the weapons. "I don't know who those originally belonged to, but I would not want to meet them in this place."
"Is he going to be okay?" Katarina asked looking at Midori concerned. "If he isn't, you're going to need those divine weapons that we were talking about earlier." Saying that the three of them left Midori to his 'fun.'
With Raphtalia's help the group had been able to track down the numerous people who had been caught up in Midori's rampage, the issue then became a matter of sorting through them. After putting all the Spirits and Ghosts into their own area the next step was to sort through the remaining people to identify the reincarnated.
"Until we can figure out who is reincarnated and who is not we need a place to keep them." Raphtalia stated while tapping her fingers. "Not to mention the fact that Midori is still on a rampage somewhere."
"Will this do?" Kuro snapped her fingers and traced a copy of the Poison jar, minus the whole 'horde of poisonous insects, plants' basically the whole 'poison part.' Without waiting for a answer Kuro opened the Jar up and sucked everyone inside that they just spent the past few moments trying to sort out.
"Don't worry, they've all been sorted into different areas. We can interrogate them later." Saying that Kuro slung the pot over her shoulder. "Now where's Midori?"
Raphtalia looked through her various illusions, and having confirmed what she was looking for she whipped out a familiar light bulb like hammer and swung. The Spatial distortions were modified under the influence of the hammer, as opposed to barriers or warped space Raphtalia altered the spatial effects to create a pathway leading to where she wanted to go.
"I was worried about you yah know." Raphtalia stated as she crossed her arms and looked down at Maple with blatant suspicion.
"Sorry for making you worry."
The old man had just been putting the finishing touches on the last of the Spears for Katarina to infuse her magic.
"That's the last of them." The Blacksmith held up the Spear and Katarina held out her hand as she infused it with her magic. Then she copied the weapon and the notification informed her of the new skill she had gotten.
"Yosh! Got them all!" Then Katarina turned to Face the new group. "Oh Tanya you're here! Do you want to do some for yours too?"
"Never mind that right now." Tanya stated waving Katarina off. "Your party member is off torturing a Reincarnated somewhere, Raphtalia should be in the process of tracking him down." Tanya waved to the two new heroes to follow her. "Come on. I'm not fond of the idea of that loser obtaining god slaying power are you?"
Kuro walked up to the head priest and opened the jar, sucking the protesting man inside in the process.
"I found him." Raphtalia stated as she started to hit the wall with her hammer again. The Effects of the warped space distorted another pathway into existence where they came across a rather pathetic sight. The man Midori had been chasing around was on the ground in a fetal position being hacked to pieces, regenerated, only to be hacked apart again.
"This is just in poor taste." Tanya stated and the other three Legendary Heroes nodded their heads in agreement. "Katarina call off your Monster."
"Right." Katarina took a deep breath. "MIDORI!" The Monster in question swung around, located the source of the voice and then visible paled. "YOU CALM DOWN RIGHT NOW!" Katarina shouted pointing in the area directly in front of her. Midori metaphorically and literally shrunk down under Katarina's glare. "Good. Now come over here. We have to have a chat with your chew toy for a bit." Midori did as he was told and went to Katarina and the others side.
Kuro made her sadism known as she smiled and held up the Rule Breaker to cut through the effects of the Reincarnated's modifications. As if someone was saying 'not this time' the man's eyes suddenly rolled into the back of his head and black substances leaked out of his mouth, before he suddenly dissolved into a black ichor and splattered all over the ground. Kuro and the other heroes blinked stupidly for a couple of times.
"Well that was unexpected." Kuro stated while she crossed her arms. They already snapped the connection between Takt and this Medea he was talking about before, could it then be possible that they rigged all their other reincarnated to self destruct if they so much as laid eyes on Rule Breaker?
"Hmm." Katarina looked at her Spear and a thought occurred. "I have an idea!" The start of many a great catastrophe. Katarina already had a Rule Breaker Spear courtesy of Kuro, now she just needed to reflect that with one of her new divine spears. "Premature stab!" The effect of Katarina's new 'Spear of Time' went as follows. People tended to throw up all kinds of pesky barriers to defend themselves, or dodge a attack, or this case be force to commit suicide before they can be tortured. The idea is that the weapon sends a strike back in time to just before the enemy could stop her from attacking them. Thus the man who had just turned into a puddle of goo reappeared on the end of Katarina's spear as if he had never been killed to begin with.
"Huh. Nice Spear." Kuro stated and Katarina let out a huge grin in response.
"What can you tell us about him?" Tanya asked and in response Kuro levelled a glare at the man, concentrating with magical eyes as she read through his history.
"If we measure the threat these losers represent by how much shit they get into then this one is relatively harmless. At least in comparison to Kyo or Takt." Kuro stated, to be fair those two did manage to set the bar pretty damned high.
"All of his reincarnated abilities have been removed right?" Tanya asked and Kuro nodded.
"Yep. All that's left at this point is just to shake him until all his secrets come loose." Katarina removed her spear from the other man who then collapsed on the ground unmoving. "Also, making sure he doesn't die."
Midori really put this guy through the ringer, it took their best Soul Magic and Maple's healing magic just to keep the poor schmuck's soul from self destructing, not to mention several bottles of highest quality soul healing water. Kuro had plenty of time to write up everything she could about the man, followed up by making several suggestions for his 'interrogation.'
"Alright Raphtalia is dealing with the prisoner." Maple stated as she looked over to the fully restored temple. "And the temple's been fixed." Once Katarina had explained what happened to Midori he promptly smacked himself in his face and undid the effects of his Weapon. It wasn't a complete lost, he did manage to uncover a reincarnated in Q'Ten Lo. "Is there anything else we need to do?"
"I could use some help testing out the rest of these things." Katarina explained as she held up the 'Spear of Time' up at her side.
"Get Midori to help with that, he copied my Charge blade and he can use the Grinding anyway." Maple explained and Katarina nodded her head in the affirmative.
"No scratch shall mar the form of your protector Milady!" Midori shouted proudly while tapping his fist against his chest. Katarina nodded her head in agreement and Got to work.
'Spear of Gravity' The Spear was unearingly drawn towards its target like a homing projectile, if not for Midori's several layers of reinforced defences the hit would have skewered him. 'Spear of Space.'
"Air Strike Javelin!" Katarina's weapon disappeared from her hand and reappeared already lodged inside of a boulder, before disappearing again and reappearing in her hands. This one manipulates space so that she can hit her target no matter how far away they are or what's in her way. "Hmm. With Time and Gravity Space seems a little redundant." Saying that Katarina tapped a couple of times on her interface. "If that's the case I'll just combine them together with my 'Gae Dearg' Spear." With all of the reinforcement methods combined Katarina could get five rounds of black smithing out of a single weapon, more than enough to meet the ten reinforcements minimum to unlock a new form and still have the original weapons.
'Conditions Met: Gungnir Unlocked. Equip Bonus: Hit the Target.'
'Hit the Target effects: No matter where, no matter when, once thrown this weapon will hit its target without fail.'
'The Hero should save this power for a better spear.'
"Again with the humbleness?" Katarina began petting the thing, she reminded herself to see if she could find any polish. "You're a good spear. And you were a good guy back when you were alive, you shouldn't beat yourself up over things that you couldn't control."
The Spirit in the Spear gave the impression of looking away shyly. Nodding her head in satisfaction Katarina continued to work. 'Spear of Creation' just gave a stat bonus, when you think about it the only thing it can really do would be to manipulate inorganic material and she already has a spear for that, so instead she just black smithed it into her combat shovel. 'Spear of Soul' didn't give effects that were too different from either the Soul Eater or the 'Over Soul' weapons that she got from Bason, so she just black smithed them all together.
'Conditions Met: Soul Reaver Unlocked. Equip Bonus: Enhance Shadows with Souls collected by the Spear Hero.'
"Huu. This has gotten a upgrade too then, is that it?" Katarina ignored the upgrade to her dark magic as she kept working.
'Spear of Metamorphosis.' Another stat bonus increasing weapon. Now that Katarina thought about it she already had cursed spears that made impossible to heal wounds, and while she was thinking about it apparently the weapon in question was the twin of the Gae Dearg the Gae Buidhe.
"Right then, I'll combine you two together too." And so the weapon in question got a stat bonus but it was still a way's away from fully upgrading. "Now that I think about it this would go pretty good too with the 'Sera Lumina X' spear too." So Katarina opted to combine together the Upgraded Gae Buide into her existing Sera Lumina Spear, dramatically enhancing its power in the process. 'The Gae Buidhe isn't worthy of such an honour.'
"So you like to beat yourself up too?" Katarina was getting two cans of polish later.
In the mean time Kuro was repeatedly smashing her sword against a rock and getting zapped in retaliation.
The 'Chaos Sera Lumina X' as it was now known had an unrivalled ability to inflict wounds on a target. Any injury inflicted carried a powerful curse that made it so that no matter what was done the flesh would not be able to heal, it was truly a horrible weapon, and so naturally Midori wanted Katarina to use it on him. If not for the effects of his own Balance Breaker 'Breath of Troll' Midori would've been killed.
The Leviathan Axe was made using the last Breathes of nearly two dozen frost trolls. Trolls are notoriously hardy buggers, they have such huge vitality that even a random chunk of flesh that has been hacked off has the chance to regenerate into a new troll, to say that this was made with their 'final breath's' would mean that they contain a ridiculous amount of vitality. That power was then combined with one of Maple's favourite Shields turned Charge blade through Black Smithing: The Yew Wood Shield. To begin with Midori is a poison type Filolial, he's not bothered by the effects of the weapon one bit, and on the contrary the poisonous weapon helped him to dissolve the wounds while the 'Breath of Troll' rebuilt him. This way he could heal even from wounds that should be impossible to heal from like the 'Spear of Metamorphosis.' Currently the Vassal Axe's Sacred Gear form most closely resembles a weapon called the Twin Hooks, a pair of thin hooked axes with sharp axe-like guards, it's yew wood shafts decorated with the symbol of twisted snakes while the blades were covered in ancient symbols of Norse and Asian origins. You can dual wield them like axes, or you can hook them together for a range extending swing.
"Looks like you got a good one Midori!" Katarina grinned brightly while she gave Midori a thumbs up and walked a short distance away from him, whipping out the form of her Combat Shovel and getting ready to swing with it. "Now come on! We're both way behind in our grinding!"
The man that they captured was not on the same level as the likes of Kyo or Takt. That didn't change the fact that he was a wretched piece of scum, nor did it excuse it. After being taken to a nearby dungeon Raphtalia had the man stripped down and locked his arms and legs into place.
"Archibald. You use to live in Siltvelt, after that Faubrey, now you're living here in my country." Raphtalia looked at the information Kuro had gathered for her, where he use to live, and what he used to do with the paralytic needles he was hiding in his sash. "They called you a 'sex fiend.' Well Even though I say that, in reality you're just a slightly more dangerous rapist." This thug has some kind of method of sucking the Ki out of women after he plowed them, increasing his own reserves for every woman that he's raped. It's quite likely that if they left this monster alone to keep building strength he would become a serious threat down the line. Raphtalia saw the way he was looking at her, he probably assumed that he would enjoy whatever was about to happen to him. He needed to be corrected. "My friend spent a small fortune and a great deal of effort saving your life, I hope you don't intend to waste our investment." That only made the fool smile. He was expensive was he? Good. That means that he won't be killed, that's right he had a lot of valuable information on him, they'd likely give him anything he wanted to have it. He was already licking his lips just thinking about it. "Wrong answer." Extending her index finger, Raphtalia poked the thug's eye out.
"GGGAAAHHH!" The man felt pain like nothing he had ever felt in this entire life. "Is this how you ask someone for information!?" Archibald snapped searing pain through every pore of his being.
"No. This is how I experiment." Raphtalia waited a few moments, long enough that had he still his powers as a reincarnated his eye would've regrown. "You understand now that you no longer have the annoying regeneration ability that makes you people so difficult to deal with. Good. Now that you understand that you can tell me everything that you know about the one who reincarnated you."
"And why would I do that bitch!?" The man growled and spat at Raphtalia, his spittle landing on her face. Wiping it off Raphtalia had her hammer assume the smallest form she had, a carpenter's hammer, and swung, the weapon flying between his legs and shattering his right testicle.
"My apologies I missed. You won't be needing that where you're going, so I thought I'd remove it for you."
"NO! NO I NEED IT DON'T! I'LL DO ANYTHING!" After Archibald was cut down he was instructed to write down everything he knew about who reincarnated him, Raphtalia made sure he was very thorough, what they looked like, what they sounded like, the exact words they used to speak to him. "To clarify, the person who summoned you was female, appears to be in her early twenties, red hair, Creamy white skin, green eyes and extremely attractive." Ugh. Sounds like someone she knows. "The exact words were 'Oh Soul who shouldn't have died, I have chosen a new world for you to act as my champion. What power would you like?' And you chose 'I would like to become a god of Sex.' How old were you when you died? 12?" Well, technically older than she was but that wasn't the point. Shaking her head in the negative Raphtalia continued. "When you saw the woman she was alone, with no sign of anyone else there with her. Correct?" Archibald nodded his head again. "To your knowledge there were twelve other Reincarnated that entered the country with you and three more that you've met since arriving." Raphtalia held out a blank paper for the man to write the names down again. "Write them down again."
"But I already-"
"Clearly your remaining testicle is causing you too much pain." He wrote down the names again. Raphtalia repeated the interrogation five more times. It was a well practised method of interrogation, force the suspect to wring out even more information than what they had before, if the information ever contradicts itself then you know that it's a lie. Once she had been satisfied about the details Raphtalia handed the man to one of the slavers working for the country, had him branded, and shipped off to be worked into his grave at the mines. Alone in the torture chamber Raphtalia held her chin in thought. "There was no mention of the Mirror Hero." Raphtalia's ears twitched as she pondered the information. "So he is working against her then." He picked off her reincarnated in the other world but that wasn't unusual for the reincarnated. If he was involved with the hero selection then did that mean that he was the weapons ally? But then the heroes of the past hunted him down and killed him, so clearly he had done something that they had disagreed with. She needed to find Bason, he was Ren Tao's ally, and he was one of the heroes who killed the Naofumi of the distant past. Now she needed to find out why. "It would seem that I have a lot of work to do." A bunch of Reincarnated that she needed to deal with, and a ghost she needed to interrogate. If she can capture the Reincarnated and separate them from their god then she might be able to obtain more intelligence capsules, assuming that their souls haven't already self destructed that is.
Review Section:
reinDank: Reflect spear is the Equip Bonus from the Spirit Tortoise Svard Stav, which Katarina copied after she escaped the Poison Jar and met Q'Ten Lo's black smith for the second time. As for what it does, it allows her to combine together two spear transformations like using the Rule Breaker and Spear of Time at the same time, different from the Black Smithing power up method which permanently combines the two weapons forms and gives bonus skills.
Nesthor5000: I have no idea why you felt like pasting this Wiki article into my review box but I thank you not to do so again. I've mentioned before that I have no interest in Kingdom Hearts on at least two separate occasions already, now on top of making me repeat myself you're expecting me to read this text block because...?
Captain Imaginat: The sad thing is that the person in question is actually innocent of this particular incident.
RonaldM40196867: Kyurie I'm thinking?
Dakota Bruder: Which is why they're going to be very thorough in looking at all the other Reincarnated in Q'Ten Lo.
Nightshadegirl: No less than Filo Likes-likes Naofumi in the original series.
Kennymadison11: Good to have a new reviewer.
Galeon82: Compared to this guy Shirou is the god of luck.