Author's Note: Had some last minute additions to make to this one, amazing when inspiration hits you doesn't it? Read, Review, Favourite and Enjoy!
Chapter 98: The Lost Works
Tanya blinked stupidly for a few moments as she watched Katarina receive instructions from one of the Black Smith's on how to perform maintenance on her spears such as sharpening and polishing the blade. To her knowledge it was wholly unnecessary.
"Does that strengthen you guys in any way?" Tanya asked looking at her bow.
'It feels nice. Like being pampered at a spa.'
"I'm not one for spa days. Not when there's still this much work that needs to be done." Tanya stated making her displeasure known.
'Agreed. The Spear Hero appears to have strengthened her weapon in some way, it would be good to know how. Should we ask her?'
Tanya had only recently been able to unlock anything resembling a Sacred gear, if there was a fast, reliable and effective method of strengthening it then she needed to know what it was.
"I'd rather ask the person that she asked."
Tanya quickly found Bason, and received the same lecture about the five elements as what Katarina had and what kinds of steps she had taken to strengthen her spear.
"I need five weapons, one for each of these areas." Tanya had Eli make up a chart for her, in a pentagram on that chart was five words, Fire, Earth, Metal, Water, Wood. Not only did she need to make a weapon suitable for each of these elements, but they also had to have divine power merged into them as well.
"Why am I here again?" Kuro asked raising her hand in the air.
"Because you are a walking weapon factory, and thus your unique skill set is needed here." Tanya explained as she made her opinion known.
"Fine then. Let's start with the easy one then." Kuro underlined the wood spear as a start and doodled a picture of a turtle on it.
"The Spirit Turtle?" Tanya asked looking at Kuro suspiciously.
"A god's flesh is still the flesh of a god, even if you don't have the soul that belonged to that god you still have lots of it's body." Tanya nodded her head.
"Emiya, start combining together the Spirit Tortoise weapons into the Spirit Tortoise Gun we got from the Black Smith." It was a bit difficult to get the Blacksmith to make the thing, he had to recruit the expertise of Faubrey's gunsmiths, and she had to use her cutesy voice.
'Roger.'
"While he's doing that we should think about the other four." Tanya stated while her eyes inevitably went to the fire section.
"Hou Yi." Was Kuro's simple reply. "It's said that the earth use to have ten suns, appearing in the sky one after another, then one day they all decided to appear together so an Emperor got his best archer to shoot nine of them down."
Tanya blinked stupidly in response to that story.
"Given how many 'sun gods' there probably are that doesn't really surprise me. Or were I guess." The power to shoot gods out of the sky? Yes please. With a snap of her fingers Kuro made a bow appear out of thin air. It had two curves in it on either side and was the length of a long bow, blackened with various burns as if it had gotten too close to a fire of some kind.
'Weapon Copy Activated. Hou Yi Unlocked. Equip Bonus: Fallen Sun.'
'Fallen Sun: Drops a minature sun out of the sky to crash into a target.'
"Mind you. Hou Yi never really existed in the technical sense." Kuro made the weapon disappear now that Tanya had a copy. "It took a lot of work to convince the world it used to have ten suns, and even then I had to distil the legend using my Sacred Gear." Kuro smiled and straightened as if she was expecting praise.
"Give me three more just like it and then we'll be in business." Tanya stated blandly as she looked at the next part of the diagram. "Earth for instance."
"Just use your own elemental root!" Kuro stated as if the solution was obvious. Given a day's cooldown for the weapon Kuro could probably take Medusa's curse to turn anything she looks at into stone and turn that into a weapon for Tanya, but she wasn't going to do it today.
Tanya was a natural Earth mage near as Kuro could tell, she manipulated gravity so that she could fly and she manipulated gravity to add more bite to her bullets, getting the bow only strengthened that root with another just like it.
"Fine then. Metal?"
"You have a hundred metal weapons in that thing, some of them are Noble Phantasms. Use them!" Kuro was starting to feel like an appliance at this point.
It's only been a few days since she's figured out she can turn legends into Noble Phantasms as opposed to just copying existing ones. Tanya put a pin in metal weapons for the time being.
"Water?" Tanya asked as Kuro stood up apparently at her wits end.
"Just use your spear gun, the water Dragon counts as a Dragon Emperor right? Just go grab some material from her and reinforce the damned thing. I already made one divine weapon for you and I need to recharge before I can make any more."
Even Kuro had limits, cheating hax like limits that bordered on the edge of manipulating reality if not flagrantly disregarding it entirely, but she had limits.
'There is one weapon the Sword Hero has not given you yet that is most suitable as a metal element weapon.'
"Kuro remind me. Emiya is supposed to have your powers right?" Kuro responded to Tanya's question with suspicion.
"The original Emiya yes." Kuro stated bluntly. "Your bow just fires modified Gae Bolg's though."
'Emiya Alter is a different matter though.'
"Who's 'Emiya Alter?'" Tanya asked and Kuro made a sour face.
"I don't want to talk about that guy."
'Nor does the Legendary Bow. But he does possess the most suitable weapon for a 'Metal Bow.''
"If you don't start talking about him, my bow will." Tanya stated in a warning tone.
Kuro stared at Tanya, and for a few brief moments Tanya felt a chill, like she was looking at some bubbling thing ready to self-destruct at any moment. Wordlessly Kuro held out her hand and two guns dropped into Tanya's hands, they both resembled fully automatic machine guns with bayonet like blades mounted to the business end, one was black and the other black and white.
'Weapon Copy activated. Unlimited Lost Works. Equip Bonus: Blade Flower.'
As Tanya was about to check the equip bonus...
'Conditions Met. Bow of Sloth X Unlocked'
Kuro left with a disgusted look on her face. Seeing what the weapon did to her legendary weapon though Tanya couldn't blame her. For starters there was a overwhelming shrieking in the air as if Tanya's soul had just died which quickly died down.
'I see so you didn't make it.' Tanya felt an overwhelming feeling of Apathy hit her, as if she suddenly just stopped caring about everything and anything. It wasn't until several minutes had gone by and the cursed weapon was completely dismantled that Tanya could sit up again.
"Emiya explain yourself! What was that just now!?" Tanya demanded glaring.
'Emiya was hoping to be able to save him.'
The bow seemed to be truly saddened by the lost. 'The Consciousness of the Unlimited Lost Works is a version of EMIYA from further into their future, after the constant trials broke them down spiritually and mentally until all that was left was a executioner of the world's will.' To put it another way, another man who was trapped by the whims of a god to be tortured into submission. If she hadn't been summoned as a hero, would she end up like that one day too?
'Sadly when exposed to the Emiya's memories the consciousness of the Unlimited Lost Works shattered.'
"From what I can tell it was a mercy kill." Tanya shivered as she opted to leave it at that. "Are we at risk of another curse popping out if we keep it?"
'No.' Emiya still seemed saddened by the loss.
'Blade Flower: A piece of the Unlimited Lost Works is separated from the weapon and fired into the body of a target, causing various blades to erupt from within using the target's own Ki as fuel for the blades manifestation. The more Ki the target has the more blades that are manifested.'
"Kuro was right to be upset. These guns are evil." Well a evil gun wasn't necessarily a bad thing, a gun is a tool that exists for killing and these things were certainly good at that. "Let's do the water bow next."
'No need for that.'
'Identify yourself.'
'Demon Dragon Core Bow.'
Some of the materials that Maple had given them when she got back from the other world.
'I was impressed by your wrath and pride, if I wasn't already spoken for I would have thrown myself on mine hands and knees to worship you as my master. But you did just give me a rather nice snack just now so I thought I should give you a reward.'
Tanya looked up the weapon in question, she never saw mention of a Demon Dragon core Bow before, was it hiding from her?
'Conditions Met: Underworld River Bow Unlocked. Equip Bonus: Forgetting Tide, Attack Support Arrow, Curse Resistance.'
'Until the worlds meet again.' And then the Demon Dragon Bow disappeared from her list of weapons again.
"Well that wasn't ominous at all." Tanya let out a breath that she didn't know she was holding. To briefly summarise what just happened, the future version of her bow's consciousness just met it's past self, self destructed, and was then eaten by a demonic monster Maple met in another world who gave her a new bow in compensation. "Alright. We have Wood, Fire, Water and Metal all covered and I provide the Earth element. Apparently." Tanya wasn't fond of the idea of going through a tribulation today, so instead she opted to do the same thing Katarina had done and brought up her own Sitera Destiny stone Bow, and the divine magics that she could infuse into the material, also since it looked like the Coronacht wouldn't be used any time soon Tanya combined it into the earth bow too mostly out of spite. She nearly got herself killed power levelling to unlock the damned thing and she was gonna unlock it!
'Which one of the Divine Magics should we put into it?'
"We haven't used any of them yet. So just shove them all in." Tanya stated looking incredibly bored with the situation, after getting blasted with Sloth she needed sleep more than anything else. At this moment a new notification appeared.
'Conceptual Magic Unlocked: Exceute a concept and alter Reality in accordance. Warning: Proficiency with most divine magics is extremely low, reality may be destabilised by execution of Conceptual magic.' Tanya just blinked stupidly for a few moments.
"Whatever. We can talk about it in the morning."
Maple and Kuro made another multi-course breakfast of various stat raising foods by the time Tanya had gotten down the stairs. Noticing that Katarina wasn't present she sent Yuki out to drag her out of bed.
"So last night I tried mixing together various divine magics and accidentally unlocked the power to alter reality." Maple's milk reflected Tanya's mood after it was spat out all over Kuro's face. "I just got blasted with a cursed weapon thanks to my weapon's antics so it seemed like a bad time to try it. Needless to say, none of us are going to be using it any time soon."
"Reality is already on the verge of breaking down!" Katarina looked like she was having a panic attack. "Are you telling us each of us now has the power to destroy it ourselves!?"
"Thank you for making my point for me." Tanya stated as she let out a sigh.
"Jeez. It's almost like I told you that copying that weapon was a bad idea!" Just the second hand despair that man had accumulated in his life was enough to simultaneously unlock an entirely new cursed weapon and max it out.
"Yeah I know." Tanya looked directly at Kuro. "You're not Emiya, or this Alter." Tanya stated bluntly. "Their future is not yours."
"I know that. I'm far too selfish to wind up like how those two did." Tanya felt something warm from inside of her weapon, like a deep sigh of relief.
"You're the only one that would be happy to learn that your little sister is a spoiled little brat." Tanya stated letting out a sigh.
"Did he suffer?" Kuro asked suspiciously.
"Emiya tried to save him but he failed." Kuro let out a sigh. Only her brother would try to save a evil alternate version of himself on the basis of morality. "I'm more concerned about a friend of yours." Tanya stated as she turned her attention to Maple. "Demon Dragon. Ring a bell?" Tanya asked looking at Maple suspiciously.
"Demon? What did she do?" Maple asked looking confused.
"It ate my cursed weapons, now it's hiding from me." Tanya stated bluntly. Maple cocked a brow suspiciously and went into her interface, turning her shield into the familiar form of the Demon Dragon Core shield, a large rough hewn metal tower shield with various swirling cursed patterns in the shape of a boars head. As Maple used the weapon she got a great feeling of unease that didn't go away until she swapped out her shield and suddenly exhaled the breath she didn't know she was holding.
"I think she's scared of you." Maple stated as she calmed down and drew an explanation from a place she didn't know it was coming from. "You should've been enslaved by a god, like the other reincarnated, but you broke free out of sheer willpower. Who wouldn't be scared of you?" Well, at least she knows that she doesn't have to worry about Being X anymore.
"Speaking of the Wrath of Gods." Kuro reached over and planted one on Tanya's lips, after a moment Kuro had absorbed Tanya's earth element mana. "Alright I'm off to the forge, gotta go talk to a Gorgon about a bow."
"I'm going to try and circulate the power in my weapon now." Tanya stated as she let out a sigh. "Maybe figure out a way of using the new power I unlocked without destroying reality."
With the addition of the Twin Unlimited Lost Works Tanya acquired the Dual Wielder skill, because of this much like Kuro she can use two weapons at once, and on top of that she had Reflect Bow too. If Tanya had the Earth Root then that just left, Fire, Water, Metal and Wood. She would deal with a Earth weapon later, for now as a precaution she found an area with a large amount of Earth energy, if she triggered a tribulation she would punt the energy into the Earth as a emergency precaution. In Tanya's left Hand a crossbow formed combining together the form of the black Unlimited Lost Works and pale green bow seemingly made out of mist, the Underworld River Bow. In Tanya's right hand another Cross Bow combining together the burnt black of the Hou Yi and the familiar dark green of the Spirit Tortoise rifle. As a precaution she had given it the healing power of a Highest Grade Yggdrasil potion, so she should heal from any unpleasant side effects too.
"Ha... woo..." Starting from the Bow, the power of wood turned into fire and was absorbed into Tanya's earth root, Tanya's flesh started to ripple but the wood element weakened the earth enough to keep it under control. From Tanya's root Earth energy was flowed into the combination Under World River Bow and Unlimited Lost Works, the two weapons were touched to each other and the energy circuit became significantly stronger, Tanya felt her body begin to sizzle as the power came on the verge of overwhelming her. Tanya's eyes opened wide with multiple colours swimming around inside of them.
"I, The Hero of the Bow, have read and understood the origins of power!" This wasn't liberation tier, for one thing Tanya didn't have a convenient 'absorb all the out of control power' magic like Katarina did, for another though, the idea wasn't to absorb power from the environment, but rather to expel the excess power before it hurts her. For this reason the most suitable tier was Driefach. "Cast the stones and carve a hole in the earth! Driefach Earth Channel X!"
Maple was back in the town as she experimented with her shields. Thanks to the Bio-plants and all the wood she's fed to her shield she has plenty of wood shields, metal shields were the most common after that, but not a lot of the others.
"Looks like I need to do some work before I can start cycling elements." Maple commented letting out a sigh.
"You're already plenty powerful as it is." Raphtalia replied eye twitching. Raphtalia turned around to the area where Maple had been 'experimenting' with poisons, her Savagery forms, and had convince Yuki to act as a Phoenix substitute in order to test her combat readiness against something on the same level of power as the Phoenix. Raphtalia concluded that Maple would likely start by paralysing the poor creature and working from there. "With any luck there will still be a phoenix left by the time you're through with it." On a related note, between all of her Noble Phantasms Kuro probably had a sword for each of the elements but that was up to her on how she used them, for now she was just trying to raise her proficiency with her Sacred Gear.
"Eh he he. So you interrogated that guy we caught right?" Maple had wisely opted to change the topic.
"I don't think his boss and the Mirror Hero are working together." Raphtalia wasn't using a name to refer to him, which in Maple's mind meant that she was actively trying to dehumanise him. "But I also don't think that he is blameless either, he or is accomplice." Raphtalia's family was dead and they had just stood by, her own alternate self if their words could be believed, and watched, or knowingly ignored, or... "But I am angry at them. I can't not be angry at them." That was the greater rage there, not the enemy who had smited her village, but the ones who had stood by and watched. In Raphtalia's mind the two of them, the Mirror and the Katana Heroes, were little better than Rabier. Maple understood her, in some small faded scar on her heart in the days after she had been summoned to this world.
"They had their reasons, mind you they might not be good reasons, first we'll need to stop Medea, then we can hear them. Then you can do whatever you want." Would Maple still say that when everything is on the table? As Raphtalia was thinking about that exactly what she needed most right now arrived in the form of a panicked messenger.
"Good news or bad news?" Raphtalia asked letting out a sigh.
"It's not good, and it's very Urgent." The Messenger catched his breath as he stood up. "An entire section of the mountain is running riot."
"Explain 'running riot.'" Raphtalia noted it was simply just going to be one of those days, and right after the mess with Midori too.
"Earth quakes, sudden spikes, land slides, we fear an eruption. We may require your power to contain the damage." The messenger explained as Raphtalia brought up the interface for the Beast King weapon.
"Why is the mountain getting bigger?" Raphtalia didn't recall pumping an insane amount of stone into the land to warrant an entire mountain suddenly deciding to grow up like a shoot of Bamboo.
"You understand the urgency of the situation then." The Messenger replied simply. Was someone casting Ritual Earth Magic on her property? And why? For what possible reason in the name of sanity would someone do something like this?
"Think you can make the mountain calm down for a little while?" Maple asked in simple terms.
Maple was charging through the path leading to the mountain in question using her Savagery form.
"I see it." Maple stated and Raphtalia acted at once. The Mountain suddenly flattened, a path had formed for Maple to use to reach it while Raphtalia used brute force and the massive amount of Worship points that she had accumulated to forcibly lock the mountain into it's current form. In that amount of time Maple used her magic senses to locate the source of the disturbance and found a chanting ball of Earth Magic for her troubles. "Tanya!?" Maple asked looking at the source of this madness in a cave, quickly Maple shoved her hand into the hole and pulled Tanya out and shook her until she snapped Tanya out of her magical stupor.
"UWA WA WA WA!" Tanya had stopped her chanting, which also meant that she had stopped her constant spitting out ludicrous amounts of Earth Magic settling the environment in the process.
"Tanya are you alright?"
"I think I'm going to hurl." Once Tanya was settled the situation that she had caused was explained to her. "My apologies." It seems that in trying to not hurt herself Tanya had instead caused some severe damage to the environment.
"If it's of any consolation her Meridians have grown by quite a bit." Maple explained raising her hand into the air.
Not as fast as Katarina's, but then again she didn't make them explode from channelling too much energy either.
"I would like to keep up this pace but I'm not sure the environment can handle it." Tanya explained as she let out a sigh. And then the answer to her woes arrived. "Alright I'm back down from the Mountain." Kuro, a person with a Metal element root, arrived back in the room. "I think I got a new weapon ready for you guys to try and copy." And then Kuro saw that everyone was looking at her like she had just provided the answer to all their woes. "What?" Kuro looked down at the latest blade she had just made.
Spirit Energy can be gotten by breaking down souls, then was the reverse also true and it was possible to make a soul out of pure spirit energy? The answer was no, but luckily Kuro had plenty of the other thing they needed too: Miasma, also known as XP. Byakuya and Kanshou were originally created when the wife of a smith threw herself into his forge and sacrificed her soul to meld together the essence of five mountains and metals of Six Heroes thus creating weapons capable of opposing the gods. Kuro didn't have five mountains to squeeze for essence or six heroes to draw metal from, she did have Tanya who was spitting out a huge amount of Earth essence and her own tracing power though.
"Here you go." Kuro Mechanically threw Tanya her latest creation, a mask. A mask of what? Kuro stopped Tanya from looking, only exposing the long purple hair that trailed down the back. "There were three sisters once, believed to have been born from the collective ideals of the 'perfect feminine form.' The gods didn't take kindly to being upstaged, so the youngest and most mortal like was cursed. Her hair was turned to snakes and her eyes crystal that turned anything that looked at them to stone."
"You're talking about Medusa aren't you?" Tanya asked and Kuro nodded her head.
"Aye, she was born as an existence similar to a god who 'receives power through prayer' before receiving a curse that would serve as the catalyst to turn into a monster. Which is why you're not going to use this mask on anyone that you don't mean to kill." Kuro stated in a very serious tone of voice. Tanya on the other hand held the mask in her hand.
'Weapon Copy Activated. Gorgon's Mask acquired.'
Well, it fulfils her need for a earth based range weapon, mind you one that was probably too dangerous to use.
"Emiya, does it do what we need it to?" Tanya asked suspiciously.
'Barely.' It was easy for Kuro to make a copy of a weapon from the Throne of Heroes, the issue here is that even if that person wielded a weapon worthy of a god the Holy Grail wasn't able to recreate it so instead it just degraded it, Kuro then made a copy of that degradation and weakened the quality further due to her inability to comprehend it's full existence with her six senses alone. With her Crafting Bonuses she increased the Quality of the work but that was only 'upgrading a copy' as opposed to 'recreate the original.' Kuro has never made a weapon on par with the gods before, and so thus had no idea how to do so, thus here she was trying to mimic the forging process of one of her proverbial divine weapons that even though it's not a real one still contains the method by which it was forged while being aided and instructed by the Crafting mini-game.
"You're not forgiven." Kuro stated bluntly. "Neither of you." Kuro looked at Tanya directly in her eyes. "Contrary to what you believe I'm not upset about the ultimate fate of Emiya because I've somehow mistaken his ultimate fate for mine. I'm upset because he is my brother and seeing him as an empty shell of a man destined to suffer for the rest of eternity until his actual literal soul has been completely crushed makes me upset!" Well, Tanya couldn't argue with that logic. Without her realising it, Kuro had drew her sword, and it was in the form of a certain dragon born blade. "You are right about one thing: I will never be like Emiya Alter, and as soon as I get back to my world neither will my brother!"
"Kuro." Tanya raised her finger and pointed behind Kuro, to the man who had appeared behind her. He was large built, like a mountain, and about as rough and ragged as one, complete with bits of metal like he had splashed molten metal onto his body and let it harden there, his skin an endless mass of marred scars. Most important of all though was the short nearly buzzed white hair, golden eyes and dark brown skin, if not for these three details Tanya wouldn't be able to tell who he was.
"O-Onii-Sama?" The man got down on one knee in front of Kuro, his fist in the ground as he looked at her straight in the eye. "...no. You're not." Kuro held his face in her hand, his roughly scarred face from countless battles. "But I don't need to hate you for not being him either. You tried your best with what you had. Tried harder than anyone. Even him." Kuro leaned up onto her toes and hugged the man's head into her chest. "But you don't have to try anymore. Your little sister can't be useless forever you know." The man disappeared after that, turning into golden light that flakes away and sprinkled Kuro with glitter as her features lit up with enlightenment. Her sword had brought him out, the reason? Closure perhaps. "Tanya, I'm going to be in the forge for a few days. Just... stay there and spit out material for me would you?"
Author's Note:
RonaldM40196867: Pun. They've all had their own growth in their own ways in my opinion. Still a ways off from that, After the directional beasts there's still Naofumi and Medea that needs to be addressed.
Halo: None.
reinDank: The Longinus is 'the weapon capable of penetrating the flesh of the god' whereas the Gungnir is 'the weapon that can penetrate the flesh of a god, always hit it's target, and return to the wielder's hand after being thrown.'
Nightshadegirl: He knows he's been bad.
Dakota Bruder: Filolial, Troll, Minotaur, little dash of Berserker.
Galeon82: Perhaps we'll find out when we run into those guys again.