Author's Note: Not a lot to say today ladies and gents. Read, Review, Favourite and Enjoy!
Chapter 104: The Necromancer
Gol was not having a good day. Her Quote unquote 'partner' was being as uncooperative as ever in regards to their shared power, she lost the sparring match against Glass who was wielding multiple sacred fans, and now she's being swarmed with skeletons. A whole bunch of the bony bastards had bunched themselves together into a giant in order to smash her with sheer mass when it became obvious that she wasn't going to come willingly to see their mistress. If her wings hadn't finally grown she probably would be a pancake right about now.
"I could use some help over here!" Gol shouted to her weapon as she attempted to fly out of the way of the skeletons trying to grab her.
'Apologise.' Was the simple demand of the weapon that Gol was trying to use.
"Is this really the time for this!?" Gol shouted by way of reply.
'When else am I going to get it?' Gol performed some areal acrobatics in order to avoid getting swatted like a fly by the bone giant that was chasing her. 'It doesn't look like you're going to survive this encounter.' Gol comically stopped in midair as she looked down at her weapon and glared.
"THEN HHHEEELLLPPP!" Screeching that at the top of her lungs her weapon, the 'Great Southern Hunter' let out a sigh.
'Balance Break: Summon Avatar'
"C'mere Chris!" Shouting that Gol summoned the most muscular looking hyper intense looking penguin that you've ever seen.
'Avatar of Water, The Winter Lord, has been summoned!'
"Pen-!" Veins popped all over Chris's body as he summoned his full elemental might. "GUUUNNN!"
With that shout Chris howled, unleashing a wave of ice berg like chunks like they were being fired out of a shot gun freezing and smashing the skeleton giant. And then the Penguin body builder popped and reverted to the form of an adorable and cute Chris.
"Huu." Gol breathed a sigh of relief, and was then zapped for her troubles.
'Apologise.' The Weapon again demanded. "You think I'm going to be grateful for being trapped in the Labyrinth for a decade you bitch!?" Gol was zapped again. This was going to be a long day.
Of all the skeletons that were released onto the world, these ones had most definitely gotten the short end of the stick. They just had to go after the most dangerously unstable of the other worlders as their target. Behind them the ground erupted, a thousand spikes hunting them down as razors rode on the wind, grasping veins wrapped around their legs and brought them to their knees while they turned around to face the horror that had stomped them. She was wrapped in a feathery cloak, like a great bird, coloured in hues of greens and reds like a great blossoming flower, glaring at them with rainbow eyes filled with murderous intent.
"Someone burned down my favourite library. And I need someone to take it out on!" The Two skeletons tried to run but all they could do was scream against the power that was 'The Paradise of the East.'
Of all the skeletons deployed, they had to be the ones to stumble across a hero in the middle of their tribulation, all around the castle they saw powerful elementals of Water, Earth, Fire and Wood tearing the country apart but they were missing a key figure, in the centre of the chaos a young girl was dressed in a robe styled to resemble that of a tiger complete with stripes and ears the Eastern Sorcerer. It would be adorable, especially since it was adorning the body of a young child, if it wasn't for the fact that she had a pure murderous intent in her eyes. They've seen enough to see how this is going to play out and so chose to flee before the very ground beneath their feet gave out on them. The Figure wearing the 'Caster of the North' took only the tiniest hint of their presence before turning her attention elsewhere, after all she had bigger fish to fry.
"Batter up!" This one was already in the middle of a battle it seems, swinging around a giant heavily armoured bat as she took down opponent after opponent, the issue here was that after the opponent had their skull crushed in they started to regenerate, at which point the Blunt Instrument hero would whip out a single club, this one with the familiar grin of the Soul Eater, and pulp the poor fools a second, more permanent, time.
The Skeletons saw nothing but fear from that club, their very souls trembling in fear at being destroyed, they were caught by surprise then when the 'Warrior of the West' was thrown up into the sky and came crashing back down like a meteor leaving behind a huge crater and scattering fools and the bones of fools alike.
Katarina was sitting on top of a pile of melted bones as she talked to the skeletons who were giving her reports about what they had found, perhaps they had high expectations since they had risked unlife and limb in order to get this information. Sadly though they had entirely missed the mark.
"Right. It's my fault for not explaining properly." Katarina let out a sigh before she continued. "It's not that you guys did a bad job, but I don't need to find this world's heroes, I need to find my friends who came from the same world I did." The Skeletons looked between each other confused.
"Milady, we do not know who these individuals are, what they look like, or where they would be. Though we look like this we are still residents of this world and are limited in what we can accomplish." The Skeleton explained and Katarina let out a sigh.
"Okay." Katarina brought out the communication Crystal Spear and waved it around, images of Kuro, Trash, Midori, Fohl, Rishia, Rat, Atla and finally Kyurie flashed by one by one. "These are what my friends look like. Does that make things easier?"
She wanted them to travel across the world, on foot, checking people one by one to see if they visually match eight people? The Skeletons looked down at the melted remains of their former leadership, doubtlessly having done something to displease the mistress, hence they were now in this pitiful state, their souls were still attached to these horrifically mutilated bodies.
"Not a problem mistress!" The skeletons, needless to say, were not eager to join them in their suffering.
"Diamuid, they worked hard is there a way we can make them stronger?" Katarina asked as she looked down at the dominant consciousness of her spear.
'Begin by maxing out the upgrades on the scythe. This should make it possible to increase the amount of strength that the scythe can wield. Additionally it is also possible to sacrifice the spirit weapon to upgrade it's power. Also you can use spirit magic to give them new abilities as well.'
"Upgrade the Scythe." Proficiency, Rarity and Enchantment were all maxed out on the scythe giving it an immense amount of power. Not only that but with the addition of the various spirit weapons from Bason the entire thing took on a new form with heavy armour in yellow and green causing the skeletons to feel another surge of immense power flowing through their bodies.
'Please select abilities to give to subordinates.'
"Uh let's see here. Detection powers so that you can find everyone easier, communication so that you can get into contact with me when you find them... is there anything else you guys need?" The Two skeletons looked at each other in surprise.
'Tell me everything that you need so that you have no more excuses.' They had to think about this one carefully.
"Mistress if we just use abilities one sidedly then we will just burn out our supply of Spirit energy."
"We can't have that." Katarina thought about it for a few moments. "What about an SP regeneration skill?"
"Mistress without physical bodies we have no ability to process ki into spirit energy." The first skeleton explained simply, in the hopes of not being striken down for his hubris.
"Oh? Is that all?" Katarina shook her spear and took out two freshly made canteens, filled with soul healing water. "Here drink these when you get hungry." Katarina also placed her hands on their heads and suddenly new knowledge filled their skulls. "There you go, that should be everything you need to know to make spirit potions of your own. Make sure you guys share with the other skeletons too. Now the world is a dangerous place, is there any abilities you need to fight?" The conversation went on for a few more minutes and Katarina gave them armour and several of her spear's offensive skills. "Okay that should be everything then."
As Katarina was finishing she saw a group approaching her on the trail, luckily she had calmed down a little bit but she still had to find the others. L'Arc was more than a little bit nervous, the last time he saw Katarina before she started raising the dead everywhere was at Cal Mira, where he tried to kill her and the other Heroes, approaching her armed to the teeth like this wasn't helping any.
"Mistress we shall dispose of this interloper at once!" One of the Skeletons whipped out the Bone Spear Katarina had made for him.
"None of that now you." Katarina on the other hand tapped him on the head and pointed behind her. "Start looking." Katarina tapped on her 'throne' returning it to the form of the hapless fools that she had bullied earlier. "And take them with you."
""At once!"" Thus the two skeletons took off running.
"Did they ever obey you like that?" Therese asked in confusion.
"No." The undead always looked down on L'Arc with contempt, to his great confusion, he only made them plow the fields with their limitless stamina and do the paper work within the castle, and a few other house hold chores.
"Didn't you basically make them into the castle's servants?" Therese asked looking at L'Arc with a scrutinising Glare.
"They're useless in a fight! What was I supposed to do with them!?" L'Arc countered defensively.
"For now we have to deal with other things." Therese suddenly felt a hot wind blow and a warm metal blade resting on her neck.
"Why do you have one of Maple's accessories?" Fast, incredibly fast, at level 1 if she had to guess. Katarina reached around from behind Therese and plucked the broach she had on her shirt. "No wait it's way more than just one. What exactly was she doing while over here?" Suddenly Katarina heard a whisper coming from the jewels. "Why can I hear the accessories talking?" Explanations followed shortly thereafter. First from Maple having made peace with L'Arc's group in order to hunt down Kyo, which is what evolved into the refugees of this world coming over to the one that Maple and the others had been protecting all this time, then with Katarina explaining the battle against the Phoenix, and Kuro's stunt in the aftermath.
"Well we have contacts from the world over, so we should be able to track them down where ever they are." L'Arc stated quite confidently.
"Still, sending people to another world to save their lives? I've never heard of a method like that before." Therese stated as she pulled out a familiarish book with a weapon like jewel in the middle of its cover. Katarina had though, Kuro was basically recreating the circumstances behind her birth, death and reconstitution in this world with their friends, according the explanation she had given at the time anyway. But onto more important matters.
"You're the book hero now?" Katarina asked looking at Therese suspiciously.
"Just in time for someone to burn down the infinite library." Therese replied as she began looking for information in the book. "I had to copy books like crazy while everyone was trying to put out the fires." Letting out a sigh Therese kept looking through the book.
"How do you burn down an infinite library?" Katarina asked in confusion.
"Jewel Hero took it pretty hard." L'Arc supplement while looking over Therese's shoulder. The Book Hero loves jewels and the Jewel hero loves books. What a pair these two would make. "Um speaking of which, are you going to keep wearing that or...?" L'Arc asked indicating Katarina's sacred gear turned witch's cloak, at that moment the time limit for the day ended, she wouldn't be able to use it again until tomorrow it would seem.
"Welp. It looks like I'm back to grinding the elements." Katarina stated spitting out a familiar combination of skills to summon 300 spears of fire, water, wood, earth and metal elements. L'Arc was just staring ahead eyes blank in shock.
"Why can you use so many spirit Blades at once...?"
"Diamuid, can you bring up the list of scythe's we unlocked before?" There were a lot of them, from what Katarina can tell L'Arc must've unlocked weapons for every kind of material in the world, he even went as far as to dismantle the monsters to get more unlocks. The issue here was that most of them were extremely weak, especially in comparison to Kuro's Noble Phantasms. "You guys got the lame weapons." Saying that Katarina cracked her knuckles as she prepared to get to work. "I'll need to buy some property from you." Katarina proceeded to use the 'Spear of the Beast King' to manufacture an infinite supply of gold coins to upgrade her various scythe transformations to their maximum possible strength, going so far as to black smith them with her own spears into stronger combinations too. "That should do it." Katarina held out her spear in the form of the upgraded 'Grim's Scythe' for L'Arc to take a hold of and he did so reluctantly.
Suddenly L'Arc's field of vision was flooded with notifications of new weapons, increasingly constantly almost without limits millions of new weapons that appeared in his vision. Left stunned for a few moments L'Arc was sure what he should do, just from the various upgrades his existing weapons received he already tripled in raw power, that was flatly ignoring the new equip bonuses he was seeing. Katarina wrested her scythe free as she turned to talk to Therese.
"If we can find Kuro she'll probably be able to get more weapons for the rest of you too. In the mean time if anyone has any spear-like transformations I can unlock more weapons for myself and I can unlock weapons for them too." Katarina explained bluntly. Therese saw L'Arc's reaction, deduced what Kuro had done, and so acted in a reasonable manner.
"Do javelins count?" Katarina nodded in the affirmative and indicated for Therese to lead the way. A few moments later she came back and dragged an exceptionally stiff L'Arc along as well. A few short moments later they found Gol too, needless to say she wasn't that happy to learn that Katarina was the source of that skeleton monster that nearly killed her. Katarina found a way of making it up to her though.
"So you're one of your world's heroes?" Demon had appeared from the Hunting Tool and was looking at Katarina curiously. "You have a strong affinity for dark magic."
"So I've been told, by you." Speaking of which Katarina's spear transformed by itself into the Demon Dragon Spear. Demon made a show of breathing deep of an aroma.
"Oh now that's an interesting flavour. You're completely immune to that thing's effects aren't you?" To Demon's question Katarina just shrugged her shoulders. It was just the curse series, there were countless other spears with different kinds of curses in there too.
"Diarmuid says he's done upgrading your weapons now." Katarina explained as she held out a javelin for Gol to weapon copy and so took it in hand. Gol stared in shock as millions of weapons appeared in front of her eyes, not only that but she recognised the names of a lot of these weapons from her home world as well, instantly Gol's entire body was flooded with new power, just the upgrades Katarina's spear made to her existing weapons was enough to make her power sky-rocket.
"Where did you get these?" Gol asked looking at Katarina like she held the mysteries of the universe.
"Kuro." Was Katarina's simple reply.
"Then we need to find Kuro as quickly as possible." Glass snapped as she ate her rice.
"We got separated on the way over, Kuro's rainbow bridge was a little unstable." Katarina explained tapping her own chop sticks.
"Maple gave the four of you some of my core correct?" Katarina nodded her head.
"Then I can track her down." Demon explained as she entered a meditative state.
Demon was unique in that she acted as both Gol's sacred gear while also being a fully indipendant life form, a so called 'independant Avatar type' capable of not only combining with Gol for a power up but also act independently of her.
"In the mean time I want to focus on increasing my own power, are there any more 'blades on a stick' weapon transformations you guys know about?" L'Arc and Gol collectively shot Katarina a look of 'You want more' in disbelief. They told Katarina about every Legendary/Vassal weapon that they knew of and when the subject of the blunt instrument came up Katarina turned her spear into a gutentag. "Well Gol's weapon gave me a lot of bonuses for monster hunting. Plus even if the Blunt Instrument Hero's weapons can't give me much of a boost I can certainly give her a heck of a boost." Everyone nodded their heads in agreement, having more power was certainly important considering the waves are becoming more frequent every day.
"That reminds me." L'Arc held up a single finger to indicate the sky, where a electrical storm was arcing between the various different clouds and zapping various different wave bosses, killing them as they emerged from the wave portals thus instantly closing them.
"Reminds me of Rishia's lightning." Katarina explains as she continues to eat. "She's the projectile hero of our world, and her Gear has to do with lightning. Something about the weapon of a god that got summoned alongside one of the past heroes of legends."
"A summoned snatched up some random mortal the moment that they pick up the weapon belonging to a god?" L'Arc asked looking at Katarina confused. "Isn't that a bit too much for a coincidence?"
"No. It is not a coincidence at all." Katarina countered bluntly. "The Weapons summon heroes because the one controlling them is rounding up weapons to keep them copies of them inside of the vassal weapons. We saw what he looked like at the end of the Dungeon where we got evolution magic. Do you know where yours is?"
"Evolution magic?" L'Arc asked looking at Katarina concerned.
"All magic is descended from the power of the gods." Katarina let out a sigh. She of all people was being made to play teacher: it was a dark day indeed. "Their magic is what we call Divine magic. Space, Time, Gravity, Creation, Metamorphosis, Spirit and Evolution. Of these seven Evolution is the most important, two spells cross path's and new magics are split off from the path both containing and missing traits from both spells. Earth for instance is the descendant of Creation and Gravity." Just because something is a newer version of something else that doesn't mean that it's weaker, chickens are supposed to be descendants of the T-Rex after all, what it does mean is the magic most suitable for a era is the one that survives. "Perhaps because of this the Evolution dungeon was locked out unless a Hero can acquire the magics from the other seven dungeons first. Now do any of you know where it is?" L'Arc and the others looked at each other and shook their heads.
"No, and we've searched all over the known dungeons for clues too." L'Arc explained as a thought occurred to Katarina.
"Not all of them." Katarina stated letting out a sigh. "Have you gone and looked through the mirror country?" Everyone made a sour face. "That's what I thought." Well Katarina wasn't here to pick a fight, she just wanted to find/save her friends and go back to her world. But if a fight came to her? She has learned how to kill a god, against anything less than that her power is overkill. "Your relationship with that person isn't my concern, I just want to rescue my friends and get everyone back home safe and sound."
"Do you know any way to stop the waves in this world?" Glass asked looking at Katarina hopefully. "The Directional Beast is right there." Katarina stated indicating the meditating dragon woman. "I don't know why she hasn't done her thing yet."
"Because then we lose our window of opportunity to end this." Demon explained while she had her eyes closed. "Right now we have eight fully fledged Longinus class Sacred Gears pointed at that creature getting ready to beat her to death, in another thousand years we might not, that doesn't include the possibility that creature has something hidden somewhere that won't just tear the barrier down again after I sacrifice myself to put it up. Those people are obsessed with us after all, one of them even managed to come up with a method puncturing the barriers and starting a wave all on their own." That might explain why they haven't been pulled back to their home world's again, assuming of course that Tanya and Maple have actually succeeded in subjugating the tiger already. "Hey Demon was it? While you're at it can you check to see how our world's barrier is doing?"
"I can tell you this much for certain. None of the worlds that we are connecting to is the one you are to protect." Dragon stated before her lip curled in a smirk. "I know where one of your fellow heroes is located."
"The Sword Hero?" Glass half asked and half demanded.
"No. The old man with the staff." Demon stood up and let out a loud crack.
"Trash?" Katarina asked sounding a little disappointed.
"""Trash?""" Everyone around the table simultaneously asked.
"He... has some self esteem issues." She can relate, If Katarina had accidentally gotten Keith killed then she'd never forgive herself either. "Why he gets us to call him that isn't important. We just need to find him. Speaking of which can we get a read on Rishia too?" Katarina looked up to the sky and the lightning that had zapped another wave boss out of existence. "If this world does have agents perpetuating the waves I don't imagine that they'll be happy about her blocking them like this."
"She's pretty much halted the waves at this point." Gol stated and L'Arc nodded his head in agreement. "Alright. I'll go find your friend and make sure she's okay." The Scythe Wielder went to the Dragon's hourglass so that he could really his people for a search.
"In the mean time I'll take the girl to find the old man in the Card Country." Gol, Glass and L'Arc all simultaneously let out a groan. "What is it? What happened in the card country?" Katarina remembered that some of her skeletons were talking about finding the four heroes of this world earlier but she had dismissed it at the time.
"There's a rampaging hero there is what's the problem is."
Review Section:
Reindank: Sorry it's too wild for you.
Captain Imaginat: No Maple has no demi-human features other than the beast transformation, which she cannot do on her own due to lacking said demi-human features! Trash will stay Trash. She gets free cuddles with Maple and doesn't ask why, which is exactly what Maple needs from her as a therapy pet. Eclair originally, then she was put on administrator duties and Raphtalia got the job.
coolkid0806: Your Welcome. More of a 'if you don't do what I need you to then I'm going to have to make you anyway.' Or yah know let the universe reset again.
RonaldM40196867: The deal was for another two seasons after the first if memory serves, meaning that there's still one in the works that has yet to air, now if you mean another one after that? I'd need to see a sharp rise in quality over what they did to the second season from the third.
Nesthor: I haven't, I have no intention to, don't want to, Etc Etc.
Nightshadegirl: I think that's just his default setting.
xerad: She's right yah know. They left her behind specifically so that she can protect the world from the one behind the waves and that's exactly what she intends to accomplish.
codywhite162: Thank you for saying so.
AZ: I did, and I'm looking forward to people expanding it.
Guest505: I have plenty of weapons lined up, but not these ones.