Author's Note: Lemme put this out for you all right now. I, Do Not, Want to do anymore Holiday Chapters, especially April Fools. They throw off my Chapter count for the rest of the Story and I don't want to deal with that headache again. Read, Review, Favourite and Enjoy!
Chapter 105: The Hero of Cards
Trash was reduced to wandering through the country side on foot. Mind you he was taking it kind of well, his own training with the Sacred Gear meant that his stats were a lot higher than what a level one scrub like him had the right to be. Luckily he had some knowledge of survival training, like for instance using the wind to figure out the direction of a river, following the river until he reached civilization. He even had the chance to pick up some monster corpses to feed his weapon. However at the end of his path he found not a city but rather a city burning, the elements rampaging inside crazily. Trash even had to take a moment to confirm that his own Elementals hadn't been let out of his sacred gear to do as they pleased.
"It would appear that I've ran into someone rather like myself." Trash tapped on the ground with his staff, a boulder formed a chair for him and a wave of earth allowed him to ride his way into the city proper. A familiar smell was in the air, a stench really, of the cursed series. "Envy and Greed." Trash noted as he rubbed his hand against the wall of miasma. "A combo with some synergy, still I've seen worst cases abound." Trash waved his staff and summoned a fiery entity, the solar elemental. "Punch through." With that simple command the holy powered entity held up it's hand to the wall of curses and pushed through, dispelling a path for Trash through the barrier. "It would appear that someone has set up a formation expanding the influence of this cursed field using elementals." Trash summoned the wind elemental. "I want to know the position of all of the elementals that are loose in this city, and I want the identity of the one responsible for them as well." The wind elemental disappeared after that.
The Formation was set up like a cross, water, fire, earth and wood at the end of each of it's prongs and at the centre a strong feeling of metal. However everything was contaminated by the cursed series, the buildings were falling apart, metal and stone eroding away while wood rotted. That was just the effect of Greed. Everyone under the influence of the field had gone mad, stealing, fighting, arguing and attacking each other, all desperately fighting over the scraps of what use to be. And at the centre of it all was a little girl in a Tiger hoodie.
"Another hero under the influence of the curse series." Trash stated with a sigh. "Well we better suppress this madness before it gets out of hand."
The top of the Cross was water, so Trash deployed the Earth Elemental. The left was wood, so he sent his metal elemental, a product of one of the staff's Kuro had given Trash to copy, apparently channeling her own essence to create and manipulate metal objects. The Nearest elemental to him was the fire elemental, so he had the water elemental go out to suppress it. The right most elemental was earth, so he tasked the wood elemental that he got from the 'Yew Wood Druid's staff' to deal with it. That just left himself and the fire elemental to deal with the little girl at the centre of this madness, a little girl in a hoodie made out of woven metal with stripes of rust going down it.
"So which one are you supposed to be then?" Trash asked the little girl seated across from him. The child looked at him, with the kind of cold dead eyes that are only possible after a few days of the Curse series eating away at you. She held up a card with a blue woman on it and pointed it at Trash.
"Get rid of him." Suddenly the blue woman came flying out of the card and went straight for Trash, figure curled into a spring and fist armed and ready for a punch.
"Now now, none of that." Trash conjured a float mirror in response, it's image depicting the familiar form of a soul eater. The mirror was shattered by the Fight card, before the retaliatory Soul Eat attack could be conjured the Fight Card's spirit was retracted and flew back into the Card Hero's hand. "I'm afraid that I'm not quite that easy to deal with miss." Trash explained as he indicated the weakening field of energy around him. His own elementals were suppressing the four elemental cards that had been scattered around the city the card hero had been in the process of tearing apart. "My own elementals have hijacked your formation, suppressing your card spirits and strengthening each other, so I'm afraid that you're going to have to calm down and explain the meaning of this." The girl held up one of her cards, a basket with angelic wings coming out the side.
"Move, switch everyone around." At once a pink light appeared around the Card hero and the four elementals that were under her command. Suddenly the watery card that was at the top of the cross that was being suppressed by earth was replaced with the Wood Card. The wood card that was being suppressed by Trash's hybrid metal lightning/spirit was replaced by the Fiery Card. The Fiery Card that was being drowned by the water Spirit was replaced by The Earthy that turned the Water Spirit into mud. The Earthy Card that was being pierced and restrained by the wood was suddenly replaced by a tiger composed of lightning and metal, while the silvery metal and red rust of the cloak the Card Hero was wearing was replaced by one of clear water and navy blue. "I can do this all day." Two formations had been set up, both feeding elemental energy into each other, but one was not only in the superior position of suppressing the others but also had the lingering energy of compatible spirits to work with as well to obtain even more strength.
"I suppose you can." Trash was already calculating his next move after being suppressed like this. "Would you like to talk about what's bothering you?" Trash could see it in the air, the clashing curses of an envious snake and a greedy fox visibly in the air if you're looking hard enough.
"An old man is messing around with my formations and I would like him to leave me alone." The girl produced another card, this time of a woman holding a fan over her face. The card was thrown into the air and turned into light as it dispersed.
"You can't just-" Trash suddenly found himself outside of the ruins of the city, the cursed barrier in front of him. "What do you know. She can." Letting out a sigh Trash had opted to do some information gathering. Luckily he wasn't the only being transported outside of the radius of the ruined city, presumably whatever that card is it doesn't like people very much. Fortunately the card had opted to save their lives instead of killing them, so now he was free to interrogate them. "Mirror Prison." A cage of mirrors appeared around the person that had just been yeeted out of the field of curses.
"This skill!? So you're here you mirror bastard! Show yourself!"
"So, they were right, that person has been up to something." The man spun around on the spot with Trash aiming his staff at their head. "You will tell me what happened here to lead to this series of events. Now!"
Sakura Kinomoto was a young girl whose mother died when she was barely old enough to remember her. Though not a reincarnated herself she is the daughter of one, a mage so absurdly powerful that he had chosen to end his own miserable existence and split his soul into two. He had been a mage to inherit two magic systems of his world, the European Sorcery, and the Chinese Taoism, and through that blend created the Clow Cards, and rather than leave them in the hands of his flesh and blood descendants, he entrusted them to one of his future selves, and through them allowed his daughter of his second life to inherit them and make them her own power. After bringing each and everyone of newly transformed so-called Sakura cards under her control Sakura was summoned to this world. Sakura was the last of the four heroes to be summoned, by a country that had been directly in the path of the Tiger, though weak and low level Sakura had the power of the Clow Cards at her side. Sealed and integrated into the Legendary Card deck, the Clow cards weren't able to immediately unleash their full power. However there was someone looking out for her at the time, the Hero of the Mirror. He had sweeped together a massive force of monsters into a specialised barrier, and taught Sakura all of the reinforcement methods of this world, although she struggled at first Sakura was able to quickly level up, and unlock and empower each of the cards under her. After mere days she was strong enough to wield the power of one of her strongest cards, the Fiery, and armed with knowledge of the the tiger's weakness to flames was able to defeat it and turned it's power into one of her cards, a Sacred Gear. Although she had defeated the enemy she had been summoned to defeat she had not yet returned to her home, instead she was taken aside by the mirror Hero and told a simple truth. That truth remains unknown to them, but Sakura never trusted the royal family again.
As for the sequence of events that led up to the current situation? Someone killed the Queen of the Card country, then the little girl went absolutely ballistic and now they are in this situation. Trash held his chin as he thought about the implications for a moment. Either she was a lot closer to the royal family than she let on, or it was the trigger for something else entirely. Trash thought about the situation more, the four spirits weren't on a rampage, his own confirmed that much, the damage done to the city appeared to have been done by the various looters. It was equally possible that she was releasing the effects of the cursed series uncontrollably as it was that she was doing it deliberately to achieve some kind of effect. What he needed to do was get to the bottom of what was going on. Luckily various intelligence capsules were being spat out of the field of curses one after another, most of them were the various scavengers that needed to wind down from the effects of the curses.
Some however were part of the kingdom's court, and so long as he didn't use any skills that reminded them of the Mirror Hero, they were more than happy to hand over whatever information they had about the crazy girl tearing their country apart.
"There was a coup?" Trash's latest conversational partner had been wounded in the chaos, thus he had been more than willing to trade information for healing his injuries.
"By the Queen's very own daughter, always been a piece of shit no matter what anyone says." The man whom Trash rescued explained while they warmed themselves by the fire.
"And what do they say, exactly?" Trash asked looking at the man before him as the tale started to feel eerily familiar.
"Just has a pretty face is all." The man snorted as if he had just told a bold faced lie. "Vicious little brat. If she has the opportunity to tear someone down, then she will tear them down. It doesn't matter how it benefits her, it doesn't matter how important you are, if you get her attention she will come after you with the intent to ruin." Familiar. Disturbingly familiar in fact, without one iota of warm fatherly affection to hold back his judgement either. "Killed her own mum for the throne, paraded her around to the masses and let her boyfriend have his way with her before stringing her up and burning her at the stake." Trash closed his eyes as he considered the situation.
'I' 'I' being the Card Hero in this imaginary scenario 'Lost my mother when I was far too young. While I can only barely remember her there is no child in any world who does not miss her mother's affection. You on the other hand murdered your mother in cold blood for what? This little kingdom? A chair? Something that you would've likely inherited anyway if you just learned how to behave yourself?' Family. It's a simple basic thing that many take for granted, except for those who find theirs just a little bit smaller than what it should be? 'If you don't want it give it to me instead! Give me my mother Back!' And then it all snowballed down there, greed and envy only differ in their specific forms of want, and the latter means that she zeroed in on one person in particular.
"Do you mind if I have a description of the young would be queen? If for no other reason then to make her understand the severity of her actions." The man who had been regaling Trash with tales of the country's downfall snorted again.
"Red hair, Green eyes, Face like an angel, heart made out of puke, can't miss her." The man stood up and stretched, ignorant to the implications of the description he just gave. "Me? I'm getting out of here while I still can."
Trash maintained a completely neutral, natural face, with such dedication that he didn't even notice that his conversational partner had stood up and left yet.
"Wind." The outline of a woman formed next to the zoned out Trash.
"Your command my master?" The woman made out of air asked giving a bow.
"Find my daughter." Trash instructed in simple certain terms.
"With all do respect master, but did you not leave your child back in our own world?" The Wind woman asked confused.
"Yes. I left both of them behind there." Trash explained simply, voice turning cold. "And yet, the eldest appears to have found a way of following me here." Trash stated before he repeated his instructions, no small measure of force in his voice. "Now find her!"
Wind spread out, it might not be one of the five elements of the Card Bearer's formation, but that didn't mean that it didn't gain power from it. Wind and Wood share a symbiotic relationship, wind carries to wood nutrients, in turn wood purifies wind and allows it to expand it's area of influence, as one grows in power so does the other, and right now there was a simply massive source of wood energy nearby. Because of this Wind was able to expand its area of influence over a great degree, and so long as she avoided her natural enemy fire then she'll be able to search the entirety of the card country.
"Master, as unlikely as it seems, I appear to have found the person you requested." Trash could only let out a sigh, as if his worst fears have been confirmed.
"Let me guess, she is trying to assert her dominance, secure allies, threaten people into submission?" Usual Malty defaults if she feels like she's in trouble. "Otherwise bullying, flirting, framing someone for crimes they haven't committed?" Typical Malty defaults whenever she hasn't been cornered by one of her victims or thinks she hasn't been cornered. "Okay, I'm supposed to be a skill and I'm even freaked out now." The Wind Elemental stated a little creeped.
"Imagine how I feel." Trash stated as he let out a sigh. It was a short trip to the next city over, luckily with the Earth Elemental Trash didn't have to do much walking to get there.
A big huge crowd had gathered together, on top of a stage a young woman was making a speech about how a demonic individual had fooled her family for years pretending to the their beloved hero of the Cards. Trash stared ahead with a blithless look on his features, severely unamused. Someone had made an exact copy of his daughter and transplanted her into this world to... annoy him he guessed, as egotistical as it might be. He certainly can't think of a practical reason to try and mass produce his daughter after all. Of course, he also couldn't think of a reason why someone would try to manufacture the same cookie cutter Reincarnated that he and the other heroes had spent so much time picking off in his home world, they were ultimately self sabotaging fools only really good at causing a relatively small amount of chaos and destruction before burning out, not unlike a weapon of mass destruction... Dismissing the implications for a moment, Trash was already planning a maneuver he had been working on with the assistance of the water elemental, his daughter's doppelganger disappeared off the stage, at the same time a loud crash echoed out of the nearby building.
"We've been wondering where you disappeared off to." The thing that looked like Malty had been pinned head first into a wall by a black haired young man with a black Katanna resting on his shoulder, smirking cheekily.
"Excuse me." The black haired young man perked up at the sound of Trash's voice. "I quite understand that woman has done something to offend you. Believe me I know the feeling. But I have business with a mutual associate of hers so I require that you..." The Black haired man turned around to face Trash, revealing the familiar face of one Ikki Kurogane, the man with the black blade who had fatally wounded his niece. The grip on Trash's cane tightened. "I came here for the girl." Trash's interface went to war with itself as the Curse of Wrath attempted to reassert itself and his interface tried to dismantle it. "But I have many questions for you too. However I'm afraid I will be in no fit state for conversation until at least I've given you a taste of my anger."
The man with the black sword smirked.
"I've got time to kill." The Malty impostor was thrown aside, with enough force that she bounced off of the roof of a nearby building and went out of sight, a related thump of a human body hitting solid ground serving as a signal.
"Balance Break!" Trash had time to think about the opponent that he wanted to defeat, the black swordsman. First was his vast and unreasonable speed, second was an abnormal body that had blades in place of bones including a pair of wings, third was his incredibly vast swordsmanship that had triggered a riot within Kuro's very soul. In conclusion if Trash came after him in a fair fight, even if he did employ his pitifully new Balance Breaker, he would be crushed mercilessly. Instead taking into account the three things that Trash did know he had to custom make a Balance Breaker that would deprive this hateful enemy of his strengths, even if only for a single moment. "Seize ARS ARCANA!"
Combining together the staff's various mana manipulating abilities Trash gave it a single order: take control of all the mana in a cut off area. A single instant, Trash didn't even see him move, but already the bladed monster had already been on him in the single moment that it took him to activate his Balance Breaker, one micron of a second later and the blade resting at his neck would've taken his head off. Of course Trash hadn't done something as boorish as using his water elemental to freeze the water in Ikki's veins. No as Hero of the Staff, even though he wasn't eligible to receive the magics directly from the dungeons himself Kuro and the other heroes had been more than generous in writing down the information on all of the divine magics and Trash, in his capacity as Hero of the Cane, was able to learn it all. Using Evolution, Trash was able to combine the Divine Time magic with one of his Sacred Gear's skills, Dimension Lock, to create a new spell, Chronal Lock, to create a space isolated from the surrounding area time in that space completely paused, something that wouldn't be possible without gaining control of all the energy in the area. Course Trash himself was no exception to the effects of Chronal Lock either, hence there was another skill active, Telepathy and Accelerated thought, that he was using to communicate with Ikki.
'Until I deactivate my Balance Breaker Neither of us can move, and you are my prisoner.' Trash could see some movement from Ikki, time was moving so slowly that it had effectively stopped and he was still able to move, so the skill was paired with Down X freezing the creature in place with reduced stats. He'll have to thank Maple for her cheat sheet later in translating his world's magic into this one. For now...
'Your questions geezer?'
'Why did you kill my niece?'
'To trigger the sword Hero's Balance Breaker, and because I knew she could revive her.'
'Why?'
'Because she's a weakling.'
Kuro was one of the most intensely powerful Heroes he had ever known, her powers break the confines of physics if not the world's very laws and brought unimaginable power to bear. To call such a person a weakling? Trash understood his reasoning completely, Kuro carried the experience of thousands of warriors but the issue lay in the quality of their training, apparently. Each of them were somehow less skilled of a warrior than this creature, something at the very core of his being demanding perfection, perfectly executed slashes, thrusts, stabs, twists, parries as if he was the physical embodiment of the notion of perfection. Kuro had the superior number of Swordsmanship techniques and skills, but Ikki had the superior Quality, Kuro's inner world was a place made out of blades and held together through constant battles. No wonder he nearly broke her.
'What is your goal?'
'To kill a god.'
Interesting.
'From what I understand Kuro is already equipped with a method of eliminating gods through the divine magics.'
'We haven't been stacking the deck for thousands of years for 'a method.''
Thousands of years got Trash's attention.
'Are you a ally of the Mirror Hero then?'
'Ally? That's a funny word for it.'
'Then are you an enemy then?'
'The seven of us are just the schmucks he dragged into his own personal hell along with him.'
Seven? One plus Seven possible headaches running around on the same level of this thing?
'Is the Katana hero one of the other 'schmucks?''
'If you're gonna count every person under his command then you're going to go insane just trying to keep track of the Zeroes.'
Meaning that there was an entire army, possibly an entirely different faction than the reincarnated. And he could bet that each one of them were more dangerous than the reincarnated that he met up until this point.
'Are you done yet Geezer!? You're making this position difficult to hold.'
Trash wanted to kill him, he went through every skill and every magic he could think of for the singular purpose of taking his very soul and grinding it into SP, he combined and separated them a thousand times in his head. But he knew that he couldn't, every fibre of his being telling him this being was beyond him, frozen in position, unable to move and completely at Trash's mercy, and yet just having his blade pointed at Trash was making his level requirements for his strongest weapons drop like a rock. Even if he can use his strongest weapons that doesn't mean that he would stand a chance against this creature.
'The girl leaves with me. She is very important to my plans.'
'Fine fine.'
Trash's skill deactivated, Ikki disappeared. Trash had the water elemental collect his daughter's look alike as he used the Portal Skill to transport himself back to the ruins of the city, then he used transport mirror to drag the girl back as well.
"Watch the hair pal!" The doppelganger screamed before she realised where she was.
"You have bigger things to worry about." Trash stated as he forced open the cursed field again and stuck the girl inside. "I believe this is what you are looking for!?"
No matter how much the lookalike pleaded for her life Trash watched with indifference as Sakura fed her to her card spirits, having finally calmed down Sakura fell to her knees, her cursed field and Balance Breaker deactivating at last as she broke down screaming and crying.
Author's Note:
RonaldM40196867: The Shield. Defensive power is roughly three times as much as the other weapons and it's counter attacks scale with the attack that triggered them, combine that with affinities for healing and support type magics. If you toss a properly levelled Shield Hero into the middle of a enemy formation and trigger skills like hate reaction and provoke you're looking at the potential to trigger some lunatic tier skills directly on the heads of the enemy.
Nightshadegirl: In L'Arc's and the others world? Minutes.
Geek Girl Naruru: Yeah, sure, I'll just get into rewriting my entire story to make use of a protagonist with a completely different skill set. If you want a Reincarnated as a Sword and Shield Hero crossover go check out Dyslexic Writer.
Xerad: Surprisingly very little of it is Tanya's at this point.