Author's Note: For those who are suffering some form of confusion, Myne is not Malty, she is the main Character of Ascendance of a Bookworm. Read, Review, Favourite and Enjoy!
Chapter 107: The Growing Gauntlet Hero
It wasn't hard to imagine what was causing the wave monsters to fizzle out of existence in the sky. From what Fohl's learned the lightning has only started when they got there, so the most logical explanation was that it's their lightning shooting hero who was the one to the deed. He however didn't care about that, what he needed was a way of figuring out where Atla went in this messed up world. And so, not knowing where he should begin looking, Fohl instead opted for answers to come to him. Hence the Hakuto boy was currently sitting in the middle of a market place his ears and tail on full display, it was no secret that Demi-humans don't exist in this world, so the way that his animal ears were twitching and his tail swishing got more than a few people's attention. And if that was not enough to get their attention, then his gauntlets would. Perhaps not the best plan, but he was getting a lot of people staring at him, including the town guards. One group had apparently decided that he was disturbing the peace and so walked up to him.
"Oi monster brat!" So they don't have demi-humans, but they do have monsters that can assume human form like Filo? "Get up and leave here or we'll make you leave!"
"Go back and bring someone with some authority here." Fohl instructed simply.
"Do I look like I'm joking with you!?" The Guard brought his halberd down on the Demi-human boy's head.
Fohl, even back to his actual age as a side effect of jumping between worlds, reached up and grabbed the halberd by it's blade bare handed. Looking at the guard with cold and dispassionate eyes, Fohl crushed the weapon. Even De-aged, Fohl has been training for month's with his Sacred Gear, getting the snot knocked out of him every day by the others, receiving the benefits of eating the Food Bonus from Sadeena, even at a scrawny level one he still had thousands of equip bonuses unlocked and his Sacred Gear.
"Last chance. Go. Bring me. Your Boss!"
"You little cur!" The Guard was quick to whip out a small knife as took a defensive stance against Fohl. "Do you think our lady is a commoner for you to summon at whim!?"
"Fine. Where are they?" It was a better lead then Fohl had gotten all day.
"Are you not listening you-" Suddenly the guard was sent flying, soared through the air upside down at the sheer force of the blow he received, he didn't even see what Fohl had done to him. But he felt what happened next loud and clear. Fohl Tackled the poor bastard he already sent flying out of the sky and used him to break his fall as the two of them crashed into a clay roof full of tiles.
"Every time I have to ask a question I will break a rib." Fohl held up a single clawed finger and pressed down on the guard's chest. "Where is your Lady!" Five broken ribs and three consciousness restoring slaps to the face later Fohl got the answers that he was looking for.
The lady in question was a petite woman dressed in a kimono, nothing outrageous simply pink flowers on red and was designed to be easy to move in, her face accented by pink eye shadow. Then she felt the entire building shake. Calmly putting her pen down the woman stood up and tracked the source of the shaking in question to a small office, it's occupant having already abandoned it in light of the crack that had formed in the wall. Said wall broke down as one of her town guards appeared face first, unconscious and his face bloody before immediately being pulled back out again and dropped two stories through the air. The Lady watched as the one responsible for assaulting her building with her Guard's face reached inside and tore out several more bricks before stepping inside.
"Are you the one in charge here?"
"I am." The lady mustered every fibre of her being to keep herself from cooing over the intruder's general adorableness and instead unfolded her fan in front of most of her face. Losing her shit against someone who just used her subordinates to punch his way through five inches of brick and mortar was not a wise idea. "Might I ask who you are?"
"Fohl Fayron, the Hero of the Gauntlet from another world. And I need you to find someone for me." Fohl stated in simple certain terms.
"And if were to refuse?" She didn't even see Fohl's fist move as he smashed the desk into splinters.
"I convince you."
Admittedly he made a pretty strong argument.
To Fohl's knowledge, no convenient magic existed to track the appearance of other worlders, nor was their arrival heralded by anything more than a dramatic fall from the sky. Therefore the most reliable method for tracking down Kuro was also the simplest: numbers. The issue with deploying the army into the wilderness to track a person down stems predominantly from the hoards of monsters roaming about the countryside. Luckily the solution had arrived with the request.
"Boost X!" The sound of a Sacred Gear crying out accompanied another chunk of monsters getting erased.
The men weren't quite sure how the Lady turned a semi-insane monster from another world wielding a vassal weapon they've never heard hide or hair of into a personal monster slaughterer but that is just one of the reasons they follow her. But more important than that though the other worlder was... weird. He'd fire roast the various monsters that he'd kill and then eat them as he went, his body growing bigger until instead of the cute little child with animal ears there was instead this large built man with tiger ears.
"Okay I'm back to my normal size." Fohl intercepted an attack on his person, grabbing hold of the monster in question with one hand and snapping its neck. "But we aren't any closer to finding Atla."
'A beacon might bring her to this location.'
"And how do we make a beacon?"
'Tribulation.'
"Even if that would work I want her to stay away from something as dangerous and a tribulation not go towards it!" Fohl snapped back by way of reply. Letting out a sigh he sat down and crossed his arms as he tried to think. "Atla is going to be looking for Kuro, we find Kuro we find out where Atla is gonna be." Fohl stated as he began thinking about the situation. And then a weapon notification popped up.
'Gauntlet's of Avalon.'
Fohl wasn't aware of this, but some time ago back when Maple was in a buzz for shields with self regeneration skills Kuro had modified some of her tracings for her, a Excalibur and Avalon combo that was turned into a charge blade, then when her shield was copied into Fohl's gauntlets the copied weapon took on a new more appropriate form.
"And what am I supposed to do with that?" The Gauntlets turned into the Gauntlets of Avalon.
'Avalon desires to be made whole and reunited with their blades.'
Fohl chose a random direction and held out one of his gauntlet clad fists, the glow on the weapons turning brighter as he found the direction that Atla was in.
"And why didn't we think of doing this earlier?" Fohl asked sounding rather suspicious.
'Level was too low to use this weapon.' Fohl just sighed as he shook his head, and then he took off.
"Whatever." With that Fohl slammed both of his fists into the ground and took off through the air, every time he landed he would orient himself to the location of Atla, fully taking into account the possibility that she herself was moving around in the pursuit of Kuro. Instead though, Atla was remaining still, disturbingly so in fact. And Fohl had an idea of why when he did catch up.
"So you came here too then." Atla was asleep, by her side was Kuro who was looking to be a bit perplexed.
"What happened?" Fohl asked as he looked down at Kuro.
"Reconstruction is going a little tipsy. Basically I remade her body the same way my own was born."
"Which is?" Fohl asked as he was losing his patience.
"A class card." Kuro stated as she held up a card depicting a woman warrior with a blue and gold sword in hand. "Previously we talked about how history has become weaponized in my world. Someone tried to take that a step further, subsume the will of the Heroes summoned for the Holy Grail war into these so that Mages could directly tap the power inside for their own use. I was born from one, and I saw the gadget that was used to make it. So I made another one and now I can use them as a base." Kuro explained while she continued. "The Heroic spirits are made out of magical power, so are my tracings. Previously I couldn't make flesh and blood beings but this sword has made a plethora of flesh and blood swords. Scale them down to the size of a cell, mass produce them, combine them together and you get a flesh and blood person. Then comes the summoning, get turned back into magic power mid-way through and get spat out the other-side as actual flesh and blood being."
That's how it was supposed to work, Atla had all the ingredients of a heroic spirit already, with the class card and her soul, but she wasn't quite making it to the other-side yet.
"Her card lacks history, which makes sense. The one chosen for her was 'Artoria Assassin' but Artoria never played the role of assassin before. Atla is in there re-writing the entire history of Artoria until she can convince the world that it's real. Well even though I say that 'Artoria' doesn't exist in this world so in reality it's like she has to write the whole book by herself." Kuro stated as she let out a sigh.
"What do you need?" Fohl asked as he crossed his arms, every fibre of his being working towards saving his sister.
"Well..." Kuro crossed her arms to think. And then a crashing sound came out from a while off. "Right now I need you to copy this and go figure out what that was." Kuro stated, her sword transformed into the form of a long metal can with a long blade sticking out of it. Fohl took the weapon.
'Gauntlet Sword Unlocked'
Fohl had an easy time reading the words, considering the fact that they appeared millions of times in his line of vision.
"Now let me see yours." Fohl did as instructed, turning his gauntlet into a random Gauntlet Sword and let Kuro weapon copy it. "There we go, a few extra bonuses to crafting to help stabilise and reinforce Atla's being." Fohl rolled his eyes in response.
"Start processing out the redundancies."
'Roger.' Fohl ran off and discovered a significant increase in his speed stat, he looked over at the menu for the Sacred gear and found that something had slid into the knight slot.
"Eh Let's test this out! Knight!" Crossing and unfolding his arms both of Fohl's Gauntlets transformed. The Gauntlets of Avalon had been combined with another pair of weapons, the Vivienne and the Morgan. With Kuro's knowledge she could rewrite the history behind the weapons, and in fact had been doing so for some time now.
Vivienne and Morgan were the creations of the Lady of the Lake, using her soul as a catalyst she gathered the power behind the lake of Avalon, purifying it into one blade and refining the impurities into another. The young King Artoria, thoroughly broken on the edge of the shore after having the Caliburn shattered was approached by the lady of the lake, her power in two swords, she had been blinded at birth, force to rely on others to protect her even as she tried to claim her destiny. Even with the power of the two swords she couldn't fight honourably as the knights she idealised would, so she would not.
"What the hell did you just put inside my head?" Fohl snapped looking down at Kuro.
"First draft, still have some editing to do. She still thinks she's in Camelot." Kuro stated while indicating the direction of the crash.
Fohl agreed that they didn't have time to argue, is what he initially thought, what he found when he reached the site of the crash was a group of miserable refugees. The reincarnated had been beaten to a pulp, one had been reduced to a meat ball and was now struggling to regenerate, another had all of his limbs torn off, one was just a burnt black head, the rest of his body having evaporated.
"So where did you punks come from?" Fohl asked as he tapped his finger against his other arm.
"Do your worst." One of the reincarnated was shaking as he was talking, scared out of his mind. "You can't do anything worst to us than that monster!"
"I can chuck you back through the wave portal you came from." Fohl stated while indicating the holes in the sky.
"NNNYYYOOO!" The limbless reincarnated desperately flailed while he attempted to worm away from Fohl. So it's not on this world anyway, well that's one concern off his back.
"If you don't tell me exactly what it is you guys saw I'm going to have to toss you back the way you came." Fohl stated holding the reincarnated by his head.
"W-w-we couldn't even do anything! We hit her with everything we got and didn't even scratch her! She used some kind of gas against us! We felt like we were being eaten alive! We couldn't move! And then she turned into a bloody cyborg dinosaur and did this to us!" Invulnerability, Paralytic gas, giant cyborg lizard.
"Are you talking about Ma-?"
"DON'T SAY THAT NAME!" It was at this point that Fohl noticed that these fools weren't healing, and weren't skipping out on their clearly ruined bodies, nor were they dying. Probably something to do with soul magic, but if Maple wasn't the one to do this... ah, then getting Kuro to look them over was a good idea then.
"I was wondering about what happened over here." Fohl turned around, and immediately landed eyes on a much more dangerous entity, one with a mirror strapped to his arm. "It would seem that there's an epidemic of heroes coming over here today."
"Naofumi I presume." Fohl asked looking at the suspected hero of the mirror in question.
"And if I am?" Naofumi stated looking at Fohl while digging out his ear with his pinky. Fohl tossed aside the body he had been interrogating letting it bounce several times as it went. "Alright then let's get-" Naofumi was interrupted as he was floored in one hit by Fohl.
"Is... is this it?" Fohl didn't even feel anything behind the hit, instead watched as Naofumi spat something out and wipe himself down as he stood up. "You're the mastermind who sent that lunatic out to-" Fohl was interrupted. He wasn't sure what he was interrupted by though, he didn't feel like he had gotten hit even though he felt a overwhelming force strike his jaw with enough force to shatter his teeth, except that he hadn't, near as he could tell he didn't have a scratch on him, and it took him a moment to process the fact that he was now several thousand feet in the air. "What the hell?" Fohl's ascent was interrupted by someone grabbing him by his tail and throwing him back down to earth like a meteor, and left a crater behind like one too.
Naofumi landed on the edge of the Crater, having taken a length of jerky out of his mirror and was now chewing on it while Fohl pulled his head out of the dirt. Something weird was happening, he took more damage from the fall than the punch that shot him into the sky like a rocket.
"You hit me?" Fohl asked looking directly at Naofumi like he was a bizarre enigma, one who nodded by way of response. "But you didn't hurt me?" A second nod, and he was finishing off his snack too, Fohl had only enough time for one more question before the fighting resumed. "How?"
"Concept magic is a bitch. I am physically incapable of hurting another living being." Clapping his hands together Naofumi jumped off the edge of the Crater and came face to face with Fohl. Armed with this knowledge Fohl wasted no time landing another strike against Naofumi, and for his troubles his own fist slammed into his face slamming his head into the ground. "You on the other hand are very capable of hurting yourself."
Naofumi moved the two invisible float mirrors he had in position aside and kneeled down to Fohl, two fingers checking for a pulse. Based on the gauntleted hand that promptly wrapped itself around Naofumi's throat it was reasonable to assume that he was still alive and conscious.
"Uck you Asssard!" What Fohl did have though was a broken jaw, several shattered teeth, a massive bruise forming, a welt that covered the better half of his face and blocked out one eye. Needless to say: ouch!
"Here let me get that for you." Naofumi was going to fix Fohl's face, but then the half Hakuko responded by slamming Naofumi face first into the crater, and then pulling him out so that he could do so several more times. While this was happening Naofumi's mirror had changed form, a pocket watch with a mirrored lid not unlike a compact mirror, a crescent of enochian symbols and a red gemstone in the centre, and then Fohl was punched into the air again. Naofumi pulled himself out of the dirt again and wiped himself down, spitting out a dirt clade in the process. "My apologies, that's my fault." Six giant arms had appeared in the air, each of them made out of pitch black demonic flesh wrapped in stone armour with the faces of fire breathing bulls for knuckles.
The compact/pocket watch combination might seem weak and insignificant to the untrained eye, but it was filled with power. It originally belonged to the Umbra Clan of witches, who would summon demons in order to kill angels that meant to take the souls of humanities dead up to Paradiso where they would be processed into more mindless angelic soldiers, course they weren't any better off getting dragged down to inferno either where they would instead be eaten by demons. Demons like for instance the Hekatonacheire, a demonic giant said to have a hundred arms and fifty heads. Course these things are different than other summonable-through-skills creatures such as Trash's Primordial's, these arms were their own independent monster, and what they do when they get here is between them and their contractor.
"I need him alive! Play with him until I finish up my business over here." Naofumi shouted back to the creature that, with lack of better things to do, decided to use Fohl in a juggling act. Naofumi approached Kuro and Atla, the first still hard at work on the latter.
"If you don't want to get skewered I suggest you stay far away." Kuro stated in no uncertain terms. "That's not going to-" As Naofumi was saying that several svardstav's were rammed through his body, ignoring even his ludicrous defensive power, Katarina's Gungnir that ignores space, time and magical defences in order to get to their target copied into Kuro's weapon and traced into a strike against Naofumi. "Well I'll be, that actually worked."
"I had plenty of time while you were screwing around with Fohl." Kuro explained while more of the blades hovered down from the air around Kuro. "I had to use hundred sword's at the minimum to bring them out. And I am more than happy to use them." Kuro stated desperately wanting Naofumi to stay the hell away from her and Atla.
"I suspect you are." Naofumi continued to walk forward, ignoring as more spears skewered his form. On the contrary after holding up his hand to the spears they quickly broke down under his influence. "Firstly. Killing your friends. Not my idea. I told those two knuckle heads to provoke you guys not stab your companions. Secondly, if I could be so bold to suggest you may remember that you were in a not too dissimilar position not too long ago in which I pulled you out of the fire, and I can very easily do it again." Kuro bit her lip as she bitterly looked at Naofumi.
"I'm not asking for your help!" Kuro snapped eyes bubbling with rage.
"I'm not asking for permission." Naofumi tapped on Atla's chest and suddenly she awoke with a gasp snapping into a sitting position, taking out both blades as she prepared to take Naofumi's head off. "Instead of doing that I would like to offer a ceasefire, and a bet. Take one day and the time and effort to test my theory, and I can prove that having your body reconstructed was a blessing of the highest order."
"And what theory is that?" Atla asked looking at Naofumi suspiciously.
"Your human blood means that you don't age as you level as would a regular Demi-human. But Kuro didn't use any human swords to remake your body did she?" Kuro opened her mouth to object, remained silent, and promptly closed her mouth.
"Call off your friend." Atla ordered and Naofumi acted at once, picking up the three reincarnated and whistling at the six arms to come down and collect their payment, dropping Fohl who landed face first before grabbing their snack of mutilated reincarnated and fading out of existence.
"Well. At least I got some new gauntlets out of this." Fohl stated though he did struggle to do so.
One explanation and one round of healing later, the three of them were dropped off in Mirror Territory where Tanya's group had gathered together and where Katarina's group was already located.
"Speaking of." Tanya tossed Fohl one of her bow's transformed into a Ember Celicia bracelet to Fohl who caught it, and thus received a second wave of notifications.
"So those things are Vassal Gauntlets?" Myne asked as she sipped her tea.
"Apparently." Sakura stated before she took a bite of her cookie.
"And we can copy each other's weapons?" Was Myne's follow up question.
"We can sort of copy, how do I explain." While thinking this over Katarina turned her spear into a Harpoon. "This is a spear, but it's also a harpoon. Sadeena the Harpoon hero can copy harpoons but she can't copy spears, I can copy spears, lances, Javelins, scythes, Halberds and harpoons." The Two Heroes of this world nodded their heads in understanding.
"So basically any blade on a stick." Was Sakura's reply. "I think Jade has a few Gauntlets he can try to copy. If we can find her." In the mean time the girls were going through their own weapon transformations. After a few moments Sakura pulled out two of the Clow Cards.
"Sword Card." Sakura stated handing the card in question over to Kuro. "The Arrow Card." And a second Card to Tanya. Sakura didn't have a Clow Card for Spears, she did however have a storage ofuda with a spear sealed inside of it. "This one's for you." And so handed the card in question over to Katarina. The three Heroes each had a wave of notifications appear in their vision, sadly only in the thousands, and in comparison to Kuro's reinforced traced copies the weapons in question were rather pathetic for their levels.
"I already gave Katarina my Javelin." Gol stated as she first handed her tuna knife to Kuro and then her hunting bow to Tanya, more weapons appearing in their vision by the thousands. "These should give lots of bonuses against monsters."
"I don't think I have any jewels that you guys can copy." Myne made a cobra flex with her arm. "Brawn is not exactly my strong suit."
"What conditions does something have to meet before you can copy it?" Kuro asked looking at Myne oddly.
"Decoration or an accessory." Myne replied simply. In that moment three weapons fell out of the air and landed in Myne's lap, a sword, a spear and a bow, polished until they shined and encrusted with gold and jewels, accessories and charms hanging off of them.
"Where'd these come from?" Tanya asked as she she watched Myne take them in hand.
"The nobles houses in Melromarc." Ah, the people obsessed with the three weapons aside from the shield, that would do it.
"Okay here you go." Myne turned her jewels into the weapons and handed them to Tanya, Katarina and Kuro who for their trouble got another wave of notifications for a few thousand or so weapons.
"Are you three going to return the favour?" The three guest Heroes handed out weapons to their three counterparts of this world after turning them into the most appropriate forms, whereas the three guests had gotten thousands of weapons from them they received millions of weapons from them.
"Where did you three get so many weapons from?" Myne asked looking concerned.
As one Katarina and Tanya raised their hands and pointed at Kuro who smiled cheekily at them.
"She has an entire planet made out of swords in that thing."
Tanya looked over the assembled group, counting with her eyes.
"We found Trash, Midori, Atla and Fohl, we have an idea of where Rishia is and what she's doing so the ones left we have to find are Rat and Kyurie. Is that what the situation is?" Tanya asked looking around at the group who slowly nodded their heads in response. "Sadeena has the harpoon. Scythe. Book. Fan. I don't see the Boat, Mirror, Katana or Musical instrument heroes here through."
"Ethanobolt is out tending to his people." Gol stated bluntly.
"After the library was torched the entire rabbit tribe has been without a home. Raccoon and Naofumi are off doing their own things as usual, the only one of any real concern we have to deal with, is Miyagi. He's the leader of the reincarnated faction on this world." Sakura was leaning on her arm as she sighed. "He escaped notice at first because he got summoned here instead of being born but well..."
"He started acting exactly like the rest of the reincarnated and demonstrated the same abilities as they did."
"He was summoned as a hero too?" Tanya looked at the other group of heroes suspiciously. "He was apparently 'dragged along' with this generation's musical instrument hero during the summoning. Then eventually killed him and took the weapon for himself." Myne explained looking tired, very tired. "He's been a giant pain in the arse ever since, rounding up the reincarnated under his leadership, using the fear of Naofumi they all have to pull them together."
"And this Jade, what of the Blunt instrument Hero?" Tanya asked her brow cocked suspiciously.
"Near as I can tell she hasn't gone crazy, but she has been fending off attacks from Miyagi's reincarnated day in and out." Sakura explained eyes looking tired.
"Fending off? She's been going after them like crazy, using them as fuel to power her own Sacred Gear's building strength." Myne just shook her head and resumed her snack. "I don't know what Naofumi has been feeding her but whatever it is it's crazy powerful."
"Maybe it's because she doesn't spend all day in the library." Sakura said shaking her head.
"To recap then, Rat, Rishia and Kyurie needs to be found, Miyagi needs to die and Jade probably has a bunch of weapons we can copy before we go." Tanya held up the Tea pot over the group's cups as if the relatively difficult tasks she just laid out were some trivial matters. "Seconds?"
Review Section:
RonaldM40196867: True. Kaede, considering that her thought processes turn her into a borderline eldritch horror, and that's before we learn that she's the daughter of literally god like beings.
AZ: That's such a Highly specific scenario that I suspect you want to write it yourself.
Guest503: I get the feeling I opened a massive can of worms with including weapons from other series some days.
Dakota Bruder: Ascendance of a Bookworm.
Art: I appreciate that you're trying to help but please leave the answers to me for now on.
Coolkid0806: The Infinite Library wasn't her life's work, she was merely camping out there as much as possible to read different books.
Nightshadegirl: Yes, Myne does have the same name as Malty's alias. Go with whatever one is most convenient for you.