Author's Note: Not a lot to say right now, Read, Review, Favourite and Enjoy!

Chapter 115: Behemoth

The sound of the sea shifting against the shore coincided with the faint call of sea gulls. Two figures walked across the Sandy shores as they walked through the mist, protected by a pair of rain slicker cloaks. A standing stone was sticking out of the ground. Approaching it the shorter of the two figures put her hand on the stone.

"Space magic?" Kaede asked looking at the stone in question.

"There are seventy two fields of distorted space beyond this point." The Taller figure explained walking up to Kaede and putting his hand on his daughter's shoulder.

"What do they do?" Kaede asked her father while pulling the hood of her cloak down.

"For people who're indestructible like me, it's inconvenient to cross." Naofumi explained bluntly.

"By Inconvenient do you mean that you can do it with a bare minimum of difficulty?" Kaede asked holding out her hand.

"Yes. I'll be like walking through molasses, and as soon as you register with me..." Kaede walked over a few feet and started touching herself, she still had the tyrant dragon costume on so she just pulled in her arms and legs as she went to work. "What are you doing?" Naofumi asked looking at Kaede suspiciously.

"I'm re-energising my shield. Be with you in a minute." Metamorphosis to infuse into her body, space to increase the room inside the meridian's, and spirit to fill the contents with energy.

"What are you doing?" Naofumi had a idea, looking at the flow of energy that was going around Kaede's body.

"Doing what your system was doing before, but better, no one has to die to do this." Naofumi blinked for a moment before he let out a sigh and walked over to Kaede, putting his hand on her head.

"It's called cultivation." Kaede felt a variety of things activate inside of her body and change internally. "It's a process that's meant to be done gradually, but it seems you're trying to be reckless so this can't be helped. I'll let you know how changing your body will produce what results, the rest is up to you." Kaede obtained new knowledge.

Huh she was wondering about that. Stats were the manipulation of a conceptual magic cast on the entire world that she came from, manipulating numbers in their raw form to gain power, this however was about strengthening and rebuilding her body, something that she's already done before. Naofumi obtained his indestructible body through conceptual magic, establishing the concept of 'Adamant' or 'Unbreakable' which means that he could never be broken but could never break either, including doing harm to others. To use another example Raccoon had been imbued with the concept of 'Destroyer' meaning that she was capable of destroying anything but anything could destroy her as well. But Kaede was looking for a different path.

To expose a pivotal weakness to the girls Naofumi brought them to a world without supernatural phenomena, but that only meant that the world itself wasn't supernatural, to overcome that weakness you have to bring the Supernatural with you.

Spirit, Space, Metamorphsis, this combination was the storage of energy but she also needed to generate it.

"Um, if I mixed together spirit with Time that would increase the rate that I'm producing spirit energy right?" Kaede suggested while scratching her head.

"And burn out your soul if not your body." Naofumi drily replied.

"Oh... um, then gravity to draw it into my body!" Kaede shouted as if solving the answer.

"And suck it out of every living this in the surrounding area in the process." Naofumi stated bluntly. Nothing in life was free it would seem.

"I suppose creation's out then." As Kaede said that Naofumi cocked an amused eye at her. "It isn't? But that's just about manipulating inorganic material." Kaede paced back and forth as she thought about it more.

"Kaede, do you remember what the seven magics came from?" Naofumi asked looking at Kaede pointedly.

"Gods?" Then a thought occurred. "Oh I get it! Because the gods created everything using conceptual magic then I can use it to manipulate the rules like you and Mom did right?" Naofumi let out a sigh of disappointment. "That's not right?"

"You are right about one thing." Naofumi held his hand down on the sand and it started to glow. "The gods did create everything that currently exists." Naofumi raised up his hand, taking a small statuette out with it. "But they created it out of 'something else' something that was here first. And that includes humans." Naofumi stated as he held out his hand for Kaede to take.

"And what was that 'something else' they made it out of?" Kaede asked taking her father's hand.

"If I had to describe it in simple terms, I would say 'potential.' But luckily I don't have to." Naofumi indicated the space beyond the standing stones. "I can show you instead." Kaede accepted her father, feeling the warm grace of dedicated affection pooling over her as the two of them stepped over the line into the space beyond. Kaede was thrown on a trip, the first few steps was like being on a roller coaster without any seat belts, the next few steps afterwards felt like the the roller coaster was being picked up by a hurricane, while it was still fully active, after that it felt like the whole kit and kaboodle went sailing off into a black hole. And then reality abruptly went back to normal and Kaede threw up.

"Yeah, that's a common first time reaction." First, Second, third, hundredth, thousandth...

"That's 'inconvenient'?" Kaede asked looking at her father incredulously.

"It is for me, and it is to the one we're keeping prisoner here." Naofumi helped his daughter to her feet and wiped the vomit off of her face.

"Well at least we're on the other side now." Kaede stated as she let out a sigh.

"That was just twenty three layers, we're on twenty four right now and we still have forty eight left to go." Kaede made a horrified face as Naofumi finished cleaning her off. "We might as well watch the exhibit while you're waiting to recover." Naofumi led Kaede to a statue depicting a creature that looked like a hippopotamus. The statues was weird, the hippo looked like one of those dissection statues you see at the doctor's office, but it's bones were made out of copper, it's muscles were iron, it's sinew's a quilt, and it's tail was made out of a cedar branch.

"What is this thing?" Kaede asked looking just plain confused.

"The Behemoth." Naofumi breathed in deeply as he let out a sigh. "I'm ready to move on whenever you are." Kaede looked her father in the eyes, they told her he wasn't ready to keep going, and not because of what they went through or were going to go through to get there.

"What is this place?" Kaede asked looking afraid.

"A prison, or it would be if we were actually capable of holding the one we were keeping here prisoner." Naofumi replied as he relaxed next to her.

"I understand why they might not want to go through that, but what does this statue do?" Kaede asked looking confused.

"It tells a story, or it's beginning anyway about the prisoner that's being kept here." Naofumi stated letting out a sigh. "This statue describes what its body is like."

"And what does that do?" Kaede asked looking increasingly concerned.

"It makes him think he's beaten." Naofumi stated bluntly as he stood up. "Break's over, next."

The first few steps Kaede knew what the world looked like through a kaledioscope, a few more and she knew what the world looked like through hallucinogens, a few more and she understood what the world looked like to a rainbow. And then reality snapped back to normal again.

"Blegh." Kaede would be throwing up right now but her stomach was still empty from the first time so right now she was just dry heaving.

"You might wanna stay on your feet here, this area is a little more dangerous than the last." Kaede looked up and saw a fight going on, a large Shark like creature, a Hippo like creature, and a bird like creature were all fighting each other, tearing off pieces of one another's flesh, which then disappeared in a flash of light, only for the wounds to be healed again. "The battle between Behemoth and his rivals in the sea and sky Leviathan and Ziz." Naofumi explained before Kaede got the chance to ask. Kaede did not like the sight of watching the three animals fighting each other, getting a bizarre feeling of familiarity from them like her friends were trying to tear each other apart.

"Can we go now?" Naofumi nodded his head and led Kaede through the remaining 24 layers, she didn't even want to think about what it was like there, she just shut her eyes and moved on.

"You're in luck. There's food in this one." Naofumi had led Kaede into an area that reminded her of the tavern from the village, there were even a variety of people that were eating the food being served.

"And this?" Kaede made her confusion known.

"After those three monsters killed each other their flesh was used to feed and shelter the righteous at the end of days." Naofumi explained and Kaede heard a sigh, looking over to the kitchen area she understood why. There was another Naofumi working in the kitchen area.

"Why did you bring her here?" Naofumi the 2nd stated making his displeasure known.

"She wanted to come here." Naofumi the 1st explained in simple terms. "She wanted to know what we're doing to ourselves."

"Good luck sleeping kid." The Second Naofumi just shook his head as more food teleported in, ah, so that's where the missing chunks of flesh from before were going. "The monster is behind that door though, be careful though, there's a bit of a walk to get there."

"Is there more warped space?" Kaede asked looking concerned.

"Nope, just a horror show, I'd eat first if I was you, throwing up on an empty stomach isn't good for anyone." The second Naofumi stated as he put a steak on the counter for Kaede, which was quite tasty. After their meal Kaede and her father continued on their way through the door. Kaede was greeted by the sight of a mountain, one that had a seven foot gap between it and the ground.

"Mount Everest, five of them to be precise." Naofumi explained prompting Kaede to look at her father shocked. "Yeah, I know it's excessive. Just one would be enough to pin down a god level figure, and this isn't even the limit of the restraints." Naofumi explained as he began walking underneath the mountain with Kaede. "Aside from this we're also feeding him iron and copper every day, keeping him frozen up to his waist in water, have him nailed to a cross, tied up up with a rope made out of wolf intestine, dripping snake venom into his eyes..."

"This sounds like you're torturing him." Kaede snapped making her opinion known.

"It is torture." Naofumi informed unapologetically. "Each of these methods of restraint represents the methods used to restrain 'the enemies of the gods.' Specifically Son Wukong, Lucifer and Loki. Because of this we're able to 'make him think he's restrained.'"

"That walk was to make it inconvenient for him, that show was to make him think he's beaten, and this torture was to make him think he's restrained. What happens when he just gets up and decides to leave?" Kaede asked looking concerned.

"We all die." Just as simple as that.

"Well, he's also sitting on a nuke, but that's more to tell us when he finally get up off his arse."

Oh yeah, that made her feel better.

True to their predictions the two of them arrived near the epicentre of the mountain, but Naofumi stopped Kaede from getting any closer either. A giant figure was kneeling on the ground, up to his waist was a frozen mass of ice, both of his arms were stretched out and nailed to a cross, a rope had been tied around his body while acidic liquid was dripping into his eyes.

"Not a pretty sight is it?" Naofumi stated as Kaede shook her head in the negative.

"What is it though?"

"It's me." Naofumi stated as Kaede looked up at her father. "I'm the Behemoth." Naofumi stated as he sat down. "So yes, the gods came in and shaped creation, out with the old and in with the new. And in creation they found life, rambunctious, unrepentant life of infinite potential that had no real limitations and just did what they wanted all day. So it did whatever it wanted, to who ever it wanted, a state of complete anarchy, so they brought order, rules, changed the creatures before them into a new form and that was humanity." Naofumi indicated himself. "Humanity." And then the Behemoth that was locked away. "Creature of infinite possibilities." And the Naofumi put his finger on Kaede's chest.

"Am I... like that?" Kaede asked concerned.

"No, you're not the same as me. You are about as different from me as a daughter and Father." Naofumi lowered his hand as Kaede looked down at her hands. "And you are going to have to decide who you want to be."

"I... I can decide?" Kaede asked looking up at her father.

"For one thing, I don't want that for you." Naofumi stated indicating the prisoner. "And I don't think you do either." Kaede shook her head in the negative. "What you are cannot be changed. Who you are can only be decided by your actions. When I came to the world I was summoned to I fed and clothed the desperate and the broken, and they in turn rose up as warriors, heroes and saviours to protect the world around them. That was my nature. Now let's have a look at yours." Naofumi put his hand on Kaede's head.

Kaede fell into a black void, and when she looked up, she saw a giant white mass looming over her, if she stretched and craned her neck she could see flaring nostrils the length of the horizon. The head lowered itself down and stared at Kaede with slitted serpentine eyes as tall as a mountain.

Kaede came out of the vision screaming, Naofumi had to grab her and hold her close while her screaming dialed down into mere hyperventilation, quietly shushing her all along the way. Kaede was too drained by what had happened to make anymore complaints as they made their way out of the last layer of the warped space, funnily enough before she realised it she had adjusted back to normal, funny what a few dozen layers of space ripping it self apart will do to you.

"You knew what that was all along didn't you? You knew what I am." Kaede asked feeling tired. Unimaginably tired.

"It took quite a few tries before the old gods got to where we are now. What you saw was one of their first attempts, Jormangandr, the world serpent." Naofumi explained letting out a sigh.

"I think Lisa showed me a game with him once..." Kaede struggled to recall. "He's a poisonous snake... who's supposed to eat... the..." If Kaede wasn't so tired, she would probably muse the irony of all those lectures she got about using her shield to suck things inside of it. Naofumi just let out a sigh as he brought his daughter back home, their actual home, and put her to bed. "Dad." Naofumi looked back at the bed while Kaede was looking up at him, struggling between sleeping and waking. "Am I going to..."

"Your decisions are your own." Naofumi stated in no uncertain terms. "That is the gift they gave us. Not even that snake can take that away from you, nor does she want to." Naofumi stated bluntly.

"She?" Maple asked struggling to keep her eyes open.

"Of course, she is a part of you Kaede, you don't have to be afraid of her." Naofumi stated as he rubbed Kaede on her face. "And if you're clever, you might be able to help her."

"Help..." And then Kaede drifted into unconsciousness.

Kaede was drowning, she was rumbling and tumbling through the current trying to stay afloat and she was drowning. But no she was not.

"Calm down." Kaede told the her that was inside of her. "I know that it was scary, and that you had a hard time, but if we don't calm down then we won't be able to move forward." The Black void again, scales a large as a mountain appeared behind her as the familiar horizon wide nostril appeared in front of her. "It's okay. I don't want to hurt you." A thought occurred. "Can you do something about your size? It's had to talk to you like this." A memory, if she could do something about her size then she wouldn't have been tossed into the ocean. "That is a problem." Kaede appeared on top of the snake's face before her eyes, but she wasn't looking into them. "For now..." Kaede was looking around the void, trying to get an idea of what was going on, saw the grey shackle, and the spike that was going through it and the snake's body.

"Doesn't that hurt? Let me get that for you." Kaede was about to swim over to the shackle but the snake shook its head. "What's the matter? You don't want to remove it?" The snake nodded its head, and took Kaede with it. "Huu. Just like I thought, it's too hard to talk to you like this." Kaede created a mirror in the void, and she saw the snake on the other side of the reflection. When the Snake looked in the mirror she saw Kaede. "See that wasn't so hard." The snake was so confused as Kaede pulled it out of the mirror and wrapped it around herself, and its several shackles. "Now let's do something about these." Kaede worked to remove the shackles but the Snake used its head to push her hands aside. Looking at the chains Kaede saw that they were coming out of her body. "The chains lead back to me? Am I the one hurting you?" The Snake shook her head. Not hurting, restraining, holding her back.

"You... don't want to be you, do you?" The snake nodded her head, of course she didn't want to be a monster that only knows how to grow bigger and eat things. She was tossed into the ocean because of that, she was torn away from her father because of that, Kaede Harrumphed in displeasure. "I'm tired of all these rules where people get hurt or people have to suffer for no good reason!" Kaede snapped and then she got to work. Pulling out a collar Kaede snapped it around Jormangandr's neck, the leash led to Kaede's hand. "There! That's your new shackle." And then all the spiked shackles disappeared. Kaede felt a great swell of fear, from the snake, from herself. "That's not enough eh?" Then Kaede whipped out several ribbons and tied them along Jormangandr's body. "There! That should do it." The Snake was just confused now. "You don't have to hurt yourself to hold yourself back, you just need practice." Kaede draped the snake around herself. "Here, let me show you." Kaede offered the serpent her hand, and the creature took her hand. "There we go, you're doing it already."

When Kaede woke up she released a stretch, like she just went through a brand new day. And when she opened her eyes up she saw that the HUD was back.

"Well now that's weird." She looked through her list of stats, which wasn't there any more nor was her level, shield's have descriptions, some of them had skills like the Noble Phantasms but most of them just came up blank. When Kaede went down stairs she was greeted by her parents. Raphtalia, or rather Raccoon, or rather Rachel Kaede's mother was sitting on the couch reading a paper while Naofumi was working in the kitchen.

"Where are the other heroes?" Maple asked looking at the group suspiciously.

"Tanya was right about one thing, the impersonal method wasn't going to accomplish much, we needed to take a more personalised method for each of them." Naofumi explained bluntly as he finished making breakfast. "I'm going to be working with the vassals again today correcting the problems with their own gears." Rachel, just because that's what Kaede knew her as, explained reading through the paper.

"Problems?" Kaede asked looking at Raphtalia suspiciously who sighed and put the paper away.

"This is called Canis Lykaon." Rachel explained holding up a black and white Katana. "A copy to be more accurate, the original had the King of Arcadia Lycaon, transformed into a werewolf by a divine curse, along with the sword holy sword Ame-no-ohabari, sealed together. The Holy and cursed power weakened each other reducing Lycaon to a mere dog and the sword into a mere curse blade. But I don't manifest a werewolf or a dog but rather this." From Rachel's shadow a single Raph-chan like tanuki emerged.

"Rafu!" The creature then jumped onto Kaede and climbed onto her head.

"Do you know why this is?" To Rachel's question Kaede picked up the Tanuki and held it in front of her face, watching the cute little ball of fluff swish her tail back and forth.

"The original form of the sacred gear can't manifest outside of the world you were protecting can it?" Kaede thought about it for a while, if the Sacred Gear's powers work on 'telling the world to do this' then it only made sense.

"Correct, I instead had to make my own power and the sacred gear one." Rachel whistled and the Tanuki went back into her shadow. "By the looks of things you've sort of done the same thing. You've opened up your own potential, but most of the power from the old days is still sealed away. Well that's fine." Rachel stated letting out a sigh. "You don't want to be like that do you?" Kaede shook her head. "Your possibilities have just opened up, your Legendary weapon's ability to change forms again is proof of that." Kaede proudly brandished her Yew Wood shield depicting a nest of snakes painted on the surface. "I already had a Sacred Gear though." Kaede stated as she switched over to the form in question.

"Yes, your reestablished connection is proof enough of that."

"I'm just as surprised as you are." To their surprise, Maple's Sacred gear spoke up. Aloud.

"Ost?" Kaede asked taking off her shield and holding it to her face. "It's good to see that you're doing well Kaede."

"How are you talking now?" Kaede asked looking confused.

"It's normal for the creature inside of a gear to be able to talk to their hosts. The ones that can talk that is, not all of them are able to." Rachel stated shrugging her shoulders.

"We'll circle back around. How are you feeling Kaede?" Naofumi asked looking at his daughter.

"...Hungry I guess?" Kaede stated shrugging her shoulders. "If you mean how things went with... me I guess... she's suffered a lot. We both have, but we don't need to, or at least we shouldn't have to." Kaede went through her shield transformations, found the one that she was looking for and brought out Syrup. "What happened to her to make her like that?"

"...she was hurt, abused emotionally and separated from her family at a young age." Naofumi stated in simple terms, but that only made Kaede mad. "The ones that break off the chains, the ones you had to deal with, means severing themselves from their humanity, we call them Desperado's. The Power is maddening and addictive, it's not easy to pull them back, you have to make them want to go back." Kaede tightened her hands into fists.

"You have to make them so scared of themselves that they want to go back?" Kaede asked and Naofumi nodded. "How many times has this happened to her?"

"I honestly have no idea, it's not like we interviewed ancient eldritch horrors when we conceived you." Naofumi stated giving a put upon sigh.

"Hmmph!" Kaede just pouted in response even as Naofumi finished making her breakfast for her.

"But at the end of the day you and Jormangandr are one, you weren't just treating her emotional and mental wounds you were treating your own." Naofumi explained in a patient tone of voice. "But you have the patience to explore your own possibilities and the maturity to understand in which direction you want those possibilities to lean into. You aren't like the ones who used brute force to snap off their own chains."

"One's like you and Mom?" Kaede asked looking up at her father concerned.

"Don't lump me in with his bad life choices." Rachel stated indicating Naofumi. "This knucklehead snapped his own humanity off Millenia ago, scattered it to the winds of the void and made a few thousand sanity milk shakes to slowly feed to that thing he showed you one at a time." Rachel snapped indicating her husband with her blade. "Now we have to wait for them to die off one by one so that we can put him back together again."

"So when you said we all die...?" Kaede naturally followed up.

"Me and my alternate selves. I'm not looking forward to when that happens."

Review Section:

RonaldM40196867: True, True. Katarina can.

hermitfan: She is talented, or insane whichever one works.

Guest: True.

xerad: Tribulation breaks down and rebuilds the body, the System is still a crutch that supports supernatural phenomena, a crutch that is now removed. As for the Sacred Gear no it is not the only system, it is though the one that is least likely to create more desperado's and can be used for more than just killing gods. Your last sentence was poorly constructed and hard to understand.