Author's Note: Not a lot to say right now, need to go write stories bye! Read, Review, Favourite and Enjoy!
Chapter 125: The Demons of the Spear
Katarina wasn't sure if she was making good progress or bad. On the one hand she had managed to acquire weapon transformations relating to several demons that she now had contracts with, King Cerberus, Alraune, Hydra, together with Baal she had four of the five elements in demon form, all that was left was a metal type demon. On the other hand though, all of the demons she's been visiting have been weirdly scared out of their minds, like they had run into a horrible monster. When asked they talked about poison, snakes, explosions, clearly something traumatised them quite fiercely but Katarina hadn't figured out what it was yet, instead of proving her worth through life or death combat she was instead consoling them telling them everything would be okay. Well it wasn't anywhere near proper but better or worst Katarina had made contracts with them.
Still the treks between each location was long, Katarina could only spend a few hours travelling between locations before she inevitably had to return to and tend to Baal again, besides she was quite knowledgeable about each of the locations she was travelling to. Thus Katarina had once more returned to Baal's side and was massaging her shoulders as she soaked in a tub, hands inside of protective gloves made from the skin of a local creature, less the acidic water eat through her hands.
"So this Rodin guy is basically the top weapon maker in Inferno?" Katarina asked while Baal regaled her with stories of her next target.
"Inferno and Paradiso." Baal explained finger in the air correcting. "He was originally one of Paradiso's where he was known as the creator. Before he-ooh!" Katarina popped something while she was working, but Baal seemed to like it so she continued. "Before it was found out his weapons were being used in a rebellion and he was cast out. Some say he chose to leave of his own accord though. We call him the Destroyer."
"Destroyer?" Katarina asked sounding confused. "He hunts us demons, takes pieces of our bodies to use as materials in weapons and powers them with our souls. He deals in both creation and destruction, claiming that they feed into one another." Baal slovenly sunk to the tub as Katarina worked.
"To what end?" Katarina asked looking more and more concerned by the moment.
"Profit of course." Baal explained as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. "He deals in multiple businesses including weapons, food and entertainment." The guy was originally an angel who was cast out of Paradiso after all, so it only made sense that he didn't actually live down here in Inferno. If that's the case then he would naturally want to live away from both sides in any number of possible human realms, and needed money towards that end. While thinking about this a notification appeared in Katarina's vision telling her that she would be heading for the Human realm in a few moments.
"Does that mean I can find Rodin back on my world?" Katarina asked looking concerned.
"If you are practising the Umbral arts as you are supposed to be, then he will find you." That wasn't ominous at all.
On that note Katarina returned to her room in the human world. Katarina concentrated on her 'clothes,' in this case a reddish brown maid outfit, and let them fall away back into her waist length reddish brown hair. The Umbral arts referred to the techniques used by a clan of ancient demon contractors who would make contracts with demons offering their souls for incredible power, it was the same clan techniques that Naofumi used to summon demons under his command to fight for him. These days most demons aren't interested in souls, apparently the quality of most of them had dropped dramatically, unless it's one of the few specimens that demons would clamour over each other for, then they'll do everything in their power to get their hands on it. Katarina had the soul of a former goddess so she should fit into the latter category but it never came up, maybe because Baal was protecting her? In any case Katarina just threw on some of her PJ's while she talked to her weapon.
"So we'll have enough for all five after Rodin right?" After tying up her hair for the night Katarina turned the spear into a hair pin and put it inside.
"Correct." The consciousness belonging to the Gungnir explained bluntly. "You'll have plenty of demonic power after you can get all five going at once, of course they'll pale in comparison to the Sacred Gear."
The Sorceress was starting to show through for Katarina, hence why part of her hair was turning red. It seems that the cloak would directly integrate with the Umbral hair suit thing that she wore whenever she went down to inferno, she hoped all of her hair didn't turn red though, that would just be inconvenient.
"What about unlocking the weapons we talked about already, like that one that Kuro mentioned before?"
"The Rhongomyniad. Aye, if it isn't the most powerful among the Noble Phantasms, I shudder to imagine what is." The weapon stated and Katarina got the feeling of goose bumps just as collateral damage.
"But what is it?" Katarina asked wondering what this absurdly powerful thing was that people were talking about. "The worlds exist in layers, you already saw another one Inferno, there are others as well. Rhongomyniad is a lynch pin holding together these worlds enabling travel between them." The weapon explained and Katarina visibly cringed.
"Isn't that a bad thing?" Katarina asked looking legitimately concerned.
"If the souls couldn't pass through between the layers, death would be impossible, no one would be able to eat anything and instead of dying would just continue to suffer through their injuries." The talking hair pin explained bluntly.
"I guess that makes sense. What kinds of equip bonuses does it give again?" Katarina, finished getting dressed, asked as she climbed into bed.
"Hero Growth bonus, 1000%." Katarina sat up straight in awe at that.
"1-"
"Shh..."
"1000?" Katarina asked nearly screaming in shock.
"Quite." The weapon replied.
"Well that's all well and good but so what? I'm not getting stats anymore right?" Katarina asked suspiciously.
"No you're not. I believe it references it's wielder Artoria Pendragon. Originally the sword Excalibur caused her to become physically immortal at age 15, however when she lost the sword but gained the lance her body rapidly aged to a physically and mentally mature form suitable as king." Okay, if the Noble Phantasms turned their history into abilities then that made sense.
"So does it have any other abilities or am I going to turn into an adult as soon as I use it?"
"Probably not, and besides the weapon does have other abilities. Fortress for instance. Its outer shell will instantly transform into a massive construct spanning the size of a city acting as a massive near impenetrable fortress. This is a derivative of its power to assume the role of the pin connecting worlds together, which takes the form of a tower though the severe distortion produced in the process can also destroy the world." 1000 levels was too small a number for such a dangerous power in Katarina's honest opinion.
"How does a Spear make a fortress!?" Katarina asked in shock.
"Interplanary lynch pin. Did you assume that something that was designed to cross dimensions and hold planets together would be small?" The weapon sounded pretty sarcastic right now.
Well it was just a copy after all, even if Kuro had been supporting it with Crafting bonuses she wasn't here to do that right now, so unless Katarina imbues it with some frankly monstrous reinforcements it's not going to regain it's full power any time soon.
"What about what we talked about before about using it to protect me against the influence of demonic energy?" Katarina asked sounding concerned. "It doesn't sound like it worked for that Rodin guy very well."
"Demonic and Holy power are two sides of the same coin, one is the most nutritional food source for the other and both are violently allergic to each other's existence." The weapon explained.
"So the Lance is actually vulnerable to the effects of demonic influence?" Katarina asked sounding concerned. "It'll protect you against the influence of weaker demonic power, so unless you're exposed to the miasma of a demonic god you'll be protected." Okay, that's good to know. "We need to discuss our next target after Rodin."
"What kind of demon are we going after next?" Katarina asked as she tucked herself into bed, her spear knew more about them than she did, a side effect of Baal's mic stand she assumed.
"Gomorrah, the Devourer of the Divine." The Weapon replied bluntly as Katarina started yawning.
"He sounds like he's a Sacred Gear in the making just by himself." Katarina noted bluntly.
"He's a monster whose favourite food is divine and other heavenly beings, the species vast brute power combined with ravenous appetite for angels makes them first pick for contracts for new witches."
"Why does it sound like there's more than one of them?" Katarina asked concerned. "Because there is, there's an entire forest in hell full of the beasts." The Spear explained bluntly.
"Lovely." But that was a concern for tomorrow, for now, sleep.
The next day Katarina had a tonne of preparations she had to make for Sophia's birthday party, dress to put on, make up to get done up, really it was more people making preparations for Katarina while she sat around and cooperated. She had the perfect gift ready too! An absolutely scandalous novel of swords, sorcery and romance, the perfect thing to let her imagination run wild. And Baal would love it too! Once Anne and the other maids finished with her for the time being Katarina seriously stopped to consider how her life came to be like this. In a time span that probably spanned a year she had went over to Sophia's house to read some romance books, got dragged into another world by one of them, fought gods, reincarnated terrorists, discovered a affinity for dark magic, became a hero, and now she was chasing down demons and making contracts with them. Then of all things a scent of Rosemary drifted on the air.
"Oh come on! I just got dressed!" Complaining like that, Katarina waved her hand and a red magic circle appeared over the window leading outside, allowing her to see into the dimension of Purgatorio which serves as a between realm between the mundane, infernal and heavenly realms, revealing winged centaur looking things with wings made out of marble and gold and decorated in blue.
Katarina just let out a sigh of complaint. Time magic could be used to fix her make up and clothes later right? It was better to deal with them now before something happened. So Katarina stepped through the portal, her mortal clothing left behind as a red and brown dress wrapped around her body. Katarina's umbran garb resembled a red body suit with a cloak draped over her shoulders, golden thread leaving a trail of embroidery going up her legs and across the cloak in question, a features obscuring hood and cloth mask over her face, it was a rather basic ensemble that protected her entire body in a weave of her own self regenerating hair, approximately the same tensile strength as steel and woven into a material resembling kevlar, it's protective properties further enhanced by being able to magically regrow to fill any gaps cut open by enemy attacks.
"Let's get this over with: Spear Wall!" A wall of three hundred reddish orange spears appeared behind Katarina, similar to the Air strike shield used by Maple. However Katarina wasn't done with this technique as of yet. "Change Spear: Gungnir!" All the spears transformed at once, turned into a Noble Phantasm whose anti-magic properties were further supplemented by three kinds of auto-locking magic. "Air Strike Javelin!"
As one, all the spears disappeared at the same time, lodging themselves into the bodies of hundreds of angels all at once, not just the ones that Katarina had seen but also the ones who were floating above in the sky and hiding in another dimension. After a few short moments the entire sky began raining down with golden rings, the halos of angels which Baal recommended that Katarina collect any time that she finds them, why she's not entirely sure because when she unlocked a weapon with them they weren't very powerful, nor was the effect very potent from using them as material to reinforce weapons. But regardless Katarina wiggled her fingers and released trails of Ki through the air catching the falling rings and guiding them to land at her feet to get sucked into her spear's storage compartment.
"I know that you're out there!" Katarina shouted as she looked up into the air at the angel that she knew was there. After having to skewer these punk angels three times already Katarina had gotten a idea of how they work by now: scout the area with weaker angels, then send in the big ones to finish off any threats that they may find. "Not coming out on your own? Fine then! Stake Field." The Noble Phantasm courtesy of Vlad Tepes the III, Kazikli Bey, reportedly Impalement was a favoured method of execution by the lord of Romania used largely to rid his lands of corrupt nobility, reportedly Vlad used this bloody method to kill one hundred thousand of his own citizens on suspicions of corruption, let alone anyone else. This power manifests as an anti-army ability manifesting 20 000 wooden stakes to skewer the enemy, each of them mundane with the exception of a curse that increases the pain of the one who was skewered on them. Purgatorio largely left the mortal world alone, unless you're using specific spells or exceptionally powerful ones, with the exception of it's sheer numbers the stake field was mostly harmless, just as a extra precaution Katarina worked with her weapon to avoid people, animals or objects. Besides she wasn't planning on skewering anyone with the skill, yet, she was waiting for all this cursed vaguely demon like energy to make the angel hiding out above to think that there was a massive flood of weak demons here. True to Katarina's predictions a much more massive heavenly sigil came through the air and Katarina's response was a sigh of exhaustion. "You again." Katarina couldn't even be bothered to remember this loser's name she's killed it so many times already, a giant upside down marble head with wings coming out of it's chin and a pair of dragon heads coming out of the forehead.
"Change Spear Gungnir!" The sea of 20 000 spears turned into the familiar Gungnir. "Reflect Spear Sorceress of the East." The spear's turned into a hybrid of the Gungnir and the splitting spear that was Katarina's Sacred Gear in its base form. The twenty thousand spears all disappeared at once, skewering into the Draconic angel leaving no surface unstabbed as it fled back into Paradiso, a brief spout of flame from the closing gate telling Katarina everything she needed to know about the creature's fate. Even if it was just a avatar it would take a little while before it could return to it's full power, Katarina didn't have the time to deal with these little annoyances that aren't even going to improve her Sacred Gear any. Instead Katarina just went back to the dressing room, and used time magic to slip back into her clothes and make up before anyone noticed that she had left. Right on time for her mother to show up.
"Good, you've actually stayed in one place for once." Katarina's mother simply indicated for her to follow along and she did so, arriving at the carriage where her mother's wolf hound, that Katarina knew for a fact she didn't have before she was summoned as a hero, was waiting for her. The two noble women sat down together inside, Keith who looked absolutely adorable today in his little tuxedo was sitting across from them, while Setsuna rested her head between them, in Katarina's vision a meter indicating the total amount of demonic corruption she had been exposed to was steadily dropping. The Carriage ride gave the young Spear Hero room to think. Katarina's presence and status as a newly inducted Umbra Witch basically gave hell a foothold into her world, and because all things were balanced so too had the angels she's been massacring been given a foothold too.
When Katarina finds Naofumi she was going to shove her spear up his arse. Why was Katarina massacring angels? Aside from them attacking her all the time they also had a bad habit of abducting the souls of the recently deceased and carting them off to heaven to be turned into more mindless angel drones to be thrown at Katarina. The demons weren't any better, on more than one occasion she's had to skewer one of the jerks that were trying to drag off some poor bastard's soul off to hell to torture them into new demon foot soldiers. So Katarina was dealing double duty. While dealing with those implications Katarina arrived at Sophia's house, similar carriages carrying the princely twins and Mary were parked ahead of them while Sophia and Nicole were already waiting for them in the garden. Standing next to the two was an unfamiliar face.
By now Katarina had a rough idea of the ethnicity of the world that she's found herself in, Caucasian white skin, red hair, blonde, black, this makes sense, for any particularly extreme divide to form in terms of appearance it would require the two cultures to be separated for a significant period of time. Opposite of what she was used to the man dressed as a butler seemingly attending to Nicole and Sophia was a hugely muscular black bald man, wearing sunglasses of all things. Katarina wasn't even sure that this world progressed enough to have glasses let alone sunglasses. The frankly terrifying black man led the children into the garden while Katarina's mother went to hang out with Sophia's and Nicole's parents. A few minutes later a Phonograph had been carted in, something that Katarina knew this world didn't have the technology for, and a record was played on it. The world flashed before Katarina's eyes and she found herself not in the garden where she was having tea and snacks with the others but instead a seedy underground bar, literally underground if the rough hewn stone ceiling was any indication.
"I knew something was up!" Katarina snapped as she realised she didn't even get to finish her tea.
"So tell me something. How is the Demon of the Shield doing?" The black man was now behind the bar, cleaning a martini glass with a cloth.
"Maple?" Katarina asked looking at the frankly terrifying black man with suspicion.
"Her father." The Black Butler corrected.
"Can you punch him twice for me if you see him?" Katarina asked thinking back to all the angels that she had to kill because of that guy.
"Might take a while, too many of my other clients have made the same or similar requests." Katarina mouthed the implications of the term, looked around her and saw words written above the bar in English: The Gates of Hell.
"Rodin?" Katarina asked looking at the man in question with suspicion.
"I heard you were looking for me." The man named Rodin replied by way of confirmation.
"So is there something I have to do to get a spear from you or is there something you wanna talk about like the others?" Katarina asked looking around the bar and wondering what Rodin wanted with her.
"Naofumi's got you spoiled." It certainly didn't feel that way to Katarina.
"I am a business man, what I want is to do business with you." Rodin explained as he indicated a sign, various wares below a sign that had pictures of both golden rings and red circles indicating prices. The items for sale were spectacular, countless weapons made using bits and pieces of demons like Baal mentioned, all useless to Katarina who had a legendary weapon. Aside from that there were various potions each of them with unique effects, and several lolipops that apparently promised unique buffs as you sucked on them.
"I know that the rings are halos..." Which explains why Baal told her to collect them. "But what are the red circles?"
"Red Orbs. Globs of crystalised demon blood. Bring me a million Halo's and a million Red Orbs, then we'll see about a contract." Once again the Witch Trainer interface appeared in Katarina's vision, progress meters that empty to the point of see through indicating Halo's and Red Orbs. Maybe she can ask Baal for an allowance...
'Rodin the Infinite One is the merchant between worlds, to earn his contract you must defeat him after empowering him with 1 000 000 Halos and 1 000 000 Red Orbs'
"If you're not buying anything today you might as well be on your way."
"Shouldn't I save my money up for the contract?" Katarina asked looking concerned, but Rodin laughed at her instead.
"The thing that you're buying isn't a contract, it's a chance to earn my contract." Meaning that she couldn't even buy it? "But I'm not such a cheap skate that I won't let you buy other things with your hard earned funds. After all I said 'Bring to me' money not 'buy the ticket with money.'"
Katarina just let out a sigh by way of reply, even as the new pop up appeared.
She bought several potions and sweets, unlocked new weapons, then went back to Sophia's party. The Girls all had a sleep over and when the time came to go to bed Katarina was transported back to Inferno.
Baal had lent Katarina a variety of demonic animals to use as mounts as needed, right now it was the horse Diomedes, a giant six limb blade headed demonic unicorn who was charging over the plains of hell. Katarina looked down at her interface, to make a contract with this horse she had to ride for a certain period with it, right now it was still a long way to go. But that would wait until later, for now Katarina had come for the certifiable god killer that she was told about, Gomorrah.
"Thanks!" Katarina shouted waving at the horse who refused to enter Johnson forest with her. Instead Katarina had to enter on foot, and as promised it wasn't long until she met the monster she had been looking for, a gigantic, Godzilla looking monster that was stomping through the woods. For now Katarina decided to see if she could tempt him with his favourite food and so took out several halo's and threw them at the big lug. "Excuse me!" The Giant monster looked down at Katarina and glared at her. "I want to make a contract with you!" The monster glared at the small child. A new pop up appeared in Katarina's vision.
'Gomorrah, Devourer of the Divine, is a demon whose favourite food is angels. To complete this contract you must bring 1000 angels for it to feast upon. Failure to complete this task will have you eaten in place of the angels.'
Katarina's face twitched.
"Excuse me for a moment while I go and bring you your angels." Katarina stated as she went off to the side for a small stretch of distance, just long enough to make the big lizard antsy.
"We got enough 'Miracle' to unlock the Rhongomyniad right?" Katarina asked looking down at the spear concerned.
"Considering the fact that we're standing in the middle of one of the most dangerous forests in Inferno, under the watchful gaze of a creature that I specifically told you not to provoke? Yes we can use the Divine Lance." The weapon that Katarina's spear turned into resembled a giant white jousting lance, the entire thing was hollow, the shell the Spear was talking about before wrapped around a white spear. "I should point out to you that even though the Rhongomyniad is far weaker than the true weapon it is still radiating divine essence in a place full of creatures that like to eat the divine!"
'Rhongomyniad: Even though it is only a degraded copy, the legendary spear still connects together heaven and earth even if it creates only the smallest of openings now.'
The Holy Grail System wasn't able to recreate true divine weapons, and Kuro was only able to give them a degraded copy of that. Hopefully it would be strong enough for Katarina's idea because otherwise they were about to get eaten.
"Here's hoping. Stake Field!" Twenty Thousand spears erupted throughout the Johnson woods. "Change Spear: Rhongomyniad!" If one spear couldn't do what Katarina needed it to, maybe 20 000 could. A wave of holy power erupted throughout hell as 20 000 divine spears appeared everywhere at once. "Fortress!"
20 000 Lances released their power all at the same time, converging and combining together into a singular massive tower that literally pierced the heavens. A flood of Angels spilled through the tower and were released into the Johnson wood attacking the various demons that had been gathered together. Such a massive divine construct? Located in the pits of hell itself? Such things wouldn't stand! It needed to be protected until it can be transported back to safety! So naturally the two forces clashed. Katarina sat in a isolated pocket of the tower, several bars indicating multiple Gomorrah's in the process of being tamed started to fill while the skimmed halos and orbs shed during the ensuing war flooded into the room and were being fed directly into her spear while Katarina had tea.
Suddenly Katarina's features warped into one of horror, here she was with a weapon that turned into an impenetrable fortress, drinking tea and having snacks while her spear passively absorbed materials and worked to unlock a monster transformation for her, one that would in all likelihood stack with the Spear of the Beast King and the Tranzdorkis mech armour which would give her access to multiple weapon transformations and a hideously powerful new form at the same time.
"Dear god! I'm turning into Maple!"
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