Author's Notes: Not a lot to say today. Read, Review Favourite and enjoy!
Chapter 127: Jewel Hero's Development Diary
The Aub was in a predicament. On the one hand 5 nobles, 12 public officials, 15 knights, and over 30 devouring sufferers turned knights had all been eliminated. So the Archduke of Ehrenfest had two choices, either to accept the fact that someone had cleaned up the excessive corruption in his ranks and move on with his time or hunt down and execute the rail thin grey robe priest who had been responsible. Even if he was corrupt to his core, one of the first of the quote unquote 'victims' had been a beloved uncle of his so Archduke Sylvester decided to have the man killed for his crimes, a lengthy process that consisted of using a extremely potent potion to transform his entire body to stone, and then have it disintegrate thereby killing the person and leaving no hope of resurrection or healing. That is the idea anyway. Imagine then Sylvester's face when he sees the man he executed as responsible for the massacre, serving him tea and cinnamon buns.
"Ferdinand, explain." Sylvester demanded his eyebrow twitching at what he was looking at.
"I wish I could." Ferdinand on the other hand had gotten so use to the scrawny man's presence that he simply reached the point where he stopped caring about if he was there or not. "Believe me I really wish I could." Ferdinand stated as he let out an exhausted sigh. "This creature has caused me no end of headaches. It doesn't surprise me to learn that he has a way of cheating death on top of that."
"Let's be real, even if I did explain to you what a clone is or the conceptual magic that put me in this position would you really understand?" Accelerator asked bringing Ferdinand, Myne and Sylvester cups of water, which to Sylvester's shock Ferdinand actually took immediately.
"You actually trust him to serve you food?" Horror compounded onto horror.
"If this thing wanted me dead it has far easier ways of doing it." Ferdinand explained as he put the cup back on the serving tray. "I could for instance trip and fall, one of my experiments could back fire and explode, a stone could fall from the depth's of space and pulp me like a taue fruit."
"Those are all just accidents!" Sylvester spat out wondering why his brother had suddenly become a coward and what connection that has to this person.
"I'm telling you that this creature is something that can make those accidents real." Sylvester paled at the statement. "He claims to possess the power of 'vector control' the ability to control the direction and speed of the flow of energy." Ferdinand turned to Accel. "Show him."
Accel shrugged his shoulders as if saying 'well you asked for it.' Suddenly the entire room went into chaos, its contents slowly rising up along with the people who had been sitting at the table. Sylvester's eyes went wide at what he was feeling, that is to say nothing. There was no overwhelming mana in the air at what one would expect from such a display of power, there was almost no mana at all aside from what was being given off by Sylvester Ferdinand and Myne, certainly nothing that was coming off of the white haired man.
"That's plenty." And then everything fell back into place at once.
"That... wasn't magic?" Sylvester asked looking horrified. "If it was, it wasn't any magic that we've ever comprehended." Ferdinand stated bluntly. "If he wanted to, the mere act of turning my head would be fatal, the speed and momentum of doing so amplified to such a ludicrous degree that my neck would spin around several times until it came flying off of my shoulders. All of this stems from the least terrifying aspects of this creature."
"And the most?" Sylvester was afraid to ask but every fibre of his being rallied at once and told him to anyway. Ferdinand stopped moving, looked his half brother straight in the eye and with a dead pan emotionless voice...
"There's an entire planet of human-like creatures such as him. Not with the same abilities as his but many equally as terrifying. Perhaps you'd like to have your body broken down into pure energy and released as enough raw kinetic force to shatter this entire side of the continent? Maybe you'd like to watch as all of our knights lose their heads and have them stacked in front of you as a tower? Or would you like to see every Feybeast on the continent have their abilities amplified a hundred fold and united together as a singular mass of violence against us?" Sylvester leaned back into his seat stunned by the existential horror he was just told. "Sylvester. I love and care about you like no one else, but if you do anything to offend those people I will kill you and present your severed head to them so that their wrath isn't brought down upon our world." Ferdinand stated with absolute seriousness.
"Ferdinand, if I ever do something like that I'll line up for the chopping block and have my head hand delivered to them."
"Don't be so over dramatic." The White haired man stated as he waved the group off. "We aren't interested in conquering the world, I'm just here to act as a minder for the girl." Accel reached over and rubbed Myne's head affectionately, like an elder brother would their younger sister, the girl in question seemed to protest the treatment briefly before she went back to her paper work, adjusting the circlet accessory that she had been wearing over her ear. "After that you never need to see me again."
"What's so special about the girl?" Sylvester asked looking concerned.
"They call it a 'legendary weapon' an instrument of mass destruction with the ability to alter and change its form. More accurately it's called 'The Legendary Jewel' I presume for its ability to into various bejeweled objects for her use." Ferdinand turned and looked at Myne. "Show him." Myne looked annoyed.
"Pause." Myne commanded before she took the circlet off of her head, annoyed that her Tom Sawyer audio-book was being interrupted, and had it transformed into a familiar goblet, one of the lesser chalices that was used for the blessing for renewing the fields.
"It attached itself to her. And under their instruction and with the resources they've been providing them she has been hard at work increasing it's power until it's achieved a literal miracle." Myne turned the goblet into a leaf-like jewel, which she then shook until a book came out. "And responding to her desires it gained the power to recreate every book that she's ever read. Including the ones from that world she was brought to, which also has people from several other worlds contributing their own knowledge of magic, technology, and natural laws to a massive library, in which she spent most of her time while over there inside of." To Ferdinand's explanation Myne let out a sigh of disappointment.
"And I still didn't get to read it all." The Girl went back to ignoring the adults and her book speaking to her in her ear as she turned the Jewel back into a circlet and put it back on her head.
"How bad is it?" Sylvester asked looking concerned.
"By my estimates she has at least three times as much raw knowledge of magic as a graduate from the royal academy if not more." Ferdinand stated bluntly.
"There were seven other 'Legendary weapons' and twenty four 'Vassal Weapons' between the two worlds that were being affected by the threat I was ostentatiously meant to fight against. Each of them are able to transform into different configurations including weapons that other heroes are able to copy, and in the process acquiring a version of all the weapons that they have unlocked in the process. To my knowledge there are two ways of unlocking new weapon transformations, the first being to feed material to the weapon, and the second being to pick up a weapon that is classified as the same as your weapon." Giving a lecture was annoying, but Myne didn't want to be interrupted again. "By my estimates there are tens of millions of weapon transformations inside of the jewel, each one of them strengthening me and the weapon in some way, or at least they were but some of them don't work on this world. The ones that don't help are being dismantled and used to strengthen the ones that do."
"Including the 'Miracle?'" Sylvester asked sounding concerned.
"Having more to work with helps." Myne easily admitted. "The Less Miraculous a miracle has to be the more powerful it can become. If I had to pick out the ones that are 'most concerning...'" Myne thought it over a bit before taking her circlet again and having it transform into a familiar looking crescent shaped dagger with a rainbow of metals, a jewel embedded into the hilt, though in fact the entire dagger looked like a jewel. "One of the Heroes from another world comes from a place that has weaponized history, they're called 'Noble Phantasms.' And this one in particular could be extra troublesome, the Rule Breaker." Just hearing its name made a great pit of worry appear in Sylvester's gut. "It has the power to sever any and all magical contracts." Not what he thought it was, but it's power to sow chaos was unrivalled. Their entire society was built on magical contracts, business deals, slave contracts, protection between nobles, peace treaties, and now one little girl and a knife has the potential to destroy all of that, and that's apparently one of just millions of weapons she could have in there. "There are others but I don't have all day." Myne explained putting the circlet back on and getting back to paper work and listening as her weapon read to her.
"Huu." Sylvester let out a defeated sigh, which was good as Ferdinand was afraid that Accel would soon bring him to that so-called 'city that was filled with people like him' the one made from people from a thousand worlds. "Alright what does he need from us?"
"Although Myne's previous life threatening condition has been dealt with she now has a new life threatening condition to replace it, Hero's syndrome which will require a Jureve potion to dissolve the lumps of mana inside of her body, followed up by a few month's of down time in order to facilitate her healing herself." In terms of raw healing, the high grade Yggdrasil potion that Naofumi gave her when he remade the lumps of mana crystal throughout her body was vastly more effective than the Jureve had been, but the Jureve would be needed to dissolve those clumps of mana that were now impacting Myne's mana flow.
"So how do we make a Jureve potion?" Myne asked looking up from her paper work.
"Four ingredients." Ferdinand explained holding up his hand. "Each of them harvested by you at specific points in the year, brewed by you, and applied by you."
"Hmm. Well that's good then, it means we should be able to take some short cuts thanks to the Legendary weapon." Myne explained as she held her chin in her hand. "What do you mean?" Sylvester liked nothing about where this conversation was going.
"I unlocked skills, abilities gained through the legendary weapon, that enhances harvested ingredients, potion quality and potion effectiveness. If I harvest a low quality ingredient it becomes Medium quality, if I create a potion with medium quality ingredients the potion becomes high quality, and if I use a high quality potion either on myself or on someone else the effectiveness becomes extremely high." Ferdinand and Sylvester blinked stupidly.
"Now than, do the specific ingredients have to be harvested during the corresponding time of the year, or do I get to take advantage of the fact that I'm working with low quality ingredients to get them whenever I want?" Myne asked her mind already calculating her next move.
Myne had access to various jewels and magic that gave her a net benefit, a section of the courtyard had been set aside, at her request, where she proceeded to plant the fast growing Bio-plant seeds, and within days the Orphans had a steady supply of fruit to eat. In addition to that Myne, also had the Bio-plants imbued with healing magic, so that they would quickly regrow their various fruits once snapped off, and prepared various methods of pickling and refrigeration thus ensuring that her orphanage would be fully and properly fed while she was away in the winter month, hunting the monster who would become a component in her Jureve potion. Then the subject of actual transportation came up and it was decided that Ferdinand would take Myne to the area where they would hunt the monster on his high beast. That was the plan but it was immediately side tracked once Myne had gotten on the creature in question.
'Weapon Copy Activated: High Beast Unlocked. Main Bonus Beast Transformation'
After Myne's weapon took on the form of Ferdinand's high beast he immediately outlined to her how to changed it and told her to change it's form immediately as all feline type High Beasts belong to the Duke's Family. So Myne took that has having free reign to change the creature however she liked, and so after a bit of tweaking created the 'Panda Bus' a giant raccoon like creature whose torso had been transformed into a car's interior so that she could ride inside of it. Normally a highbeast without wings wouldn't be able to fly but since Myne was able to easily imagine such a creature flying thanks to the anime of her original world it wasn't a problem. Ferdinand just followed her from behind after that.
Way behind.
The Lord of Winter is what happens when you mix together abundant mana and starving animals. As the winter rages on abundant earth type mana pools together in the mountains, pushed in by the raging winter where thousands of Feybeasts gather to feed upon the mana therein, the issue here lies in the fact that as the mana supply drops there is less of it to go around, and as the feybeasts continue to feed off it they require vastly more of it, so they resort to hunting each other, and when there is only one massive beast left combining all the ones that were devoured then you have the Lord of Winter, a massive feybeast of unparalleled size and power that commands the raging snow storms and delays the onset of spring, in fact it's so massive and so powerful that once the Lord of Winter has run out of feybeasts to cannibalise it'll go straight for human settlements. Every year several knight orders have to be dispatched to engage in three days of combat against the creature and the ones that it summons in the process. All the Myne could really say about this was that it was superbly inefficient.
"Deep Diving Barrier." The Skill Myne got from one of Maple's countless shields activated creating a bubble in which water could not pass through, including snow, though it's supposed to create a pocket of air that you're supposed to go and dive into the water with. Because of this skill and the reserves of food in her weapon Myne was able to arrive in advance of the Lord of Winter and Make preparations to kill it. Shumil's are small docile rabbit like creatures that even a small child like Lutz could hunt for it's meat and fur, it would be the last creature you'd expect to be able to achieve the position of Lord of Winter. After days of casting debuff spells and sniping at monsters puffed up on mana Myne had one final song she needed to play, the Song of Sacrifice.
The Demon Dragon had numerous curses up it's sleeves, some of them are designed to offer buffs while driving the one it's cast upon into a frenzy, however the Song of Sacrifice's extreme boost in power meant that the song's second part would leave the creature crippled and half dead. Myne picked out the weakest monster, boosted it to be able to defeat and cannibalise the strongest contenders for the position of Lord of Winter, and then left it ready to be struck down in one hit. The next weapon that Myne brought out was a bejeweled spear which she rose into the air and hurled it at the 'Lord of Winter' directly striking the giant rabbit like creature's heart stone killing it in one hit, and after that Myne just used the Dragon Hour Glass Jewel to transport herself back to the church with the monster's corpse.
"So aside from spending all of your time in a library what other kinds of things did you do in that world?" Ferdinand asked while he looked down at the flatly massive Feystone that Myne was now filling with her mana.
"When I was summoned they wanted me to kill a monster that was rampaging in the area, a kind of flower that when it blooms it turns into a giant bird like creature and goes on a rampage spewing flame and planting it's seed everywhere. Even when one of the plants manages to go down after a while another one will just sprout again elsewhere and go on another rampage." Myne explained simply while she continued to focus on the giant feystone in front of her.
"How did you kill it?" Ferdinand asked looking suspicious.
"You remember how the orphans were collecting Taue fruit before I came back?" Ferdinand nodded his head. "They're really good at absorbing mana, so I went to sleep with one that night, and I still had it when I was summoned to the other world. But when Taue fruit absorbs enough mana it turns into a Trombe instead." Ferdinand's face went pale.
"You didn't..."
"I did."
"What did you do next?" Ferdinand audibly face palmed as he processed this latest horror story.
"That 'Bird of Paradise' was pretty strong, but it's main form of attack was fire type attacks, so it wasn't able to deal with the Trombe's. Well both the Trombe's and the Bird of Paradise reached the settlements a few times so I had to fend them off, eventually another monster appeared after a while and that stopped the Bird of Paradise from coming back so I had to go around cleaning up the Trombe's after that. Well after I spread the method of killing Trombe's around I just left cleaning them up to the people of that world and retired to the library until I could go home again." Ferdinand's brow twitched at the little brat who unleashed that plague on that world and then made them deal with the aftermath. "And this other monster that was woken up soon after?"
"I never met it, they summoned Sakura after me to kill it." Myne stated as she shrugged her shoulders. "The elves wanted to kill me for a while though, I think Naofumi made them stop though."
"Naofumi? Isn't that the guy you said that you wanted to punch?" Ferdinand asked looking at Myne suspiciously.
"He remade my body without telling me, depriving me of my precious reading time and forced me to spend all of my free time working out, and making me spend all of my time controlling my mana so that it doesn't go out of control and make my body eat itself." Myne stated letting out complaints one after the other. Ferdinand made a mental note to thank Naofumi when he saw him, as he has likely accelerated the time table that he can move Myne into Noble Society and thanks to Accelerator has reduced the number of obstacles in their way. This Naofumi and his people have saved Ferdinand a great deal of trouble.
"For now I leave the matter of the lesser grails to you." Ferdinand stated and Myne let out a sigh. Ever since she got back Myne's raw mana capacity exceeded even Ferdinand's in terms of sheer amount, so whenever she did the mana dedication ceremony she had to do it by herself. Even though they said that, Myne's raw power meant that she could easily fill enough chalices to run three duchies, so she was selling off her extra mana to various nearby duchies. The kingdom had gone through a purge of it's noble population, so the amount of magic users in the kingdom had been severely reduced, even with the blue priests that were recalled from the church various duchies still didn't have enough.
Of course Myne wasn't doing this for free, so because of this a massive amount of funds were now lining Myne's pocket which she would be reinvesting into her businesses and the church. One of Myne's skills let's her transport herself from any point to another preset location, which in this case was the Church Courtyard and the balcony of Myne's family home, so her fears that she wouldn't be able to see her family during the winter was resolved as well.
As Spring approached Myne's family got a little bigger, a baby boy was born of Myne's parents along with a new arrival at the church, a young baby boy named Dirk, a child who much like Myne was born with the Devouring. Ferdinand suspected that rather than commoner born like Myne, Dirk was the bastardised child of a middle rank Noble, probably with one of his maids, and his natural mana capacity was proportionately higher, though he had yet to use Myne's mana compression techniques nor the use of her Legendary weapon on top of being a child, so he was also much weaker than Myne as well. Course since the church had countless mana absorbing tools and a steady supply of Taue fruit/Trombe Seeds for Myne's printing business so he wouldn't be suffering the negative effects of mana overload any time soon.
"I would like it if Dirk could go to a family that will love and take care of him." Myne stated while she played with the child's hands, a bowl full of Taue fruit nearby in case his symptoms started to flare again.
"What's the problem?" Delia was one of Myne's personal attendants, she use to be under the High Bishop but that ultimately didn't work out, for many obvious reasons. Currently she was acting as Dirk's older sister. "Ferdinand said before that the kingdom needs all sorts of mana users like you and Dirk."
"Yes, but needing mana and doing a good job of looking after Dirk are two entirely different things." Myne explained finger raised in the air. "Don't forget that when I first came here the High Bishop tried to separate me from my parents by force, I had to brow beat the High Bishop, bribe Ferdinand and explain just how bad my health was before I could obtain blue robe status. Dirk can't do either, and if that family ever has a legitimate child Dirk will be an obstacle." Myne explained finger raised in the air.
"What about writing a magic contract?" Delia asked looking concerned.
"And who would be the one writing that contract?" Myne asked and Deliha opened her mouth to respond, paused, and then closed it again. "Hence why it's so important to find someone that we can trust."
"We don't have to go that far." Myne turned around to face Accel in the corner of the room. "We don't need to find someone trust worthy, we just need to find someone that we can terrorise so thoroughly that they can't even think about bringing harm to the child." The person Naofumi sent over as Myne's minder, is thoroughly terrifying.
Reveiw Section:
RonaldM40196867: I would ask what she did to earn that but I suspect I would just end up poking the bear. Malty surprisingly enough, modern programming likes to give tragic reasons and meaning to their villains to make them seem 'sympathetic' and more 'real' but honestly? I don't want to sympathise with the bad guy I want to see them being punched in the face repeatedly for the atrocities they have committed, better yet she also satisfies the modern consumer's itch to demand a reason for their actions in that she's a agent/reincarnation of Medea.
Nightshadegirl: Sorry.
Dakota Bruder: Tanya missed Being X the first time because he was trying to lead Tanya to believe that he was the only god in the world, in the Manga this meant claiming to be Zeus, Odin, Yahweh and others all at the same time in a attempt to steal or borrow divinity, something that he was only able to get away with, ironically enough, because Yahweh was already dead and Odin and Zeus were already weakened from fighting him. This time Tanya made sure that she got him at point blank range.
