Author's Note: Okay so this is the last of the girls travelling between worlds, a few more chapters of reconciliation and then the finale. Enjoy! Read, Review, Favourite!
Chapter 130: Curse of the Hunting Hero
Goll hates her life. For three months she has been shot at, chased, made to do the most absurd tasks you can imagine, running across water, getting assaulted by vegetables, ranching cows. The two servants of 'Waka-sama' were taking their frustrations out on her, it's not her fault that the two spinsters decided to chase after an eternal virgin.
"You do know that we can hear you right!?" The dragon Spinster shouted her hands folded into sleeves as she glared down at the girl who had been running away from her for three months.
"I didn't say anything you old hag!" Goll shouted swinging her arms around angrily.
"But you did think about it!" Tomoe shouted as she pulled out her katana again. "I guess we need to do something about that tongue of yours!" And then Goll zoomed off again.
Goll didn't know it, but Tomoe had been using her 'substitute reality with illusion' attack for the past several months, which with literally any other opponent would have reduced Goll to mist about eighty times over by now, the key is to maintain your sense of self throughout the technique, if you ever lose track of that well... Tomoe didn't know if it was the miracle power of the Sacred Gear or if Goll's will to live was simply that strong. Either way she herded her towards Mio now.
"Well that's the dragon hag taken care of, now where's the other one at?" And then the pitch black webs started to shoot out of the ground and into the sky. "DDDAAAMMMNNN IIITTT!" Goll was not having a good time.
Eight hours a day dedicated recovering after praying to Tsukuyomi, eight hours dedicated to the various businesses under the Kuzunoha banner such as working as a instructor at the school, managing the two stores, and preparing Tsige for the war with Aion, right now Makoto Mizumi was performing his third task that was part of his daily routine: Archery. Makoto possesses a unique training technique, when he takes aim at a target with his bow he concentrates deeply, imagining that everything that was between him and the target was all a part of him while at the same time clearing his mind. The combination of doing these things diffuses his consciousness and mixes it with all the mana in the surrounding area, then when his consciousness returns to him his power spikes permanently.
Most of that mana came from Makoto himself, without his mana consuming rings that he goes through dozens of per day his aura is like staring down a god, he's been performing this technique so many times that in terms of sheer raw power he easily rivals the gods, and yet for the sake of his survival he desperately needed to perform this technique over and over again, less the overwhelming amount of divine power that the bug goddess stuffed into his body kill him. Not just his survival either, he desperately needs to awaken Tsukuyomi so that the human race of his home world can be saved: Including his family. Such ridiculous reasoning for his home-world to be destroyed. Is managing a world so difficult? He's doing just fine delegating the important stuff to knowledgeable people.
"Waka-Sama!" To the sound of that Cheery voice Makoto turned around and faced Mio, who was carrying black a sack with something struggling inside of it. Makoto just sighed. "Mio. What are you doing?"
"I thought I would make you a pillow, so I caught a pigeon to use as stuffing." Mio looked like the proverbial cat who caught the canary, Goll wasn't quite a Canary but she was close to it. She certainly sings like one, and spits venom like a snake.
"Let her go Mio." Makoto stated letting out a sigh.
"But Waka!"
"Let. Her. Go." Showing her unwillingness, Mio tore open the sack made out of darkness, revealing Goll who had been bound and gagged. Bending over Makoto ripped the webbing that had been restraining Goll's mouth off.
"Spider Spinster!" Goll shouted angrily at the spider woman.
"Could you stop antagonising her?" Makoto asked with a dead pan stare as he suffered the collateral from Mio's rampaging aura.
"I'm antagonising her!? My Sacred Gear has been grinding danger since the moment she stuffed that bag over my head!" Goll snapped by way of reply, intent on playing the victim to the very bitter end.
"And which one of us is suffering for it?" Makoto created a spiked ball of ice and grabbed it, ramming holes into his hand from which blood leaked out before slapping said bloody hand over Mio's mouth who immediately instinctively started licking the blood up.
"Oh no, two beautiful women want to sleep with you and you're too much of a Eunuch to accept them so instead they're taking their sexual frustration out on by standers like me and Demon." Goll stated her voice full of mocking sarcasm. "Whatever am I going to do to overcome this situation?"
You could see the veins popping in Makoto's head.
"Yah know what? I don't think these archery targets are enough for the current me? I think I need to get a moving target!" And so Goll's battle with the inhabitants of Asora continued.
And in the mean time a similar battle was taking place across the pocket dimension. Tamaki had bluntly informed Makoto that letting the animals born in the demi-plane continue to run wild doing as they please was simply intolerable, they did what Makoto told them so he was inclined to let them but there would be inevitable conflicts between the growing animal population and the various residents of the Demi-plan as they grow over a period of time. The Demon Dragon piped up, explained her experience in managing an entire kingdom of monsters, and said to leave the task of bringing them to heel to her. Dragon had gotten throttled, repeatedly, most recently she was stampeded by a heard of cows, left spread eagle inside of a crater twitching. Those were animals the humans of Makoto's home world domesticated for food. Demon had a new found respect for the Heroes of Earth.
"How is it coming?" The Sassy green haired priestess asked sounding amused.
Needless to say things hadn't been going as she had initially planned. She had started with the more obvious of targets like the bears and hawks, before she nearly got torn apart.
"The Good news is I can say with full certainty that these things only have one king, and that's Mako-" A naginata was held to the throat of the trampled dragonness. "Huu. Waka-Sama."
"Agreed." The Priestess retracted her weapon as she continued the conversation. "Now the question becomes a matter of integrating these animals into a proper military force."
The animals Makoto insisted were cattle in his world would be more useful if they weren't so unruly, the bears made for decent siege engines, the birds aerial scouts, the horses mounts, the wolves were being integrated into patrol groups already. If the Demon Dragon wasn't up to the task of managing them then they'd need to identify leaders among each group of animals and assign them the tasks of general management for each individual group. For now that would wait for later, between the valkyrie constantly mouthing off to Tomoe, Mio and Makoto and this pathetic dragon's constantly picking fights with the local wildlife their respective halves of their shared Sacred Gear's was slowly increasing in their amount of miraculous power. It was debatable how much good it would do this pair, so far their only real talents that they demonstrated was getting trampled on and spewing insults, and as she understood it the people they were helping already had a tanker.
"For that matter, what are you two even good for?" Goll crashed down next to the two as they talked, several arrows sticking out of vital points of their body. "The common point that links you two together is a weapon that explicitly is designed to only be able to hunt monsters. Your enemy on the other hand is a god. You two are just dead weight." Goll's fingers cracked as her anger mounted. Then an arrow stuck her in her rear.
"YYYEEEOOOUUUCCCHHH!" Goll's bad day was destined to stretch on.
Getting away from the evil monsters that enjoyed taking their sexual impotence out on her Goll, the valkyrie was sitting on a rock in the wasteland looking at some of the Unlocks that she had 'earned' from being used as a chew toy by the two women and their eunuch. From Tomoe she received the 'Greater Mist Dragon' Series of weapons which seemed to focus on a variety of illusion type abilities, from Mio the 'Greater Darkness Spirit Series' which offered up a variety of curses and a massive boost to her regeneration, from Shiki the 'Undead King' Series which contrary to what it's name implied gave her a bunch of support type abilities. However she earned nothing from feeding bits from Tamaki, a demi-goddess, and Makoto, a human turned Demi god, to her weapon.
Demon had happily fused the three monster's series of weapons into herself, after all she was both a dragon and a expert user of curses and support type abilities, but it felt like they were still missing something, a certain stimulation, like if they had made one last push through in their training then they would obtain new power on a unprecedented scale. But for now, war loomed over the horizon.
The tale of Tsige and Aion was one as old as time, a country founds a town on the edge of their territory. That town is perpetually subjected to incompetent management and unreasonable demands on all fronts and so decides to separate from their founding country, the founding country goes out of it's way to keep it's territory and thus war breaks out.
"Come out everyone."
Filo and Syrup had both vacated their positions as demon's lords, that said the power of wind and earth that they gave back had grown significantly stronger as well so Demon couldn't complain. In addition to Chris and Miroku Goll and Demon had been able to recruit replacement lords from the local animals of Asora's forests, course they had to get Makoto's sponsorship before they would agree to join the duo's side, replacing Syrup as lord of Earth was Redhell, a full Moon Bear as Makoto had dubbed the species, a giant species of bear that had scraped out a niche in Asora's forests as a Alpha predator, Redhell was relatively young, not able to overthrow the older bears that had spawned earlier on, instead he agreed to Demon's promise of power and thus was here now.
The new wind lord King on the other hand was the dominant power of Asora's mountains, a Hawk that has grown to a massive size picking off the animals of Asora that have grown rich on Asora's food stuff, now seeking to expand his master's domain to other worlds. Asora's food was especially rich in unique properties that just by eating it over a prolonged period of time you naturally raise your body's physical abilities, unique properties that synced with the Mirror reinforcement technique to dramatically enhance Goll's physical specs even more. And yet, all of it evaporates as soon as Goll is faced with a human being! So now they would have to rely on these four creatures, Redhell, King, Chris and Miroku, to help them.
"Everyone agrees on the plan?" Goll asked looking at her four companions in curiosity.
"When the night comes the four of us will be deployed among the other 'tamed' monsters and attack the enemy army." Redhell explained lounging about and looking very much like the bored teenager. Tamer was one of the Job classes of this world, some nonsense of stuffing a monster into a specialised gemstone poke-ball style and then throwing it when you want to use the creature to maul your enemy, course unlike that show there's no companionship between tamer and monster, only disposable weapons of war and the people who manufacture them by hunting monsters. After a day of fighting when the human forces of both sides have tired each other out Redhell, Chris, King and Miroku will be deployed alongside the rest of the monsters to fight, Goll also instructed them that when their turn was over with they were to snatch up as many of the gemstones of surviving monsters as possible so that they could bring them with them, Myne could probably weapon copy them, and Demon could use the extra subordinates.
"Where are we on getting Asora's monsters involved?" Goll asked, refusing to call the creatures that had been mauling Demon all this time as Animals, they weren't nearly anything as cute as animals.
"If it's those foul tempered bulls, then we can just open a mist gate onto the battle field and provoke them." Redhell stated establishing his opinion, he wasn't exactly what you call high on the food chain around here after all. "I have already informed my subordinates of my intention to fight, many are planning on joining in for the assault." King explained giving a dignified bow to Goll. "And you two are good too?"
"Pen!" Goll's emperor penguin type familiar gave a salute in the affirmative, dozens of growth bonuses, Maple's 'advice' on raising shikigami's and the food of Asora having massively raised the creature into a unstoppable force.
"Woof! Woof! Woof!" The Three headed Lord of Fire Miroku nodded his three heads, for some reason his bonuses were listed under the 'Inugami' series, not that Goll knew what that was referencing. Either way time to prepare for a fight.
In all honesty, Goll was embarrassed for Aion, the opening move of the war had Patrick Rembrant, head of the Tsige faction, release several masses of ritual magic. Like in the world that Goll had previously been isekai'd to, ritual magic was when you get a bunch of people together cast WMD level magic, normally it wasn't something done here, largely because the highly visible and easily identified magic can be neutralised by a dedicated contingent of mages on the other side of the line of battle. Which was presumably why Rembrant had bribed the guard's of those same mages to have them killed and then see them defect to their side, even with the Goddess's intervention doubling Aion's raw stats and halving Tsige's the supposedly stronger side still got slaughtered.
Then came the melee with the confused enemy, even with the buff and debuff in effect these people were use to fighting in the wasteland against monsters significantly stronger than them, not to mention that they had Makoto's magic with it's unique properties of washing away foreign magical influence, Aion's throttling continued all the way into the night. You'd think that this would be the point where Tsige would just let up and let the poor bastard's go but no. As soon as Tsige's forces were safe behind the absurdly long stretching wall Tsige had built with Makoto's help catapults were released dumping easily hundreds of thousands of gold worth of jewels all over the battlefield releasing the creatures within.
"Well that's our que." Goll stated sighing breathlessly to her four monsters. "Get em." And thus Redhell, Chris, King and Miroku were all released to wreak havoc, the four lords using their respective powers of earth, water, wind and fire to utterly break the enemy line. And then something came out of left field and shattered their combination, radiating with divine power and sparking with electricity. "Funny. I was under the impression that the goddess of this world had been collared." Goll stated while Demon bristled beside her.
Tamaki's explanation is that the Goddess managed to screw over Tsukoyomi, their main problem fixer, that he wasn't able to do anything to help them for the next few hundred years, and as a result the Goddess had been made to share their suffering.
"It would seem that she found a loop hole." The woman who had crashed into the middle of their formation was very much the spitting image of the goddess, golden blonde hair, soft features and large breasts. She dressed in a white gown with numerous pieces of jewellery adorning her figure, a large scythe stood at her side, it's shape better suited to harvest than battle. Even by this world's standards she didn't belong on a battlefield but rather a runway, and yet that was precisely why she was so powerful, unlike Makoto who had been carelessly stuffed with so many blessing's for language by the goddess that he was ready to pop this woman instead had her abilities carefully chosen to maximise her gains. Alte Barrette, the Apostle of the Goddess.
"Be gone from my sight!" The woman took a bolt of lightning in her hand, iron from the broken weapons, from broken armour and blood left on the ground, combined with the lightning and formed a bladed whip of vibrating iron powder. A defence was immediately mounted by Redhell who threw up a barrier of stone to block the attack. However the crackling whip blade turned red with the power of erasure, easily destroying the magic in the barrier as it passed by.
"C'mon guys!" The four lords were all recalled at the same time, flying back into Goll's hands as she looked down at the enemy in front of her, her lightning passing by where the four lords use to be.
"A winged kin?" Alte asked looking up with contempt at Goll.
"Valkyrie to you bitch!" Goll snapped by way of reply as she held up her middle finger to the woman in front of her. "It doesn't matter what you call yourself you will-" Alte suddenly stopped, looking off to the side as if someone was talking to her, and lowered her weapon from striking position. "What's a Valkyrie doing here?" Ah... So she was just speaking with her boss then.
"My big sister Brunhilde sent me to train with the bloke your boss tried to kill with blessings." Goll stated a pitch black fishing rod appearing at her side as Demon transformed into a Sacred Gear form.
"Freya's huntress has been revived?"
"Oi! It's Odin! Brunhilder worked as Odin's chief head hunter! Don't go dissing my sister by mixing up names you bitch!" Goll snapped waving her fishing rod around angrily. Alte narrowed her eyes as her mistress confirmed Goll's suspicions, so it wasn't just Makoto feeding her information then. "Your boss caused a lot of trouble yah know that!" Goll snapped as she continued to run her mouth off. "Her mismanagement and blatant favouritism caused a war between races, 90% of intelligent life on this planet is being pushed into extinction and it's all her fault. Then on top of that, you go ahead and botch the summoning process and took an actually competent and hard working god like Tsukoyomi out of the picture." That caused visible rage with Alte, as if the very idea that another existence that rivalled or surpassed her oh so precious goddess offended her. "The time of your mismanagement is ending: Clean up the mess you made or me and my sisters are going to come up there and do it for you."
Goll has been chased around Asora for the past several month's, currently she was only armed with a fishing rod, yet looking deep into her eyes you'd see it, someone who was so utterly done with this situation that their depleted patience had warped into malice. Apparently her goddess was finished asking her questions as Alte brought her whip down and slashed through Goll's body which then fell apart to either side.
"If your sisters are as strong as you are then I can face twenty of them without fear." Suddenly the fishing rod acted on it's own, its hook grabbing the pieces of Goll's body and reassembling them.
'Undead King Trap Equip Bonus: Undead Life'
'Undead Life: So long as the Hero has Mana they will survive with one point of HP no matter the state that their body is in'
Even though Goll had been torn to pieces with the last attack she was still alive, and now the black thread was putting her back together again.
'Darkness Spirit Fishing rod Equip Bonus: Hungry Regeneration'
'Hungry Regeneration: Energy from attacks is absorbed and used to treat injuries'
The Goll who had been messily stitched up by the fishing rod had her injuries and stiches turned to mist as in their place stood Goll in Pristine condition.
'Greater Mist Dragon Javelin Equip Bonus: Illusion Perception'
'Illusion Perception: Everything within range of the skill remains exactly as how the Hero perceives it.'
A hideously expensive skill, so Goll had been limited to just using it to heal herself up. And with this death Goll's Balance Breaker got the final thing it needed to manifest, not the danger of having nearly died, but rather true Malice, the desire to see not your opponent dead but to make them suffer, and suffer horrifically at that. After all the Hunting Tool couldn't hurt people, but what if the opponent wasn't a person?
"Balance Breaker-" Millions of monster based weapons, thousands of Demi-human based weapons, hundreds of skills born of curses that were created by the demon dragon after it ate choice materials or laboratory materials from the Reincarnated or extracted from the other heroes weapons that they copied, not even that so called 'charm' created by the goddess was safe, all of these things were converged into a single thing, the answer to that question! "-Cursed Transformation!"
The hook of the fishing rod mutated and transformed into the head of a black dragon.
"GGGAAAOOO!" The Black Dragon Roared as it charged forward.
"As if I'd let you!" Alte swung her lightning, the lightning nulified the black shadows, the shadows overwhelmed the nullfication and ate the lightning, continued on the way to Alte until with a loud chomp the darkness swallowed her, the sound of chewing and screams of pain echoed out from the darkness.
Cursed Transformation was slightly misleading, it didn't refer to a transformation for the heroes or any number of their allies, rather it was a curse along the lines of Lycanthrope of the Heroes fictional lore, to take a person and make them into a monster, but it's not just that. The exact concept of the curse is 'become what you hate,' imagine everything you've ever been disgusted by, every notion that you've found repulsive, every creature that you've ever shuddered just looking at it, imagine looking into the mirror one day and seeing such a hideous and repulsive thing staring back at you. The darkness fell away to reveal one such creature, porcelain white skin had given way to a slimy chiten, as if it was fresh out of the egg. The creature stood on three legs, two of them sharp and insect like spikes, the third like a thickly armed human's leg. The right arm was wrapped around the scythe, the once pristine blade stained by blood, dripping from veiny tentacles that integrated the blade into a mantis like claw, the left arm was turned into a hulk of muscle ending in three uselessly fat fingers. The face worthy of acting as a stand in for the goddess was unrecognisable, five eyes were randomly distributed around the face while the once golden blonde hair had been overtaken by several teal tentacles, crackling with electricity. Overall, the first thing that comes to mind when you look at this thing was 'Ugly.'
"Wha-" The Ugly monster looked down at herself shocked at what she had become. "WHAT HAVE YOU DONE!?" The creature bolted forward, riding on lightning as she got ready to slash with her claw. "I'LL KILL Y-!"
"Stick your nose on the ground!" A loud crash echoed out.
"Gah, GAh!" The Sound of struggling echoed as the Ugly Monster attempted to push herself off the ground, the hook of the fishing rod once again leaking shadows and forming the head of the Demon Dragon and though the Ugly Monster knew it was wrong she still felt the need to worship the creature.
"Are you feeling it?" The Demon Dragon whispered honied poison into the ear of the Ugly Monster, well, what used to be Ears anyway. "That's the influence of your 'goddess' at work, her pathetic charm that demands you worship and love her foolish champion is now mine!"
"I'LL KILL YOU! IF IT EVEN TAKES MY VERY SOUL I WILL RIP YOU APART AND FEED YOU TO HER DOVES!" The Ugly Monster shrieked spewing black hate.
"Careful now, your soul's the only thing left!" The Hook bit into the Ugly Monster's shoulder. "Well it was." Goll ripped out the hook, taking the soul of the creature that it had been attached to with her.
"Looks like we've got quite the catch this time!" Excitedly saying that Goll quickly reeled on the struggling soul.
"DDDAAAMMMNNN YYYOOOUUU!" The Shrieking soul was pulled in like a fisherman's prize catch, Valkyrie and Dragon looking at their bounty as they processed their achievement.
"Booyah!" The two figures fist bumped with each other. "Who's useless now!?" Goll cupped her hands over her mouth and shouted that question to anyone who would listen. "Careful yah mirror bastard! It looks like I might be pulling your tail outta the line of fire from now on!"
"I should hope so." Goll turned around and looked at Naofumi who was leaning against one of the broken battlements of the Aion army, her buzz quite thoroughly killed.
"C'Mon I just got a useful power!" Goll snapped stretching her arms out to either side of her. "Would you mind letting me get use to it first!?"
"Would you rather I left you for the Spider and the Dragon to continue chewing on?" Goll deflated at that.
"Can I at least pack first?"
Those two were originally monsters to begin with, and Goll did not want to imagine what they'd do to her if she tried to use that power on them, even if she succeeded briefly their connection to Makoto would just wash away the curse, then they really would kill her, no she can revive herself with skills so they'll kill her several times, while that would be good for their Sacred Gears neither Goll or the Demon Dragon were interested in being tortured by the pair, so it would be better to flee as soon as possible. Thus they ducked into Asora, cleaned out a warehouse then left.
Review Section:
RonaldM40196867: That they are. The Show would be better if they followed the damned script that they were given, that and personally speaking I think that Season 1 finale should've been 'Malty and King gets punished for their actions' with season 2 starting with 'Cal Mira Arc' then 'Hengen Musou Training Montage' Followed by 'Spirit Turtle Crisis' and Finally 'Kill Kyo.' I will be severely disappointed if it doesn't consider we're scheduled to get Sadeena and the Hakuko siblings.
Dakota Bruder: It is what it is, you can't win em all. The thing you have to understand is that the biggest thing that makes the demon's a threat to begin with is that they're an outside context problem, the various weapons that Section Thirteen and other such Government agencies are willing to use on them can only do so much to hurt them, though I'd imagine that even they'd balk at taking a nuke head on, but in a series like say Inuyasha or Yashahime? The Other Seven Demon Sorcerer's are equivalent to say... the four perils of Kirinmaru, Drago and Shendu at their full power are probably closer to Kirinmaru or Toga himself, what makes Terrakudo a serious threat isn't his raw power but the numbers provided by the Oni generals and their Shadowkahn making them a threat closer to the So'unga and it's limitless army of the undead.
Nightshadegirl: You would to.