King Explosion Murder the Shield Hero

by BKL777

This is the story of hero in training Katsuki Bakugou being transported into the world of Melromarc and is the new cardinal shield hero in their darkest time of need. Bakugou will go on many new adventures in this fantasy world to become their world's greatest hero whether they want him to or not.

23. Chapter 23: War of the Tortoise

Chapter 23: War of the Tortoise

It has been 4 days since the spirit Tortoise had awakened, it had been an extremely chaotic time for the Shield and Sword Cardinal heroes.

Ever since the capital was destroyed the Spirit Tortoise began its rampage across the Tortoise kingdom, despite it being a slow-walking tortoise its vast size allows it to cover a huge amount of ground, as it heads its way to any city or fortress with high populations to kill them and absorb their souls to supposedly power up a barrier to stop the waves.

Speaking of the waves themselves Bakugou and Ren had noticed their timers had stopped, with a blue number 7 appearing on where the timer was at. What was once a wave coming in a few days, now no longer existed. Horai told them that it was a result of the Tortoise being awakened which caused the timer and waves to stop. It was good for the heroes to not have to worry about dealing with two different threats at once but it didn't make the Tortoise any weaker.

There was also no sign of what happened to the Cardinal Spear and Bow heroes, they were last seen trying to kill the Tortoise after it had risen from the earth, but no one knows where they are now. Some people are already theorizing that they both might be dead, which the likes of Sword Hero Ren hoped wasn't true knowing that the waves will get stronger or that Fitoria will just pop in next to them and then outright kill him and Bakugou because of that.

No one has also seen the mastermind who was behind releasing the Tortoise in the first place, Kyo Ethenina. He is now the most wanted man on the planet with rewards for anyone who can capture or kill him going as high as 10,000 gold.

Despite the death of their king and royal family, the Tortoise Kingdom's armies were able to mobilize quickly and engaged the Spirit Tortoise themselves multiple times, but these ended in huge massacres, 10's of thousands of troops were killed off and had their souls absorbed into the massive Tortoise. They eventually stopped engaging it and forced themselves to retreat and reorganize elsewhere.

With the King and Royal Family's deaths Horai despite being originally just a concubine of no royal blood has more or less became the new head of State of the Tortoise kingdom. It didn't mean too much with the kingdom in chaos right now, though it helped with getting through some of the Tortoise kingdom nobles and governors faster.

Right now Bakugou, Ren, their team's, Horai, and the 3 demi warriors focuses had been getting themselves ahead of the Tortoise's direction and evacuating the cities it was heading toward. However, a lot of the cities they visit seem to already have most of their populations evacuated when word got out of the Spirit Tortoise's awakening, once the news spread like wildfire the people of the Tortoise kingdom flee for their lives in any direction they could.

The heroes were still going around as fast as they could to help the civilians get out as fast as possible, "Come on everyone! Move! Move!" Bakugou shouts toward large crowds of people trying to escape, taking what they can carry with them.

"Sir Bakugou, Sir Ren! Another swarm is here!" Neia shouts which draws the heroes and other sidekicks' attention.

They look toward the outside of the city walls and see a large army of Bats and Yeti-like creatures all of whom had turtle shells on their backs. These things started appearing no more than a day after the tortoise was released and seemed to be its giant master's vanguard, always ahead of the Tortoise's direction. According to Horai, these things were familiars of the Tortoise itself, with it being confirmed when Ren and Bakugou absorbed them into their weapons and unlock their Tortoise familiar class variant's. Creatures acting as servants and minions of the monster to help collect souls or weaken defense's of incoming settlements. And despite how many the heroes would kill more and more would keep coming every day and knew they would never stop coming while the Tortoise lived.

The Sword and Shield heroes along with their teams quickly fight off the monsters, while stronger than they looked the heroes were still able to cut them down.

Thanks to his hate reaction ability, Bakugou gets to attract huge amounts of the monsters in his direction where he proceeds to slaughter most of them with explosion after explosion.

Ren with Scarlet, Kiel, and Raphtalia at his side cut the yeti's down with their weapons, same with Neia while also blasting them with her electricity.

Rino and Rishia blast away groups with their magic both in the sky and on the ground. And Rifana with her arrows both magic and physical ones would snipe out any that got away from the blasts.

Daven teleports around the yeti monsters to either make them accidentally attack each other or stab them himself and instantly kill them at their weak spots.

And Kirishima goes wild, burning and eating as many as he could.

Even Horai aids the heroes with her gravity magic being used to hold down a large amount of these hordes.

They do this while still trying to evacuate the civilians.

These monsters seem to have no sense of fear or self-preservation so they would do all they can to kill for their master with no signs of ever stopping, but eventually the heroes would finish cutting them all down, leaving many corpses on the ground.

"Sense anymore?!" Bakugou shouts to his scout and pet dragon.

After a few more seconds of Daven using his detection dark magic along with Kirishima beside him smelling the two nod to each other, "Looks like we're good, however the Tortoise is not far now. I say we just got an hour before it's here.".

"Here that soon? It feels like each new city we get to we have less and less of a window to evacuate everyone." Neia says with the others nodding in agreement.

Bakugou was annoyed to hear that but pointed back to the city "Whatever! We continue as planned, get everyone out as soon as possible!" he shouted with everyone nodding in agreement as they followed Bakugou as they ran around the city to make sure all the people are out and save themselves.

And indeed after an hour passed, the ground started to shake as the heroes and sidekicks looked out toward the distance to once more see the giant Spirit Tortoise stomping through the mountains on its way to the now evacuated city.

"Alright everyone let's go!" Bakugou shouts now on his dragon Kirishima with the rest running to get onboard.

Thankfully this time the population was properly evacuated including those who couldn't just run for it, so there was no need for another makeshift airlift anymore.

Once the group's numbers were taken account of, the Dragon flapped his wings and lifted himself off into the air until he was flying, while also doing his best to not be seen by the Tortoise for it to fire at him again.

Eventually, the dragon lands himself on a large plateau, far and out of sight of the Tortoise, but he and the rest of the heroes can see the Tortoise from up there as they get off the dragon to witness the monster's destruction once again.

The Spirit Tortoise moves its huge legs and stomps its way into the middle of the large empty city, immediately marking huge craters into it. It continued to move around as it crushed and smashed every building there was, while the familiars that surrounded itself wreaked havoc in the spots the Tortoise missed and collected souls if they could find any. Unfortunately for the Tortoise, there were no souls to collect here but it would not stop it from moving as it crushes away more and more of the city.

It was a horrific sight for everyone on the plateau to witness, even if they knew the city was evacuated it didn't stop the fact that these were people's homes being destroyed. Their lives would now be forever changed as the people are now forced to flee with no homes to go back to. The heroes had seen this happen with multiple towns and knew for a fact it would not be stopping anytime soon.

Bakugou himself was absolutely sick of it, "Why the hell are we continually doing this!? Just evacuating and running away like cowards!? We need to kill that damn turtle and end this shit!"

Bakugou then moves up in front of everyone looking like he was ready to jump and blast off with his quirk until Ren moves in his way, "Wait Bakugou! I know what you're feeling, I feel the same, but we can't just go attacking it without knowing how to kill it first. We don't want to make the same mistakes Ponytail Slut and Bow Bitch made right?" he explains to Bakugou with the rest of the group agreeing with him.

Bakugou groans at this, even though he knew Ren was right and jumping at the Tortoise one on one was suicide but it didn't make him feel any better, "Grrrrrr, Damn it! I know, but what the hell are we supposed to do then?! Keep it from draining souls until it gets bored and goes to sleep again?!"

Horai then spoke up, "I'm afraid at this point the Tortoise will never stop until it collects enough souls to power the barrier. Regardless of how long it takes."

Rifana then spoke up, "But how many does it need?" she asked with a few others curious as well but knew they would not like the answer.

Horai let out a sigh and answered, "There is no exact number, but usually it needs at least 90% of the world's population for a proper barrier."

"So I doubt it'll stop at just the Tortoise kingdom," Daven responds.

Everyone hated they were pretty much helpless to stop this monster, despite their great powers even the strongest knew their small band wouldn't be enough to stop it along it's huge horde of monster familiars.

But before they could think anything else they heard some loud roaring sounds, and it was the Spirit Tortoise itself. After reducing the city to rubble it looks to be stopping itself. It then lays its giant body on the ground and it retracts its head and legs like an actual turtle into its shell.

"What's it doing now?" Raphtalia asked with the others curious as well.

Horai quickly responds, "After a few days of rampage the Tortoise goes to rest itself for a few days to re-energize and begin attacking again once it's done." she explained.

Bakugou liked the sound of that, "Perfect! Then this will be our opportunity to make it permanently go to sleep. Everyone on the-"

But then Ren interrupts again, "Wait Bakugou! We still don't know how to properly kill this thing! We could just make it wake up again if we get too close or start attacking it!"

Horai nods to him, "It's true, if it's numerous familiars don't try to stop us first, provoking the Tortoise's slumber will just wake it up again."

"GOD DAMN IT! What the hell are we supposed to do then!? I'll ask you again miss "I know all about the genocidal turtle!"?" Bakugou yells at Horai, which makes everyone else turn toward the woman hoping she had some knowledge on how to kill the thing.

Horai though was looking nervous toward the groups, ever since the Tortoise's release her mind had been really cloudy on certain subjects of the tortoise, and the Shield hero was losing his patience with her again, "Uh well I-, Uh I.. I… l Well-"

"Sir Shield and Sword Heroes!" yelled a random voice.

This surprised the groups and they wondered who that was, they didn't see anyone around them, but then they looked up and they saw a large black Dragon flying toward them.

Everyone grabbed their weapons ready for a fight, but as the dragon got closer they realized who it was, "Wait! Gaelion?!" Ren says with the others quickly recognizing him as well, though that voice sounded too feminine for it to be him. But that also got quickly answered when Gaelion lands beside the heroes and riding on his back was Queen Mirellia herself in her battle armor.

"Finally we found you." Mirellia expressed with relief.

"Your majesty! What are you and Gaelion doing here?" Rino asked with the others wondering as well.

Mirellia quickly responds, "We're here to pick you heroes up, I've managed to assemble a coalition force to help defeat the Spirit Tortoise, and we need the cardinal heroes help if we are to kill it. And thanks to Lord Gaelion I was able to get this force together faster than on foot."

Gaelion himself nods as he looks overhead on the Plateau to witness the now resting Spirit Tortoise, "By the heavens, even after all of these years, I hoped that I would never witness that thing again, and then it wakes up in one of the worst times." he expressed with fear in his tone, he lived long enough to see what this thing can do and wasn't liking to see it a second time.

Neia then turns toward the Dragon, "Sir Gaelion do you know of anything that can kill the Tortoise?" she asked.

"Ha, if I knew that already I would've done it centuries ago." Gaelion joked though he still had a hint of fear in his tone which didn't help the morale of the group that even an elder dragon Emperor is unable to stop such a monster.

Neia then asked, "So are either Wyndia or Princess Melty here in the Tortoise Kingdom as well?"

Mirellia quickly answered her, "No this is far too dangerous for either to be involved. Melty still remains in Bakcadia, while I made Lord Reichnott regent of the country again."

Gaelion also responded, "Wyndia is also back in Mirso, thankfully Miss Melromarc is someone I can actually trust as she left behind most of her shadows to protect the town while I'm out."

Mirellia nodded back then said, "Now then we can talk more later, right now we need to head our way to the coalition camp itself and meet with the other generals to find out what we can do."

The heroes nodded knowing this may be their only chance in stopping the Tortoise. As much as Bakugou didn't like having to run away again, he knew they needed an army if they wanted to kill this giant thing.

After Kirishima shrunk himself to his toddler form and jumped on his father's shoulder everyone quickly got on Gaelion and the Dragon Emperor flew off into the distance leaving the resting monstrosity behind them.

---

After a few hours of flying the heroes finally made it to the coalition forces camp, it was based in a large fortress city that was not too far from the edges of the Tortoise Kingdom's borders. What was once a normal town was now a base where hundreds of soldiers of multiple different nations are camping out as well as hundreds of refugees doing what they can to escape from the Spirit Tortoise's destruction.

Gaelion lands not far from the main structure of the city where everyone jumps off him.

The sidekicks headed toward the camps to help out the refugees and soldiers alike, while Queen Mirellia, Horai, Bakugou, and Ren head off toward the main building for the war meeting.

Once they were inside they headed their way to the meeting room, there 4 important figures were sitting down around a large round table in the middle of the room.

These were the generals representing the coalition forces armies of each different nation that bordered the Tortoise Kingdom. One was from the nation of Haikazuya, a nation known for its dragon breeding with most of its forces that are here are the ones riding land dragon mounts. Another was from the nation of Lowhirot, a nation that specialized its skills in engineering, it had brought forth numerous different siege and long-range weapons with its soldiers knowing how to operate them. The other was from the nation of Mideus, a Magocracy with all of its forces being mages specializing in different forms of magic. And the last of them included a general of what was left of the Tortoise Kingdom's forces.

All of them had their ears open once Mirellia, Horai, Ren, and Bakugou sat down at the table.

Mirellia was the first to speak, "Now that the full leadership of the Spirit Tortoise coalition force is here, let us begin this meeting. How are things looking so far?"

The Lowhirot general answered her, "All of our forces have settled down and are preparing for the battle ahead. And you may have seen it yourself already, but the Tortoise has gone to rest after destroying the town the Shield and Sword Cardinal heroes were last in, and if what the legends say are true it will be in this state for 2 or 3 days."

The Mideus general then spoke on the last point, "You mean to tell me that thing kills the Tortoise Kingdom's King and royal family, destroyed its capital and many other cities, is now just taking a nap?!" Horai and Mirellia nod toward the mage general.

The Haikazuya general then spoke his mind, "The legends also state it will always be attracted to cities or forts with large populations in it, with all the refugees and soldiers we have here it will have no choice but to head for our direction once it wakes up. We'll at least know what way it will be going and attack from there."

"Ok and then what genius?" Bakugou spoke up.

"The shield hero?" the Mideus general said, not enthusiastic that he and Ren were involved in this.

"I'm assuming you got something better planned than just wacking at its giant foot with swords until it falls dead?" Bakugou asked back, already not impressed with the war meeting.

The 3 foreign generals were all growing annoyed at the cardinal heroes presence, "A plan? We don't need a plan to kill this thing, we have brave soldiers from every kingdom around here! If we charge in with our full force that tortoise won't stand a chance!" the Haikazuya general argues back with the two other foreign generals nodding in agreement.

"Ha, yeah right! if it was that simple before this thing would've been dead already! But it's not, and you're just a quack of a military leader!" Bakugou insults the man.

"What did you say to me child!" The Haikazuya general yells back not taking the insult down.

"A giant Quack!" Bakugou yells back.

The Mideus general then spoke, "Both of you calm yourselves, but I have to agree with the Haikazuya here."

"Indeed we don't need the cardinal heroes' help." the Lowhirot general adds in.

Ren then decided to speak up, "The major powers were unable to handle the waves on their own, what makes you think just you 3 can handle the Tortoise?"

The Lowhirot leader responds to the sword hero, "Because these are not the waves! We are dealing with just one monster that will be overwhelmed by large numbers."

"No! It won't work." said a random voice in a rough intense tone, and everyone turned their head to its source, the Tortoise Kingdom's general. He looked to be deeply angered as he clutched his fists on the table, "Our nation's forces threw thousands of men at that thing and they were slaughtered! Brave knights, veterans, and loyal patriots, they gave their all and they couldn't put a scratch on it. Killing the Tortoise through conventional means is impossible!…. So we have no choice, we need all the help we can get, we need the help of the cardinal heroes." he explains looking toward Ren and Bakugou.

The words of the Tortoise Kingdom general struck a lot of nerves with the other generals, and they still had their doubts, "If I recall correctly, the cardinal Bow and Spear heroes were partially responsible for allowing this to happen in the first place. Doing nothing to stop this Kyo fellow from breaking the seal." the Mideus general says which was hard for anyone to argue against, even with Bakugou and Ren knowing he was right about that.

The Lowhirot general nodded in agreement then spoke up, "King Ransha was also the one to allow this thing to be released knowing it would murder all of us, just so he would take over what be left of the world. The man you swore loyalty to!" he shouts and points to the Tortoise kingdom general who was growing extremely angry by what he was implying.

"We swore loyalty to protect the Kingdom! We had nothing to do with what Ransha did! Nor were we aware of what that madman was doing!" the Tortoise kingdom general yelled back getting deeply offended and was ready to start a brawl with the other general.

That was until Horai grabbed the man's arm to calm him down and turned toward the other generals, "Please understand, Ransha ordered most of the Tortoise Kingdom's armies away from the capital to make sure no one would stop him and his own church's forces. The army had no involvement in this." she argues back trying to calm the two and make sure no division would be made among the forces making it into a big blame game.

Unfortunately, the Haikazuya General had this to say, "Even if that's true, the very heroes who are here now were also the ones who failed to stop those four in the first place and we expect them to have control over our troops? Ha, don't make me laugh!"

This immediately triggered Bakugou as he literally jumped himself onto the large table, "What the hell are you-"

But before the Haikazuya general could finish and react Bakugou grabs him by his armor collar and lifts the man from his chair right below his pissed-off face. His bodyguard attempts to stop Bakugou by stabbing him in the shoulder, only for his sword to break in half doing no damage to the shield hero.

"YOU THINK I'M NOT AWARE OF THAT YOU QUACK PIECE OF SHIT! YOU THINK YOU WOULD'VE DONE BETTER IN MY POSITION WHILE ALSO DEALING WITH OTHER BRAINDEAD IDIOTS IN THIS STUPID WORLD!" Bakugou explodes and screams at the frightened general as he is too much in shock to do anything while being manhandled.

"Katsuki Bakugou! Put him down now!" Yelled Queen Mirellia taking a stern stance toward the hero, "I know what he said was in very poor form, however this is a sacred meeting between nations against a great threat and I will not tolerate this kind of behavior! You will calm yourself down or I'll have no choice but to have you leave, am I clear!" she demands of the shield hero. While in other circumstances she would be happy to see a blowhard general like him get what's coming, but here she knew now was not the time, as it was still important for all nations to be together on this critical mission.

Bakugou grits his teeth in anger, hating to be told off like a child, but he still respects the Queen enough to understand her point, he then throws the general back down and he falls on his chair as the shield hero walks back to his old spot as if nothing happened.

Ren and Mirellia sighed to themselves from that little event, though as they looked around the table the other generals looked on in surprise shocked to see someone just manhandle them like that with the Queen of Melromarc having managed to rein him in. It was something the Queen was happy to see, "Now then, are we on board with coming up with a plan to kill the Spirit Tortoise?" she then asked the generals as if nothing happened.

"Uh, yes. Yes of course" the Lowhirot general nervously immediately agreed.

"Yes indeed." the Mideus general also agreed.

The Tortoise Kingdom general just nods already onboard since the start.

The Haikazuya general still a bit shocked after that event got himself back up and also nodded in agreement, "Yes, I think coming up with a plan together is best for all of us.".

Mirellia and Ren smile at this, it seemed Bakugou's little stunt made the generals fall in line in fear. They weren't sure if Bakugou intended to scare them but they were happy with the results.

The meeting then continued with everyone trying to come up with that very plan they had to think of.

The Mideus general then spoke up, "Alright, but before we can come up with something, I would like to ask what's taking the Seven Star heroes so long to get here?"

The Lowhirot general quickly answered that, "I've received word that they were made aware of the situation at their home countries, but they are all far off, at least weeks away so I doubt they'll make it in time."

"Seven star heroes?" Ren says, he and Bakugou have heard that name before but didn't know who they were.

Mirellia answers that question for them, "They are heroes who weld vassal weapons like Larc and Glass did, though these weapons are different than the cardinal weapons. While some were summoned from another world like you 2, others from this world were chosen by their respective vassal weapons. As you already know Aultc-uh Piece of Shit used to be one of them."

Bakugou wondered though, "If these assholes existed before, what the hell is the point of summoning us in the first place!?"

Mirellia quickly answered the question, "While powerful on their own, the vassal weapons are nowhere near as strong as the cardinal weapons. They are helping to fight off the waves on there own, but they can only handle so much compared to the cardinal heroes."

The Haikazuya general though wanted to get back on topic, "Whatever, we'll deal with the monster without them. We just need to find a way to kill this thing as fast as possible."

The Mideus general then turns his head toward the Tortoise kingdoms head of state, "Miss Horai, you know more of the spirit Tortoise than any of us, do you have any ideas on how to quickly kill this thing?" he asked with everyone else wondering as well as they all stare at a nervous-looking regent.

Horai didn't like all the attention she was getting, even if she knew it was understandable, she tried to immediately think of something, "Uh… well yes, I think theirs the.. Uh.. the head…. Do you know about the head! If you cut its head off the Spirit Tortoise would certainly die off quickly." she responds excitingly hoping this would help with there plans.

Bakugou wasn't amused though, "No shit Sherlock would cutting its head off will kill this damn thing. Do you know any weak point on its head? Any weapons that can cut it easily? Any strategy that would make it fall off? God damn anything to make cutting its head off easier!?" he rapidly questions her.

Horai looked nervous again unable to answer those questions, "Uh… well no, none that I can think of-"

"Then why the hell did you bother bringing it up in the first place if you don't have anything useful to help about it!?" Bakugou yells at Horai who is shocked by the outburst.

Ren fearing he was going to manhandle her quickly spoke up, "Bakugou she's just trying to help, no need to be-"

"We don't have any damn time to be nice to each other Paleface! There's a big ass turtle that is going to wake up soon and if we don't find a way to kill it fast, more people are going to die!" Bakugou yells back which makes Ren go quiet, despite how overboard Bakugou is going at it, he knows the shield hero isn't wrong either, the spirit Tortoise for sure isn't going to wait for them to find a fast way to kill it.

The Lowhirot general also nods in agreement, "I have to agree with the shield hero, we need not only to think of the obvious. If there is a weakness to the Tortoise we need to exploit it as fast as possible. Hmmmm.. Perhaps its narrower unarmored legs are one of the more vulnerable parts of its body. Perhaps if we take those out first it may be easier for us to cut its head off.".

Mirellia then spoke up, "At least cutting its head off would guarantee that we know it's truly dead, better than letting it bleed out only for it to come back again all healed up a few days afterward. It may be simple but it may be our best bet."

The Mideus leader then spoke up, "We need more than to know a weakness, we need a plan that we can all agree on, one that needs to be properly executed through a strong leader."

The Lowhirot general nods in agreement, "Indeed we need to decide who will take charge once we agree on something.".

The Haikazuya general then spoke out, "Agreed, we will. We're providing the bulk of the core so it only makes sense we take command."

The Lowhirot general though didn't like the idea of that, "Oh really? And how do you intend to take out its head without any siege weapons? Last I recall my nation's forces are providing the most of them, so I should be leading." he argues back which the Haikazuya general didn't like.

The Mideus general then spoke his mind, "That said, as I recall Melromarc is providing the most funding for this operation and is responsible for creating this alliance in the first place so perhaps Miss Mirellia should take the lead." he said trying to think logically, but neither of the two other generals liked that suggestion.

Queen Mirellia herself didn't like where this was going, "That isn't the issue we are dealing with here, whoever is providing the most forces shouldn't decide who will lead the charge."

The Tortoise Kingdom general nods in agreement with her, "She's right, it doesn't matter who ends up taking command. Just as long as we're all in agreement that our forces should take charge as the vanguard of the attack."

The Haikazuya general disagrees though, "What's one battalion going to do in a single charge!"

The Lowhirot general also spoke up, "He's right, your forces should remain in the rear where they belong!"

The Spirit tortoise kingdom general then yelled back, "How are we supposed to avenge our dead in the rear! This is still our kingdom and our sovereign is also right here to make sure you know your place! Is that right your Highness!" he yells and looks back toward Horai hoping she validates his point.

Horai though looked nervous and confused by this situation she was being forced into, "Uh.. Well, I think maybe we should.."

"She's not even of royal blood! Why should we care about her opinion on military matters!" The Haikazuya general yells back not liking how the Tortoise Kingdom general was using her to validate his points.

Ren himself finally spoke up to this, "We do not need to be arguing about who should take charge or not! This kind of mentality is what the Bow and Spear hero went through and look what happened!"

"This is none of your business child! You have no experience in military matters either!" The Haikazuya general yells back.

"Neither do you it seems, if you think that a bunch of land dragons would be enough to take out a walking fortress." the Lowhirot general argues back.

The chamber then became a big argument match as the various generals and leaders argued about who should take charge and get the glory of fighting the Spirit Tortoise directly.

Ren and Mirellia tried to be the voices of reason, but the generals stubbornness was getting in the way of their reasons.

Bakugou was remaining quiet though, he saw no point in getting involved in some dick measuring contest between the generals, but it then started getting on his nerves of how long these are going on, before they even thought of an actual plan they were more focused on who will be leading this plan they don't even have.

The shield hero started to grumble in annoyance as the pointless arguments went on and on, but finally he had enough of this, "That's it!"

*Boom!*

Out of anger Bakugou with his quirk, he blows up the large meeting table, exploding it into pieces and getting the attention of the whole room.

"I don't give a damn who leads what, but if you idiots don't even want to think of an actual plan to kill this damn thing then you can try killing it and die yourselves! I'm out of here!" he yells across the room, turns his body, and heads his way out the exit.

"Sir Katsuki-" Mirellia tried to yell at him, but the shield hero had already left the room out of earshot.

Mirellia sighed and facepalmed to herself at how this meeting ended up turning into a disaster. Ren also sighs in annoyance knowing this is going to be reflected on him, especially to the generals.

The generals themselves were looking back in shock from the random outburst.

Horai herself was looking down in sadness, feeling like she was useless for this whole event, she was thinking of telling them all her big secret, but with how everything went down it was best to not make the scene more awkward than it already was.

---

On the outside within the camps the sidekicks continue to help out whoever they can, civilians and soldiers alike. While still a sad sight to see so many being affected by the Tortoise, they were glad to be of help to those in their most vulnerable time of need.

"Well look who it is, my favorite students!" shouted a familiar voice as the sidekicks turned toward it to see some familiar faces. It was Eclair and the Old woman Grilaroc herself.

The sidekicks of both Shield and Sword heroes all gathered and approached the two who they were happy to see as well, "Miss Eclair, Mrs. Grilaroc what are you guys doing here?" Neia asked with the others curious about the same thing.

"We caught word that the cardinal heroes were going to fight one of the legendary monsters, so we both came with the Queen to help out," Grilaroc answers with Eclair nodding in agreement.

"Indeed, this is a threat to my nation that rivals the waves of catastrophe, I was forced to watch people suffer once before to such a threat in my father's lands, and I will not allow the same to happen again to Bakcadia." Eclair adds in. The sidekicks were happy to see their teachers had come to help, knowing they were the best at their fighting arts, they will need all they can get with the Tortoise.

Eclair though looks around them and sees none of the cardinal heroes with them, "Speaking of that, where are Sir Bakugou and Ren at?"

Neia was about to answer her, "Well they went-"

"I'm here now." said a random voice and as they turned, it was Bakugou himself stomping his way to the sidekicks looking madder than usual, which was saying something since this was Bakugou.

"Oh hey Sir Bakugou, how did the meeting go?" Rino asked her leader though she had the feeling she knew the answer already.

"Piss poorly! Those idiots couldn't think of a proper plan if it bit them in the ass!" Bakugou shouts while crossing his arms annoyed by the whole situation.

The shield hero sidekicks weren't surprised by this development, but Eclair looked worried, "Wait so it went without an agreement?! How are we supposed to fight the Tortoise now?!"

"Guess we're fighting it alone then?" Grilaroc says shaking her head.

"That was what Bow Bitch and Ponytail Slut tried before and we haven't heard from them since," Daven added in with Rishia looking sad to be reminded of that.

Eclair shakes her head in agreement to that, "Of course, we can't fight the Tortoise alone, you've seen how massive that thing is!"

"I rather fight it myself than deal with idiots who are going to screw up!" Bakugou says back.

"Just remember Sir Bakugou you did once willingly agree to fight with the Bow and Spear hero against the Pope despite their lack of common sense." Neia reminded him.

"Yeah Yeah! But I still did most of the work in that battle as well!" Bakugou argues back which is starting to annoy Eclair.

The swordswoman hoped to get through with the hero, "Still Lord Bakugou we should be thinking of the bigger picture here!"

"I am looking at the damn picture! The problem is those other idiots are blind as hell to it!" Bakugou yells back which just makes Eclair facepalm.

Before Eclair tried to argue with Bakugou some more Scarlet saw her leader, "Oh look it's master Ren as well." Scarlet pointed out and indeed it was Ren looking angry as well.

"Thanks for bailing on me in the middle of that crap Bakugou!" Ren immediately shouts at Bakugou for his little stunt at the meeting.

"What can't handle doing things on your own Paleface?" Bakugou snarks back.

"That's not the point Bakugou, this was a serious meeting and your crappy attitude didn't help matters!" Ren argues with the shield hero.

"Not like you were doing much better either Paleface. You weren't exactly ass-kissing yourself to those quack generals either." Bakugou argues back.

Ren lets out a deep sigh, "Ugh, I know but at least I was trying to rein them in a bit, rather than just having a tantrum and leaving the room!"

"If those idiots want to die like idiots then they can be my guest, the last morons you tried to save ended up as turtle food." Bakugou reminds him.

Rishia once more looked disturbed to hear that knowing he was referring to the spear and bow heroes, with their fates still unknown.

Ren just sighs again and facepalms trying to bring sense to the only other cardinal hero here. Eclair also tries to talk to him again, "Sir Bakugou we can't fight that thing alone we need all the help we can-"

"You think I don't know that myself pink hair! I've been dragged out of my world to be in this damn place to kill a bunch of monsters for an old idiot in a tiara, and now I have to deal with this stupid turtle thing those other 2 idiots helped wake up! Damn them and damn that Piece of Shit former consort!" Bakugou shouts and begins ranting now facepalming himself as he goes to sit down on his teenage form dragon.

Everyone can tell this wasn't just typical Bakugou anger, they can see within there was something personally bothering him.

Neia could tell what this was and approached her distressed leader "Sir Bakugou, I understand what you are feeling and there is nothing wrong with expressing it." she asked calmly.

"What the hell are you talking about Blu-I mean Neia!?" Bakugou says back looking away annoyed.

Neia continued trying to talk with him calmly, "I know you've been feeling stressed out from everything that happened and wishing to end it quickly. There's no need to hide it."

"I'm not hiding anything! I'm just- I'm just trying to.. to-Damn it, if I was faster or stronger or something I could've stopped that bookworm bastard before this shit happened!" he yells to himself.

Neia then sat down next to her leader, "Sir Bakugou just remember you're still just a normal person like everyone else here. You can't be everywhere at once and stop every single natural or manmade disaster that happened. As you said to me, you have to not let past actions drag you down, you have to look forward toward the future and become better than before."

"Well, I.. Well I-Ugh…." Bakugou tried to yell something but after sighing and thinking about his sidekick's words for a second he understood what she was talking about, "Yeah, that is true, you are right, and my advice is always right. I think I just need an aspirin or something."

What's Aspirin? Is that a plant or medicine we can get?" Neia asked

"Oh forget it, I'll get over it. Good lord I can't believe I'm the one listening to lectures now." he laughed with Neia smiling back.

Bakugou got himself back up brushing himself now looking less angry than before, Ren and Eclair hoped this meant that Bakugou would be more willing to not smash things with the generals next time.

But before the two could say anything, everyone noticed Kirishima was now sniffing something, "Kiri do you smell something?" Rino asked with the others wondering as well.

And indeed Kirishima recognized a certain smell and transformed into his large adult size. He then stomped his way toward a random tent with everyone wondering what this was about.

Before anyone could call for Kirishima, the dragon quickly swipes his tail on the tent sending a bunch of 4 robed figures flying and screaming until they fall flat on the ground.

The heroes and sidekicks wondered what this was about, until Rishia recognized one of the robed figures, "Sir Mald? Is that you?" She says as she quickly recognizes one of her former teammates.

And as the heroes look at the others they recognized them all as part of Bow Bitches party. They seemed to have been posing as refugees to get out of the country without getting recognized. Too bad for them they couldn't disguise their own smell.

Before any of them could get themselves back up and then make a run for it Kirishima still in his large adult form pins them all down on the ground with his wings, feet, and tail preventing them from going anywhere as they struggle and squirm.

A few minutes later the heroes informed the Queen of them and she ordered the former Bow hero companions to be tied up with guards surrounding them, an angry Queen now looks downward toward the group, "You four have a lot to explain for what you and your cardinal hero leader has done." she scolds the group.

The four especially Mald knew how deep in trouble they were, "My Queen you have to understand, we tried all we could to stop Bow Bitch, but the bastard wouldn't listen and blackmailed us to join his and the Spear hero's crazy quest!" he lies trying to make up whatever good excuse he can to get out of any punishment with the 3 others nodding in agreement with him.

The Queen though wasn't having any of it, "That's funny because according to one of my shadows that watched your conversation in the bar has told me the opposite, that you four and the Spear heroes companions were encouraging the heroes to go on this mission with Sir Kyo." she responds them knowing the full truth."

The former companions were all sweating nervously knowing how screwed they were, Mald tried to think of something else, "Uh, well you see your majesty we were just-"

"Enough excuses!" Mirellia yells at the group, "Tell us the location of the Spear and Bow heroes right now!?" she then demands with the others wondering as well.

"We have no idea, we ditched that idiot after wasting hours doing no damage to that massive thing! We don't know what the hell happened to them after that!" Mald yells back.

"Oh no! Sir Its-the bow hero!" Rishia cries to herself, being the only one of his former team to truly care about the Bow Hero.

"And what of the Spear hero's team, Bitch and Bigger Bitch!?" the Queen then asked.

"We have no idea! They were also smart and ditched that idiot Ponytail Slut a good 10 minutes before us! We haven't seen them since then either!" Mald continues responding.

Rishia then cries to Mald, "But Mald you must've-"

"Shut your damn mouth you snitching idiot! You think I'm going to say anything to some stupid demon siding-Ow!" Mald yells at the poor girl until Ren kicks Mald in the face.

"Unlike all of you, Rishia actually cares for her teammates despite all you put her through. She shouldn't be lectured by some coward who sucks up to their leader only to ditch him when things look bad for you!" Ren scolds the group standing up for Rishia with Scarlet and the rest of Ren's team standing beside her which brings comfort back to the poor girl.

Mald tried to yell again, "Like I need to be lectured by a-OW!"

Until Bakugou hits him on his helmet with the bottom of his shield, "You're not going to get anything useful out of these idiots at this point Queeny. Might as well lock them up."

Mirellia shook her head and sighed in disappointment, "I understand Shield hero, take them back to Melromarc to the dungeons to be ready for their trials later." she orders her men.

"But your majesty we were-!" the blonde woman of the bow hero's group tried to plea only for her and the rest of Bow Bitches team to get their mouths gagged as the guards dragged them toward the wagons to head back to Melromarc.

Ren sighs to himself, "So much for finding out anything about Ponytail Slut or Bow Bitch."

"Those idiots are probably dead now, we should stop thinking about them," Bakugou responds which was something Ren didn't want to think about considering his promise.

"No! It can't be!" Rishia shouts, "Lord It-the Bow hero can't be dead! There might've been a way they could-"

"Oh god, why do you care about that bastard in the first place!? He shot you with an arrow in the back!" Bakugou yells back at her which frightens the troubled girl a bit.

"Sir Bakugou please be easy on her, she's been through a lot in only such a short period," Neia says in her defense.

"I'm only spitting facts! Bow Bitch was a bastard and we haven't heard dick of him or Ponytail Slut yet, so sugarcoating it isn't going to accomplish anything." Bakugou argues back, and while blunt it is hard for the others to argue back, even Rishia is unable to say anything back as she cries to herself on the idea that the bow hero might really be gone.

"Oh Lord Itsuki, why couldn't I have helped you and let your mind be moved in the right direction." she quietly says to herself as she starts crying. But then a small hand grabbed her, which made Rishia turn to see it being little Scarlet smiling and holding her hand in comfort showing emotional support for her new teammate once again, which the act of kindness made Rishia cheer up a bit.

With Rishia's mood now better Mirellia turns herself back to Bakugou, "Now to other pressing matters, Sir Bakugou I won't comment much on your behavior at the meeting since I'm sure Sir Ren already relayed that information on you."

Bakugou sighed in annoyance at that whole thing, "Yeah yeah I know. What did you expect me to do, stay quiet while those idiots talk about pointless crap like who will lead the stupid charge."

"Actually about that shield hero." said a voice and when he and everyone turned toward it, it was Miss Horai herself approaching the heroes, "Me and Miss Melromarc talked with each other for a bit and we figured as a way to finally get us pass that issue was to make you the leader of the charge to the Tortoise."

Bakugou somewhat smiled at that, "Of course, I be the obvious choice, but what the hell would even be the point of it?" he questioned.

Mirellia responds to that, "Not much really, but if it will get us through with that nonsense already we can move forward with a plan, I even have the Mideus general agreeing with me, if him, me, Ost, her general, you, and Sir Ren agree to that, the other 3 generals will be outvoted and we can finally get back to business." she explains with Ren nodding to that, he be happy to just move on from that nonsense.

Bakugou though shook his head in disagreement, "Even so, I doubt we'll get anywhere after that, they'll probably argue for some other stupid thing and we be at this over again and the damn turtle will be up again once they're done." he explains.

Ren sighs to that, but he can't help but agree, when he tried getting through with the generals it went nowhere, like trying to talk with a brick wall, "Well do you have any other suggestions that we can do to get them to cooperate or are you just going to manhandle and scream at them again." he states which just made Bakugou growl at him.

But before Bakugou could start yelling again, Rifana spoke up, "Perhaps we just make up our own plan beforehand."

"What do you mean by that?" Ren asked.

Rifana now looked nervous at being the center of attention again, especially with her crush now also staring at her with his arms crossed, "Uh.. well... I just think..."

Raphtalia then already seeing what she was trying to say spoke up for her, "I think what Rifana is saying is that if we all put our minds together and make up an already set plan and then we can just present it to the generals."

Neia saw where this was going, "I see and if we give them a fully set up plan-"

"Then there will be nothing the generals can protest about." Daven finished her.

Rifana nodded to everyone and to her friend in approval for stating what she wanted to say.

Despite it sounding pretty simple the Sword and Shield heroes nod to that idea, "Hey if allows us to skip the bullshit with those meathead idiots I'm for it." Bakugou agreed.

"Same here, and after Bakugou's episode earlier they may now be afraid to go against the shield hero that we also agreed to make the leader of the plan." Ren also agreed.

"Better watch what you say paleface! You're on pretty thin ice with me!" Bakugou playfully threatens Ren who just ignores him.

The Queen and Horai also nod in agreement to the idea, "That sounds perfect, with my knowledge of the Tortoise, the Queen's diplomacy and strategy skills, the experience from the heroes, and the advice from fighting experts of Grilaroc and Eclair we can think of a perfect plan." Horai says to the group.

Mirellia nods in approval to the Tortoise battle plan, "I'll go and schedule another meeting with the generals later tonight, by then we should all make a compelling plan together." she tells everyone and the Queen leaves to inform the generals.

"You should probably know it won't be easy to think of something to take down a monster like that Bakugou," Daven states to his leader.

"I know it won't, but it'll be a good challenge." Bakugou brags and then cracks his fingers, "Alright then let's go and come up with a plan." he says and as he walks away to where they will conduct the plan the rest of his sidekicks, the 3 demi-warriors, Eclair, Grilaroc, and Ren follow suit, already wanting to make use of his position as the leader against the Spirit Tortoise.

There were still some uneasy feelings from Horai, not with the plan itself, but with the idea she might be holding back her biggest secret. In her heart, she wanted to finally say it after all of this time she spent with the cardinal heroes, but with how uneasy the shield hero has been to trusting her the whole time and to now getting him back on board to work together with the coalition to beat the tortoise, she knew now it was better she keep quiet about that while still providing what she can to defeat the tortoise. She knew her time was ending soon, and she hoped she was going to be taking her secret to the grave.

---

After only a day had passed since the heroes' arrival at the camp, the coalition forces had left the fortress on their way toward another abandoned one within a narrow valley where they knew the Tortoise would head toward with the large number of soldiers going there.

Leading ahead were the coalition forces generals, Queen Mirellia with Miss Eclair beside herself, Ost Horai next to the Tortoise kingdom's forces general, the cardinal heroes and their sidekicks and companions with the 3 demi-warriors, and massive Gaelion flying ahead everyone, on their way to the battle that will judge the fate of the world.

Thankfully the second meeting went a lot better than the first with the coalition forces now having a solid plan that the heroes and the 2 monarchs had created last night with Bakugou more or less officially leading the charge.

Ren turns toward the generals and Bakugou, "So all of you are aware of the full plan right?" he asked them while they continued marching.

"Of course I do Paleface. You and I will first distract the Turtles familiars and kill them off." Bakugou says as he nods toward the Haikazuya general.

"Then our dragon riders led by Miss Eclair will get the Tortoise's attention." the general responds.

Eclair then finished the rest of their part, "We will then lead the Tortoise toward the valley itself where the rest of the forces are at."

The Lowhirot general then spoke, "And once within, we'll start firing weapons at its legs to stop it from moving."

The Tortoise Kingdom general then spoke, "We'll then use our explosives to keep the damn thing pinned down."

The Mideus general finishes with his part, "Then we'll use our magic to slice a cut into the tortoise's neck, but I should inform you heroes again, it will only be enough for a cut, any more will start killing mages off."

Bakugou though brushed it off, "A cut is all we need. Me, Paleface, and our sidekicks will take care of the rest."

Eclair though still looked uneasy, "You make it sound simple, but even most thought-out war plans can go wrong fast in the heat of battle."

Miss Horai then spoke, "We'll change tactics if we need to, we still must do all we can to stop it, we either go forward or die trying to save the world."

Bakugou punches his fist to his palm, "Indeed! Now let's kick ass and make ourselves some turtle soup afterward!" he shouts as he and the coalition forces march on.

After a few more hours they were now at the abandoned fortress where preparations for the battle were about to begin.

All of the Haikazuya dragons have all been brought forth with their riders being given their instructions on what to do by Miss Eclair.

Lowhirot's forces have set up all of their siege weaponry on the walls of the fort and the cliff sides.

Most of Mideus's mages have set themselves up in the fort itself and are currently doing all they can to expand their mana pools and be ready for whatever incantation they need.

Lastly, the Tortoise Kingdom's forces have set up the explosives at an important spot in the valley, all to stop the tortoise for good.

Despite all of these preparations, there was still a lot of dread in the air for the soldiers to be facing the Spirit Tortoise directly, more than even the waves. But with both the Shield and Sword heroes there, they knew there was hope to defeat this thing for good, even if they may not come back alive, they'll at least make sure their families will be safe and all of the innocent souls the Tortoise did take in will be freed to move on to the afterlife.

---

One more day had passed, and in the crack of morning everyone had heard the Tortoise's loud screech knowing that meant it was up again to continue its rampage.

All of the coalition forces quickly got together into their positions and prepared themselves for the worst. Even the cardinal heroes were now ready to face the thing they had been running away from for over a week.

After only a few more hours after the screech, the Tortoise had finally arrived near the fortress being attracted to the huge number of souls there, souls all ready to fight back against this giant monster. Most of the generals and Queen Mirellia herself remained at the command post of the fort to command the troops in safety, other than the Tortoise Kingdom's forces general who volunteered himself to directly command the troops on the explosives team.

Despite most of the soldiers already knowing what was ahead of them, there was still a lot of dread in the air at the thought of going against such a monstrosity.

However, the morale of the troops quickly skyrocketed after seeing the Shield hero and his team on his dragon with Gaelion following behind, flying across the narrow valley, inspiring them to fight to the bitter end if they have to.

More cheering also came from the sight of a fast wagon moving through the valley with a giant black Filolial driving it, the troops knew this was the sword hero as he, his team, the demi-warriors, Miss Grilaroc, and Miss Horai herself were on their way to also face that monster.

Near the mouth of the valley, there was a large regiment of Haikazuya dragon riders and Melromarc knights on horses. All led by Eclair Seaetto, now in her proper knight armor.

Even a strong knight like her felt some fear in her stomach on facing the massive tortoise directly, but her confidence had also quickly rose up as Ren's wagon made it up to her and Bakugou's dragon along with Gaelion landing themselves on the ground next to them.

They all then stared forward toward the approaching Tortoise along with its huge army of flying and ground-based familiars heading their way toward the valley, with this familiar army being far bigger than any of the other ones the cardinal heroes had fought before.

"You're sure both you and Sir Ren can handle all of this?" Eclair asked of Bakugou, hoping the hero had full confidence in his abilities.

"Ha, I can handle a bunch of dumb bats easily, and since we're not in water this time Paleface should hopefully not have another panic attack," Bakugou says with the last statement making Ren roll his eyes, but he still kept his focus on the battle ahead, both he and Bakugou had there parts to fill, so Ren needs to make sure he doesn't falter on his end as the Sword hero raised his weapon out and pointed toward the Tortoise to show his resolve and inspire the troops again.

With a nod of confidence toward the two heroes, Eclair also raises her own sword out and points toward the tortoise as well, "Everyone charge toward the Tortoise until we get its attention! Then fall back to the valley! Avoid everything else, the heroes will handle it!" she orders the troops who all nod understanding that order.

And with that Bakugou shouts, "Kirishima fly!" and with a whip of his reins the dragon is now flying heading directly toward the huge bat familiar swarm, Gaelion does the same but in a different direction to do his part.

"Scarlet head toward the yeti hoard now!" Ren shouts as Scarlet immediately follows that order and runs towards the charging turtle yeti army.

Once Ren's wagon was far enough ahead Eclair signal her troops and she and her entire Dragon and horse Rider company charged toward the Tortoise itself.

Once Kirishima flew close enough to the huge bat swarm, Bakugou finally shouted "Hate reaction!" which cast a spell on the whole Swarm. With the spell now working on the giant swarm of turtle bats they had all of there eyes on the Shield Hero. Bakugou then steers Kirishima away toward a different direction where the swarm continued to follow them, keeping themselves far away from the troops.

Down below on the ground Ren follows suit, "Hate reaction!" he shouts producing the same spell Bakugou recently taught him on the ground familiars, and now with their attentions, he steers Scarlet away with the horde following the wagon and completely ignoring the troops.

And with the familiar armies gone, Eclair and the large concentration of mounted soldiers can just focus on the Tortoise getting its full attention now.

Once it was clear the Tortoise wanted to crush them, Eclair and the troops turned themselves around back to the valley to bait the Tortoise into it as the monster stomped its way toward the valley opening.

Meanwhile up in the sky and ground the cardinal heroes continue to distract and fight against the army of familiars.

On Kirishima's back, the sidekicks were firing various attacks at the swarm trying to close in on them, Neia firing chained lightning attacks, Rino fired her light energy missiles, and Daven threw his energy daggers. Bakugou and Kirishima would wish they could attack back but they are trying to focus on flying away from the huge swarm and had to leave it to everyone else.

A similar situation happened on the ground, as Scarlet raced her way across flat rocky ground, Ren, his sidekicks/companions, the demi-warriors, and Miss Grilaroc did all they could to stop the monsters from getting close to them, slicing, blasting, or firing arrows at the turtle yeti's away as they follow Bakugou's lead to continue keeping the monsters away from everyone else.

As for everyone else back with the Tortoise, once the massive monster finally moves into the narrow valley, Eclair and the company of dragon and horse riders dispatch and hide away in safety, leading to the next phase of the plan.

"FIRE!" shouted multiple commanders on the valley cliffs as the siege equipment finally fired hell on the Tortoise.

Launching heavy rocks or sharp crossbows at the massive beast, there didn't seem to be much coordination at first from the mass attack, but it was enough to help confuse the Tortoise to stop it from attacking anything.

Once enough hell was thrown though, the commanders then shouted, "Focus all fire on the left leg! Take it out!" they yelled, and now all the crossbows fired at the Tortoise's left leg as the catapults continued firing all around the Tortoise to keep it confused.

However, the confusion was only doing so much for the beast and was not taking the hundreds of bolts being forced into itself lightly, as it bashed its huge feet into the mountains, taking out a bunch of siege weapons and crews. But despite the casualties, the attack kept on as they did all they could to take out at least one of the feet.

Meanwhile back with the cardinal groups Bakugou and Ren continue to keep the familiars distracted, taking them all out of the battle as they continue their pursuit of the heroes.

"Sir Ren! Look out ahead!" Scarlet shouts as she notices a bunch of the turtle yetis coming out of the ground ahead of them.

It seemed a bunch of them dug ahead to set an ambush for the sword hero.

Ren grips his sword and orders, "Turn right!" he shouts despite it going out of Bakugou's path, he and his crew had no choice but to go off course to avoid the ambush.

Bakugou notices this below and quickly orders his scout, "Daven help them out down there!" he ordered and with a nod, Daven teleports down on the ground in the wagon.

Ren knew what this meant and ordered, "Your four, attack the ones the ambushers directly!" he ordered the demi-warriors and Grilaroc as they quickly nodded back.

Grilaroc quickly acted, "Hengen Muso secret technique, crescent moon!" she shouted and after jumping out of the cart she leaped all around and kicked or punched many of the yetis, killing them all in one hit.

Raphtalia and Kiel also went out of their way to chop and slice up many Yetis with their sword and axe respectively.

"Wind spiral arrows!" Rifana shouts and fires multiple wind arrows that directly hit the skulls of many Yeti's killing them instantly.

With the ambush quickly dealt with Daven quickly teleports by each of the off-wagon warriors and teleports them back into the wagon to get away from the horde. Then after that was done Daven teleports back right up to Kirishima, giving Bakugou the thumbs up on a completed task.

Soon enough the two monster familiar forces were now where the heroes wanted them to be at, with Bakugou now seeing Gaelion floating in the air to indicate that area's location, Bakugou lets out a side explosion on the dragon to indicate the signal.

"There's the signal Miss Horai!" Rifana shouts being the lookout for the signal which the regent nods back and stands up to conduct her part in this plan.

Horai then started to conduct her spell as she formed a black energy ball, "I Ost Horai, give my orders to the heavens and the earth, sever the laws of reality, bind them together, and spit out the pus within! By my power, let the gravity of those be amplified, ultra gravity enhancement sinking temple!" she chants, and once her spell was completed like in the cave before she fires her energy ball in the air now affecting the gravity of all the familiars.

Quickly both ground and flying familiars alike were now forced to fall on the ground, no matter how high the flying familiars were, they were all dragged to ground level unable to do anything, and like before in the cave all of Horai's allies remained unaffected by the magic.

And with that, the shield hero and Gaelion took action, "Meteor Shield!" Bakugou shouts putting a protective barrier around the entire wagon and Filolial.

While all the enemies were unable to move Kirishima and Gaelion then descended near to the ground still flying as they both breathed fire on all the helpless familiars.

Quickly burning most of them to crisp, the two continued to fly all around the area burning up as many of these things as they could while avoiding the wagon barrier.

Eventually, the dragons finished scorching the earth killing off most of the familiars. But even they knew they couldn't kill every single one of these things, but that is what the wagon crew were there to do.

Once the fires died down, the barrier disappeared and all the crew on the wagon from Ren, his sidekicks, the demi-warriors, and Miss Grilaroc continued attacking around the area to kill the last remaining monsters while Horai continued casting her spell.

Back with the Tortoise again, it continued to be a complete bloodbath as the siege assault continued on the monster. But despite the casualties, the amount of crossbows being impaled on the Tortoise's right foot was finally doing its damage on the monster.

The Tortoise kept on smashing its huge body on the mountain's side taking more crossbows and crews out, but finally enough crossbows damaged its foot enough to cut off its circulation while also leading it to bleed.

The monster tried all its might to keep its right leg up, but it was no longer any good as the leg collapsed on itself. While it can still barely move now, its right leg won't be moving again until it can heal itself up. So now it was the coalition's time to take out the other leg, but from all the casualties it took there wasn't enough anymore to take out the left leg with crossbows.

The coalition force knew this would be the case and had a new method of taking out the other foot. The left side of the valley near the Tortoise is filled to the brim with explosives, enough to collapse a mountain on a large monster.

And with the right foot taken out, it was now the time. Unfortunately due to the Tortoise's physical attacks most of the explosives crew were either forced to run or died from the attacks leaving no way to set off the bombs.

However, there was one soul left nearly buried under rubble next to the pump starter. It was the Tortoise Kingdom's forces general, who remained behind to not only honor the sacrifice of his men but to save all those still living from the tortoise's wrath, "Don't be in such a hurry big guy, I'm going to send you back to your eternal slumber." his last words were, he then push down on the pump.

Booooooom!

A huge explosion erupted on the left side of the valley, while the explosion itself didn't do much to the tortoise itself, it still caused a huge avalanche that partially buried the tortoise's entire left side including the leg. Normally such a thing wouldn't be a big deal to the tortoise that dug itself out of thousands of pounds of dirt, but its other foot was still injured from the crossbow attacks so until it healed up it was now stuck within the valley unable to move.

And the explosion was seen from far away, far enough for the cardinal heroes to see it, just as they were done taking out the familiars.

The Sword hero group witnessed the explosion as well did the shield crew on Kirishima who has now descended on the ground along with Gaelion, "Looks like phase 3 of the plan just started!" Bakugou shouts with Ren and his crew with Scarlet back in her human form all nod in agreement as they along with the demi-warriors, Grilaroc, and Horai get themselves on Gaelion. Once all on, the two dragons quickly lifted off and flew toward the valley.

While on their way there, Ren looks over Gaelion to Bakugou, "Ok Bakugou, we made it this far, so I hope you have an idea on how to cut off its head?" he asked hoping the shield hero knows what he has in mind, this was part of the plan that was pretty vague on their end.

Bakugou grins to that, "Oh don't worry Paleface, I know how to decapitate this bastard! We'll be having turtle soup soon enough!" he brags which gives Ren and the rest some confidence, especially with how well things have been going all things considered.

Rino though had something on the back of her mind, "Not to put any doubt, but this is starting to feel too easy." she said out loud then turned her head toward Rishia, "Rishia could you look over that book again at page 240?" Rino requested, she was trying to remember something she and Rishia read where mage has seen this sort of imagery of a similar scenario before.

Rishia not wanting to question Rino, quickly opens up one of the books the queen gave to them on information about the spirit tortoise. She quickly turns it to page 240, "I have the page here, it looks like the spirit tortoise is also cornered in the illustration and what looks to be some sun rays beaming on its shell or something, but it doesn't say anything on the context here." she shouts back to Rino, but it was weird for her and Rishia on to why the writers of the book would have such a thing there without reason.

However Horai right behind Rishia saw that illustration and suddenly a big memory came back to her, now getting a massive headache, "Miss Horai are you alright!?" Rishia asked with concern as she noticed Horai in pain.

After the headache wore off Horai responded, "I'm fine but.." but before she could finish she suddenly had a clear picture, "Sir Bakugou! Sir Ren!" she shouted getting the two heroes' attention, "I remember now, once the Spirit Tortoise is in a state where it's unable to move, it still has a means of fighting back!"

"Fighting back!? What the hell do you mean!?" Bakugou yells back already getting a bad feeling about this.

Horai quickly responds, "Once it can no longer take souls, it starts to use a magic attack called long-range assault which it can- Oh no it's already begun!" she then says and when everyone looked back in front of the Tortoise they noticed hundreds of long giant purple energy spikes forming from its shell.

The troops near the Tortoise were just as confused, but before anyone could think what this could mean the energy spikes started to launch themselves out of the shell and were attacking all around the valley, exploding on impact.

The troops have no choice but to run all around to escape the blast as they can, as more and more of these new spikes keep forming on the shell.

They were being launched all over the valley including the air, two of which were aiming at two flying dragons.

"Sir Bakugou!" Neia shouted and Bakugou quickly saw the energy spikes.

"Meteor shield!" Bakugou shouts forming a powerful energy barrier around the two large dragons as the energy spikes hit and explode on impact with the groups no worse than wear, but just those two spikes took a lot out of the shield hero.

It didn't help those two weren't the only ones aiming for them, as more of the energy spikes went for the dragons, "Dodge!" Bakugou shouts at Kirishima as the dragon ducks away from the energy spikes.

With the amount being thrown at the two dragons, Bakugou forces Kirishima to land in a part of the valley with a bunch of large enough rocks to hide from the spikes with Gaelion following suit.

They both land in the safe zone as they watch on in safety as the Tortoise's rampage continues even while it's crippled.

It was a horrifying sight for everyone to see, "How are we going to fight that thing now?" Rifana expressed with the others wondering the same.

Bakugou immediately turns to Horai to express his anger at her, "So do you mind telling me why you didn't inform us about this little trick the damn turtle can do Barbie!?" he yells and points his fingers at the guilt-filled woman.

"I just forgot about it, I don't know why, but my knowledge of the Tortoise has been blurred until I get in close proximity of it or I see something to remind me of the thing." Horai tries to explain while trying to not tell about her true nature.

"And why the hell is that!? This brain rot of yours is pretty fucking convenient for your excuses isn't it!" Bakugou continues yelling at her until Ren steps in.

"Bakugou we don't have time to argue like this while we are still being bombarded, why not focus on another plan to get the hell out of this situation!" Ren yells back as he points to the Tortoise.

As much as Bakugou wanted to just blow up something to let out his anger, even he knew this was not the time for that. He then looked back toward the still attacking Tortoise trying to think of something.

Rishia looked the most nervous in this situation, "What are we to do Sir Bakugou? Should we retreat?" she asked though not out of cowardice but just out concern of for all the soldiers getting slaughtered out there and their own lives, even Ren was starting to think the same.

It was something Bakugou didn't want to think about, but even in many wars in Earth's history sometimes it was better to run and fight another day, but with them getting this far to ending it and how many soldiers have died already, he wasn't in the mood to just pack and run like he had been doing for almost a week with the Tortoise.

But as he looked around the tortoise itself, outside the area of the monster were numerous craters created from the explosive spikes, but around the Tortoise itself everything was relatively unscathed.

With that little detail he knew what they needed to do, "We're going to stick to the plan and decapitate this bastard!" he announced to everyone.

Ren thought Bakugou was insane, "How are we going to cut off its head while it's attacking us like this?!" he argued back, but then Bakugou just grabbed his collar and turned his head toward the Tortoise's feet.

"Look down there dumbass! The Turtle is obviously trying to avoid hurting itself! If we stick close to its body and head we'll be safe from the spikes!" Bakugou yells at Ren to make sure he gets the point and indeed after getting a clear look at the unbombed area around the Tortoise Ren got it, as did the others.

"That's still a long way toward there while we are up in the sky." Gaelion states back, even he was expressing his own fears.

Bakugou just points to his chest, "Hey remember I'm the shield here! Just stick close to me and we'll get there in one piece. Like what Barbie said, we either kill this damn thing now or die trying! Are all of you with me!" he shouts, and without hesitation his sidekicks all nod in agreement.

Rifana also nods with them, "I trust you lord Bakugou, I know you won't let us down." she says toward the hero. And despite her and Raphtalia's and Kiel's fears, the 3 were still willing to do all they could to stop this thing from doing any more damage.

Ren also nods toward Bakugou and then turns his head toward his own group, "Just so you guys know, you don't have to follow me through this. If you want to stay and not risk your lives I won't hold it against any of you." he announced to them.

However, his teammates all placed their hands on their chests and bowed to their hero, "We won't abandon you Lord Ren after going this far, even if we die today, we won't let our fears overcome our duties, not just to you but to save many more lives." Farrie speaks for her group as the rest nod in agreement

"Same here master, let's kick some turtle butt!" Scarlet boasts making Ren smile once more to have such a loyal and dedicated team.

After Horai, Gaelion, and Grilalac also nodded in agreement to continue forward as the groups quickly get back on the two dragon's backs and look toward the Tortoise ready for their supposed suicide mission.

The two dragons then flew off from the safe spot on their way to the Tortoise again.

Once more several energy spikes aim toward the flying monsters, "Meteor shield!" Bakugou shouts again as his powerful energy barrier continues to hold out as much as it can as Kirishima and Gaelion get assaulted over and over again by these powerful attacks.

It was straining on the shield hero, but he was determined to keep his and Ren's parties safe and endured as much pain as possible.

And down from below in the valley, Eclair and her damaged regiment saw the two dragons flying in the air and helped boost the nearly broken morale of her and the men, "Men spread out into groups and try to distract the Tortoise, get as close to it as possible!" she ordered, Eclair knew the heroes needed help and even some of her men thought so as they got back on their rides getting there confidence's back by the sight of the heroes dragons. Eclair leads the charge again as the group does what they can to draw fire from the Tortoise.

The Tortoise notices them and attempts to attack them with the spikes, while there are still casualties, thankfully by splitting themselves up the dragon riders were now harder targets to pick off, and once they got close enough to the tortoise now safe from its attacks they do what they could get the monster's attention.

Back with the heroes, thanks to Eclair's actions they were now facing less fire from the energy spikes giving both groups breathing room.

And with this opening Bakugou turns his head, "Rino fire the signal, and weasel girl launch the marker at the side of the bastard's neck!" he orders with the two girls nodding back.

Rifana from Gaelion's back quickly grabs a specialized arrow that was given to her and after a few seconds of aiming with no more energy spike attacks, she fires the arrow from a huge distance eventually striking within the Tortoise's neck.

Rino then used her light magic to fire up a bright light orb for anyone to see in a long distance.

And through a telescope, Queen Mirellia sees it, "That's the signal for the mages, tell them to cast the spell!" she orders some of her men.

Eventually the two dragons were both not too far from the Tortoise itself, now within its safe zone of the spike attacks, like with Eclair the heroes and dragons fire their attacks at the monster to distract it from the soldiers while avoiding the area of the neck the arrow marker was fired on.

This went on for a minute or so but from afar on another plateau hundreds of mages were all in the process of casting a powerful chant. And thanks to the magical marker arrow Rifana fired they knew where they were going to cast it.

Eventually, the chant finished and from the sky above the Tortoise a powerful beam of light rains down right by the tortoise's neck nearly identical to the holy judgment cast the Pope had used on the heroes and Rabiers castle.

This lasts for a few seconds until the magic attack stops. It wasn't enough to fully decapitate the Tortoise however it left a very wide and gashly wound on the Tortoise's neck.

With the wound there, the heroes knew they would have a limited time window before the Tortoise healed from that. So Bakugou had Kirishima circle back around and he lets go of the reins, "Daven! Pilot Kirishima!" he ordered with Daven nodding and then teleports to the front and grabs Kirishima's reins.

Bakugou then grins as he stretches himself as they near the Tortoise, "You sure this is a good idea sir Bakugou?" Neia asked having concerns about this part of the plan.

"HA! When did I ever have bad ideas!?" he jokes which Neia knew she was forced to just accept her master's crazy plan and once they were right near the Tortoise's neck wound Bakugou launches himself off of Kirishima and blasts himself toward the wound.

Bakugou knew this was his big moment of the plan, and had been forcing himself to use the least amount of explosions as possible to save on the sweat he produced all day and avoid direct combat with anything else.

Gaelion breathes fires from the front to keep the Tortoise's head straight as Bakugou hones in on the wound.

Once he was right at the wound itself it was time for his move, "DIE!"

Booom!

Bakugou blasts himself right into the wound going deep into the Tortoise's neck itself.

"RRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAWWWWWWWWWWRRRRRRR!" the Tortoise screeches in pain as Bakugou blasts himself directly through its neck.

As Kirishima flies toward the other side of the neck, the crew quickly notices a heated blister coming from that side of the neck.

Then-

Booooom!

Katsuki had blasted himself through the other end leaving a big open hole on that side of the neck, and just as planned he landed right on a passing flying Kirishima.

"RRRRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAWWWWWWWWRRRRRRRR!" the Tortoise screeches again now in deeper pain than before. This stunt wouldn't be enough to completely decapitate the monster, but it was one step of a few to finally do the beheading.

Once Bakugou took back Kirishima's reins, Gaelion flew up next the them, "You know what to do next, right Paleface!?" he yells with Ren nodding in approval.

Ren quickly turns to his filolial, "Scarlet!" he shouts with the girl quickly transforming into her bird form him and Raphtalia to jump on.

Daven also teleported on Gaelion to pick up Kiel and Horai as they were brought on board Kirishima.

The two dragons then flew back to the still in pain Tortoise right toward the hole Bakugou made on its neck.

From Gaelion, Scarlet jumps off his back landing right on the Tortoise's neck and once right above the hole clutching onto the flesh with her clawed bird feet, Ren and Raphtalia then powered up their swords with aid from both Rino's and Rishia's magic they stab deep into the thick neck.

And on the other side of the hole from the bottom half Neia and Kiel also powered up their weapons and cut through the bottom half as Kirishima flew right under the Tortoise's neck.

These cuts continued up until the two sides were right up to the mage cut wound. Scarlet jumps off and lands on Gaelion with Ren and Raphtalia also back on board again, as Gaelion and Kirishima circle back and at the very wounds that were just made the two dragons breathe down fire into them making the cuts even worse than before.

"RRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAWWWWWWWWWWRRRRRRRRRR!" The Tortoise continues to roar and screech in pain as it tries its best to shake them off or move up again, but its legs haven't regenerated back fast enough to do so.

Kirishima flies to the bottom of the neck once more and before the fire has time to make the flesh scab up, Rino raises her arm and staff out, "Arcane missiles!" she shouts and numerous energy balls appear all around the bottom of the neck as she launches them toward the deep wound ring.

"100 swords!" Ren also shouts from up above the neck to fire his special ability and rains down numerous energy swords at the wound ring as well.

Both attacks go at it at the same time, Rino's powerful magic explodes at the bottom of the neck as Ren's energy swords tear through the tops.

"RRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAWWWWWWWWWWWWRRRRRRRRR!", The Tortoise screeches in pain again as its neck bleeds all over, still not enough for a full decapitation but was getting close as the beast was starting to lose consciousness.

Bakugou smirks knowing it is time for the grand finale, "Absorb this! Air Strike Shield!" he shouts and he launches a green energy air-strike shield right into the bottom of the bleeding wounded bottom neck.

This was supposed to be the final attack to truly end the tortoise to forcibly widen all the wounds that it had been inflected, but the shield itself wasn't big enough for that yet.

That is when Miss Horai made her move as she pointed her arms toward Bakugou and cast her magic right behind him, "I Ost Horai, give my orders to the heavens and the earth, by my power may I strengthen the holy shield before me, now go!" she chants as she placed her hands on his shield. The shield glowed brightly from all of that power she provided and with this new power, Bakugou's airstrike shield grew bigger and bigger as it quickly dug deep through the screeching Tortoise's head.

"RRRRRRRRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAWWWWWWWWWRRRRRRRR-*Splat*" The energy Shield finally expands all the way through from the bottom to the top of the neck completely slicing right through the Tortoise's neck.

And just as the energy shield disappeared before anyone could think, the Spirit Tortoise's now lifeless head fell off from its body finally crashing into the ground. Along with its head, the rest of its headless body falls and collapses forward. And from its shell, the energy spikes disappear completely.

After the long grueling and bloody battle the Spirit Tortoise has been fully decapitated.

And from all around the valley, cheers can be heard from all the surviving soldiers, from the mages, the siege crews, the dragon riders with Eclair, the bomb crews, and even the generals and Queen cheer to their victory over this terrifying monster.

Things were just as celebratory on the dragons as well, "Hell yeah! Another score for the Katsuki Bakugou agency!" Bakugou shouts with Kirishima following his father's lead as he roars in victory "RRRRRRROOOOOOOAAAAARRRRRRR!".

The rest of the sidekicks and Kiel all cheer on as well for their victory with them even hugging each other for their accomplishment.

The same can be said on Gaelion with the Sword hero crew and Raphtalia, Ren was surprisingly silent, but he was still amazed with himself that he helped take this whole thing down along with his crew who all cheered and also hugged each other, "We did it master Ren, we helped defeat the evil turtle!" Scarlet congratulates her master as she hugs him the hardest.

Ren smiles back and rubs the top of her head not covered by her crown, "We sure did Scarlet, we sure did." he says back. He knew there was still much for them to do after this like the waves, but he could worry about that later, right now he would like to just celebrate the moment. Gaelion himself also follows Kirishima's lead and makes a mighty roar himself across the valley, "RRRRRROOOOOOOAAAAAARRRRRR!".

However there was one particular person who did not look happy to be celebrating, Miss Ost Horai, she looked extremely troubled knowing something was extremely off right now.

Eventually, the two dragons descend back to the ground near the Tortoise's corpse as they see a large force coming their way, it's the dragon rider regiment, and along with them are the 3 generals, Eclair, and the Queen herself happy to see the heroes jump off the dragons with Kirishima turning back to his toddler form and jumps on Bakugou's shoulder.

Queen Mirellia, Eclair, and the Generals then got off their horses and approached the heroes. The Queen was the first to speak, "Congratulations heroes, both cardinal heroes and companions alike. You both did what many thought to be impossible and defeated the Spirit Tortoise. We can't thank you enough for your help."

Almost everyone there smiles and bows back in respect, "It was nothing your majesty. We only did our duties as heroes." Rino says back and the others nod with her in agreement.

Eclair then spoke up, "Your duties were to just stop the waves of catastrophe, what you did today was more than we could ever expect from the cardinal heroes let alone their teammates, and not for any one nation or one people, but for all nations for all humans, elves, dragons, and Demi-humans alike." she says as she and the knights around her took a knee and bowed back toward the heroes.

The heroes bowed back for such gratitude. With Bakugou though, while he likes the praise has to remind himself of other matters, "We still need to find bookworm and then blind him with the arms of his glasses after releasing this damn thing in the first place." he reminds everyone there.

"Not to mention find Ponytail Slut and Bow Bitch, hopefully they're still alive for our sakes." Ren also adds in.

The Lowhirot general nods to that, "Indeed those fools need to answer for their crimes for all of this damage soon enough. Something worse than name changes for sure." he says with an angry tone with a bunch of other soldiers there nodding in agreement while also shouting over each other for what they want to do with those two, they know now that their dead comrades are on their hands and want them to answer for what they allowed to happen.

Mirellia knew this was going to be an icy topic to deal with and would rather handle the situation tomorrow and not ruin the celebratory mood from everyone having a rough day, "We'll deal with those 3 later as we continue our investigations, for now let us just celebrate our victory for now and then we'll deal with those three and the fate of the Tortoise Kingdom." she says with everyone nodding in agreement with her as the soldiers now going back to cheer in celebration.

However with Horai, the more smiles she sees from everyone the more guilt she felt, as she knows the truth about the situation. She wanted to keep this secret to her grave and not ruin everyone's happy mood, but at this point Horai knew inside this was the right thing to do for the fate of the world and billions of innocent lives.

After clutching her heart and letting out a sigh she finally gained the courage to finally speak the truth, "Everyone please listen to me!" she shouted out loud getting everyone's attention.

"Miss Horai, is there something you wanted to say?" Mirellia asked the regent with everyone else wondering as well noticing her disgruntled look.

"Miss Horai are you ok?" Raphtalia asked with the other Demi-warriors, sidekicks, and cardinal heroes wondering as well.

Guilt continued to consume her, but after another sigh Horai finally spoke, "I hate to be the one to bring such bad news, but.. But.. I'm afraid the Spirit Tortoise is not truly dead yet." she finally admits.

"What!?" almost everyone around expressed with the once happy mood now turning into one of confusion and dread.

Even Ren and Bakugou looked confused, "What the hell do you mean not truly dead!? Its fucking head is rotting on the ground right now!" Bakugou yells at her not liking where this might be going.

All eyes were now on Horai with them all wondering how she would know such a thing.

This was also something she didn't want to admit, but after expressing another sigh she finally confesses, "Because if the Spirit Tortoise was truly dead, I should be dead as well."

This answer though just confused everyone more, "Miss Horai, why would that be the case?" Neia asked with the other sidekicks awaiting the answer to that.

Horai then points to herself, "Because you see, everything you knew about me before was a lie."

"A lie? Miss Horai what are you talking about?" Mirellia asked herself just as clueless as the rest.

Horai finally answers those questions, "You see, I'm no normal mortal human woman. I'm actually a familiar of the Spirit Tortoise."

"What?!" everyone expressed once more by this truth.

Even Ren couldn't believe it, "A familiar?! Miss Horai are you saying you're no different than those Bat and Yeti things we've been fighting all this time?" he asked hoping for clarification.

Horai nods back, "Yes, I'm a human familiar, unlike the others I take the form of a human woman."

"But why Miss Horai?" Kiel asked her.

"It's so I can be inside centers of power of many nations, you see it was my job to help subterfuge souls for the Tortoise to help create the barrier to stop the waves. If the cardinal heroes are unable to stop the waves it's me and my master's duty to create the barrier which requires souls to power it. And one way to collect souls is for me to manipulate heads of state to start wars and conflicts that would result in the deaths of many with their souls being absorbed by the Tortoise."

"So that was why you allowed yourself to be King Ransha's concubine?" Daven asked with Horai immediately nodding yes to that.

"So ever since you become that bastards whore you've been sucking up people's souls without anyone noticing?!" Bakugou shouts at her not liking the implications of a being that is just absorbing the souls of deceased people without the living knowing what's happening to their dead loved ones.

Horai immediately tried to correct the shield hero, "Oh heavens no, I never take anyone's soul like that. I only start the process once permitted by the cardinal heroes first, as I said before the spirit tortoise is only meant to be released in absolute emergencies. Only the cardinal heroes would be allowed to release the Tortoise after I the human familiar gave them instructions on how to release the seal. And even so, once the barrier has been created the collected souls would be released and finally pass on to the afterlife with the waves being stopped for good." she explains the process to clarify as much as she could to not make anyone think she had any malicious intent.

Mirellia then spoke her mind, "Such a cruel fate for someone to be in such a position, where the lives of the whole world would be on your hands to have to sacrifice. It's still sad to see everything about you was a lie. I thought of you as someone trustworthy." she expresses with sadness in her tone.

Horai can understand and nods back at the Queen, "I know, I'm sorry but I had to play my part for the good of the world. I had to look the part and well played the role of an evil consort." she apologizes back.

Daven then spoke up, "So if you're a familiar of the Tortoise and are still standing here alive and well, that means-"

"It means the Spirit Tortoise is still alive." Horai finished confirming everyone's fears. Now complete dread filled the air for everyone with the thought that this massive monster was still technically alive despite its missing head.

"And mind telling us why the hell you didn't say this to us for over a week?! Did you also forget about that!?" Bakugou demands from Horai not happy about this at all.

"Uh.. No, I always knew about this. I didn't say anything since it didn't seem to have mattered either way in killing the Tortoise or before the Tortoise was awakened, I figured you guys wouldn't have trusted me if you thought I was working with the Tortoise directly." Horai explains, the sidekicks understood her logic but it didn't change Bakugou's anger, he did expect something more out of the concubine and being directly related to the Tortoise somehow, but he still didn't like the idea of being in the dark on this whole thing.

The Haikazuya general then takes out his sword and points toward Horai, "Well then monster! What if we just cut your head off and see if that will kill the Tortoise also!"

"Sorry I'm afraid it doesn't work like that, if you kill me I'll eventually just reform again in a different location as if nothing happened, no matter how many times you try it," Horai explained which made the angry general put his weapon away knowing it will accomplish nothing, but this situation still angered him as it did with the shield hero.

"Ok then Barbie, how in the hell do we kill this damn thing then?!" Bakugou demands from her while pointing toward the Tortoise.

"I.. I'm not sure-"

"How in the hell do you not know how to kill this damn thing!?" Bakugou yells not in the mood of her being so unclear about everything.

"I just don't know, ok!" Horai snaps, surprising everyone to how the normally calm regent would just erupt like that, Horai then lets out a light sigh, "I'm sorry shield hero. I'm trying all I can to help, but I just can't remember everything. It's as if my mind keeps getting clouded when I try to look deeper into my memories, I don't know why, it's just how it's been. I'm so sorry." Horai explains calmly to the Shield hero as she lets out tears from her eyes showing how sincere she is with all the guilt the poor woman carries with herself. Everyone even Bakugou knew these were her genuine emotions, "You think I wanted all of this pointless death? All of this pointless destruction? No, I only wanted to protect the world. Protect the weak, protect the helpless, and protect future generations. No one is more hurt about all of this than me. I apologize to you heroes, for not being of any help." she continued expressing her inner pain.

Once more it was something Bakugou couldn't argue back, but like her, he too was upset about all the destruction that had been happening and just like her wanted to end it for good.

After a few seconds of pause, everyone was trying to think what they could do now. It seemed they had no idea on they could deal with the Tortoise as Horai also remained quiet, none could think of the proper way to permanently kill the monster and it would only be a matter of time before the Tortoise would start its rampage again.

Rino then finally thought of something, "Miss Horai I recall back on the dragons that you didn't remember the Tortoise's attack from before, but after getting a look in that book you finally started to remember it again right?"

"Yes, having a visual of the attack as well as getting close to the Tortoise helped me remember, perhaps that could mean something," Horai says and then quickly she and the others around see where this might be going.

Neia was the first to speak up on that, "I see, and perhaps if we can find more ways to bring back your memory then."

"Then we might find the key to killing the Tortoise." Daven finished coming to the same conclusion as Neia and Rino nodded back.

Bakugou, Ren, the generals, and the Queen also nod understanding the idea, "Then the most we can do now is to ignite these stimuli as soon as possible." Mirellia says.

"But will books be enough?" Eclair asked.

Horai shakes her head in disapproval of that, "I doubt it will be enough, though it does seem that if I'm in close proximity to the Tortoise itself things become more clear to me.

Bakugou then turns his body around, "If proximity is what jugs the airhead's memory, we might as well get her to the core of the stimuli itself over there." he says and then points toward the headless Tortoise.

"The Tortoise's back, are you sure this is a good idea?" the Mideus general wondered.

"If you idiots got any better ideas then spit it out now, if not we're going to the Turtle." Bakugou insults the general back.

Horai nods to that, "Yes, there is also a village and a large temple on its back as well, perhaps if we head toward that I may be able to remember the core weakness of the Tortoise." she agrees with Bakugou

With no counterargument back the Queen, the generals, and the heroes nod in approval of Bakugou's plan, right now it may be their only hope.

The Lowhirot general then said, "Very well, if that's the plan, I'll set up some of our crossbows to create a means to get up to the Tortoise's shell.

"No need, Kirishima!" Bakugou responds then yells at his dragon as Kirishima jumps off his father's shoulder and grows into his huge adult form, "We're going to just fly up to it." Bakugou continued as Kirishima lowered himself to allow his family, Horai, and the demi-warriors to get on.

Gaelion also nods and lowers himself to allow Ren's groups, Mirellia, and Eclair to get on.

The two dragons then quickly lift off and head their way to the Tortoise's back.

---

After a couple minutes of flying, the dragons finally land on one of the mountains on the tortoise's back. Everyone quickly gets off them as they walk on foot up the pathway on the mountain.

Despite it being a part of the Tortoise's shell the mountain itself would look like any other mountain, with the crew knowing this place was the same place the holy temple was at, they head their way toward it to hopefully get Horai to remember what needs to be done to truly kill the monster for good.

The dragons though didn't land far from the village with the temple, the groups only had to walk up a couple of minutes on the pathway. But as they got up higher and higher a thick mist began to cover the area.

Eventually, the groups made it toward what was supposedly the entrance of the town near on top of the mountain on the Tortoiseshell. However the mist was the thickest past the entrance, it was nearly impossible to see anything else beyond it.

Everyone then turns back toward Horai, "Miss Horai do you remember anything yet?" Neia asked.

Horai could only rub her head, "I'm sorry but it's like a fog is clouding my head, perhaps it's connected to the mist right here?" she says and thinks about it out loud.

Ren rubs his chin to that, "I guess we may have to wait for this mist to clear up for us to-"

"We don't have time to wait Paleface!" Bakugou interrupts as he walks up toward the entrance and points out to the thick mist, "Kirishima! Use wind magic to blow this crap away!" he then orders.

Kirishima nods then transforms back into his adult form and with his wings and wind magic he starts to make powerful winds toward the mist, and with each flap of his wings, he pushed more and more of the mist away.

Scarlet then groaned in annoyance that it seemed the dragon was upstaging her again. She then transformed into her bird form and ran up next to the dragon, "My wind magic is more powerful! I can beat the stupid dragon at blowing away mist anytime!" she boasted as Scarlet flapped her own wings and with the powerful wind gusts and magic she was blowing the mist away as well.

Gaelion then approached the two, "Might as well help." he casually said and with his strong wings he was helping get rid of the mist as well.

Rifana then ran up to the wind blowers, "Wait I can help too!" she said then quickly took out her bow, and with her own wind magic she formed magic air arrows and fired them into the receding mist as the arrows dragged the mist off with them into the air or off the tortoise shell.

This mist was somewhat magical in nature so it wasn't easy to get rid of, but the combined power and magic from the four had eventually done its work.

After only a couple of minutes, the mist was now all gone.

With the way now cleared the heroes then continued walking a little bit longer until they finally stopped.

They finally made it to the village, or what was left of it. The sacred village full of priests and devoted followers of the Spirit Tortoise's religion, was now a complete ruin, full of crashed and destroyed buildings and many corpses of equally crushed bodies.

Most of the heroes were shocked to see quite a horrifying sight. Despite them seeing death before, it was still a grim view to all of them, "By the gods, these poor people." Neia says sharing a lot of the same feelings with the rest of the group.

Bakugou then said, "Don't feel bad Neia, remember these were the same idiots who wanted to wake this monster up and now got the end result of it." he didn't want to show any empathy for the supposed evil people responsible for this whole disaster in the first place.

"No they weren't." said a voice with everyone including Bakugou turned toward, it was Miss Horai as she walked toward a building with some of the crushed victims, "These people weren't like the ones you fought in the caves. They weren't manipulated fanatics under the influence of an equally fanatic and selfish king. These people were of the true faithful, who respected the Tortoise and would never want to bring harm to anybody unless they had no choice. They were kind and loving people who only wanted what would be best for the world if the time were to ever come by the choice of the cardinal heroes." she continued as she kneeled down feeling extremely saddened about all of this.

Mirellia then said, "I'm sure they knew this would have happened one day. But the fact it was forcibly awakened means these people had died for nothing."

Everyone continued to look across the depressing sight, even Bakugou now felt a little guilty for his comment a minute ago. He knows this sort of thing is what Pro-heroes will have to see one day with disasters like this, but it still wasn't a good feeling. This even started to remind him of the aftermath of Kamino, and just like that, this was the result of an evil bastard that needed to be put down like the mad dogs they were.

But for now he sighed, "Well, at the very least we give their bodies proper disposal. Might as well give Barbie time to think." he said in a surprisingly calm tone.

It was a surprise for almost everyone there, but at the same time, they weren't going to say anything about it. They then began the process of disposing of the bodies of the Tortoise church followers and villagers.

After about an hour or so the groups quickly gathered and wrapped up the bodies. Kirishima and Gaelion were there to do the heavy lifting of the crushed buildings and Daven used his dark magic senses to identify as many bodies as he could find.

Eventually when it seemed they collected and wrapped all of them, the corpses were placed on a large pile together.

Bakugou then said to his dragon, "Kirishima, cremate them now."

Kirishima then breathes flames on the pile setting all the bodies on fire. They eventually burn away to ash as their remains go up into the air.

"May all of you find peace with the gods." Neia prays out loud with her eyes closed and hands together. Rino and Daven were praying as well but were silent to themselves. Most of Ren's group were also praying, though Ren, Scarlet, and Eclair continued to just watch in silence.

Ren also notices how the demi-warriors look the most upset out of everyone else, with Rifana doing her best to hold back her tears while Raphtalia and Kiel hug each other.

Eclair noticed and finally spoke to Ren, "They remember of what happened to their village, when the waves arrived and killed so many of them, including their parents. Seeing such a familiar sight is not easy on them."

"I don't think it's easy on anyone. Back in my old world in the games I played, I would see things like this in the story of the game and not think much about it. But seeing it all in reality… man, to think I saw this whole thing just as a game before, I feel stupid now." Ren admits out loud feeling the guilt of his past self.

Eclair then placed her hand on his shoulder, "Don't blame yourself for anything. None of this is your fault, neither were the waves at my father's town. However the aftermath of it should've been my responsibility to protect the 3 and the rest of the survivors of Seaetto, only to get myself captured by Piece of shits men. There's no changing that, but all we can do now is move forward and help those still alive now and stop further suffering." she says in comfort toward the sword hero who smiles back feeling a little better now.

Everyone continued watching, including the one feeling the most guilty of all of this, Ost Horai. While she knew none of this was directly her fault, it still ate at her that all of these people were dead now because she couldn't stop Kyo and the two other cardinal heroes in time. But hearing the words of Eclair also made her feel a little better, one can only sulk for so long, especially if there was still a chance to stop massacres such as these from happening again.

Finally, it had become clear to her where they needed to go next, "Everyone, I think I know where we might find more answers!" she announced out loud getting everyone's attention.

"Where to miss Horai?" Mirellia quickly asked.

Horai then pointed toward a pathway up past the village ruins, "The Temple of the Spirit Tortoise is over here." she said and walked that way.

Everyone there follows suit hoping to finally find an end to this nightmare for good.

After a few minutes of walking the heroes were now up to the temple Horai was talking about, it was a large structure that seemed to be embedded into the mountain itself. While parts of it looked damaged, the building itself was still standing, just barely though.

The heroes all go inside the temple, hopefully to find something that can help them. All but Gaelion who remained outside since unlike Kirishima he couldn't shrink down his size.

Much like the village outside, the temple was very damaged with some debris decorating the floors, but was still barely standing so everyone had to be cautious about where they went and what they could touch.

Rino then spoke while observing her surroundings and reading one of the books, "According to the texts, this shrine was a temple dedicated to the Spirit Tortoise itself.".

"Does it say anything about how to kill this damn thing already?" Bakugou says back getting unhinged again by the lack of anything of note yet.

"Nope nothing yet, we might as well keep looking," Rino responds, unfortunately for them there was very little left here that wasn't destroyed or blocked off by mountains of debris.

"Guys, over here!" shouted Farrie of Ren's team as she pointed to a set of large broken doors.

Everyone carefully rushes over to her and beyond the broken doorway is a huge room, a room with a huge painted picture of the Tortoise on the wall with some writing on it.

This sparked most of the group's curiosities especially Horai's as they all went into the room and approached the wall.

Rino and Rishia quickly start reading the text on the wall, "So what does it say?" Mirellia asked.

Rino quickly responds, "There isn't too much I can decipher. It's mostly just descriptions of what the Tortoise is and its purpose."

"Yeah even referring to it as a Guardian beast of the world," Rishia added as she looked through a book herself to make comparisons.

Bakugou wasn't impressed, "Well we're going to need more than Wikipedia descriptions, unless it actually tells us something on how to kill the damn thing."

"What's Wikipedia?" Rishia asked with a few others also confused by the name.

"Forget it! Just keep reading it until you find something." Bakugou responds.

Rino shook her head, "I'm afraid it doesn't say anything else, not even any mention of the seal that kept it asleep before."

"Same here," Rishia added.

This didn't help the group's morale thinking they may be at a dead end now, though Neia quickly noticed something behind some damaged drapes, "Wait what's this." she said out loud getting everyone's attention and as she walked toward the wall she pulls the drapes to show off more writing on it.

Rino tries to read it, but has no luck understanding it, "This isn't like any language or runes I've studied before, not even ancient ones." she says.

Bakugou was curious to know what language it could be to confuse his own party member and looked over at the wall, only to stutter in surprise, "No way, that's Japanese!" he shouted immediately identifying the writing as Japanese Kanji.

Ren quickly looks over and was shocked to see it himself, "Holy crap your right, it's in our language."

Rifana quickly asks about that, "Your language? So this is from your two's worlds?"

Mirellia nods to the demi-human girl, "Yes, it's known as the heroes alphabet, I imagine it was left by the ancient cardinal heroes." she responds answering her question.

"So what does it say?" Neia asked with the others wondering as well.

"Gah, I'm trying, but this crap is extremely worn and faded, I see the words seal, seventh, and I think shatter, but that's it. Damn it! This might as well just be a mad libs game!" Bakugou shouts in anger now thinking they were in a dead end again.

Mirellia quickly turns toward the sword hero, "Sir Ren can you identify anything?" she asked.

Ren tries his best to read the very worn kanji himself hoping to see something Bakugou might've missed, but it is no use, "I.. No, I can only see the word's seal, seven, and shatter as well." he responds.

As Rino thinks to herself, she finally thinks of something, "Could this have been the original instructions on opening the seal?" she says out loud.

Neia nods in agreement with her, "It would make sense if the other heroes were the original ones to have sealed it in the first place. They leave something behind to help future heroes to open it. Could this be how that Kyo guy found out about this?" she says out loud.

"Not like that matters to us now. Those idiots should've left something on how to kill this thing, damn it there has to be more to this." Bakugou complains trying to brush off any dust while being as careful as possible to not ruin the worn-out writing.

"Maybe it could be a code for something?" Ren suggested.

"Why the hell would they make something so important like that be so cryptic while giving instructions to awaken this thing on a silver platter Paleface!?" Bakugou yells at Ren on his stupid suggestion.

"I'm just trying to think of something Bakugou, not like we have a lot to go by to begin with." Ren defends himself, but Bakugou ignores him and tries to read the message again hoping to identify more words or find meaning to them.

But from behind, as Ost Horai looked around at the Tortoise painting as well as looking at the ancient heroes' writings, some sparks in her brain started to appear, clearing up her fogged mind. It started to creep up quicker and quicker as she felt a huge surge of old knowledge coming into her head. So much knowledge started to cause a headache which got most of the group's attention, "Are you okay Miss Horai?" Raphtalia asked.

But before she could respond, the mass headache quickly overwhelmed her body and she nearly passed out before Kiel grabbed her, "Miss Horai, is there something wrong with you?!" she immediately asked with everyone gathering around the familiar woman wondering what this could mean.

Horai quickly gets back on her feet still holding her head, "No I'm fine, it's just that….. Wait, it's all coming to me. I remember now." she says and then confidently walks away from the group toward a large wall in the room free from most of the debris.

Before anyone could ask what this was about, Horai starts performing some of her gravity magic from her hands and points toward the wall as her arms glow green.

A section of the wall then also turned green from her powers, and with her gravity magic Horai forces up that section of the wall until it eventually stops itself, now revealing a dark cave tunnel that leads within the mountain.

Everyone there was both amazed and confused at the same time, "Miss Horai what is this?" Mirellia asks hoping for an answer to all of this.

Horai turns herself back to the Queen, "It's a secret tunnel within the Temple, it leads directly through the Tortoise's shell into its very body."

"Wait a minute? You mean inside the Tortoise itself?" Neia asks wanting to confirm it.

Horai nods back, "Yes, yes it is. I also now remember how to properly kill the Tortoise itself. To truly kill it we need to destroy its heart."

Everyone looked surprised and somewhat relieved to hear that, now it seems they finally have found a solution to this crisis, even Bakugou to a lesser extent, "So that's it then Barbie? We just go inside this monster, destroy its heart and we kill the thing for real right?" he questioned her.

Horai nods to that, "Yes, once destroy the Tortoise and myself will finally die with this nightmare finally being over."

Bakugou then stretches and cracks his arms after hearing that, "About time we get something out of this." he then turns toward his team, "Ok Bakusquad, it probably won't be easy down there, so I hope you're all ready to deal with any shit thrown at you." he announced to his sidekicks.

And with that Neia, Rino, Daven, and Little Kirishima nod in approval of that, confident to fight well down there, "We're ready for anything Sir Bakugou." Neia says for the team, and even Rifana nods with them, which seeing that made Raphtalia look nervous knowing what her friend is thinking.

Ren also stretches himself, "Hopefully we'll be able to destroy the heart before it starts rampaging again, but together we can-"

"What do you mean we Paleface? You, your group, and the bird Loli need to stay out here." Bakugou interrupts.

"Wait a minute, what do you mean stay out?" Ren reacted confused.

"Isn't it obvious idiot!? You need to remain outside to take care of this damn turtle if its head grows back before we're done." Bakugou explains to a now more worried Sword Hero.

"Hold on, you mean by myself and my team? How am I supposed to cut its head off again if that happens?!" Ren argues back not liking how this was being set up.

Bakugou then starts forcibly poking Ren on the head, "You're a big boy with a magic super-powered sword! Use your damn head and figure it out on your own!" he scolds Ren driving his point across.

Mirellia even nods in agreement, "I agree, if the Tortoise starts rampaging again, more could die and might interfere with you five getting to its heart. It be wise if one cardinal hero and their team goes below and one remains up outside." she says with Eclair nodding in agreement with her point.

Ren groaned in annoyance at this whole thing, he didn't like the idea of being on his own to deal with the Tortoise if it started moving again, but he knew there was no arguing with the shield hero, "Ugh, fine, me and my group will stay topside. Hopefully, you'll find the heart and kill it without us having to worry about the monster again." Ren says back in annoyance with the rest of his team along with Raphtalia and Kiel nodding in agreement.

"Sir Bakugou what about us?" Rifana asked looking concerned about the answer.

"You three might as well stay with Paleface." Bakugou quickly answered.

Rifana immediately looked somewhat upset to hear that answer, "But Sir Bakugou I could be of assistance with the-"

"This isn't a field trip kid. You and the other two have been useful enough but this might be a suicide mission, so I'm going to need my best men with me and not worry about any more distractions." Bakugou interrupts and responds.

Rifana though didn't want to be left out of being involved her own crush, "But Sir Bakugou I can-"

But she is then interrupted again by an arm touching her shoulder, it is her friend Raphtalia smiling back at her friend, "Don't worry about them Rifana, they are strong enough to handle this on their own. For now let's remain together to help the sword hero." she says with Kiel nodding with them. After seeing the bodies in the ruined village earlier, it reminded her of what happened to their village, Raphtalia and Kiel now feel more concerned about their trios well-being, as they're the only things left of their old village and want to protect that and each other as much as they could.

Rifana though still looked upset, she really did want to go and help Sir Bakugou, not just for his love, but also wanting to help kill this thing before more lives are lost like back at their village. But she knew arguing about it with the heroes and her friends wouldn't get her anywhere and concede, "You're right, I'm sorry Raphtalia." she apologizes, though still looking a bit upset.

Horai then spoke, "I shall go with the Shield hero, it's a large body down there and they will need someone to navigate them directly to the heart."

And with that Bakugou punches his palm letting out a small explosion, "Perfect! Now enough chit chat, and let's go kill some Turtle already!" he shouts to everyone.

Mirellia nods and bows once more to the shield group, "Very well then, good luck to you heroes and Horai." she says and turns along with Ren and the rest.

"One more moment please." Horai says to the Queen and the others as they turn back to Horai, "I just want to say goodbye to all of you. This may be the last time I'll be seeing you and I want thank you for trusting me enough to help you as we have done everything we could to stop this madness and saved more lives. So again thank you, especially you Sir Ren, your hard work and bravery along with Sir Bakugou's will always be remembered by me, and hopefully by the end of this day it will be remembered by everyone else forever." she finished as Horai turns away toward the tunnel as the rest of the shield group follow suit.

Ren sighed to himself, even though he knew it was necessary it still felt uneasy that this sweet woman had to die with the Tortoise. But he also knew what needed to be done, and he had a lot of responsibility on his hands now to deal with without having Bakugou to be there to help him out.

The two groups head off, Bakugou, his sidekicks, and Horai head inside the tunnel to find its heart. The rest including the Queen, Eclair, the demi-warriors, and Rem and his group will be heading their way back with the armies and general's to keep an eye on the tortoise itself.

The sword group finally left the damaged structure as they headed for Gaelion still waiting outside, "I see we're short on passengers, I'm assuming there's good reason for this?" the elder dragon asked.

Ren answered him, "Bakugou will be dealing with the heart to hopefully kill the Tortoise for good, we need to make sure to put this thing down if it gets up again. Somehow." he says still feeling uneasy that he is expected to deal with the Tortoise by himself."

Mirellia then speaks herself, "We need to get the generals together and come up with an emergency strategy to handle the-"

But then the Queen stops herself after feeling the ground had started shaking, "What's happening!?" Scarlet shouted

"It must be the Tortoise! It seems despite the loss of its head it is still reacting to when things go inside itself!" Eclair rationalized, she hoped that was the case and not the Tortoise already quickly regenerating again.

Everyone did their best to keep their feet on the ground and not trip on themselves. This includes the demi-warriors Kiel and Raphtalia respectively, "Then we better get off it soon, Rifana can you hold my hand to firm ourselves on the ground better?…. Rifana!?" but as she looked around she didn't see her friend at all, "Kiel! Do you see Rifana!?"

"No I thought she was with you?!" Kiel yelled back not seeing her other friend around herself, everyone else there also looked around and didn't see where the weasel girl was at.

That was until Raphtalia thought of something, something she didn't like, "Oh no! Please don't!?" Raphtalia then turns back to the Temple and sees a brief glimpse of her friend Rifana running into the Temple again as it starts to crumple from the tortoise shaking, "Rifana NO!" Raphtalia shouts as she runs back toward the temple again to stop Rifana from going in and then into the Tortoise itself, but it is really hard from the shaking.

Unfortunately, the result of the ground shakes made the already damaged temple begin to crumble further, even seen from a distance the ceiling was collapsing, debris was falling all over the place, and even the pillars that helped keep it all up began to break apart.

"Rifana!" Raphtalia screamed as she continued trying her best to run and stop Rifana, but as she approached near the entrance, the entire Temple finally fully collapsed. Dust and debris spew out in a thick cloud of smoke and dust getting all over on Raphtalia. After spitting it out of her mouth and brushing it off her eyes, she now sees the entrance fully blocked off by the temple roof and rocks from the mountain, "RIFANA!" she screams with full tears in her eyes, as she quickly collapses on the ground, now crying into her hands, thinking the worst has now happened with her best friend. One of the few things she had left of hers and Kiel's old life was now seemingly gone.

Soon the others finally caught up as the ground shakes finally stop for now, only for them to be also too late to help with the situation.

Kiel quickly comforts her friend as she kneels and hugs Raphtalia as the poor young adult hugs her friend back, "Don't worry Raphtalia, remember we all got stronger together, and she is always the more athletic of all of us. I think she might be fine." Kiel tries to comfort Raphtalia, even if she wasn't fully confident herself about that, she still wanted to have hope and cheer her other friend up.

"But… but Kiel, how do we even know she got to the entrance to the Tortoise in time? What if she didn't get there fast enough or tripped or something!? It will be impossible to know at this point if she even made it." Raphtalia cries more, feeling depressed that it seemed hopeless with Kiel unfortunately having no way to ensure Rifana is truly still alive.

That was until Gaelion finally approached the group as he sniffed the area. He does this for a few seconds until he recognizes what he wants to look for, "Your friend is fine for now." he says to the Demi-warriors.

Hearing that surprised the two, even Raphtalia after she stopped herself from crying, "But how do you know sir Gaelion?" she asked the dragon.

"Her scent is still fresh, still has a beating heart pumping blood through her veins. I can smell it even out here." Gaelion explained as he sniffed again to confirm it, "I can also tell that the smell is now going underground, or at least what counts as underground on this thing." he continued.

Kiel smiles at that, "So she did make it through! That's great!" she cheers out loud.

Raphtalia though still looked upset as she wiped away her tears and looked back at the collapsed entrance, "But she is still stuck in there, now forced to go inside the guardian Tortoise by herself in the dark with who knows what in there." she says still concerned of her friend's safety.

But she then felt a hand on her shoulder, as Raphtalia turned it wasn't Kiel, but Ren Amaki as he also smiled at the girl for comfort, "Just remember she won't be alone down there, Bakugou and his group are also there and I'm sure that he will protect her at any cost. I know she will be in good hands." he says back to comfort her, this might not be Ren's thing but even he knows from experience to not think nothing is impossible, if some loud blonde guy with a useless shield can be the best hero there is, then nothing is impossible.

Despite still feeling a bit upset and worried, Raphtaila did finally start to cheer up a bit, being reminded that the shield hero would be there gave her hope that Rifana would be in good hands. Though she did look toward the collapse entrance one more time to say, "Still, I hope she can handle herself before catching up to Sir Bakugou. Good luck, Rifana I know you'll be in good hands.

---

Back with Bakusquad, they have been walking their way down inside the mountain of the Tortoiseshell for a few hours, all the way until they made it through an opening in the shell itself. They were now officially inside the Tortoise itself, all the while Horai led the way to the heart.

This place definitely reminded them of the tunnels where the Tortoise originally rested at, only a bit more closed-spaced. There were also some familiar enemies inside though they weren't much trouble for the heroes, just minor roadblocks to their way to the heart with Rino's light spell being their only source of light.

It was an eerie atmosphere and Bakugou hoped this wasn't going to be a true repeat of the tunnels all over again, "I hope you do know where we are going Barbie, and are not just leading us toward this thing's literal asshole!" Bakugou shouts at Horai to ensure they aren't just lost.

"Things are still somewhat blurry, but I know the general direction of the heart this time, we will eventually get to it. And why do you always keep calling me Barbie? What does it even mean." Horai says then asks.

"It basically means doll in my world. And so far it feels like you are just one of those old wind-up ones that keep saying the same shit over and over again." Bakugou responds to Horai in his blunt Bakugou way.

"Sir Bakugou, I shouldn't be surprised by this kind of thing by now, but theirs no need to be hostile toward her. She has been nothing but of help to us, and hasn't done anything of ill intent." Neia spoke up to defend Horai feeling Bakugou has been unfair with the poor woman for a long while.

Bakugou could've argued back, but he could only sigh to himself, "I just want this crap to be over with, then I'll find that bastard responsible for all of this and smash him with his book until it's autographed in his blood and brains!" he says out loud.

"That's not all is it?" Horai said herself getting the hero's attention, "I know what you are also feeling, it was also the same feeling back in the camp as well. You're not the only one feeling great guilt." Horai continued.

"What do you mean?" Bakugou asked curious as to what this woman was saying.

"It was my job to ensure the Tortoise was only summoned when it needed to be summoned, just like it was yours to save the world and protect its people, and yet I allowed it to happen on my watch because I wasn't strong or fast enough to act, especially in that cave. So I know the pain you are feeling Sir Bakugou, but unlike you who is still fulfilling your task as a cardinal hero, I failed in what I was supposed to do. I also just want to end this and be done and over with it myself, hopefully it will also clear my clouded soul." she continued.

Bakugou didn't say anything back, he once again felt a tiny bit of guilt in being harsh on the woman who feels just as shitty as himself for this whole event. But now he just wanted to not have to think about it anymore and focus on the challenge ahead, he knew it probably wouldn't be simple to just destroy the monster's heart so he had to be prepared when they get there and finally end this living natural disaster for good.

Daven then heard something, "Wait!" he shouted and extended out his arm to stop the rest of his group. Bakugou knew this wasn't anything good and had his shield out with him and his sidekicks ready for anything.

In just a few seconds a random human rushed out from the corner with what looked to be a large scythe and aimed directly at Bakugou. But the shield hero was quick to react and blocked the weapon in time stopping the human in place.

"Wait you're human?!" The scythe wielder reacted as he stepped back.

Rino quickly focused her light toward their attacker and it revealed his face along with another individual walking from the corner toward the scythe wielder. The two were both humans, the scythe wielder looked to be a brown-haired adventurer with a bandana and basic-looking gear and the other looked to be a red-haired woman with armor and a cold look on her face not trying to look directly at anyone.

These two seemed to be completely random and Bakugou wasn't liking it, "Who the hell are you two!?" Bakugou immediately demanded with his sidekicks and Horai on their guard.

The scythe wielder started to look nervous as he rubbed the back of his head not helping his case, "Uh, well you know. The Queen told us that we should come in here to help you guys out." the man responds not sounding very confident in his response.

Bakugou was not buying it, "Really? I didn't recall you being with us when we flew up to the Tortoise's back?" he pointed out knowing this would expose what a bad liar this guy was.

"Oh well you see, the Queen found another opening near the bottom of the Tortoise, now being exposed after all the attacks on it and we just simply went up through that." the guy continued answering which sounded more and more unconvincing with the group. They knew these two were not who they said they were.

"Well think of it this way, the more people to help the better off right? " the guy casually says back which wasn't changing any minds, he then points forward toward another tunnel, "Well I guess we'll get going and not disturb you." he continued as he and the girl just walk away, but once he was up to the shield hero he said, "So long, Kido."

And with that, it immediately triggered Bakugou, "I told you to NOT CALL ME THAT!"

Boom!

Bakugou blasted the scythe wielder into a wall, this surprised and staggered the man, but before he could react Bakugou already blasted himself up to the man's face as he pressed his shield directly into the strangers chest, keeping him and his weapon in place.

The woman attempted to help her partner as she took out her fan weapons, "Don't try." until she heard the voice of Daven behind her as he had his bladed sais on both her lower spine and the back of her neck, Neia also had her swords out pointed directly at the woman's face and neck, Rino was right beside her aiming her staff at the woman now powered up with mana to attack with.

A now enlarged Kirishima and Horai also stand beside Bakugou to be prepared to attack the man when needed. Bakugou finally spoke again, "Don't try to play dumb with me farmer boy, I know it's you and Cateyes there." he shouted at the man already knowing who these two really were.

The cornered man originally had something else to say to defend himself, but even he knew at this point the gig was up. With that he turns off his little illusion spell, revealing himself to be the red-headed outworld adventurer Larc, and the woman reveals herself to be Glass herself, though she was sporting a new hairstyle with her hair now in a double ponytail rather than letting her long hair flow out free, as well as replacing her kimono with proper armor.

The squad knew this could only mean trouble, though Horai was somewhat out of the loop, "Do you know these two?" she asked out loud.

Daven quickly answered her, "These are the outworld adventurers we talked about a few nights ago, who are attempting to destroy our world and kill all of us."

"And we told you bastards we are only doing this to save our world and its people!" Larc argues back still not liking how much these people are trying to portray them as evil people. Larc then let out a sigh, "But listen, we're not here about that."

"Then why are you and Cateye's here then!?" Bakugou demanded still pressing his shield up at Larc.

Larc groaned to be in such a position with this bastard but he still responds, "We're here to stop the guy who is responsible for this, the guy who opened the seal, we're planning on kicking his ass."

This surprised the group, "Wait so you know about Kyo Ethnina?" Neia asked with the others wondering the same.

Glass nods to her, "Yes, this isn't the first time he has done such a thing. He's been trying to control guardian beasts of other worlds as well. We're here to stop him."

Larc nodded then spoke, "And we know what you're wondering, we want you dead so why would we help you? It would make more sense to help him right? Well Kyo is different, he's been wreaking havoc in this world all for the sake of his own personal greed."

Glass then continued, "If he is not stopped he'll soon bring death and destruction to our world as well."

"Yeah and why should I care about you're own stupid world?" Bakugou insults back still finding hypocrisy between these 'heroes'.

Larc also took offense to that supposed callousness, "Because billions of innocents and good people will die you heartless bastard."

"Ha, that's funny coming from the bastard who wants to commit mass genocide with this world to save your own asses."

"I told you we're not- Grrrr, why am I even bothering with the likes of you, you're just as stubborn as any other idiot."

"Just remember who has you cornered now and a few weeks ago kicked yours, jewels, and Cateye's asses last time dumbass!" Bakugou argues back

Glass just sighs seeing how this has devolved into childish arguing.

But with Rino once her leader mentions Therese, she quickly notices that she is nowhere to be seen, and Daven or Kirishima would've known her presence already, "Speaking of her, where is Therese?" she questioned the two.

Larc started to look mad again, "She couldn't come with us this time, she's still suffering from that curse your little assassin inflicted on her. Since then she's unable to do any magic or use her jewels." he angrily answered Rino.

Daven smirks while twirling one sai while still having the other on Glass's spine, "Ha, nice to know my own magic still works well even outside of this world." he smugly says out loud which just angered the two adventurers even more from his seemingly callous attitude.

Larc wanted to lash back, but even he knew it wouldn't accomplish anything and just turned back to Bakugou, "But anyway, we both have a common enemy between us . So why don't we have a truce and try to kill him together and stop this?" he proposes to Bakugou.

"Ha, why should I trust either of you when you tried to kill me and my sidekicks before!?" Bakugou retorts back.

Larc can only groan in annoyance at how Bakugou keeps walling him off, "Because you might need all the power and people you need to deal with Kyo, he may seem scrawny but that vassal book gives him great power, even in my world at my full strength the bastard has gotten the upper hand on me more times then I hate to admit. You're going to need all the knowledge you can get to stop him. So what do you say, let by gone's be by gone's, or take a risk and leave more to die from this thing?" he bargains with the Shield hero.

It was silent for a few seconds as tensions remained high for the sidekicks and off worlders, as the shield hero tried to think about this situation as much as he could, valuing the positives and negatives of the whole thing.

This went on for almost half a minute until finally, Bakugou made up his mind, "fine." he said as Bakugou finally removed his shield from Larc's chest, no longer pinning him on the wall.

Larc finally smiles thinking he got through to him, "Good decision kido, no if you don't mind us we'll-"

Boom!

But in a second Bakugou fires an uppercut explosion right under an unexpected Larc's chin sending the adventurer flying up until he smashes into the ceiling of the cave.

"Larc!" Glass shouted, then Daven struck her with his sais with the ghostly woman quickly blocking and holding back the rogue with her fans.

Before Glass could counter, in less than a second Neia pointed her sword's toward the enemy and fired her electricity on Glass quickly harming and stunning the woman in pain.

Rino then jumps in and fires an intense light beam spell knocking her into the wall and then drops on the floor.

"Horai! Pin her down quick!" Daven shouted and Horai despite her confusion about all of this quickly reacted, and with her gravity magic she forced Glass to be stuck on the ground unable to use her fans.

And during all of that Larc falls back down on the ground still stunned and in pain by the random attack, and before the adventurer can stand back up, Kirishima with his winged claws pins Larc on the ground.

The two outworlders now struggle to get themselves back up as even with their powerful vassal weapons they are unable to get up, "You damn bastard! Do you have any idea what the hell good form is?!" Larc yelled back not happy about Bakugou's deception as he attempted to lift up his scythe.

"It's called being smart dumbass. You should learn that yourself." Bakugou smugly insulted back as he quickly changed his shield to the rope shield and approached Larc.

After a few minutes, Bakugou now had both Larc and Glass tied up with each other thanks to the rope shield while Rino had been adding her charms to make it so they couldn't easily break out and use their weapons, they couldn't remove those from themselves. The two struggle to break the rope apart but it was no use to them at that point, "Please Shield hero you're making a big mistake! So many lives are at stake here! Including those from this world, you have to understand that!" Glass tries to argue and reason back at the shield hero.

"Ha, that's rich coming from the genocidal bastards who would like to kill those same people to save their own asses," Bakugou responds not feeling any sympathy from these two.

"We told you, we're only here for Kyo! We want that bastard dead as much as you do!" Larc yells back.

"We can deal with Bookworm without having to deal with the likes of you dumbasses. If we even find him in this damn turtle to begin with." Bakugou says back then looks toward his mage, "Rino, hang up the meat!" he orders her.

Knowing what he meant Rino conjures a spell that creates her magic chains that wrap around Larc and Glass, and once the chain fully wraped around their bodies the end of the chain launches up into the air dragging the two adventurers up with them until the chain end hits and sinks into the ceiling a bit.

The tied-up Larc and Glass now dangle upside down from the ceiling as they look on in anger toward Bakugou, "Are you seriously just going to leave us like this!?" Larc yells back from up there.

"We'll deal with you genocidal bastards later after we deal with this damn turtle and bookworm if we encounter him." he says then turns himself away from the two, "So you stay there until we come back to ask some questions and get answers out of you. If you get out, I'll kill you and just get my questions answered from Cateyes." he continued as he and his group finally just move on.

"I told you my name is Glass!" Glass shouted still annoyed by the nicknames and the situation they are in now.

"Do you really think that will hold them?" Daven asked

"Doubt it honestly," Bakugou responds.

"So what was the point of all of that?" Rino asked considering she spent a lot of time on those charms.

"It's to make it clear to those genocidal bastards that I won't be playing nice to them regardless of what common threats we might have. They'll now know when I tell them no, It mean no." Bakugou responds which just makes Rino sigh and just accept her leader's answer and not question it further.

Eventually, Bakugousquad disappeared into the darkness of the tunnels to continue their search for the heart.

All the while Larc and Glass remain hanging as the two struggled to get out of the rope and chains, "Damn it! I can't believe I let my guard down like that! I should've known better and kicked that bastard's ass when I had the chance." Larc yells pissed off by this whole situation.

"I warned you about attacking before knowing what we are up against, we could've avoided encountering the shield hero if you didn't blindly attack everything behind every corner!" Glass argues back

"Whatever let's just get out of here, I'm already getting a headache from being upside down like this," Larc responds going back to just being annoyed.

Glass was now trying to concentrate on her mana and transfer it to the magic chains, "If I can find a weak link I could break it down through my pure mana." she said as Glass psychically observed the magic chains. This went on for a minute until she found the weak link. Glass then with her body and fans power to concentrate most of her mana on the weak line until the chain got weaker and weaker, it was draining on the woman but it was working.

Finally the chain breaks, shattering the chain's spell, the two are now freed from them as they fall back on the ground.

While still in the rope they were now back on the ground standing up, "Good work Glassy, now is my turn, if I can just…." Larc congratulated his partner and was now trying to rub the bottom of rope with his scythe to cut it, this also took a minute to adjust the weapon to cut the right way, but eventually the magic rope was now being cut, and after just a couple of lines of the rope are cut, *rip* the two off world heroes finally bust out of the rest through there own physical strength now freed again.

"At least we're out now," Glass says stretching herself still feeling exhausted from using so much of her own life force to break the surprisingly powerful chains ,she then drinks a mana potion to revigorate herself.

After he finishes his own stretching, Larc turns toward a tunnel Bakugou's group headed off to as he angrily walks toward it, "Now time to show that kido what I can do when I'm not caught off guard by a-" Larc says but is stopped by one of Glass's fans being pressed on his chest.

"Remember that our mission is to stop Kyo, not getting involved in petty revenge Larc." Glass reinforms Larc.

And as much as he wanted to get his revenge on Bakugou he knew Glass was right, "Hrrrrr…. Alright fine, let's kill this damn thing and then beat up the other bastard and then go home." he reluctantly agrees with Glass.

The two were about to leave toward another tunnel, until they heard some footsteps, "Who's there!" Larc yells as he takes out his scythe thinking it was more enemies.

Glass once again blocks Larc, "What did I just tell you about attacking without knowing what it is first!?" she scolds and stops him.

Thankfully for them though the figure calmly emerges from the tunnel and it turns out to be Rifana herself, "Larc is that you?" she asked recognizing the man.

Larc then smiles toward her, "Oh it's little Rifana, nice to see you again kid." he gleefully says to her.

"Larc isn't this the same girl that blasted those alcohol barrels in the last wave?" Glass questioned wondering why he was being friendly with the girl that messed everything up in their battle with the heroes.

"Yeah that was a pretty good shot, not like anyone could do such a thing so cleanly." he congratulates Rifana which just makes Glass sigh.

Rifana though didn't have time to chat with them for long, "I won't disturb you two, but do you know where Sir Bakugou went?" she asked trying to remain friendly out of respect with Larc after spending time with him together grinding before the last wave.

Larc looked angry to be thinking of Bakugou again and the fact she wanted to be with him of all people, Glass though didn't hesitate to get rid of the girl as soon as possible, "Yes, he went down that tunnel over here." she says and points to the tunnel she knew the shield group went to.

Rifana nods to them, "Thank you, I'll be on my way then." she says her goodbyes and rushes toward the tunnel to catch up with the shield hero.

Larc though grabbed her hand to stop the archer, "Wait a second kido, why do you even want to be involved with him?" he asked wanting to know why such a sweet young adult girl like her would want to be involved with a bastard like Bakugou.

Rifana was surprised by the grab like that, though Larc quickly lets go after asking his question, Rifana didn't want to be too far behind Bakugou but saw no harm in respecting a former friend's question, "Well I… I just want to help out Sir Bakugou, use my talents to assist on killing the spirit Tortoise and save the world." she answers truthfully.

Larc nods to the girl then smiles, "Sounds noble, but we're also here to kill the Tortoise as well. Since we're together anyway, why not join our party and we'll kill the Tortoise together." he proposes to her.

"Larc!" Glass immediately reacted not liking the idea of the girl that soaked her in alcohol before and worked with this world's heroes to be following them, but Larc just ignored her to see Rifana's response.

Despite a few seconds of silence, Rifana quickly answered, "Thank you for the offer, but I have to decline. I want to work with Sir Bakugou."

Larc looked deeply disappointed by her answer, "Why do you want to have anything to do with that asshole!? All he does is yell and insult everyone!" he argues back genuinely wanting to know.

Rifana just says back at Larc, "Are you not still planning to kill the cardinal heroes and allow my world to be destroyed once the Tortoise is taken care of?"

Larc was surprised by that response, "I well…. Yes, but you have to understand it is to save our world and save innocent people."

"But you will also condemn more to die here including me and my friends," Rifana argued back more sternly with Larc

Larc was now silent for a few seconds not having anything to counter that. But after a few more seconds he thought of another way to convince the girl, "Alright Rifana how about this, if you help us, we will not only take you but also Raphtalia and Kiel with us to our world where you can live in peace and be safe from the waves once we do what we have to do?" he once more proposes.

This time it did make Rifana think more of the offer, to be just taken into a new world, a new home where she and her friends could live like in their old lives together. After thinking about this more thoroughly she gives her answer, "I appreciate the offer, but I also decline." she answers which surprises Larc, "I understand you have good intentions with your world, but I can't forsake my own world for myself, not against my new friends. There are many other demi-human kids just like me, those of my old village, and many more in Bakcadia who now play peacefully with human kids as well. If me and my friends leave for your world we will be leaving them to die. I could never do such a thing Larc, I'm sure there have to be other ways to save both worlds, but as of now I can only save my own world, and it will be the case whether the shield hero is involved or not, I love him, but I also love my friends and the people whose smiles bring life to my heart. That is my ultimate decision Larc and I will not change my mind."

Larc was annoyed by all of this, that the girl he once fought beside was going to remain with the enemy greatly disgruntled him, but as he sighed he respected her choice, "Very well Rifana, if that's what you want I'll honor it, but once your on the battlefield fighting for the cardinal heroes I will not hold back in killing you like last time if you continue to help that bastard." he explains to Rifana which the Weasel girl nods back.

Without saying another word, Rifana finally leaves toward the tunnel Glass pointed to and heads to find the shield hero and his team.

Larc could only look on in silence as he shakes his head at the whole thing, "Come now, Glass we wasted enough time already." he says and he and Glass run toward a different tunnel to find the heart themselves and kill this Tortoise already.

---

Back with Bakusquad, they continued to walk deeper and deeper into the Tortoise's body. As they went deeper, it started to look a lot less like a cave as things started to look more.. organic, with what looked to be red tissue growing all over the cave walls and floor making the ground they walked on a lot more soft and squishy than before. But it didn't slow the group down as they moved on in their hunt.

Horai continued her lead as she also helped open up shortcuts and passageways that lead to the center of the body. However as she gets closer to the monster's heart, she starts feeling worse and worse about herself, even if this was her job and task it started to eat at her that her purpose was to have millions or billions die by her hands just to save what is left of it, seeing all the bodies on the temple grounds, the soldiers that died in the battle this morning, and the number of people now homeless since the Tortoise had awakened. Even if she had nothing to do with it herself, the fact this is what would've happened if the Tortoise was released normally made her more and more depressed that mass death was all she was made to do even if was for a good cause in an emergency. Her memory was also starting to get less and less clouded as it seemed she was approaching her end. There was one more thing she was in the dark about but can't quite remember yet, but hopefully it was nothing important enough to get in the way of their task, it was now or never to put the tortoise down for good and stop its rampage.

Eventually, the group reached what appeared to be a large dead end of the tunnel, but the group knew better as Horai once more took the lead and placed her arm on the large wall, "From here is straight to the room of the Tortoise's heart. So be ready." she warned the group.

The sidekicks nod with Bakugou stretching his arms, "More than ready Barbie. Let's cook up some turtle heart." he boasts with a grin on his face.

Horai nodded back and with her magic she opened up the flesh wall, and passed that now opened wall was a large room with a very notable thing at its center, and as the group went through the wall into the room itself they finally found what they were looking for, the Tortoise's heart itself.

It was a huge yellow roundish mass of muscle like any heart, with a mass of muscle and tissue connecting it to the ground and ceiling of the room to pump its blood throughout its huge body.

Once they approach close to the heart Bakugou makes them stop, "Ok so this is the heart and when we destroy it the dumb turtle will died with it. So Barbie what's the catch? I doubt it will be this easy to destroy?" he asked knowing something will happen.

Horai nods and turns to answer the hero, "Well yes inside the Tortoise's heart there's a-"

"Sir Bakugou look!" Neia shouts getting the group's attention, and to their horror, at the center of the heart itself, a giant eye opens up and looks directly at them

"What the fuck!?" Bakugou expressed and soon enough more eyes started opening up around the heart. And from the one eye looking at them, an energy attack was building up in the center aiming directly at the group, "Everyone back!" Bakugou shouted and once an energy laser fired, "Meteor shield!" and a barrier instantly appeared around the heroes as the laser fired and blasted harmlessly on the barrier.

"It looks like the heart's self-defense system has activated now. It'll do all it can to protect the heart." Horai quickly responds as the eyes all lock on to the group.

"Grrrr, of course, this thing has a self-defense system. Whatever, we'll still give this thing the mother of all heart attacks!" Bakugou shouts and turns to his team while still holding up his barrier from more incoming laser attacks, "Daven, you and me will get as many of the eyes distracted as possible! Kirishima, Rino try taking out as many eyes as you can! Barbie you keep an eye on more eyes appearing! Neia once you get an opening, slice the damn thing in half!" he orders his sidekicks who all nod in approval of the plan.

And with that settled the fight begins as Bakugou jumps in the air toward the heart as he blocks the laser blast, "Die!" he shouts and fires an explosion back at the eye.

"Ah!" Horai shouted as she gripped her own heart.

"Miss Horai, are you okay?" Neia asked concerned.

"I'm fine don't worry about me, just do as the shield hero says and destroy the heart as soon as you can," she tells her and the others as all of them but Neia for now ran forward to their jobs.

And back with Bakugou he remains in the air as he continues to block more attacks from the eyes firing more and more lasers, his explosion left a small impact but it almost immediately healed itself, he knew this thing had to be cut open to do any permanent damage. So he blasted himself and made himself go on the defense getting more eyes to focus on himself.

Daven does the same throwing his energy blades at the eyes on the other side getting their attention on him, they fire their lasers but it is easy for the rogue to avoid them with his teleporting magic

And while those two got the eyes distracted and focused on themselves, both Rino and Kirishima made their moves.

Kirishima remained in his teen form to not make himself a giant target and as he flew around the heart, he fired blasts into the eyes as they focused on his father and brother. Some of the eyes did try to fire at Kirishima, but before they could ever get a clear shot of the fast-moving flying dragon, Rino fired her light magic spells on the eyes while also firing at the other eyes aiming at Daven and Bakugou or new eyes appearing thanks to Horai identifying them despite her now kneeling and clutching her heart in pain with Neia now feeling worse and worse about this situation if destroying the heart will really kill her as well.

The heart does all it can to fight back, but as more and more eyes appear just as many are quickly taken out. Eventually, the amount of damage it took starts to take a toll on its ability to fight back as the eyes start to regrow back less and less frequently and are still being quickly taken out.

Bakugou knew this was the time, "Neia! Cut this bastard up now!"

Neia heard him but was starting to have second thoughts on this, "Sir Bakugou! I can't just kill this-"

But before she could finish Horai grabbed her shoulder knowing what she was going to say, "It's ok Neia, this is for the good of everyone. Please as my final request as a friend, kill me now!" she tells Neia now with a stern look on her face despite the pain from her chest.

Neia still felt terrible about this, but she knew Horai was right and it was by her own choice to let herself be killed. Despite not liking this she knew it had to be done.

Neia finally started running at the heart gripping both her swords and quickly empowering them with her powerful electricity magic. As the eyes tried to stop her Bakugou kept on stopping any attack with air strike shields while Kirishima blasted away the eyes themselves.

"Electric blades!" Neia shouted, still feeling a lot of guilt but kept going forward as she finally drove both her blades deep into the monster's heart.

"AAAAHHHHH!" Horai shouts feeling the pain already.

Neia still didn't like this but continued her job as she ran all around the heart of the monster going completely around the structure while frying it with electricity.

Blood was spewing out all behind where she cut, destroying more and more of the heart.

"AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!" Horai shouts in deep pain as the heart continues to get more and more destroyed.

Eventually, Neia finally completes her run around the entire heart. From this thick cut the massive organ began to split itself apart with the eyes disappearing until finally the heart splits itself in half, now flooding the area around itself with massive amounts of blood. The Spirit Tortoise's heart was now destroyed.

Once Bakugou lands on the ground he raises his fist up in victory, "Hell yeah! the Turtle kaiju is now toast! Victory for us members of the Bakugou agency!" he boasts to himself. However, there wasn't any fanfare from his end, when he turned his head to see why, the sidekicks were all gathered around a dying Horai as she lay on the ground with Neia rushing back to place her head on her lap with the others gathering around her.

Bakugou sighed to himself, while he might not care about Horai himself, he didn't want to disrespect a dying woman and just approached her with his sidekicks as they watched Horai's life starting to fade.

Neia felt the most guilt from all of this, since she was the one who technically dealt the final blow, "Miss Horai I'm sorry that I-"

But Horai placed her hand on Neia's mouth, "No need to feel sorry for anything, you did what was necessary and I did my duty as the… as the… what was my true purpose?" she then said to herself now placing her hand on her head.

Neia smiles too the woman and nods to her, "Miss Horai, thank you for your sacrifice." she says in comfort to the woman with the other sidekicks nodding back, while Bakugou just stood there not expressing anything other then having his arms crossed.

Horai was happy to see all of these people around her, all in respect for eventual passing. However, after the heart was destroyed something changed in her head, ever since the Tortoise had awakened her memories have been so clouded it was impossible to remember anything but the bare minimum of the tortoise itself. But with everything that happened and the physical pain she had endured, something finally unlocked in her memories. Through her eyes to her head, she quickly looks into all of those distant memories. It was the memories of the truth, the truth about her very self.

And during the whole process, she stood there in silence while looking away from everyone else. It was starting to confuse the group including Neia, who worried she might already be passing away to the gods now, "Miss Horai, can you hear me? Are you in any more pain?" she asked, she hoped the destroyed heart wasn't causing internal suffering inside Horai's body, which she would have to resort to directly put Horai down to put her out of her misery.

However, things radically changed for everyone once Horai finally recounts every last memory she has. She then moves Neia's hands away, "No Miss Neia, I'm no longer in pain." she says, then to everyone's surprise Horai gets herself back up and stands on her two feet, even Bakugou was surprised by this, "In fact, I feel perfectly fine right now." she informs everyone with a straight face.

"Oh no, god fucking damn it!" Katsuki shouts softly now knowing what this implicates.

The sidekicks also quickly realize what this means including Neia, "Miss Horai if you're fine, that means- "

"That means the Spirit Tortoise is not truly dead yet." Daven interrupts saying what no one wishes to believe but Horai nods in approval toward him confirming the truth.

Bakugou of course quickly changed back to being angry, "You got to be shitting me Barbie! You said yourself that killing the damn heart will be enough to kill the turtle! How can this thing still be alive without a heart and its tiny brain!?" He yells at Horai demanding answers.

"I understand how you feel Sir Bakugou, but there is one more thing we must do before destroying the heart." Horai responds to Bakugou.

"What the hell else are we supposed to destroy in this stupid thing?! The goddamn kidneys?!" Bakugou continues yelling demanding something be answered to him.

Horai though calmly shook her head, "No, it's something deeper, more than any organ." she said then walked closer to the center of the room in silence, she then raised her arms up now glowing with her magic, "I Ost Horai, give my orders to the heavens and the earth! Sever the laws of reality, bind them together, and spit out the pus within! And now I command myself, to reveal the path to my deepest depths!" she chants and with her magic creates a large hole in the middle of the room leading to the Tortoise's very core.

Most of the group didn't know what to make of this but Horai didn't have time to explain, "Hurry, jump in! The heart's going to regenerate soon and attack again!" she shouted and was right as the mutilated heart was quickly regenerating itself.

"You heard her, everyone jump in!" Bakugou ordered and he and the sidekicks did as he ordered and jumped into the hole, and once all in Horai finally lowered her arms and quickly jumped in the hole herself before the hole quickly sealed back up.

Bakugou and crew all safely land at the bottom of the hole, however this area was nothing like the rest of the body, rather than resembling a cave or the insides of a monster, they now look to be in a large sterile metal room, with few unknown metal objects decorating the walls with two glowing pink orb things at the back of the room, but the most prominent thing in this whole structure was a giant glowing crystal-like object floating in the very center of the room.

Everyone looked in wonder at such a thing, "What is this?" Neia asked.

Horai walks ahead and answers her, "This is the physical core of the Tortoise itself, destroy it along with the brain and heart and I'll finally rest in peace."

"You rest in peace?" Daven asked in confusion.

"Hahahahahahahahaha!" But before Horai could answer anything to Daven the group heard some evil laughter, and to their displeasure they could easily recognize whose laughing it was.

In a flash of light he appears next to the floating core, the one responsible for all of this, Kyo Ethnina himself giving his smuggest smile as he approached the group, "Well Well Well, if it isn't the stupid Brute with his harem. I was surprised you even got this far." he mocks the group.

Bakugou and his team immediately drew out their weapons and pointed directly at Kyo with even Rino firing a light energy blast directly at the book wielder. Only for the blast to be stopped by a magic barrier Kyo instantly creates.

"My my, where are your manners miss, is that a way to treat someone in their home?" Kyo mocks again still acting as smug as he can be.

"Why are you here bookworm!?" Bakugou demanded.

"Isn't obvious idiot, I'm here to ensure none of you morons ruin anything in my plan like you almost did before," Kyo answers with a little annoyance in his words.

"What is even your plan? What do you accomplish from mass murdering so many innocent people?!" Neia demanded with her and everyone else wondering what the point of all of this was.

Kyo laughs again and then responds, "Hahahaha, it's very simple you stupid girl, the Tortoise has the ability to absorb the souls of everything it kills, and since I control the Tortoise I control all of its souls as well to do whatever I want with them. I have big plans of multi-universal conquest so I'm going to need a lot of them. So not only do I get a free Kaiju monster, I get billions of souls, and an empty world for me to do whatever I want with it." he explains showing just how evil and cruel the man was.

Horai especially took offense to that, "The Tortoise is not yours to control! And the souls are to be used to protect the world and move on! None of this is yours to claim!"

"Oh nag nag nag, like I care about the words of some reptile's persona." Kyo mocks once again.

"Huh, what are you talking about now?", Rino asked, the wording confusing some of the group.

Bakugou himself already knew on what he meant, already suspecting something with Horai's odd behavior since coming into the Tortoise.

"Your tiny brains haven't figured it out yet have they? Guess I'll tell you morons anyway, the woman with you now is no mere familiar, she is connected to the monster's very core! Pretty much the Spirit Tortoise itself!" Kyo explains making everyone turn toward Horai

"Miss Horai is this true?" Neia asked, and Horai herself nodded looking extremely upset as she grasped her chest which finally revealed to be an advanced slave crest. A similar mark they now see on the floating crystal.

Kyo then continued, "It makes sense, if she really was just a random familiar like the bats and yetis she would be directly under my control but as you see she's unaffected, though it does seem like I can stop her from doing certain actions with the slave crest shocking her like back in the cave. But whatever, it won't change anything, not like you can do much yourselves like those 2 other idiots."

"Like I care if Ponytail Slut and Bow Bitch couldn't handle your snarly ass." Bakugou insults back.

Kyo though just laughed, "Haha, Oh no not those 2 idiots, the other 2 idiots from a different fantasy world."

"Is he talking about Larc and Glass?" Rino asked out loud.

"Right you are magic girl." Kyo condescendingly responds as he conjures a large magic display that acts as a video projection and from the projection it shows off images of Larc and Glass cutting up what looked to be multiple types of Tortoise hearts as they not only rapidly regenerate but increase in numbers as well, "Hahaha, those meatheads are just out there in the Tortoise killing off a bunch of fake hearts that just multiply. Going through all the effort to come here to save this pathetic world they were planning to destroy anyway." Kyo then looks back at the group, "But whatever, I can just focus on stopping you now."

Bakugou just laughs back, "Ha, like I'm afraid of you, last time all you did was stand behind a barrier and teleport all the damn place like a weak coward."

Kyo sighs in annoyance, "Man you really do remind me of all of those stupid meatheads in middle school. Before I was focused on completing the opening of the seal which required my full concentration and magic. But that won't be a factor now, now I can use my book to its full potential and properly show you bruisers what a superior mind can do." he says and mocks back now gripping on to his vassal weapon.

Bakugou cracks his neck, "Sounds like fun." he says but then looks up toward the crystal, "But first." he then blasts himself in the air directly toward at the floating crystal, and once right at the floating object.

Boom!

Bakugou lets out a double explosion on the thing, hoping to have blast it into a million pieces finally killing the Tortoise for good.

But as he landed back on the ground and the smoke cleared, the Crystal was left completely intact with a powerful barrier similar to Kyo's now surrounding the giant object.

"Hahahaha! Nice try you brute! But jumping and firing at the core won't be that easy for your tiny brain! Hahahahahaha!" Kyo laughs at the attempt.

Bakugou was now left confused by the random barrier, he knew this wasn't just something Kyo created even casually, "What the hell is this?"

Horai then said, "The core can only be destroyed if both the heart and brain of the Tortoise are destroyed at the same time. And the heart had fully regenerated back already."

Kyo then makes another smirk, "Oh it won't be just the heart, let's look at the screen again." he says and points at the projection screen that changed away from Larc and Glass to now showing the outside of the decapitated Tortoise itself, "Let's see how your boyfriend handles this.".

---

Back outside the Tortoise itself, the armies are doing all they can to mend their wounds from the assault and be as prepared as they can if the Tortoise revives itself, but there is still a ton of fear in the air, they suffered from many casualties from just pinning the thing down, they are not sure if they can do it again with less soldiers and without the shield hero around.

This extends to the generals and Queen Mirellia herself doing their best to keep morale up and showing no fear themselves. This also extends to Ren, who being the one everyone is looking up to here puts a lot more pressure on him than usual.

Ren then continued his talks with the generals and Queen, "Do you guys think we can repair any more of the siege weapons?" he asked the Lowhirot leader.

The general shakes his head, "We are repairing as much as we can, but unfortunately most are broken beyond repair, we won't be able to have the same amount for a second attack. And it will be days before reinforcements can come in."

Mirellia shakes her head to that, "We will have to work with what we have now, and not try to rely on the same strategy twice, I'm sure the Tortoise is not that stupid to fall for the same thing again."

Ren sighed at this whole thing, he didn't like this feeling of all of this responsibility being put on him, he may be a hero, but he was also originally just some teenager who liked to play his single-player VRMMO games, he never wanted to be responsible for 5 armies worth of troops that are depending on him for their lives and there nations survival, and he has no Bakugou around to defer to him for help or bail him out on the super monster, the burden of being there hero was now his burden.

He then felt some tugging on his coat and looked to see little Scarlet along with Raphtalia, Kiel, and Rishia smiling at him, "Don't worry about fighting alone Master Ren, we are all here to help you in any way we can no matter how difficult." Scarlet says with her, Kiel, Rishia, and Raphtalia bowing before him.'

"Same with us." Said Farrie with her and the rest of Ren's crew bowing before him in respect as well.

Ren smiles and nods to them all, happy to see such loyal people behind his back who believed in him, "Thank you everyone, but still we need to think of a proper plan, if we can just-"

But Ren then got caught off when everyone noticed the ground was shaking, "Master Ren what is going on?!" Scarlet asked looking concerned.

"Please don't tell me," he says quietly to himself fearing what this implies.

"Everyone look!" Grilaroc shouted and pointed to the headless Tortoise.

The skin and muscles around the neck began to pulsate beating at the rhythm of its heart. And before anyone could think of anything, in less than a second a brand new head of the Tortoise pops out, instantly regrowing from the wound and immediately rises back up again.

"Please god no," Ren says to himself now in deep fear again, he hoped that the regeneration would take some time and during that time Bakugou would've destroyed the heart already. But right now there is no word of him succeeding in such a thing, and now he the soul cardinal hero out here will be forced to deal with a fully active Spirit Tortoise with beaten to hell soldiers.

"RRRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAWWWWWWWRRRRRRRRR!" the monster screeches and it raises back on its fully healed feet, now fully reenergized as well having the strength to easily get its other foot out of the rockslide.

"It looks like we're out of time!" Mirellia shouts to everyone trying to look strong herself in the threat of immediate doom.

The Tortoise then stares down at the army, full of souls it can collect, all the while the sword hero contlines to stare back at it, he was now the sole hero who has to deal with this massive monster directly.

Eclair quickly looked toward her Queen, "Your majesty what are we to do now?!" she quickly asked of Mirellia hoping her leader had the answer.

Queen Mirellia tried keeping herself collected and cool but even she and the generals didn't know what they could do now, "Miss Eclair, I know I'm supposed to be the one with the answers, but even I don't-"

"I know what to do." Said a voice interrupting the Queen, and when she and everyone else looked toward that voice's source, they saw it was the Sword hero Ren who was on Scarlet in her bird form with Kiel, Raphtalia, and Rishia jumping the filolial's back with him, Ren then pointed his sword toward the Tortoise, "If this thing wants souls so badly, I will make mine a juiciest target. Scarlet! Charge!"

With that order, Scarlet immediately sprinted herself toward the Tortoise directly, and right behind them was the rest of Ren's team riding on horses, following their leader as they kept themselves spaced out from one another.

And with the charge engaged, Ren points his sword toward the Tortoise once more, "100 swords!" he shouts and casts his attack as 100 energy sword projectiles fire at once at the Tortoise.

They all hit the Tortoise's head, while it did basically no damage it was enough to get the Tortoise's attention as it now eyed the Sword hero group.

"RRRRRAAAAWWWWRRR!" the Tortoise screeches again and finally decides to use its mouth beam attack firing on the ground.

"Scarlet!" Ren shouted and with her speed, she quickly dodges the beam attack as it scars the ground.

The Filolial continued the charge at the Tortoise's general area along with the rest of the sword team. Thus begins Ren's strategy to make himself and his team bait to distract the Tortoise to avoid it attacking the main armies as much as he could, hoping for Bakugou to finish his mission in destroying its heart. While Rishia, Raphtalia, and Kiel remained as his extra eyes for more attacks while also providing magic boosts to him and Scarlet.

The Queen and the generals also saw what Ren was doing, as suicidal as it seemed to be, it was working and they hoped that the sword would keep it up to protect everyone else in this valley.

Eclair though knew she couldn't just stand around and only allow the Sword hero fight alone with his team, so she quickly ran and got on her own horse, she then raised her sword out and pointed toward the Tortoise following Ren's lead, "Charge toward the Tortoise!" she ordered and right behind her a small force of 100 dragon knights cheered for her as the volunteered to fight with her and the sword hero. They and Eclair charge forward to the Tortoise to do the same as Ren and act as bait and distract the Tortoise.

Mirellia nods toward the riders knowing they are volunteering for this task to keep the rest of their comrades protected. She and the generals can only look on at the battle and pray for everyone to do their best out there, both outside and inside the Tortoise, "Good luck Sir Ren, and Sir Bakugou please hurry." Mirellia says as she and everyone else there continue to watch the battle of the Tortoise.

---

Back inside the tortoise after watching the whole thing from the projection, the shield crew were all surprised to see Ren to take such a brave charge against such odds just to give them time and protect the armies, despite how fast the thing regenerated Ren was going to do what he could to stop this thing as they were trying to do the same as well.

Kyo somewhat looked annoyed by this turn of events, "Disappointing, I was expecting the sword idiot to run for the hills screaming and crying, but no matter it still looks like your little boyfriend has a lot cut out for him, you'll soon enough witness his team and friends getting slaughtered and there will be nothing you can do about it, Hahahahahaha!" Kyo finally mocks and laughs at the heroes thinking he'll eventually win without needing to lift a finger which just angered everyone in the room.

"The Tortoise does have fast regeneration capabilities, but not to this absurd of an extreme, it should've taken a few days at least," Horai responds, even she was surprised by the insane regeneration.

Eyes turn back to Kyo, "Let me guess you used the souls of the fallen to boost its healing?" Daven guessed to Kyo.

"Good guess, but not quite." Kyo then snapped his fingers and from one of the glowing orbs in the back it revealed to be filled with some kind of pink liquid and inside the liquid were none other than the Bow and Spear heroes themselves, unconscious and immobile in the device.

"Is that Ponytail slut and Bow Bitch?" Rino questions out loud with the others wondering the same as well.

Kyo smirks back again, "Yep, Dumb and Dumber were nothing more than gullible pushovers, their weapons on the other hand have great use."

"So that's why you wasted your time on these morons? For this crap?" Bakugou questioned with him now seeing why he bothered with the two in the first place.

"Glad we're on the same picture brute, but yes I always figured I use them as batteries to help empower the Tortoise, and I'll suck every last bit of life out of them until they are just husks." Kyo continued and after he said this, the two captured heroes shouted in pain within the glowing device as they were painfully being siphoned of their power.

Kyo then said, "Now then, if you have enough brainpower in your skulls, I suggest you just hide or leave this world and I'll just get back to business collecting as many souls as possible. But if you still insist on destroying the heart again, I'll have to kill you now."

"Like hell I'm letting you get away with this Bookworm, I'll jab your eyes out with those glasses of yours!" Bakugou shouted and was ready to attack along with the rest of his sidekicks.

Kyo just laughs as he struggles to open his book weapon that is trying to resist him, "Ha, I like to see you try you dumb brute, unlike you and your boyfriend, I'm not enslaved to my weapon, in fact I'm it's master and it shall do as I say as will you and many more universes will soon do!" Kyo finally forcibly opens his book already casting a powerful spell from it, "Composition one bird of flame!" he shouts and from the pages of the book it forms a large magic firebird elemental of sorts and Kyo immediately throws it at the group.

"Meteor shield!" Bakugou shouts as the bird directly impacts the powerful barrier

Bakugou then immediately blasts himself directly at Kyo and fires his quirk directly on the barrier, "Did you really think that'll work on me now when it failed last time idiot?!" Kyo mocks once more as he creates multiple energy spears from his book and fires them all at Bakugou at once trying to pierce through his high defense.

When Bakugou just tanks them all Kyo looks annoyed and activates another spell as he produces and fires numerous energy orbs at the shield hero blasting them all around Bakugou's body trying to overwhelm the hero as he tries to block and tank each hit.

Neia finally runs up and attempts to stab and electrify through the barrier, but Kyo using his book again creates what looks to be a glowing green energy stick and blocks the sword attack. Neia fires her electricity off trying to zap him through the barrier, but this barrier was even stopping types of attacks as well, "Still no good bitch." He mocks Neia, and the elf warrior continues her attacks as Kyo keeps on toying with the elf girl finding it amusing that Neia though she could just break through his barrier with just her swords.

Bakugou then engages from the left side while teenage form Kirishima attacks on the right side as they both blast into the barrier over and over again hoping it would in some way break and open up a hole in the barrier to allow Neia's electricity through and fry the bastard.

Daven then teleports Rino from above and fires her light energy beam on top and then transforms her staff into a spear and attempt to stab right through the weakened top.

But once more these attacks were of no use with neither the explosion attacks and spear end not being enough to break through from either the side or top, Kyo then just turned more pages of his book into energy spears and quickly aimed them all at the attackers forcing Daven to teleport away with Rino and Bakugou having to protect himself, Kirishima, and Neia with his shield abilities.

Kyo grins and now focuses his fire projectile attacks on Bakugou who is forced to block or dodge these powerful attacks.

Once pushed to a wall Kyo then activates his energy spear spell again, "Like any stupid animal, you fight with blunt force and get trapped by someone of a superior mind." Kyo mocks thinking he's got Bakugou cornered with a spell

But Bakugou grins back, "Now!" he shouts and from the other side of Kyo thanks to Daven's teleporting, Neia, Rino, and Kirishima all fire their weapons on Kyo's barrier after he got distracted by Bakugou.

"You annoying pests! Barrage arrows!" Kyo shouts casting a spell that forms dozens of magic arrows and throws them directly at the group.

"Meteor shield!" Bakugou shouts as he creates another energy shield to tank the hits of all the arrows. Kyo didn't like the interference and finally fired the energy spears to kill the bastard after he wasted his powerful shield.

But Daven just teleported behind Bakugou and instantly teleported away with the energy spears hitting an empty wall.

Kyo was mad he allowed himself to get outsmarted by that brute while still getting overwhelmed by the many attacks on the Book weilder's barrier that was now cracking a bit from the pressure.

Kyo tries to conjure another spell to stop them, but then he feels an intense invisible force being pushed on him. As the villain turned he saw Horai using her gravity magic to make Kyo helpless as the barrier started to break down especially after Bakugou was teleported above and landed on top of the barrier and fired his AP shot down on the area it was being fired on by the other attacks.

Kyo was now getting mad by this, "I wanted to have fun with you idiots but if you're just going to use cheap exploits." he shouted then turned to Horai, "First you'll stop!" he shouted and as soon as the order was made Horai shouts in deep pain as the slave crest shocks her.

And now freed from her gravity, Kyo quickly activates a spell before the barrier collapses. This spell caused a giant invisible force that pushed Bakugou off the barrier and he was thrown into another wall. Kyo then fires a powerful energy spell at the sidekicks which forces them all to jump out of the way making them stop their attacks.

As the crew got back on their feet Kyo proceeded to mock them again as he magically reinforced his barrier again, "Tried to do that same plan like last time Brutes? Ha, like I said already I don't have any seal to worry about opening this time. So now I can just-"

*Boom!*

But suddenly a part of the wall in the room blew up, surprising everyone even Kyo, and from the smoke came in Larc and Glass of all people, "Hey where's the real heart at jerk!" Larc smugly boasts but as he gets a good look at the room, "Oh great, you as well kido?" he immediately says in a less enthusiastic tone, with Bakugou just groaning in annoyance back.

Even Kyo himself looked annoyed, "Grrr, How many damn walls did you smash to get here? You meatheads all think the same." He insults back at the outworlders.

"No matter the cost, I swear by my vassal weapon, I will stop you!" Glass shouts back at Kyo while opening her fans up.

Kyo just smugly smiles back, "Ha, like you two will make any difference, and I would say how hypocritical it is to be saving a world you intend to destroy anyway, but the Shield brute probably already told that to you anyway." he mocks the two as he forcibly opens his book again to be ready to fight them off.

Larc quickly turns to Bakugou, "Kido unless you want to waste time trying to tie us up again, I suggest we-"

"Just kill the bastard already idiot!" Bakugou yells back, he hated having anything to do with Larc, but right now he had someone he hated more to deal with.

Larc just nods back and without hesitation, he jumps and attacks Kyo with Bakugou doing the same.

Both attacks hit Kyo's barrier with the force of them making him slide back, Glass then fired her Tortoiseshell cracker attack on the left side hitting the barrier.

Rino does the same with her light force attack on the right, with Neia thanks to Daven's teleportation magic pops up not far in front of Kyo while firing off her electricity on the barrier as well.

"Composition form Dragon!" Kyo shouts with the pages of his book quickly forming into a large paper Dragon, the magical beast then attempts to pounce toward the group to aid its master,

Only for adult-sized Kirishima to jump and push at it, knocking it to the ground, the dragon then fought off the paper beast.

The paper dragon was very powerful, but it was no match for the real deal, Kirishima's strength knocked the monster against the wall and managed to quickly overpower the thing as he bites on the paper dragon's neck and through shear force ripped the paper dragon's entire head off, and before its headless body could do anything Kirishima breathes fire on it, destroying the magic paper dragon for good.

Kyo was growing extremely annoyed as well as some fear as the heroes continued their constant attacks, he may be powerful and still maintained his strong barrier, but it was clear that with this many heroes at the same time was overwhelming him especially when he could only activate one or two spells at a time, not helping him that Kirishima was biting into his barrier and from all the attacks it was weak enough for the thing to start cracking again around his teeth. He then saw Bakugou coming at him again from the air ready to do a howitzer impact attack as he twirled from above straight for him.

Kyo hates the idea of being beaten by a bunch of meatheads, so he finally resorts to his trump card he has thanks to the Tortoise, "Intense gravity!" he shouts.

And just from the glow of the core, suddenly all of the heroes felt an immense force now pulling down on their bodies, even airborne Bakugou was immediately forced onto the ground. They tried to resist it, but it wasn't enough and soon everyone from Bakugou, his sidekicks, Larc, Glass, Horai, and even adult form Kirishima were now lying flat on the floor. The only one standing was Kyo himself as he smugly smiled and gloated again, "Hahahahaha, I guess you've forgotten that I control the Spirit Tortoise and the Tortoise's magical specialty is gravity magic right!?"

Everyone tried to move or at least fire an attack but the gravity was being pushed down on them so much even that was impossible, Kirishima was even unable to open his mouth to breathe fire, not even Daven's teleportation would work whenever he wanted to teleport away he is still forced down at the same place.

Bakugou tried his hardest to get back up to kick Kyo's ass, but even he could barely lift his head, "Damn you! Damn you weak coward! Your just some weak nerd who can't fight worth a damn!" He insults Kyo back trying to overpower the magic but it was still no good.

Kyo now looking extremely amused by the situation walks his way toward the shield until he is right in front of Bakugou, "Man you don't know when to shut up do you? You get outsmarted and out foiled by someone of superior intelligence and all you have to say is how cowardly it was? Ha, just like those idiot jocks I was forced to endure in school. Well look at where we are now. You're now beneath me, nothing but a stain on my boot!" Kyo then stomps his boot on Bakugou's head.

Kyo then proceeds to do it over and over again with Bakugou unable to do a thing to stop Kyo, "Damn you! Damn you stupid coward!"

"What's wrong shield hero? Run out of dumb insults to throw at me while you get squashed like a pancake? Hahahahaha!" Kyo laughed and continued tormenting Bakugou who remained helpless.

"Stop it! Leave him alone!" Neia cries horrified by the sight of her master suffering, wanting to just blast Kyo with lightning, but she is unable to even lift her fingers.

Kyo just found it amusing, "Aw, the little elf girl is going to cry for you? Hahahahahaha, you have a more devoted harem than I thought. It will be sad when they are flattened into a squished puddle of blood in a few minutes." he continued to laugh and mock.

"Fuck you!" Bakugou yells back, wanting to fight as much as he can but it was still no use as Kyo continues stepping on Bakugou's head.

After repeating the stomp over and over Kyo said to Bakugou, "And you want to know the funny thing about all of this? It would be too late to do it now even if you weren't helpless, but had you killed the Spirit Tortoise's avatar from the very start the Tortoise would've already been dead. Haha, that's right, before you even got to see me you could've prevented all of this from happening in the first place and that city and all of those soldiers didn't have to die for nothing. How does it feel to be a complete utter failure of a hero, a useless loser? AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!" Kyo continued laughing and gloating taking every last second to revel in his victory over the cardinal and vassal heroes.

There was a lot of anger brewing up inside Bakugou, a huge amount of anger he was feeling was getting to its boiling point, and at its height the shield hero's menu was now producing red static electricity with the wrath shield being recommended once more, "Damn it, NO!" Bakugou shouted, he knew of the shield's great power, but both times he embraced it fully he turned into a monster with endless bloodlust, even if he killed Kyo and the Tortoise itself, he feared he'd become a monster of a greater threat then the two combined. But every second it was getting harder and harder to resist that power as Kyo kept up the torture.

And he kept up his mocking, "You know, maybe I'll at least let you live you stupid brute. You'll be another battery like dumb and dumber over there, draining all of that anger and power from yourself. Soon I future Emperor Kyo Ethnina shall use this power of the cardinal heroes and the souls of the world to-"

But before he could finish, a random projectile hit his magic barrier around his left shoulder exposing a small hole from the impacted area, "What the?" Kyo expressed in confusion by that random thing. But before he could think about it barely a few seconds later an arrow fires right through that barrier opening, "AAAHHHH!" Kyo shouts in pain as a real arrow pierces right into his shoulder as the man stumbles in pain and quickly rips the bloody arrow out. Kyo immediately applied healing magic on the wound, but was now extremely mad as he looked around to see which of the fools did that despite all of them being stuck on the ground.

The heroes and Bakugou were also wondering the same about who could possibly be their savior, as they were barely able to turn their heads to see who the hell was that who was there to save them, and from an exposed opening in the walls that Larc had blown through, and from it in came a figure holding on to a bow. Once out of the shadows the figured revealed herself to be none other then Rifana herself with an angry stern look on her face, "You leave the heroes alone." she says as Rifana quickly readies to fire another energy arrow.

Kyo was confused at first, "Who in the hell are you?!" he yelled.

"Weasel girl?" Bakugou reacted

"Is that really Rifana?" Neia asked herself.

"Ha, looks like it was a good idea for you to go off on your own to find Kido yourself." Larc says happy to see her again.

Kyo himself then quickly recognized her face and started acting smug again, "Oh wait I recognize you now. You're that curvy Weasel girl back in the caves with Raccoon and Wolf girl. But I see you're all alone with no support on hand."

"I don't need support against some evil bastard like you." Rifana says back not intimidated by the book wielder.

Kyo just shook his head, "Whatever, though nice arrows you got there? Piercing holes through my own barriers. Where was that in the last battle?" he asked with curiosity.

"I was busy dealing with the cultists at the time only doing what Sir Bakugou ordered me to do, and I didn't know before what magic made up that barrier, now that I know that it's made through gravity magic I now have the abilities and means to get through it." Rifana explains.

"Well that's interesting to note, you now have the ability to get through my defenses. Quite the trump card. But too bad you didn't go for my head idiot." Kyo then points his finger to Rifana, "Intense gravity!" and from the glow of the Tortoise's core, a huge force is now placed on Rifana. All the while Kyo laughed, "Hahahahahaha! Looks like another idiot has been outsmarted by my own genius, soon I shall rule over all of existenc- "Then an arrow is shot right on the barrier near his head leaving an opening, "huh?!" he expressed in confusion, and as Kyo looks back at Rifana she was still standing up like normal and fires another air arrow, this time directly at Kyo's head, "Ah!" Kyo screams and in the nick of time he shields his face with his own book with the arrow harmlessly hitting it as his barrier hole closes back up.

Kyo then looked back now completely confused, "What the hell?! Why are you not affected by the Tortoise's gravity?!" he shouted to her not liking to be outwitted by a young adult demi-human.

"My main affinity is in wind magic, but I have a secondary affinity I never told anyone, not even Raphtalia and Kiel. Gravity magic." Rifana explains as she continues to look sternly at Kyo showing no fear.

Kyo though was now angered by the situation ruining his fun, "You damn bitch! No matter I'll just kill you the old-fashioned way!" Kyo then opens his book and quickly conjures some spells now firing lighting from his hands.

But Rifana saw it coming and quickly dodged out of the way, her affinity with wind made her light on her feet and made her run faster than the average person. Kyo attempts to hit her only for each lightning blast to miss, "Damn you!" Kyo shouts and this time uses pages of his book to form fire projectiles and fire them directly at the archer.

But with the combination of her wind and gravity magic Rifana launches herself in the air dodging the attacks. Once on the ceiling she fires more arrows at Kyo who struggles to avoid them as they pierce small holes through his barrier, "Composition form fire elementals!" he casts with multiple fire entities appearing that either breathed fire or directly attacked Rifana, but the nimble girl continued dodging and fires her arrows both real and magic at the elementals destroying them and then at Kyo who continued creating more fire projectiles.

While this was all happening the heroes continued to struggle to get themselves back up to not let Rifana fight alone, but the gravity continued pressing them down. Bakugou was the one struggling the most trying to get up and not having to resort to the wrath shield, "Damn it! Damn it! Come on! Let me get up!" He shouts in anger trying to move up but he can't overcome such force.

"Shield hero." Said a random voice that caught Bakugou's attention, when he turned toward the voice, it was Horai herself as she used part of her own power to move just a little bit toward the shield hero. Once she was close enough, Horai finally raised her hand toward Bakugou's shield and said a chant, "I give my orders to the heavens and to the earth, sever reality, then spit up out the pus from within. Shield hero, I hereby grant you the power of the Spirit Tortoise." she says then with the chant Bakugou's shield now glowed a bright blue light.

He wasn't sure what this all was, but he wasn't going to question help from an ally and nodded, "Yes, I accept this power." and with this power his shield finally expelled a good amount of that energy out to himself and all the heroes in the room. And from this new power, a glow appeared on everyone including the off world heroes, and from this energy they no longer felt the effect of gravity being pushed on them anymore, they were now freed from this Spirit Tortoise's gravity powers.

The heroes attempted to get up, until Bakugou made a hand signal to make them stop, he pointed to Kyo who remained unaware of what was happening as he was busy fighting off Rifana. Bakugou knew he had an idea and turned his head toward Rifana as she continued running across the walls to avoid every attack Kyo threw at her. And when Rifana looked back at Bakugou he made his own hand signals to her as he pointed at his leg and then to Neia who saw that as well. Rifana knew what this meant and as she jumped high in the air avoiding more explosive projectiles she fired another arrow at Kyo, but this time the arrow hits part of the barrier near his lower leg leaving a small opening in that area, Kyo mocked her from the suppose bad aim, "Ha, are you starting to lose your game you weasel? How about you stop now and I-"

But before he could finish Neia fires an electric bolt through that opening, "AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!" Kyo screams in pain as he gets electrocuted.

"Weasel girl fire at the chest!" Bakugou shouts and immediately blasts himself toward an electrified Kyo.

Rifana nods and fires another arrow right at Kyo's chest area leaving a new opening in his barrier. Kyo barely recovers himself after the bottom hole closed up stopping the attack, and quickly widens his eyes in fear as he sees a pissed-off Bakugou running toward him, "What! How did you-"

*BOOOM!*

Bakugou fires his quirk right through that small opening and this sends Kyo flying across the room until he smashes right into a wall and drops painfully back on the ground.

And with that everyone else quickly got back on their feet. Horai then moves her hands toward a wall that creates an opening, "Go! The heart needs to be destroyed to kill the Tortoise! Go now!" she shouts toward the off worlders.

Larc and Glass didn't question her and nodded back as they ran toward the tunnel in the opening.

"Daven go with them!" Bakugou ordered and with a nod from the rogue, he quickly teleports away and pops in right behind Larc and Glass following them to the heart.

Horai then closed the opening

"Did you really have to come with us!?" Larc says back at Daven, not liking to be with the guy who cursed Therese.

"Unless you know how to find the heart yourself, you might as well tolerate me for now. I can just follow the blood vessels heading toward its core." Daven says back as with his ability to see a enemies blood vessels it allows him to see even through the Tortoise's thick muscles that will led to the heart.

Larc still didn't like being with him, but he knew the Tortoise was a bigger priority, "Fine let's just find this thing already!" he agreed and the trio continued running their way through the flesh tunnels.

Back in the core room, everyone looks back at the recovering Kyo who was now really pissed off by this whole event, "You stubborn bastards don't know when to quit do you?!" he then smirks again, "But no matter, you can kill the heart as many times as you want, but you won't be able to destroy the brain in time to matter, so too bad, Hahahahahaha!" Kyo mocks them once again.

But this time there was no more letting him continue insulting them and Neia, Kirishima, Rino, and Rifana all fight together to hold off Kyo.

Bakugou was about to fight Kyo until Horai grabbed his shoulder, "Wait Katsuki, he's right. If the brain is not destroyed or severed from the body at around the same time the heart is destroyed we can't truly stop him.

Bakugou knew she was right but he didn't like the implications of what that entailed, "Damn it, looks like I need to make a quick call." he responds and transforms his shield into his crystal ball shield.

---

Outside of the Tortoise itself, Ren continued his intense battle of cat and mouse with the monster, as he along with Scarlet with Kiel, Raphtalia, and Rishia, his team, and Eclair did all they could to keep the Tortoise's attention as it kept trying to blast or crush the heroes, it was now even resorting to its energy spike attacks again.

There had been multiple close calls, but the heroes persisted as they held out for as long as possible and hoped Bakugou would finish the job soon.

But the Tortoise started to fight more and more aggressively, as it loses its patience trying to kill and collect these annoying souls, its beam and energy spike attacks created many more holes across the landscape making it harder and harder to move around, Eclairs dragon knight volunteer unit was taking more casualties, she feared it will be a matter of time before the Tortoise will eventually focus on the main armies of troops near the Queen and general's who remained as observers of the event trying to think of what they could do to stop this thing.

Ren was also growing worried as he kept on firing whatever long-range sword attacks he could to keep the Tortoise's attention, but even he could tell it was losing more and more interest in him.

He didn't know what he was going to do once it flat out ignored him completely. Then something strange happened to his menu, it randomly popped up and stated, *Incoming transmission from crystal ball Sword*, "What?!" he expressed, with himself and his 3 companions beside him on Scarlet wondering why such a thing would appear at a time like this. But once he realizes who it could be he immediately shouts, "Crystal ball sword!" and his sword quickly transforms into its crystal ball variant and from it he finally gets the magical connection through to the responder, all the while Scarlet keeps on dodging the Tortoise attacks.

And just as he hoped for, images of Bakugou appear on the ball, "Paleface do you hear me now!?" Bakugou shouts from his end while some explosions go off in the background with Bakugou blocking some fire projectiles with his airstrike shields.

"Bakugou! Are you guys close to killing the heart yet!? The Tortoise is active again and is trying to kill all of us!" Ren asked Bakugou as the spikes impact and explode on the ground around them.

"We're on that! But we also have to kill the bastard's brain as well!" Bakugou responds.

"Wait what?! What do you mean!?" Ren asked with some fear in his voice.

"I mean that you need to cut the bastard's head off again idiot! What else do you think I'm bothering to call you for!?" Bakugou yells not having much patience in a time like this.

"I thought the heart was all that needs to be destroyed?!" Ren argues back not wanting this to be the truth.

Unfortunately for Ren, Horai confirms it, "I'm afraid to truly destroy the Tortoise's core and permanently kill it, both the heart and the brain have to be destroyed or severed around the same time, you are our only hope at this point." Horai says to the hero which didn't help his fears.

"But how am I supposed to destroy its brain? We don't have enough explosives or harpoons anymore to pin it down?!" Ren yells back

"Your the one with the goddamn sword idiot! Figure it out on your end! We spent over a week learning new stuff, use your damn head and decapitate the turtle already!" Bakugou finally yells back at Ren.

Bakugou was about to cut the transmission off but before he could Raphtalia knew she had to ask something first, "Sir Bakugou wait, is Rifana with you!?" she yelled from her end.

"Weasel girl? Yeah she's over there, saved our asses while we were down!" he answered and adjust his crystal ball to show Rifana in action firing her arrows while jumping out of the way of attacks.

"Oh Rifana you actually did it. You're fighting with the shield hero now." Raphtalia says out loud happy almost to tears to see Rifana not only doing fine and well but she was also helping out the cardinal shield hero and had supposedly saved him.

Bakugou then finally ends the transmission before the sword group can ask any more questions.

Everyone on the Filolial now looked worried about the whole situation as they looked toward the attacking Tortoise, "What are we going to do Sir Ren?" Rishia asked with Raphtalia and Kiel wondering the same.

Ren remained silent and was trying his hardest to think of something, he then spoke silently to himself "Damn, what the hell can I do to cut that giant thing? I know we learned a lot in a week but what did I learn that can cut off a…. Wait a minute." he then had a eureka moment on something he remembered in training, something that nearly broke his arms before, but it might be there only chance in cutting off the head and severing the brain, "Rishia, Raphtalia, Kiel! I need you to transfer as much of your Ki and mana into me as much as possible." he ordered.

It confused the 3 but they weren't going to oppose it and through the technique Miss Grillaroc taught them they touched Ren's sword and transferred all the Ki and Mana they could without killing themselves, "Master Ren what are you planning to do?" Raphtalia asked already starting to feel a little drained from the transfer while Ren was also drinking through as many different potions as he could on what he had planned.

"I think I have a way of cutting its head off, but I will only have one shot at this and we'll need to get as close to the head as possible." Ren tells them as he feels extremely floaty from all the Ki and power being transferred into him, he knew he was going to need all of it to do what he needs to do, "But Rishia, when I go inside it you will help me float in the air it for this to work.

"Float inside of what?" Rishia asked.

"Inside the Tortoise's mouth and throat," he responds which surprised the group of that being the plan, but despite how insane it sounds they are going to follow Ren's orders and nod in approval, planning to go all the way to the end to defeat the Tortoise for good.

Ren then activated his crystal ball Sword again, this time to contact the Queen. He quickly got it through from a shadow next to her, "Ms Mirellia, I know this isn't the best circumstance to talk but I'm going to need help from all the mages you have there!" he immediately asked the Queen.

Despite the random request Mirellia wasn't going to say no to the hero in a time like this, "Of course, but what do you need them for?" she quickly asked.

"I'm planning on going into the Tortoise's mouth and head deep enough in its throat to do my special move to cut its head off, and I rather not be vaporized while inside, so right after it finishes its blast, I'll jump into its mouth so I need you guys to create a powerful enough barrier to stop it's next mouth beam from vaporizing me, do you think that's possible." He answers and asks the Queen.

Mirellia nods to that, "We may be able to create one strong enough, but it may only last for 30 seconds at most so please be quick about this move you intend to make." she responds to the hero who nods back through the ball.

Grilaroc next to her though had her suspicion about what Ren was going to do and didn't like the sound of it, "Sword hero what is this move you're planning...-wait don't tell me you're going to do that again!" she shouts to him, but Ren cuts off the orb ending the call, "By the heavens, the Sword saint is making a giant gamble here." she says out loud.

"What is this move he is planning?" Mirellia quickly asked Grilaroc.

"It's a special sword ki attack, a move when he tried it the first time it nearly ripped his arms off. Hoped he trained hard enough to handle it this time." Grilaroc answered her Queen.

"Will it be enough to cut the Tortoise's head off?" Mirellia asked hoping this plan had some viability to it.

"If his body doesn't fall apart before activating it, then yes it should, as much as I don't like it, it may be our only hope so make sure that barrier is as strong as possible." Grilaroc finished with the Queen nodding as she turned herself and with the Mideus general they gathered all the mages together to do their part that will need all the magic they can get.

Back on the battlefield Ren quickly got his team, Miss Eclair, and what was left of her dragon volunteer regiment near each other so he could explain his plan while still dodging the Tortoise's long-range attacks, "So you fully know the plan?" Ren asked them.

Eclair nods back, "I normally would say this is suicide, but I have my faith in your abilities hero, so don't disappoint us." she finished with a nod.

Ren's companions still riding horses separate from their leader and what was left of the volunteer squad nod with Eclair, he then turns one more time to Raphtalia, Kiel, and Rishia who also nod in approval of their leaders plan, Ren smiles and turns back forward.

"Alright then, right at the Tortoise's head now!" Ren shouts and the charge is now fully engaged as Scarlet, Ren's team, and Eclair's forces charge as fast as possible right to the Tortoise itself.

The Spirit Tortoise now losing its patience with this squad was firing all it could at the heroes, firing its mouth beam and launching more and more energy spikes.

It was a brute charge as the window of safety grew smaller and smaller for everyone trying all they could to dodge the attacks with many of the dragon rider squad getting blown to bits, but the sword hero continued the charge as he felt more and more power being inserted into his sword, with it already tingling his nerves, Ren knew it was only going to get worse from here but it was not going to stop him now.

But the Tortoise remained relentless as it fired more and more spikes from its shell exploding in almost every part of the valley, it was becoming extremely dire as the Tortoise got ready to fire another mouth beam attack while the exploding spikes left almost no area safe.

"SCARLET!" Ren yells and once again the filolial princess jumps out of the way of the mouth beam as they close in on the Tortoise's head.

But the spikes were also getting closer and closer to the Sword hero with it becoming almost impossible to dodge them without getting directly hit.

It seemed like it was going to be impossible to get any closer as it seemed hopeless for everyone there including Ren himself with his own limbs now aching in deep pain.

However, Ren's companions knew what they could do to help and stop this for their leader. They knew this could mean death to all of them, but it was for the sake of the world and the people they loved. The 4 then split up from the main force and charged in another direction.

Ren quickly noticed what they were doing and wanted them to stop, "Welt! Bakta! Tersia! Farrie! No!" he shouted for them hoping they would listen.

However the four were going to continue their duty to help their cardinal hero to save the world, and if it meant sacrificing their own lives, then that was fine with them.

The four fired as many attacks and spells as they could at the Tortoise to get its attention to them, and attention it did bring as the Tortoise then fired almost all of its spikes at the four, exploding the entire area they were running into, explosion after explosion went off like a carpet bombing. It was hard to see anything, but what all the main charge force could hear was the companion's horses screeching to their deaths.

"NO!" Ren shouted to the quiet dust clouds, It was a horrifying sight to the sword hero and what was left of his team on Scarlet, as they looked on in horror at their teammate's sacrifices, even Scarlet looked horrified and depress to see what happened.

Ren felt a ton of guilt and wanted to cry to himself to see such a thing happen to such good people. But he knew he couldn't let their sacrifices be in vain and he forced Scarlet to continue the charge as they near the Tortoise's head.

Ren's companions sacrifices helped pave their way to the head with all the spikes being used up with the Tortoise trying to reform more of them as fast as it could.

As they all approached the Tortoise, Eclair turned her head back to what was left of the dragon rider unit, "Be ready to disperse! We'll distract the Tortoise's beam for the sword hero!" she ordered with her men all nodding back on the most important task of there lives was about to begin.

Ren readies himself for what he was going to do, despite all the pain he was feeling from his sword now flaming from his ki.

Ren himself stares upward at the Tortoise as he waits for it to make its next beam attack with him and Eclair's unit now close enough to the tortoise for it to no longer use any more spike attacks, "Come on! Come on! Attack! Attack me you bastard! Fire at me!" he shouts to the Tortoise and after it recharges itself its throat glowed purple once more as Scarlet knew this was going to be her time to move with Eclair ready to do the same on her end.

And after charging its energy enough, the Tortoise finally breathes its beam attack.

"Scarlet JUMP!" Ren shouts and Scarlet immediately jumps up in the air high above and out of the way of the beam attack.

Eclair and her unit turned themselves around and did what they could to be the Tortoise's target as it aimed its beam attack on them. They made their horses go as fast as possible trying to avoid the beam in any way they could but the beam was faster than even the horses could handle with a couple of them getting vaporized.

All the while Scarlet had already jumped on the Tortoise's leg and had quickly climbed up on the top of the monster's neck as she approached the end of the head.

Eclair knew this was it and in a quick reaction, she and what was left of the riders jumped off their horses and dragons barely missing the beam as the poor things instantly vaporized while Eclair and 7 survivors of the riders remained safe as the beam continued past them out of there direction, Eclair then looks up toward the Tortoise's head.

Up there Ren knew he had to time it right or everything would be ruined, despite how much pain he was feeling from his weapon, he knew it was now or never with his big plan. Once Scarlet was near the snout, the Tortoise's beam attack finally dissipated, "Scarlet jump!" Ren shouts and Scarlet does as ordered and jumps from the end of the snout.

As the bird fell down from the Tortoise, the beast's mouth was wide open but was slowly closing itself. Ren knew this was his chance and using all the strength and mana he could, he made a super jump off of Scarlet by himself as the filolial and the rest of Ren's team on herself fell back down toward the ground.

Ren heads directly inside the Tortoise's mouth, and right before it closes its mouth, Ren makes it inside.

As Scarlet lands and safely slides across the ground Rishia immediately raises her hands up to the the tortoise's head to conjure her float spell on the sword hero inside it while Raphtalia and Kiel transfer what remains of their mana to Rishia to keep her producing the spell she had to maintain.

Inside the Tortoise's mouth, Ren continued to float himself across inside the monster's throat until he was to the right point to do his attack and make sure the brain was going to be completely cut off from the rest of the body. And soon enough he was near the diaphragm or at least the equivalent of what turtles have to separate their digestive system from the lungs, he stopped right before it.

Ren knew this was his time, and all he had to do now was fully charge his attack. But the process was absolute suffering to him, the amount of mana, energy, and Ki he had to concentrate on himself was absolutely agonizing as if his insides were on fire. But he couldn't give up now, not when he got this far, while his remaining team was counting on him along with Eclair and the army outside. He continued to do all he could to power up his sword as it was now starting to feel like holding an extremely heavy weight.

However things got worse for the hero as he noticed down the throat was a glowing purple light, he knew this meant the Tortoise was ready to fire his mouth laser again and he would be instantly vaporized once it came up from the Tortoise's esophagus.

The purple energy was rapidly coming right up from the throat ready to vaporize the helpless floating sword hero.

That was until a powerful energy barrier appeared just right next to Ren, now halting the energy inside the throat.

Outside of the Tortoise, every single mage there was helping to conjure that barrier to protect the sword hero.

However the Tortoise's power was intense with many of the mages already feeling drained from maintaining the powerful barrier and the Tortoise's beam continued, "Please Lord Ren, hurry now!" Mirellia shouts toward the Tortoise as it was coughing itself from the blocked passage in its throat.

And back inside, Ren was in complete absolute pain as he finally finished up charging his sword to do his big attack. But his sword now felt like it weighed 100 pounds as he struggled to keep it above his head as Ren felt every bone in his body start to crack under the intense pressure while the barrier keeping the beam attack at bay was also immediately cracking with his bones.

Ren was in complete suffering the whole time, but couldn't stop now as he finally made it to the peak of his absolute strength with the sword using all of his Ki, all of his mana, and all of his strength to finally do what needs to be done.

Once his sword was finally above his head he shouted, "Sword of Light!" and his blade immediately transformed into a giant powerful hot beam of light and quickly grew and expanded upward. In just a few seconds the beam sword bursts right through the top of the Tortoise's neck, the monster could scream in pain if its throat wasn't completely blocked off.

Ren wasn't done yet, despite how every part of his body felt like it was burning he moved his sword and the hot blade quickly cut through the neck like butter.

It was complete pain for every second to Ren, and it was getting harder and harder to maintain this powerful sword as he kept it activated, but he had to go in a complete circle of the neck first to make it a clean cut.

The sword continued cutting all the way to the bottom and now Ren had to do the hardest part of raising it back up as it felt like his arms were going to snap in half.

But through all the pain and using all of his might Ren forces his sword upward, "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!" he screams in absolute pain and anger, and through that strength he finally makes a complete round cut.

And with the clean-cut completed, the Tortoise's head was now completely cut off once more and the now lifeless head fell off on the ground like before.

The armies cheered to victory once more, thinking the sword hero had done it.

However, the fate of the Sword hero was unknown to all of them until the head had fully fallen off from its neck.

Ren was still up there, now looking like he lost all the life out of him from doing something so painful with his cardinal weapon turning back to its default sword.

Rishia who was exhausted as well from the transfer of ki and keeping her leader up the whole time stops and collapses herself.

With Ren no longer being magically lifted up in the air, he now fell down lifelessly as his broken body spun around with no means to stop his fall as the magic barrier stopping the bean inside the Tortoise's body was cracking and about to break.

Scarlet didn't know if she could jump fast enough to save him from the collapsing beam barrier in time but was ready to jump and sacrifice herself to protect her master if she had to.

But before the bird could do anything Gaelion swoops himself in with no more energy spikes to worry about to blast him out of the sky, and quickly grabs the falling hero with his clawed hands.

The dragon was quick enough to get away from the giant monster, and despite all the efforts from the mages the barrier finally collapsed and broke apart as the beam thankfully harmlessly fired itself into the sky with no more head to point it anywhere.

After a few more seconds the beam stops, and without its head again, the Tortoise's body collapses itself on the ground.

The armies once again cheer in victory, thinking once again the Tortoise has been slayed.

The Queen and the general's on the other hand knew it was too early to celebrate yet, knowing what Bakugou was still doing now.

They also look toward the sky with Gaelion still holding onto the Sword hero as he finally lands himself and Gaelion softly lays an unconscious Ren on the ground.

"Give him medical attention now!" Mirellia shouts as a bunch of doctors and healing mages run toward the down hero to do all they can.

The Queen then turns her head to see Scarlet approaching him with Raphtalia, Rishia, Kiel, and also Eclair on her back.

Once right by Ren, the others jump off Scarlet who then turns back into her human form as she and the others gather near Ren while the doctors do all they can to help the hero, "Master Ren! Please master Ren don't die on us! Not after this!?" Scarlet cries as she runs to grip Ren's hand.

"He's alive, but we need to stabilize his body. He nearly wore out his own heart." one of the doctors stated as they did all they could to stabilize his senses while giving him any healing potion or magic to help the hero.

Ren's group and the Queen could only look on from the sides and hope Ren would be okay as some soldiers came forth with a movable bed to pick up the injured hero while the doctors continued to aid him with Scarlet following him.

"I hope he will be ok." Raphtalia says with Rishia looking worried as well.

While also worried herself, Kiel wanted to remain positive, "He's strong like Sir Bakugou, I'm sure he can pull through, we all did after going through worse under Rabier." she said to her team who despite still looking worried smiled softly to their friend and nodded.

"It's still not over yet though." Eclair said as she looked toward the decapitated Tortoise, "We still need Sir Bakugou to do his task for this nightmare to truly be over. Please Sir Bakugou, please hurry."

---

Back inside the core room, the battle continued between the heroes and the vassal book wielder.

Kyo was throwing any spell he had to kill or stave off the shield hero and his sidekicks but they continued to endure through all of them. He mostly had to resort to spamming elementals and other conjured monsters to keep them all off his back, but these barely slowed them down with the heroes quickly killing them.

Not helping Kyo was Rifana constantly firing her barrier-opening arrows that made obvious weak points on his body that Bakusquad was willing to exploit, forcing Kyo to be more active than usual to avoid getting attacked.

Things changed though when the ground shook a little bit and Horai grunted in pain and nearly collapsed on the floor while fighting off some of Kyo's conjured elementals.

Bakugou quickly noticed and got up to her while blasting away any other conjured enemies in his way.

Once by Horai, she quickly tells him, "The head is now cut off, get a hold of Daven now." she informs him.

Bakugou couldn't believe that Ren actually did it, but he wasn't going to think about it for long and quickly transformed his shield to the crystal ball variant.

"What?! How can that be possible?! No!" Kyo shouted after overhearing Horai and tried to cast a fire spell at Bakugou to stop the shield hero, only for Kirishima to jump in way in front of Kyo's spell and breathing a large amount of fire back on the wielder own flame attack.

And with him distracted Bakugou makes his call.

---

"Damn it! I know this is the heart, but isn't this overkill!?" Larc yells as he hides behind some rocks along with Daven and Glass. The Tortoise's heart defenses were active again and were firing its laser attacks on the 3.

They were all within the chamber of the Spirit Tortoise's heart, thanks to the openings Horai provided even outside the main chamber and Daven's navigation the 3 quickly made it to the Tortoise's heart once more.

"We don't have time to complain, we need to destroy this thing now!" Glass shouts back.

"No, we need to wait until the head is cut off or it will just regenerate back!" Daven yells back knowing the full details.

"Well how long is that going to take and how would we even know its head is off again!" Larc argues back not liking this whole situation.

But before Daven could say anything back, the ground over the chamber started to shake and rumble for a few seconds until it all just stopped.

"I hope that's what I think it was?" Glass says out loud

But before Larc and Daven could think about it themselves, Daven's crystal ball rumbles and he quickly gets it out, to turn on with Bakugou appearing from it, "The heads off! Kill the heart now!" Bakugou shouted getting to the point quickly as he continued blocking attacks from the background.

"You only have a one-minute window! Destroy the heart now!" Horai shouted from the background herself.

"Then let's not stand around!" Larc yelled with Glass and Daven nodding back.

Daven was the first to jump out and head toward the heart head-on. The laser defense aims directly at Daven and fires at the Rogue for a little bit.

Only for Daven to disappear and land on the surface of the heart and stab at the eyes taking them out, it seemed that combined with it still recovering itself from the attack from earlier to regenerate itself and Kyo draining more power from the tortoise, the heart was a lot weaker than before not spamming as many eyes like before.

Daven teleports away and before more eyes could appear Larc and Glass made their moves, " Zero stance rondo! Reverse four seasons!" Glass shouted throwing her long-range wind attacks as Larc also jumped in and with his powerful Scythe they both quickly chopped up and destroyed the heart with 15 seconds of their minute to spare.

---

Back at the chamber core, since Bakugou sent his message to Daven he and his group continued to fight valiantly against Kyo who was getting more and more desperate throwing more and more spells he had on them to kill the shield hero and his party. Kyo was determined to not be bested by those he saw were of low intelligence and to not ruin his brilliant plans, despite how much mana he had wasted at this point.

However, things radically changed once the heart has been fully destroyed with Horai first feeling the pain of it being destroyed once more.

Everyone including Kyo looks up toward the Crystal core, and with both brain and heart destroyed near the same time, the barrier that stopped anything from harming it finally breaks apart now leaving the thing exposed for anyone to destroy it.

Everyone quickly noticed this including Kyo himself, who now gasped in horror to see his plan now going downhill, he quickly slams his fists on the metal floor, "Damn it! Ahhhhhahahaha!" he cries looking pathetically defeated in front of everyone.

"Nah, just kidding." Kyo casually said making a complete 180 on his fake cry.

To everyone else's surprise, what looked to be remnants of the Tortoise's heart came out of the walls and floor. They quickly float their way to the core, in just a few seconds the huge amount of flesh quickly covers up the crystal core, "Did you really not think I wouldn't have a plan in place just in case that were to happen?" Kyo once again mocks the group as the flesh clumping completes itself, now the Tortoise's core is completely covered up in a thick flesh cocoon, "It's more of an emergency measure that uses the soul's power to the core, but oh well. As long as I see your face twisting in despair it's fine by me, it will just take a few minutes for both the head and heart to come back soon anyway.

The heroes looked worried about the prospect that all of their work would've been for nothing and to go through a mountain's worth of flesh was going to look impossible. But Bakugou wasn't going to stop now, "Ha , like that stopped me before bookworm, Rino! Neia! Kirishima! Fire-"

"Not so fast brute!" Kyo shouts and from his book, he conjures up new spell to stop the them. 4 new symbols appear and from the symbols they fire powerful beam attacks on the heroes.

Bakugou, Rino, Neia, and Kirishima were forced to fire back at the powerful beam attacks to save themselves with no time to dodge them, "Ha, I've had it about you and your harem's combined beam attacks, you won't have enough mana left once these attacks finished before the Tortoise fully regenerates!" Kyo continues mocking the heroes.

"Shield prison!" Bakugou shouts and the symbol attacking him gets covered up in a metal ball, though this only lasted a couple of seconds with the ball instantly breaking, but the opening allowed Bakugou to jump out of the way now freed from Kyo's beam trap.

Kyo was surprised but used one more spell that used up almost all of his mana up, getting extremely desperate to stop Bakugou from freeing his sidekicks, this time by creating multiple barriers around them, barriers that would take time to break, time Bakugou did not have.

Kyo didn't have enough magic left to put a powerful enough barrier around Bakugou himself, but he had one last bargaining chip as he now resorted to taking hostages, he pointed toward the object containing the 2 other cardinal heroes, "You better stay back shield! If you do anything else I'll just boil these two alive from the inside and make your waves get worse with their dea-"

But then a magic arrow is fired on the device containing the two, the object shatters with the bow and spear hero now freed but still unconscious as they fell to the ground.

"What?!" Kyo yells in a panic with his hostage plan now literally shattered, he turns to see who fired the arrow and it was none other than Rifana who slipped Kyo's mind while he was focused on stopping the other heroes. Kyo was of course enrage, "You stupid bitch, stop ruining everything!" he yells and begins firing his spells despite his limited mana resources at Rifana again as she also fights and distracts Kyo with her arrows.

And with him distracted Bakugou goes for the kill on the Tortoise core. With how long the battle went on, a lot of his abilities were on cooldown so he couldn't help free his sidekicks from the beam attacks so they had to just hold them back until the barrier and beam spells are done. Though Bakugou knew it would to late to destroy the Tortoise core by then, so he knew he had to break through the core by himself.

He also knew his normal explosions wouldn't be enough to destroy the flesh cocoon so he had to resort to another move of his, "AP Shot!" he shouts and with his two arms he fires his concentrated explosive beam attack on the thing doing all he can to melt through it and destroy the core. But this flesh was a lot harder than it looked, Bakugou kept on firing as much as he possibly could but it wasn't enough. Bakugou was forced to stop himself, now realizing this was not going to be enough, even if he could eventually get to the core he didn't have enough sweat in his gauntlets to break through the cocoon to do so.

He knew he had to think of something fast knowing the heart and head would regenerate back in a few minutes. From vague memories of the past though, back in Siltvelt he remembered that he had an even more powerful version of this AP shot, one that made his normal one look like a baby attack. The only problem though, it was through the wrath shield.

"Damn it! Why does that damn thing have to be so overpowered! Why can't it just go away!?" Bakugou shouts out loud, he didn't want to resort to it, he didn't want it to corrupt his mind again and turn him into a rampaging monster once more, but he still remembered what this tortoise had done, its mass destruction, the many homes and cities it destroyed, and how many lives it took. All so Kyo could smugly profit from it. If he didn't kill this thing now, it would be all for nothing with it all starting over again with more lives to be lost with their souls being taken.

Bakugou hated it, but he knew he no longer had a choice, he finally shouted, "Wrath shield!" and soon his shield transformed into its powerful wrath form with Bakugou also getting enveloped by the corruption armor that came with it.

"Sir Bakugou no!" Neia shouts within her barrier still containing the beam attack on her end. Like the rest of her team, she didn't want her master to ever resort to that evil thing, but there was nothing she could do on her end while still stuck where she was.

Bakugou is quickly empowered by the wrath weapon but still maintains his mind, despite the shield trying to corrupt him once again. Bakugou wanted this to just be done and over with as he eyes the cocoon once again and fires his powerful corrupted AP shot, it was far more powerful leaving a larger hole and burning deeper through the flesh.

"What?! No that's impossible!" Kyo shouts surprised to see Bakugou making progress into the core, he wanted to fire another attack spell at him, but Rifana once more kept firing her arrows at the book wielder stopping him from trying anything as he was forced to dodge or block the arrows that were still breaking holes in his weakening barrier.

Bakugou kept this attack up getting deeper and deeper into the cocoon, but as he noticed, it was getting thicker and thicker on the inside requiring him to make the beam more and more powerful.

However he quickly saw that his attack wasn't getting any stronger, it was actually weakening, "No! Come on! Just until it breaks through damn it!" Bakugou shouts trying his hardest to maintain his momentum with the AP attack, but it only started to fade, getting dimmer and dimmer, until it eventually stopped. Even with the wrath shield, Bakugou failed to make his beam fire all the way through to the core.

Kyo noticed and took joy in this development while still dodging arrows, "What's this? You stopped your attack despite its great power!? Oh, I see now, you're holding your own anger back to not lose control of yourself! Hahahahahahaha, you and your boyfriend got so far and yet you still failed at being the hero, loser! Loser! Loser! Hahahahahahahaha!" he mocked Bakugou now feeling smug once more not even worried about Rifana's arrows anymore.

As much as Bakugou would hate to admit it, he knew Kyo was right, he was holding himself back to stop his mind from fully succumbing to the corruption again, even if he knew allowing more power could let him finally break through the cocoon, he didn't want to be turned into a monster again, "Damn it! If I was only stronger and can keep myself together! Why can't I keep my damn rage under control?!" he shouted to himself, fearing that it was now all over, that more will die because of him, because he failed to be a strong-willed hero.

"No need to worry shield hero." said a voice that turned out to be Horai who smiled and then pointed her arm toward the hero, "Now it's time for the power I left in within your shield to take its true form." she chants and before Bakugou could say anything he noticed his shield was now glowing and transforming again.

Kyo didn't like the look of this, "What are you doing! Stop this! I order you to stop right now!" he yells hoping activating Horai's slave crest would stop her spell.

The crest did go off electrifying her, however it was no longer holding Horai back, as much pain as the crest was applying to her, she was no longer going to be stopped because of the crest forced on her, so Horai endured the pain as she finished her spell on the hero's shield.

Finally, Bakugou's shield transformed once again, no longer in its corrupt wrath form with the armor that comes with it disappearing on Bakugou as well. The shield now changed to be more circular in a glassy light blue color in its center, Bakugou's menu quickly popped up *Shield unlock: Spirit Tortoise heart shield*

Bakugou didn't know what this meant, but he could already feel the shield taking its effect, he randomly formed green energy angel wings from his back, and the shield now conjured up a bunch of energy objects just below it, now somewhat resembling an AA gun turret of sorts. With what resembles a targeting system appearing on his menu as the cursor floated around until it finally picks its target, the cocoon.

Kyo knew what this power was and knew it was not good for him, he wanted to make another spell, but combined blocking Rifana's attacks while maintaining the spells on the other sidekicks, there was nothing Kyo could do now, "Wait! No! Just remember! If you kill the Spirit Tortoise! You'll kill her as well!" Kyo shouts trying to get Bakugou to have second thoughts.

Bakugou turns his head to Horai just to see what she wants to say about that, on the act that will truly end her life. But Horai didn't say anything else and just smiled and nodded to the hero in approval of accepting her fate.

Bakugou nods back, and after he turns his head forward with a smirk on his face he grabs hold of the Tortoise heart shield weapons controls, "Say bye to your pet bastard!"

"NOOOOOOOO!" Kyo shouts, but before he can do anything else to stop it, the energy from the shield quickly charges to its full strength thanks to Horai, in a matter of seconds a massively powerful laser fires from the shield energy AA turret.

The beam was so powerful, it not only blasted through the cocoon it completely obliterated the whole thing along with the crystal core itself.

And this beam kept on going past the walls through the Tortoise's body until it busted right through its shell firing right into the sky for everyone outside to see for miles. The armies outside didn't know what the hell this was, but they knew that this all had something to do with the shield hero and they hoped it was a good thing.

Right back inside the Tortoise's center, the Tortoise's core had now been shattered into a million pieces, the Tortoise was now truly dead with its reign of terror finally over.

"Thank you, Shield Hero." Horai said, she then collapsed on the floor with Bakugou's tortoise shield turning off back to its default shield.

"Miss Horai!" Rifana shouts as she quickly runs to her to comfort the dying woman.

With the other sidekicks with the Tortoise now dead, Kyo had lost a lot of his power and combined with using most of his natural power already, both the beam attacks and barriers trapping them inside had disappeared, now freeing them as they all ran toward the dying avatar of the tortoise with Rifana now laying Horai's head on her lap.

Not too long after, Larc, Glass, and Daven arrived back again, and when they saw the group they quickly ran toward Ost wanting to see if the worst was truly happening to her.

Bakugou was also decided to move near her, not expressing much emotion but even inside his tough demeanor even he felt bad at the sight of someone who had just willingly sacrificed her own life to save the world.

Not far from them though was Kyo, now looking mad that his whole plan had failed, though not as mad as one would think, he actually looked more annoyed than anything else, "Ugaaaaaaaaahhhhhhh! Way to go and ruin everything! You couldn't resist killing the poor woman could you? Well now what am I suppose to do?" he jokingly mocks the heroes still maintaining his evil smug attitude.

The heroes turn back to Kyo with deep anger at the bastard who showed absolutely zero sympathy or empathy for anybody.

Kyo then turns himself toward the heroes while still maintaining his smug smile, "Well at least this wasn't a complete waste of time, after all I still succeeded in completing my real goal."

The heroes were surprised to hear that from Kyo, despite everything being ruined for him, he would still say that, "What are you talking about?!" Larc demanded.

Kyo then explains why, "Did you think that after you destroy the core all the souls inside will spread across the world and head up to heaven? Well too bad!" he then pulls out a glass vial containing some sort of blue liquid, "Unfortunately for you, I went ahead and kept the bare minimum, just so that wouldn't happen." he brags then says his parting words while grinning with that smug smile of his, "Now if you excuse me, I'm on my way out of this rotting tortoise carcas-AAAAAAHHHHHHHH!"

But out of nowhere, Kyo gets stabbed on the right shoulder by Daven with his Sai and the book wielder lets go and drops the soul's vial, with the Tortoise dead and all his mana used up he no longer had any barrier to protect himself from attacks like that.

Despite it being glass the vial still rolled across the floor in one piece until it finally rolled right up to Bakugou being stopped by his foot. Kyo now looked horrified despite all the pain he was feeling on his right shoulder as Bakugou gave off his own smug smile as he raised his foot up, "NO DON'T!"

*Smash*

Bakugou immediately crushes the vial, shattering it into pieces.

"NNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" Kyo screams at the top of his lungs, unlike before this was a real genuine scream as all of his hard work was now ruined.

And as Bakugou steps back the blue liquid from the broken vial glows, and in a few seconds a large stream of blue light launches itself up into the ceiling, and from there the energy blob splits itself up into multiple different individual light orbs, going from the hundreds to the thousands each representing a soul of the Tortoise's victims, "The souls of the Tortoise are now freed from their imprisonment." Horai says softly, happy to see the souls free as they ascend out through the Tortoise's body.

All of the souls rise up into the sky as they glow a bright light across the valley, the soldiers, generals, Queen Mirellia, Gaelion, and the sword heroes team all witness this event from afar knowing what this all meant. Pretty much all of them bowed down in respect to the souls ascending, knowing many of them were souls of their fallen comrades, who helped give their lives to save them and many people from the Tortoise.

Eventually, the glow from the souls disappears from the sky. After giving off their energies to help produce a temporary barrier from the waves, the souls of the dead moved on from this world to rest peacefully forever in heaven (Or in cases like King Ransha's soul for his evil deeds in the opposite direction to face endless suffering).

Soon all the souls disappeared, now leaving behind a clear blue sky of a setting sun.

Back inside the now dead Tortoise after finishing watching the souls leave for the afterlife, Larc quickly noticed that there were two Davens, one next to him and one by the crying Kyo, "Wait a minute, how can you be there but you're also-" But after a smile and wave from the Daven next to him it puffs away out of existence in a poof of smoke, "You mean that wasn't the real you the whole time?" a surprised Larc asked the other Daven in confusion.

Daven was happy to answer, "Shadow clone, nobody expected a thing."

"But how were you able to keep yourself invisible? I thought you only specialized in dark magic?" Glass asked.

Rino then stepped in giving a small smirk, "It was me, just some light-based illusion magic. Just as Daven said, no one saw it coming." she responded with Daven smiling and nodding back in approval with a thumbs up to Rino.

But back with Kyo, he continued his loud crying, "No! No! No! NO! This isn't fair! That was months of research! Months of planning! All ruined! All wasted for nothing! AHHHHHHHHHHahahahaha!" he continued whining and sobbing like a baby completely and utterly defeated and ruined by the whole situation.

But there was no sympathy from anyone, the entire cave just smiled and silently giggled at the pathetic evil bastard's crying. Bakugou was enjoying it the most as he records the whole thing from his Crystal Ball shield, "Man I have to say cry baby, for someone who gloats about how smart they are, it was really stupid to be bragging about your last twist when someone in my party can just teleport from behind when there is no barrier up." Bakugou mocks Kyo back enjoying that he was back on the side of mocking the villain this time.

With Kyo though, his sadness had now transformed into deep anger as he clutched his fist and gritted his teeth in absolute hatred as he stood back up and turned to Bakugou, "You! You! YOU! You stupid, idiotic, MORON!" He then opens up his book and stomps his way to the heroes, "I'll make you pay for all of this! I'll make you all suffer for everything! You will rue the day for crossing against me! Do you hear me! You will rue the da-AAAAAAAHHH!" but suddenly a sharp blood covered blade pops right out of his chest.

Kyo was now in utter pain and was bleeding from his chest and mouth, and as he turned his head he saw that it was Neia who stabbed him in the back with Daven right behind her, clearly indicating he just teleported her there behind Kyo while the book wielder wasn't paying attention once again.

"You talk too much." Neia simply said, she then turned her head toward Bakugou.

Bakugou just places his thumb on his neck and quickly swipes it across, making it clear what he wants his sidekick to do.

After a nod from Neia, she lifts her other blade up in the air.

Already knowing what's coming Kyo just drops his book on the floor and with his magic makes it turn the pages on its own, then with blood still coming out of his mouth he finally says to Bakugou, "You and your harem will suffer for this Katsuki Bakugou. I'll be sure you will regret everything you've done, and know what happens when you cross the great Kyo Ethnin-"

*Slice*

Neia finally shuts Kyo up for good after a swith swing of her blade on his neck. Kyo's head flies clean off his body and rolls across the floor, and after Neia pulls out her other blade from the chest of his headless body as it collapses on the floor now bleeding out. Kyo Ethnina was now dead, and there were going to be no cries from anyone for him, only relief.

After Kyo's death, everyone then turned back to Ost herself, as she continued to barely remain alive feeling weaker and weaker by the second. Neia and Daven move up around her with Bakugou doing the same as they look toward Horai.

Neia once again felt a lot of guilt from seeing this, "Ost, if only we could've stopped that bastard before all of this we might've-"

"No, like I said before don't blame yourselves for anything, I knew this was coming once the Tortoise had awakened, I knew for everyone's good I would have to die. I was the one who failed and you all succeeded in stopping me and freeing the souls. You are true heroes." Horai says not wanting to leave any guilt to her friends.

Neia smiled back and wiped a tear from her eyes, Bakugou then walked up closer to Horai, "Don't downplay yourself either Bar- I mean Miss Ost Horai." saying her real name surprised everyone even Horai herself, but it also made her heart feel warmer hearing that, Bakugou then continued, "I know I was harsh and yelled at you multiple times, but well that's just me. What you did today I could barely see any other pro's back at home are willing to do, willing to give up their own life like that to stop this monster for good, but you took it without any strife or second thoughts. To me that's, for lack of a better term, badass. So Miss Horai, when my hero academy gets built, you will not be known as the avatar of a murderous turtle but as a true Pro Hero, I'll be sure this little act will be known to all future heroes, of what it means to be a true hero, one that is willing to make the sacrifices to save the world. Just like me, Paleface, and my sidekicks, the first of this world's pro-heroes." he finished.

It was a lot for Horai to take in, but she knew each word was genuine from the shield hero, that this was what he really thought of her not just flowery words. Horai let out a tear and then said, "Can you come closer shield hero?" she requested.

Bakugou didn't know why she wanted this but didn't protest against the dying woman and got up closer and kneeled down to Horai, "Ok why do you-"

But before Bakugou could finish Horai immediately hugged the shield hero, "Thank you Katsuki Bakugou, thank you for everything." she said to the hero while crying in joy some more. As much as Bakugou didn't like hugs, he was willing to make another exception with Horai as the weakened woman continued her hug. And then Neia joined in on the hug with Horai, then Rino, then Rifana, and then even Daven and Kirishima joined in all showing their love and gratitude to Horai for everything.

Horai then finally lets herself go now with almost no strength left in her as the last of her life leaves her body while lying on Rishia's lap again. She then spoke her final words to the heroes, "Thank you again for everything. I hope to see you all again one day, whether it be through a new life reborn or in heaven, I'll be happy to see all of you. Goodbye, and may you continue to save the world and many more people along the way."

And with those parting words, Horai closed her eyes and finally passed on, her now lifeless body glowed and slowly dissolved away into light particles. In a few seconds her body finally disappeared for good, now moved on from this world.

"May you find peace with the gods." Neia prayed to her along with the other sidekicks doing the same in silence, even Kirishima had lowered his own head in respect of Horai while Bakugou remained silent himself, giving respect to a fallen hero.

The silence continued for a minute until everyone finished their respects, "At least she has died in peace. Doing what she thought was the right thing to do." Rino said with her and the others still feeling sad about this whole thing, but they knew they couldn't sulk about this forever, it would certainly not be what Horai would want and like any lost loved one they must move on and do more with their own lives.

After a few more seconds of silence Bakugou finally spoke up again, "Let's just remember guys, we still did, we kicked that bastard's ass and killed his enslaved monster. We'll celebrate for all of us, including Horai. We all did our parts and went beyond plus ultra. This includes you to weasel girl." he says to his sidekicks and then to Rifana to cheer them up.

Rifana was now blushing in embarrassment from the attention, "Oh, uh it was nothing Sir Bakugou. I just only did what I could with everything that happened."

Bakugou then patted her shoulder, "Ha, you kidding? You pretty much saved us back there. You made that bastard finally feel pain and probably made him wet himself, that's good to me in my book." he said to her.

Neia also smiled at Rifana, "Yeah you saved all of us, who knew what Kyo would've done if you didn't shoot those arrows and distracted him." she says with Daven, Rino, and Kirishima nodding to her in approval.

Rifana was still blushing from the attention she was getting, but also smiled at the feeling of her helping and saving everyone back there including the shield hero himself, "Uh...I...I... thank you everyone, you don't know how much this means to me." Rifana says to the shield hero team feeling welcomed by everyone.

Bakugou then said, "You know we still have openings in the Bakugou agency, and I could always use a good sniper on me. And I think I got myself a good candidate."

Rifana was surprised to hear that, "Really Sir Bakugou?! I can be a part of your party?!" she asked the hero now looking excited that her dream might be coming true.

"Eh, think of it as a more advanced internship, but continue to impress me and you will be a permanent member," Bakugou responds to her.

Rifana quickly repeatedly bowed to the shield hero, "Thank you, thank you so much sir Bakugou, I won't disappoint you." she says to him with the mood in the room feeling a lot happier now after everything they have been through. She couldn't wait to tell Kiel and Raphtalia once they get out of here.

After Bakugou quickly confirmed her position on his status menu he then said, "Of course, you'll still have to complete the Katsuki Bakugou agency training course first." he casually said giving a small grin on his face.

"Training camp?" Rifana questioned.

Neia and Rino quickly smiled and nudged at Rifana, "Oh boy, are you in for some fun Rifana." Rino jokes with her and Neia gives a light laugh knowing what Rifana has gotten herself into.

And not too far away from them, Larc and Glass witnessed the whole thing and watched everything, "I can't believe I'm saying this Glassy, but I think I can see why those guys follow the bastard." Larc admits, he still absolutely hated Bakugou as a person, but after watching all of that with Horai and Rifana, he gained a little bit more respect for the so-called Shield Devil.

Glass nods in agreement with Larc, and as she looks at the ground she sees Kyo's rotting head next to her foot and just kicks it away in disgust, "We've done our duty here, now we just need to get the vassal book and get out of here." she said quietly pointing to Kyo's open book laying on the floor not far from his headless body.

Larc nodded, and whispered, "Good idea, if we can just get through that hole opening we should be able to-"

"Hey!" Shouted a voice and when a surprised Larc turned to it, he saw a now angry Bakugou launching himself right at them.

Larc panicked and quickly reacted and blocked Bakugou's attack as he slides across the floor, with Bakugou's shield holding his scythe in place, "Don't think I forgot about you and Cateyes!" Bakugou shouts to the outworld heroes.

Glass opens her fans up ready to attack, but then Daven pops in from behind with his sai's pointed at her spine and neck, with Neia and Rino aiming their blades and spear-staff at her.

Kirishima also towers over Larc ready to smash him on the ground again.

"I'm getting a weird case of Deja vu Larc." Glass said, not liking they were pretty much in the same position as before within the shell.

"Really Kido? After everything you're still going to do this." Larc says with Bakugou growling in anger again from that nickname.

Larc though noticed something new then before, an arrow pointed directly at his head, aimed by Rifana herself, "Even you Rifana? After all we did together?" he expressed in disappointment.

"You still plan to kill Sir Bakugou and destroy my world. To me right now, you're no different than Kyo, and like him before, I'll continue to help Sir Bakugou to stop evil people like him." Rifana responds enforcing her own loyalty to the cardinal heroes.

Larc sighs in disappointment, "That's sad to hear, I guess we'll have to fight our way out."

"Larc maybe you don't realize we are outnumbered 3 to 1 and lost in a true battle against them last time when Therese was here." Glass reminded him knowing how screwed she and Larc really were.

"How about thinking positively for once Glassy?" Larc jokingly says while still keeping his eyes on Bakugou.

Bakugou just says, "If you have any brains in that thick head of yours, you'll give up without a fight and we'll get you and Cateyes to answer some questions from us and if you give the right answers I won't have to smash your head in like a melon!"

"I like to see you try Kido." Larc says back

Bakugou then yells at him, "How many times do I have to tell you!? Stop calling me-"

"Sir Bakugou, what is going on with that book?" Rifana interrupted, and after the mention of it Bakugou, Larc, and the others looked toward Kyo's book weapon and saw it was still turning pages by itself and was now glowing.

"What the hell?!" Bakugou expressed.

Glass looked the most confused, "But that's impossible, it shouldn't... oh no, it can't be?!" Glass then expressed in fear on the implications.

"What's impossible?! What the hell do you mean Cateyes!?" Bakugou yelled hoping for a quick answer.

"It.. It... could only mean-" But before Glass could finish, the book stopped in the page it wanted to be on and glowed brighter than ever.

"What in the hell is going-" But before Bakugou could finish himself, the brightness engulfed the entire room in just seconds.

A few more seconds later the light itself disappeared, along with everyone else in the room but the still unconscious Ponytail Slut and Bow Bitch. Bakugou and his entire team were gone, along with Larc and Glass. And the very book that did that disappears itself, leaving this world back to its own world.

After they disappeared, like with its human form the entire corpse of the massive spirit Tortoise dissolved away into pure light but this light didn't just disappear, like ashes the light particles rained down across the desolate and barren valley and almost immediately grass, flowers, and many other plants grow across the landscape. So with its death, the Tortoise has brought in new life.

Eventually, the corpse disappears into nothingness, with the still unconscious Spear and Bow heroes, and Kyo's lifeless body and head falling and landing on the ground.

And up some cliffs, a particular figure watches on to such a rebirth of life. It was the Filolial Queen herself Fitoria, having witness the whole event afar. For the whole time she wanted to see if the cardinal heroes could handle such a threat on their own. And to her the sword and shield hero exceeded beyond her expectations, after the foolish actions of the Spear and Bow heroes, she once again considered to just kill off the cardinal heroes again. But after seeing the work of the Sword and Shield heroes, she didn't want to end such good heroes, ones who took on a world ending threat without her help.

She smiled as she looked across the valley then said, "You've made your choice now heroes, you won't just save this world, you'll save its people as well.".

---

Deep in a military camp in a medical tent, a particular individual was finally waking up after being asleep for the rest of the day last night.

It was none other than the sword hero Ren Amaki, out of his hero clothing and covered up in many bandages. He was also aching all over his body, feeling like he was stuffed in a box for days as he stretched himself out. And after a quick groan, he quickly found out he wasn't alone, "Master Ren!" Shouted multiple voices and as he looked over to see who it was, and it turned out to be Scarlet, Raphtalia, Kiel, and Rishia themselves, who were awaiting their leader to wake up after such a long night, and they all immediately rushed over to hug him.

As much as his body was still aching, he didn't want to push them off and just smiled back at his loyal teammates. To his surprise, he also sees Miss Eclair in the tent with them who just smiles and nods to the hero in respect.

The girls then let go of their hug and smiled at Ren, "Master Ren it's so good to see awake again." Raphtalia says

"Yeah me too, wished I didn't feel like crap though, but I guess that's what I get for doing that super move," Ren responds as he continued moving his arms around.

"You're lucky that didn't tear you into mush." Said a random voice from outside who heard the hero, and once he and the others turned to the tent entrance they saw Miss Grilaroc and Queen Mirellia herself coming in at the same time and smiling at the sword hero.

Mirellia herself made a bow to the sword hero, "Thank you for everything you and your team have done, I can't thank any of you enough."

Ren nods in approval, though now he has to ask the important question, "What of the spirit Tortoise?"

Mirellia nods back and answers, "The spirit Tortoise is dead now, with its body fading away. And from where its body used to be we also found the Spear and Bow hero both unconscious and in our custody now, along with Kyo Ethnina's corpse and severed head.

Ren sighed in great relief to hear about all of that, not only is the monster dead, but the Bow and Spear heroes were back in custody to not screw up more, and the one responsible for all of this was dead as well.

Miss Eclair then approached the bedded hero and kneeled before him, "You were brave out there Sir Ren, even many experienced knights would have not done what you did back there. Thank you for everything Sword hero." she thanked Ren nodding back to him in respect.

Ren's smile though disappeared when he remembered what happened during the battle with the Tortoise, "What's wrong Master Ren?" Scarlet asked with the others looking concerned as well.

Ren lets out a light sigh, "It was still a pyrrhic victory for all of us, we lost many good people out there, brave men and women. This includes Welt, Bakta, Tersia, and Farrie, they died under my watch, I could've done something to not allow them to sacrifice themselves like that." he explains feeling extremely guilty from what happened to them.

But what surprised him was that all of the girls were smiling at him now including the Queen, Grilaroc, and Eclair, "Oh about their sacrifice Sword hero." Grilaroc then grabs and opens the tent entrance.

"Master Ren it's good to see you!" said a group of people in unison that arrived in, and to Ren's shock, it was Welt, Bakta, Tersia, and Farrie themselves smiling.

Ren couldn't believe his eyes but he sees withwith them that his presumed dead teammates were alive and well, "I can't believe this, you're all alive?" he expressed.

"Well, 80% alive anyway," Welt said and he revealed that he was missing his right arm, with what's left now covered in bandages, Bakta also revealed to have a missing left leg, and Tersia was missing both his legs now riding on what looks to be a primitive wheelchair of sorts. Farrie on the other hand other than some bandages around her body she was completely fine still having all of her limbs.

Ren immediately looked on with some guilt again, thinking it was his own fault the 3 were permanently crippled now, "I'm sorry guys, if I was stronger or a better leader I could've prevented this from-"

"Stop blaming yourself Sir, we were the ones that volunteered to save Melromarc and the world against threats such as these, so we expect to be on suicide missions. The fact we're not 100% dead shows how good of a leader you actually are." Tersia says in Ren's defense with the other 3 nodding in agreement.

Bakta then spoke up, "And in the end, all of our sacrifices helped kill the Tortoise and saved the world from that bastard Kyo."

Farrie nodded and spoke herself, "We joined to help our heroes, and we regret nothing aiding you in the heart of battle. So thank you again for giving all of us the opportunity to be heroes ourselves." she thanked as the girl and the 3 others bowed to Ren, even Tersia bowed from his wheelchair thing.

Even though Ren still felt bad about all of this, he was once again thankful to have a strong and understanding team and nodded back to them, "Thank you, thank you for all of your services."

The 4 nod back in approval, though when Walt looked at his stub of an arm he, Bakta, and Tersia knew they now had to lay the one item of bad news to Ren, "Unfortunately though Sir Ren, I think it should be clear at this point our adventuring days might be over, I doubt you would want a one-armed man fight off the waves of catastrophe." he says with Tersia and Bakta nodding with in agreement as they rub on there own missing limbs.

Ren though nods back completely understanding them, "I fully understand, all of you deserved your retirements and I'll be sure your hard work and sacrifices won't be for nothing, I'll be sure the waves are defeated and all of you and your families will live in peace in the future." he thanks and promised the 3 who all smiled and nod back. Though Ren wanted to check on one more thing as he turned to Farrie, "Do you also want to retire too Farrie?" he asked.

"Ha, no way. I still have both arms and legs together Sir Ren. I'll be sticking around with you as well as Raphtalia, Kiel, and Rishia." Farrie responds confirming she is still going to stick around with Ren.

Ren was happy to hear that at least one of his original party was going to stick around despite everything, he nodded back to her, "Thank you Farrie." he then turned toward Raphtalia and Kiel, "And it looks like they're plenty of position's opened to be in my team, do you guys want to be permanent members?" he asked the two demi-humans having been impressed with there loyalty and skills since the last wave, there time in the Tortoise kingdom, and all the way to fighting with him against the Tortoise itself.

The two young adult demi-humans were surprised to hear that, "Are you sure about that Sir Ren?" Raphtalia asked with Kiel wondering the same. But without saying a word Ren just smiles and nods back. The two girls quickly hug Ren, "We're glad to accept your offer Sir Ren." Raphtalia responds with Kiel smiling as well.

Not a second after that miss Eclair spoke up, "If you don't mind Sword Hero, could I join your party as well?" she asked which surprised the Sword Hero sidekicks and even Ren himself.

"Are you sure Miss Eclair?" Ren asked wanting to confirm it with her.

Eclair nods back, "Indeed, after seeing your bravery and your actions out there. I knew I would be of more help joining your side directly than sulking around thinking of the past about me and my father's failures. So do you mind Sword Hero?" she explains.

Ren thought about it for a few seconds and smiled back, "Sure why not, the more the merrier." he agreed to the arrangement. Though he did feel weird that now all of his team consisted of nothing but girls now like Ponytail Slut's party before, but unlike them he knew they will be true loyal party members to him.

Mirellia herself smiled and nodded to this, approving of the arrangement herself, she was glad to see Eclair so happy after going through so much since Lord Seaetto passed away.

Once that was done, Ren looked back at his former teammates, "And guys my domain of Miriso is open to everyone, so you can live in my mansion there if you want to." he said to the three.

But then the Queen stepped in, "That won't have to be completely necessary Sir Ren, I would like to announce for all of you that your rewards for helping defeat the Spirit Tortoise, along with a monetary reward of 2000 gold, I shall bestow each and everyone one of you not only your own lands and estates to claim for yourselves, but be given the titles of nobility to your names and families along with the benefits and privileges they shall grant." she says to the sword hero sidekicks who all bowed in gratitude to there generous Queen.

Mirellia then turns herself to Rishia, Raphtalia, and Kiel, "This also applies to the 3 of you as well."

"Really?!" the 3 girls said surprised to hear that.

Mirellia nods and looks to Rishia, "Miss Rishia I have told you before at the trials, that the ones who had their noble titles stripped away fas punishment would have the chance to get them back if they do a good enough deed to earn them, the likes of Mald and Bigger Bitch had wasted there opportunities for good as still only caring about there old greedy self's, but you Rishia for your selflessness and hard work, you've earned your place back as an Ivyred."

Rishia was surprised to hear all of that, that her majesty would say such things to a former screw-up like her, but then she became happy to hear all of that and cried tears of joy and bowed to her Queen, "Thank you so much your majesty. I'll be sure to continue to redeem my families name and to protect Melromarc and its people at any cost with the sword hero." she says to her Queen who nods in approval.

Kiel then finally spoke out, "Did you really mean the same with us as well?" she asked with Raphtalia nodding in agreement.

Mirellia smiles at them, "Yes, of course, I wouldn't leave any of the Sword companions out of their deserved reward?" she responds.

The two were still somewhat shocked that she meant it, "But wouldn't some of the nobles hate the idea of Demi-humans getting noble titles your majesty?" Raphtalia asked with Kiel wondering the same.

Mirellia let out a sigh knowing this would be brought up, "Oh no doubt some will protest or send me angry messages about the whole thing, but the worst of their lot have been vaporized after Balmus destroyed Rabier's castle and I doubt they would go against their Queen or those that saved them from the Spirit Tortoise's wrath." She confirms making it clear she doesn't care what some whiny nobles will say, she will do what is right, "Of course it will take me time for me to deal with all the paperwork that is involved for all of you, but I guess you can just live at the Sword heroes estate for a little bit in the meantime after all." she added in which the sidekicks just nod back understanding their Queen's reasoning, she then look toward Ren again, "I will also have to think of what rewards I can possibly provide you and Sir Bakugou as well." she added in.

The mention of Bakugou, quickly made Ren think, "Where is Bakugou and his team at?" he asked the Queen.

"As of now the Shield hero and his party are missing." the Queen quickly answered.

Ren sighs not liking that, "Great so Bakugou is missing now, huh? Well it looks like my work as the Cardinal hero babysitter is not done here. I'll start the search once my limbs don't feel like jelly anymore your majesty." he responds to her.

That was until Scarlet spoke up to him, "Oh don't worry about the shield guy and his team Master Ren, Fitoria told me they are mostly okay."

"Wait you talk to Fitoria again?" Ren quickly asked.

Scarlet nods while adjusting her crown, "Yes she was here in person and told me the shield guy and his party were sent to a location we won't be able to get to ourselves and wouldn't be anything we can help to get him back here, so she said to not waste our times trying. But she also said that if the shield guy is smart enough he should be able to get back in one of the next waves." she explains what the Filolial Queen told her.

While it was a lot of information to take in, Ren still let out a sigh of relief that he wouldn't be forced to go out on a wild goose chase again. Of course this also meant he would be on his own as the only competent cardinal hero in this world, and would have to deal with the two dumbasses that helped start this whole fiasco in the first place when they finally wake up. Then again anything will probably feel like a walk in the park after dealing with a giant monster Tortoise.

Raphtalia and Kiel also felt a little concerned about Rishia's fate as well considering she was also gone along with the rest of the shield heroes team. But after seeing her confidently in action from the crystal ball sword last night and was truly with Sir Bakugou now, they were both she would be fine, now in good hands in the shield hero's party.

Mirellia then spoke up, "Well then once you recover we can head our way back to Melromarc and have a proper celebration for everyone."

Scarlet smiles at that, "I hope it is soon, I'm really hungry." she says out loud.

"Considering our food budget, when are you not." Ren joked.

"I don't eat that much master!" Scarlet argued back.

"Whose the one paying the bill then?" Ren snarked again and everyone started to playfully laugh, less from the joke and more from everyone being in a good mood now.

Scarlet just continued to look confused, "What? What's so funny?"

---

In another world, deep within what looks to be a dark science laboratory, there were dozens of human-sized metal pods with glass fronts, containing a light blue liquid inside them, but within that thick liquid were actual living male human bodies connected to a bunch of different wires and tubes maintaining the bodies and keeping them alive.

However in one of them, several lights have gone off on them with what looks to be electricity flowing through the pod. After a few more seconds of this, the electricity flow stops and within the liquid, the human body's eyes open up, now awakened.

The man inside rips off some of his tubes and wires to press some buttons within the pod itself. Soon the metal pod drains out all of the liquid inside of it leaving just the now awakened man in the pod.

The man pushes the pod open and finally walks out of it, the man was none other than Kyo Ethnina himself, back in the land of the living, in a fresh new body free from of any wounds or scars. Surrounding himself were multiple more of these stasis pods of more identical clone copies of his own body floating in the blue liquid remaining as his only way to cheat death using both science and magic.

He walks naked across the room until he makes it to an area which revealed to be a large closet of sorts, full of suits for him to wear. Kyo quickly puts on one of the brand new suits, it was the same type of clothes he wore before in the Spirit Tortoise's home world, which includes the vials and the cape.

After putting on his clothing he also puts on a new pair of glasses, one of dozens he has spares of.

He then walks to a podium where he conducts his dark magic as purple lightning from above and around the podium zaps at its center. And after a few minutes, the lightning conjures up what Kyo wanted back in his hands once more. The vassal book weapon was now back in its home world and was once again being forced against its will to be used by its evil master.

With the book in his possession again Kyo walks himself to another part of his lab ready to come up with a scheme to get his revenge on the one who had screwed him over, "You're in my world now Katsuki Bakugou, you will pay for ruining everything I worked so hard to achieve. I will see you and your little harem suffer, and then lay waste to that worthless world of yours for good. Your soul is mine!"

---

Author's note: Man another thick one that took me forever to edit and complete. Glad to finally get it out there though and just as when the third season of the shield hero anime is coming out. I admit I do feel a little bad for what I did to some of Ren's original party, though frankly I really haven't done much with them or gave any major characterization to Bakta, Tersia, and Welt in an already pretty bloated cast in Ren's party, pretty much acting as extra's, but at least they have better fates then they ever could have from the original source material getting some happy endings, and hopefully I can finally do more with Farrie in the future now that she is longer lumped with those 3 all the time. Thank you again for your patience and join me next time as Bakugou goes to yet another world where hijinks ensue.