Author's Note: Okay so it's taking longer than I thought to finish the last few chapters, I hope I can finish them by the end of the month. Read, Review, Favourite and Enjoy!
Chapter 134: Truth
'Jureve Shield: Main Bonus: Hero Regeneration 1000%, Mana Shard Removal'
And that was just the base version. Kaede hasn't even upgraded it yet, still compared to the kind of damage that she was receiving just by using dedicated affection it wasn't even a drop in the bucket, but every little bit helped. It certainly would help with dealing with this crisis Tanya seems to have imagined.
"Holy cow..." Myne just said in awe while she looked through Maple's body. This was the worst case of the devouring that she had ever seen, how had Maple not turned into a feystone already? Most of the mana shards had already been converted into support type mana stones like what Naofumi had done for her, not to mention the basket of them that was next to Kaede. Myne had been wondering if it was possible to just... cut them out but she never brought up with Ferdinand. Yet another bit of information for her noble sponsor. "Have you been cutting these out of yourself?" Myne asked looking somewhat horrified by the implications.
"No." Kaede's hand turned intangible as she reached into her chest and pulled out one of the largest crystals and threw it onto the pile. "I'm just using a bonus from my weapon." Maple continued to pull the most problematic of the magical tumours out of her body and threw them onto the pile.
"You can stop doing... this to yourself now! Just reflect the Jureve with your shield armour and it'll start melting them back into mana and expel it from your body." Myne stated looking to be exasperated. What has this person been doing to herself? "You can probably reinforce it using those." Myne stated as she indicated the pile of Mana shards that Kaede had built up for the day.
"Leave." Tanya barked as Kuro and Katarina arrived behind her. "We have matters to discuss with our suicidal shielder." Myne did as instructed and Tanya turned her attention on the woman of the hour as it were. "You've been applying your Dedicated affection ability across entire planets."
"I've been managing it." Maple countered narrowing a glare. "I've refined the miasma generated from the ruins of the world to create channels between me and the other worlds and the people I've been protecting, minimising the amount of health that I've been burning through, which is even further reduced by all of the health regen bonuses I've been stacking together." Maple explained, even though she knew it was just a drop in the bucket. However Katarina and Kuro just had a horrified look on their faces.
"She's been doing what to herself?" Katarina asked but Kuro was already busy.
"She's using her shield's skills so much that they're killing her." Kuro snapped as her eyes glared with mana. "A near death state like this causes the mana in a magician's veins to crystalise, blocking their mana pathways and forcing even more build up, it's like having tumours made out of broken glass." Katarina gasped in horror. "Even if you do have some kind of miracle to protect you this is still a horrific act of self mutilation!" Kuro grabbed Maple by the bath robe that Tanya made her put on. "What the hell brought you to do something so blatantly dangerous! Was it that rat bastard of a dad of yours!?"
This time it was Kaede who gave off a sharp spike of killing intent, both it's quality and the person that it was coming off of legitimately surprised Kuro who found herself stepping back, and just as quickly Kaede calmed back down.
"No. I chose to do it by myself." Kaede glared, a dark aura hanging over her, and for a brief moment everyone remembered that she was Naofumi's daughter. This wasn't malice, quite the opposite in fact. It was self loathing. "It's the least that I can do to fix things."
"The least you can do!?" Kuro snapped brow twitching. "What do you think you're talking about!? Aside from your father dragging you into this what do you have to do with anything!?"
"Did you know? My shield doesn't even consider me to be its hero?" Kaede asked getting mixed looks of surprise and impatience from her friends. "So I asked why it attached itself to me then. And it showed me my father's fall to madness."
Naofumi finished putting on one of his nicer suits, complete with tie.
"I'm entrusting you people to manage things today." Naofumi stated into the blue tooth ear piece he had on. "It is my daughter's graduation party, and I would like to be able to enjoy it without the mood being soured by someone fucking up. Is that clear?" Naofumi received a measure of grovelling from the other side of the ear piece. Then he felt a pair of familiar weights on his back.
"It's alright to be nervous." Raphtalia dropped her illusion magic revealing herself in the mirror Naofumi was dressing himself in, pressing her own body against his. She looked stunning in the one piece dress that she was wearing but then again she looked stunning in anything, even with her cutest features, her demi-human ears and tail, hidden from the world. Ah well, just more of her Naofumi could have to herself. "You were thinking something rude again weren't you?"
"I was only thinking of your best features." Naofumi laughed to himself, Raphtalia would hit him if she could do it without breaking her hand. "Come on we're gonna be late." Naofumi wasn't surprised to see Atla waiting for him outside of the house, while she wasn't so short to be mistaken for a child anymore Kaede, who was eighteen years her junior, had overtaken her in height and she was short for her age.
"Atla." Naofumi just let out a sigh at Kaede's self proclaimed 'aunt' inviting herself along for the ride.
Naofumi looked up in the air, Filo had taken the form of a bird and was circling above them from up high. It seems that everyone wanted to come and see her off. Watching Kaede's class walking between the divide of seats where the parents were gathered together was the happiest moment in his entire life. The Moment that the diploma touched Kaede's hand... everything went to hell. The nearby buildings collapsed as if subjected to thousands of years of decay and erosion in a single moment, Naofumi immediately spread Dedicated Affection to his loved ones as he ran towards the stage. Whether a Earth Quake or something else he would grab his loved ones and get them to safety.
"GAAAHHHH!" Kaede screamed in pain as she hit the ground gripping her leg that released various foul smelling juices like rotting meat, like his sweet little angel was rotting alive. "Dad!" Tears came to Kaede's eyes as her body was wracked with unimaginable pain as she reached out for him.
"I'm here! Daddy's here!" Naofumi picked his daughter up and looked around as everything kept getting worse and worse.
Whatever had hit Kaede was hitting everyone else too, Raphtalia had followed him to the stage but she was already screaming in pain, gripping hold of her arm as it's rotting meat started to slosh off of the bone. Raphtalia ripped the rotting limb off and quickly tore of a strip of her dress to make a tourniquet.
"Figure out what's happening later!" Raphtalia snapped as she and Naofumi started to move, but it was already too late.
Kaede, Raphtalia, Atla, Filo, the City, everything just continued to rot and no where was safe. Naofumi just held his loved ones close to him whispering to them that everything would be okay, but it wasn't, and it never would be again as everyone Naofumi had ever cared about fell apart in his hands.
'Shield of Wrath VI'
"Why didn't you protect them?" The only left, the only thing left as everything rotted around him, was Naofumi, and he knew why.
'Shield of Wrath VII'
"WHY DIDN'T YOU PROTECT HER!" Naofumi slammed his fists in frustration.
'Shield of Wrath VIII'
"YOU SHOULD'VE PROTECTED HER!"
'Shield of Wrath IX'
"RRRAAAWWWRRR!"
'Shield of Wrath X'
Naofumi slammed his hands down into the stone floor beneath them. So much of the black tide was swelling up and was about to vomit out when he heard the words, the accursed words that had nearly destroyed his life, indeed the words that had destroyed his life before he pulled it back together kicking and screaming.
"Heroes! Please Save our world!"
The other Heroes looked at Maple with legitimate surprise as she relayed the story.
"He calls it the Rot, a hyper accelerated entropy effect that destroys everything that comes into contact with it." So that's how Maple became the Hero of the Shield, it chose to protect her. "I can't even blame the shield for this. It didn't know what it means to protect someone then, not really." Maple said letting out a sigh. "The only thing that it could do was..."
"Summon you as a hero." Tanya stated, and both she, Kuro and Katarina all let out a sigh at once.
"Things got better for him, they also got a lot worse too." Maple explained as she continued the story.
Naofumi was wearing the green jumpsuit he was wearing on that hateful day, passing through a window he caught his reflection, his beard was gone and he looked about twenty years younger, the same age as he was back then too. The Shield hero gave an alert and attentive look to the other three heroes. Motoyasu Kitamura, Ren Amagi and Itsuki Kawasumi.
"Hey man are you alright?" Motoyasu was the first to approach him, concern clear on his features as he looked at Naofumi who had a glazed over look in his eyes.
"No. I am not." Isuki was looking at him with concern as well, even Ren who always tried to project a stoic atmosphere was concerned. "I just watched my family die. So I would appreciate it if we could move this farce along so that I could have some time to myself and grieve in peace!"
The court room was different than before too, Trash wasn't sitting on a throne, but standing over a table with a few of his advisers. Spread out on the table was a map, various pins tracking the movements of some unknown force. Naofumi had an idea of what they were tracking.
"Did it work?" One of the magicians nodded to the King's question as he stepped aside and let Naofumi and the others into the war room. "I am King Aultcray Melromarc the XXXII. My apologies for bringing the four of you here. Might I know your names so that we can proceed smoothly?"
"Motoyasu Kitamura."
"Ren Amagi."
"Itsuki Kawasumi."
The King looked to Naofumi last, and to his surprise Naofumi realised that the man was waiting for him to give his name.
"Naofumi Iwatani." Naofumi stepped around the other three and moved across the table from the King as he looked down at the map. "What's the situation?"
"We call it the Waves of Calamity." Aultcray stated using a very familiar cane to indicate the map, specifically the Seatto territory. "Portal's leading to other worlds that open up and release monsters into ours. The first of them appeared here." Aultcray stated before bringing his cane back down again. "To my shame, our own forces handled the situation quite poorly, a large number of monsters were able to escape-"
"This sounds pretty different than when we were summoned." Katarina stated as she was scratching the side of her head.
"It was different from the time he was first summoned too." Maple explained letting out a sigh. "But all the people there was the same. That was his first red flag."
"And the second." Tanya immediately understood the implications.
"That came when they formed their parties." Maple explained letting out a sigh.
"Are these monsters only going to appear here or are there other places too?" Priority number one, figure out how much this pile of human garbage is going to lie to them.
"Waves are set to appear in every country in the world, the nearest is set to appear in our neighbour Siltvelt, after that their ally Shieldfreeden, then Zeltoble, Faubrey and finally our own country of Melromarc." Aultcray replied bluntly. "According to our Dragon Hourglasses there's a roughly week long interval between each of the waves with the nearest being three days away."
Three days, with Filo's carriage they should be able to- Naofumi bit his lip. Filo hasn't even been born yet.
"Um I hate to ask but-" Ren raised his hand in the air and Naofumi wanted to smack the stupid out of him.
"Obviously we're supposed to stop them." Naofumi half growled his talked. "Bringing us here has somehow attached these weapons to us which I presume are supposed to be either considerably powerful or carries some specific advantage against the monsters." Naofumi watched the King's brow quirk as Naofumi used logic to explain away his advanced knowledge of his situation.
"Correct. Your weapons gain powers from being fed unique materials, or by coming into contact with weapons similar to themselves." Aultcray stated bluntly.
"The people of this world, which now includes the four of you, gain power by killing monsters-"
"So Trash was being more proactive with dealing with the wave?" Tanya asked looking suspicious.
"The First time my Father was summoned as a hero Trash was dismissive of him, looked down on him from up high, not to mention that when his daughter Malty made a false rape accusation against him he took her word for it. But Malty didn't exist in this version of events, a by-product of who he took out during the first run."
"Medea." Kuro stated and Maple nodded by way of response. "Malty was one of Medea's plants, a fragment of her soul that she shoved into a fetus that otherwise wouldn't have been born. No Medea. No Malty." Maple stated letting out the sigh.
"And then?"
"Waves, Directional Beasts, Returned Home, Rot, Repeat." Maple stated letting out a sigh. "Then he started trying to get to the bottom of what was really happening and well..."
"He lost his marbles." Kuro stated letting out a sigh.
"Aye." Maple followed letting out a sigh. If you lose your family like that, and you don't go insane, you're not human.
"And we have a relatively good idea of what happened next." Tanya stated letting out a sigh, before she got down to business.
"Katarina restrain her." At Tanya's order Katarina grabbed Maple from behind and held her up, both of her arms wrapped around Maple's while her spear pinned down her neck. "Kuro. Rule Breaker."
"Gladly." Kuro whipped out the familiar ugly looking knife. "Listen very closely my little friend, you are going to cease and desist this instant or me and my little friend here are gonna do it for you! Got it!?" A presence was lifted in the room, the numerous channels funnelling Ki into Maple's body had been severed. "Unscrew this situation post haste!" Kaede's shield armour immediately wrapped around her body, but in lieu of the normal demonic visage it was instead clear and slimy, the Jureve Shield's influence. According to Myne the potion would melt all the mana crystals in Maple's body and heal any damage done to it, since Maple has been doing that part all by herself she should only be out of commission for about a month. A dark aura coated the three girls, a mixture of their own cursed weapons and their sharp killing intent.
"Kuro, Katarina?"
""Aye.""
And then all three of them portal away.
Naofumi was working at the bar again, the smell of freshly cooked food wafting in the area. A portal skill spat all three of the heroes that just portalled themselves out in front of the man in question.
"Did you know?" Tanya already had Col. Slade whipped out and aimed at Naofumi's head.
"Many things but let me make an educated guess." The channels funnelling Ki from the numerous alternate worlds to Kaede had been shut down, so they probably were at her place, doubtlessly having forced her to stop nearly killing herself. "Ah. You mean to imply if I was a party to her nearly drowning herself in the danger that belongs to others?" The air was pushed out of the three girls stomach's as a overwhelming amount of force slammed into them and pinned them to the building across the bar. "Of course I bloody well knew!" Naofumi hopped the bar as his entire body was suddenly covered in an demonic black armour. "How long do you think I've been trying to get her to stop trying to kill herself!?"
Blood started to come from Kuro's eyes at what she was seeing. A device like Ikki's, another soul on display, and Naofumi's... made Kuro feel like she was being pulled inside out, suicidal self destructive gambits seems to run in the family.
"She has some delusion stuck inside of her pretty little head that she's at fault for me ending up as this broken mess! I sever her connections to other worlds and she reestablishes them! I render her unconscious and she wakes herself back up! I beg and plead with her and she doesn't listen!" Naofumi calmed down, his raging aura releasing his three prisoners, Kuro puked all over the ground still recoiling in disgust at what she saw when she looked at Naofumi. "Normally, I consider myself above taking my frustrations out on children. But you three came here looking for a fight didn't you? Meaning that this is completely justified self defence!"
Kuro reached up and grabbed both Tanya and Katarina by the collars of their shirt and pulled them close.
"RUN!"
Kuro's sword turned into two of the Salamandra and wrapped themselves around her feet before she took off in the streets carrying both Katarina and Tanya along with her. Naofumi tapped his watch and summoned a familiar set of six giant arms, that then disappeared into his body in the form of motes of light, leaving behind in their wake a large size armed eight foot tall brute with three faces. The Giant brute slammed all six arms into the ground and punted himself through the air as Naofumi chased after three of them. Tanya quickly wiggled out of Kuro's grasp and assumed the form of her own eight limbed brute and intercepted Naofumi with a hail of machine gun fire and missiles. It would be one thing if Naofumi simply tanked all the damage with brute strength but he quickly went above and beyond that: He swept all of Tanya's attacks up in a swirl of Ki, condensed them into a ball, and then threw them back at her. Tanya quickly hopped back before the attack turned into a fountain of shrapnel. This was then followed up with Naofumi landing on top of Tanya, and an appropriate response of two point blank shots of the anchor balista not quite so politely telling him to get off of her, and another reply of missiles fired from the Col. Slade wings off to the side. Naofumi formed two catcher's mitts of Ki and grabbed both projectiles in them, before spinning the balls of Ki with the projectiles lodged inside around and flinging them back at Tanya, ultimately exposing them as a distraction. Tanya's mechanical face turned into a giant beam cannon and fired point blank into Naofumi, who blocked the beam with one hand, and then crunched it down into a smaller form, over and over again, until Tanya's energy beam that looked like it could level a mountain was little more than a ball in Naofumi's hand, one that he shoved back into Tanya's weapon as it was folding back up into her head. A loud boom echoed out as Tanya's Headless griffin transformation went flying through the air and crashed into a nearby building, reverting back to Tanya's own smoking but alive form.
"One down."
Countless blades were scattered into the sky, transforming into different forms as Kuro prepared her own counter attack.
"Stake Field!"
In the meantime Naofumi was rammed with spears which then transformed. Katarina's time in Inferno had what you call an effect on her Rhongomyniad transformation, the original was still intact, but the attempts to corrupt the weapon unlocked a second form of it, Rhongomyniad Alter, a version of the Pin between reality that instead of connecting to heaven, connects to hell, dyed black and filled with thirteen blood red thorns. Katarina Blacksmithed together the Rhongomyniad, the Holy/Demonic lance she received from copying Kuro's sword, and the Rhongomyniad Alter resulting in a massive double ended lance connecting the two weapons together. Rather than anchoring the layers of reality the description of the weapon says that it 'balances the cosmic scales.' Regardless the entire city was now decorated by these skewering lances. "Fortress!" The city erupted as tens of thousands of black and white spikes ripped through the city and reached on into the sky. Naofumi was tangled up in two of the overlapping towers, with an annoyed sigh he dismissed Hekatonacheir and his now considerably smaller form slipped free of his restraints before letting out a audible crack of his neck. Various portals opened up as angels and demons alike entered the sprawling city.
"Oi!" As one angel and demon alike turned around to face Naofumi. "Get!" And immediately all of the Angels and demons immediately noped out of the area, not dealing with a pissed off Naofumi, and closing the proverbial door on the way out, like they just locked eyes with a known serial killer. "You're going to have to do better than this Katarina!" Naofumi shouted, suddenly the thousands of spears all disappeared, resulting in the appearance of a massive godzilla like monster in the middle of the city: Sin Gomorrah, the ultimate form of the god eating monster Gomorrah.
Sitting on its head was Katarina with a spear that was dripping blood, so in other words she banked her own blood for just such a case of emergency. There was just one problem with her strategy that Naofumi felt truly compelled to point out and his made his point known as he summoned a lizard-like centaur shaped woman who used several vines to rapidly ascend him up to the top of of the creature.
"I'm not a god you brat!" Naofumi produced a massive mirror and shoved the head of the godzilla expy through along side Katarina leaving the head and the hero who was sitting on top of it hanging from another mirror upside down, at which point in time the portal snapped shut through Gomorrah's neck. Katarina fell forward, transformed into the two phoenix's, got ready to strike at Naofumi, and immediately stopped inches away from his face, blood dripping out of her mouth. "And I would change back if I was you." Naofumi was surrounded by several length's of woven hair having taken the form of blade headed snakes three of which had stabbed into Katarina's body in both phoenix's, with a shove he pushed Katarina off of the blades and watched as she fell back to the ground with a crash, a now much smaller wound in a important but not immediately fatal part of her body that her Spear's auto-regen was soon going to take care of.
"2 down." Naofumi looked up to the sky, where he noticed that Kuro's blades were gone. "Now what are you up to?"
"AAAHHHH!" Kuro screamed, every part of her body screeching in agony as she ran forward with her blade, 100 Septillion blades of the five elements, reflected with the Holy Demonic Excalibur. The Holy Demonic sword has the power to drain holy to strengthen it's holy attribute and drain demonic to strengthen it's demonic attribute, the blade in Kuro's hand greedily devoured 100 Septillion Blades converging their power into one and combining the power of seven unique attributes to strengthen and amplify one another. Kuro's mortal body wasn't able to keep up by itself, her entire body was erupting with blades, but luckily for her thanks to her legendary weapon the blades stitching her together was made out of her own flesh and blood and had been imbued with the attribute of accelerated healing, it didn't stop her from screaming in agony as she swung the monster of a blade forward.
"Huh. Never thought of using them that way. I'll have to run the idea by Raphtalia." Naofumi punched the blade upwards as all the energy was released at once, Kuro soon being brought down to her knees, her entire body warped by seemingly random scar tissue. "Are you three done yet." Naofumi looked through the air and saw that the lines of Miasma seemed to have reactivated. "I have to go check on my daughter now." Kuro wasn't seeing much at the moment. Her eyes were among the first casualties of her attack, and now they had been covered in skin as her body attempted to stitch them back together and heal them.
"You. Are. Such. An. Ass!"
"I'm aware." Naofumi replied bluntly as he poked Kuro in the forehead and knocked her over. All three girls were soon covered in a cocoon of Jureve as their weapons worked to accelerate their recovery. Naofumi called over some people to take the three of them somewhere they could recover while Naofumi went to find his daughter. "Kaede's a thousand times stronger than you three."
Review Section:
RonaldM40196867: True. I actually like Shield Hero's villains, they provide a surprisingly in depth deconstruction of the 'die and reincarnated in another world' trope of Isekai stories, similar to how Naofumi and the other legendary Heroes deconstruct the 'summoned to another world to save it' sub-trope.
Nightshadegirl: Not really no.