Author's Note: And that's that Until I finish Na No Wri Mo! Read, Review, Favourite and Enjoy!
Chapter 136: Heroes Return
Medea Pidith Machina, sitting here in the castle she had long since desired for her own, sat on the throne that was rightfully hers, her entire existence felt like one big joke. She was born one Malty Melromarc, the rightful heir to the Kingdom of Melromarc, a right that was taken from her by her cruel mother. Malty of course worked to restore her taken birthright, and like any dutiful ruler when her country came under threat she took the initiative to save it, summoning a bunch of disposable fire power idiots that she could throw at the problems in her life. And yet immediately her pawns had turned against her, rewarding being bestowed the honour and prestige of becoming their legendary heroes by turning on her, and what's worst is that her own family sided with them!
It ultimately got so bad that she had to flee her own home and travel to another country after being chosen as a vassal hero, but instead the malicious heroes she had summoned had chased her down to kill her. Well she had gotten the last laugh in the end, she offered her flesh and blood to a group of creatures that she had summoned to do her bidding and they had saved her life in return as was their honour. The Heroes tossed them all into the void afterwards but that was the greatest boon she had ever been given, left at the mercy of eternity she went insane, and then went sane, very sane! She learned secrets of power that even those wretched Heroes would never be able to realise, learned the way to take it for herself, and how to get her revenge on the fools that had betrayed her trust!
This wasn't the first world that she had drained dry and it won't be the last either, but she would savour it like fine wine! One of her plants had already been sent in advance to play the role of saboteur giving her front row seats to this world being destroyed, and to her surprise events had played out exactly as they had when she herself was still known as Malty leading up to her own apotheosis as a god. She had thrown herself back in time and created herself. And now she had been drawn in like a lamb to the butcher, some parasite was off some where draining her power and using it to restore the worlds that she had destroyed, she could no longer contact her other soul fragments, The Directional Beasts had suicided themselves and spat up their barrier around her like stocks to the guillotine, she of course could easily tear said barrier down, given time, now however it seems that her executioners were coming for her.
Tanya had grown a considerable amount of muscle tissue, not to the point that you could call her masculine but not overly feminine either, a true androgynous tomboy.
Kuro looked tired, having been taking herself apart and put herself back together again, like someone taking a statue made out of red lego bricks and replacing them one by one with black ones. By her own estimates she's completed about three quarters of her body. Katarina just looked tired, even if Dark magic doesn't have the usual negative effects on her but instead she was burned out from studying.
"'The Clock of the Dragon's Era?'" Tanya mouthed out the familiar-unfamiliar term, no matter how you thought about it there was a clear connection to the Dragon Hourglasses. They knew someone had to make them, now she was learning about this new contraption as well.
"One of the Plan B's of the ancient people who fought to try and end the waves." Naofumi explained while he was looking at various documents. "A miniature world that they could control the passage of time in making it move at a accelerated rate, this would allow them to try out multiple ideas to try and beat back the waves without having to risk any personnel or resources in the real world. If any of the Legendary Heroes die in that world then time is reset back to the moment of the summoning."
"Or in your case prepare a back up set of heroes in order to beat the snot out of that goddess for you." Kuro stated making her rapidly declining opinion known.
"Wait so if we actually died and we didn't have Kuro's weapons to revive us we would've just been sent back to the day of the summoning?" Katarina wanted her weeks of stress back.
"I left nothing to chance." Naofumi stated bluntly, and ignore Katarina's silent demands. "I prepared a group of individuals on the ground that can wipe out her armies, beat the snot out of her without the risk that she can steal and redistribute your weapons, or won't turn into insane psychotic lunatics after she's been beaten. On top of that I also prepared another group to ambush her when she tries to escape, namely myself and the other desperados that have been looking after you."
"Why go all out like this?" Katarina asked sounding confused. "I mean you went as far as to double the number of Heroes you can send after her."
"Because this is his last shot to beat her." Kuro stated having already clued in on the situation. "I got a look at you enough times already to piece together your gambit, he tricked Medea into a setting up a Bootstrap paradox." Tanya looked like she had some idea what was going on but could use some more details, Katarina on the other hand had no clue what was going on so Kuro decided to tailor her explanation to the latter. "Medea's her own Grandma." Katarina made an exaggerated face of understanding, Tanya just shook her head at the stupidity on display.
"Are we going to attack now, is that why you called us back?" Tanya asked sounding rather suspicious.
"Now would be the best time, it's what I timed it for after all." Naofumi stated as he let out a sigh. "You need to go get the other four though."
The Demon Dragon had already finished her snack of various curses absorbed through the different legendary weapons and had already distributed the rewards.
Myne on the other hand had lots of Noble Phantasms and a lot of years to learn how to make the most out of them for her purposes, purposes that partly involve 'More books' but Myne can confidently say that's not what it's only good for either.
Jade had spent the past few years the simplest, hone her own weapon for it's sheer destructive potential.
Sakura on the other hand had a massive array of different support type abilities at her disposal.
They were soon joined by the other Three heroes of the world across from theirs, the fourth sadly it would seem has not been found.
"You guys still don't know where Kaede is do yah?" Goll asked as she rubbed the heads of her extra demonic looking three headed dog, one head alight with fire and the other with electricity.
"No we haven't been able to find her." Tanya stated sounding rather annoyed.
"Whatever she's doing she's making life for that goddess miserable." Kuro stated having eyed the reports Naofumi had on his desk. "It seems that now that she has access to a means of expelling that witch's power at a hyper accelerated rate she's stepped up her the amount of mana, spirit and Ki that she's draining from her."
"And killing herself faster." Myne added darkly.
"Which means that we have to go over and beat up that goddess or whatever right now if we wanna save her right?" Katarina half shouted and the others nodded in agreement.
"Aye." There's also the part about there being entire worlds at stake and this was the best moment to go and kill that lunatic but the end result was still the same anyway.
"Fantastic! I got a spear for this!" Katarina transformed her weapon into the familiar double ended Rhongomyniad, Upgraded with the appropriate divine magic to enable it's use as a rainbow bridge and send all seven of them to the world they have to save.
"LETS GO!" Katarina slammed the spear down, what emerged was closer to a Rainbow Elevator than a Rainbow bridge but it did it's job all the same bringing the seven of them to a place both familiar and different.
There were two versions of the world that they were sent to save, a 'Subworld' created through the power of the Clock of the Dragon's era, and a 'main world' that Naofumi had gone to along with the other desperados/former heroes. They were filling the gap, a gap that had a few more holes that they could fill from both sides. Most of the World's Vassal Heroes were already here after all, what they were lacking was the extensive sacred gear training of the people of the world they came from.
"I'll work on bringing the others here." Kuro has already memorised the details needed about the others, now she just needed to perform a summoning of her own. "Stall for me."
This world was a piece of crud, assuming that Kuro had simply picked a random location to portal herself and the others over then that means that the entire world was likely one big warzone against the Reincarnated. Myne audibly cracked her fingers.
"Balance Break-" Myne's jewel flew up into the air. "-Alexandria!" Integrating both the Rhongomyniads and the Lord Camelot along with all it's variations into the Sacred Gear had given Myne one of the most important parts of her instant library Sacred Gear: A building. The Jewel expanded into a huge mass of a building transforming into a massive castle directly in the middle of the battlefield, inside was not filled with weapons or the like, but rather from wall to wall with books.
"I should've known." Tanya half growled and half mumbled. "Tell me is there something that we can actually use inside of this place to fight other than story books!?"
"Ask Kuro how powerful these 'story books' really are." Myne stated as the books started to pull themselves off of the shelves, each of them transforming as figures emerged from the pages. Myne had other reinforcements made to her sacred as well, monster, demi-human and human growth bonuses and corrections, as well as jewel crafting and enchantment mini-games, a detailed map of how to build a living being from the ground up to the best of the ability of eight legendary weapons, with the Bao Lei sword even manufacturing souls wasn't off the table. It was a power that paired well with another of Myne's abilities, one of the consequences of a person of a incredibly high level of power like her letting her mana run wild are creatures known as Feybeasts, monsters born out of pure magical power. Under the instruction of her Sacred Gear Myne mass produced these creatures to fit with the hyper specific designs set for her by her weapon transformations, then she took it a step further. Utilising Kuro's existing techniques to imbue a Noble Phantasm directly into a target's body, as she had accidentally done with Atla, Myne super imposed the various heroic spirits over her mass produced army of beast men of various shapes and flavours granting them consciousness, memory, personalities and fighting skills. At once Myne deployed her army to go out and annihilate the enemy forces that were gathering around the castle.
"It's a shame to have to waste Myne's Balance Breaker here." Goll stated having her own plans in place to wipe out a army or to.
"There's plenty of planet to go around." Tanya stated indicating the path to the roof, Not to mention that with her prided wings Goll was the fastest one there.
So Goll took to the air, flying over the raging battlefield she activated her own power.
"Balance Break: Curse Transformation!" From Goll a huge mass of Miasma floated above her head, the atmosphere was thick with it thanks to all the lunatics running wild. The black Ichor splashed down on the army of reincarnated below, their bodies becoming mutated and warped under it's influence. Myne used her weapons for Growth corrections as a blueprint, Goll used them as a curse, bones were broken and snapped into place as thousands of humanoid beings were swept away in a tide of ichor and replaced with just as many monsters each of them a horrifically twisted parody of what they once were. Smoke rose from the end of the fishing rod and soon materialised as the head of a great black dragon who let out a massive roar commanding everyone present to kneel before her.
And then the army shifted, there were only a few at first, individuals whose bodies popped under some unknown influence, but like stones dropped into water they rippled outwards causing bodies to burst into a sea of gore, be they reincarnated turned monster or wave monsters any who attempted to shift their allegiance died a horrible and messy death. The Head started chewing, snacking on passing reincarnated souls though the majority of them got away from them.
"So here's a question for you." Goll stated indicating the mess that was made below. "You think Katarina can do anything with that?" As Goll asked the question they got their answer as a wave of black overtook the messy remains below.
"I would say that's a yes." Demon replied as she saw two phoenix's circling around Myne's Library/castle, one mostly red with rainbow tipped feathers, the other mostly red with black tipped feathers: Katarina's mech/monster form. Where ever the phoenix's went shadows of broken and twisted monsters emerged from the gore below, crude makeshift souls pulled from the armour and weapons and refined into a stronger form but no less crude for the process filled up the Shadow's forms. And it was a good thing too, this Medea person's knowledge of the dark arts appeared to rival Demons. Rather than re-reincarnate the souls of her minions as she was usually one to do the souls flew down into the gore that was their bodies. Intestine ripped through skin and bone stapled muscle together, flesh hulks not unlike the ones faced in Q'Ten Lo emerged from the sea of gore and now engaged with the army of shadows Katarina had just raised.
"Balance Break-" Jade's own weapon was no less powerful than their's had been, a huge club composed of Earth, Water, Wind, Fire and Lightning with twelve talismans inside each of them offering unique abilities. "-Dark Destroyer!"
Jade was Maple's opposite in many ways, chiefly in her stats. Whereas Maple has huge defensive power with minimal offensive power in her base form, a weakness that she got around using transformation skills, Jade was the proverbial glass cannon, all attack and little defence, most of it provided by Kaede's shields. This showed in how the armour wrapped around her body, normally a Sacred Gear's armour would cover the entire body to provide maximum defensive power while at the same time augmenting their strength for offensive power. Instead what had grown from Jade's now considerably larger club was what's commonly known as an exo-skeleton, or bikini armour depending on where you were looking. Material that would normally be dedicated to full body protection was now off to the sides of Jade's body in the form of a huge mechanical frame, connecting to Jade's body via bikini shaped plating that covered her private areas, even in a Balance Breaker state Jade was completely vulnerable: If not for the twelve stones lodged inside of the Suit.
Jade charged the enemy formation, the Dog Talisman's immortality brushing off lethal attacks and the Horse Talisman healing them. Jade spat fire with the Dragon's Talisman and fired beams of energy from her eyes with the pig. She zipped through the enemy formation carried by the Rooster and the Rabbit, each swing of her club carried the power of the ox, Katarina's shadows holding and occupying the undead monsters as Jade annihilated them.
"We are not needed here are we?" Goll asked looking down at the carnage unfolding.
"No. I think it's rude that they're taking our prey away from us, but on the other hand we have ample opportunity to pick something up." Demon stated as she turned her smokey head to the horizon. "This world's Directional Beasts are dead, including it's version of the Demon Dragon."
"You want to eat yourself?" Goll asked looking at her partner astonished.
"Why not?" Demon asked and Goll just let out a sigh.
The two of them flew off over the horizon, every few minutes they'd stop over at another battlefield, dump their curse over it, watch the bodies get swept away in a tide of gore before being reconstituted into grotesque lumps of flesh. They caught sight of the Heroes of this version of reality a few times but they weren't their immediately goal, that they found being used as a makeshift barrier for a group of people that was on the ground, including this world's musical instrument Hero. It wasn't the Bat boy though, it was a little girl with purple hair and a purple dress, blasting away at the enemy forces with a trumpet.
"Demon I believe that would be yours." Goll stated indicating the demon dragon corpse below them.
"Don't mind if I do!" The black mass of thread swooped down and entered the newly dead body the other Demon Dragon.
Technically speaking, the monster couldn't even be called dead at this point, not beyond the point of resuscitation anyway, it's soul merely left the body along with all of it's XP and Ki, demon fitted inside of the corpse like a hand would a glove. Of course without any XP the creature would quickly shrink down to its true infantile age, unless of course they found another source of XP. Say for instance a party that was more than willing to massacre fools on your behalf.
"C'Mon Guys!" At once four monsters were dropped onto the battlefield. When the Heroes were reunited the Demon Dragon had absorbed various curses that they had collected, the Demon Sorcerers of Jade's home world, the Alter Noble Phantasms from Kuro, Katarina's various demonic weapons, but the first of these were the most significant. Eight Demon Sorcerer Chi's and four lords to distribute the spoils. Chi near as Goll can tell is best summarised as 'essence' a creature's abilities, personality and skills in the form of energy mixed in with Ki.
Chris naturally had first pick, the Water Demon was naturally given, giving the penguin a long mermaid like tail that it stood on like a leg, but aside from that he could choose another chi as well and thus Chris took sky, and obtained his life long dream of flight in the process. After that was King, since he was the most responsible of them, taking wind demon Chi and causing his cheeks to swell up like a frog, but then pairing that with Moon as well giving the bird both anti-gravity powers and the ability to manipulate objects using air. Third had been Red Hell, who aside from receiving the Earth Demon Chi also had one request: Bigger, so Goll obliged with the Mountain demon Chi, now not only did he have goat horns now, he also had a body as big as a large hill. Miroku had been the last to receive the demon Chi's, but he had been the most richly rewarded, with the Demon Chi of both Fire and Lightning he now controlled two of the matter type elements, a large burden yes, but with three heads he should be more than able to handle controlling the power. Now these Five monsters were turned loose to destroy the battlefield. That gave Goll the opening that she needed to tend to the little girl.
"Who are you?" The little girl asked watching with suspicion as the Four Lords decimated the battlefield.
"Goll the Hunting Tool Hero." The Valkyrie debated how to handle the situation before turning her Fishing rod into a Bird Call. "I need you to do me a really big favour and hold onto this whistle for me."
Well, she is the Musical Instrument Hero. Reluctantly Melty Melromarc took the Whistle in hand.
'Accept Weapon Upload Program Y/N?'
"Weapon Upload?" Melty asked sounding quite suspicious.
"It'll help you get stronger." Shrugging her Shoulders Melty checked the yes option.
'Heroes stats are extremely low, Sacred Gear proficiency extremely low, initiating procedure 'Kuro''
"Kuro?" Melty wasn't sure why that name filled her with nothing but suspicions.
The Weapons had naturally picked up on Kuro's ability to 'Lie to the world so good that it becomes reality' they were the world's spirit though, so they didn't really need to be lied to, just use the information in the Noble Phantasms to playback the past few years of Kyuries life on Melty's body. If Medea simply kicked her out of the world then the power would disappear but for now...
"HHHYYYAAAHHH!" His painful brutal life constantly in life threatening danger, causing Melty to collapse from the stimulation which stats adjusted themselves on her form as millions of weapons appeared and were unlocked.
"Time for the Show then? Hmm?" A smooth voice echoed out as the weapon transformed into a demonic skull. "Say it with me now, Balance Break: Orchestra to the Gods!"
"Balance Break: Orchestra to the Gods!" Melty mumbled as she became a conduit for a massive influx of power.
Suddenly Melty became the epicentre of change on the battlefield, A massive wall of musical instruments sprung up behind her while the entire field was soon covered in a field of over 20 000 different musical instruments, Melty slowly rose to her feet as her princess dress gave way to a tuxedo leotard combination and another mind entered her body.
"Hmm so this is what it was like for him?" The best way to describe the phenomena that was happening to Melty's body was to be possessed by a Class Card, in this case one that was based off of Kyurie and his experiences as a Hero, which managed to short cut Melty's way into becoming a hero. "For now let us begin with the star of our show!" Katarina wasn't the only one who could summon a demon, one emerged on a stage that was surrounding by familiar looking Microphones.
Baal might not be contracted with either Kyurie or Melty but she is a massive attention whore, so if she's being given a stage to sing on then she was more than happy to let the whole world know about it, her weapon, a Microphone stand, was one of two demonic weapons that could be used by the Musical instrument hero, and the other lady wasn't interested. So Baal Sung, her voice projected along voice gengar weapons while she read off the notes provided by the skull, the effects of her body bursting voice significantly amplified by virtue that she sung in tune to the Music of the Universe. If Goll and Demon didn't fly out of the way in time they would be gore on the ground now too, even the attempts to bring the dead to life was hampered by virtue of the ongoing opera concert.
"Hey Demon, where are we with getting into contact with the rest of the Vassal Weapons?" As if the world itself was answering Goll's question a bolt of thunder like a bomb was let out in the distance.
"What do you think?" Melty wasn't the only one affected, now that Kuro had finished writing the program and Goll uploaded it the combined fruits of seven years of Sacred Gear Training had just been unleashed.
The nearest one was a young Tanuki man wielding a giant hammer that spat lightning.
Miles to the side a young Hakuko girl carrying a mirror was riding into battle astride a giant demon horse.
Further ahead a Young Man suddenly hulked out as he got hit with Midori's berserker form.
The Queen's Cane suddenly flew out of her hand into her opponent's, her dead and resurrected husband, the Cane version of the Rule Breaker severing his connection to Medea, the Nine lives Reviving him while rebuilding and revitalising his body as the power of a entire world was put into his hands.
Other Heroes were one to one counterparts of the weapons original wielders.
L'Arc was suddenly raising the dead, reaping the souls of dead reincarnated.
Therese and her book called down interdimensional beings to wreak havok.
Sadeena brought forth the very seas themselves in order to drown the reincarnated.
Fohl was quite welcome to receive his dragon scale-mail armour.
Most notable of all, Raphtalia sword in Hand appeared in the middle of the battlefield and looked around as the progress of the fight was instantly flipped around.
"Well. It's nice to know that we didn't do so much work for nothing." Raphtalia raised her Katana, and swung down, and an entire battlefield was swept aside and turned to ash.
Author's Note:
RonaldM40196867: True. Thanks. Not really.
Captain Imaginat: Raphtalia has decided to be crossed with them later. Cid is the main character of The Eminence in Shadows. Raphtalia right now is a mixture of Column A and Column B. Two, one is an extremely potent pain inducing poison, the other is nine extra lives in reference to the number of monsters Hercules had to slay during his 12 labours. Yeah kind of. No Kuro is just putting Kaede into a position to get her to come back by herself by killing Medea. I'm not a Samurai Jack Fan, I have not formally watched the series thus it is inappropriate for me to write the fic, if someone else wants to write it, then they can go ahead. This is the last Chapter Until I am done Na No Wri Mo. You may recall that the Heroes have learned how to travel between worlds now.
Frieren: Might I recommend Dyslexic Writer? They've been on a Bookworm binge for quite some time now.
Galeon82: Raphtalia gave up the hammer.
Nightshadegirl: Yes but I have no interest in writing them in.