26 – Derflinger Shows Off

"Nnnnggghhh. 5 more minutes…" Derflinger said groggily.

"You've slept enough Derf, now come on. Weren't you excited to see a whole new world?"

I held him out in front of me and shook him up and down.

"Yeah, yeah. Alright. This place feels terrible, I want to leave already. There's no mana in the air, Partner!"

"But you can't even absorb mana from the air. What does it matter?"

"Tch, it just feels weird. Anyways, what're we doing next?"

"Before that, I have some bad news. Agate didn't quite make it," I said sadly while holding Agate in my other hand.

"What? What happened?"

"You remember what happened when we were trying to planeshift? The Beast?"

"Yeah, but I remember Agate was fine. Didn't even get hurt," said Derflinger. "The only one who got hit was you, though I gotta admit I thought you were a goner. Can't believe you survived with just a head and arm, looking all chipper again."

"Well, that place wasn't normal. It was like a spiritual place, so my body was fine but my soul wasn't. And Agate and I were linked so we both took some serious spiritual damage. I pretty much fully recovered but Agate couldn't. Long story short, what was left of her mind merged with me and now this wand is just a wand. I mean it's still a talking wand but it's not smart like you and me," I said.

"Well shit. That sucks."

"Yeah."

"What about Offensive Bias? I didn't hear a peep from him when we were there."

"Oh he's fine. Technology doesn't work there so he wasn't awake for it at all, but he came through perfectly intact."

"Huh. At least some of us made it. I'm pretty surprised about that. Never seen anything like it in my whole six thousand years of life. I like new and exciting things but that was too much excitement for these old bones."

"And hopefully we won't have to deal with something like that again. Though we probably will, so we need to get a hell of a lot stronger."

"Sounds like a plan."

"How are your reserves doing?"

"Completely dry. I threw everything I had in that last attack and that monster didn't even blink."

"Then let's refill some of that first."

Derflinger had an enormous capacity to store mana from absorbing spells, even though I couldn't take it back to cast spells with so it was hard to put an accurate number on it. It had been enormous even when he was an old and rusty sword, something like 10,000 MP, but now that he was made of cellulose nanocrystal, his capacity had become even larger.

I estimated that he could absorb something like 50,000 MP worth now. His output wasn't very efficient, but that was to be expected given the energy conversion process. It was far cheaper to use Reinforcement than his Boost of the user, for example, for the same level of enhancement.

It would start to become inefficient to grow the Armoriont farm past 256 as it would take too much time just to get to each one, achieve symbiosis, then drain the lifeforce, that I wouldn't necessarily generate any more MP. So it would take two days here just to get Derf back to max.

Nevertheless, Derf was a powerful weapon in my arsenal, and I wanted to fill his reserves as much as possible. Even if his output was inefficient, the sheer amount of mana that could be stored in him and released in various techniques made them shockingly powerful.

Through training, we had devised a system of vocal commands to communicate the technique I wanted him to use, and the power output, while systematically improving his consistency.

Saito only ever managed to absorb a few Square class spells at most at any given time, which translated to less than a thousand MP each. But once I had Derflinger start to use more than one thousand MP with his techniques, they reached a whole new level of power.

I just didn't have the opportunity to test his damage output on durable targets much or train a lot with it yet, so it was still unclear just how powerful he was, and he was somewhat inconsistent due to lacking practice, especially with large scale area attacks, but I knew that with Derflinger fully charged I could hit far above my weight class.

So I spent three days not only recharging him, but also testing out some of his powers in this new plane which to my delight worked just as well as they did back in Familiar of Zero.

The techniques we had were as follows:

Slash Beam – Goes from Level 1 to 10, increased size/power with more mana used. Concentrated beam of mana. Each level is twice as powerful as the previous, starting from 100 MP/strike up to 51.2k MP at level 10.

Slash Wave – Wider area version of Slash Beam. Size is limited. Due to spreading out the AoE, each level is approximately 1 level weaker than the Beam version in terms of damage potential.

Sword Aura – Powers up a Slash Beam but doesn't release it, holding it around the sword for melee. Can be released upon swing or 80% of energy reabsorbed. Effectively sharpens and fortifies the sword greatly. Drains 10-100 MP/sec while active.

Boost – Boosts user physical attributes massively and takes control of them. The boost is additive, applied last, and provides up to 10x boost from baseline peak human capability. Costs 10-100 MP/sec.

For now, the levels of Slash Beam and Wave above 6 went untested because they used too much mana, and I couldn't really get an accurate gauge on their power when the Slash Beam level 5 already destroyed everything I currently had access to.

A fully reinforced Armoriont was obliterated by the Slash Beam Level 5. So it was at least significantly stronger than an anti-Tank explosive.

Similarly, the Sword Aura Level 5 easily cut through the highly durable Armoriont. Even the Level 4 was strong enough to deal some damage to it.

After having lost Agate, it was a relief that Derflinger worked so well. Maybe it was because his techniques were simplistic, similar to Reinforcement or just taking energy and releasing it in a big blast.

I couldn't say the same for the water stone.

After getting enough lifeforce to coax them into using some spells, it seemed that they demanded a much bigger cost than before to achieve the same effect. I didn't have any easy way to measure the actual water element mana they used, but in terms of life force, they asked for nearly double the amount they did before.

And that made it almost impossible to use them here. I didn't have that much lifeforce, you know? I was certainly not about to totally exhaust myself to cast some parlor tricks with water.

The last thing to check was the wind stones. But now that I couldn't easily go back to Albion to resupply, I decided not to waste any on extensive testing. They were usable, and that was good enough.

With all that done, it was time to check on CRUCIBLE.

I'd been putting it off while preparing myself, but at a time like this, morale was probably low after the losses they took and without my magecraft portals they couldn't explore our old worlds either without exposing the new one, unless they used the escape AAPV go to Mars again, which was a bad idea because they only had one right now.

The sooner I got back, the sooner I could help them get back on their feet.

"So we're meeting your old team eh? What are they like?" Derflinger asked.

"You'll find out when we meet them. I'm going to introduce you," I said.

"So not introducing me was an option? That sounds like you don't trust them," Derf said.

"It's not that I don't trust them, it's to do with how their powers work. Their powers aren't magic...in this plane, there are extraterrestrial beings that grant powers by forming a connection to hosts…" I proceeded to explain the basics of the shards' influence on hosts to Derf, and shards' ability to learn or model new powers as they were exposed to them.

"So magic is your ace in the hole? Why're you introducing me then?"

"There are several reasons. They've heard the Simurgh's song, and that has mind control effects. But it isn't direct mind control, it's more like nudging people towards certain emotions or ways of thinking, using precognition to find exactly how to nudge them to get the right effect. You're completely new to this plane, so there's no way the Simurgh could've predicted you when she sang back then. By interacting with you, we will hopefully break the chain of causality that leads to whatever outcome she was hoping for. Another reason is morale. After taking huge losses, I'm sure the team is feeling down, and probably bored and lonely too with just the three of them, four or five if you count Offensive Bias and Enduring Witness, but they aren't really good conversation partners. After being holed up by themselves for a month, they need something to bring up morale or the rebuild efforts will suffer, plus the shards might get antsy and push them to do dangerous things...like fighting each other. I want to kill both birds with one stone by having a spar against them, using you. And last but not least, I'm sure you're itching to test out your new techniques in live combat, rather than the tests we've been running, Isn't that right?"

"Well I don't know about the other stuff but you're damn right about the last bit. Think they'll be good opponents?"

"Of course. If nothing else, you should have an opportunity to face some unusual creatures you've never seen before," I said.

"Count me in then!"

O O O

[Interlude]

"You're back!" Taylor noticed as soon as Kaleidus stepped through portal to the new Earth M2B. A swarm of bugs was sent to greet him. "I'll get the others."

She led him around to the new command area while he looked about curiously. To speed things up, Amelia had made various biostructures around the base instead of having Offensive Bias construct everything.

She had taken some inspiration from elven villages of fantasy, and now the base had lot of tree-like facilities.

Taylor could see that Kaleidus' attention had been captured by these and the new humanoid bugs that were busy moving around and carrying things.

"Those are Worker Bugs, we got them because we don't have the ability to build productivity drones yet," Taylor explained.

"I didn't dare hope for it, but that's great. You guys are much further along the rebuild than I thought."

"Amelia's been working hard to find all sorts of biological solutions to everything," said Taylor through her bugs.

"I can certainly see that."

After a while, they met up with Amelia and Paige.

"Kaleidus!" Amelia ran over to hug him. He returned the hug with a smile, and patted her on the back.

"It's good to see you again Amelia, and you too Paige. On the way, Taylor's told me you guys were working hard, I'm impressed with all this," he said, gesturing around. "I thought it'd be another month before the base would get this big."

"Welcome back, Kaleidus!" Paige said warmly.

"It's been terrible without you. Did you see the report we left on Refuge? I still can't believe what happened right after you left!" Amelia said, letting go of him. "We lost almost everything! The base we're rebuilding, but all the capes! We've been too scared to go back and check because we only have the one AAPV. I'm so sorry!"

"I did see the report. You all did the best you could under the circumstances. I couldn't have done any better even if I was here," said Kaleidus.

"You don't need to console us, Kaleidus. We've never even failed an operation before when you were around. Obviously we couldn't handle it on our own," said Amelia with a gloomy face. "So we messed up, badly."

"Do you two think the same way?" Kaleidus asked Taylor and Paige.

Paige answered first, clasping her hands together. "The Lord gave us a trial and we failed. But we were saved and you were returned to us even though we are unworthy. The Lord is truly merciful."

Taylor had remained expressionless the whole time. She had started being a lot less expressive after shunting her reactions into her bugs and talking through them, forgetting to change her own expressions.

"It was a hard battle. Everything was going perfectly until it went wrong all of a sudden. I don't know how we could have done better or predicted the Morrigan's trap. You never mentioned the Morrigan in your notes," she said. "I think we would've had more options, maybe, if you were with us. But you weren't here, and I don't blame you for not being here, it was our responsibility."

She'd had a few arguments about it with Amelia and Paige when they were reviewing the battle. In Taylor's view, Kaleidus wouldn't have left in the first place if he thought he could do better. And she also thought they shouldn't always rely on Kaleidus. That was something he himself had told them before he left. The other two had excessive faith in him, but to Taylor, putting it all on Kaleidus would make it seem as if they lost because he chose to leave at the wrong time, and that was also unfair.

"Nobody blames you for leaving Kaleidus," Amelia said with an annoyed look at Taylor. "I'm just saying that we weren't ready for a fight like that on our own. We didn't have our best Thinker and the Simurgh is practically the most powerful Thinker in the world. And now we've lost our other Thinkers too."

"Alright, let's not argue about it. The fact is, I wasn't here and you know my precognition isn't a Thinker power. I couldn't have predicted something like this, and I think you all did a great job. I'm glad you three survived, and we haven't lost anything we can't get back with a little time. In fact, I would consider it a victory, because we've obtained new information on the Simurgh's limits and forced it to activate something: the Morrigan. The Morrigan never actually became active in any of the alternative futures I'm aware of, so this is a big deal. It means that the Simurgh is struggling too."

In Kaleidus' mind, the fact that they had successfully confirmed a way to establish bases on new worlds that were out of the Simurgh's reach, like Earth Refuge (due to the coordinate data being unavailable anywhere the Simurgh could access), was a huge victory for himself. His main concern was being able to keep assets in Worm secure as a home base, and he could even start setting up more secret worlds.

"Wait, what do you mean we haven't lost anything we can't get back with a little time?" Taylor asked. "We can rebuild the bases sure, but what about all the capes?"

"I didn't want to tell you guys this before, because I don't want you to start seeing people as expendable. But the truth is, I had DNA samples of all our capes stored at the Refuge base with Enduring Witness too, plus memory backups made with Cranial's tech. So all we have to do is have Amelia clone them all and transfer the memories into the clones, and we've got all our capes again. Before you ask, yes I have the same backups for you three too in case any of you died. The only one that doesn't have a backup is me, because I don't want the shards to read my memories of powers they don't know."

Kaleidus also didn't want any chance of a clone fighting himself for the right to be the "real" Kaleidus, because he strongly suspected he'd have that attitude if he were a clone, rather than being willing to work together with the original.

There was a moment of silence as the team processed Kaleidus' words.

"That's...really good news," said Taylor. Amelia and Paige still looked surprised as they nodded their agreement.

"You really thought of everything," said Amelia.

"Hello, everyone. It is good to see you all in good health." Offensive Bias' voice suddenly came out of Kaleidus' visor.

"Oh, Bias. Did you link up with yourself over here yet?" Amelia asked.

"Yes, we have merged some of our databanks already."

"Some? Not all?" Taylor asked.

"For the purpose of keeping off-plane information from the shards, which may be vital to our future ability to fight Scion and other threats, I encrypted and isolated all information gathered off-plane prior to our entry here so that my own shard cannot access it."

"A good idea after what happened with the Simurgh. I'll never say we're being paranoid again," said Amelia.

"Now I have some good news as well. I found a new partner on my travels, and he's eager to meet you and show his skills," said Kaleidus.

"A new partner?" asked Amelia with a confused expression, looking around him and not seeing anything.

"Girls, meet Derflinger," said Kaleidus, as he drew a crystalline sword out of its sheath. The girls had all noticed that part of his attire, but felt a little underwhelmed when his 'partner' was just a sword.

A similar thought went through their minds. 'Guys and their swords…'

"Sup, nice to meetcha!" A new voice spoke.

"Huh? Did you learn ventriloquism or something?" Amelia asked with a confused face.

"Nope, I'm the one talking here! I'm the great Derflinger, spirit of the sword! But you can call me Derf," The sword responded.

"What? No way…! Is this for real? You have a magical talking sword?!" Taylor asked excitedly. She had read plenty of fantasy books growing up, and this was so cool to actually see! Everyone looked down on supposedly magical capes like Myrddin, and Taylor couldn't help but agree that it was over the top, but if it was real, actual magic?

"Oh my god!" Taylor sent her bugs in to get a closer look.

"Woah, woah, get these things away from me!" Derflinger complained loudly as the bugs swarmed over him.

"It's actually coming from the sword, it really talks!" Taylor exclaimed with a joyful expression.

"It doesn't just talk, Derflinger here is quite powerful. Why don't we have some friendly competition? A demonstration would be much more interesting than just explaining it," said Kaleidus.

"Oh yea, that sounds good. We have some new stuff that we need to test out too," said Amelia.

O O O

Paige sat on the side while Amelia and Taylor prepared the 'arena'. Basically just a large open area where they could fight.

All sorts of bugs gathered on one side while Kaleidus was on the other. Amelia and Taylor themselves rarely tried to fight in person, so they stood on the sidelines with Taylor controlling the bugs.

Soon the fight began.

At first Taylor sent in the old Soldier class bugs. She knew the Armoriont enhanced Kaleidus was stronger than those bugs, so she went for quantity.

Kaleidus dispatched them much faster than she expected though.

"He must be using that Reinforcement spell already. He's gotten a lot better with it," said Amelia. "That's like twice as fast as the Armoriont is supposed to be."

Taylor started sending in the new and improved bugs that packed a lot more punch.

A Warrior-class engaged first. This one was bulging with muscle, was taller than most people and weighed more than 500 kg. Heavily armored and standing on four legs, with another set of clawed limbs used for attack, it was a strong melee unit worth a Brute 4 or 5 rating.

Several other Warrior-class designs of different types lined up to be tested.

Kaleidus swung his sword at the bug which was lunging at him. The sword crashed into it, but didn't slice through. It did, however, send the bug crashing backwards.

"Huh, seems about twice as strong too," Amelia observed. "We probably can't match that level of strength with something only human sized."

"Seems like it…" Taylor said while sending in the other ones. Similar to the first one, they were all outmatched in sheer strength, and definitely in speed as the Warrior-class bugs tended to be bulky.

Like this, they tried out a few variant bugs, with more agility, flying types, ranged, etc. They brought in some that were a bit larger, about the size of an SUV, but all were defeated by Kaleidus with little trouble.

"You guys got anything tougher? Can't really show Derf's real abilities on these cannon fodder," said Kaleidus.

They'd hit a sort of limit on how powerful their creatures could get, simply because of size. Biological creations were subject to physics unlike shard powers.

The Armoriont had been made to be about three times stronger than the strongest Olympic lifter. That was close to the limit already in terms of similar sized natural biological creatures like the gorilla.

Amelia's customized bug creatures could get about 80% stronger than that, but Kaleidus with his Reinforcement clocked in even higher at double, plus he was more skilled in using martial arts to generate a lot more concentrated force than a pure strength contest. The creatures that were the size of cars were technically stronger, but then they couldn't generate as much velocity or instantaneous acceleration compared to the more humanoid forms.

Another limitation was that Amelia couldn't make creatures freeform—the designs had to be accepted by Taylor's power as a bug, and it wasn't just one organ or genetic marker. It seemed to be based on an arbitrary assessment of whether the creature was sufficiently bug-like to qualify. Without that restriction, her creatures might have been able to get a lot more powerful, but then nobody would be able to control them.

Amelia's own Armoriont hadn't really improved much either, she considered with a little shame. After everything that happened, she forgot to try and improve it or the Bionanite Swarm, in favour of working on the base rebuild.

"We do, but they're pretty big. I mean, we don't have anything else that actually fits in our portals, so they're basically just for show," said Amelia.

"Well, this is a demo, so why not test those?" Kaleidus said.

"Alright, I'm bringing them over," said Taylor. "You wanna get the chimera titan, Amelia?"

"Sure," Amelia said, getting on one of Taylor's transport bugs.

After a short while, their larger creatures lined up. The super-sized Warrior bugs, monster worms, and other weird arachnid-like creatures they'd experimented on.

The super-sized Warrior bug was about 27 times bigger than its normal counterpart. It was 3 times as large in every dimension.

"Be careful, Kaleidus, this one's about twice as strong as an elephant," said Taylor. "Although, like elephants, it can only exert a fraction of that force in the front."

"An elephant huh…that means…we'll have to use that. Derf, you ready?"

"Always," said Derflinger.

"Then let's do it. Boost, Level 8!"

Suddenly Kaleidus glowed in a golden light along with the sword.

"Woah…" Paige said with awe.

He burst forth and practically disappeared from sight. Then in the next instant, he slammed into the super Warrior bug, and sent it stumbling back.

The Warrior bug was winded, but it recovered quickly and charged.

"Sword Aura, Level 3!"

This time the sword glowed even more intensely, and when Kaleidus swung with it, it cleaved the Warrior bug's arm and then leg in two barely visible strikes.

"Holy shit," said Taylor, watching Kaleidus finish off the bug easily.

"Damn, was that the sword's power?" Amelia asked from her position at the head of the chimera titan, which was a monstrous thing that was as tall as a five storey building.

"Sure was! Impressed yet?" Derflinger shouted.

"That's gotta be a Mover 4 or 5 at least," said Amelia. "But let's see how you do against this!"

Amelia melded her costumed Armoriont form into the titan's head.

It looked like a Tyrannosaurus Rex, much larger and thicker arms and legs, was almost fully covered in a shell-like material and what looked like numerous tentacles extending out of its back.

"That's…why tentacles?" Kaleidus asked.

"I told her it was weird," said Taylor.

"They're much more versatile than other kinds of limbs," said Amelia, her voice projecting through the creature's mouth.

"Well, alright, show me what you got!"

Amelia wasted no time and started by aiming the tentacles at Kaleidus. Something shot out of them, which Kaleidus dodged, causing them to explode on the ground, each one packing as much power as a tank round.

The chimera titan roared thunderously, its roar causing the ground to vibrate.

Then it lashed out with a tentacle as if it were a whip and slammed into Kaleidus while he was trying to dodge the explosions amidst the shaking ground.

Kaleidus was sent flying away, but then he turned around mid-air and simply shot towards the huge creature again.

Just before another tentacle went to bat him out of the air again, he flew around it and stayed out of the reach of the tentacles while circling over top.

Then he shouted the name of another technique.

"Slash Wave, Level 6!" A golden wave of light was unleashed from Derflinger and slammed into the titan's back.

All the tentacles and the back of half the chimera titan was destroyed in one hit as the wave of energy broke through the shell and continued on to disintegrate the body beneath.

"A Blaster power too? That's amazing!" Paige said.

"He's like an Alexandria package now," said Taylor.

Amelia gave up and jumped out of the creature while Kaleidus flew down and the glow surrounding him died down. "Now that was impressive," said Amelia, while they walked back to where Taylor and Paige were sitting.

"I heard you say levels for each your techniques. Does it go up any higher than that? 8 for the Boost, 6 for this Slash Wave thing?" Amelia asked.

"It does. Each of them go up to level 10. I can use the level 10 Boost if I want, but it doesn't make that much of a difference. Each level only adds about 10% more power. The Sword Aura or Slash Waves though, and this other more concentrated version I call the Slash Beam, they double in power each level. But going to level 10 costs all of Derf's energy in one hit, so I wouldn't use it without a good reason," said Kaleidus. "It takes days to recover all that energy, and that's only under the right circumstances. Otherwise it could take months to store up to that much."

"I've only used the level 10 once, but that was an impossibly strong enemy. I can still barely believe we made it out of there alive," said Derflinger.

"Sounds like you've had it rough too, huh?" said Taylor. "But you're so strong now, I'm kind of jealous. You're even an Alexandria package. Back before I got my powers, that's what I always wanted to be."

"How did you even find Derflinger? There must be a cool story behind that," said Amelia.

"Believe it or not, I found him in a run down shop, rusting away, and bought him on the cheap. Then he transferred over to this new form I made for him," said Kaleidus.

"Really? I thought it would be like after an epic quest or something!" said Amelia, with a laugh. "That's so mundane."

"What kind of world was it? To have magical swords?" Paige asked. "Were they common, that Derflinger got left to rust?"

"No way. I'm one of a kind. Those fools just can't see greatness if they stared it in the face. Trust me, I've been around a long, long time. Six thousand years in fact. I'm probably one of the greatest weapons in history, back where I come from," said Derflinger.

"Wow…then it was really lucky that Kaleidus found you!" Paige said with a grin. "Almost like destiny, or divine intervention!"

"Don't get started on that again…" Amelia groaned.

"He sure is lucky. And I don't just let anyone wield me either. I have pretty high standards, but Partner here has been impressing me with how he's managed to use me," said Derflinger.

"Um…does that mean you won't let us try wielding you? I was kinda hoping…" said Taylor.

"Hah if you want to try me out, I don't mind. Any friends of my Partner are friends of mine," said Derflinger.

"Awesome!" Taylor said cheerfully.

O O O

A/N: Derflinger was really quite a bargain for just 100 gold coins.

superpierce: He's been in worse spots a few times now, so this sort of thing wouldn't faze him.

JustAFan123: I felt that she was a bit of a pain to write, actually. Not only in terms of how overpowered she was (and I chose not to nerf most of those abilities, like phasing), but because she shared all senses and thoughts with MC, she wasn't really a distinct character. I didn't feel that she contributed much to the story except comedic relief, and it made me have to stop and think about where I could insert her comments when the story flows easily enough without her. But her disappearance and revelation as part of MC's own mind was planned from the prequel, there was never any way that MC could have obtained such detailed telepathy from the Kaleidostick, when it's practically worthy of a True Magic on its own, on a completely different level from normal familiars.

jdboss1: Glad you enjoyed it, thanks for the ideas.

Reader25846: It's the other way around. Shirou's UBW is what lets him use Tracing and allows it to work on items with Mystery. The regular Structural Grasp and Projection/Gradation Air are considered useless skills by magi because they don't work on anything that has Mystery. Tracing is unique to Shirou, nobody else can learn it. If that wasn't the case, there is no way that magi who are devoted to research would neglect a skill like Structural Analysis. As for your other review on the Seize Church Property chapter, MC's Wormvoid portaling spell is specific to Worm, for the same reason that most Tinkertech is Worm-specific. It requires the existence and physics of Wormvoid, and of other stable alternate realities within the same reality cluster (or plane). There are no other alternate realities in FoZ plane. Saito's Earth is [probably] another plane entirely. Even if Saito's Earth is not a different plane, but within the local reality cluster, MC does not have the ability to move between worlds in the local reality cluster. He would need the void spell to do that.