Author's Note: Does anyone else feel annoyed with Fanfiction right now? I do. I'm working on figuring out some other sites right now, might start cross posting when I figure out how to use them. Until then, enjoy.
The Principality was a mess. The people had been reduced to mindlessly happy zombies working themselves to the literal bone to manage territories that were too small for their populations just to sustain themselves. There was a lot of work that needed doing here. As a start the various people were rounded up and strapped to medical tables before being subjected to the Sloth blade/magic amplifier combination which gave them back their ability to feel negative emotions. The people's screams were audible even through two layers of sound proofing and across the entire Blackmore Island chain. Speaking of, Nick was hard at work inside of his workshop as he reviewed the engineering logs for the Principalities armour workshops.
"I believe I have determined the secret behind the Black Knight's extreme mana expenditure." Nick stated as he leaned back in his chair in triumph.
"Does it have something to do with that fish you're cutting apart?" Sarah sat on the nearby table.
As heiress to the Winchester arms factory Armour was a vested interest to her, and yet for some reason she walked in on Nick dissecting a fish of some kind.
"Humans who live near dungeons gradually accumulate Demonic and Angelic energies in the form of catalyst crystals which enhances their physical abilities and increases their magical powers." Nick walked over to a nearby book shelf and started to pull out a text on anatomy. "People who enter the dungeons themselves experience this process at an accelerated rate. To our knowledge plants and animals do not benefit from this process. However that has changed now." Nick used tweezers to extract the heart from the fish he was dissecting and brought it over to a telescope, which Sarah could then used to find the catalyst crystal that had been the size of a grain of sand in the fish heart.
Luxion had been observing the process through the Terminator Unit he had dubbed Leonardo Da Vinci, here as representative of the Da Vinci workshop. To his knowledge Singularity only had interest in trying to turn humans into Homunculi, however after his defeat, and with the explanation that he had been constantly sending pieces of himself back in time, it made sense that other creatures would get the same treatment that the Newmans had gotten.
"Is that the Black Knight's secret? A few thousand of these put together? And where did the Principality even get a mutant fish like this?" Sarah had so many questions that needed answers however Nick didn't stop adding to them.
"That tiny little grain of sand wouldn't be able to power the Black Knight's Pinky if they had a billion of them." As Nick was explaining the next book he took out was one that he had taken from the Principalities workshop. "The Bigger an organism is the bigger the mana crystals it produces becomes. A creature's theoretical full size is directly proportionate to its potential energy output. Part of this is from consuming food, but the stats provided by the catalyst crystals mean that they can get even stronger and bigger as well."
Strength is not proportionate to size. If you double in size then so will your strength, but your weight will have vastly increased as well, a total of eight times over from your height, width and depth. Thus even though you get stronger as you get bigger, how big you could get would ultimately be limited to how strong you were.
"Catalyst crystals have to become more efficient in order to support a size that is beyond reason. More important than size, you also have to be able to defend yourself from hostile life, which becomes difficult to impossible to accomplish if you're spending all of your energy on just being able to move and support your own weight." Luxion nodded in agreement to Nick's thought process. Even after he turned the float stone core into generators for his Armours there were still hard limits on the size that he could push them to.
"So the more formidable a creature is the more powerful that the Catalyst taken from its form will become." Luxion noted as Nick gave the follow up.
"Yeah, looks like they scooped them out of the ocean." Nick continued with his assessment of the logs while he held up the opened book for the group to look at. "It seems that this was the kind of creature that they killed for the Black Knight's armour." The picture Nick showed Luxion resembled a killer whale in terms of shape and colouration, however it was covered in plates of what looked like cartilage, and if the airship that was hoisting it into the air was any indication, it was approximately twice the size of a Orca from the old world.
"How did they get to the critters though? I know that the group from the Principalities ambush are fine but..." Sarah asked looking suspiciously at the picture in question. Sarah knew that after the Principalities ambush a group of people camped out on a iceburg until they could be rescued and brought back to civilisation.
"Those same people were casting magic like crazy, and had a mana eating monster on life support desperately gobbling every drop of mana that came near him." Luxion explained holding his chin in his hand.
Nick was going to ignore the definitely-not-a-human calling Leon a monster.
"So all that we need to be able to colonise the surface is a army of shadow magic users to neutralise the mana dense atmosphere." Sarah stated letting out a sigh. "And all that it'll cost us is everything we already have in the air as the mana dies down." Sarah let out a sigh at the revelation.
"I wouldn't mind not having to worry about falling out of the sky all the time." Nick muttered as he began putting the books away again. "And we're already familiar with the answers." Nick held up his hands as he mimed playing a flute. "The Principality was full of personnel that are immune to mana poisoning."
"Even if they do have the ability to retrieve the catalyst crystals adapting machinery to be compatible with them is still an astounding feat of engineering." Luxion stated bluntly, hiding his confusion by simply not changing his android's facial features. Transplanting Catalyst Crystals into Android bodies is something that he's been trying to do for years, there's no shortage of 'donors' dying off in the dungeons after all, unfortunately he hadn't yet been successful.
"That I don't know." Nick stated bluntly. "The books I've found don't mention the exact process. For now I have to settle for studying the Armours that we captured." Luxion was seeing red at that.
"Where are they?"
Leanan Sidhe: Powerful Fairy turned Fearsome Demon.
The Fae are a race driven by curiosity and stimulation, for many this leads them to seek out humanity and their endless parade of innovation.
Others pursue a darker path, among the Demons and their Umbran Neighbours.
Fae women ruled by their Desires become part of the Leanan Sidhe tribe, their unique mixture of demonic and fae magic sends intense stimulation into the minds of those that they are intimate with generating new knowledge of the dark arts in the process.
Leanan Sidhe are fearsome magic casters having learned unique magic developed by their partners, their reputations as loyal and excellent partners know few rivals among the Umbra, and their reputation as enemies is nothing short of Nightmarish.
Excerpt from Lemegeton's Guidebook of Demons
Hertrude certainly looked... different from when she was aboard Leon's ship. At some point her hair had turned a scintillating crimson colour, her figure was fuller, she had probably tripled in body weight resulting in a figure of a mature woman and wearing a long dress of black shadow. Which led to the topic of the next point of concern, aside from her lower body that was covered in a flowing mass of shadows the rest of Hertrude was naked, wearing her hair in such a way that protected her modesty. Her soul was bare to the world, more naked than should be humanly possible, while her mortal flesh was sitting next to her going through the process of being reunited with her soul.
"How long is this going to take?" Hertraude was waiting off to the side, refusing to leave her sister's side until such a time that she was whole once more.
"This is more than just shoving her back into her body." Rodin stated bluntly. "Demonic power causes mutations in organic flesh. A mass of demonic power that large shoved into a mass of organic flesh that small will induce mutations with a ninety nine percent chance of fatality." Rodin was drawing out a large scale ritual circle, as an added precaution this entire process was taking place inside of the Temen Ni Gru. "This place was the site of a ritual performed by a demon named Sparda who had a very similar problem to your sister. Sparda sealed away the vast majority of his demonic power into the form of the weapon that bears his name and passed down to his sons. We will do the same thing to your sister."
Hertraude had a explanation given to her, much of what made Hertrude who she is is tied up into her physical body, her brain to be more precise, restoring her to who she was requires reuniting her physical body with her demonised soul which inherited the negative aspects of her soul, in this case that being her desires, her overwhelming need and want for something to badly that it had consumed her entire being.
To the little sister's newly reacquired capacity for jealousy, Hertrude barely recognised her own sister but she pounced on Leon, a fact that Rodin believed had far more to do with Leon's bloodline than it does any real affection that Hertrude has for him. Naturally, Hertraude demanded that the Blackmores 'fix' her sister immediately, Ideally towards this end they would also like to get the Angels that were repeatedly ripped out of her but as the saying goes, war demands sacrifices. Instead they tracked down the necessary weapons to 'infect' Hertrude with angelic essence.
"That's the last of the Prep work." Rodin stated as he put on his forging apron. "Jenna I leave the ritual itself to you." The sister of the man who was the subject of Hertraude's scorn was standing off to the side reading and writing in a note book that she now snapped shut.
"Where are you going?" Hertraude asked in her usual hyper suspicious tone.
"To collect and seal off your sister's demonic power before it tries to reunite with her soul." Rodin explained as he left for his workshop, pointedly not mentioning the fact that he would be turning the demonic essence in question into a Devil Arm. Perks of good business is that you make a profit coming and going.
Leon was walking around outside of the medical ward working to get the numbness out of his body from the drones damned muscle relaxer, that said he wasn't walking just for the sake of walking either. With classes suspended after the Battle Leon had some free time to work with, and with Cleare having clamped a tank like thing around his arm stump to facilitate regrowing his arm which left him alone at his families compound, which had been parked above the capital of Holfort temporarily, so he was off to find two certain cowards that he knew to be hiding from him.
"Colin, Finley~! Come out! Come out! Wherever you are~!" 'Come out and accept your beatings!' Not only did the little snots have the balls to sleep through their parents send off, but now he's learned that they were also on the battlefield when the God of the Earth was on a rampage. His shouting was partially successful as he did attract someone's attention, just not the people he was looking for.
"Leon you should be resting!" Olivia had approached Leon with a stack of books in her hands. "Raided the library again I see." Leon was honestly more surprised that Olivia managed to get on the cranky old spider's apparently existent good side than he was anything else.
"Don't change the subject!" Olivia pouted cutely as Leon continued in the direction he was going in the first place. "Where are you going anyway?"
"The warehouse has lots of places for Colin and Finley to hide in there." Leon stated as he at plucked what looked like an oversized crow bar to help him open crates with.
"Oh your little brother and Sister." Olivia hadn't met them yet, but she wanted to. "I'll help!"
The duo passed through one of Nick's many workshops on their way inside. Normally Nick works on building new machines, however much of his work was reverse engineering old world technology, so he had an entire archaeological department set up in the compound, complete with attached warehouse.
"I wonder what these are for anyway." Nick had apparently left several articles out on his desk, patches of multi coloured cloth he had behind a glass frame, and a ball of some kind that was pinned through a standing spike in a manner that it could rotate around like a wheel.
"Part of his archaeology project." Leon stated bluntly as he began thinking about which of these crates his targets would be hiding behind.
Observing the pieces of cloth closely, no two looked alike, or the ones that did had clear differences between them. There Were for instance White, Blue and Red stripes going across and Green white and red stripes going across in another. Another was red and white with a big leaf in the middle, a second was only mostly white with a red circle in the middle instead, a third had a red and blue circle in the middle with ancient indecipherable writing at the four corners. Olivia continued to examine the clothe pieces and found a chart that detailed where they were found. More closely examining the orb Olivia observed that it was mostly blue with green, brown and white patches thrown in, everywhere that there were green and brown patches were more of the symbols from the cloth pieces.
"I don't understand what this one is for though." Olivia stated as she spun the globe around a few times. "I could tell you what Nick thinks they are but that would deprive you of finding out for yourself." Leon was using the crowbar to tear open one of the crates. People can get pretty imaginative with hiding places when they can use time magic to repair objects. "Aside from the documents detailing the place of origin everything there came out of the different dungeons that my family has visited." That much already was a huge boon.
It meant that this ball was something that was important to the people of the old world, that was the standard theory among archaeologists for the various artefacts found in dungeons of non-demonic and angelic origin, that they were either so important that they took extreme measures to keep them safe or that they were so widely mass produced that they survived through sheer law of probability. That said even Olivia knows that this was important to the people of old she didn't know how.
"Hmm." Olivia looked through more of the documents. The pieces of cloth were mostly taken off of the bodies of the dead, and matched up with the symbols on larger pieces of cloth. "Is this heraldry?" Olivia thought back to the flags around Holfort, displaying the heraldry of various different noble families, apparently they were painted on the Armours and shields of various knights as they go into battle. "It's pretty simple compared to Holforts?" Olivia turned to face the ball again. The 'flags' painted onto the ball wasn't a recent addition, it was put there by whoever had originally made it. Olivia knew from their navigation classes that heraldry was often used as short hand for noble territories, so that meant that these were meant to indicate the territories they had come from. If so, the implications were down right biblical.
"These were found all over Holfort's main continent." A blue flag, with overlapping eight pointed white and red crosses. "So then does this mean that this?" Olivia put her finger on the ball with the overlapping cross pattern. "Is Holfort? And if so does that mean that these are the rest of the countries?"
The one world theory is a radical theory proposed by one Professor Narcisse Calze Granze of Alzer, an archaeologist studying various old human civilisation items, and dictates that the world was originally one giant mass before a unknown disaster tore the planet apart.
Naturally this theory is widely decried by the Archaeological and Adventurer community, the very idea that the entire world spontaneously decided to change it's shape and composition into a completely different form is utterly ridiculous.
That said, many scholars and rulers alike fear that one day this 'ridiculous theory' may one day become reality.
Every day more and more islands are destroyed, whether by war, natural disaster or to harvest resources, the debris falls into the oceans swallowed by the seas and even float stone is destroyed in battle.
Still Professor Granze does have his supporters. It is a fact that objects not supported by Float Stone fall into the ocean, like people who fall off the sides of the islands. Thus it is theorised that Float Stone itself is unnatural, a byproduct of the Old Civilisation or a material that they used in their technology that, through the power of erosion, has seeped into the ground and congealed into what we now know as float stone, and if and when it is lost a return to the state of the old world is inevitable, with us bathing in mana so thick that even the weakest spells will be fatal miscasts from mana overload. Even reducing the mana at sea level to liveable standards means that the various floating islands that our civilisation is built on will likely sink into the ocean.
Excerpt on the 'One World' Theory
Unfortunately for them, Colin and Finley couldn't hide forever, especially because an Airship of unfamiliar design and make was now arriving at the dockyard, Luxion. The Ancient Airship was in relatively poor shape, various different parts on the surface had been burnt out, heavily damaged, it was as if it had been in battle recently, and not a particularly nice exchange either. Yet the reason why the Airship was docking here instead of on the mainland was obvious when you see the two figures standing on top of it. Cereza and Jeanne Blackmore. Colin and Finley were riding on the shoulders of their own demonic familiar, the giant demonic stuffed toy Cheshire.
"Any sign of him yet?" Finley asked her brother, neither of the twins were on the look out for their parents. They were looking for someone who scared them vastly more than their parents.
"Not yet." Cooling was equally as nervous as his sister. Unknown to either sibling a demonic hand made of black hair formed behind them and delivered two flicks to the back of their heads at once.
""Oww!"" Both of the Twins were left kneeling on the ground holding their heads in pain. "Leon!" Olivia immediately turned on her walking companion. "Is this why you were looking for them!?"
"Oh please, I didn't hit them that hard." Leon gave a roll of his eyes in response to Olivia's scolding. "Bout as hard as I hit Greg."
"You nearly killed Greg! Twice!" Olivia snapped by way of response.
"Up!" Both Colin and Finley had their arms up in the air as they made their demand. Leon scooped Colin into his remaining good arm while one made of hair grabbed Finley and put her on his shoulders as the ship was locked with the dockyard. The two women who were lounging on top of the ship jumping off.
Both women were taller than Leon, but only slightly. A black haired woman in a black body suit, and white haired woman in a red suit. The two women gave Leon a hug along with the two younger children that he was carrying around with him.
"It's good to see you two again." Leon stated as he let out a sigh of contentment.
"Good to see you too." Cereza and Jeanne took their kids into their arms as they smirked knowingly. "Even if you are a little worse for wear." Cereza took Leon by his chin affectionately and looked him in the eyes as she asked her next question. "Who do we have to kill for maiming our son?"
"Someone who's no longer among the living. You can talk to Rodin about torturing his disembodied soul later if you want." Leon stated by way of shrugging his shoulders.
"But then I suspect you already know that." Leon was not having a good few months, and two of the chief culprits were right in front of him. "What else has Aunt Chiyo told you?"
It was a long chat. For all that Cereza and Jeanne were video game junkies they never played anything that even resembles a Dating sim, let alone this specific one. They only knew what Chiyo told them and the information that she gave them. That now led them to Chiyo's stash, another smashed block of concrete, and something far more valuable to the group than the dating sim. Chiyo's original files about how things would've gone, had none of the reincarnated interfered.
"How are you going?" Erica was evacuated with the other non-combatants when Fanoss invaded, after all she was but a weak frail, sickly little girl, at least when you fail to realise that she was wearing one of the most heavily armed pieces of technology in the Kingdom integrated directly into her body. Unfortunately for her, for Erica to maintain a degree of normalcy no one can be aware of this fact.
"It doesn't look like Holfort was destined to live for long." Luxion stated bluntly. Erica had started at one end and Luxion at another, and from Luxion's interpretation of events the fates were not so kind. "None of the five were able to gain the Saint's affections in the 'correct' timeline enough to unlock the ship. Brad died pulling a Leeroy Jenkins, Greg bit the blade of a common foot soldier in better armour, Chris was sniped and Jilk was blown up by the Saintess herself." According to Luxion, whether Ann used Olivia's body to seduce Brad, Greg, Chris, Jilk or Julius the end result would've been the same every time: five dead heirs and one destroyed Kingdom. "Julius was the last to die, mostly by virtue of Ann wanting to save him for last."
"We are so not returning the Saint's relics." Letting that menace to human civilisation anywhere close to freedom was not an acceptable outcome.
"Yes. It also appears that I had been helping her as well." Which tracked with the events of the third game, and was one of the biggest reasons why Erica had gone out of her way to track Luxion down and diffuse his genocidal desires. "I should also note that none of these events line up with what actually happened either."
"Perhaps we should try and get our hands on this prophetess ourselves." Erica held her chin as she looked down at their data. "Chances are she's the only one who knows what's going on."
Of the Five Black Sister's Chiyo was always a bit of an odd ball among them. For most of them the clans were their life, even their 'day jobs' were just fronts that advanced their management of the Trinity in their home reality. Then there's Chiyo, most talented in the magic of time manipulation and the one with the least interest in the affairs of angels and demons. Instead Chiyo applied her natural talent for seeing and predicting the future to advancing her career in the game designing industry, peering off into the future in order to save time on writing stories for the games she worked on. I would like to think that this future information ultimately benefits the clan, but unfortunately Chiyo's tendency to release the information enmasse to the public in the form of her games have a tendency of screwing up her prophecies, further more instead of reinvesting these funds earned in the clan or in trying to avert the apocalypses that she sees in the future she instead spends on herself and her own personal interests. She does occasionally spit out important information, though it's usually, as she puts it 'highly unreliable.'
Biography of Chiyo Black by Rodin
Angelica had returned to Yamatai, bringing the saint items with her locked in a suitcase to use as a bargaining chip. The plan was that she could get Lea to set up a meeting with the one she really wanted to talk to. Thus Now Angelica was at a familiar eatery sitting across from a pink haired woman wearing a jacket and short shorts. She was a giant of a woman too, like Lea and Leon, and like their parents she assumed. Angelica was left wondering what else she had in common too.
"We all have the same face. Some of us are natural blondes, me and Leon's mum Cereza are noirettes though, however I dye my hair." Chiyo explained as she brushed her pinkish hair. "The five of us all wear eye wear of some sort or another, the effects of 'the Eye of the World' left us with something called stigmatism. Well we don't have the eye anymore." Angelica was about to speak up again. "I Predicted your existence before your entire bloodline ever existed, I knew the questions you came to ask before you knew you had them, and most of them I don't need my visions of the future to know them."
"Alright." Angelica folded her hands as she wiggled into her seat as a show of getting comfortable. "Enlighten me."
"I hear that it's common in stories about prophets like me that their visions of the future almost never come true, or rather don't come true in a manner in which the people who made the prediction expected." Chiyo stated in simple terms. "Speaking in terms you understand. Never try to fulfil prophecy, avert prophecy, or have anything to do with prophecy what-so-ever!" Chiyo stared ahead with dead eyes. "Jumping off the docks into the ocean will spare you a far more painful death and unleash a less ironic horror on creation."
"You're still alive." Angelica replied bluntly as if the exception disproved the rule. "And how many people do you think died because of the things that I saw?"
"My condolences." Angelica stated as she prepared to continue.
"So how come what I saw differed so vastly from what I wrote? The thing you have to realise is that what I wrote differs vastly from what I wrote." Chiyo stated as if she was speaking of something obvious.
"Choose your own adventure." Angelica was a clever girl, one who had been fed a slue of different books by her God mother the Queen, you didn't need the advance technology of the old civilisation to pull it off. "Your 'game' doesn't follow a fixed story-line instead featuring multiple different endings and multiple different romantic interests for Olivia."
"I wrote that story over 800 years ago, shit happens." Chiyo stated bluntly. "How about the time that Olivia befriended Stephanie and became friends with her?" Angelica was taken aback by the statement. "Of course not, because it never happened, but it could've. If I wrote every possible scenario out I'd still be writing that damned game. Just having written the details down altered the course of events, because then new variables came into existence that makes the future I am trying to predict impossible."
Right. Marie played the game in her past life and acquired enough knowledge to alter the course of events, stealing Olivia's place in the game's events and scooping up the five heirs for herself, not to mention finding the Saint's bracelet. Erica was another of these variables, snatching up Luxion and using him to try and reinforce the capital after defusing his genocidal desires.
"So you're telling me the future is full of infinite possibilities and can't be predicted?" Angelica asked sounding confused.
"That is not remotely what I said!" Chiya saw this coming and it was still making her angry. "I saw you coming didn't I?" Angelica was about to ask again. "The only futures that are possible are the ones that the people in them make possible."
"That's ridiculous." Angelica stated tapping her fingers bluntly. "What if different people decide on different futures?"
"Did I say that they Got to choose?" Chiya stated bluntly cocking a knowing brow at Angelica. "No I didn't did I? The individual that can forcibly decide what kind of future that they're going to have is extremely rare, more often than not it is a product of lots of individuals working together to achieve a common goal, or even more common, lots of individuals piling up their gambits and then having them collide together into a crescendo that no one expected or wanted." Chiyo leaned back into her chair, smirking knowingly as if waiting for Angelica to give a follow up. Indeed after a few moments Angelica put the suitcase she had been carrying with her onto the table. "You can keep them." Chiyo didn't even let Angelica make the offer. "There is no force between Paradiso and Inferno that can make me let you keep those on this island." Angelica chose not to argue with the lady who can see possible futures.
"Then what should we do with them?" Chiyo shrugged her shoulders and Angelica could only let out a sigh in response. "Last question." Angelica was more surprised than anything that Chiyo had actually let her ask this one. "Tamamo Called Leon 'Young Master.' He is important to whatever scheme you people have hatched but I don't know why."
"He's going to take this world back." Chiyo stated as she stood up to look on at the horizon. "Once upon a time. There was no part of this world that humanity didn't control. If humans weren't living there then it was by their grace that the other animals that lived there were. But now the world's been broken, and it is our responsibility to fix it."
"And Leon is the key to this?" Angelica asked looking confused. "Leon has the potential to banish the Angels and Demons back to their native realms, once he is strong enough. We had a few others eggs prepared to hatch though, but you've already met Lea and his wonderful Personality, not to mention what happened to Celene's boy." Chiyo let the implications sit in the air.
"So you had several irons in the fire and two of them are already out of the picture?" No wonder Leon feels pressured.
"If there's nothing else, a final gift, to make up for my idiot son ruining Leon's confidence in his future." Chiyo whispered something into Angelica's ear, the Duchess going wide eyed as she heard the contents of the plan. Angelica faced Chiyo, bowed, before taking the cursed items she had intended as payment and left. "I wonder how many kids they'll have, maybe I should start a betting pool." The witch turned around and suddenly pondered something. "We probably should start one on how many wives he's going to get first though." Decisions decisions. What is she going to do with them?
Review Section:
RonaldM40196867: ...as far as I know? None. Slavery was still a thing, as well as the black plague, mass starvation, and the high possibility of getting forcibly conscripted to participate in idiots wars. I'm autistic, I would probably be sooner burned at the stake than receive anything resembling the modern era's standard of luxury.
m6102032: They probably wouldn't take that deal even if he would've been genuine with it. Roland has nothing left to his name to offer them, not even good will. Funny you should bring up Lovecraft.
RedRat8: They also didn't see a better option either for dealing with what they saw as a very real threat to the stability of their nation. The easy way would be to build up the sense of unity of their people and educate them to the point that they are focused on long term benefits instead of short term gratification. Also making destroying islands for Float Stone illegal would be a good start too.
hnh058513: There's a difference between having a broken arm and being permanently crippled with no one willing to do anything to enact your will upon the kingdom.
KadoyaOkami: Trust me the fate of Holfort and Fanoss is at the bottom of Hertrude's priority list right now.