We arrived on Harmony Island, back in the Ashen Isles near Cal Mira, this test, needing as it did, quite a lot of space. Luckily, no one had returned home yet, given it had only been a few days, and they were likely still dealing with things in the main city, shipping people back to the continent, so a quick use of my (Sense) skill showed no humans, beastmen, or demi-humans as far as the eye could see.
No, all around us, agitated with our entrance, were enemies. Monsters, enough of them that they cast a red hue everywhere we looked, from the forests to even the nearby sea through a break in the trees. All the world was our foe, or so it appeared, and that was fine with me, as I reminded them of the plan, and they nodded, Ray quickly deploying her armor, and drawing her swords.
"And if this doesn't work, you're sure that Naofumi's 'trick' will work to keep this from being a problem?" asked the catwoman, as she hefted her blade around, testing their weight and heft, as if to give her something to compare them to.
"I think so. He said it had worked with a boost he gave Raphtalia, and there IS a list of said bonus effects in my menu," I said, bringing it up, and even 'clicking' on the boosts from her armor. They had a greyed out option to turn them off, which, according to Naofumi, would work to deactivate any positive effects on a person you gave them, something he'd discovered during some battle with Raphtalia and…the others during their time defending the central Isle of Cal Mira.
"If it doesn't, we're going to upset a lot of people back in Sanctuary," added Lucia, motioning with the Vassal Staff to her body, and I nodded.
"I trust Naofumi, something that man has earned, so I don't think there will be any problems. And if there is…we'll burn that bridge when we come to it," I admitted as I looked around, the agitated monsters, mostly squirrels, but with all kinds of things mixed in, were coming closer, so I got to work, closing my eyes, focusing on the magic spells I knew, and then opening them up, holding out my hands.
In a moment, I started to move my fingers, sharply, rapidly, looking like I was painting some kind of picture with harsh angles in the air between myself and my companions. In my view, however, I watched as lines began to connect those before me. First Lucia and Ray together, then their equipment, each piece, individually gleaming in my vision, slowly webbing together until each bit connected to every other bit.
"Alright then, let's get in formation," I said, walking to stand behind the two of them, as they put their weapons into a position in front of them that showed they were ready to attack. The edges of Ray's twin blades glinted wickedly in the last few rays of the setting sun, while Lucia's Staff began to hum, as she focused some of her magic in it, creating an almost musical tone for us, as I drew out my Bow, creating two of them, one for each arm, and then pointed them at my companions.
"(Up Scale Arrow)!" I shouted, unnecessarily, but still, it felt good to do so, as bolts of light shot from my Bows into them, causing their bodies to shudder, shake, and then to expand. The brothers had always been in motion as they grew, saying it helped them to keep their balance, but neither Lucia nor Ray were budging an inch, instead their bodies began to move for them, outward, in every direction.
I was happy that none of the homes in the small village on Harmony Island were still standing, given that, as they swelled, they would have destroyed them. Still, I quickly made myself scarce, looking straight up into the heavens, then using my (Blink) move to teleport as far into the sky as I could, which turned out to be almost a half a kilometer, if the sudden chill and lack of oxygen was any indication.
Luckily, this was planned for, and one of the moves I had purchased, I began to feed my SP into a barrier around me, a costly one, that if it took damage would have fallen even quicker, but was being sustained by my almost infinite pool at the moment, allowing me to look down, and watch as the islands below began to gain a pair of new goddesses, their forms soon towering over the island that birthed them.
The brothers' best height had been forty meters, which was as much as I'd been able to give them back in the Soul Eater Wave. This time? I had no restrictions, and so I got to watch as the pair of ladies became towering one-hundred meter tall giants, their bodies looking like things carved from stone for a moment, as they stood there, waiting for it to stop, and then looking around for me, before I sent them a message via thought.
I told them I was out of the way, and assured them they could go all out. They slowly turned to each other, their bodies moving ponderously to me, though their thoughts, slow at first, indicated that it was different from their point of view. Speed, after all, determined motion over a certain amount of space, so they were moving faster, proportionally, to what they would otherwise, but looked for all the world like they were in slow motion.
They still moved with power, as Lucia turned herself towards the more distant isles of the chain, her Vassal Staff raised up, as she held a hand behind it, gathering her strength. Below, I watched her foot rise up, sailing over the trees of Harmony Island, causing them to ripple with the wind its simple motion kicked up, before she brought it down, softly to her probably, into the ocean.
Despite being careful, a tide was created as her foot came down in the water, a wave washing against the shore of Harmony Island, while also moving out to lap gently at Dhonal's Isle in the distance. She seemed embarrassed by that, if the slight red tinge to her cheeks wasn't the air being thin for her too. Even from more than fifty meters up above, I could hear the breathing of the two.
Beside her, Ray was still testing her blades a bit, the now huge pieces of glass gleaming as they were high enough to catch an almost full sun on the horizon. They would have made really cool lighthouses with the right setup, but she seemed to find them acceptable as weapons as well, as she held out her arms, holding the two blades out with them, like they were extensions of her body.
Then the two huge giants began to glow, their bodies covered in auras of magic in a variety of colors. Lucia's magic flared and hissed, crackling with lightning in between the tips that might have been stone, but with small flakes like ice mixed in. As he moved, she requested I provide overwatch, and so I focused on my (Sense) skill, and put more into it than I ever had before, letting a pulse from it stretch out into the world below.
The islands all lit with red, as did the oceans and even some of the clouds in the sky…including some that were moving against the wind towards me I noticed with some small trepidation. Nothing too bad, mind, they weren't exactly moving quickly, and I could just use (Blink) again if they got too close, but it was still annoying to know that even up here one couldn't escape the monsters of this world.
Below, I got the first view of how the mixed equipment worked, with Lucia's foot in the water suddenly being attacked by a horde of undersea monsters. For the brothers, that sort of strike was dangerous, as their increased size only made their offensive options stronger, not their defensive ones. As such each strike was hitting Lucia with all the power it would have had had she been her normal scale.
However, her connection to Ray and her armor was providing the magic user with all the defense she might need, and even as they attacked her, stabbing and striking, they were doing pinpricks of damage, nothing huge. Better, Ray looked towards her and used some kind of paladin spell to start her healing, her wounds being mended faster than the foul beasts below the surf could create them.
Nodding towards the other titan, the movement of her head actually warping the clouds around it, Lucia turned back towards the islands in the distance, and with a smile, brought her hand up, placing it behind the head of the Vassal Staff, and then channelled her magic. Circles of magical symbols, most larger than my head, appeared all along the length of the Staff at her mental command, giving it an almost festive look with their variety of colors and shapes, before she loosed their fury on the world below, and I got to watch a living natural disaster in action.
Each circle on her Weapon soon had a twin, one that appeared in the air above or beside one of the monsters, some of them screaming with recognition, rage or fear it was hard to tell which, as they struck out at the offending magic. Only for the circles to explode out with power, Lucia's magical might ending the lives of all the monsters beneath her in an instant, as thunder bolts, stone spikes, ice spears, and flame lances pierced their fetid bodies, my system informing me of (Auto-Loot)'s activation, and piling the things up on the island below.
Not that Ray was to be outdone, as she held out her weapons, which crackled with their own power, light and shadow intermingling in the space between them as bolts of lightning. She had lamented a time or two that her ability to 'project' attacks as she had done against the skeletal hydra so long ago was limited by her pool of MP, and worse, by her need to conserve some of that to heal her allies with.
Now, with Lucia's garb giving her more than she might ever have need of, she let loose her fury, not as massive crescents, which would have split the islands of Harmony and Greenwood in two, but instead as a rainfall of such things, slightly larger than what she might have made with them at her normal scale. They arced both upwards and downwards, some slicing through the things in the sky around me, as below, each one found a target amid the ocean and trees of the isles, and did their grim work.
It was mesmerizing to watch it happen. Where Lucia's blasts lit the world up, Ray's vanished as they touched the ground, the only sign they were working being the cleansing of the red tint to everything, as monsters by the hundreds died in mere seconds, their bodies sliced clean through, and leaving them as wrecks that would fall to the earth, their fetid blood spilling out into the world, leaving one last bit of pollution to deal with.
Looking down, I nodded, and had to smile. My level had increased. Not a lot this time, but enough to show that this 'trial' was more than successful, and soon I brought up my menu, finding the buffs for my two companions, and then turning off the (Up Scale Arrow) just as Naofumi had said I could. Instantly, Lucia went from a giantess who's hairs I could have used for ropes, to a woman fluttering in the breeze as she fell towards the earth below, while Ray, flipping end over end, held out her blades like wings, as if she meant to fly.
I shook my head, and quickly used (Domino) again, linking my shoes to both of them as well, causing their descents to slow, and Lucia, looking up to where I was, giving me a mental thanks, as she 'walked' in the air towards the island to prevent herself from falling into the water, even as I held up my Bow, and shifted it into a form that had a bonus to this technique, and focused on it.
A burst of light, a wave of purity, leapt from my hand to wash over the world below. Where it touched, the corpses of the monsters faded into dust, and animals, corrupted too far to be saved, were rendered into inert piles. It was draining, to be fair, but given my SP regeneration rate, I was able to keep from passing out, as I watched, willing the wave to go farther, faster, watching it spill out onto the other isles and seas around, before finally (Blinking) to join Lucia and Ray below.
We compared notes, with Lucia commenting on what a good job the smiths and makers had done on her gear, a sort of 'self repair' ability in all our stuff already fixing the small holes in her shoes. Ray remarked likewise, as she let the armor shift back into a cloth form, and they both turned to me, asking how they'd looked blown up to that scale. Sensing that answering that in a certain way would not really be the best thing for my health, I responded that they were both lovely, but insisted we should return to Sanctuary.
After all, the sun had set, and tomorrow morning, we and the other Heroes would head to Faubrey, a prospect that sounded very draining. I doubted either was buying it, but they didn't press too hard as we vanished, leaving behind isles that would be free of the spawn of the Waves for a time at least, and in my heart, a hope that, in the years to come, a freedom we could gift to the whole world.