Disclaimer: Black Clover is owned by Yūki Tabata, Studio Pierrot, and Shonen Jump.
Saga 16: Welcome To The Jungle Part 2
Governmental Building's Mail Room, Central District, Libratium, Spade Kingdom, Afternoon
"Anything?" asked Charlemagne as he entered into the bombed-out mailroom, whose mailboxes were replaced with actual piles of envelopes and other crap made of paper dipped in streaks of ink.
"Just finished separating the intact parcels from the burnt out ones," says the mailman, "... damn skeletons, having no respect for the job."
"Did what you can, my man," said the young premier spoke as he looked at the piles of ash at the other side. "... So uh, you want me to get some extra hands?" he said as he then puts on an golden armor with multiple arms and a cherubic-looking masked helmet with an ornate crown placed atop of its head. "Or I can just call for help. Either's fine."
"Heard you the first time," said another voice from behind, the open door revealing a strikingly tall, red-haired woman with a loose, blue and white hip-lengthed jacket over her bare torso only covering her bosom with white bandages wrapped around it. Her legs were adorned with black, loose-fitting pants embroidered with thunderbolt patterns with a massive, white nautical rope tied around her lower waist into a ribbon formed behind her back, and her feet clacked in their elevated square sandals lacquered in a glossy red and black paint scheme.
"Lady Zio?!" cried the mailman to find the Lightning Dragon here of all places.
"I have free time," she answered, "finished clearing the rubble from the whole city state. Figured I help you guys out on a whim."
"Much appreciated," said Charlemagne from his [Armor Magic: World Mover]. Then the three began working to organize the surviving mail.
"Sort them by seal," said the mailman as he put the letters with the crown seal on one pile, "crowns are aimed to the governmental affairs, quills are directed towards the Magia Academia, coins are monetary towards whatever business their addressed to and stars are more personal and directly addressed to the person they're writing towards."
"And the unmarked ones?" said Zio as she held up an envelope with a red cord tied around it.
"Break it open," the mailman answered, "depending on what's written, either it's from an outsider, or might be a case of mail fraud."
Zio then snaps the cord before unfurling the paper to reveal only one thing written across the sheet.
決別
Farewell.
It didn't take a genius to figure out who wrote this. Let alone for Zio, who was the Dragon that took them in when they came to this continent here 15 years ago.
"... A-a t-two week's notice wasn't an o-option?" she stammered in disbelief at this sudden farewell from the Mitsurugi twins that she'd thought of as her daughters.
"Come to think of it..." said Charlemagne as he took off his helmet, "... I don't think I saw them anywhere since yesterday morning."
The Lightning Dragon then immediately bolts out of the mail room upon hearing this revelation. She grabs her portable weapon rack that she laid outside of the room, which carried a massive, two-handed broadsword with a serrated double-edged blade and a taped grip, a pair of clawed gauntlets, a wicked scythe, a one-handed longsword with a garnet hilt, a jousting lance resembling a massive handheld drill, a black-bladed scimitar, a pair of massive magical railgun cannons, a chainsaw with a chain attached to its handle, and a modestly-sized silver-sheathed katana whose pommel resembles a dragon's head. An entire small armory's worth of arms, each crafted by the Dragon herself, she carried it with her everywhere she went, intending to search for the Mitsrugi twins even if it meant starting a one-woman war against the whole world pitted against her. And likely win.
"Where are you going?!" asked the mailman, "don't tell me you're going to try and find them all over the continent!"
"DON'T YOU DARE STOP ME!" her voice boomed liked thunder before she flies off into the air as a bolt of lightning streaking across the clear blue sky.
Charlemagne gulps before turning his attention back to the mailman. "Inform everyone, including our new allies," he ordered, "tell them that two of our own has now gone AWOL."
Neutral Territory between Heart and Spade Kingdom, Afternoon
"(Pathetic)," Akane spat on the rotten Thanatophage's corpse. "(Who in their right mind would send an army of bugs synchronized with the surrounding chi)?"
"(To be fair, elder sister)," interjected Mari as she skipped over a dead giant grasshopper, "(they likely didn't take into account for your [Poison Sorcery] to have the ability to pollute the surrounding chi and everything that are harmonized with it)."
The two were now traversing thorough what used to be a lush forest filled with life. Now thanks to Akane's own [Poison Magic], it has infected the very mana emanating from it, causing everything linked to the flow of natural energy to start decaying inside-out until the whole area was reduced to a wasteland.
Over their usual sailor suit attires and modified bushi armor plates, both wore a flowing traveler's cloak colored navy blue trimmed with crimson edges, and propped on their heads were dark-blue kasa sun hats in shapes of flat domes, tied around their chins with red cords.
"(So)," Mari continued to speak to her twin sister in Hanafudan, both as a way to keep their agenda a secret from earshot while symbolically cutting all ties outside of Hanafuda, "(do you believe the braided man on that night spoke the truth? Of this 'Yami' fellow that he'd mentioned being at Heart Kingdom)?"
"(The same Yami clan that was found slaughtered 20 years ago)?" she replied with a slight glare, "(this is our only lead. We must take initiative before he gets away)."
As the two continued to make their way though the newly-formed dead earth laid before them, a small bugger no bigger than a child crept up towards them from a safe distance.
... Idiots, the child grinned, revealing to be none other than Dante, those dumbasses were too busy watching whatever carnage that was shown on the Projection Orb while I was taking back my stuff and making a run for it! The boy snicked as he bit off a piece of raw meat from his recent kill. Forget those two nobodies, he referred to Vancia and Zenon whom he'd deliberately left behind, I'll start my own cabal and soon enough, I'll be back on the top of the food chain!
An apostle of malice trapped in both the mind and the body of a child didn't help Dante's faculties of rationale. Even with his reclaimed grimoire along with Zenon's partial Stigmata that was in his burlap sack, Dante was solely focused on those two whom he'd witnessed the bugs along with the surrounding forest to rot themselves to death by their mere presence.
"Such power..." he salivated as he hid behind rotting corpse after rotting stump, "... I must have it as my own-"
But just as he stepped out of his hiding place and towards another, Dante hears a brittle snap sound coming from beneath his feet. The boy looks down, revealing a broken twig snapped in two between his right foot.
He then looks up, only to find Mari's [Shien] pointed right at his face, the azure gleam of the kamitsurugi's blade under the midday sun causing the boy's eyes to squint from the glare.
"You," she spoke, back to this continent's language, "why are you following us?"
"... I-I'm lost!" Dante tried to play himself off as a hapless child, "I saw you guys kick their butts, so you're plenty strong, right-"
"Cut the crap, we know who you are," Akane remarked as she drew her violet-bladed [Murasame] from her scabbard, "even after Grinberryall went up in flames 15 years ago, we know that you're capable of pulling this kind of smoke and mirrors, Dante Zogratis."
The boy sighs in disappointment. "... I hate whores who are too smart for their own good." His childish frame then inflated itself into giant humanoid hulk as he attempted to crush the two with his [Body Magic].
"Ane-sama!" Mari cried out as the twins dodged the initial assault before the meat monster made his way towards her, blocking his boulder-sized punches with her blade, parrying blow after blow with skillful swings of her blade redirecting the punches and where they landed.
"I TAKE ON MORE WHORES ON MY BED ON A DAILY BASIS!" he boasted as he slammed both of his fists into the ground, "YOU TWO ARE NOTHING SPECIAL!"
Akane and Mari just keep slashing their blades into the monster's skin, with each cut healing back to normal in second.
"YOU NEED MORE THAN THOSE STEAK KNIVES IF YOU WANT TO SEE ME BLEED!" Dante taunted, to no effect towards Mitsurugi twins.
"(Elder sister, we're wasting our time with this miscreant)," Mari spoke to her twin in Hanafudan, "(should we unleash our full power and humble him now)?"
"(No)," Akane shook her head as she dodged another clumsy blow, "(he disgusts me more than that traitor we're after. Consider this a test cut for the vagrant's eventual seppuku)."
Mari nods in agreement as Dante belts out a roar before growing another pair of disgustingly-muscular arms the size of tree trunks from his shoulders. "IMMA THROW ALL MY HANDS AT SOME HOS!"
The flurry of punches intensified as Dante used the increased number of his arms to throw even more punches at the twins. Both twins easily parry the onslaught with their slashes, leaving gashes and cuts across all of Dante's now-20 fingers.
"HA! CAN'T EVEN HURT ME!" he gloated, "AFTER AFTER ALL THAT BRAVADO-"
"Now," ordered Akane as Dante began vomiting a sanguine stream of his own blood and the skin around his armed turned a bright purple.
"WHA-WHAT THE FUCK?!" Dante coughed out a cloud of blood as he felt his vision get blurry.
"I forgot to mention," she sneered as Dante fell onto his knees, "but I use [Poison Magic]. Those shallow cuts allowed my toxins to enter into your bloodstreams and have begun to contaminate your inner workings."
"And given that your magic requires you to grow additional muscle fibers and blood vessels," Mari pointed out, "your heart is more likely to be overtaxed by the increased number of bodily activity without the venom. The latter expedites the straining process."
"You will not have a painless death, Zogratis," Akane declared, "prepare to atone for all of those who you've defiled."
Dante gritted his teeth as he saw those two whores looking down at him. "... DON'T FUCK WITH ME!" he roared as he grew an additional pair of legs from his hips to kick away the twins, turning him into a crude imitation of a [Centaur]. "I'll show you..."
"Show us that you're the most saddest existence that we've ever witnessed?" deadpanned Akane.
"THAT I AM BETTER THAN YOU!" Dante then pounced onto the aloof warrior girl with all of his limbs attempting to bury her where she stood.
But upon making direct contact with so much as Akane's hair, she immediately stops all of Dante's blows coming from six of his eight limbs with her single, pinkie finger.
She shook her head in disappointment as Dante was frozen in shock at the girl's hidden powers. "(Mari, go on ahead)," she smirked, reverting back to her Hanafudan tongue as a sign of disrespect towards the one that deserved it, "(he's weak. Let your elder sister clean this mess up)."
Akane then flicks the hulk away with her snapped middle finger. Dante rolled across the ground while the girl threw off her traveler's cloak and her kasa hat into the air, revealing her black and red sailor uniform and her bare limbs covered in armored grieves and gauntlets.
"... You know," cackled Dante as he saw Akane approach him from a distance, "this is the first time that a bitch stripped herself naked without me having to do anything."
"(You make the worst kind of lover then)," Akane taunted back as she then took off her menpo half-mask, tossing it aside before it left a visible crater upon landing.
Dante was speechless and assumed that his eyes were broken at what he'd saw. ... How heavy is that mask?! he thought as he looked at the half-mask resembling a snarling mouth of a red demon lying at the bottom of the crater that it had formed upon impact.
"(By the way, that mask is over 50 pounds)," she pointed out as she flexed her armored fingers and cracking her neck to the side to side, "(it's the lightest load that I had on me)."
Dante then lashes out all of his limbs and began extending them like rubber bands during his next flurry of punches. Akane effortlessly dodged every last one while not breaking from her casual stride, looking more annoyed rather than intimidated. Desperate, he opts for a low sweep across Akane's legs, only when his shin met Akane's entire body, the leg, even after it was reinforced with layers of fresh muscles from his [Body Magic], snapped in two like a dry twig.
"(I felt spring breezes more intense then that love tap of yours)," she deadpanned before she stomped onto one of the thrown punches into the dirt before taking off running across the arm's length.
Across the arm, a thicket of smaller arms grew out of its skin, with her simply cutting them down like bales of wheat with her [Murasame]'s poisoned blade. Even as Dante began to overtax his ever-shifting and changing body, Dante ignored such limits to simply slake his thirst for domination.
"I REFUSE TO LOSE TO A BITCH LIKE YOU!" Dante's head and neck then stretched out like a serpent, growing his head to a size of a [Lindwyrm]'s to take a bite of the girl.
Akane, with a single punch, shatters all of Dante's teeth and sent his rubberlike neck all the way back before it snapped back forth towards Akane's direction like a tetherball. Upon his return, Akane quickdraws her sword, severing the monster's rebound head off of his serpentine neck with one stroke from her blade.
"(You lost regardless)," said Akane as she sheathed back her [Murasame] upon performing a three-point landing. "(Mari, collect his head)."
"(How are we going to carry it back when it's roughly the size of a large boulder without making it look awkward)?" she asked.
"(Chop it up first)," she answered as she redrew her sword and hacking the head apart bit by bit, "... (fuck, now I know how the fishermen who cut up monkfish feel)."
As Dante was still conscious despite being decapitated, he cursed at the twins for bringing him this low. DAMMIT! NOT LIKE THIS! he cursed the two with all of his malice. His regenerative properties of his [Body Magic] was keeping him alive (and growing another heart inside of his head), but at the same time, Akane's [Murasame] was chipping away at his regeneration, with each cut applying more poison to slow his regeneration, slowly burning away akin to a candle running out of wax in its foundation.
... I won't lose... he then eyed towards the Stigmata that his headless body that he'd dropped. "I CANNOT LOSE!"
The small Stigmata then flew off the ground and stabbed itself into Dante's left eye, embedding itself into the pulsating orb like a driven-in nail. Upon fully embedding itself deep, the head then emits a massive shockwave that sends Akane and Mari back several feet.
Hell, Qliphoth
"Mr. Beelzebub, you got another call," Ishtar remarked.
The parasite Demon hosting an empty crocodilian Demon's body then looked at his upcoming host and his current state of affairs. "Well, what's your take on the sod?"
"He is not worth the trouble," the lioness Demon bluntly answered, "it's like trying to squeeze out a king's ransom off of a peasant in a single day."
"Still," said the parasite Demon as he licked his host's chops, "... I find his crude kind of evil... tantalizing..."
"Are you thinking of committing a contract fraud just so you can have the chance to gorge on some junk food?" asked Ishtar, raising an eyebrow.
"Haven't had once since bossman put me on an epicurean diet of sin borne from good," he growled, drool dripping between his molars. "And besides, a truly evil person born as a piece of shit? Even I can't stand him, and I want to crush whatever little hope he has left in his black, rotten heart between my teeth, dissolve it in my guts, and shit it out as a wet fart."
"So a smash and grab," the Demon of [Greed] sighed, "I'll tell Satan first."
"I will allow it," said the draconic Demon as he flew down from the darkness above. "Consider it meting out punishment. To the one who dares to waste our time at such crucial moment."
Beelezebub cackles as he then regurgitates out one of his parasites from his mouth. "Sit back and enjoy the show." He then threw the writhing parasite into the open gap between the gates leading to [First Layer, Limbo].
In the world of black and white beyond the gates, waited a pathetic looking wisp of pure malice, looking nothing like a human being and more of a grainy wisp of pure black. Normally, a host's soul would look vaguely humanoid, reflecting their own weakness and the incentive that drove them to make this infernal bargain in the first place. But this one before the writhing Demon was so shallow and pathetic that he didn't consider himself anything human.
Just a ball of malice. And disgustingly proud of it too. No desire beyond evil. It sickened Beelzebub of all Demons, who embodied [Gluttony], has now found a pig more disgusting than him. Even he likes to eat a smorgasbord of food/sins of creation rather than gorge on the same slop every day like a prisoner.
"HEY YOU!" spoke the black ball of hate, already annoying the parasite, "GIVE ME YOUR POWER!"
It rolled its eyes and opted to get it over with soon as possible. "Fine, but I request one thing from you in return."
"WHAT?!" barked the embodiment of entitlement.
"Your very being." The parasite then opened its mandibles and swallowed the ball of hate whole before spitting out his eyeballs, completely cleaned out of his filth like a bone stripped of all of its fat and meat.
There was nothing substantial left of Dante. Malice and ego were the only things that defined his hollow existence.
"You wished for power, but you'll never enjoy it," said the piecemeal Demon of [Gluttony]. "There's nothing here for you. No pain, no joy, nothing. You're neither good or evil. You're born as a corpse. A shell without meaning. A husk that was formed from the void that you have stared into again and again. Not even a free will, just malice and ego that are as transient as air. I shall grant you the power to destroy your foes... but you'll never see the deaths that you desire, should they even prove themselves to be that weak."
The parasite slithers back into the Hell that it was expelled from.
"How did it taste?" asked Ishtar as Beelzebub retrieved his parasite back into its mouth.
"I think I'll stick to my prior epicurean diet of souls," said Beelzebub. "From now on, I swear off junk food!"
"Right..." Ishtar rolled her eyes.
Back at Reality...
The twins then see Dante's inflated head grow back its body, albeit only half-formed on the account of missing his legs. His right arm bulged into a giant claw of that of a beast's, while his left arm shriveled into that of an inferior, skeletal copy. The head's left eye inflated into a size that superseded his current head's own, while from the other eye socket a massive wormlike creature made of black crystals akin to a Stigmata came out of the hole.
Akane lets out a disappointed sigh as she then began unclipping her gauntlets and grieves. As each piece of armor dropped onto the earth, visible craters cracked where they've landed upon. "(And with that, I have shed an additional +400 pounds of armor)."
With the weight drop, Akane flat out disappeared from the abomination's sight before it then lost an entire chunk of its own head from her swift slash.
"(Power alone will not move the world)," she continued to speak in Hanafudan, "(mere muscles, like boobs, are just meat)."
Such were the words of the old Kensei, Ise-no-Kami. The abomination can longer comprehend anything aside from its own power, blindly groping and thrashing like an unintelligent being, attacking whatever comes close to him.
All efforts simply led it to its limbs being severed by her corroding blade, bones and all.
"(You preach of malice, but evil cannot exist without good)," she continued over the monster's bellows, parrying every blow that came her way with her scabbard and pommel, "(life is never simple, regardless if one is born as a humble rice farmer or an emperor's firstborn son. The sky favors no one, destiny laughs at us. Yet we continued to exist as all forms of life)."
What was left of a person named "Dante" attempted to take a bite out of Akane, only for its regrown teeth to all shatter as she clapped her hands so loudly that it shattered bones like stale wafers from the sound of the resonance.
"(You worshiped evil and hate as your idols, but understood none of it)," said Akane, "(I acknowledge that I am ignorant, hence why my journey as a warrior, both to my nation and my own lineage, will never end)."
The worm out of the right eye lashed out towards Akane in one last desperate move to take her down with him.
"(But your journey never began)," she then drew her [Murasame] from her scabbard, "(repent in the black depths of Naraka, ignorant one, and start over from the primordial void of creation)."
The violet blade glowed as an ethereal serpent slew its fangs across the worm's neck and base.
"([Poison Breathing-Zeroth Form])," Akane declared as she walked away from the stillborn, "([Biting Sin - Entropy])."
As soon as [Murasame] returned into its scabbard, the monster falls apart like a decayed pumpkin.
"Ane-sama..." Mari then approached Akane as she began retrieving her armor and traveling clothes.
"(Forgive me, sister)," said Akane as she tied her cloak and kasa hat back on, "... (for my own petulance)."
Mari wordlessly shakes her head before walking off towards the savage jungle up ahead. As the younger twin walks ahead, Akane looks back at what was human, but not.
"... (Meat)," Akane then walked away from the sad pile of rotting flesh and towards their way back home.
Heart Kingdom, Evening
"We're back," Yami called out as he and everyone else returned from their daily routine of lowering the Thanatophage population.
"Less bugs than usual today," said Mosin, "still fucking annoying to deal with."
"Hold on," said Gaja, "... you said that there are less of them then they are usually?"
"Must've lost the nerve to come at us," scoffed Jack, "pansies."
"Your caution is warranted, Guardian," said the High Inquisitor, "usually, when change occurs in a field of battle, either the enemy is planning for something bigger or some outside interference has come in and muddled the tides of combat."
"Either way, we cannot let our guard down," said Fuegoleon, "same as usual, prepare for the worst."
"Let them come," smirked Meroleona as she pounded her fist upon her fire-arm, "I'll be their undertaker."
"Yeah yeah," Yami brushed her off, "everyone, to the baths. Wash off the pheromones that got sprayed onto us."
"I will inform the other Spirit Guardians to watch for any night attackers," Gaja stated as he went the other direction. The Clover Kingdom Magic Knights and the High Inquisitor all then went towards the bathhouses and began washing the demonic stench off of their bodies.
At the women's bath, Meroleona noticed that one of Mosin's wrists had a simple gold band with a smaller silver band around its circumference. "... You got hitched once?" she asked.
"This?" the High Inquisitor raised her engagement band with a wedding band welded around the gold band, "yes, I was married and had a son."
"Where are they now?" asked Vanessa, admittedly curious.
"... Both are dead," she looked down in sadness, much to the latter two's shock.
"... Oh," Meroleona blinked, "... a widow then."
"It's fine," she shook her head, "we Inquisitors are fleeting anyway, given our line of work."
"Wait," the witch stood up from the waters, "you saying that the whole family were full-time Demon slayers?!"
"My son, Nagant III killed his first Demon at the age of 5," Mosin looked back with pride, remembering the time of seeing her boy stand atop a dead Demon lying on the bloodied snow, "the boy was truly like his great-great grandfather, Patrem Nagant Ivanov I, the first Inquisitor."
"How did you guys found the Demon-slaying order?" asked Meroleona.
"We were originally from a land further up north," she answered, "Chernobyl, a once giant empire before a wicked sorcerer named Rasputin, the Mad Monk, summoned a terrible Demon that killed everyone throughout the empire in a single night, turning the land up north into a land of pure death. The current Order of the Spade Cross are composed of the descendants of those who survived the Mad Monk's insanity taken in by the first ruler of Avalon during our long flight."
"So Demon-slaying became almost an obligation," gulped the witch.
"It's a duty," she answered, "to not only avenge our kin, but to make sure that tragedy is never repeated. No matter how much it hurts with each lost life from our own."
Meroleona then began to think about what Mosin's son would've looked like, but when doing so, she can't help but think about the boyish-looking monster named Caligula. Then it hit her one why Mosin was so focused on that Demon aside from the fact that he's the one leading the joint.
"Hey, stupid question," the Crimson Lion King's Vice-Captain spoke, "but did... Caligula ripped off your kid's look?"
Mosin closed her eyes as she nodded in acknowledgement.
"... When?" she asked.
"Literally 5 years ago," the High Inquisitor answered, her hands balling themselves into fists, "he was the first to die."
"... Well this is awkward," groaned Meroleona, "now I'm punching someone else's kid."
"Don't be," Mosin reassured, "that thing's mere existence is a mockery of my son's memory. Put him down so that he may rest in peace."
Vanessa can tell that beneath the High Inquisitor's cold and steely demeanor, she knew that Mosin was still a childless widow who is grieving for their deaths, and that killing the fly Demon is her way of honoring them.
Helluva lot better than my own 'mother', she thought as the witch looked towards the High Inquisitor before they all got out of the baths.
As soon as everyone finished up, they all found Scheherazade standing before a large pressure cooker with a hissing lid bolted onto its basin.
"What the hell is that?" Jack pointed out.
"I thought that given that most of my work is being done by one of you, I thought the best way to express my gratitude is by cooking an Daman specialty," she answered with a jubilant smile. "A dogroma chorba goat stew!"
"We eat that shit every night!" said Nix.
"But not just any goat," she replied, "this goat was fed to the point where it has developed the perfect balance of meat and fat that has reached a decadent balance of raw and smooth flavor! No meat goes to waste in this soup. Kidneys, offals, stomach, intestines, livers, anything edible, it's in the pot. Coupled that up with a bone broth from the goat itself and a myriad of vegetables, rice and spices, and you have the best kind of soup that will feed several men in one bowl!"
"So what's with that thing?" Leopold pointed to the specialized pressure cooker, "that thing looks like it's gonna explode."
"Don't worry, I assure you that it won't explode," the envoy reassured as she then looked at her hourglass, "now this just needs to cook for an additional 11 minutes and 34 seconds-"
The pot's lid then explodes off of its base, splattering everyone with the unfinished soup.
"WHAT THE HELL?!" Yami cried out, "YOUR DINNER ALMOST KILLED ME! I SURE AS HELL AIN'T GOING OUT IN A STEW-MAKING ACCIDENT! EITHER I'M GONNA DIE TAKING THE WORLD'S GREATEST DUMP, OR YAMI'S NEVER GONNA DIE!"
Of all people, Henry then took a small lap of the splattered dinner from the back of his hand. "... I'm full... already."
"Well, guess expediting a dish that takes a whole week to cook wasn't the best idea," sighed Scheherazade. "... I'll clean it up. The rest of you are going to have to make do for dinner."
As everyone else walked away covered in their would-be dinner, Yami turns his head back towards the envoy, who'd just summoned a trio of cat-like creatures standing on their hind legs and their forepaws were literally gloved human hands a third of their whole size.
"Uh, forgot to ask," said the Black Bulls Captain, "but how is Charmy? And did the little Queen find out anything about her... you know, past that I'm now aware of? For the latter, it ain't the first time I had to deal with that within my own group."
"So far, nothing," she answered as her trio of cats licked up the spilled stew, "but for Charmy herself, she's fine. Just working in her sleep, talking to magic as if they were living beings."
Meanwhile...
Floating in the ethereal space of pure white, was Lolopechka. Both her eyes closed in deep concentration, as she'd tapped into the collective knowledge of the past Queens of the Heart Kingdom.
"Begin search," she declared, to which then the entire space then filled itself with countless bookshelves, each full of reference material linking to whatever knowledge she desires. "[Diamond Kingdom]," she declared as the bookshelves shifted among themselves, the declared category filtering themselves out amongst the cavalcade of knowledge. "[Dual Attributes]," more bookshelves flew away to sort out themselves from the declared category.
So far, with two declared keywords, Lolopechka saw that there were now a couple dozen bookshelves's worth of knowledge before her. But even then, it's rather impractical to simply read all of these at once, so she needed a third category to narrow down her options until that one specific book can be found.
"Think Lolo, think," she muttered to herself while fiddling with her hair, "so far, Charmy's been revealed to have been found at the fringes of the Diamond Kingdom if Yami's testimony is to be believed..." she gleaned over the topics presented before her, "and allegedly that the Diamond Kingdom has been progressing to weaponized hybridized mages for their own military... but how did they got there in the first place?"
Logically speaking, unless someone was legitimately insane to think of it on their own from the ground up, then the whole "hybrid mage" would have a pre-established basis.
"Come on... there's got to be something that I can look up to narrow my options..." she ruminated. As she continued to stew in her own storm of thoughts, a certain book/knowledge caught the corner of her eye. "... 'The Dwarven Theocracy'?"
It then hit her. Charmy might not be entirely human.
"[Dwarf Race]!" she declared, the bookshelves sorting themselves out until only one full bookshelf stood in front of her. "Alright, just a little further," she sighed as she looked around the contents, but all of them were vaguely religious texts about the Dwarfs rather than anything specific. "Wait," she muttered, "religious? Why am I making that correlation?"
She then tries to remember about Charmy's hidden [Food Magic]. More specifically, how it felt.
Instinct, she recalled, it was like as if it was seeking out food, like any normal animal. But how can said instinct be described...
And then, it hit her like a charging boar's tackle.
"... Other than 'desire'," she then whipped her eyes back to the knowledge vault, "[Desire]!"
Five books separated themselves from their bookshelves as the latter made itself scarce.
"I'm getting warmer," she smiled, "let's push one more time! [Religion]!"
One book presented itself before her. The book's title was called the "Caucus of the Earthen Heart Faith."
"If I recall correctly, Dwarves were a race attuned with mana like the Elves," Lolopechka said to herself, "unlike the Elves, the Dwarves gained a divergent evolution by turning their own desires into secondary magical attributes... hence why they were such prolific miners..." the thoughts began piecing themselves together and the similarities between the typical depiction of a dwarf and Charmy herself. "... [Food Magic] representing her 'desire'... I'm afraid of her already of what's she's going to do to the pantry as soon as she wakes up."
Without further ado, Lolopechka then cracks open the book, only for the pages to be covered in "DIE" as if a madman had scratched his blood all over the papers. She kept flipping over through the book, with each leaf just repeating the same "DIE" over and over until all of those "DIE" words suddenly burst into flames and forcibly expelled her from her own treasure trove of knowledge and landing back onto Undine's own laps.
"Lolo dear, what happened?!" she asked, concerned for her friend's safety.
Lolopechka adjusted her glasses before she looked towards Charmy in the pool next to them, still dreaming of dreams of her own candy land.
"Pardon my language..." she spoke as her propped up glasses fell off from being straight, "... but I think we're in for some deep shit."
Rotten Elysia, Neutral Territory, Night
"So... let me get this straight," spoke Caligula as he was currently feasting on a recently-killed mole cricket Demon as his dinner, "not only all of our recently-hatched swarm has been killed to a single bug, but also the forest that they were in simply... died, you said?"
The hooded cockroach Thanatophages chittered between each other before chittering towards their leader.
The fly Demon rolled its eyes in indifference while ripping a piece off of his meal. "Not like I expected much from those failures, but still..." he grimaced as he looked up. "Well, silver lining, at least the package from Dama arrived this afternoon, so that'll be enough to make up for our losses."
Upon finishing his sentence, the minute-sized Demon then swallowed whole of what was left of the unfortunate worker drone that he was feasting on, like he promised if he failed to meet his expectations. Caligula didn't tell what exact expectations were there to live up to. So really, the fly Demon killed him on a whim.
Not like it mattered. It was fun for him for a second before he grew bored. "Alright, enough dawdling around," he remarked as he stretched his shoulders and neck, "let's get that shit integrated into the hive."
Emitting a certain chemical mixture of pheromones, Caligula calls upon his bee Thanatophages to carry the main "package" back to where the captured Dryad was being kept.
"Damn, looking at your face mixed with hate and disgust never gets old," Caligula taunted as he buzzed into the hive's heart, the captive nature spirit doing what she can to defy him. "But it's time to turn that frown upside-down, because I have good news!"
The bee Demons then pry open the "package's" bindings, revealing a pod of flesh and wax with a black-haried, caramel-skinned girl no older than in her preteens embedded inside, much to Dryad's horror and disgust.
"This is your new cellmate!" he giggled, "never learned anything about this little squirt other than the fact that she has a vagina. Anyhoo, she's been the one birthing my first-gen boys that wrecked your place to high heaven! And with my most recent production going to the shitter due to..." he then glared at the nearest worker Thanatophages, causing them to flee meekly in fear of their leader's wrath, "... unforeseen circumstances, which I will deal with later, my plans must now be... well, improvised."
A pair of sharp insect legs sprouts out from Caligula's back as he then lifts up the girl in the cocoon with his own humanlike hands.
"I'll be blunt, you're not going to like the next part," he smirked as he drove his pair of sharpened legs into the nature spirit's naval region, cutting her open where an organic's womb is supposed to be, but being a nature spirt like Dryad, she has no need for such thing (until Caligula forced it in unspeakable ways), so Caligula opts to jury rig an improvised womb with his very first Queen into his second.
Dryad's screams shrilled across the silent air during her procedure.
"Come on, this shouldn't hurt that badly," Caligula remarked while trying to kick the flesh cocoon into the open wound. "You took birthing out second-gens like a champ, so where's that bravado from before?"
Upon fully being integrated into the Dryad's "womb," Caligula then stitches the gap shut with his insect legs before retracting them back into his body. The nature spirit was now looking like a pregnant woman, with all the pains and suffering that came with it on top of her current burden.
"Hey, I can be kind," smirked the Demon, "I just choose not to because it's more fun that way."
Dryad coughs out as she began to speak. "... This... is fun?" she snarled, catching the fly Demon's attention, "... this... demented display... of the violation... of life... is just mere... fun?!"
Caligula then lets out a hearty cackle as if he'd heard a genuinely funny joke before he kicked the nature spirit across her face, the ensuing whiplash sending her crashing into the hive's walls.
"OF COURSE IT IS, YOU SOYBEAN HIPPY!" he ranted as the Demon grabbed the spirit by her hair before lifting her up and began slapping the shit out of her. "IT'S WHAT I DO! IT IS WHAT I WAS MADE TO DO! TO KILL AND VIOLATE EVERYTHING IN MY WAY IS SAME YOUR SUBJECTS AND BREATHING! IF I DON'T HAVE FUN WITH IT, THEN WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF MY OWN EXISTENCE?! I DON'T HAVE THE PRIVILEGE OF CHOOSING TO BE GOOD BECAUSE I AM DESTINED TO BE EVIL BECAUSE I CANNOT CONVINCE THOSE NUMBSKULLS OTHERWISE! EVEN AFTER I TOOK THIS BODY TO MAKE MYSELF LOOK MORE ACCEPTABLE, I WILL STILL BE CALLED EVIL BECAUSE I DON'T HAVE A CHOICE IN THE MATTER! SO WHAT'S YOUR FUCKING PROBLEM WITH THE WAY I LIVE MY LIFE?! DO YOU NOT UNDERSTAND HOW EVIL IS SUPPOSED TO WORK?! IT IS TO SOLELY CRUSH THE GOOD'S HOPES AND DREAMS BECAUSE IT IS AN OBLIGATION, NOT A CHOICE! SO EXCUSE ME IF YOU THINK THAT I'M NOT ALLOWED TO HAVE FUN AT MY OWN JOB!"
Upon finishing his rant, Caligula then stops beating the nature spirit after calming down. Having enough her taunts after realizing that he nearly killed her, the possibility that Dryad was counting on to sabotage his plans, Caligula then emits another arrangement of pheromonal signals to call upon his spider Thanatophages.
"You wanna die so badly? Living is too painful for you as long as your existence is made to make others suffer because of my machinations?" growled the Demon as he then pried open a locked jewel box with her fingers, "I shall grant you your wish, but it will end on MY TERMS!"
In a flash, Caligula then stakes three Stigmata in different parts of the composite "Queen," further corrupting her with their innate infernal influences.
"Pure magic of the nature spirit, the untainted human flesh free of mana, and the chaotic energies linked to the depths of Hell..." he listed the ingredients as he then pulled out a smaller stigmata looking more akin to spike or a nail, "at last, perfection is within my grasp, as I create, the ultimate Queen!"
Caligula then stamps the smaller Stigmata into the spirit's chest, dark crackles of electricity sparking from where the nail had buried itself into.
"With that, it is finished," the Demon smirked at his latest creation, "a fairy tale ending... with a cruel twist. So until then, ENJOY BIRTHING OUT YOUR INCREASED QUOTA."
As he then left the composite hybrid abomination in an inert state as her gaping mouth began vomiting out all of the first Queen's gestated maggots, enough so to drown the two cockroach Thanatophages under a tide of newborns that devoured them and then each other for nutrition, Caligula returns to his personal quarters and grabs the prehistoric insects off of his shelves and enters into his own jury-rigged laboratory.
"Alright you little buggers," he then screws on the jars into the tanks containing the pseudo-homunculi, "let's get you all dressed up for the upcoming performance."
The ancient insects entered themselves into the meat dolls preserved in their tanks, slowly morphing out exoskeletons over their endoskeletons.
To Be Continued...
Author's Notes: More questions than answers. Nothing in life is ever simple, and during war, it gets messier.
Anyhoo, Akane and Mari have now gone AWOL just to track down and kill Yami for their chance to "go back home," presumably Hanafuda. Political consequences be damned (even if they seriously matter), since now a fucking Lightning Dragon has also gone on a one-woman manhunt (and possible rampage) for the twins akin to a parent whose children had ran away. Yeah, Dragons have humanlike quirks while having enough power to reduce the entire continent into bedrock, which is a really messy combination. Even if she sticks solely to her human form, it's gonna be super-awkward for people to see a woman carrying a small army's worth of weaponry who is looking for two people across a whole continent. And yes, she will get inevitably lost because the letter didn't specify where the twins have gone, so clusterfuck incoming (again).
Also, Akane's brand of [Poison Magic]/[Sorcery] is semantic, meaning that it can serve as a HARD COUNTER to anyone using [Mana Zone]. More on how destructive her brand of decay is in later chapters.
And Dante. I honestly didn't know what to do with him compared to Zenon (who's actually bothering to adapt) or Vancia (she fits into Ulster's warrior culture like a glove even if they don't like her, for a good reason IF they find out), and it was in-character for him to do something stupid like run away on his own and try to throw is below-100 pound weight around the bigger world. The only depth I could come up for him is that he's so shallow in his worship of evil, that he's less of an "acolyte of sin" and more of a "mid-2000s emo kid who thinks Hatred is cool that never grew up-Cannibal Corpse fanboy and possible Columbine school shooter," to the point where his soul doesn't identify itself as a human being, which is like a frog that is convinced that it's a human being, in complete denial of the fundamental truth (and partially inspired by the Korean folktale about the frog who speaks purely in contradictions to the presented fact). He's better off with Devils since in his eyes, they both "Made of Evil," but when in reality, he's a human that cannot grasp at the complexity of morality and just defaults to evil. This is why the Demons are disgusted by him. They used to be something else before their fall to Hell, so they HAD depth before, just twisted, kinda like the logic of Orcs from Lord of Rings but actually practiced and shown. If Devils (and Dante) are Chaotic Evil, then the Demons of the Eleven Elusive Evils are fundamentally Lawful Evil. Zenon is Lawful Evil due to his patriotism and loyalty to his brethren and Vancia's Neutral Evil because at least she understands how good guys operate to better her brand of evil (her relationship with Acier and later Noelle in the canon is my cited example). Dante is Chaotic Evil bordering Stupid Evil because he's that much of a self-inflicted misanthrope and a deconstruction of a "Hell Seeker" trope, the saddest kind of a human being.
From that dark topic, the scene with the Clover-Heart Kingdom (and Mosin) Alliance is meant to be a cooldown segment. Mosin (and the Order of the Spade Cross)'s origins are revealed more in-depth (Rah Rah Rasputin, Lover of the Russian Queen) and the reveal that Caligula stole her son's look just to spite her, which is then followed up by some levity with the exploding soup from the obviously-improvised pressure cooker. Ruler, diplomat, envoy and sorceress Scheherazade is. An inventor and whiz in the kitchen, she is not.
Also, Lolopechka is looking up who the hell Charmy is, and it's clear that no one wants to let her find out. She may punch like cotton candy, but her mind's like Sherlock Holmes if she puts some mental elbow grease to it. Her mind will be her greatest asset for the coming big raid.
And Caligula reacting to his current losses... surprisingly well. Eating his own minion for the hell of it aside, but then again, the babies eat everything that is near them, so everyone is currently going through the suck, including his prisoners/breeding stock. As long as his "Phase 2" is undisturbed, he's content. Although there might be some hints that he might be "Forced Into Evil" with some elements of "Being Evil Sucks" in his rant, but in hindsight, [Hedonism] is really disguised self-pity drowning itself in wine and glamour. To jive off Tolkien again: "All that glitters is not gold."
One last thing: next chapter will start with the Illuminati trying to make their next play while Morris/Mammon is cooking up something fierce.
References:
- Charlemagne's [Armor Magic: World Mover] is based off of Skyward Sword's [Ancient Automaton: Koloktos].
- The Lightning Dragon, Zio has a lot going for her. First, her name is named after the lightning-elemental spell line from the Shin Megami Tensei franchise. Second, her human form is based off of Erza Scarlet from Fairy Tail, with her attire being loosely based off of her [Clear Heart Clothing] with a haori jacket based off of the Shinshengumi's iconic blue and white colors, and her massive nautical rope belt tied into a ribbon is based off Orochimaru's, albeit white instead of purple. And finally, her portable weapon rack is a doozy. The frame itself is designed after a torii gate and Saitō Musashibō Benkei's feat/claim to fame from Japanese culture, while the weapons carried in it are the ones that the ones that the Eradicators from Cardfight! Vanguard uses. Here's their own list of the weapons and their corresponding units:
- Two-handed broadsword: Vowing Sword Dragon
- Pair of clawed gauntlets: Gauntlet Buster Dragon and Finish Blow Dragon
- Wicked Scythe: Dragonic Deathscythe
- One-handed longsword: Dragonic Descendent
- Jousting lance resembling a handheld drill: Electric Shaper Dragon
- Black bladed scimitar: Sweep Command Dragon
- Pair of magical cannons: Twin Thunder Dragon
- Chainsaw: Ignition Dragon
- Silver katana with a dragon head pommel: Tempest Bolt Dragon
- The way Dante's soul/malice is portrayed in [Limbo] is based off of "The Dwarf in the Flask"-form of Father from Fullmetal Alchemist.
- Dante's haphazard form granted to him by another one of Beelzebub's parasites is based off Jonathon Bear's Boss Form from Jimmy and the Pulsating Mass, albeit less "bear" and more akin to The Thing, the game's inspiration for the titular "Pulsating Mass" (Look up the boss "Mutt" from the game for reference-AT YOUR OWN RISK).
- Akane quoting Ise-no-Kami/Kamiizumi Nobutsuna is from his iteration from Tenkaichi: Nihon Saikyou Bugeisha Kettaisen.
- Scheherazade's stew exploding is a reference to Brooklyn 99's Season 3, Episode 17, "Adrian Pimento."
- When I first saw Lolopechka tap into the "past knowledge of Heart Kingdom's previous rulers/Queens" in the manga, I just knew that I had to make a reference to Philip's Gaia Library from Kamen Rider Double. I even implemented the "keyword" function in its searching capacities (and I spent my first semester in my current/final year in databases, so this may be projection of my own experiences of doing research).
- The whole "DIE" written repeatedly in a book is based off of Trials of Mana's Ghost Ship chapter, where the captain's log did the same thing as a jumpscare before turning the player character into a ghost.
Hypothetical Voice Actors:
- Zio: Ayako Kawasumi (JPN), Danielle McRae (ENG)
And as usual, please leave a comment or a review, for I'd love to know what my readers think!