And the plot begins. Wonder if Naofumi will do the smart thing and give Yumiella the details.
Grinding of the Sword Hero
- Thread starter Obloquy
- Start date
- Crossover Fantasy
Easy Queasy!
Obloquy
CrossMyHeart And HopeToDie, StickANeedleInMyEye
- Location
- the Physical Realm
Day 3, morning
"Since you unlocked the wood sword even if we couldn't get a bark sword, let's try this next."
Yumiella took the burning branch Welt had pulled out of the campfire and fed it into her sword.
"Fire damage. This will be useful," Yumiella complimented. The sun is getting higher this morning... "This is enough for now. I will refresh myself and then we will go hunting," Yumiella declared.
Rather than go back into the cave, where there was constrained space and low visibility, Yumiella had agreed to hunt outdoors today so that everyone could get a handle on their improved stats.
Several farms between Riyute Village and Gitah River had reported problems with a trip of Motor Goats ravaging their crops and put out a request to exterminate them, so the team would be riding for an hour or to to check the area and get anything they could manage while Riyute Villagers checked the usability of the mine now that the big monsters were dead and brought back ore samples for the Cardinal Sword.
(Yumiella had originally thought she misheard the assignment, but it turned out that Motor Goats were magical fire-attribute goat monsters with metallic fur, the ability to eat almost anything, and a tendency to belch toxic fumes as they charged with great speed and strength across land or water. After thinking about it, Yumiella had to admit that they didn't make much less sense than Boss Monsters capable of human speech remaining at the bottom floor of a dungeon and respawning after each death, but she had to wonder if these and the balloons were natural developments or the results of escaped breeding experiments.)
Yumiella trudged into town, paid the innkeeper a few coppers for accessing the amenities, and made herself ready to travel.
On the ride over, she kept the pack holding her three Gacha monster eggs on her lap, stroking the three eggs and willing them to hatch soon even as part of her also wanted them to stay small and cute forever, because she'd barely gotten any time with Ryu as a baby before she had to move him outside to his own dwelling.
Thinking of Ryu made her heart hurt, but it was a sweet sort of pain, and for once Yumiella just peacefully let herself be as they traveled toward the last sighting of the Motor Goats.
"We're here, milady," Bakta reported. "Do you have a plan?"
"Pommel Submission." Yumiella stored away one monster egg to stay with her and put the other two safely away in the pack. "Step one, find the herd with our tracking skills. Step two, isolate one Motor Goat, kill it, feed it to the Cardinal Sword. Step three, use what we learn to develop a plan to wipe them out en masse. Mister Bakta, please look around for stool and hoof prints. Mister Tersia, please find high ground to spy for the smoke they produce. Mister Welt, please use your wind magic in whatever way you think will work." Welt had mentioned that he had spells to buff hearing or aid distance vision, and Yumiella didn't want to give a stupid order that flopped. "Miss Farrie and I will speak to the local farmers."
This little speech had mostly exhausted Yumiella's social battery for the morning, so she let Farrie take point in the discussion as she tried to get her itch for a fight back under control. Their prior experiments had unlocked several swords that were easily mastered-
-but none of them particularly provided useful passive stat bonuses. Her Animal Spine Sword offered the highest ATK and a useful skill, so she planned to keep using that until they got a grip on how hard the goats were to kill, but she felt like there was some benefit to using un-mastered swords she was forgetting...
Right, I have a Help Menu now, Yumiella remembered with a twitch as they moved through the woods. She pulled it up with her mind, nearly tripped over a tree root, remembered that they were walking toward where the Motor Goats were guessed to be, and decided to leave it for later.
There was Level Grinding to be done.
"Careful, Lady Hero," Welt warned as he steadied her, and Yumiella felt very grateful that he'd gotten his hair dyed as black as hers, since she didn't have to handle another flashback.
Although... Was it fair of me to ask him-
A put-ut-ut-ut sound filled the air, and then a second, and then a hard crack of impact as her head snapped toward the monsters they'd all heard.
"Mating display, two males tussling," Tersia reported from the tree branch he'd hopped up to.
"Mister Welt, can you freeze them in ice?" Yumiella requested.
"I might not have enough power..." He judged as they carefully snuck closer to the two males in the clearing.
"Ah!" Despite the exclamation, Farrie had kept her exclamation soft. "Faust Mana Breath," she chanted, exhaling a glitter that gathered around Welt. He inhaled and flexed his fingers.
"Right, now I can do it," he decided, shifting to get a good aim. "I am an acolyte who has deciphered the laws of nature. I command the origin of power: bind their forms and their feet in chilling frost! Zweit Winter Prison!"
Chilling mist coalesced around the smoke-spewing goats, who couldn't unlock their horns fast enough but began bleating in alarm as several inches of ice froze them in place.
Sharp Stab. Yumiella raced forward and pierced through both goats' skull with a single thrust of the rapier-style blade.
It wasn't enough to hit the next level, but it was a respectable amount of experience per kill and Yumiella hoped that she would hit Level 20 and 21 by the end of the day. "Mister Bakta, please come help me dismantle these," Yumiella requested as she shifted to Human Meat Sword, which gave her a sizable dissection skill bonus but which (because she wasn't a human-murdering Demon Lord like school rumors said,) she hadn't mastered yet to unlock the permanent passive bonus.
"I think we'll need to melt the ice first, milady," the large, bearded man considered.
Yumiella wordlessly reached into her Inventory to produce the burning branch from earlier-
"!"
-and produced a handful of warm ash instead.
...Oh. The branch burned out in the Inventory. I thought it would still be aflame.
I suppose that means it is not time-paused, and things inside are prone to rot or temperature changes. ...But if it burned to ash instead of the fire guttering out on a scorched branch, then fire was not extinguished, so does that mean there was a source of oxygen as well? I suppose the Inventory could supply airflow, but I don't walk around with the inventory open all day, so there must be airflow even if it is closed.
Now that I think of it, airflow in my inventory would make sense for ensuring the captured monsters of Pummeled Into Submission don't suffocate either. I was assuming it involved suspended animation, but now I suspect otherwise.
Does this mean that I can deliberately store air, oxygen, or other gases in my Inventory? A supply of fresh air could work wonders in underwater areas or places with toxic gas.
Keeping her inventory open, Yumiella waved the Cardinal Sword around, trying to get air to flow into it, but she received no notifications. Frowning, she took a deep breath, pressed her mouth to the Inventory entrance, and blew.
"Lady Hero?" Bakta pressed, shaking her.
A surge of annoyance -- I am experimenting to get stronger right now -- flickered through her before she remembered the location.
"The branch in my inventory burned out," Yumiella explained, dusting the ash off her hands. "Mister Welt, do you know fire magic?"
"Even better, Lady Sword Hero! I am an acolyte who has deciphered the laws of nature. I command the origin of power: ease this bondage with gentle warmth and let the water flow free! Anti-Zweit Winter Prison!"
The ice melted away, Yumiella complimented his counter-spell, and Bakta set to her dissection lesson.
I'm glad my experiment with the bit of ice succeeded, but what will it take for me to unlock a sword that boosts Dark Magic? Yumiella wondered irately once both cut up carcasses had been stored in her inventory.
you could Get moRe powEr if you triEd harDer...
She shook off the image of tracking down a bunch of bandits to slaughter them in the name of justice. Killing people was wrong, and possibly more wrong than usual when it was also convenient.
"If you have finished your experiments, we should find the rest of the herd."
"Yes, Lady Sword Hero! Despite ice's traditional weakness to fire, my ice magic was able to punch through the hide samples much better than any other element, so a rain of icicles should be perfect to eliminate them."
"The majority of them. Plus we need to get across the river to find them... Tersia went to look around, saw the rest of them across the river, came back, and now he's off looking for a boat again," Farrie informed the rest of the party, having apparently decided to do a handstand to pass the time while they were busy with dissections.
"If the goats are near the river, we may be able to use river water to augment the spell. This should be simple enough," Yumiella judged.
... ...
"Urk! Uuuurpp..."
"Poor Lady," Farrie cooed, rubbing Yumiella's shoulders as the Dolkness Countess vomited over the side.
"I've heard of seasick, but I've never heard of anyone getting river sick," Tersia reflected drily as the rowboat rocked back and forth on the river currents.
"Shaddup and show our Lady some respect," Bakta grumbled as he did his best to row smoothly.
I never got on a boat in my entire life as Yumiella... and it was only once when I lived in Japan when I was twelve... How is it that I'm still getting seasick...?
"Lady Hero, I see the goats!" Welt's voice shouted eagerly, but Yumiella was too miserable to react. "I am an acolyte-,"
"Faust Mana Breath! Oh, actually, Faust Life Breath," Farrie cast, and Yumiella felt better as the glimmering energy settled over her.
"...Thank you," Yumiella muttered as Welt finished his chant and icicles rained down to the sound of bleating goats. A flood of EXP gain notices hit her, followed by:
She dismissed the notice as the sound of bleating came to their ears again.
"Missed some!" Tersia shouted as he pulled out his daggers and the sound of splashing neared.
"Ohshit. I am an acolyte who has-,"
"He's not gonna make it, I'll get you to shore," Farrie promised as she grabbed Yumiella by the waist.
"Sharp Stab," Yumiella hissed, feeling good enough to push Farrie aside and thrust the Cardinal Sword so it impaled the Motor Goat before the monster could capsize their boat.
The first goat died with a bleat as the water stopped churning behind it, then Bakta got the second goat with his axe and Welt finished his chant to end the rest.
The sword that Yumiella had blearily dropped in the river reappeared in her hand and zapped her hard enough to shave off 5 HP.
Yumiella's only response was to quietly groan as her stomach tried to turn itself inside out again. And we'll need to take the boat back when we're done. I wish I could jump the river like I used to when my legs were Level 99...
Bakta generously handled all the dissections with Tersia's assistance while Yumiella slowly recovered, as Farrie gave her a back massage and Welt took assorted notes on various ideas while muttering excitedly to himself.
Yumiella decided that she felt too sick to want to risk a boat ride back immediately, so Farrie offered to catch some fish to offer the Cardinal Sword and Welt got a campfire going to improve the Flaming Sword while Yumiella waited miserably for her stomach to settle; Bakta and Tersia offered to scout around the area for monsters or beneficial herbs before they crossed back.
Yumiella felt too queasy to care that she wasn't being terribly productive, for once, so since she was halfway to her personal goal of Level 40 it all in all wasn't a terrible way to spend the afternoon.
"Since you unlocked the wood sword even if we couldn't get a bark sword, let's try this next."
Yumiella took the burning branch Welt had pulled out of the campfire and fed it into her sword.
"Fire damage. This will be useful," Yumiella complimented. The sun is getting higher this morning... "This is enough for now. I will refresh myself and then we will go hunting," Yumiella declared.
Rather than go back into the cave, where there was constrained space and low visibility, Yumiella had agreed to hunt outdoors today so that everyone could get a handle on their improved stats.
Several farms between Riyute Village and Gitah River had reported problems with a trip of Motor Goats ravaging their crops and put out a request to exterminate them, so the team would be riding for an hour or to to check the area and get anything they could manage while Riyute Villagers checked the usability of the mine now that the big monsters were dead and brought back ore samples for the Cardinal Sword.
(Yumiella had originally thought she misheard the assignment, but it turned out that Motor Goats were magical fire-attribute goat monsters with metallic fur, the ability to eat almost anything, and a tendency to belch toxic fumes as they charged with great speed and strength across land or water. After thinking about it, Yumiella had to admit that they didn't make much less sense than Boss Monsters capable of human speech remaining at the bottom floor of a dungeon and respawning after each death, but she had to wonder if these and the balloons were natural developments or the results of escaped breeding experiments.)
Yumiella trudged into town, paid the innkeeper a few coppers for accessing the amenities, and made herself ready to travel.
On the ride over, she kept the pack holding her three Gacha monster eggs on her lap, stroking the three eggs and willing them to hatch soon even as part of her also wanted them to stay small and cute forever, because she'd barely gotten any time with Ryu as a baby before she had to move him outside to his own dwelling.
Thinking of Ryu made her heart hurt, but it was a sweet sort of pain, and for once Yumiella just peacefully let herself be as they traveled toward the last sighting of the Motor Goats.
"We're here, milady," Bakta reported. "Do you have a plan?"
"Pommel Submission." Yumiella stored away one monster egg to stay with her and put the other two safely away in the pack. "Step one, find the herd with our tracking skills. Step two, isolate one Motor Goat, kill it, feed it to the Cardinal Sword. Step three, use what we learn to develop a plan to wipe them out en masse. Mister Bakta, please look around for stool and hoof prints. Mister Tersia, please find high ground to spy for the smoke they produce. Mister Welt, please use your wind magic in whatever way you think will work." Welt had mentioned that he had spells to buff hearing or aid distance vision, and Yumiella didn't want to give a stupid order that flopped. "Miss Farrie and I will speak to the local farmers."
This little speech had mostly exhausted Yumiella's social battery for the morning, so she let Farrie take point in the discussion as she tried to get her itch for a fight back under control. Their prior experiments had unlocked several swords that were easily mastered-
-but none of them particularly provided useful passive stat bonuses. Her Animal Spine Sword offered the highest ATK and a useful skill, so she planned to keep using that until they got a grip on how hard the goats were to kill, but she felt like there was some benefit to using un-mastered swords she was forgetting...
Right, I have a Help Menu now, Yumiella remembered with a twitch as they moved through the woods. She pulled it up with her mind, nearly tripped over a tree root, remembered that they were walking toward where the Motor Goats were guessed to be, and decided to leave it for later.
There was Level Grinding to be done.
"Careful, Lady Hero," Welt warned as he steadied her, and Yumiella felt very grateful that he'd gotten his hair dyed as black as hers, since she didn't have to handle another flashback.
Although... Was it fair of me to ask him-
A put-ut-ut-ut sound filled the air, and then a second, and then a hard crack of impact as her head snapped toward the monsters they'd all heard.
"Mating display, two males tussling," Tersia reported from the tree branch he'd hopped up to.
"Mister Welt, can you freeze them in ice?" Yumiella requested.
"I might not have enough power..." He judged as they carefully snuck closer to the two males in the clearing.
"Ah!" Despite the exclamation, Farrie had kept her exclamation soft. "Faust Mana Breath," she chanted, exhaling a glitter that gathered around Welt. He inhaled and flexed his fingers.
"Right, now I can do it," he decided, shifting to get a good aim. "I am an acolyte who has deciphered the laws of nature. I command the origin of power: bind their forms and their feet in chilling frost! Zweit Winter Prison!"
Chilling mist coalesced around the smoke-spewing goats, who couldn't unlock their horns fast enough but began bleating in alarm as several inches of ice froze them in place.
Sharp Stab. Yumiella raced forward and pierced through both goats' skull with a single thrust of the rapier-style blade.
It wasn't enough to hit the next level, but it was a respectable amount of experience per kill and Yumiella hoped that she would hit Level 20 and 21 by the end of the day. "Mister Bakta, please come help me dismantle these," Yumiella requested as she shifted to Human Meat Sword, which gave her a sizable dissection skill bonus but which (because she wasn't a human-murdering Demon Lord like school rumors said,) she hadn't mastered yet to unlock the permanent passive bonus.
"I think we'll need to melt the ice first, milady," the large, bearded man considered.
Yumiella wordlessly reached into her Inventory to produce the burning branch from earlier-
"!"
-and produced a handful of warm ash instead.
...Oh. The branch burned out in the Inventory. I thought it would still be aflame.
I suppose that means it is not time-paused, and things inside are prone to rot or temperature changes. ...But if it burned to ash instead of the fire guttering out on a scorched branch, then fire was not extinguished, so does that mean there was a source of oxygen as well? I suppose the Inventory could supply airflow, but I don't walk around with the inventory open all day, so there must be airflow even if it is closed.
Now that I think of it, airflow in my inventory would make sense for ensuring the captured monsters of Pummeled Into Submission don't suffocate either. I was assuming it involved suspended animation, but now I suspect otherwise.
Does this mean that I can deliberately store air, oxygen, or other gases in my Inventory? A supply of fresh air could work wonders in underwater areas or places with toxic gas.
Keeping her inventory open, Yumiella waved the Cardinal Sword around, trying to get air to flow into it, but she received no notifications. Frowning, she took a deep breath, pressed her mouth to the Inventory entrance, and blew.
"Lady Hero?" Bakta pressed, shaking her.
A surge of annoyance -- I am experimenting to get stronger right now -- flickered through her before she remembered the location.
"The branch in my inventory burned out," Yumiella explained, dusting the ash off her hands. "Mister Welt, do you know fire magic?"
"Even better, Lady Sword Hero! I am an acolyte who has deciphered the laws of nature. I command the origin of power: ease this bondage with gentle warmth and let the water flow free! Anti-Zweit Winter Prison!"
The ice melted away, Yumiella complimented his counter-spell, and Bakta set to her dissection lesson.
I'm glad my experiment with the bit of ice succeeded, but what will it take for me to unlock a sword that boosts Dark Magic? Yumiella wondered irately once both cut up carcasses had been stored in her inventory.
you could Get moRe powEr if you triEd harDer...
She shook off the image of tracking down a bunch of bandits to slaughter them in the name of justice. Killing people was wrong, and possibly more wrong than usual when it was also convenient.
"If you have finished your experiments, we should find the rest of the herd."
"Yes, Lady Sword Hero! Despite ice's traditional weakness to fire, my ice magic was able to punch through the hide samples much better than any other element, so a rain of icicles should be perfect to eliminate them."
"The majority of them. Plus we need to get across the river to find them... Tersia went to look around, saw the rest of them across the river, came back, and now he's off looking for a boat again," Farrie informed the rest of the party, having apparently decided to do a handstand to pass the time while they were busy with dissections.
"If the goats are near the river, we may be able to use river water to augment the spell. This should be simple enough," Yumiella judged.
... ...
"Urk! Uuuurpp..."
"Poor Lady," Farrie cooed, rubbing Yumiella's shoulders as the Dolkness Countess vomited over the side.
"I've heard of seasick, but I've never heard of anyone getting river sick," Tersia reflected drily as the rowboat rocked back and forth on the river currents.
"Shaddup and show our Lady some respect," Bakta grumbled as he did his best to row smoothly.
I never got on a boat in my entire life as Yumiella... and it was only once when I lived in Japan when I was twelve... How is it that I'm still getting seasick...?
"Lady Hero, I see the goats!" Welt's voice shouted eagerly, but Yumiella was too miserable to react. "I am an acolyte-,"
"Faust Mana Breath! Oh, actually, Faust Life Breath," Farrie cast, and Yumiella felt better as the glimmering energy settled over her.
"...Thank you," Yumiella muttered as Welt finished his chant and icicles rained down to the sound of bleating goats. A flood of EXP gain notices hit her, followed by:
She dismissed the notice as the sound of bleating came to their ears again.
"Missed some!" Tersia shouted as he pulled out his daggers and the sound of splashing neared.
"Ohshit. I am an acolyte who has-,"
"He's not gonna make it, I'll get you to shore," Farrie promised as she grabbed Yumiella by the waist.
"Sharp Stab," Yumiella hissed, feeling good enough to push Farrie aside and thrust the Cardinal Sword so it impaled the Motor Goat before the monster could capsize their boat.
The first goat died with a bleat as the water stopped churning behind it, then Bakta got the second goat with his axe and Welt finished his chant to end the rest.
The sword that Yumiella had blearily dropped in the river reappeared in her hand and zapped her hard enough to shave off 5 HP.
Yumiella's only response was to quietly groan as her stomach tried to turn itself inside out again. And we'll need to take the boat back when we're done. I wish I could jump the river like I used to when my legs were Level 99...
Bakta generously handled all the dissections with Tersia's assistance while Yumiella slowly recovered, as Farrie gave her a back massage and Welt took assorted notes on various ideas while muttering excitedly to himself.
Yumiella decided that she felt too sick to want to risk a boat ride back immediately, so Farrie offered to catch some fish to offer the Cardinal Sword and Welt got a campfire going to improve the Flaming Sword while Yumiella waited miserably for her stomach to settle; Bakta and Tersia offered to scout around the area for monsters or beneficial herbs before they crossed back.
Yumiella felt too queasy to care that she wasn't being terribly productive, for once, so since she was halfway to her personal goal of Level 40 it all in all wasn't a terrible way to spend the afternoon.
- Location
- USA
I think adding the message function might have been a mistake. Without it everything could be waved off as offscreen due to standard fantasy lack of communication, but this raises the question of why it was not used.
I suppose an answer for why she hasn't gotten a reply or been notified in the first place could be handled well?
I suppose an answer for why she hasn't gotten a reply or been notified in the first place could be handled well?
SeQuester
Novice explorer
- Location
- Russia
- Pronouns
- He/His
In the SB thread, the author said that despite Yumiella's assumptions of instant communication, the messages take time to be delivered to the addressees based on distance.
Awesome chapter, no replies from her last blood message yet? Also, I'm kind of curious about the seasickness thing, does that happen in canon? Because I agree with Tersia, getting seasick on a river is not a real thing.
- Location
- England
Missed opportunity to unlock vomit sword.
Obloquy
CrossMyHeart And HopeToDie, StickANeedleInMyEye
- Location
- the Physical Realm
Depends on your definition of "well" but you can assume the four of them have some assumptions about the message system that are sadly inaccurate and they don't realize it.
As revealed above:
The messages basically travel at walking speed -- meaning it's probably an 8 hour trip between Riyute and the capital, then 8 hours back -- it only seemed instantaneous before because the four of them were standing near each other when they tested it. Also, Yumiella is expecting an ALERT to pop up when the reply arrives to her question, but it's actually less magical email and more magical snail mail that can't be intercepted.
Canon-Yumiella is never seen on any kind of boat, never seen swimming or wading, and she grew up in a forested mountain region pretty far inland. So we have no idea whether or not she ever got seasick.
However, Ren Amaki, the canon Sword Hero, had a running joke where he (and Motoyasu and Itsuki) got horribly seasick on the boat to Cal Mira, and worse, Ren was the only one of the four Cardinal Heroes completely unable to swim, to the point that he stayed in the chest-high part of a hot spring and he nearly drowned flailing in water shallow enough to stand in.
Given that canon Yumiella has no known experience swimming or riding boats, I decided it would be amusing to transport over this weakness of canon-Ren to her, because being an awesome combat badass doesn't mean she can't have her own Why Did It Have To Be Snakes moment as well.
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- Location
- USA
That makes an awful system, but a decent explanation. Do the messages have to wait for a ferry/boat at water crossings?
Obloquy
CrossMyHeart And HopeToDie, StickANeedleInMyEye
- Location
- the Physical Realm
That would be hilarious! Maybe instead of a ripple/wave spreading out at walking speed, there's an actual invisible messenger spirit who has to chase down each hero to deliver the message.
Messenger: "Why do they keep moving!? I nearly delivered this update last night and then they teleported back to the capital city!! I'd have delivered it already if I just stayed there instead of having to chase them down!!!"
I came up with this system using the idea that the messaging would be faster and better once they upgraded it a few times -- I mean, they literally unlocked this Ability at Level One, it's seriously not going to be as game-breaking as they think -- but it's still early days so the Heroes don't know that and haven't had the time/resources to do so yet.
Nakama
Obloquy
CrossMyHeart And HopeToDie, StickANeedleInMyEye
- Location
- the Physical Realm
Day 4, morning
Morning dawned, and Yumiella Dolkness sat quietly by the breakfast campfire, considering her achievements from the previous day.
Mastering more sword forms was always good, but the most important notification was one she'd woken up to that morning, after having spent all yesterday and last night with the Animal Spine Sword form instead of switching around.
This message had prompted Yumiella to go through her Help Menu in detail again, and then to go through her notes, and the main reason she hadn't yet asked her teammates for their opinion on whether or not the reset would be worth it was because she hadn't wanted to admit that she'd forgotten about this using this Proficiency improvement method for herself after she'd written notes about it for the other three heroes in their first strategy meeting.
Although her written notes hadn't included the data that an unmastered sword couldn't get 100% Proficiency (her Help Menu didn't explain whether it couldn't get any Proficiency until it was Mastered or whether it topped out at 99%) or any mention of how much PP was a lot or a little, so she felt less embarrassed for forgetting about it.
Deciding that waiting longer wouldn't help her, Yumiella reset the Proficiency and was awarded 15 PP. It seemed she couldn't Awaken a sword form that wasn't Mastered yet either, so after perusing the list she decided on the Limestone Sword, which couldn't go too wrong.
It improved all the stats of the Sword and its skill, and I have 5 PP remaining. Interesting... I need to get in the habit of keeping one Sword Form instead of switching between them, Yumiella noted. It may seem counter-intuitive to not become used to multiple forms' weight and shape, but improving the numerical values needs to take precedent early on, and later I can specialize more with the few sword forms that I find comfortable and useful.
"Breakfast is up, Lady Sword Hero," Bakta declared, and she turned from her contemplation to eat.
Day 4, late morning
Yumiella remained in the center of their formation as they trooped through the tunnels of the mine. While they had been hunting Motor Goats the day before, a few of the Riyute miners had gone back to investigate the mine, only to report that they'd had a run-in with some man-sized beetles and spiders now that the hounds and the one zombie were gone.
Since Yumiella didn't have those sword forms and they sounded like good EXP, she'd taken her team in to clear the mine's tunnels more thoroughly.
"Hey Bakta, we passed the spot they said," Tersia observed, pointing out a few shards of glass by one side of the tunnel where the bug monsters had attacked the miners and broken a lantern. "You sure you don't want me to take point, since it's a cave?"
Bakta scratched awkwardly at his beard. "You'd be a better tracker over the stone in here, but you're most like to survive an attack from behind, and I'm better if we get charged from the front."
"Umahahahaha... Fair," Tersia allowed, anxiously spinning one of his daggers. "Wait, get me some light up near the ceiling?" Farrie stretched her torch up higher. "Oooh, the bugs dug out a tunnel above our eye level. We'll need to keep our eyes on those."
"Mister Welt, please seal it up with ice," Yumiella instructed. One chant later, they continued further down the tunnel.
Yumiella had her Bat Sword active, since it had passive stealth and hearing bonuses, and her level growth combined with passive ATK bonuses from mastered swords meant that she probably wouldn't need to change forms with her party to assist her.
So they moved steadily deeper into the mines.
"Wait," Bakta ordered. They paused, and he peered ahead. "Tersia, my instincts are telling me there's something here, but I can't identify why I'm worried."
Their sneaky scout moved up as Yumiella shifted to rearguard position, keeping her attention out for assaults from behind.
"...Spiderwebs. Might just be regular spiders instead of giant ones," Tersia concluded, "but there are several strands in the tunnel ahead, good instincts."
"Tug on the web and try to lure a spider," Yumiella suggested.
Nothing showed up after a few minutes, so Yumiella cut the web to put in her sword -- it increased the sample counter for her Wire Sword instead of creating a new sword -- and they proceeded deeper.
More spiderwebs began to blanket the edges of the tunnel, but at least Yumiella got to improve her sample counter toward mastering the Wire Sword as a result, even as no monsters came out to attack them.
And then she heard chittering.
"Stop. Behind and above," Yumiella informed her teammates.
"Faust Flare," Welt cast, hurling a bolt of fire at the ceiling.
It splashed off the rocky roof next to a beetle that had been approaching while clinging to the ceiling, illuminating several more giant beetles nearby.
"Blow them to the floor," Yumiella ordered. "Don't retreat."
"I am an acolyte who wields the origin of power! I have deciphered the laws of nature!"
One giant beetle dropped deliberately down onto them, but Yumiella swatted it away in mid-air, Farrie snapped off a high kick that knocked it further off, and then Tersia raced forward to take its head off with his daggers.
"Winds around us, rip these anchors from their moorings and hurl them by my will! Zweit Tearing Gale!"
Wind howled down the tunnel, ripping four more beetles from the roof of the cavern.
Yumiella lunged, burying her sword in the guts of one beetle as it fell, bisecting it before it hit the ground. She grimaced as its death throes scratched her with its flailing leg, and said "Heavy Block."
The Skill of her Awakened Limestone Sword only had a mild SP cost, and where before it had made her heavy enough to break a zombie's bones with flying kicks, now all she needed to do was stomp on the beetles' shells to kill them.
It was when Yumiella began unlocking new Sword Forms using the first of the beetle carcasses that she noticed a problem.
"...How long ago was the First Wave?" she asked quietly.
"About two weeks ago, milady," Bakta estimated.
"Wait," Tersia realized, "don't tell me...?"
"These beetles are Wave monsters," Yumiella confirmed. With wolves traveling this far it made more sense. Maybe if the beetles can fly...? But if it will take us several days to travel to the site of the first Wave, and we've seen two groups of monsters that have spread this far out... "We may need to accelerate our schedule to help wiping out the remnants of the last Wave. But we should not move with haste in here, so we will discuss it when we leave. For now, remain alert."
They continued to explore.
Tersia's thrown daggers took down several bats, including a live bat that got put into the Captivity Sword, but no Voice Gengars appeared. Bakta beheaded a tunnel snake before it could slither into a crevice, so Yumiella got some good additions to her sword counts.
And then the spider webs became much, much thicker.
"I can't safely go any further," Bakta admitted.
Yumiella closed her eyes, then said, "I do not hear any movement in the cavern."
"I'm up, then," Tersia declared, striding forward and beginning to pick his way through the tangled webs.
"I was going to throw the captive bat into the web and see if a spider arrived," Yumiella noted, but Tersia gave a casual wave as he carefully ducked and weaved into the large, web strewn cavern ahead of them. Once he was well through the entryway, he peered around, then very very careful began to make his way back. He looks pale, Yumiella noted, preparing for bad news.
"G-guys... There are three to five spiders up in the cavern there, but there's a giant egg sac hanging in a corner. If that hatches-,"
"We exterminate it," Yumiella confirmed. "Do we have enough supplies?"
"If it's ultimately just the spiders, then yes," Bakta assessed. "Maybe some more fuel to burn it the webs-,"
"Spider webs don't burn," Farrie interrupted.
"A large fire would eat the good air and suffocate us," Welt objected at the same moment.
There was a pause, so Yumiella stepped in. "I will throw a bat to draw in the spiders. Mister Welt, please be prepared to use magic if I have difficulty killing them. Everyone else, please guard against attacks from behind."
"Right, but... In case you get grabbed, we should tie a rope around your waist so we can pull you back," Farrie advised.
Preparations were made, the new formation was assumed, and the bat was tossed into the spider webs.
When the first giant spider appeared, Yumiella frowned slightly as she fought down her urge to charge forward into battle so she could slay it immediately.
fiGht to eaRn powEr, strEngth from Death...
"Welt, kill it with magic please. I shouldn't charge into the web," she judged as the spider's chelicerae began examining the struggling bat.
"Faust... Icicle, Faust Wind Spear," he quickly chanted, and the wind-boosted ice spike struck the spider through one eye.
It still twitched for almost a minute before it died, during which Yumiella kept a tense watch for any tricks.
"Is there a risk of the other spiders taking the egg sack out of our reach?" she checked once no new attack was forthcoming.
""No,"" three of her team answered at once.
"Farrie, or Bakta, please bring me the spider's body and more webbing."
"Still no sign of the other spiders moving around," Tersia reported from the entryway as Yumiella finished absorbing everything.
"If we cannot lure them to us, then we will not be lured to them. Mister Welt, can you kill them safely?"
"I will strike them down with-!"
"Quietly," Tersia hissed.
"Um," Farrie tapped Tersia on the shoulder. "Wouldn't it be a good thing if we make enough noise to draw the spiders to us?"
"Not if the noise makes those spiders scurry away," Bakta answered quietly.
Yumiella sighed and waited for them to get it out of their systems.
Day 4, afternoon
After the spiders were dead, Bakta had insisted on crushing all the spider eggs rather than trying to raise, store, or sell any because 'You do not take risks with Wave monsters'.
Yumiella had been disappointed, but she hadn't argued about it, though she'd sighed when the egg and cocoon remains had not unlocked any new forms.
They'd encountered several more groups of beetles and a few individual spiders, but nothing troubling before they returned outside for an afternoon break.
Thirty days until the wave. I want to hit Level 21 by the end of today... I did gain 100% Proficiency with the Bat Sword, so I can reset it to get more PP.
What swords should I awaken, and what swords do I need to master? Yumiella munched on her late lunch with all three incubating eggs in her lap and perused her MENU list of sword forms.
Swords I need to Master: Ichor Sword I because all I should need are healing potions to rejuvenate the blood I feed it. Bloodshed Sword can be mastered if I ask villagers to donate some drops of blood. Haircut Sword is similar...
Yumiella paused, swallowed her mouthful, and then turned to look at Welt.
Specifically, at Welt's dyed black hair.
"Mister Welt," she admitted with a knot in her stomach, "I feel like I owe you an apology."
"Ah-? For what, Lady Hero?"
"It was wrong of me to ask you to dye your hair. I should not-,"
"Um," Farrie intervened, "it was because his hair woke up hungry memories, right?"
"Y-Yes! Lady Sword Hero, please don't-!"
Yumiella held up a hand, and Welt's loud declaration cut off.
"I want to tell you about Balshine, the world I was born into before this world. The first king of Balshine had two lieutenants, a woman with powerful Light and Holy magic, and a man who was a skilled warrior and monster tamer with powerful Dark magic. While the woman married the first King to become the Saintess Queen, there grew a powerful resentment between the king and his right-hand warrior. Eventually, the man's grudge grew to a point that he transformed into the self-proclaimed Demon King and directed armies of monsters to attack Balshine Kingdom."
Yumiella paused her tale for a moment as her party members muttered reactions of outrage.
"In addition to his dark magic, the Demon King possessed naturally black hair and eyes. Each of these three characteristics -- dark hair, dark eyes, and dark-attribute magic -- became individually considered bad omens or points of mockery, such that Patrick was mocked by some of his family for having dark gray hair, despite his green eyes and his talent with wind and earth magic. Similarly, children with brown hair and brown eyes were also often looked down on and would not play with their age mates."
"That's sad~!" Farrie cried.
"And stupid," Bakta rumbled. "Discrimination based on hair color. That's no way for humans to treat each other."
Welt fiddled awkwardly with his newly black hair, but Tersia leaned forward intently.
"Lady Hero, I remember you said that you had dark-element magic before the summoning reset your level," Tersia noted. "If you have dark hair, dark eyes, and dark magic... how did that world treat you?"
"They-,"
Farrie gasped dramatically. "Oh! Are you feeling guilty because you had to dye your hair, and now you made Tersia do it too?"
"That's not-,"
"Ah-! Lady Hero! Please don't feel guilty, it was my own choice to make this change for your comfort!!"
"I-,"
"Hair dye to avoid medical problems is different from a vanity, Lady Hero, please don't feel guilty," Tersia insisted.
"That-,"
"SHADDUP! Let our Lady Sword Hero speak already, you punks!" Bakta roared, and the other three fell silent. "Besides, she would have got her coloring from one of her parents, so they must have taught her how to handle it, even if she couldn't be her true and holy self until the summoning brought her to us."
But you shouted over me as well even though they were... never mind, Yumiella sighed. "My parents were both blonde, although they had violet eyes that may have contributed. I do not know what elements, if any, they had an affinity for."
All four of her teammates reacted very slightly, in the manner that an anime would have exaggerated with sweat drops and sounds effects.
"D-doesn't that violate genetic principles, Lady Hero? I mean! I only know the bare minimum since it's studied mostly in Siltvelt and Faubley, but His Majesty brought a bit of the knowledge over with him so I have the basic bits, like two blonde parents producing blonde children..." Welt trailed off awkwardly. "Um, genetics are-,"
"I do not know if the workings of heredity, genotypes, and phenotypes are the same between different worlds, but I have studied the concepts," declared Yumiella Dolkness, once Yumi Satou, a college student in 21st-century Japan. "However, I am certain that there was no affair involved, or else Count Dolkness would certainly have abandoned and erased me as an infant, and possibly his wife as well to cover the scandal. I was not made to dye my hair or change my appearance as a child, rather, I was left at the Dolkness Estate in our county's seat while my parents lived full-time in the capital city, with only sporadic letters exchanged between us. The maids who raised me did not bare me malice, but they feared my appearance and left me alone as much as they could. I reached the Level Cap at a young age because my primary form of entertainment each day was to sneak out of the house and hunt nearby monsters with the magic I taught myself from books and experimenting."
"When I was old enough to attend the Royal Magic Academy and my Max Level became known, my birth parents still did not visit me face-to-face, only sending letters with files for marriage candidacy and instructions that my husband would become the new Count Dolkness, while I would provide our line an heir."
If any of her party members had been drinking, there would have been some epic spit-takes.
"They what!?" "You'd what?!" "That's-!" "How the-?!"
It took a bit for everyone to stop objecting over each other and calm down into coherency.
"Lady Hero," Welt eventually asked, "were either or both of your parents, by chance, the result of inbreeding?"
"Yeah, that's brain damage levels of dumb-as fuck," Tersia agreed quietly.
"Idiot!" Bakta whacked Welt upside the head, and Yumiella idly checked her MENU to note that it had done some HP damage. "If they were, then you'd be implying that she was as well!"
Welt began babbling apologies, so Yumiella cut him off: "I did later discover that my parents were cousins, yes. I do not know about their parents, but it would not surprise me." Welt looked stricken as the others grimaced. "When I traveled to the academy, people were afraid of my power and my magic, but also of my appearance and my hair color. It was wrong of me to ask you to change your appearance for the sake of my comfort."
With that, Yumiella stood and gave a formal Japanese bow toward Welt.
The was some awkward shuffling, and then Farrie spoke out instead of Welt.
"Guys, I vote we all dye our hair black as a show of support for Lady Yumiella!"
"Eh, sure." "Sounds great, umahahahaha~!"
Yumiella... had no idea how to respond to that.
Or that. Why must this world keep throwing curveballs at me? she wondered, even though she felt something other than exasperated in her heart.
She blinked rapidly, because her eyes were oddly blurry, and then Farrie was patting her cheeks dry with a handkerchief for some odd reason.
"Thank you," she said softly.
Morning dawned, and Yumiella Dolkness sat quietly by the breakfast campfire, considering her achievements from the previous day.
Mastering more sword forms was always good, but the most important notification was one she'd woken up to that morning, after having spent all yesterday and last night with the Animal Spine Sword form instead of switching around.
This message had prompted Yumiella to go through her Help Menu in detail again, and then to go through her notes, and the main reason she hadn't yet asked her teammates for their opinion on whether or not the reset would be worth it was because she hadn't wanted to admit that she'd forgotten about this using this Proficiency improvement method for herself after she'd written notes about it for the other three heroes in their first strategy meeting.
Although her written notes hadn't included the data that an unmastered sword couldn't get 100% Proficiency (her Help Menu didn't explain whether it couldn't get any Proficiency until it was Mastered or whether it topped out at 99%) or any mention of how much PP was a lot or a little, so she felt less embarrassed for forgetting about it.
Deciding that waiting longer wouldn't help her, Yumiella reset the Proficiency and was awarded 15 PP. It seemed she couldn't Awaken a sword form that wasn't Mastered yet either, so after perusing the list she decided on the Limestone Sword, which couldn't go too wrong.
It improved all the stats of the Sword and its skill, and I have 5 PP remaining. Interesting... I need to get in the habit of keeping one Sword Form instead of switching between them, Yumiella noted. It may seem counter-intuitive to not become used to multiple forms' weight and shape, but improving the numerical values needs to take precedent early on, and later I can specialize more with the few sword forms that I find comfortable and useful.
"Breakfast is up, Lady Sword Hero," Bakta declared, and she turned from her contemplation to eat.
Day 4, late morning
Yumiella remained in the center of their formation as they trooped through the tunnels of the mine. While they had been hunting Motor Goats the day before, a few of the Riyute miners had gone back to investigate the mine, only to report that they'd had a run-in with some man-sized beetles and spiders now that the hounds and the one zombie were gone.
Since Yumiella didn't have those sword forms and they sounded like good EXP, she'd taken her team in to clear the mine's tunnels more thoroughly.
"Hey Bakta, we passed the spot they said," Tersia observed, pointing out a few shards of glass by one side of the tunnel where the bug monsters had attacked the miners and broken a lantern. "You sure you don't want me to take point, since it's a cave?"
Bakta scratched awkwardly at his beard. "You'd be a better tracker over the stone in here, but you're most like to survive an attack from behind, and I'm better if we get charged from the front."
"Umahahahaha... Fair," Tersia allowed, anxiously spinning one of his daggers. "Wait, get me some light up near the ceiling?" Farrie stretched her torch up higher. "Oooh, the bugs dug out a tunnel above our eye level. We'll need to keep our eyes on those."
"Mister Welt, please seal it up with ice," Yumiella instructed. One chant later, they continued further down the tunnel.
Yumiella had her Bat Sword active, since it had passive stealth and hearing bonuses, and her level growth combined with passive ATK bonuses from mastered swords meant that she probably wouldn't need to change forms with her party to assist her.
So they moved steadily deeper into the mines.
"Wait," Bakta ordered. They paused, and he peered ahead. "Tersia, my instincts are telling me there's something here, but I can't identify why I'm worried."
Their sneaky scout moved up as Yumiella shifted to rearguard position, keeping her attention out for assaults from behind.
"...Spiderwebs. Might just be regular spiders instead of giant ones," Tersia concluded, "but there are several strands in the tunnel ahead, good instincts."
"Tug on the web and try to lure a spider," Yumiella suggested.
Nothing showed up after a few minutes, so Yumiella cut the web to put in her sword -- it increased the sample counter for her Wire Sword instead of creating a new sword -- and they proceeded deeper.
More spiderwebs began to blanket the edges of the tunnel, but at least Yumiella got to improve her sample counter toward mastering the Wire Sword as a result, even as no monsters came out to attack them.
And then she heard chittering.
"Stop. Behind and above," Yumiella informed her teammates.
"Faust Flare," Welt cast, hurling a bolt of fire at the ceiling.
It splashed off the rocky roof next to a beetle that had been approaching while clinging to the ceiling, illuminating several more giant beetles nearby.
"Blow them to the floor," Yumiella ordered. "Don't retreat."
"I am an acolyte who wields the origin of power! I have deciphered the laws of nature!"
One giant beetle dropped deliberately down onto them, but Yumiella swatted it away in mid-air, Farrie snapped off a high kick that knocked it further off, and then Tersia raced forward to take its head off with his daggers.
"Winds around us, rip these anchors from their moorings and hurl them by my will! Zweit Tearing Gale!"
Wind howled down the tunnel, ripping four more beetles from the roof of the cavern.
Yumiella lunged, burying her sword in the guts of one beetle as it fell, bisecting it before it hit the ground. She grimaced as its death throes scratched her with its flailing leg, and said "Heavy Block."
The Skill of her Awakened Limestone Sword only had a mild SP cost, and where before it had made her heavy enough to break a zombie's bones with flying kicks, now all she needed to do was stomp on the beetles' shells to kill them.
It was when Yumiella began unlocking new Sword Forms using the first of the beetle carcasses that she noticed a problem.
"...How long ago was the First Wave?" she asked quietly.
"About two weeks ago, milady," Bakta estimated.
"Wait," Tersia realized, "don't tell me...?"
"These beetles are Wave monsters," Yumiella confirmed. With wolves traveling this far it made more sense. Maybe if the beetles can fly...? But if it will take us several days to travel to the site of the first Wave, and we've seen two groups of monsters that have spread this far out... "We may need to accelerate our schedule to help wiping out the remnants of the last Wave. But we should not move with haste in here, so we will discuss it when we leave. For now, remain alert."
They continued to explore.
Tersia's thrown daggers took down several bats, including a live bat that got put into the Captivity Sword, but no Voice Gengars appeared. Bakta beheaded a tunnel snake before it could slither into a crevice, so Yumiella got some good additions to her sword counts.
And then the spider webs became much, much thicker.
"I can't safely go any further," Bakta admitted.
Yumiella closed her eyes, then said, "I do not hear any movement in the cavern."
"I'm up, then," Tersia declared, striding forward and beginning to pick his way through the tangled webs.
"I was going to throw the captive bat into the web and see if a spider arrived," Yumiella noted, but Tersia gave a casual wave as he carefully ducked and weaved into the large, web strewn cavern ahead of them. Once he was well through the entryway, he peered around, then very very careful began to make his way back. He looks pale, Yumiella noted, preparing for bad news.
"G-guys... There are three to five spiders up in the cavern there, but there's a giant egg sac hanging in a corner. If that hatches-,"
"We exterminate it," Yumiella confirmed. "Do we have enough supplies?"
"If it's ultimately just the spiders, then yes," Bakta assessed. "Maybe some more fuel to burn it the webs-,"
"Spider webs don't burn," Farrie interrupted.
"A large fire would eat the good air and suffocate us," Welt objected at the same moment.
There was a pause, so Yumiella stepped in. "I will throw a bat to draw in the spiders. Mister Welt, please be prepared to use magic if I have difficulty killing them. Everyone else, please guard against attacks from behind."
"Right, but... In case you get grabbed, we should tie a rope around your waist so we can pull you back," Farrie advised.
Preparations were made, the new formation was assumed, and the bat was tossed into the spider webs.
When the first giant spider appeared, Yumiella frowned slightly as she fought down her urge to charge forward into battle so she could slay it immediately.
fiGht to eaRn powEr, strEngth from Death...
"Welt, kill it with magic please. I shouldn't charge into the web," she judged as the spider's chelicerae began examining the struggling bat.
"Faust... Icicle, Faust Wind Spear," he quickly chanted, and the wind-boosted ice spike struck the spider through one eye.
It still twitched for almost a minute before it died, during which Yumiella kept a tense watch for any tricks.
"Is there a risk of the other spiders taking the egg sack out of our reach?" she checked once no new attack was forthcoming.
""No,"" three of her team answered at once.
"Farrie, or Bakta, please bring me the spider's body and more webbing."
"Still no sign of the other spiders moving around," Tersia reported from the entryway as Yumiella finished absorbing everything.
"If we cannot lure them to us, then we will not be lured to them. Mister Welt, can you kill them safely?"
"I will strike them down with-!"
"Quietly," Tersia hissed.
"Um," Farrie tapped Tersia on the shoulder. "Wouldn't it be a good thing if we make enough noise to draw the spiders to us?"
"Not if the noise makes those spiders scurry away," Bakta answered quietly.
Yumiella sighed and waited for them to get it out of their systems.
Day 4, afternoon
After the spiders were dead, Bakta had insisted on crushing all the spider eggs rather than trying to raise, store, or sell any because 'You do not take risks with Wave monsters'.
Yumiella had been disappointed, but she hadn't argued about it, though she'd sighed when the egg and cocoon remains had not unlocked any new forms.
They'd encountered several more groups of beetles and a few individual spiders, but nothing troubling before they returned outside for an afternoon break.
Thirty days until the wave. I want to hit Level 21 by the end of today... I did gain 100% Proficiency with the Bat Sword, so I can reset it to get more PP.
What swords should I awaken, and what swords do I need to master? Yumiella munched on her late lunch with all three incubating eggs in her lap and perused her MENU list of sword forms.
Swords I need to Master: Ichor Sword I because all I should need are healing potions to rejuvenate the blood I feed it. Bloodshed Sword can be mastered if I ask villagers to donate some drops of blood. Haircut Sword is similar...
Yumiella paused, swallowed her mouthful, and then turned to look at Welt.
Specifically, at Welt's dyed black hair.
"Mister Welt," she admitted with a knot in her stomach, "I feel like I owe you an apology."
"Ah-? For what, Lady Hero?"
"It was wrong of me to ask you to dye your hair. I should not-,"
"Um," Farrie intervened, "it was because his hair woke up hungry memories, right?"
"Y-Yes! Lady Sword Hero, please don't-!"
Yumiella held up a hand, and Welt's loud declaration cut off.
"I want to tell you about Balshine, the world I was born into before this world. The first king of Balshine had two lieutenants, a woman with powerful Light and Holy magic, and a man who was a skilled warrior and monster tamer with powerful Dark magic. While the woman married the first King to become the Saintess Queen, there grew a powerful resentment between the king and his right-hand warrior. Eventually, the man's grudge grew to a point that he transformed into the self-proclaimed Demon King and directed armies of monsters to attack Balshine Kingdom."
Yumiella paused her tale for a moment as her party members muttered reactions of outrage.
"In addition to his dark magic, the Demon King possessed naturally black hair and eyes. Each of these three characteristics -- dark hair, dark eyes, and dark-attribute magic -- became individually considered bad omens or points of mockery, such that Patrick was mocked by some of his family for having dark gray hair, despite his green eyes and his talent with wind and earth magic. Similarly, children with brown hair and brown eyes were also often looked down on and would not play with their age mates."
"That's sad~!" Farrie cried.
"And stupid," Bakta rumbled. "Discrimination based on hair color. That's no way for humans to treat each other."
Welt fiddled awkwardly with his newly black hair, but Tersia leaned forward intently.
"Lady Hero, I remember you said that you had dark-element magic before the summoning reset your level," Tersia noted. "If you have dark hair, dark eyes, and dark magic... how did that world treat you?"
"They-,"
Farrie gasped dramatically. "Oh! Are you feeling guilty because you had to dye your hair, and now you made Tersia do it too?"
"That's not-,"
"Ah-! Lady Hero! Please don't feel guilty, it was my own choice to make this change for your comfort!!"
"I-,"
"Hair dye to avoid medical problems is different from a vanity, Lady Hero, please don't feel guilty," Tersia insisted.
"That-,"
"SHADDUP! Let our Lady Sword Hero speak already, you punks!" Bakta roared, and the other three fell silent. "Besides, she would have got her coloring from one of her parents, so they must have taught her how to handle it, even if she couldn't be her true and holy self until the summoning brought her to us."
But you shouted over me as well even though they were... never mind, Yumiella sighed. "My parents were both blonde, although they had violet eyes that may have contributed. I do not know what elements, if any, they had an affinity for."
All four of her teammates reacted very slightly, in the manner that an anime would have exaggerated with sweat drops and sounds effects.
"D-doesn't that violate genetic principles, Lady Hero? I mean! I only know the bare minimum since it's studied mostly in Siltvelt and Faubley, but His Majesty brought a bit of the knowledge over with him so I have the basic bits, like two blonde parents producing blonde children..." Welt trailed off awkwardly. "Um, genetics are-,"
"I do not know if the workings of heredity, genotypes, and phenotypes are the same between different worlds, but I have studied the concepts," declared Yumiella Dolkness, once Yumi Satou, a college student in 21st-century Japan. "However, I am certain that there was no affair involved, or else Count Dolkness would certainly have abandoned and erased me as an infant, and possibly his wife as well to cover the scandal. I was not made to dye my hair or change my appearance as a child, rather, I was left at the Dolkness Estate in our county's seat while my parents lived full-time in the capital city, with only sporadic letters exchanged between us. The maids who raised me did not bare me malice, but they feared my appearance and left me alone as much as they could. I reached the Level Cap at a young age because my primary form of entertainment each day was to sneak out of the house and hunt nearby monsters with the magic I taught myself from books and experimenting."
"When I was old enough to attend the Royal Magic Academy and my Max Level became known, my birth parents still did not visit me face-to-face, only sending letters with files for marriage candidacy and instructions that my husband would become the new Count Dolkness, while I would provide our line an heir."
If any of her party members had been drinking, there would have been some epic spit-takes.
"They what!?" "You'd what?!" "That's-!" "How the-?!"
It took a bit for everyone to stop objecting over each other and calm down into coherency.
"Lady Hero," Welt eventually asked, "were either or both of your parents, by chance, the result of inbreeding?"
"Yeah, that's brain damage levels of dumb-as fuck," Tersia agreed quietly.
"Idiot!" Bakta whacked Welt upside the head, and Yumiella idly checked her MENU to note that it had done some HP damage. "If they were, then you'd be implying that she was as well!"
Welt began babbling apologies, so Yumiella cut him off: "I did later discover that my parents were cousins, yes. I do not know about their parents, but it would not surprise me." Welt looked stricken as the others grimaced. "When I traveled to the academy, people were afraid of my power and my magic, but also of my appearance and my hair color. It was wrong of me to ask you to change your appearance for the sake of my comfort."
With that, Yumiella stood and gave a formal Japanese bow toward Welt.
The was some awkward shuffling, and then Farrie spoke out instead of Welt.
"Guys, I vote we all dye our hair black as a show of support for Lady Yumiella!"
"Eh, sure." "Sounds great, umahahahaha~!"
Yumiella... had no idea how to respond to that.
Or that. Why must this world keep throwing curveballs at me? she wondered, even though she felt something other than exasperated in her heart.
She blinked rapidly, because her eyes were oddly blurry, and then Farrie was patting her cheeks dry with a handkerchief for some odd reason.
"Thank you," she said softly.
This last sword feels like a counter to the cursed series, I like it.
Hatching
Obloquy
CrossMyHeart And HopeToDie, StickANeedleInMyEye
- Location
- the Physical Realm
Day 4, afternoon
With her other teammates off to make crazy fashion choices in support of her, Yumiella was left to quietly contemplate how her life ended up like this.
Thinking about it started to give her a headache and make her chest tight, so she went back to diving through her HELP MENU to get a better idea of all the power-up methods, how they could be used, which methods were worth using, and how to differentiate between them.
Yumiella would have felt guilty about not doing this earlier, except her memories definitely told her that the HELP MENU had not been this thorough on previous viewings, so it looked like the menu grew with her (possibly certain entries were level locked?) and that she would need to continue checking it for new information in the future.
Yumiella wrote all that down, once in Japanese and once in Balshine's language, and then proceeded to the next topic.
Mastery was something she thought she had been familiar with, but it turned out there were details she had missed.
Yumiella had to fume a bit as she read more information that had not been in her HELP MENU earlier.
I was habitually swapping between weapon forms to gain familiarity with their weight and balance, but that turned out to be the worst possible thing to do as it interfered with the sword forms' Mastery process. Why didn't I-?
Yumiella cut herself off. She was discovering this comparatively early on, after all, with another four weeks (specifically, 29 days now,) to benefit from it, so each day she could choose one unmastered Sword Form and keep her weapon in that form overnight and into the next morning's grinding until it was mastered.
She'd already set her weapon to its Human Meat Sword form, as she wanted the passive dissection bonus (medium) for gaining materials but was revolted by the idea of feeding her sword human flesh. After she achieved that she would run down a list of other forms to master.
Once she'd noted down all that information, she moved to the improvement methods that originated with the Cardinal Sword: information which she had mostly shared with the other three heroes that first night, but had not thought about too deeply herself with everything else taking up space in her brain.
After reading and actually paying attention to this, Yumiella had irately twitched while wondering why this hadn't been shown on her Menu before, and then she'd suffered a brief headache for two minutes as her list of sword forms rearranged itself to include Rarity notations attached to each weapon form.
Adding to her annoyance, the rarity notations themselves struck her as a stupid series of name identifiers -- common, uncommon, rare, and then assorted levels of super-duper rare -- and she'd spent the next ten or twenty minutes poking at the MENU options to see if she could alter the terminology to something a little less abstruse.
Whatever got it done might just have been the Cardinal Sword responding to her frustration, but after poking at her Help Menu for far too long she finally ended up with something that didn't make her want to Yumiella Kick the designers in their teeth.
With that settled, Yumiella turned to the sparser notes she had on other improvement methods. Motoyasu's and Itsuki's descriptions both seemed to involve ores -- preferably expensive or rare ores -- and enchantment improvements that seemed to have some probability of failure involved with a risk of reset the weapon's improvements.
To be honest, Yumiella wasn't certain that they weren't both describing the same process with opposing vocabulary, so she sent off another questioning message (noting that there was still no response to her prior messages, suggesting a sharp range limit,) and mentally put those methods aside until she could meet with either boy to ask them for examples and a demonstration.
The only rare ore Yumiella was likely to have access to for certain in the near future was the Light Metal from the nearby mine, and while she resolved that she'd consider adding some +1 enchantment to some useful weapons, the risk of using up limited ore and suffering a reset made her cringe. At least the PP Rarity Awakening function didn't carry risk of a reset tied to its failure.
After that, her teammates still hadn't returned from their hair dye expedition, so Yumiella set to studying the local mundane and magical alphabets.
It was... incredibly tempting to go out and try to Level Up, but if Wave monsters were moving into the area then there was a genuine risk of encountering something she couldn't handle while she had no back-up available, and she wasn't willing to put a country or a world at risk again like she had being too sure of her ability against the Demon King. Back when she had been raising her Level for the first time in Dolkness County, even while having tremendous fun she had known she couldn't begin by fighting the entire dungeon in one run, so she had carefully paced herself! Thus, she simply had to apply the same rules here, except this time she would have back-up to help her handle the unexpected!
Although if something wanders into our campsite, I feel quite confident in killing it, Yumiella resolved, hoping she wasn't tempting fate. Still, it is too much to ask for something to happen?
Yumiella stared at the status update blankly before the meaning registered and she rushed off to the eggs' impromptu incubator.
One of the eggs was twitching!
It was shaking!
There was a crack!
"Ganbatte, egg-chan! Ganbatte-kudasai!" Yumiella cheered quietly. What will you be? Another cute child like Ryu? My heart is fluttering! You can do it, egg-chan, ganbatte!
*crack*
A piece of the shell fell away, and a scaly green foot flailed awkwardly.
"You can do it. Yosh! You can do it," Yumiella whispered, almost vibrating as more shell bits broke free.
*C-Crack!*
"Yom!"
"Yom," Yumiella greeted, metaphorical stars in her eyes. "How cute... You're just like Ryu at that age."
"Yom!" chirped the little dragon, colored green with some purple patches and a distinct lack of wings.
Yumiella cleared away the last few bits of eggshell and pulled him to her, enjoying this sacred moment between mother and child.
Yumiella cuddled the baby dragon to her, enjoying this sacred moment between mother and child with no interruption from anything...!
"...Ah, please don't eat kaa-chan's hair, I'll get you something good for your first meal. Was it said that animals eat their own eggshells to absorb nutrients?"
Yumiella tried, but the baby dragon didn't want to eat its eggshell, so she got out an assortment of food options from her inventory to tempt him with.
At first he sniffed the meat and seems interested, but then he got to a piece of fruit she had laid out.
"Yom!" the baby dragon nearly sang as it sank its teeth into a juicy piece of sweet fruit. Watching it chirp and eat happily, Yumiella felt like her heart was healed, and she realized.
"Tyrella are mounts for knights, dragons who run and jump and devour prey. From now on, little one, your name is Yoshi."
"Yom!" Yoshi-kun chirped happily.
Day 4, late afternoon
Yumiella's eye twitched as she stared at the updates about her newest sword forms.
Even while gently scratching her new child's head, Yumiella grit her teeth so hard it was a wonder her jaw didn't crack.
It isn't enough that I get called the Demon King and treated fearfully... Now this stupid 'holy' sword has to label my cute child a monster and a demon! Whether it's liquid nitrogen or over-grinding or dynamite, I will find a way to make you regret this you stupid hunk of stupid steel!!
The so-called 'holy' sword shocked her once, and then as Yumiella glared furiously while envisioning a new use for Black Hole, the Status Menu flickered and altered its text.
That's more like it, Yumiella allowed.
"Lady Sword Hero?" Bakta checked. "You were glaring at the Holy Sword just now...?"
"The Cardinal Sword and I were having a disagreement over the importance of proper vocabulary, and whether I needed to start referring to it as the cardinal scrap," Yumiella answered. She raised her face from feeding baby Yoshi more tidbits and tried not to react at seeing her teammates.
Bakta didn't look much changed by the dye, since he'd had dark hair before, but seeing Farrie and Tersia with ink-black hair was different.
Farrie's eyes went wide much like Eleonora's would. "Ooh, idea! Are carved wooden practice swords something the Holy Sword could use?"
That started a pleasant discussion about types of weapons and practice weapons that might mesh with the Cardinal Sword -- ideas included scimitars, the flamberge, hotel blades, and other variants -- which lasted until a runner from the Riyute Village chief arrived.
"Emergency! Em-emergency!" the boy panted. "There's an Armor Quill tearing up the south- the southwest fields!"
The group jumped into action, the runner boy leading them toward the trouble zone.
"What is an armor quill?" Yumiella checked, as her mind had pulled up some image fusing a suit of plate armor with a giant writing quill.
"Large porcupine, metal quills, claws," Bakta huffed, being the slowest runner of the team.
"Is it slow? Me and Tersia can lead it around," Farrie offered.
"I think," Bakta allowed.
"Sounds good then," Tersia chuckled.
"Don't get injured," Yumiella ordered, slowing momentarily as the fastest two of the team shot off far ahead toward the distant fields on the far side of the town. "Bakta, weaknesses?"
"Fire," he huffed. "Cook it in- its own- skin."
"Will Faust- Flare be e- enough?" Welt panted, only slightly faster than Bakta but possessed of less stamina.
Yumiella pulled them to a stop. "Give me support magic, then focus on inhibiting its movements when you arrive."
"R-right," Welt gasped. "Faust Stoneskin. Faust Windspeed. Faust Brilliant Blaze."
Duly empowered, Yumiella rocketed off toward the battle site, where she found a swathe of crops trampled with the ground torn and furrowed.
"The armor quill has a bunch of Porcupine followers!" Tersia yelled, pulling his dagger from the eye socket of a dead porcupine as Farrie somersaulted over the charging bronze-colored monster that was leading this battle.
"I'll clear them," Yumiella assured Tersia, "keep it tied up."
"On it!"
There were at least 10 porcupines on the field, three of which were between Yumiella and the boss, so she went for those first. She didn't bother to use Flaming Sword when she stabbed the first porcupine in its unprotected side, which got her a delicious EXP notice and a squeal of pain that attracted the other porcupines' attention.
Then Yumiella had to deal with eight monsters charging at her, which (unfortunately for the monsters) was about half what she'd usually get from blowing her Flute in her prior life.
She sidestepped the first porcupine's rolling charge and gutted it with a stab to the side of its underbelly as it passed. The second porcupine got beheaded when it hesitated.
Rope Sword. "Air Strike Slash," Yumiella cast, knocking the next two closest porcupines into each other.
Gaining precious seconds, Yumiella stabbed the gutted porcupine in its spiky back before it had completely died, to check whether or not her improved ATK stat was high enough to cut through their spines directly.
It was, which meant she didn't need to bother with artistry and could just enjoy the EXP gained from bisecting them.
At least until the Armor Quill charged her.
"Look out!" Tersia shouted; Yumiella dodged the soil-churning stampede of rage and pain and was momentarily bemused by the sight of rope and most of a tree trunk stuck to the Armor Quill's back. "Sorry. Farrie flipped it back-first into a tree and I tied it there, but it thrashed so hard the wood broke."
"Hey," Farrie gasped, winded but otherwise uninjured, "at least it can't burrow underground to escape now."
Flaming Sword. "You tempted fate," Yumiella informed her teammate just as a shower of soil began to fly into the air from under the Armor Quill. "Blazing Blade."
Her orange-bronze sword lit aflame, and her SP began to drain, but Yumiella could easily keep up the pace for a while. She charged, stabbed the Armor Quill in its metallic haunch, then rolled aside without her sword as brassy spikes went flying everywhere.
*zap*
Rather than discarding it, I think of a small amount of HP and pain as cheap to retrieve my weapon when it would be unwieldy to pull it free, Yumiella thought toward her sword, which had reappeared in her hand with only a bit of pain as punishment.
Staying low, she slashed her still flaming sword at the limbs and side of the Armor Quill, doing damage but not much.
The Armor Quill shook itself like a wet dog; Yumiella had to duck the rope ends and wood splinters that went flying, and then Yumiella wanted to face-palm when she remembered what said ropes were attached to.
Five seconds later, the Armor Quill was shrieking around with half a burning tree trunk on its back.
"Shoot, shoot! The field!" Farrie squawked as smoke and burning embers went everywhere.
Ah. Perhaps that was not such a good idea, Yumiella acknowledged as she backed away. Stalagmite Sword. "Stone Spike. Stone Spike. Stone Spike." Rather than try to pierce through its metallic belly, Yumiella focused on hemming it in and trying to restrain its thrashing. "Stone Spike. Stone Spike." I think I have it mostly immobilized by now. Flaming Sword.
She reactivated the Blazing Blade skill, dashed around to the Armor Quill's front, and stabbed burning hot metal straight into its screaming mouth.
Then her Shadow Assassin reflexes -- trained by years of fighting dark attribute monsters deep in the local dungeon that lunged at your back from out of your shadow -- triggered and she instinctively kicked backwards at a threat.
Pain.
"Ah, we missed one!" Farrie dashed over and dropkicked away the final porcupine that hadn't yet died, kneeling down to check Yumiella's injured leg, with three large quills poking into it.
Yumiella balanced awkwardly until the Armor Quill finally stopped thrashing, and with her EXP notice came one final bit of good news.
"Pass me some potions, I need to be really careful taking these out and apply the treatment immediately," Farrie instructed, holding Yumiella's injured foot gingerly.
This did not make it easier for the Sword Heroine to keep her balance, but at least she didn't end up worsening her injuries when she inevitably toppled face-first into bloody dirt of the ruined field.
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With her other teammates off to make crazy fashion choices in support of her, Yumiella was left to quietly contemplate how her life ended up like this.
Thinking about it started to give her a headache and make her chest tight, so she went back to diving through her HELP MENU to get a better idea of all the power-up methods, how they could be used, which methods were worth using, and how to differentiate between them.
Yumiella would have felt guilty about not doing this earlier, except her memories definitely told her that the HELP MENU had not been this thorough on previous viewings, so it looked like the menu grew with her (possibly certain entries were level locked?) and that she would need to continue checking it for new information in the future.
HELP --> Cardinal Weapon Functions --> Growth Methods --> All Legendary Weapons
ABSORPTION
Weapons can absorb loot, items, and materials to unlock new variations of themselves. The user can access new transformations provided they reach the level requirement. Things absorbed by the Legendary Weapons to unlock new forms are not destroyed, and can be accessed again from the Inventory.
1) Not everything absorbed will unlock a new form
2) Due to assorted circumstances, absorbing material that can unlock a weapon form does not always mean it will unlock every possible weapon form
3) Interdimensional material from a Wave that is absorbed will be consumed to create new weapon forms, rather than unlocking a sealed but known-to-exist weapon form. Later samples of this material may be stored normally in the Inventory.
4) Repeatedly absorbing new material of the same type that unlocked a weapon form will fill a Mastery Counter that brings the weapon form closer to being Mastered [ (M) ]
Yumiella wrote all that down, once in Japanese and once in Balshine's language, and then proceeded to the next topic.
Mastery was something she thought she had been familiar with, but it turned out there were details she had missed.
HELP --> Cardinal Weapon Functions --> Growth Methods --> All Legendary Weapons
MASTERY
A weapon form that is Mastered (M) will have its equip bonuses (skills, effects, and stat improvements,) permanently applied to the Hero, even when a different form is equipped.
Most weapon forms may be mastered through any of three methods:
1) repeated absorption of different samples of the unlocking material, filling a Mastery Counter in the weapon form's list entry (i.e. 15/20)
2) Keeping the same weapon form active for prolonged periods of time without shifting between other forms
3) Using the same weapon form to fight and slay multiple monsters without shifting to other forms
When a form is Mastered through one method, applying a different method will not result in any further Mastery. A form is Mastered (M) or it is not (unmastered).
The second and third mastery methods share a mastery gauge with each other, but they do not share the Absoption-based Mastery Counter. Mastery cannot be unlocked with half material absorption and half time or combat use.
There are certain situations in which a weapon form's Mastery may be reset; this does not overlap with the Weapon Proficiency reset effect that generates PP!
Yumiella had to fume a bit as she read more information that had not been in her HELP MENU earlier.
I was habitually swapping between weapon forms to gain familiarity with their weight and balance, but that turned out to be the worst possible thing to do as it interfered with the sword forms' Mastery process. Why didn't I-?
Yumiella cut herself off. She was discovering this comparatively early on, after all, with another four weeks (specifically, 29 days now,) to benefit from it, so each day she could choose one unmastered Sword Form and keep her weapon in that form overnight and into the next morning's grinding until it was mastered.
She'd already set her weapon to its Human Meat Sword form, as she wanted the passive dissection bonus (medium) for gaining materials but was revolted by the idea of feeding her sword human flesh. After she achieved that she would run down a list of other forms to master.
Once she'd noted down all that information, she moved to the improvement methods that originated with the Cardinal Sword: information which she had mostly shared with the other three heroes that first night, but had not thought about too deeply herself with everything else taking up space in her brain.
HELP --> Cardinal Weapon Functions --> Growth Methods --> Legendary Sword
PROFICIENCY
Using the same weapon form continuously or very frequently will improve a Proficiency Gauge up to 100% Proficiency
A weapon form with 100% Proficiency gains improvements to its skills, effects, and bonuses whose benefits are links to the Level of the Cardinal Hero
At any time, the Hero may reset a form's Proficiency Gauge to release the Proficiency Point energy into a 'pool' of PP that may be used by the Hero
If the Hero resets a weapon form with 100% Proficiency, the resulting PP added to the pool is greater than the benefits of reseting incomplete proficiency
Items and materials stored in the Inventory may also be turned into PP, but the conversion rate is not good
PP may be used to improve a weapon's Rarity, which correspondingly increases the weapons stats and bonus benefits; this increase has a chance for failure
After reading and actually paying attention to this, Yumiella had irately twitched while wondering why this hadn't been shown on her Menu before, and then she'd suffered a brief headache for two minutes as her list of sword forms rearranged itself to include Rarity notations attached to each weapon form.
Adding to her annoyance, the rarity notations themselves struck her as a stupid series of name identifiers -- common, uncommon, rare, and then assorted levels of super-duper rare -- and she'd spent the next ten or twenty minutes poking at the MENU options to see if she could alter the terminology to something a little less abstruse.
Whatever got it done might just have been the Cardinal Sword responding to her frustration, but after poking at her Help Menu for far too long she finally ended up with something that didn't make her want to Yumiella Kick the designers in their teeth.
HELP --> Cardinal Weapon Functions --> Growth Methods --> Legendary Sword
RARITY
Each weapon form has a Rarity value related to the materials it was made of or unlocked by
Rarity values from highest to lowest are as follows: SS > S > A > B > C > D > E > F > G
This rarity value may be improved/awakened by spending PP on the weapon form in proportion to the benefits it gives the Hero, or by other methods
There is a variable non-zero risk that the effort to improve a weapon's rarity will fail; failure does not reset a weapon form's rarity or damage the form
Whether it fails or succeeds, spent PP are not refunded to the Hero
Forms in each rarity ranking include:
G -- Sand Sword . Soil Sword . Leaf Sword . Wood Sword . Haircut Sword ... (more)
F -- Orange Rubber Sword . Cave Moss Sword . Porcupine Sword . Fishing Sword ... (more)
E -- Voice Gengar Sword . Motor Goat Sword . Wire Sword ... (more)
D -- Undead Sword . Captivity Sword . Interdimensional Black Beetle Sword ... (more)
C -- Interdimensional Hound Sword . Interdimensional Spider Sword . Owlbear Sword ... (more)
B -- Ichor Sword Series . Nakama Sword
With that settled, Yumiella turned to the sparser notes she had on other improvement methods. Motoyasu's and Itsuki's descriptions both seemed to involve ores -- preferably expensive or rare ores -- and enchantment improvements that seemed to have some probability of failure involved with a risk of reset the weapon's improvements.
To be honest, Yumiella wasn't certain that they weren't both describing the same process with opposing vocabulary, so she sent off another questioning message (noting that there was still no response to her prior messages, suggesting a sharp range limit,) and mentally put those methods aside until she could meet with either boy to ask them for examples and a demonstration.
The only rare ore Yumiella was likely to have access to for certain in the near future was the Light Metal from the nearby mine, and while she resolved that she'd consider adding some +1 enchantment to some useful weapons, the risk of using up limited ore and suffering a reset made her cringe. At least the PP Rarity Awakening function didn't carry risk of a reset tied to its failure.
After that, her teammates still hadn't returned from their hair dye expedition, so Yumiella set to studying the local mundane and magical alphabets.
It was... incredibly tempting to go out and try to Level Up, but if Wave monsters were moving into the area then there was a genuine risk of encountering something she couldn't handle while she had no back-up available, and she wasn't willing to put a country or a world at risk again like she had being too sure of her ability against the Demon King. Back when she had been raising her Level for the first time in Dolkness County, even while having tremendous fun she had known she couldn't begin by fighting the entire dungeon in one run, so she had carefully paced herself! Thus, she simply had to apply the same rules here, except this time she would have back-up to help her handle the unexpected!
Although if something wanders into our campsite, I feel quite confident in killing it, Yumiella resolved, hoping she wasn't tempting fate. Still, it is too much to ask for something to happen?
Yumiella stared at the status update blankly before the meaning registered and she rushed off to the eggs' impromptu incubator.
One of the eggs was twitching!
It was shaking!
There was a crack!
"Ganbatte, egg-chan! Ganbatte-kudasai!" Yumiella cheered quietly. What will you be? Another cute child like Ryu? My heart is fluttering! You can do it, egg-chan, ganbatte!
*crack*
A piece of the shell fell away, and a scaly green foot flailed awkwardly.
"You can do it. Yosh! You can do it," Yumiella whispered, almost vibrating as more shell bits broke free.
*C-Crack!*
"Yom!"
"Yom," Yumiella greeted, metaphorical stars in her eyes. "How cute... You're just like Ryu at that age."
"Yom!" chirped the little dragon, colored green with some purple patches and a distinct lack of wings.
Yumiella cleared away the last few bits of eggshell and pulled him to her, enjoying this sacred moment between mother and child.
Yumiella cuddled the baby dragon to her, enjoying this sacred moment between mother and child with no interruption from anything...!
"...Ah, please don't eat kaa-chan's hair, I'll get you something good for your first meal. Was it said that animals eat their own eggshells to absorb nutrients?"
Yumiella tried, but the baby dragon didn't want to eat its eggshell, so she got out an assortment of food options from her inventory to tempt him with.
At first he sniffed the meat and seems interested, but then he got to a piece of fruit she had laid out.
"Yom!" the baby dragon nearly sang as it sank its teeth into a juicy piece of sweet fruit. Watching it chirp and eat happily, Yumiella felt like her heart was healed, and she realized.
"Tyrella are mounts for knights, dragons who run and jump and devour prey. From now on, little one, your name is Yoshi."
"Yom!" Yoshi-kun chirped happily.
Day 4, late afternoon
Yumiella's eye twitched as she stared at the updates about her newest sword forms.
Even while gently scratching her new child's head, Yumiella grit her teeth so hard it was a wonder her jaw didn't crack.
It isn't enough that I get called the Demon King and treated fearfully... Now this stupid 'holy' sword has to label my cute child a monster and a demon! Whether it's liquid nitrogen or over-grinding or dynamite, I will find a way to make you regret this you stupid hunk of stupid steel!!
The so-called 'holy' sword shocked her once, and then as Yumiella glared furiously while envisioning a new use for Black Hole, the Status Menu flickered and altered its text.
That's more like it, Yumiella allowed.
"Lady Sword Hero?" Bakta checked. "You were glaring at the Holy Sword just now...?"
"The Cardinal Sword and I were having a disagreement over the importance of proper vocabulary, and whether I needed to start referring to it as the cardinal scrap," Yumiella answered. She raised her face from feeding baby Yoshi more tidbits and tried not to react at seeing her teammates.
Bakta didn't look much changed by the dye, since he'd had dark hair before, but seeing Farrie and Tersia with ink-black hair was different.
Farrie's eyes went wide much like Eleonora's would. "Ooh, idea! Are carved wooden practice swords something the Holy Sword could use?"
That started a pleasant discussion about types of weapons and practice weapons that might mesh with the Cardinal Sword -- ideas included scimitars, the flamberge, hotel blades, and other variants -- which lasted until a runner from the Riyute Village chief arrived.
"Emergency! Em-emergency!" the boy panted. "There's an Armor Quill tearing up the south- the southwest fields!"
The group jumped into action, the runner boy leading them toward the trouble zone.
"What is an armor quill?" Yumiella checked, as her mind had pulled up some image fusing a suit of plate armor with a giant writing quill.
"Large porcupine, metal quills, claws," Bakta huffed, being the slowest runner of the team.
"Is it slow? Me and Tersia can lead it around," Farrie offered.
"I think," Bakta allowed.
"Sounds good then," Tersia chuckled.
"Don't get injured," Yumiella ordered, slowing momentarily as the fastest two of the team shot off far ahead toward the distant fields on the far side of the town. "Bakta, weaknesses?"
"Fire," he huffed. "Cook it in- its own- skin."
"Will Faust- Flare be e- enough?" Welt panted, only slightly faster than Bakta but possessed of less stamina.
Yumiella pulled them to a stop. "Give me support magic, then focus on inhibiting its movements when you arrive."
"R-right," Welt gasped. "Faust Stoneskin. Faust Windspeed. Faust Brilliant Blaze."
Duly empowered, Yumiella rocketed off toward the battle site, where she found a swathe of crops trampled with the ground torn and furrowed.
"The armor quill has a bunch of Porcupine followers!" Tersia yelled, pulling his dagger from the eye socket of a dead porcupine as Farrie somersaulted over the charging bronze-colored monster that was leading this battle.
"I'll clear them," Yumiella assured Tersia, "keep it tied up."
"On it!"
There were at least 10 porcupines on the field, three of which were between Yumiella and the boss, so she went for those first. She didn't bother to use Flaming Sword when she stabbed the first porcupine in its unprotected side, which got her a delicious EXP notice and a squeal of pain that attracted the other porcupines' attention.
Then Yumiella had to deal with eight monsters charging at her, which (unfortunately for the monsters) was about half what she'd usually get from blowing her Flute in her prior life.
She sidestepped the first porcupine's rolling charge and gutted it with a stab to the side of its underbelly as it passed. The second porcupine got beheaded when it hesitated.
Rope Sword. "Air Strike Slash," Yumiella cast, knocking the next two closest porcupines into each other.
Gaining precious seconds, Yumiella stabbed the gutted porcupine in its spiky back before it had completely died, to check whether or not her improved ATK stat was high enough to cut through their spines directly.
It was, which meant she didn't need to bother with artistry and could just enjoy the EXP gained from bisecting them.
At least until the Armor Quill charged her.
"Look out!" Tersia shouted; Yumiella dodged the soil-churning stampede of rage and pain and was momentarily bemused by the sight of rope and most of a tree trunk stuck to the Armor Quill's back. "Sorry. Farrie flipped it back-first into a tree and I tied it there, but it thrashed so hard the wood broke."
"Hey," Farrie gasped, winded but otherwise uninjured, "at least it can't burrow underground to escape now."
Flaming Sword. "You tempted fate," Yumiella informed her teammate just as a shower of soil began to fly into the air from under the Armor Quill. "Blazing Blade."
Her orange-bronze sword lit aflame, and her SP began to drain, but Yumiella could easily keep up the pace for a while. She charged, stabbed the Armor Quill in its metallic haunch, then rolled aside without her sword as brassy spikes went flying everywhere.
*zap*
Rather than discarding it, I think of a small amount of HP and pain as cheap to retrieve my weapon when it would be unwieldy to pull it free, Yumiella thought toward her sword, which had reappeared in her hand with only a bit of pain as punishment.
Staying low, she slashed her still flaming sword at the limbs and side of the Armor Quill, doing damage but not much.
The Armor Quill shook itself like a wet dog; Yumiella had to duck the rope ends and wood splinters that went flying, and then Yumiella wanted to face-palm when she remembered what said ropes were attached to.
Five seconds later, the Armor Quill was shrieking around with half a burning tree trunk on its back.
"Shoot, shoot! The field!" Farrie squawked as smoke and burning embers went everywhere.
Ah. Perhaps that was not such a good idea, Yumiella acknowledged as she backed away. Stalagmite Sword. "Stone Spike. Stone Spike. Stone Spike." Rather than try to pierce through its metallic belly, Yumiella focused on hemming it in and trying to restrain its thrashing. "Stone Spike. Stone Spike." I think I have it mostly immobilized by now. Flaming Sword.
She reactivated the Blazing Blade skill, dashed around to the Armor Quill's front, and stabbed burning hot metal straight into its screaming mouth.
Then her Shadow Assassin reflexes -- trained by years of fighting dark attribute monsters deep in the local dungeon that lunged at your back from out of your shadow -- triggered and she instinctively kicked backwards at a threat.
Pain.
"Ah, we missed one!" Farrie dashed over and dropkicked away the final porcupine that hadn't yet died, kneeling down to check Yumiella's injured leg, with three large quills poking into it.
Yumiella balanced awkwardly until the Armor Quill finally stopped thrashing, and with her EXP notice came one final bit of good news.
"Pass me some potions, I need to be really careful taking these out and apply the treatment immediately," Farrie instructed, holding Yumiella's injured foot gingerly.
This did not make it easier for the Sword Heroine to keep her balance, but at least she didn't end up worsening her injuries when she inevitably toppled face-first into bloody dirt of the ruined field.
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Nerrevarrine
Formerly of House Indoril
- Location
- Stranded in Akavir
That's how the cardinal weapons work. One of my oldest gripes with Shield Hero was the overly simplistic "game logic" that meant the "heroes" were forced into simplistic roles with little room for creativity. It's just DPS/DPS/DPS/tank. Except the tank is also the healer and buffer, making the shield unironically the most versetile by virtue of being the least restrictive. Even so, There's a major flaw in the shield's "permitted actions" that by all rights should prevent it from working as any sort of tank at all: the inability to meaningfully attack. In any party the cardinal shield is in, they're the most durable and the least (immediately) dangerous and EVERYONE knows it. No one intelligent would willingly attack the shield hero when they can attack their allies and party members instead. No matter how heavily buffed they are, the shield's party will be easier to kill than the shield itself. That'd still be true if the shield hero had an attack, but it's MUCH harder to think rationally when a hunk of metal is approaching your face at mach fuck. Alternatively, the shield has to have a way of magically compelling others to attack them, or the ability to be in multiple places at once to intercept every enemy on the field. Both are theoretically possible, but this entire issue is caused by the fact that the cardinal weapons are yandere and unimaginative. (And yes, I know about the wrath shield. It was an asspull when it appeared in canon, and it has yet to appear here. It is, as of now, irrelevant)
In both the most recent chapter of this fic and throughout canon, the weapons "punish" the heroes for "discarding" them, as well as using other weapons. It's not practical, it's to force them into their assigned "roles." The cardinal weapons have very specific ideas about how their weilders should act, and deviation from this is punished.
It's actually a shame that there seem to be few, if any, fics that explore what the heroes would be like if these restrictions were relaxed and they had access to more gear. What if they weren't literally punished, but instead just had no special growth with things outside of their assigned role? The heroes would still be encouraged to specialize into their "assigned role," but they'd have more options and the choices they made would have more weight. Plus, Naofumi could be a speshul boi because of creativity and willingness to use other tools to increase the shield's utility rather than just the author giving him random power ups.
Seriously, there was an opportunity here to have the protagonist's "special power" to be common sense. The ability to think like a person when the other heroes treated it like a game. But no, we got video game logic and "real life consequences" only exist when the author needs to show how much cooler and smarter Naofumi is.
It's why my favorite Shield Hero fics are the ones where people posess the power of critical thinking. No canon character would tank the "punishment" for "discarding" a cardinal weapon and use it as a way to retrieve it from an enemy's body (not deliberately anyway). No canon character would argue with a cardinal weapon about specific terminology. Yumiella Dolkness is compelling because she actually thinks.
Obloquy
CrossMyHeart And HopeToDie, StickANeedleInMyEye
- Location
- the Physical Realm
Agreed. I'm planning to do something a bit like that in later arcs, as an adaptation of the "Level Link" empowerment method used by the Cardinal Sword, where the weapon restrictions become less strict once you're at a higher level, but I'd love to see a story that just altered or removed a lot of those restrictions.
(This is partly why Yumiella can 'discard' the Cardinal Sword at all, rather than it being physically stuck to her hand, and she's high enough Level now that the early restrictions are loosened a bit.)
Even 0 STR Maple of BOFURI got a 9 Damage dagger alongside her great shield when she chose that class.
On the corollary, the writer would need to figure out ways and excuses for Naofumi to pick up various teammates if he could potentially fight solo....
Actually, now I have an idea where Ren gets summoned as the Shield Hero and insists on fighting solo, so Malty never joins his party and he has to do all sorts of crazy workarounds to deal damage with his Shield.
The easiest one I can think of would involve (since Ren would know about weapon copy unlike Naofumi) either commissioning Erhardt to make him a weaponizable Shield or just lighting a campfire and sticking balloons in it until they pop.
To be fair, most of their enemies are unintelligent monsters, and IIRC Naofumi does have a "Hate Reaction" skill to draw aggro, but yes, more shield use flexibility would be very cool.
If the Four Heroes only had to worry about fighting the Waves and the unintelligent Sacred Beasts, then these issues wouldn't be much of a problem, but since Naofumi is dealing with a lack of willing allies, lack of knowledge, sabotage from Melromarc, and intellect (albeit stupidly zealous) human enemies like the Three Heroes Church, this becomes much more problematic.
...And now on top on my Shield Hero Ren story idea, I just got an idea for a Bow Demon story where the Cardinal Bow Hero is the one who has traditionally supported Demi-humans and gets scorned by Melromarc -- there's even a great argument of "the Bow Devil is a coward who hangs back far from the fight, allowing their allies on the front lines to be ruthlessly killed!" -- while the Shield Hero is supposedly a protector of humanity. Giving Justice-Zealot-Itsuki reasons to find out about and begin fighting the oppression and enslavement of Demi-humans would immediately pit him against the 3 Heroes Church harder than Naofumi was...
"Weapon" Definition Issues
Obloquy
CrossMyHeart And HopeToDie, StickANeedleInMyEye
- Location
- the Physical Realm
Meanwhile, in a certain smithy:
Naofumi: "Thanks for believing in me, Old Man. This armor might save my life if I run into anything abnormally strong."
Erhardt: "Bwahahaha~! Not just that, but I've got a spare helmet too! Here!"
Naofumi: "I don't know why it's sparkly and pink, but I'll take it." *Puts it on his head.* "Cool, and still a good range of vision."
Erhardt: "It's decorated because it's a Unicorn Helmet; that spike jutting up from your forehead is sharp, so you can headbutt with it."
Naofumi: "Really? That's incredible, I bet I can kill loads of balloons with- YEOWCH!
*brrzapp!*
Naofumi: "This is armor, you stupid Shield! Who cares if it's sharp?!"
...
Erhardt: "Naofumi! You said you're heading to that mine near Riyute Village?"
Naofumi: "Yeah. The other heroes mentioned some stuff about uses for ore, so I figure it's worth checking out."
Erhardt: "Here, take these. Hiking boots with ankle support, and hobnailed boots for extra grip.
Naofumi: "Don't hobnails usually... actually, no, wait, this is great. I bet I can stomp a bunch of monsters to death now like Mario!"
*brrzapp!*
Naofumi: "Ow! I didn't even put these on, you stupid shield!"
...
Naofumi: "That's all the materials I've got right now. How long until you can complete my order?"
Erhardt: "Two days, maybe three? Hey, it's pretty late and dark out. You going to be okay walking back to camp by yourself?"
Naofumi: "Yeah, I've got a torch with me to light the way."
Erhardt: "Always useful, those. I once bashed a wolf in the face and burned its nose when I was your age, you know?"
*brrzapp!*
Naofumi: "Dang it, you stupid hunk of useless Yandere steel!! I wasn't even going to fight anything with it!
...
Naofumi: "Screw this, if I have no attack stat then I'm just going to bite the monster to death."
*Waits for a moment*
Naofumi: "What, no shock? Okay, I guess biting it is A-Okay then! Now I just need to find a monster..."
*A nearby tree rustles. A meter-long snail slimes its way down the tree trunk.*
Naofumi: "Fuck it, I'm going to go hire someone to kill monsters for me or something. The EXP isn't worth it."
Shield Spirit: 'Finally! I didn't give you all these passive ally growth bonuses for you to solo it like an edgy noob and get yourself killed! Just get some teammates and I'll let you get some more flexibility in wielding other stuff, like that wooden shield studded with carpentry nails.'
Naofumi: "Thanks for believing in me, Old Man. This armor might save my life if I run into anything abnormally strong."
Erhardt: "Bwahahaha~! Not just that, but I've got a spare helmet too! Here!"
Naofumi: "I don't know why it's sparkly and pink, but I'll take it." *Puts it on his head.* "Cool, and still a good range of vision."
Erhardt: "It's decorated because it's a Unicorn Helmet; that spike jutting up from your forehead is sharp, so you can headbutt with it."
Naofumi: "Really? That's incredible, I bet I can kill loads of balloons with- YEOWCH!
*brrzapp!*
Naofumi: "This is armor, you stupid Shield! Who cares if it's sharp?!"
...
Erhardt: "Naofumi! You said you're heading to that mine near Riyute Village?"
Naofumi: "Yeah. The other heroes mentioned some stuff about uses for ore, so I figure it's worth checking out."
Erhardt: "Here, take these. Hiking boots with ankle support, and hobnailed boots for extra grip.
Naofumi: "Don't hobnails usually... actually, no, wait, this is great. I bet I can stomp a bunch of monsters to death now like Mario!"
*brrzapp!*
Naofumi: "Ow! I didn't even put these on, you stupid shield!"
...
Naofumi: "That's all the materials I've got right now. How long until you can complete my order?"
Erhardt: "Two days, maybe three? Hey, it's pretty late and dark out. You going to be okay walking back to camp by yourself?"
Naofumi: "Yeah, I've got a torch with me to light the way."
Erhardt: "Always useful, those. I once bashed a wolf in the face and burned its nose when I was your age, you know?"
*brrzapp!*
Naofumi: "Dang it, you stupid hunk of useless Yandere steel!! I wasn't even going to fight anything with it!
...
Naofumi: "Screw this, if I have no attack stat then I'm just going to bite the monster to death."
*Waits for a moment*
Naofumi: "What, no shock? Okay, I guess biting it is A-Okay then! Now I just need to find a monster..."
*A nearby tree rustles. A meter-long snail slimes its way down the tree trunk.*
Naofumi: "Fuck it, I'm going to go hire someone to kill monsters for me or something. The EXP isn't worth it."
Shield Spirit: 'Finally! I didn't give you all these passive ally growth bonuses for you to solo it like an edgy noob and get yourself killed! Just get some teammates and I'll let you get some more flexibility in wielding other stuff, like that wooden shield studded with carpentry nails.'
Jordisk
<Unverified N00B>
- Location
- Blind Eternities
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
You know what would be an interesting Shield Hero story idea? A time loop where one of the Legendary Heroes gets sent back to the summoning upon ending the waves, but with a different weapon. The important thing is, he STILL HAS HIS FIRST WEAPON. So you end up the second summoning Sword Hero as the Sword-and-Shield Hero, standing with the Bow, Spear, and Shield heroes. Then next loop you have the Sword-and-Spear-and-Shield Hero. Maybe start mixing in new weapons eventually, like the Seven Star Cane gets replaced by the Seven Star Sword and there is now a Hero of the Wand. Or even toss in weapons that don't exist in canon, like the Hero of the Helmet, the Hero of the Breastplate/Armor, the Hero of the Boot(s). I think the Cestus/Gauntlet is a vassal weapon already.
Or maybe a story where each hero is summoned with their legendary weapon AND a vassal weapon. The Hero of the Bow also gets the Arrow/Projectile. The Hero of the Sword also gets a Gauntlet. The Hero of the Spear has the Seven Star Claw. The Hero of the Shield gets the Cane/Staff/Wand, and pisses of the King even more.
Or maybe a story where each hero is summoned with their legendary weapon AND a vassal weapon. The Hero of the Bow also gets the Arrow/Projectile. The Hero of the Sword also gets a Gauntlet. The Hero of the Spear has the Seven Star Claw. The Hero of the Shield gets the Cane/Staff/Wand, and pisses of the King even more.
Traveling and the Twins
Obloquy
CrossMyHeart And HopeToDie, StickANeedleInMyEye
- Location
- the Physical Realm
Day 5, morning
"Are you certain you can't stay any longer, Lady Hero?" one of the Riyute village leaders asked.
Yumiella to a deep, slow breath and quietly reviewed her mental timeline.
Day Zero: the Cardinal Heroes were summoned and the four of us exchanged notes. Day One: we arranged our teams and went grinding around the city; I rose to Level 7 that day. Day Two: we arrived in Riyute, entered the mine, and I made it to Level 19. Day Three: we hunted the Motor Goat herd. Day Four: yesterday we returned to the mine and cleared out more Wave monsters in the morning, and then I hurt my leg defeating the Armor Quill and the porcupines in the afternoon.
Day Five: we inform the town that we plan to leave this evening so that we can fill up on supplies.
Truth be told, I wish we had left last evening instead of taking it easy as my wounds healed. We are ahead of schedule, still possessing three weeks to get from Level 21 to Level 40 before the Wave, but...
"The monsters responsible for recent issues -- infesting your mine, and pushing other creatures like the Motor Goats and the Armor Quill out of their native territories -- are monsters that survived the previous wave and are spreading out. If we stay here," Yumiella explained, "they will continue to trickle toward your village and the neighboring villages as they spread out like ripples. If we continue toward the site of the previous Wave, we can exterminate them in larger groups and prevent them from spreading out to reach you. I am resolved that this evening we will be continuing on toward Soma Valley," she finished. "If there are any requests you wish to make, please say so today."
The old woman looked dismayed, but curtsied. "I will convey this to the village."
Yumiella turned her attention back to feeding Yoshi some fruit and scraps of raw meat. The Tyrella wasn't growing anywhere near as fast as Ryu had, but he had still almost doubled in size from hatching yesterday and was cheerfully ravenous.
After patching her up, Farrie had got Yumiella to a trained healer and they'd given her orders to take it easy for a day even if the quill wounds were healed... but Yumiella had a slightly different idea of 'light duty' and was still hoping for some kind of quest or hunting.
Day 5, noon
"Ack!"
"Hold," Yumiella sighed, although her teammates had already halted their sparring when Welt hit the ground. "Tersia and Farrie win."
"Speed over power!" Farrie cheered, cartwheeling over to help Welt up after he'd been sent flying by her kick, while Tersia and Bakta shook hands for a good match.
"True, but I think you both work better fighting against humans than against most monsters," Bakta judged. "Maybe we should look for a mission or two to hunt down bandits?"
"No." Yumiella's stomach had squirmed at the thought of harvesting EXP from human beings, even if some distant part of her mind had whispered about how easy it would be to farm EXP that way. "No hunting people. If we see crimes, then we can stop them, but the cardinal weapons exist to protect the people of the world, even criminals."
It was mostly just an excuse so that she didn't have to risk committing murder -- she hadn't killed her own birth parents when they sent assassins after her, she didn't want to imagine killing random bandits on the road -- but her four teammates gave her wide-eyed looks like she had said something impressive, so at least it seemed that the message had been received.
She checked the time.
With two hours until the future time of the next Wave, that means it's almost noon today. Nearly time for lunch.
"Good work everyone. We should break for lunch soon," Yumiella decided.
"Yom!"
"Yes, yum-yum," Yumiella assured little Yoshi, pulling more Porcupine meat from her Inventory and dropping it into his adorable little snapping jaws.
Rather than trouble any of her team with cooking, they moved to a tavern that did a good lunch spread and didn't object to a labrador-sized baby Tyrella curling up their table as they ate.
"I've got an idea, but I'm not sure if we have time for it today," Farrie mentioned once they were tucking in. "Remember how we talked about wooden practice swords and whether or not they'd just count for your wood sword, Lady Yumiella? What if we got a bunch of wooden practice swords and had a bunch of villagers do practice matches with them! I'm not certain how the Holy Sword works, but if they're carved and used in practice, that might differentiate them from regular pieces of wood, right?"
Yumiella hummed thoughtfully and checked her list of existing sword forms. Other than things like her Wild Tamer sword and her Nakama Sword, the closest she could see to something Farrie was suggesting involved her Breath Sword or the Stalagmite Sword... or maybe the Fishing Sword that she'd got from a fish Farrie had caught.
Still, it was worth experimenting with, since Yumiella couldn't find any way to get EXP today while on light duty. The Wood Sword does seem to improve my Carpentry skill...
"It is a good plan. Who wants to hunt for experience, and who wants to help me with carving swords?"
After lunch, Tersia and Welt went Level grinding while Bakta and Farrie stayed to carve, although Bakta went to do some hunting after they had enough swords that Farrie left to get some volunteers.
Plenty of villagers were interested in practice matches and a sword lesson run by the Cardinal Sword Hero herself, and Yumiella noted that easily half the students were girls with stars in their eyes. In fact, they got so many volunteers that several people had to make do with broom handles or other makeshift weapons.
Yumiella demonstrated the footwork and stances she had learned early at the Royal Academy, and after a few minutes of swings to get them used to it, she went around pairing people up for matches and correcting holds or footwork as best she could remember how.
Once the matches were under way, she turned back to her Menu.
Between turning useless things like monster bones into PP (with a horrible exchange rate, admittedly,) and her discovery of how to master forms more quickly by keeping them active, Yumiella had a pool of 42 PP and little idea of what to spend it on.
It should probably be a sword form that I have mastered, she reflected as she examined her list, but is it better to spend it all on attempting to upgrade an already powerful sword, or to give myself more options that are more powerful?
No. Rather, a better question is to decide what sword forms' skills I make the most use of and upgrade those to be more useful. I kept the Usapil Sword active and got the Mastery and Proficiency alerts for it this morning because I knew that it was too inconvenient to switch back to that form whenever I jump, and my fighting style when I can't easily overpower monsters involves a lot of reflexive movement.
I can get raw stat bonuses by unlocking and mastering new sword forms instead of improving existing sword forms, so improving my Skills and passive effects are more important.
Yumiella minimized her Menu to do another walk around the sparring students and change up their partners. Part of her wanted to join in -- her foot wasn't even tender anymore! -- but she knew Farrie and the others would cluck at her if she did so.
She gave the starting signal for the next round of pairs' matches and pulled up her Menu while trusting Farrie to supervise.
Yumiella heaved an exasperated sigh at all the options in front of her. I need to master the two tunnel Snake swords for poison and improved healing, and the Stalagmite sword because I use it often for crowd control tactics. The rope Sword too, for a ranged attack... Until I Master them, I believe I can cross them off the list... I can try to Awaken the Wild Tamer Sword, but that might decimate my pool of energy.
"Awaken Usapil Sword and Wire Sword," Yumiella declared.
"Intermediate? I thought the options were small, medium, and large," Yumiella murmured.
She made notes to check her HELP MENU again later for a better explanation -- and to ensure that Binding Slash was improved by the awakening process -- and turned her attention to the sparring pairs.
Everything seemed under control, so Yumiella decided to check how intermediate jumping improvement differed from medium improvement.
She bent her legs and leaped.
(Sadly, she wasn't yet capable of jumping onto rooftops again, so she had to apologize when she careened off a wall and into a sparring pair, knocking them both over.)
Once it was almost dinner time, several Riyute Village leaders gathered together to present Yumiella's party with tokens of their appreciation for the help they'd given the village, which included some more potions but also multiple samples of ore from the mine.
Given that she'd unlocked a Sand Sword and a Limestone Sword, the idea of absorbing metal ores should have been obvious to her, but Yumiella was still taken by surprise.
Once the swords were unlocked, though, she quickly asked the villagers for more samples so that she could master the swords in question, promising to return them from her inventory once she was done.
"Thank you," Yumiella said with a curtsy to the village representatives. "This has been very helpful. Are you able to offer sample of ore to any other Cardinal Heroes who come this way?"
It was unlikely, since the four of them had agreed to train in four different directions to prepare for the Wave, but Riyute village was close enough that Yumiella could easily point the boys toward it for a day visit at some point.
"Certainly, Lady Hero. We pay our taxes in raw ore, but we have enough set aside for this month with a surplus for the time being."
Yumiella expressed her gratitude once again, and the villagers insisted on throwing a small party before she and her team boarded the overnight carriage they'd hired for the month and finally trundled off into the darkness.
Day 6, morning
Yumiella woke up to the gray light of pre-dawn, wondering why she was awake. Then she saw her MENU icon blinking.
Reset and let me sleep; we're moving, so we haven't arrived in Soma Valley yet, Yumiella grumbled silently as her body twitched and rocked.
Yumiella shot awake as she realized the two eggs in her arms were twitching.
"Yoshi. Yoshi-kun, wake up," she hissed to the Tyrella curled up beside her. "Yoshi, the twins are hatching! Ganbatte, ganbatte-kudasai!"
"Yom!"
First one, then the other, the two eggs cracked and broke apart, revealing two adorable little bird chicks, one gray and one brown.
"Piiyaah!" "Piyu-piyu!"
Both darker colors, similar to my own hair... and to my teammates' dyed color as well, Yumiella reflected as she pulled the to chirping baby birds to her as Yoshi watched curiously.
In the gray light of dawn, Yumiella enjoyed the sacred moment between parent and child with no interruptions.
I will figure out a way to make you suffer...! Yumiella silently threatened the Cardinal Sword, and it obligingly dismissed its alert function.
The events of the rest of the morning were nothing special: Yumiella unlocked Wild Tamer Sword II with the eggshells, which seemed to give a small intelligence bonus to tamed animals; Yoshi got upset about losing her attention so she had to soothe him and feed all three of them and apologize that it woke up her teammates; and at mid-morning their carriage arrived at Soma Town, in Soma Valley, in the territory of Countess Soma and her husband.
They ate a large breakfast at the camp to use up food supplies that wouldn't stay edible much longer, and Yumiella took the opportunity to discuss their strategy for the next few days.
"With all three of our eggs hatched, I want to focus on mastering Wild Tamer Sword Two today, so no monsters that are too dangerous until we get an understanding of what we're up against," she assessed. "Some of us should investigate the surrounding area for monsters nests, and the rest of us should get the news in town."
"Tersia and I are the best suited to scout the locale," Bakta volunteered, "but since we're in a noble's territory now, Lady Sword Hero, you should probably go introduce yourself to Countess Soma to be polite."
"Should I?" I really would prefer to avoid politics...
"Lady Hero! As the nephew of a Marquess, please let me go with you!" Welt volunteered loudly. Yumiella glared at him as the twins started peeping at the noise. "Sorry, ma'am. Miss. Um..."
"Hey," Farrie interjected smoothly, offering the birds a bit of her breakfast bacon as Yumiella soothed them, "how about Welt and Lady Yumiella go to the Countess while I go check around town for shops and rumors? But chances are the Countess will know what's going on better than most people, and she might have a request or two that isn't public knowledge. By the way, did you name these cuties after creatures from your world like you did with Yoshi?"
Yumiella's face remained impassive even as her mind spun into motion.
"...Yes, I did," she hedged slowly. I named Ryu after the word for dragons, so following that pattern should work. "The gray child is... Rich, short for Ostrich, a flightless bird from my home world. The tan child..." Another flightless bird is the Dodo, but is naming her after an extinct bird a potential death flag? Wait... The Sand Sword has the skill Sand Slash, and I thought I sounded like a Pokemon saying it...! "...is named Doduo, after a mythical bird with two heads that can evolve into Dodrio, a bird with three heads. Rich is a boy and Doduo is a girl."
"So cute! I heard some tamed monsters-," Yumiella glared but Farrie was looking away and didn't notice. "-can eventually Class Up too, so will you change her name to Dodo if that happens?"
"...To be determined," Yumiella answered.
Day 6, afternoon
As it happened, Countess Soma was busy with some wine-making project, but her third son (of four adult children,) greeted Welt politely and Yumiella very politely, and he was happy to tell them about several local monster issues, ranging from patches of magically altered bloodsucking garlic that had been cropping up, to different families of colored Slime monsters inhabiting various stretches of river in the valley, to the fact that the valley's local Giant Toad population was larger than normal and had suffered a boom in numbers from eating a lot of the giant insects released from the First Wave, so some assistance in culling their numbers before they ate too many goats or goatherds would be wonderful.
The Giant Frogs in the Dolkness County Dungeon had been a royal pain for her to fight in her past life until she got strong enough to stomp them, because she hadn't been using a weapon: they were largely impervious to blunt force and one of the few things that could resist her Dark Magic. Up until she learned Dark Flame, she'd tended to just skip through their rooms as much as possible so she didn't have to deal with them.
According the to nobleman, the Giant Toads here were similarly impervious to blunt force, but sharp weapons and most magic worked perfectly well on them.
I wasn't expecting them to larger than a horse-drawn carriage, but I suppose "giant" means giant. "Mister Welt, you said you have lightning magic?"
"Yyyes, but it- It's only Faust-level magic, Lady Hero. I don't think I can kill it in one hit," he worried, peering down at the giant toad resting near the bottom of the hill.
"Miss Farrie taught you her Faust Tailwind spell," Yumiella reminded him.
"I- yes. Should I cast it on you, Lady Hero?"
"On both of us, and on Yoshi. Please hold the twins and cast a lightning spell," Yumiella instructed, "then run if it survives. We will prevent the toad from chasing you down."
"R-Right! Come here birdies, Uncle Welt will be taking you for a ride..."
...
"to speed our way! Zweite Tailwind," Welt finished casting.
"Is your MP at an acceptable level?" He looks more tired than I expected.
"Yes, Lady Hero. I'm just not- huff- not used to casting in succession so much. But I'll improve! Faust Shocking Lance!"
The flash of magic plasma hit the giant toad in its back, but there was no EXP notification. It croaked like grinding stone and jumped... the direction it had been facing, away from them.
"Tsh. Yoshi, chase," she commanded. He wasn't large enough for her to ride yet, but he could keep up with her like a hunting hound as they both shot into motion after the giant toad.
It turned, and Yumiella immediately broke left with Yoshi before the toad took the air again, with them both getting well out of its landing zone when it leaped.
Given how much the ground had shook from its first impact, Yumiella jumped at the toad just as it was coming down, so the tremor couldn't disrupt her footing. She landed on its back and began to stab with Wild Tamer Sword II at its spine and skull.
The toad croaked again, deafeningly, and she heard Yoshi savaging at its side or one of its legs but she didn't stop.
"Sharp Stab. Sharp Stab," Yumiella used when she realized she wasn't doing damage fast enough.
The giant toad died with a gurgle, and Yumiella got a delicious EXP notification. She'd intended to absorb the body and break it down later with Bakta's help, but she got a notification that it was too large to absorb in one piece so Welt kept watch as she broke it down and absorbed the components.
The toads were so giant that she got enough meat and bones to master those sword forms just from the first toad, which was very convenient.
Then she took some of the meat out from her Inventory again to feed Rich, Doduo, and Yoshi, as it seemed they all loved the smell and taste of it.
"I can't tell, was that close or not? It seemed like you had it under control...?" Welt checked as the animal trio tucked in ravenously.
"I expect that your lightning dulled its reflexes, so it did not try to fall on its back. However, between magical buffs, my mobility, and use of weapon skills, we should be easily able to kill another five or ten without mishap, especially if we can approach them from behind."
"Five or ten...?" Welt looked worried for a moment, then he rallied. "Yes! I will not fail you!! Lady Sword Hero!!!"
"Are you certain you can't stay any longer, Lady Hero?" one of the Riyute village leaders asked.
Yumiella to a deep, slow breath and quietly reviewed her mental timeline.
Day Zero: the Cardinal Heroes were summoned and the four of us exchanged notes. Day One: we arranged our teams and went grinding around the city; I rose to Level 7 that day. Day Two: we arrived in Riyute, entered the mine, and I made it to Level 19. Day Three: we hunted the Motor Goat herd. Day Four: yesterday we returned to the mine and cleared out more Wave monsters in the morning, and then I hurt my leg defeating the Armor Quill and the porcupines in the afternoon.
Day Five: we inform the town that we plan to leave this evening so that we can fill up on supplies.
Truth be told, I wish we had left last evening instead of taking it easy as my wounds healed. We are ahead of schedule, still possessing three weeks to get from Level 21 to Level 40 before the Wave, but...
"The monsters responsible for recent issues -- infesting your mine, and pushing other creatures like the Motor Goats and the Armor Quill out of their native territories -- are monsters that survived the previous wave and are spreading out. If we stay here," Yumiella explained, "they will continue to trickle toward your village and the neighboring villages as they spread out like ripples. If we continue toward the site of the previous Wave, we can exterminate them in larger groups and prevent them from spreading out to reach you. I am resolved that this evening we will be continuing on toward Soma Valley," she finished. "If there are any requests you wish to make, please say so today."
The old woman looked dismayed, but curtsied. "I will convey this to the village."
Yumiella turned her attention back to feeding Yoshi some fruit and scraps of raw meat. The Tyrella wasn't growing anywhere near as fast as Ryu had, but he had still almost doubled in size from hatching yesterday and was cheerfully ravenous.
After patching her up, Farrie had got Yumiella to a trained healer and they'd given her orders to take it easy for a day even if the quill wounds were healed... but Yumiella had a slightly different idea of 'light duty' and was still hoping for some kind of quest or hunting.
Day 5, noon
"Ack!"
"Hold," Yumiella sighed, although her teammates had already halted their sparring when Welt hit the ground. "Tersia and Farrie win."
"Speed over power!" Farrie cheered, cartwheeling over to help Welt up after he'd been sent flying by her kick, while Tersia and Bakta shook hands for a good match.
"True, but I think you both work better fighting against humans than against most monsters," Bakta judged. "Maybe we should look for a mission or two to hunt down bandits?"
"No." Yumiella's stomach had squirmed at the thought of harvesting EXP from human beings, even if some distant part of her mind had whispered about how easy it would be to farm EXP that way. "No hunting people. If we see crimes, then we can stop them, but the cardinal weapons exist to protect the people of the world, even criminals."
It was mostly just an excuse so that she didn't have to risk committing murder -- she hadn't killed her own birth parents when they sent assassins after her, she didn't want to imagine killing random bandits on the road -- but her four teammates gave her wide-eyed looks like she had said something impressive, so at least it seemed that the message had been received.
She checked the time.
With two hours until the future time of the next Wave, that means it's almost noon today. Nearly time for lunch.
"Good work everyone. We should break for lunch soon," Yumiella decided.
"Yom!"
"Yes, yum-yum," Yumiella assured little Yoshi, pulling more Porcupine meat from her Inventory and dropping it into his adorable little snapping jaws.
Rather than trouble any of her team with cooking, they moved to a tavern that did a good lunch spread and didn't object to a labrador-sized baby Tyrella curling up their table as they ate.
"I've got an idea, but I'm not sure if we have time for it today," Farrie mentioned once they were tucking in. "Remember how we talked about wooden practice swords and whether or not they'd just count for your wood sword, Lady Yumiella? What if we got a bunch of wooden practice swords and had a bunch of villagers do practice matches with them! I'm not certain how the Holy Sword works, but if they're carved and used in practice, that might differentiate them from regular pieces of wood, right?"
Yumiella hummed thoughtfully and checked her list of existing sword forms. Other than things like her Wild Tamer sword and her Nakama Sword, the closest she could see to something Farrie was suggesting involved her Breath Sword or the Stalagmite Sword... or maybe the Fishing Sword that she'd got from a fish Farrie had caught.
Still, it was worth experimenting with, since Yumiella couldn't find any way to get EXP today while on light duty. The Wood Sword does seem to improve my Carpentry skill...
"It is a good plan. Who wants to hunt for experience, and who wants to help me with carving swords?"
After lunch, Tersia and Welt went Level grinding while Bakta and Farrie stayed to carve, although Bakta went to do some hunting after they had enough swords that Farrie left to get some volunteers.
Plenty of villagers were interested in practice matches and a sword lesson run by the Cardinal Sword Hero herself, and Yumiella noted that easily half the students were girls with stars in their eyes. In fact, they got so many volunteers that several people had to make do with broom handles or other makeshift weapons.
Yumiella demonstrated the footwork and stances she had learned early at the Royal Academy, and after a few minutes of swings to get them used to it, she went around pairing people up for matches and correcting holds or footwork as best she could remember how.
Once the matches were under way, she turned back to her Menu.
Between turning useless things like monster bones into PP (with a horrible exchange rate, admittedly,) and her discovery of how to master forms more quickly by keeping them active, Yumiella had a pool of 42 PP and little idea of what to spend it on.
It should probably be a sword form that I have mastered, she reflected as she examined her list, but is it better to spend it all on attempting to upgrade an already powerful sword, or to give myself more options that are more powerful?
No. Rather, a better question is to decide what sword forms' skills I make the most use of and upgrade those to be more useful. I kept the Usapil Sword active and got the Mastery and Proficiency alerts for it this morning because I knew that it was too inconvenient to switch back to that form whenever I jump, and my fighting style when I can't easily overpower monsters involves a lot of reflexive movement.
I can get raw stat bonuses by unlocking and mastering new sword forms instead of improving existing sword forms, so improving my Skills and passive effects are more important.
Yumiella minimized her Menu to do another walk around the sparring students and change up their partners. Part of her wanted to join in -- her foot wasn't even tender anymore! -- but she knew Farrie and the others would cluck at her if she did so.
She gave the starting signal for the next round of pairs' matches and pulled up her Menu while trusting Farrie to supervise.
Yumiella heaved an exasperated sigh at all the options in front of her. I need to master the two tunnel Snake swords for poison and improved healing, and the Stalagmite sword because I use it often for crowd control tactics. The rope Sword too, for a ranged attack... Until I Master them, I believe I can cross them off the list... I can try to Awaken the Wild Tamer Sword, but that might decimate my pool of energy.
"Awaken Usapil Sword and Wire Sword," Yumiella declared.
"Intermediate? I thought the options were small, medium, and large," Yumiella murmured.
She made notes to check her HELP MENU again later for a better explanation -- and to ensure that Binding Slash was improved by the awakening process -- and turned her attention to the sparring pairs.
Everything seemed under control, so Yumiella decided to check how intermediate jumping improvement differed from medium improvement.
She bent her legs and leaped.
(Sadly, she wasn't yet capable of jumping onto rooftops again, so she had to apologize when she careened off a wall and into a sparring pair, knocking them both over.)
Once it was almost dinner time, several Riyute Village leaders gathered together to present Yumiella's party with tokens of their appreciation for the help they'd given the village, which included some more potions but also multiple samples of ore from the mine.
Given that she'd unlocked a Sand Sword and a Limestone Sword, the idea of absorbing metal ores should have been obvious to her, but Yumiella was still taken by surprise.
Once the swords were unlocked, though, she quickly asked the villagers for more samples so that she could master the swords in question, promising to return them from her inventory once she was done.
"Thank you," Yumiella said with a curtsy to the village representatives. "This has been very helpful. Are you able to offer sample of ore to any other Cardinal Heroes who come this way?"
It was unlikely, since the four of them had agreed to train in four different directions to prepare for the Wave, but Riyute village was close enough that Yumiella could easily point the boys toward it for a day visit at some point.
"Certainly, Lady Hero. We pay our taxes in raw ore, but we have enough set aside for this month with a surplus for the time being."
Yumiella expressed her gratitude once again, and the villagers insisted on throwing a small party before she and her team boarded the overnight carriage they'd hired for the month and finally trundled off into the darkness.
Day 6, morning
Yumiella woke up to the gray light of pre-dawn, wondering why she was awake. Then she saw her MENU icon blinking.
Reset and let me sleep; we're moving, so we haven't arrived in Soma Valley yet, Yumiella grumbled silently as her body twitched and rocked.
Yumiella shot awake as she realized the two eggs in her arms were twitching.
"Yoshi. Yoshi-kun, wake up," she hissed to the Tyrella curled up beside her. "Yoshi, the twins are hatching! Ganbatte, ganbatte-kudasai!"
"Yom!"
First one, then the other, the two eggs cracked and broke apart, revealing two adorable little bird chicks, one gray and one brown.
"Piiyaah!" "Piyu-piyu!"
Both darker colors, similar to my own hair... and to my teammates' dyed color as well, Yumiella reflected as she pulled the to chirping baby birds to her as Yoshi watched curiously.
In the gray light of dawn, Yumiella enjoyed the sacred moment between parent and child with no interruptions.
I will figure out a way to make you suffer...! Yumiella silently threatened the Cardinal Sword, and it obligingly dismissed its alert function.
The events of the rest of the morning were nothing special: Yumiella unlocked Wild Tamer Sword II with the eggshells, which seemed to give a small intelligence bonus to tamed animals; Yoshi got upset about losing her attention so she had to soothe him and feed all three of them and apologize that it woke up her teammates; and at mid-morning their carriage arrived at Soma Town, in Soma Valley, in the territory of Countess Soma and her husband.
They ate a large breakfast at the camp to use up food supplies that wouldn't stay edible much longer, and Yumiella took the opportunity to discuss their strategy for the next few days.
"With all three of our eggs hatched, I want to focus on mastering Wild Tamer Sword Two today, so no monsters that are too dangerous until we get an understanding of what we're up against," she assessed. "Some of us should investigate the surrounding area for monsters nests, and the rest of us should get the news in town."
"Tersia and I are the best suited to scout the locale," Bakta volunteered, "but since we're in a noble's territory now, Lady Sword Hero, you should probably go introduce yourself to Countess Soma to be polite."
"Should I?" I really would prefer to avoid politics...
"Lady Hero! As the nephew of a Marquess, please let me go with you!" Welt volunteered loudly. Yumiella glared at him as the twins started peeping at the noise. "Sorry, ma'am. Miss. Um..."
"Hey," Farrie interjected smoothly, offering the birds a bit of her breakfast bacon as Yumiella soothed them, "how about Welt and Lady Yumiella go to the Countess while I go check around town for shops and rumors? But chances are the Countess will know what's going on better than most people, and she might have a request or two that isn't public knowledge. By the way, did you name these cuties after creatures from your world like you did with Yoshi?"
Yumiella's face remained impassive even as her mind spun into motion.
"...Yes, I did," she hedged slowly. I named Ryu after the word for dragons, so following that pattern should work. "The gray child is... Rich, short for Ostrich, a flightless bird from my home world. The tan child..." Another flightless bird is the Dodo, but is naming her after an extinct bird a potential death flag? Wait... The Sand Sword has the skill Sand Slash, and I thought I sounded like a Pokemon saying it...! "...is named Doduo, after a mythical bird with two heads that can evolve into Dodrio, a bird with three heads. Rich is a boy and Doduo is a girl."
"So cute! I heard some tamed monsters-," Yumiella glared but Farrie was looking away and didn't notice. "-can eventually Class Up too, so will you change her name to Dodo if that happens?"
"...To be determined," Yumiella answered.
Day 6, afternoon
As it happened, Countess Soma was busy with some wine-making project, but her third son (of four adult children,) greeted Welt politely and Yumiella very politely, and he was happy to tell them about several local monster issues, ranging from patches of magically altered bloodsucking garlic that had been cropping up, to different families of colored Slime monsters inhabiting various stretches of river in the valley, to the fact that the valley's local Giant Toad population was larger than normal and had suffered a boom in numbers from eating a lot of the giant insects released from the First Wave, so some assistance in culling their numbers before they ate too many goats or goatherds would be wonderful.
The Giant Frogs in the Dolkness County Dungeon had been a royal pain for her to fight in her past life until she got strong enough to stomp them, because she hadn't been using a weapon: they were largely impervious to blunt force and one of the few things that could resist her Dark Magic. Up until she learned Dark Flame, she'd tended to just skip through their rooms as much as possible so she didn't have to deal with them.
According the to nobleman, the Giant Toads here were similarly impervious to blunt force, but sharp weapons and most magic worked perfectly well on them.
I wasn't expecting them to larger than a horse-drawn carriage, but I suppose "giant" means giant. "Mister Welt, you said you have lightning magic?"
"Yyyes, but it- It's only Faust-level magic, Lady Hero. I don't think I can kill it in one hit," he worried, peering down at the giant toad resting near the bottom of the hill.
"Miss Farrie taught you her Faust Tailwind spell," Yumiella reminded him.
"I- yes. Should I cast it on you, Lady Hero?"
"On both of us, and on Yoshi. Please hold the twins and cast a lightning spell," Yumiella instructed, "then run if it survives. We will prevent the toad from chasing you down."
"R-Right! Come here birdies, Uncle Welt will be taking you for a ride..."
...
"to speed our way! Zweite Tailwind," Welt finished casting.
"Is your MP at an acceptable level?" He looks more tired than I expected.
"Yes, Lady Hero. I'm just not- huff- not used to casting in succession so much. But I'll improve! Faust Shocking Lance!"
The flash of magic plasma hit the giant toad in its back, but there was no EXP notification. It croaked like grinding stone and jumped... the direction it had been facing, away from them.
"Tsh. Yoshi, chase," she commanded. He wasn't large enough for her to ride yet, but he could keep up with her like a hunting hound as they both shot into motion after the giant toad.
It turned, and Yumiella immediately broke left with Yoshi before the toad took the air again, with them both getting well out of its landing zone when it leaped.
Given how much the ground had shook from its first impact, Yumiella jumped at the toad just as it was coming down, so the tremor couldn't disrupt her footing. She landed on its back and began to stab with Wild Tamer Sword II at its spine and skull.
The toad croaked again, deafeningly, and she heard Yoshi savaging at its side or one of its legs but she didn't stop.
"Sharp Stab. Sharp Stab," Yumiella used when she realized she wasn't doing damage fast enough.
The giant toad died with a gurgle, and Yumiella got a delicious EXP notification. She'd intended to absorb the body and break it down later with Bakta's help, but she got a notification that it was too large to absorb in one piece so Welt kept watch as she broke it down and absorbed the components.
The toads were so giant that she got enough meat and bones to master those sword forms just from the first toad, which was very convenient.
Then she took some of the meat out from her Inventory again to feed Rich, Doduo, and Yoshi, as it seemed they all loved the smell and taste of it.
"I can't tell, was that close or not? It seemed like you had it under control...?" Welt checked as the animal trio tucked in ravenously.
"I expect that your lightning dulled its reflexes, so it did not try to fall on its back. However, between magical buffs, my mobility, and use of weapon skills, we should be easily able to kill another five or ten without mishap, especially if we can approach them from behind."
"Five or ten...?" Welt looked worried for a moment, then he rallied. "Yes! I will not fail you!! Lady Sword Hero!!!"
xbox432
Lover of Editing
Oh? So the Dragon and the Chocobos -cough- Filolials didn't immediately try to eat one another? Looks like being raised together by a Hero was enough to get them to bond. Sibling relationship maybe?
Also, it may have been a small scene but I liked the sword training in the village. Specifically the part where all the little girls were excited. With so many of the Heroes being guys, it must be amazing to them to see a lady hero. Yumellia may have just inspired the next generation of lady knights!
Also, it may have been a small scene but I liked the sword training in the village. Specifically the part where all the little girls were excited. With so many of the Heroes being guys, it must be amazing to them to see a lady hero. Yumellia may have just inspired the next generation of lady knights!
Birds, Bugs, and Babies' First Hunt
Obloquy
CrossMyHeart And HopeToDie, StickANeedleInMyEye
- Location
- the Physical Realm
Day 6, afternoon
"Hollow Bones," Yumiella murmured, feeling her body grow lighter.
She waited, patiently, for the giant toad to take the bait.
They'd come across this strategy partly by accident, and she'd nearly had a heart attack the first time -- no giant toad had ever been made sorrier before it messily died -- but Yoshi seemed to enjoy it and she was loathe to cut down on his helpful fun, even if she insisted that Welt keep a damage protection spell over her Tyrella baby for safety.
*Phlbt!*
"Rrri-!"
Now! Yumiella jumped, propelled by her natural strength and the jumping bonus she'd gained, and at the height of her arc she got her sword (still in Wild Tamer II form, but it seemed very close to mastery and 100% proficiency,) into a downward stabbing position as she began to fall. Heavy Block. Sharp Stab!
The bite to her SP was nothing major, but these Skills combined horrendously well to shatter the Giant Toad's skull on impact and drive her sword through its brain.
It died, Yumiella clambered down to solid ground, and just as her feet touched the ground Yoshi messily tore his way out of the toad's belly to meet her.
Is this what the saying means, Happy as a pig in the mud? Yumiella wondered fondly as she scratched the least bloody bit of Yoshi's skull available.
"You'll have your food soon, here's some from the last toad to tide you by," she chided, producing more meat from her Inventory.
Yoshi and the twin birds had all been growing very quickly and eating ravenously since they'd started the hunt a few hours before; Yoshi was now the size of a pony or a large wolf, though not so large that Yumiella felt it safe to ride him, while Rich and Doduo were larger than chickens but still smaller than the average swan.
(Yumiella had spent a 30-minute break teaching the birds to walk and then how to play hopscotch when Welt had confessed that he was having trouble carrying them, and once the duo had been insulted by Yoshi winning a few rounds they had buckled down, gotten the hang of it, and begun running literal circles around Welt to explore this brand new adventure of movement.)
Once she'd finished her dissection, Yumiella got a pleasant surprise.
Yumiella idly reset the Proficiency, which brought her total up to 42 PP, and shifted to her Bat Sword form so that she could master it and get the bonuses to stealth and hearing that it provided.
I hit Level 22 about an hour ago, so we're making good progress on that front... Awakening a sword form seems to cost 10 PP for the Rank G forms and an additional 5 PP for each form after that, with increasing possibilities for failure. But if Wild Tamer II Sword has been mastered and its passive bonuses are improved, then I should upgrade that to make the most of it. That or Nakama Sword, but I still don't fully understand that one and... yes, at B Rarity it is more expensive and more likely to fail than at C Rarity.
"Awaken Wild Tamer Sword II," Yumiella ordered. Her Menu fuzzed, and for a scary moment Yumiella worried that she had just burned 30 PP on a failure by reaching too far.
"Yom!" "Pi-piru-pi!" "Piiyuuu~!"
"Lady Hero? Was the Holy Sword supposed to glow?" Welt checked.
"Yes. I succeeded in a power-up," Yumiella confirmed.
"That's good... Can we get back to the camp and meet the others please?" Welt requested; Yumiella could almost imagine the anime sweat drop symbol beside his head.
"Ah." I forgot, they must be waiting for us.
After being scolded for going out to Level Up without proper back-up, everyone had compared notes about their discoveries:
Bakta had brought back enough small Pikyupikyu to finish mastering her Captivity Sword, and he'd pointed out a few local likely nesting places and watering holes.
Tersia had gone further afield around the valley and asked several households about trouble spots, including three places where multiple colors of slime monsters often gathered, but he'd also had to limp back after stepping in a plant patch that tried to tear up his ankle; Yumiella made a note that it was inconvenient for her to be the only holder of healing potions, and promptly redistributed several potions to her teammates for emergency use.
Welt shared what the son of the Countess had told them, and then Farrie contributed rumors she had picked up about a lot of giant insects making their home in one particular patch of forest, which everyone had agreed were likely the wave monsters and that they should be stomped out first thing before they could breed.
Yumiella had taken idle note of this while feeding more and more food to her trio of animal children, and then Bakta had brought up a point that placed her in a conundrum: monsters usually went through growth spurts as a result of gaining experience, but with Yumiella herself, four humans, and three animals all sharing experience, then not only was it being divided 8 ways but they were facing a group EXP penalty from having a party larger than 6 individuals.
Yumiella hadn't particularly noticed due to her own amulet doubling EXP on top of the Hero bonuses, but the idea of inhibiting anyone's growth made her very uncomfortable, yet she couldn't just decide to remove anyone from her party either.
She told them she would sleep on it, and then later before trying to sleep on it she'd gotten into an argument with Bakta about whether or not it was safe to leave a pile of food out for Yoshi, Rich, and Doduo to snack on all night when they felt hungry.
He'd insisted it would attract monsters, and Yumiella had immediately wondered why they were hunting monsters up to now instead of leaving out food to attract them to prepared locations, like she'd used to do with setting up a prepared area to blow her Flute.
In the end, Yumiella had left a pile of cooked and raw meat out with instructions for her babies to also feel free to eat any monsters that came by the campsite.
She woke up to a respectable pile of EXP notifications, as well as the sight of Doduo and Rich being fully ostrich-sized while Yoshi had grown large enough for her to ride.
Her Bat Sword had been mastered with 100% Proficiency overnight, so she reset the Proficiency (27 PP available) and settled down to talk with her team about their training plans.
"Some of my skills and Cardinal Weapon abilities have a cooldown period," Yumiella explained, "but the party system does not, so I can remove or re-add members at will. Given the number of monsters they hunted this past night, keeping one of them in our party each day and switching to have them all in the party at night while we sleep seems fair."
"If they're hunting without us, they should reap the benefits," Farrie agreed, and that statement stopped the men from voicing any objections.
"Guess we're bringing one of them along today?" Tersia mused.
"We're still planning to wipe out the bugs from the First Wave, Lady Hero?" Bakta checked.
"Yoshi first, since he is the oldest," Yumiella confirmed.
"Piiii-yiiiii!" "Piyu-pi!"
Both the large birds heard that plan and objected, Rich even beginning to peck at Yoshi irately while Doduo sulked.
As Ryu had been an absolutely obedient sweetheart, Yumiella had no idea how to handle her misbehaving children other than getting between the fight to break them up; other than a momentary flare of murderous rage, she felt somewhat grateful when Bakta physically intervened by whapping Rich on his beak, which left the dark gray Filorial in a stunned jaw-drop.
"It's not about pain, it's about making them pay attention," Farrie had agreed, getting forehead to forehead with Rich and using her wide eyes to make him blink. "Behave. Hurting your big brother also hurts your mommy, okay? You see how scuffed up and distressed she is? You did that to her, you made Yoshi hunker down all scared."
The message seemed to get through, as Rich let out a keening moan and curled up in shame with one head under his wing.
Yumiella desperately wanted to comfort her fluffy gray baby, but she already had her hands full petting Yoshi in the hopes that he would settle down.
Bakta buried his face in his hands and muttered a prayer for patience to deal with this.
"How about I go check out the forest and see what insects we're dealing with, where good choke points would be, that stuff," Tersia offered.
"Alone?" Welt worried.
"As long as I don't enter the grove and get caught in webs, I can outrun the bugs easily," Tersia chuckled reassuringly. "I'll try to sketch out a map for when you guys arrive."
Yumiella gave approval after checking he had emergency equipment, and Tersia raced off.
It took another 10 minutes to hash out a plan of action, which amounted to Farrie taking a day off -- her martial arts skills weren't great at fighting giant insects -- to supervise Rich's punishment while the other six (including Yoshi and Doduo) partied up together and cleared out the Wave monster infestation.
It took Yumiella a little longer to convince the others that she didn't want to bother with a special saddle -- they talked her into a folded blanket tied to Yoshi's back with a rope -- and then they headed off to the patch of woods where Wave monsters had reportedly made a nest.
"The really creepy thing is that the beetles and spiders aren't fighting each other," Tersia reported once he'd clambered down from his spying tree. "I saw a bunch of spider webs in the tree branches, but the beetles are crawling around ground level with no problems. Spiders are carnivorous but the beetles are probably omnivorous, since I think they've been eating plants and some of the trees. These three areas," he marked them on the map, "had the densest webbing and multiple spiders around, so any egg sacks are most likely there."
I really wish I could hurry up and learn magic again for ranged options. Better use Rope Sword so I can master it efficiently here, she decided. "Welt, would your ice magic or other spells be able to fence off the area and prevent the monsters from fleeing?"
"Wave monsters don't usually flee, they single-mindedly attack when there are humans in their range," Bakta observed.
"Maybe during the Waves, but if that were true, then these guys would've chased fleeing humans into town and tried to rampage before now," Tersia countered.
"It should be easy enough to check," Yumiella decided. "I will enter their demesne, draw aggro, and lure them out so you can attack."
She'd already stood to do so, and her three teammates immediately grabbed her to object.
"I can tear their webs and resist their poisonous fangs with my sword skills, while you have no such safety net," she had replied.
"But-! Lady Hero, at least send in one of the two animals to-,"
A sound like a crack or a pop came from Yumiella's clenched fist, and Bakta immediately blanched and dropped the callous suggestion before she needed to decide whether yelling or hitting him or something else would be the most appropriate response.
Tersia insisted she take a potion before her apparently injured hand could begin to swell, and then she gave Yoshi and Doduo a firm instruction to "stay".
Even walking just a few steps into the trees felt... It feels like a just walked into the entry of a Dungeon, Yumiella assessed. She swung her Rope Sword with a smile. Air Strike Slash!
Her arc of power carved through several tree branches, which fell to the ground with a crash. Immediately, her ears picked up a familiar skittering.
The first beetle came into view and Yumiella immediately lunged, stabbing her sword behind its head and then crushing said head with a stomp.
"Ah..." Right, I was supposed to lure them outside. Sword-chan, can you please store this in your inventory to dismantle it later?
More skittering neared, and Yumiella reflexively kicked back at a beetle that tried to lunge out of a hole in the tree roots at her while she was bent over absorbing the first body.
No! I don't have time to get the second body absorbed with more monsters coming! I'm sorry, precious material drops, I'll be back for you!
As three more beetles charged, Yumiella had to leave and kite the monster trio out into the sunlight where her party was waiting.
The large black beetles chased her out of the forested area, but then the two in the rear began to hesitate and slow their charge as she led them further away from the trees.
The rearmost beetle finally turned, only for an arrow to shoot from Tersia's treetop perch and skewer its head.
"Pi-yuuuu~!"
"Yahm!"
Doduo immediately fell from the sky feet first to smash the pinned beetle and then savage the second beetle with his beak, while Yoshi bounded out from the bushes to snap up the frontmost beetle with his jaws.
So adorable! I wish I had a camera, but I'll have to immortalize this in my memory: the siblings' first shared monster hunt, protecting their mother!
Yumiella could only barely resist the urge to squeal in glee at her two babies' cuteness, and she immediately moved to give them cuddles and scritchies and encouragement without even caring that they were devouring the monster corpses she'd wanted to absorb.
Once the beetles were all eaten up -- and her teammates in hiding had seen several more beetles scurry up to the tree line, observe the scene, and then retreat out of sight again -- they had settled in to discuss their method of approach.
Bakta had wanted to ask the Soma family for permission to burn down that patch of forest.
Tersia wanted to thin the bugs' numbers by repeating Yumiella's kiting actions.
Welt said that he wasn't very experienced with consecutive casting -- the act of linking spells one after the next to create an enhanced chain reaction effect -- but he knew enough to put together an area effect that could inhibit or disadvantage a large number of bugs at once, preferably by freezing them.
Yumiella had cut to the chase.
"Doduo and Yoshi are both capable of out-running the insect swarms, and I can reliably kill them without taking damage already. We will enter the forest while staying within view of the tree line, goad as many insects to attack us as possible, kill them, and retreat back to open grassland if we begin to be overwhelmed by numbers. Welt, please stick to Faust-level magic but conserve your MP enough to use a Zweit-level spell if we need an opening to retreat. I will ride Yoshi, but does anyone wish to ride Doduo?"
Her teammates couldn't really argue with her plan, so long as they stayed on the ground, in view of the path to retreat, so once Welt was mounted on Doduo (as the one who most needed protection), they stepped back beneath the trees.
Day 7, noon
"Yomyomyom~!"
"Pyuuuuu~!"
Tersia still had arrows, so he didn't let up on shooting, but he shivered at the sound of those beastial war cries, and the wet crunching that followed them.
Was it extremely satisfying that a lot of Wave Monsters were being slaughtered and devoured so they could never hurt good people ever again? Yes.
Was it still disturbing to see a couple of animals hatched only a few days ago tearing through Wave Monsters like- like...
Tersia didn't even really have a good comparison for watching a Tyrella bounce around like a skipping stone as it crunched monsters under its feet, or watching a Filorial kick giant bugs into the air and snap them in half with her beak.
Welt had already vomited once (though not on Doduo's feathers) from motion sickness when the bird jumped up among the tree branches to eat some spiders.
Yoshi was even more active, but the Holy Sword Hero seemed utterly unaffected, no matter many times her mount jumped to squash a bug, ducked to munch on them, or spun into a tail whip.
At least three times, he'd seen Lady Yumiella hop off Yoshi's back to cut through a group of bugs massed together, and one of those times had involved Yoshi's tail slingshotting her into a treetop!
Despite the rapid pace of her combat, she never lost her cool and he'd never seen her make a mistake; the 'Air Sword Slash' arcs she sent out every few seconds in between precise sword strikes never failed to hit at least two bugs, save for one time where she cut through a tree trunk such that it squashed six or seven bugs when it fell.
Welt was releasing Faust Icicle spells at a good pace while Tersia and Bakta killed monsters as fast as they could, but Tersia felt certain that the Lady sword Hero had killed more monsters than the three of them combined, and that was without counting the literal piles of bodies her mounts had slain.
Once he'd run out of arrows, Tersia had to kill the giant insects with his daggers, but by then he'd leveled up enough that his stats meant he was in minimal danger. He could probably kill the monsters with his bare hands if he had to.
He started stomping the bug monsters to death just because it'd keep him from being distracted by the ick on his hands, and that seemed to work well enough.
Then he smashed one more beetle's head, stomped its shell in half to make sure it was dead, and spun around to look for his next target.
"...Huh? Wow, I guess we're done." He almost said it felt like there ought to be more monsters left, except 1) he knew not to tempt fate like that, and 2) he could see Lady Yumiella beginning to absorb monsters from the first of several waist-high and shoulder-high piles of carcasses. "Blades and Bow, we must torn through eighty or more in, what? Was it an hour?"
"Eleven minutes," Lady Yumiella answered.
"It... felt longer," Bakta managed.
"Guuuuuhhhh..." Welt groaned.
"There are at least two spiders still alive, and we will need to check for egg sacks. Do you need medical treatment?" she asked Welt, totally unfazed and not pausing her absorption of corpses.
Welt groaned again, slipped off Doduo to the ground, and tried to say something but only managed a garbled mess.
"I'll clean him up and wash his mouth out," Tersia offered so he wouldn't have to stare at the surrounding carnage and wonder when he'd gone from a sneaky message-runner to a guy capable of helping cause it.
It was extremely satisfying!
He was damn proud to be striking a blow for humanity against the Wave and proud that he'd become so strong. It just...
Walking into a den of monsters and slaughtering them all without losses is the type of thing you hear bards sing about Classed Up knight troops doing! I don't feel like some kind of living legend, but am I going to hear people talking about how Tricky Tersia did some crazy feat? I don't feel like an awesome hero, I feel like I got caught in a rush of people and had to struggle free!
Admittedly, that's better than feeling like I got munched on by ravenous monsters, but I just...
"Next time, you ride the bird, okay?" Welt wheezed once he'd rinsed his mouth out.
"Not on your life," Tersia hissed.
"Well I'm not doing it!"
"I can ride Doduo if one of you would prefer to ride Yoshi," Lady Yumiella offered blithely, even though she ought to have been out of hearing range.
"No!"
"No way, I wouldn't want to steal either kid from mommy," Tersia denied. "My old bones just can't keep up with young whippersnappers, you know? Maybe one of them can just have some free rein around the battlefield, testing their limits? Or Bakta, do you want a ride on either of them? Bakta?"
"Mister Bakta went ahead to scout for egg sacks or dense webs," Yumiella informed them. "I will hear if he gets in trouble."
Left unsaid was the utter certainty that she could get him out of trouble when necessary, and Tersia couldn't fault her confidence.
It really put the capabilities of a Hero in a new light for him, and that was after he'd been awed by the cavern fight.
"Hollow Bones," Yumiella murmured, feeling her body grow lighter.
She waited, patiently, for the giant toad to take the bait.
They'd come across this strategy partly by accident, and she'd nearly had a heart attack the first time -- no giant toad had ever been made sorrier before it messily died -- but Yoshi seemed to enjoy it and she was loathe to cut down on his helpful fun, even if she insisted that Welt keep a damage protection spell over her Tyrella baby for safety.
*Phlbt!*
"Rrri-!"
Now! Yumiella jumped, propelled by her natural strength and the jumping bonus she'd gained, and at the height of her arc she got her sword (still in Wild Tamer II form, but it seemed very close to mastery and 100% proficiency,) into a downward stabbing position as she began to fall. Heavy Block. Sharp Stab!
The bite to her SP was nothing major, but these Skills combined horrendously well to shatter the Giant Toad's skull on impact and drive her sword through its brain.
It died, Yumiella clambered down to solid ground, and just as her feet touched the ground Yoshi messily tore his way out of the toad's belly to meet her.
Is this what the saying means, Happy as a pig in the mud? Yumiella wondered fondly as she scratched the least bloody bit of Yoshi's skull available.
"You'll have your food soon, here's some from the last toad to tide you by," she chided, producing more meat from her Inventory.
Yoshi and the twin birds had all been growing very quickly and eating ravenously since they'd started the hunt a few hours before; Yoshi was now the size of a pony or a large wolf, though not so large that Yumiella felt it safe to ride him, while Rich and Doduo were larger than chickens but still smaller than the average swan.
(Yumiella had spent a 30-minute break teaching the birds to walk and then how to play hopscotch when Welt had confessed that he was having trouble carrying them, and once the duo had been insulted by Yoshi winning a few rounds they had buckled down, gotten the hang of it, and begun running literal circles around Welt to explore this brand new adventure of movement.)
Once she'd finished her dissection, Yumiella got a pleasant surprise.
Yumiella idly reset the Proficiency, which brought her total up to 42 PP, and shifted to her Bat Sword form so that she could master it and get the bonuses to stealth and hearing that it provided.
I hit Level 22 about an hour ago, so we're making good progress on that front... Awakening a sword form seems to cost 10 PP for the Rank G forms and an additional 5 PP for each form after that, with increasing possibilities for failure. But if Wild Tamer II Sword has been mastered and its passive bonuses are improved, then I should upgrade that to make the most of it. That or Nakama Sword, but I still don't fully understand that one and... yes, at B Rarity it is more expensive and more likely to fail than at C Rarity.
"Awaken Wild Tamer Sword II," Yumiella ordered. Her Menu fuzzed, and for a scary moment Yumiella worried that she had just burned 30 PP on a failure by reaching too far.
"Yom!" "Pi-piru-pi!" "Piiyuuu~!"
"Lady Hero? Was the Holy Sword supposed to glow?" Welt checked.
"Yes. I succeeded in a power-up," Yumiella confirmed.
"That's good... Can we get back to the camp and meet the others please?" Welt requested; Yumiella could almost imagine the anime sweat drop symbol beside his head.
"Ah." I forgot, they must be waiting for us.
After being scolded for going out to Level Up without proper back-up, everyone had compared notes about their discoveries:
Bakta had brought back enough small Pikyupikyu to finish mastering her Captivity Sword, and he'd pointed out a few local likely nesting places and watering holes.
Tersia had gone further afield around the valley and asked several households about trouble spots, including three places where multiple colors of slime monsters often gathered, but he'd also had to limp back after stepping in a plant patch that tried to tear up his ankle; Yumiella made a note that it was inconvenient for her to be the only holder of healing potions, and promptly redistributed several potions to her teammates for emergency use.
Welt shared what the son of the Countess had told them, and then Farrie contributed rumors she had picked up about a lot of giant insects making their home in one particular patch of forest, which everyone had agreed were likely the wave monsters and that they should be stomped out first thing before they could breed.
Yumiella had taken idle note of this while feeding more and more food to her trio of animal children, and then Bakta had brought up a point that placed her in a conundrum: monsters usually went through growth spurts as a result of gaining experience, but with Yumiella herself, four humans, and three animals all sharing experience, then not only was it being divided 8 ways but they were facing a group EXP penalty from having a party larger than 6 individuals.
Yumiella hadn't particularly noticed due to her own amulet doubling EXP on top of the Hero bonuses, but the idea of inhibiting anyone's growth made her very uncomfortable, yet she couldn't just decide to remove anyone from her party either.
She told them she would sleep on it, and then later before trying to sleep on it she'd gotten into an argument with Bakta about whether or not it was safe to leave a pile of food out for Yoshi, Rich, and Doduo to snack on all night when they felt hungry.
He'd insisted it would attract monsters, and Yumiella had immediately wondered why they were hunting monsters up to now instead of leaving out food to attract them to prepared locations, like she'd used to do with setting up a prepared area to blow her Flute.
In the end, Yumiella had left a pile of cooked and raw meat out with instructions for her babies to also feel free to eat any monsters that came by the campsite.
She woke up to a respectable pile of EXP notifications, as well as the sight of Doduo and Rich being fully ostrich-sized while Yoshi had grown large enough for her to ride.
Her Bat Sword had been mastered with 100% Proficiency overnight, so she reset the Proficiency (27 PP available) and settled down to talk with her team about their training plans.
"Some of my skills and Cardinal Weapon abilities have a cooldown period," Yumiella explained, "but the party system does not, so I can remove or re-add members at will. Given the number of monsters they hunted this past night, keeping one of them in our party each day and switching to have them all in the party at night while we sleep seems fair."
"If they're hunting without us, they should reap the benefits," Farrie agreed, and that statement stopped the men from voicing any objections.
"Guess we're bringing one of them along today?" Tersia mused.
"We're still planning to wipe out the bugs from the First Wave, Lady Hero?" Bakta checked.
"Yoshi first, since he is the oldest," Yumiella confirmed.
"Piiii-yiiiii!" "Piyu-pi!"
Both the large birds heard that plan and objected, Rich even beginning to peck at Yoshi irately while Doduo sulked.
As Ryu had been an absolutely obedient sweetheart, Yumiella had no idea how to handle her misbehaving children other than getting between the fight to break them up; other than a momentary flare of murderous rage, she felt somewhat grateful when Bakta physically intervened by whapping Rich on his beak, which left the dark gray Filorial in a stunned jaw-drop.
"It's not about pain, it's about making them pay attention," Farrie had agreed, getting forehead to forehead with Rich and using her wide eyes to make him blink. "Behave. Hurting your big brother also hurts your mommy, okay? You see how scuffed up and distressed she is? You did that to her, you made Yoshi hunker down all scared."
The message seemed to get through, as Rich let out a keening moan and curled up in shame with one head under his wing.
Yumiella desperately wanted to comfort her fluffy gray baby, but she already had her hands full petting Yoshi in the hopes that he would settle down.
Bakta buried his face in his hands and muttered a prayer for patience to deal with this.
"How about I go check out the forest and see what insects we're dealing with, where good choke points would be, that stuff," Tersia offered.
"Alone?" Welt worried.
"As long as I don't enter the grove and get caught in webs, I can outrun the bugs easily," Tersia chuckled reassuringly. "I'll try to sketch out a map for when you guys arrive."
Yumiella gave approval after checking he had emergency equipment, and Tersia raced off.
It took another 10 minutes to hash out a plan of action, which amounted to Farrie taking a day off -- her martial arts skills weren't great at fighting giant insects -- to supervise Rich's punishment while the other six (including Yoshi and Doduo) partied up together and cleared out the Wave monster infestation.
It took Yumiella a little longer to convince the others that she didn't want to bother with a special saddle -- they talked her into a folded blanket tied to Yoshi's back with a rope -- and then they headed off to the patch of woods where Wave monsters had reportedly made a nest.
"The really creepy thing is that the beetles and spiders aren't fighting each other," Tersia reported once he'd clambered down from his spying tree. "I saw a bunch of spider webs in the tree branches, but the beetles are crawling around ground level with no problems. Spiders are carnivorous but the beetles are probably omnivorous, since I think they've been eating plants and some of the trees. These three areas," he marked them on the map, "had the densest webbing and multiple spiders around, so any egg sacks are most likely there."
I really wish I could hurry up and learn magic again for ranged options. Better use Rope Sword so I can master it efficiently here, she decided. "Welt, would your ice magic or other spells be able to fence off the area and prevent the monsters from fleeing?"
"Wave monsters don't usually flee, they single-mindedly attack when there are humans in their range," Bakta observed.
"Maybe during the Waves, but if that were true, then these guys would've chased fleeing humans into town and tried to rampage before now," Tersia countered.
"It should be easy enough to check," Yumiella decided. "I will enter their demesne, draw aggro, and lure them out so you can attack."
She'd already stood to do so, and her three teammates immediately grabbed her to object.
"I can tear their webs and resist their poisonous fangs with my sword skills, while you have no such safety net," she had replied.
"But-! Lady Hero, at least send in one of the two animals to-,"
A sound like a crack or a pop came from Yumiella's clenched fist, and Bakta immediately blanched and dropped the callous suggestion before she needed to decide whether yelling or hitting him or something else would be the most appropriate response.
Tersia insisted she take a potion before her apparently injured hand could begin to swell, and then she gave Yoshi and Doduo a firm instruction to "stay".
Even walking just a few steps into the trees felt... It feels like a just walked into the entry of a Dungeon, Yumiella assessed. She swung her Rope Sword with a smile. Air Strike Slash!
Her arc of power carved through several tree branches, which fell to the ground with a crash. Immediately, her ears picked up a familiar skittering.
The first beetle came into view and Yumiella immediately lunged, stabbing her sword behind its head and then crushing said head with a stomp.
"Ah..." Right, I was supposed to lure them outside. Sword-chan, can you please store this in your inventory to dismantle it later?
More skittering neared, and Yumiella reflexively kicked back at a beetle that tried to lunge out of a hole in the tree roots at her while she was bent over absorbing the first body.
No! I don't have time to get the second body absorbed with more monsters coming! I'm sorry, precious material drops, I'll be back for you!
As three more beetles charged, Yumiella had to leave and kite the monster trio out into the sunlight where her party was waiting.
The large black beetles chased her out of the forested area, but then the two in the rear began to hesitate and slow their charge as she led them further away from the trees.
The rearmost beetle finally turned, only for an arrow to shoot from Tersia's treetop perch and skewer its head.
"Pi-yuuuu~!"
"Yahm!"
Doduo immediately fell from the sky feet first to smash the pinned beetle and then savage the second beetle with his beak, while Yoshi bounded out from the bushes to snap up the frontmost beetle with his jaws.
So adorable! I wish I had a camera, but I'll have to immortalize this in my memory: the siblings' first shared monster hunt, protecting their mother!
Yumiella could only barely resist the urge to squeal in glee at her two babies' cuteness, and she immediately moved to give them cuddles and scritchies and encouragement without even caring that they were devouring the monster corpses she'd wanted to absorb.
Once the beetles were all eaten up -- and her teammates in hiding had seen several more beetles scurry up to the tree line, observe the scene, and then retreat out of sight again -- they had settled in to discuss their method of approach.
Bakta had wanted to ask the Soma family for permission to burn down that patch of forest.
Tersia wanted to thin the bugs' numbers by repeating Yumiella's kiting actions.
Welt said that he wasn't very experienced with consecutive casting -- the act of linking spells one after the next to create an enhanced chain reaction effect -- but he knew enough to put together an area effect that could inhibit or disadvantage a large number of bugs at once, preferably by freezing them.
Yumiella had cut to the chase.
"Doduo and Yoshi are both capable of out-running the insect swarms, and I can reliably kill them without taking damage already. We will enter the forest while staying within view of the tree line, goad as many insects to attack us as possible, kill them, and retreat back to open grassland if we begin to be overwhelmed by numbers. Welt, please stick to Faust-level magic but conserve your MP enough to use a Zweit-level spell if we need an opening to retreat. I will ride Yoshi, but does anyone wish to ride Doduo?"
Her teammates couldn't really argue with her plan, so long as they stayed on the ground, in view of the path to retreat, so once Welt was mounted on Doduo (as the one who most needed protection), they stepped back beneath the trees.
Day 7, noon
"Yomyomyom~!"
"Pyuuuuu~!"
Tersia still had arrows, so he didn't let up on shooting, but he shivered at the sound of those beastial war cries, and the wet crunching that followed them.
Was it extremely satisfying that a lot of Wave Monsters were being slaughtered and devoured so they could never hurt good people ever again? Yes.
Was it still disturbing to see a couple of animals hatched only a few days ago tearing through Wave Monsters like- like...
Tersia didn't even really have a good comparison for watching a Tyrella bounce around like a skipping stone as it crunched monsters under its feet, or watching a Filorial kick giant bugs into the air and snap them in half with her beak.
Welt had already vomited once (though not on Doduo's feathers) from motion sickness when the bird jumped up among the tree branches to eat some spiders.
Yoshi was even more active, but the Holy Sword Hero seemed utterly unaffected, no matter many times her mount jumped to squash a bug, ducked to munch on them, or spun into a tail whip.
At least three times, he'd seen Lady Yumiella hop off Yoshi's back to cut through a group of bugs massed together, and one of those times had involved Yoshi's tail slingshotting her into a treetop!
Despite the rapid pace of her combat, she never lost her cool and he'd never seen her make a mistake; the 'Air Sword Slash' arcs she sent out every few seconds in between precise sword strikes never failed to hit at least two bugs, save for one time where she cut through a tree trunk such that it squashed six or seven bugs when it fell.
Welt was releasing Faust Icicle spells at a good pace while Tersia and Bakta killed monsters as fast as they could, but Tersia felt certain that the Lady sword Hero had killed more monsters than the three of them combined, and that was without counting the literal piles of bodies her mounts had slain.
Once he'd run out of arrows, Tersia had to kill the giant insects with his daggers, but by then he'd leveled up enough that his stats meant he was in minimal danger. He could probably kill the monsters with his bare hands if he had to.
He started stomping the bug monsters to death just because it'd keep him from being distracted by the ick on his hands, and that seemed to work well enough.
Then he smashed one more beetle's head, stomped its shell in half to make sure it was dead, and spun around to look for his next target.
"...Huh? Wow, I guess we're done." He almost said it felt like there ought to be more monsters left, except 1) he knew not to tempt fate like that, and 2) he could see Lady Yumiella beginning to absorb monsters from the first of several waist-high and shoulder-high piles of carcasses. "Blades and Bow, we must torn through eighty or more in, what? Was it an hour?"
"Eleven minutes," Lady Yumiella answered.
"It... felt longer," Bakta managed.
"Guuuuuhhhh..." Welt groaned.
"There are at least two spiders still alive, and we will need to check for egg sacks. Do you need medical treatment?" she asked Welt, totally unfazed and not pausing her absorption of corpses.
Welt groaned again, slipped off Doduo to the ground, and tried to say something but only managed a garbled mess.
"I'll clean him up and wash his mouth out," Tersia offered so he wouldn't have to stare at the surrounding carnage and wonder when he'd gone from a sneaky message-runner to a guy capable of helping cause it.
It was extremely satisfying!
He was damn proud to be striking a blow for humanity against the Wave and proud that he'd become so strong. It just...
Walking into a den of monsters and slaughtering them all without losses is the type of thing you hear bards sing about Classed Up knight troops doing! I don't feel like some kind of living legend, but am I going to hear people talking about how Tricky Tersia did some crazy feat? I don't feel like an awesome hero, I feel like I got caught in a rush of people and had to struggle free!
Admittedly, that's better than feeling like I got munched on by ravenous monsters, but I just...
"Next time, you ride the bird, okay?" Welt wheezed once he'd rinsed his mouth out.
"Not on your life," Tersia hissed.
"Well I'm not doing it!"
"I can ride Doduo if one of you would prefer to ride Yoshi," Lady Yumiella offered blithely, even though she ought to have been out of hearing range.
"No!"
"No way, I wouldn't want to steal either kid from mommy," Tersia denied. "My old bones just can't keep up with young whippersnappers, you know? Maybe one of them can just have some free rein around the battlefield, testing their limits? Or Bakta, do you want a ride on either of them? Bakta?"
"Mister Bakta went ahead to scout for egg sacks or dense webs," Yumiella informed them. "I will hear if he gets in trouble."
Left unsaid was the utter certainty that she could get him out of trouble when necessary, and Tersia couldn't fault her confidence.
It really put the capabilities of a Hero in a new light for him, and that was after he'd been awed by the cavern fight.
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Obloquy
CrossMyHeart And HopeToDie, StickANeedleInMyEye
- Location
- the Physical Realm
Bickering and fighting, sure, but they're not going to jump to immediate attempts at eating each other this young. So yes, sibling bonds with the possibility for bullying or other developments later when they're older.
Yup! Melromarc being a matriarchy is something I feel doesn't get explored enough, since almost all the high-ranking nobles and warriors we see are men, and all four Cardinal Heroes are men.
Queen Mirellia very clearly isn't a figurehead, she's a powerful mage and warrior in her own right, so you'd expect lower people to be looking up to her, and yet the main nobles we see -- Idol Rabier, Van Reichnott, the late Duke Seaetto (though his daughter was his heir), and Count Habenburg -- are all men as well, and so is the Pope.
I figure more patriarchy is slipping in culturally, but it's not all the way rooted in yet, and a female Cardinal Hero is a Big Deal that's getting a lot of young women excited and idolizing her.
Yeah, that's pretty much it. A little over the top, but she'd definitely rip to shreds all the people involved as well as people whom she plausibly suspects to be peripherally involved, like the King and the Pope and the Vizier.
xbox432
Lover of Editing
Heh, good to hear. For me that is. I don't think Yumellia will be as happy about the bullying. She just went from being a mother of one to a mother of three, she's not used to dealing with sibling antics yet. Though it does seem that her party members are capable of taking up the position of stern parental figure to offset Yumellia spoiling them.
Egleris
Vagrant Dragon
- Location
- Italy
I think that's just an author fail - that is, the author of Rise of the Shield Hero doesn't really understand what a matriarchy is, so he said that the society was matriarchal, but when writing the story, he portrayed a patriarchal one. A fanfic author that wants the wordbuilding to be consistent needs to then choose between correcting all of the wordbuilding that doesn't fit the definition, or remove any mention that the society is matriarchal and just have it be portrayed as it canonically was. At least, if wanting for consistency.