A/N
Yo, what's poppin.
Last time I addressed the readers was chapter 1, so it's kinda been a minute.
I know I've been real slow with uploads, since before chapter 5, the last upload was like a month ago. Sorry about that.
I do plan to pick up the pace, but since this is the last of the pre written chapters, it's still gonna take a while, being inexperienced and all that.
Have this 2,500 word chapter as an apology before hand.
P.S. Thanks for adding this to your collections, it gives me a lot of confidence to keep going, I'll try not to disappoint✌️
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Time Skip
It's been a couple of days since that first job with marisa, and sans has been doing requests every now and then. As much as he wants to be lazy, the situation was rather desperate.
So he's been doing some jobs, helping some people, and shooing off the occasional yokai with a bone or two. He still didn't know what these creatures are.
At first he just assumed they were monsters like him. But the more he encounters them, the more different they seem. They were violent, rowdy, and egotistical. Which was damn near opposite of a monster, which were beings made of love, hope, and compassion.
The nature of these beings puzzled him greatly, but it'd be rather difficult to just straight up ask without looking weird. So Sans just came to the conclusion that they weren't monsters, but an entirely different species.
Not that it matters much anyway.
Sitting in an inn room he bought, he thought back to the past couple of days.
It's been almost 2 weeks.
He had gotten very acquainted with the village and some of its inhabitants.
Walked around the village, placing a couple of short cuts along the way.
Ventured into the Forest of Magic (yokai tried to eat him multiple times).
Became even more aqainted with the residents.
And finally, once his income was stable enough, rented out 'Gensokyo Chronicles.'
As he was lounging on the bed, he cracked open the book, and looked through the table of contents.
His eyes moved swiftly between the words before landing on something interesting.
'Heroic Legends...?' sans raised a brow.
Feeling immediate intrigue, sans opened up to that page and was greeted with an illustration of a brown haired girl with a rather nonchalant expression.
She wore a red skirt and sleeveless red top, both with white accents. She also had a pair of detached white sleeves, and a white ribbon on her collar. It all went rather well with her reddish-brown eyes.
But most importantly was the name.
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The Gensokyo Chronicle
Hakurei Reimu, Red-White Miko of Paradise
Current Shrine Maiden of the Hakurei shrine. She comes from a long line of miko's that have kept the peace of Gensokyo for centuries. Her job is to watch over the Hakurei Barrier, and ensure that there is order in Gensokyo. This includes exterminating harmful yokai.
Despite her heavy burden, she is rather easygoing and nonchalant. She is known for treating everyone, human or yokai, in the exact same uninterested manner. Neither harshly nor kindly.
She is by no means a slouch however, as when it comes to incidents that threaten the balance, her easygoing attitude disappears, and she becomes relentless in putting down the nuisance.
When it comes to hunting down troublemakers, she could be considered,
The Strongest.
Without a way for any youkai to defeat the Hakurei shrine maiden, many youkai felt that their meaning to exist had disappeared, but by taking some ground-breaking measures she solved this problem.
That is, the introduction of the spell card rules. Dueling rules that EVERYONE must follow, and allows both parties to show off their skills in a fair, and beautiful manner.
She shows no mercy to those who break these rules.
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Sans strokes his chin. This article was quite lengthy compared to the vampire Remilia's.
What caught his attention though, was the last couple of lines. The introduction of spell card rules. Sans wasn't unfamiliar to battle rules.
Thing is, he just ignored them.
In the fight with frisk, he threw aside the usual turn based rules in an attempt to force frisk into resetting. Sneak attacks, follow up attacks, even attacking in the menu. He resorted to all kinds of tricks to win.
However, doing that here will get an angry, full-strength Miko on your tail. And as sans is one to avoid conflict, he thought he should play along.
'When in Rome' as they say.
Sans gets up and walks out of his room. As much as he wants to sit and sleep in, he has to learn this spellcard system if he wants to continue. He's lucky nobody tattled on him for not using it, but he can't risk it anymore.
'It's kinda weird being this proactive for once.' sans thought to himself. Usually he would wait untill the last moment to do anything.
'And look where that got you.'
Fwoosh
Seemingly walking OUT of the inn, only to appear walking INTO the Suzunaan book rental, sans approaches Kosuzu reading a book at the reception without her noticing. Standing over her shoulder sans whispers into her ear. "Boo."
"AAAK!" Sans ducks under the book Kosuzu swung while laughing. "Why you...! Oh yeah, laugh it up. Why are you here?" Kosuzu glares daggers at sans, who is currently giggling up a storm.
"Heheh, Well sorry to bother ya, but I came here to ask ya about this spell card thingy." Sans explains. Hearing this, Kosuzu tilts her head curiously. "Spell cards? Sorry, I don't know what to tell you. I don't get into any fights, so I don't really use them."
"Nah, it's alright. I'm just tryna learn more about them, you got any books on it here?"
Kosuzu held her chin for a couple of seconds, before shaking her head.
"No, sorry. We don't have any books here on magic."
At this sans hums before the receptionist perks up again.
"But, if you're interested in things of the magical variety, maybe you should go ask Miss Kirisame. Her being involved in magic, shes sure to have the knowledge you seek."
Sans brightens up at Kosuzus suggestion, before ruffling her hair.
"Good idea kid! Miss Magician is sure to have to know a thing of two."
Kosuzu pushes sans' hand off her head, huffing and muttering about how she put effort into fixing it.
"Yeah yeah, just stop doing that, I have to fix this later you know!"
"Yep, that's why I did it. Anyway, thanks Kosuzu, I'll see ya later."
"Uh huh..."
Exiting the rental, sans suddenly appears near Marisa's shop. Now that he's been around, he has much more options in terms of shortcuts. Approaching the window, sans rings the bell.
"COMING!" A voice echoes out from the shop. A series of crashes, thuds, and cursing follow, before she appears in the window. Sans chuckles, it never gets old.
"Yeah? Welcome to Kirisame magic shop, how can I help ya daze~!" Looking down from the window, a look of confusion flashes across Marisa's face. "Sans? You don't usually ring the bell, what do you need?" Marisa asks curiously.
"Just askin if you got any books on the spell card rules I could borrow.
"Spellcards? You didn't have some already?"
Sans, in return, raises a brow, "Was I supposed to?" He replies.
"Well yeah, how else are you supposed to walk around the forest of mag- Wait! So you've been walking through the forest without spellcards?? You came around here at night last time!"
"ye."
"No way! How are you still alive!" Marisa stares in shock.
"Luck, I think." Sans lies through his teeth.
Marisa narrows her eyes, "geez dude, night time is dangerous around here, you should know better! Its like you don't even know where you are." Marisa pinches the bridge of her nose, causing sans to chuckle. "Do you even know how to use magic?"
Sans thinks for a second. Tell the truth, or nah? He looks her dead in the eye and says, "A lil bit." A half lie oughta do the trick.
Marisa sighs in relief. "Well, you're in luck, cause I wasn't bouta teach ya."
Sans grins at that. "Glad to know you've always got my back pal."
Marisa waves her hand while smiling, and heads back inside, leaving sans to wait for a couple minutes while she flips her house upside down to find some empty spell cards she wasn't using.
Just as sans was starting to doze off, her door swung open, and she stepped out looking slightly exhausted.
"You really gotta start organizing some of that." Make no mistake, sans was a lazy slob. But even he knew to clean around from time to time. At least, when his brother didn't.
Marisa becomes slightly flustered. "Oi! I don't need to organize anything! I know perfectly where everything is!" Sans tilts his head, as if saying 'seriously?'
"Whatever! You wanna learn this or not!" Marisa shouts indignantly. "Sure, why don't you 'spell' it out for me." Sans replies unflinchingly. "Heh. Alright, let's get started." Marisa holds out a stack of blank playing cards. "These are spell cards, that of which the system is named after."
"Got it."
"As you might know, the spell card system is a way for inhabitants of gensokyo to duke it out without seriously hurting each other. It's pretty recent, too." Marisa takes a pause to think about what to say next.
"The system uses a form of battle called Danmaku as it's main parameters. True to it's name, it involves dodging a barrage of bullets and responding with your own. Simple, right?"
Sans nods his head. "So hit the opponent and avoid getting hit."
"Right." Marisa confirms.
'nothing I'm not used to.' sans thinks to himself.
Marisa continues, "While that's the main gist of it, that's not all. I'll run over some rules and knowledge with ya real quick." Sans grins. "Hit me."
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The spellcard system runs off of magic, so if you don't have any, like most humans, you can't use it. This makes magicless humans vulnerable.
Through shouting 'Danmaku', the system will sense to see if you have mana and activate automatically.
while in a battle, all attacks are greatly weakened. However, naturally strong attacks will still hurt like hell.
spellcards are special attacks or bullet patterns.
Making impossible-to-dodge spellcards/bullet patterns are strictly forbidden.
Killing your opponent will be punished
The goal is to knock the opponent unconscious, or force them to use all of their spell cards.
The amount of spell cards is agreed upon before hand
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"You got all that?" Marisa takes a deep breath and asks sans, who looks completely spaced out
"Yep."
"Are you sure?" Marisa asks, not quite convinced. "You looked pretty empty headed while I was talking."
Sans, with said expression, simply replied, "yep." At this, Marisa sighs, still not convinced. She steps towards sans and hands him the stack of spellcards.
"Why don't we have a quick practical lesson?
"Wh-"
No you aren't getting out of this."
Sans was gonna say something, but Marisa shut him down right out the gate.
"Fine," He decided not to resist. "But go easy on me, ey?"
Marisa gives sans a thumbs up. "So how this will work, is that we'll both say 'danmaku!' and the battle will officially begin. On the count of 3!"
1!
2!!
3!!!
"Danmaku!"
"Danmaku."
At that moment, sans shudders as he feels a warm feeling envelope him. Looking down at his hand, he thinks to himself.
'so this is how it feels, huh?'
sans looks up at Marisa, who's looking at him with her arms crossed. "You good?"
Sans nods. "Just peachy."
Marisa shuffles on her feet and puts her palm out facing upwards. After a moment, a red bullet manifests in her hand, causing sans to look in great interest. "While there are many ways to do magic, danmaku streamlines the process, making it stupidly simple."
Sans smiles. "So even someone as 'empty headed' as me could do it?"
Marisa grins. "That's right. All you need to do is think about making a bullet, and shooting it."
At this sans tilts his head, surely it cant be that easy. As he imagined one of those bullets rumia shot at him, sans looked astonished, as it really IS that easy, a green orb now floating a foot from his face.
The magic drain was nowhere near as much if he were to make an attack by himself. Combined with his new body and stamina, he would last a lot longer in fights. Not that he'd ever willingly get into fights.
Marisa looks at sans who finally showed a change in facial expression that wasn't a grin, and smiles herself. She remembered when reimu showed her how to do it, marisa had complained that it was too easy compared to what she was doing.
While Marisa was reminiscing, sans had taken the liberty of creating multiple bullets, and rotating them around himself.
"Whoa! You got the hang of that fast!" Marisa was impressed.
"Yeah, almost like 'magic'." Sans snapped out a pun.
Marisa rolled her eyes. "If you got that down, we can get a little fancy with it then."
Marisa smiled, before creating another bullet, and morphing it into the shape of a star.
"Once you feel comfortable enough with creating bullets, you can change them to any form you feel comfortable with, within reason of course." Marisa demonstrated.
Seeing this, sans thought to himself, 'any form huh? You totally see where I'm going with this.'
And as predicted, sans summoned a blue bullet, and with tiny effort, shaped it into a bone.
"Only 'a lil bit' of magic huh..." Marisa mumbled.
Bone boy shrugged.
"Ahem! Moving on, spellcards!" Marisa tried to ignore the frustration sans gave her.
"Like I said, spellcards are like special attacks that can have a variety of effects. Depending on the rules set, you can only use a limited amount."
Sans pulls out a blank spell card as he narrowed his eyes and scratched his chin. "Special attacks huh? You can just make whatever you want?"
To this, Marisa replied, "Not quite. The effect of a spell card depends on you as a person. It could be based on a great achievement, your nature, a change in personality, or an unfortunate past."
"In other words, the effect is random most of the time." She explains
Marisa pulls out a spell card of her own.
Love Sign - Master Spark
On the card is a depiction of a black witch silhouette shooting a massive rainbow beam at the sky using some kind of octagonal block. Marisa puffs out her chest in pride.
"This, is my magnum opus! When I made a breakthrough in my magic, i became inspired and made a spellcard. It resulted in this beauty."
'well, it certainly has some spark to it alright, I can see the love that was poured into it.' He wonders if the illustrations were assigned automatically.
"Now you try!" Marisa snapped sans out of his thoughts, making him look down at the card in his hands. "All you gotta do is pour some magic into it." At this, sans gets slightly nervous. If it depends on you as a person, what could it possibly show about him?
Deciding to rip off the bandaid, he starts flooding it with magic, causing his left eye to slightly glow cyan. The card glows along with it, slowly amping up in brightness until a brilliant golden glow emanates from the card, a golden glow sans recognizes.
And all of a sudden, he feels his sins crawling up his spine.
Because the illustration and the name,
Last Word - Judgement Hall
Were all too familiar to him.