The Rising of the Shield Hero Volume 05 (10 page)

“Pleasure. My name’s . . . .”

“I’m an adventurer. And this over here is Therese.”

Oh boy . . . . He spoke right over me. Sure enough, we were sharing a room with a seriously annoying guy.

“Pleased to meet you. My name is Therese Alexanderite.”

“My name is Raphtalia.”

“And myyyyy name’s Filo!”

“Great to meet you guys!”

“Um, pardon me, but is Therese from another country? I had trouble understanding her.”

“Huh? Oh . . . yeah. Therese?”

L’Arc called Therese over.

She reached over and brushed her fingertips against the scythe hanging at L’Arc’s waist. Suddenly, a magic ball came floating into view.

“Can you understand me now?”

“Oh, yes, actually. I can understand you just fine now.”

“Tee-hee. I’m sorry for forgetting. I will use magic to make myself understood, so please bear with me.”

Wow . . . I never knew there was magic like that.

But actually, I guess my shield had been doing that for me since I got here. No one else had a legendary weapon handy though, did they?

I realized that I was the only one who had yet to introduce myself. Oh well.

The room was organized with three beds, stacked vertically as bunks, on each side of the room—it was an arrangement that would allow six people to share one room.

Raphtalia, Filo, and I would take one side of the room. The other two would use the other side, but that would leave one bed free.

The staff was considerate enough to not try and fill the last bed, so the five of us ended up sharing the room.

“Huh? Looks like the ship has set sail.”

With the rocking of the ship pulling away from the pier, I felt my anger subside. The rocking grew a little more noticeable, and finally the scene viewed through the window of the room began to move.

And so our anxiety-filled, worrisome journey began. Maybe I was just imagining it.

“So, kiddo, what’s your name?”

If I didn’t tell him, I’d have to sit through being called “kiddo” for the rest of the trip.

If Ren, Itsuki, or Motoyasu overheard my new nickname, there’s no telling what they would do with that. I decided it wasn’t worth allowing that possibility.

“It’s Naofumi.”

“Naofumi?”

I nodded, and L’Arc let out a raucous peel of laughter.

“Hahaha! What are you talking about? That’s the Shield Hero’s name. If you’re gonna use an alias, you might want to come up with a better one.”

“I AM the Shield Hero.”

“I don’t think so. The Shield Hero isn’t some kiddo.”

“Excuse me?”

“Listen up. The Shield Hero is a cheater. He steals from the pockets of the people he defeats. He’s no good.”

I guess I couldn’t call him a liar.

When Glass defeated Bitch, I did reach into her pockets and took some magic water and soul-healing water.

Even so, what kind of person would say that about someone they had just met?

Humans can do the most evil things with a smile. It’s crazy.

Just like Bitch!

“An immoral creature like that wouldn’t look so nice—would he?”

“People often tell me I don’t look so nice.”

“Oh stop that. You’re not so bad, kiddo. You just have an attitude.”

We kept going back and forth like that, and Raphtalia eventually held her head in her hands and started moaning.

Whatever—I guess if you were objective about it, I probably wasn’t the most moral guy around.

“I don’t even know what to say to that . . . ,” Raphtalia muttered.

“That’s what I’m saying! Kiddo here doesn’t seem like such a suspicious guy to me.”

Guess he wouldn’t believe me.

But still, I couldn't stand to let him go on calling me kiddo.

“Fine, how about this . . . .”

I held up my shield and changed it into different shapes, one after the other, in front of him.

“Does that convince you that I’m the Shield Hero?”

“Not really. You know I just hunted down an imposter Shield Hero a while back, and he was doing the same thing the whole time.”

“What?”

“A little while ago we had a problem with a whole crowd of imposters of the Shield Hero. They were showing up left and right. Hunting them down and catching them was basically a full time job. Kiddo—honestly you do look a bit like the wanted posters. Those things aren’t up anymore, though. I suggest you stop lying, before someone throws you off of the boat.”

People pretending to be the Shield Hero? That’s right, members of the church had claimed to be the Shield Hero while they committed crimes. It had been an overwrought effort to trash my reputation.

Meanwhile, I’d been pretending to be a saint of the bird god and had left the castle town far behind me while I traveled around the fringes of the country peddling wares. So I’d been able to stay out of the church’s clutches for a while.

Now that I think about it, the high priest had been using a replica of a legendary weapon. It had been very powerful, but what stood out to me the most now was that it had been able to change forms just like my shield. So, at the very least, it must have been possible for them to duplicate the
appearance
of a legendary weapon.

Well damn. If my shield wouldn’t convince him of my authenticity, then I didn’t really have any other ideas.

I figured he’d believe me just because I looked like the picture in the posters—but apparently he was set on doubting me.

Sure, a Japanese-looking face was relatively rare here, but you saw people like that from time to time. What was the deal with that?

Heroes had been summoned before—in fact they were summoned periodically. Some of them must have left descendants behind. That would explain it.

If there were other people out there pretending to be the Shield Hero—and if they looked like they might be Japanese too—then how was I supposed to prove who I was?

Maybe I could get an official form from the queen. I’d think Filo would be enough proof for any skeptic out there.

Raphtalia too . . . . The public had probably heard about the pretty raccoon-type demi-human traveling with the Shield Hero.

I can’t really explain why, but I felt like he wouldn’t believe me even if I showed him Filo’s monster form. If he had seen the wanted posters, and if he’d seen that crystal ball that had a video of me inside, and he STILL didn’t believe me then he was probably just an idiot.

I’d had to learn to read people when I was a merchant of sorts, and that intuition was telling me that this guy was just a little slow on the uptake. So I just gave up.

“Sure. Fine. I don’t care. Call me whatever you like.”

“Lazy, aren’t ya, kiddo?”

“Nothing I do or say is changing your mind. So I gave up.”

“Mr. Naofumi, be careful with your phrasing.”

“No thanks. I don’t have the energy.”

“Okay, well—fine. Nice to meet you, Shield Kiddo.”

Either way, we’d only have to entertain this jerk for the length of the journey—it wasn’t that important that I corrected him.

And so we ended up sharing a room with some unknown adventurers, as our ship slowly made its way to the Cal Mira islands.

Chapter Six: Cal Mira

The staff on the boat had implied that they wanted the heroes to gather and introduce themselves, so I was prepared to run to the meeting place.

But then it turned out that the other three heroes were all seasick.

“Seasick . . . ?”

I’d never gotten motion sickness of any kind, but it sure seemed like a lot of people around me got sick on any sort of vehicle.

Did they have any idea what sort of situation they had stuck me with by commandeering all the good rooms?

“Naofumi, how can you stand this rocking?

“I dunno—it’s never bothered me.”

Honestly, I didn’t feel like sitting around and being friendly with them. That would be their punishment for stealing the private rooms.

“Kyahoooo!”

Filo let out a triumphant shout and jumped from the deck into the water. She swam through the waves below like a fish.

“Ah . . . .”

I saw a large silhouette below the surface. It was catching up on Filo from behind.

“Filo! You better watch out!”

“Hmmm?”

Filo took her sweet time turning around to look, and by the time she did, a large, shark-like monster was bearing down on her. Its mouth opened wide—its teeth flashing.

“Take that!”

She did a quick flip and kicked the shark-like monster in the chin. The beast flew out of the water and flipped through the air.

Then she jumped and delivered another swift kick. The shark flew towards the boat and crashed on the deck. The staff and customers all screamed.

The large creature was thrashing about on the deck, so Filo jumped in and finished it off.

“If you think you can make a meal out of me that easily, you better think again!”

She stuck a claw out and slit the beast’s stomach open, spilling its guts out onto the deck.

“Stop making a mess.”

“I think I’m going to be sick.”

Itsuki whispered. He was white as a sheet. I guess by most standards, Filo’s behavior was strange. But for Filo, all this was pretty normal.

By the way, this was the second shark she’d done this to. I broke down the first one and absorbed it into my shield.

And I unlocked something pretty interesting.

Blue Shark Shield conditions met.

Shark Bite Shield conditions met.

Blue Shark Shield: ability locked: equip bonus: swimming skill 1

Shark Bite Shield: ability locked: equip bonus: naval combat skill 1

special effect: shark tooth

Swimming ability, huh? I could already swim well enough.

As for naval combat, would that somehow affect the movement of the ship?

If we ran into a situation that required combat, it might prove useful. If I had any spare time, I figured I might as well unlock it.

I’d already gotten the abilities I could from other sharks she’d killed, so I let Filo eat the new one.

“Are you really THAT sick? Just from riding on a boat?”

“You’re the weird one, Naofumi.”

“Oh hey, Shield Kiddo. What’s going on?”

“What?”

L’Arc came sauntering over. Raphtalia followed behind him.

“What’s going on? Nothing, I’m just talking with these people.”

“Those seasick losers over there? Give me break. We’ve only been at sea for a few hours.”

“Even though we’ll be arriving tomorrow morning. Seems a shame.”

Apparently L’Arc and Therese didn’t get seasick.

I sat down near the bow and watched the ocean. The waves were growing taller.

Raphtalia and the staff were whispering that it might turn into a storm.

“Hey, kiddo. What are you guys doing when we get to the island?”

“If Cal Mira is in the middle of an activation event, there’s really only one thing worth doing.”

Obviously, I was going there to level.

And of course I was also going to explore and look into any new items and monster drops that I encountered along the way.

“I figured as much.”

Also . . . I’d heard there were hot springs on the island. Apparently they were considered restorative for cursed people.

If that were true, I’d definitely stop by for a soak.

“Well if you’re going to be leveling, want to team up with us?”

“Huh? What are you after?”

“I figure there’s a reason we ended up roomies on the boat. Besides, Therese and I leveling alone gets a little lonely. I was thinking we could all team up.”

Hm . . . . Honestly, I didn’t really care one way or the other.

It sounded like L’Arc still didn’t believe I was the Shield Hero. So he wanted to team up with just any old adventurer that he thought was pretending to be the Shield Hero.

That was enough reason to trust his intentions.

I wonder what he was thinking? I looked over to Raphtalia.

“What do you think?”

“I don’t have a problem with it. Do we have anything to lose by letting them come along?”

If this world was like an MMO, I wondered if there was an upper limit on the number of party members that you could have at once.

It was possible to set reserve troops for assistance under the formation menu, but that was limited to the waves of destruction.

I had played games before that would let you form parties of up to 20 members, but I wasn’t sure what the rules were here.

I was ruminating over the issue when I suddenly remembered Itsuki’s party.

There were a whole bunch of them. I counted six members, and with Itsuki that made seven.

If he was able to have seven people in his party, then me, Raphtalia, Filo, L’Arc, and Therese made five. That shouldn’t be a problem.

“Sure, but try not to hold the rest of us back, will you?”

“Haha, I’d like to say the same thing.”

L’Arc kept his cool and laughed off my insult.

I didn’t really have any problem with people like him, but he did cause a ruckus.

“I don’t really know what’s up with that bird of yours, but once we figure her out I’m sure we will all get along fine.”

“I’m sure we will.

So I ended up agreeing to go hunting and leveling with two adventurers I knew nothing about.

If I was able to do that, I guess I’d done a lot of personal introspection and healing since the days of being tricked and framed by Trash and Bitch.

I started to wonder what the other heroes’ party members were doing, but I had my answer within a second or two: they were all relaxing in the captain’s chambers.

Night fell, and we sailed through of storm of some kind—the boat rocked pretty aggressively in every direction you could imagine. But everything had cleared up by morning, and we arrived right on schedule.

Our room was small enough that we didn’t get thrown around too much. Filo was freaking out the whole time though, and Raphtalia was feeling pretty seasick.

Any adventurer that wasn’t a crew member . . . . Well, you can imagine how sick they all were.

Cal Mira was much larger than I had anticipated. It rose tall from the sea, a massive volcanic island.

I didn’t know if I could trust the measurements on the map I’d been given, but if I had to compare it to something back in my own world, Hawaii was probably pretty close.

It was an archipelago, of which Cal Mira was the largest island, so sometimes people just talked about the area as if it were only Cal Mira.

As you might expect from a tropical archipelago, I could see a number of other islands offshore.

The interior of the atoll was protected from the deep ocean, and so the waves were small and peaceful. When the tide was out, they say you could walk to some of the other islands. We’ll have to see about that.

I wondered if could I ride Filo to another island.

“Alright, kiddo, what do you say we head out in two days or so?”

“Sure. Whatever.”

We didn’t go through the formalities of figuring out how we were going to meet back up, but nevertheless we parted ways with L’Arc.

“Well, we made it to Cal Mira.”

I turned and saw the other heroes. They were clearly elated to be back on solid ground.

Having spent the night being flung around their stately room, the other heroes apparently hadn’t been able to get much sleep. They were dragging their feet down the pier, looking groggy and worn.

Bitch was pale and disheveled. She seemed right on the verge of throwing up.

“Aren’t you guys playing this up a little much? It was just a little boat ride.”

“Naofumi . . . you’re the weird one here.”

“I thought we were going to sink!”

Granted, there had been a few times throughout the night where it seemed like the ship really had slipped under the waves. But you couldn’t just keep freaking out about it.

I had gotten a little tired of being tossed about the room, though.

By the way, apparently storms very rarely got that big in these parts. I wondered if the strange weather was somehow related to the waves of destruction. Had we been back in my world, I’d have said that the storm was big enough to tip most ships of average size.

“I was a little worried that we’d have to start a new life on a deserted island. I’m glad we made it.”

“What are you blathering about?”

“I’m not kidding!”

“Anyway, let’s get to bed early tonight. We need to make the most of our time here.”

The queen had recommended an inn to us, but I recalled that before we retired for the day, we had to go introduce ourselves to the nobles in charge of governing the islands. We might have been in the middle of nowhere, but the place attracted a lot of travelers, so there were certain to be all sorts of people around.

“Welcome! Welcome! The Legendary Heroes and their retinues!”

I was waiting for the other heroes to recover from their seasickness down at the harbor, when someone who seemed to be leading a tour group (based on the little flag they were carrying) came running over.

He was dressed in a Melromarc military uniform and seemed to be just on the cusp of old age—the little flag didn’t suit him at all.

“I am the Earl of Habenburg, and the care of these islands has been entrusted to me.”

I was the only hero that wasn’t sick, so I stepped forward and met the visitor.

“Very pleased to make your acquaintance.”

“Oh, um . . . . Yes. Pleasure.”

The other heroes all nodded to the Earl of Habenburg.

“Please allow me to tell you all a little bit about our lovely islands.”

Oh come on—he really WAS a tour guide? I hated sitting through this kind of thing.

“You know we really didn’t come as tourists . . . .”

We’d come to get our hands on the extra experience points and loot available during the activation event. And now we had to sit through a lecture on the oral traditions of the islanders? I wasn’t in the mood to play tourist.

“Yes, well—these oral traditions speak of Cal Mira long being a place special to the four heroes—for aeons they have trained here.”

He started his tour at the market and gesticulated and described the scene as we walked through it.

Halfway through the market I spotted something strange. It was a statue, something like a totem pole, and it consisted of a penguin, rabbit, squirrel, and dog stacked one on top of the other. All of the animals were wearing Santa hats.

The penguin held a fishing-pole, the rabbit held a hoe, the squirrel a saw, and the dog a rope.

What was it supposed to mean?

“You have a sharp eye, Shield Hero. These are the four pioneers that brought prosperity to our island: Pekkul, Usauni, Risuka, and Inult.”

Those names all sounded Japanese. I wonder if previous heroes had named them.

“Just so you know, these were all named by a previous group of heroes. They named them after what these animals were called in their own language, in the land from which they came.”

Whatever their motivation had been—those were some ugly names. They could have tried a little harder.

“Are there animals like that on this island?”

“No. After developing the island, they moved on to other, unknown lands. They have not been seen since.”

So I guess they had died somewhere else. There wasn’t even a good reason to suspect that they had been historical figures. I mean, what sort of penguins and rabbits turn into frontier pioneers?

“Oh wow . . . . They look yummy!”

A thread of saliva dangled from Filo’s beak as she looked at the animal statues.

Come to think of it, here was a monster I knew personally that loved to pull carriages as a hobby. Maybe pioneering monsters weren’t such an oddity after all?

There was another strange object next to the statue of the animals. It was a stone pillar of some sort.

“What is that thing?”

“It is an inscription left to us from the Four Legendary Heroes.”

“Really . . . .”

There was a very good chance that the other heroes, like the four of us, had been Japanese.

Could they have left their phrase in Japanese?

It said something like . . . .

“Hey! This thing is fake!”

The other heroes came close to see if they could read it.

“Well that is strange . . . . It is said they left it here to guide the heroes that would come after them.”

“Is this some kind of joke? What is the deal with the magical writing of this world?”

Magical letters . . . those things were really starting to get annoying.

They weren’t the sort of writing that you could just learn how to read.

I’m not sure how to explain it. They sort of changed what they said based on the person reading them.

I’ll try to explain further. Raphtalia was skilled with light and shadow magic, so she could read books that were written about that magic because they shared an affinity—but if I tried to read the same book it wouldn’t say anything. If I translated what was written it was just gibberish. But Raphtalia could read it, understand it, and then perform magical spells based on what she’d read.

There were magical letters that were made for everyone to read too, but if you weren’t about to use the information written there, then it would become illegible. It was like they reacted to your innate magical ability. Of course you’d have to be able to read the letters they used in this world anyway.