The Rising of the Shield Hero Volume 05 (17 page)

Chapter Nine: Island Days

We continued to level at different spots around the islands.

We defeated a boss called the Karma Pengu. It was a monster that flew in the air and looked like a giant black penguin.

But we defeated it so easily it was almost boring. Just more of the same. It was all so easy and so expected—I figured that was probably why the other heroes hadn’t abandoned the idea that it was all just a game.

Karma Pengu Shield: ability locked: equip bonus: swimming skill 2, fishing skill 3, pekkul status adjustment (medium): special effect: underwater swimming time increased

Karma Pengu Familia Shield: ability locked: equip bonus, swimming skill 1, fishing skill 2, penkul status adjustment (small)

Pekkul . . . I thought those had gone extinct?

I’d gotten pretty similar shields out of the other karma series monsters that we had been fighting since we got here.

I think they were called usaunis and inults.

It was great that I could use them if I wanted to, but they were extinct—so it wasn’t going to do me much good, was it? I was complaining to myself while I checked the monster’s drop item.

Pekkul Kigurimi?

“Is it some kind of sleeping bag?”

It was a soft costume of a penguin wearing a Santa hat. I checked out the stats.

Pekkul Kigurimi: defense up, attack resistance (small), water resistance (large), shadow resistance (small), HP recovery (low), magic up (medium): automatic recovery function, underwater swimming time increased, size adjustment, skill adjustment (small): type alteration, monster equip time, no alterations other than type

Wow! It had a lot of great effects. It was at least as powerful as the barbarian armor +1 that I was using. If it would increase underwater swimming time, did that mean that it was for diving or something?

“It looks like it’s a really good piece of equipment. Raphtalia, why don’t you . . . .”

“No thank you! I don’t care how good it is, I’m not fighting in that!”

I thought she might say that. I felt the same way.

“Alright then. You try it on, Filo.”

“I thought she hated clothes?”

“Looks fun!”

Filo turned into her giant filolial queen form, and when she went to try it on the kigurumi grew to her massive size!

Maybe that’s what size adjustment meant? That was pretty neat!”

“I’m gonna wear it!”

Filo clucked her approval as she slipped into the giant kigurumi. Then the kigurumi seemed to glow for a second before melting into her feathers?”

Then Filo was standing there as normal, but her coloring had changed to look more like a penguin, and she was wearing a Santa hat.

“Urm . . . . It feels kinda scratchy!”

“Really?”

“Yeah . . . and I feel sort of . . . sort of like I can’t flex my muscles?”

“Then take it off.”

It probably had something to do with the type adjustment effect. Its magical effects would make her into something other than a filolial, so my monster status adjustment probably stopped working. That effectively meant that monsters couldn’t use the equipment—which limited its use for me.

“But I kind of want to wear it when I sleep back at the inn!”

“Yeah, that seems to be what it’s for.”

It was probably most useful as a type of pajama. I wondered if she could just take it off so easily? But there was nothing to worry about, her coloring returned to normal, and the kigurumi appeared in her hands. What a weird piece of equipment.

“Mr. Naofumi, if I wear your armor, you could wear the kigurumi, and then it wouldn’t go to waste. “

“Raphtalia, are you seriously suggesting I wear that thing?”

Still, its effects were nothing to scoff at.

Because of my shield, the monsters weren’t able to damage me anyway. And I was getting concerned about Raphtalia and Filo’s equipment too.

“Um . . . uh . . . .”

“Fine then, let’s draw straws to see who wears it. After how it melted onto Filo, it’s probably safe to assume that it doesn’t restrict movement.”

“Oh . . . okay then . . . .”

Oh boy. It was looking like I was going to have start measuring efficiency and power next to looks and fashion. It was going to be a tough choice.

“Master, you’re so cuuuute!”

“Shut up! I’m taking it off the second we start heading back!”

I was mortified at the thought of being seen in it. And it wasn’t acting the way it had when Filo had worn it.

It hung off of me, baggy, just like a normal kigurumi.

I really didn’t want anyone to see me wearing it!

It mostly hid my face though, so unless they saw my shield they’d have no way of knowing that it was me. That’s right, I looked like a pekkul.

And it raised my stats while I had it on. But when I wore it the type adjustment didn’t activate.

Raphtalia wore my armor, and we pressed on. The Karma Pengu Familias we ran into along the way didn’t pose any threat to us at all.

“Raphtalia . . . .”

“What?! Why are you looking at me like that? I’m not going to wear that thing.”

I held out a cup of straws to her.

“You’re wearing this thing tomorrow. I swear it. Better make your peace with that now.”

“Hmph!”

As for Filo . . . well, she better just be happy that she was born a filolial.

“Well that ended up being a pretty good day.”

“Yes, you’re right.”

We were in the boat on the way back to the main island, and Raphtalia seemed concerned.

I could sort of see where she was coming from. It was the way our leveling had dropped off that had her upset.

I made it to level 73, she was at 75, and Filo was at 76.

According to the earl, it was basically impossible to level past 80 there.

When things seemed too good to be true, they were. That’s what people say anyway.

Right about the time we started approaching level 70, I’d noticed the leveling efficiency dropping off. If we didn’t push really hard to keep leveling, I didn’t see how we were going to make it to level 80.

It was still fun and interesting to collect drop items, but if the leveling efficiency wasn’t worth it, then it might be smart to start looking for another way to level. The wave would be upon us pretty soon.

“But we still leveled up, isn’t that good enough?”

“Yeah!”

Filo apparently still felt like she hadn’t done enough swimming. She was in the water next to the boat.

“Filo, I wasn’t talking to you.”

“Oh . . . .”

“Back to what I was saying, we’ve still gone up over 30 levels since we got here.”

“I know that . . . but . . . the monsters are just too weak . . . and I’m starting to wonder if it’s going to be good enough.”

“I know how you feel.”

With how things were now, the Karma series bosses barely caused us to break a sweat, and as for the rest of the monsters we encountered, they all went down with a single hit. Raphtalia and Filo had powered up very dramatically though, so I suppose that was enough to be grateful for.

There were still a ton of shields that had equip bonuses I’d yet to unlock.

We’d been leveling really efficiently since we got to the islands, but I think we were all realizing that getting more powerful wasn’t going to be quite that simple.

The levels had . . . well they possessed some sort of magical meaning, but they didn’t directly translate into confidence.

We were going to have to raise our confidence, and our morale, if we wanted to stand a hope of facing the injustices that surely awaited us in the future. There was no avoiding that.

In the online games I’d played, there were lots of players that had leveled up quickly but didn’t have the skills or the knowledge to handle themselves. They were powerful enough, but too ignorant and weak-willed to really be of use to anyone.

And there were plenty of them that made the mistake of thinking their high levels automatically made them impressive and respectable.

It was a real danger, one we’d have to watch out for. And that all went double for Itsuki and his party.

Chapter Ten: The Water Temple

We ended up spending a few peaceful days on the islands.

Filo was pretty obsessed with swimming the whole time.

We’d been on the islands for five days or so when Filo said it:

“Hey master! There’s a thing. It’s like another island! It’s red! It’s at the bottom of the ocean!”

“What?”

What was she talking about? It sounded pretty interesting though.

I suddenly recalled the red outline of the island that I’d seen against the sky. It had seemed to be glowing.

I’d just assumed it had been related to the activation event. I’d seen it pretty much every day since we’d arrived.

“Yeah! If you go out into the ocean at night, you can see it at the bottom!”

Hm . . . another island?

“Well, our leveling has pretty much stopped anyway. We might as well go check it out.”

“Are you sure?”

“We’ve got that new equipment that let’s us swim, don’t we?”

Raphtalia scrunched her nose up. She’d worn the kigurumi the previous day and hadn’t been happy about it.

The thing sure made you look like a fool, but I couldn’t argue with the stat boosts.

The drop item wasn’t all that common, but by the time the day was done we’d ended up with three of them.

So if we wanted to, we could all wear one and swim. It didn’t help Filo though.

“The bottom of the ocean . . . ?”

“What, you can’t swim?”

Big sister can swim just as well as I can!”

“Well, isn’t that something?”

I’d watched Filo swim for a few days now. She could stay underwater for quite a while. She could really hold her breath.

If Raphtalia could match that, then it was pretty impressive.

“Well I am from a fishing village, so I’m a pretty decent swimmer.”

“I guess that settles it then. Let’s go check this place out.”

“I wonder what the monsters in the ocean are like?”

“We’re pretty strong now. I’m sure we’ll be alright.”

“I hope so.”

We had never fought in the water before. Eventually we were going to have to learn how to do it.

“Ride on my back!”

Filo turned into her filolial queen form and jumped into the water.

We could climb on her back and go wherever we wanted. I guess we never really needed to use a boat.

We climbed onto her back, and she lunged forward into the surf.

“It’s down there.”

We had left the island pretty far behind and were getting out into deeper water when Filo indicated the location.

“Let’s change into the kigurumi and swim down there then.”

Fumbling on Filo’s back, we pulled the kigurumi on.

Raphtalia still wasn’t thrilled about the idea, but eventually we had the new equipment on and were ready,

“Alright, let’s dive.”

“Okay.”

“This looks so strange.”

“Too bad. This is the only equipment we have that will let us swim to the bottom.”

We grumbled about it, but a second later and we were diving below the waves.

Wow! It was incredible! We could swim with so little effort, we didn’t really need to try to hold our breath, and the littlest kick sent us moving swiftly through the water. I didn’t care how it looked. I could get used to this.

Filo pointed the way and kept on swimming downwards.

We followed her, and soon enough we saw something that appeared to be an island rising from the ocean floor below.

Had it sunk or something? It was glowing red, just like the island had been when we first approached.

We dove towards it.

Ten minutes had elapsed since we started to dive.

It was amazing that we were able to stay underwater for that long. This world really was like a game—if you had the right equipment you could basically do anything.

Even still, I felt like I was starting to approach my limit. I don’t think we’d be able to stay under for more than 20 minutes.

Luckily, we didn’t run into any monsters while we were swimming.

If we had gotten in a fight, I wasn’t totally sure what we were going to do. Could Raphtalia swing her sword under water? Before I had to worry about it any more, we arrived at the island.

It didn’t seem like there were any monsters lurking about. Besides, if we wasted time with a battle we were sure to run out of air. I looked around the island and quickly spotted something artificial. It looked like a building.

We swam over to get a better look. It seemed to be a temple of some kind.

Was it a water temple? The door was shut tight.

I reached out to touch it. When I did, the jewel in the center of my shield started to glow, and the heavy door creaked open on its own. I looked over to Raphtalia.

We were going to run out of breath soon. Should we go to the surface?

A bubble of air plopped out of the opening door. Was there air inside? I swam to the bottom and looked up, into the temple.

The surface of the water broke soon after the entrance, and it looked like we could climb into the temple to get out of the water.

I motioned for Raphtalia and Filo to follow me.

“Ha!”

“Where are we?”

“I don’t know . . . .”

We all took deep breaths and looked around to get a sense of the place. It was pretty dark, but our eyes soon adjusted. We were in a large room built from stone. The interior of the building looked dry, and the water was only there in the entrance. We walked deeper into the temple.

“It’s so dark.”

“Should I use some of my light magic?”

“Yeah.”

Raphtalia chanted a spell and the room lit up. When the room came into view, I could hardly believe my eyes.

“What the . . . .”

Large and looming in the center of the room stood a giant dragon hourglass.

To make matters even more mysterious, the top portion seemed to be nearly empty. Like it had been counting down to our entry.

What was a dragon hourglass doing in a place like this?

I remember that Fitoria had mentioned it. She’d said that waves occurred in other places too, places without people.

This must have been one of those places.

What should we do? The area might have been under Fitoria’s control, but it didn’t seem wise to just ignore it either.

The islands were full of adventurers and tourists. If a wave happened now, the destruction would be immense.

The wave wouldn’t be confined to the island either.

The ocean all around would overflow with monsters. It would be exceedingly dangerous.

“We need to hurry back and report this to the soldiers.”

“Yes, you’re right.”

I held my shield up to the hourglass.

A light flashed from the hourglass and entered the jewel in my shield. The remaining time appeared in my field of view.

48:21

There were two days left before the countdown ended.

“There’s a dragon hourglass in the underwater temple?”

When we have back to the main island, I called an emergency meeting of the heroes.

“But that . . . .”

“If you don’t believe me, I’ll take you there right now.”

“I’m not calling you a liar.”

“At the bottom of the ocean? I remember a really rare quest like that in my game.”

Itsuki responded exactly how I assumed he would.

“So what do you want to do? Ignore it?”

If we ignored it, a wave of monsters would wash over the islands.

At the very least, we needed to evacuate the islands. That would do a lot to prevent loss of life.

But if what Fitoria has said was true, then the heroes had a responsibility to do something about it.

I thought that if the heroes ignored the hourglass, Fitoria might show up and kill us all.

“It’s a good chance to put our new powers to the test. I’m not against it.”

“Me neither. It’ll be a good challenge if Naofumi is telling the truth.”

“I’m not lying. I’ll take you there.”

Both Motoyasu and Itsuki were on board with going because they wanted to put there new, higher level parties to the test.

“Huh? Give me a break, who cares?”

But one hero didn’t seem interested.

It was the Sword Hero, Ren. He’d been quiet for the whole conversation. Now he said he didn’t care and acted like he was about to leave.

“Hey, haven’t we been charged with protecting the world? Are you going to turn your back on it?”

I thought that he LIKED fighting. Was he saying that he didn’t care what happened to the world one way or another? He was starting to piss me off.

I grabbed his hand before he could leave. He shook me off.

“Don’t touch me. I didn’t come here to make friends with you all. If you three think you can handle it on your own, then I’m going to leave the islands.”

That struck me as strange. Why was he acting like that?

I slipped my arms under his and grabbed him, to keep him from leaving.

I wondered if I was breaking a rule of some sort by restraining a hero.

But nothing happened. As long as I wasn’t attacking him directly I guess it was okay to restrain him.

“Let me go!”

Ren started violently writhing and tried to throw me off. What was it with him?

“Motoyasu! Itsuki! Make Naofumi stop this! I’m not going to let you force me to fight!”

Haha! I suddenly understood what was going on. It seemed like Motoyasu and Itsuki figured it out too.

“Ren, you don’t know how to swim, do you?”

“What? No! That’s not it! Fine. If you want me to come so badly, I will. I’ll do it for you. Be grateful.”

He couldn't swim, so of course he didn’t want to go to an underwater temple. And if a wave of destruction was going to come to the islands, he wanted to make sure that he was somewhere else.

That had to be it.

Ren was still refusing, and it looked like he was preparing to fight back in earnest.

“Naofumi, you better let me go before you get hurt. “

“Go ahead and try.”

“ARRRRRGGGGH!”

He thrashed violently and tried to throw me off, but I had him from behind and he couldn’t get at me.

Was he really that scared of the water?

“What are you going to do?”

“Are you really afraid of the water? Naofumi, just drag him into the ocean and let’s go.”

“Sure.”

I couldn’t believe I was agreeing with Motoyasu, but I was. We had to see if Ren was lying.

If he tried to look cool and pretend that he could swim when he really couldn’t we’d end up in deep trouble by the time we got to the water temple.

“Hey! Stop it! I can swim, so just let me go!”

“Fine.”

I dragged Ren over to the docks.

“Itsuki, you can swim, right?”

“Yes.”

“And you wouldn’t lie like Ren here, would you? You’ll have to prove it eventually.”

“That’s fine.”

“Let me goooooo!”

“Ren is always acting so cool. How lame is it that he can’t swim?!”

Motoyasu was gloating and laughing at Ren.

“I . . . I CAN swim.”

“Then show us.”

I loosened my grip on him, and Motoyasu kicked Ren off the pier and into the water.

“?!”

With a pathetic look on his face, Ren fell straight into the water, headfirst.

Bubbles came floating to the surface behind him, but Ren went on sinking.

“ . . . .”

“ . . . .”

“He’s not coming up, is he?”

“Oh well.”

I jumped into the water after him. The water wasn’t deep at all, but Ren was randomly struggling at the bottom.

I slipped my arms around him and pulled him up. The idiot. He’d drown in four feet of water!

“Upah! You idiots! Why are you doing this!?”

Ren was furious, but not intimidating at all.

“You didn’t waste a minute drowning.”

He hadn’t even been in the water 30 seconds.

He could have just stood up, but he just let himself sink—it was a scene I wouldn’t soon forget.

“Doesn’t look like Ren is going to be much help.”

“That’s not good for the rest of us.”

It was a serious loss to lose one of our main offensive heroes.

“I can swim!”

“You still say that after what we all just saw?

We weren’t going to be able to take him with us, which meant that we were going to have to think about another strategy.

“When the waves come, we’ll have to be in a boat or something. Then we can leave Ren in the boat any time we have to be in the water.”

He was going to be a burden, but if we were in a boat, then he wouldn’t be completely useless.

“Who knows what’s going to happen. But let’s plan on using the boat.”

“Good idea.”

“What about the rest of you. I hope you’ve realized that you can add support troops to your party during the waves.”

Motoyasu and Itsuki both winced.

I wasn’t making fun of them or anything. I was just telling them the truth.

“Yes, we understand.”

“Of course we know that!”

“Then let’s talk strategy. What sort of formation are you thinking of using? It will depend on the situation, but what sort of patterns do you have in mind?”

“Naofumi, you sound like you know your stuff.”

“Are you three still thinking of these huge scale battles as if they were the exact same thing you’ve encountered in the games you know?”

If I was being honest, I was an
otaku
myself.

So I had a ton of knowledge about event battles in MMOs.

It’s not like I was the strongest player, or that I’d maxed out my stats or anything like that, but I did really enjoy these exciting events when they happened online.

I used to make my own guilds and teams. I recruited all the players by myself. I really enjoyed those sorts of events, and so I felt like I knew how to play them most effectively. They were one of my favorite parts of online games.

The waves of destruction did seem to have a lot in common with those sorts of events.

“I have experience with things like this from games I’ve played, but the mechanics are not the exact same. It sounds like these sorts of events were part of the games that you all are used to.”

“I already told you that I have experience with this stuff.”