The Rising of the Shield Hero Volume 01
Page 21
“Don’t let them escape! Kill the old ones! We can sell the women and children, so don’t run them down!”
I can’t really remember what happened next.
“Noooooo!”
“Calm down! Take that!”
“Ugh….”
Someone had a hold on my hair. I felt like someone had hit me, and then nothing.
A week passed. I continued having dreams of my parents’ deaths.
They caught me, and sold me into slavery.
The first owner seemed nice. He just wanted me to act as a servant, but then he sold me, and I still don’t know why.
The next one…
“Take that!”
“Ugh…”
Why? Why did they treat me this way?
He was a fat man and looked like a bad man. He kept me in the basement of a large house, in a town I’d never heard of. There were animals there. They were just like me… Ugh… Apparently this man had bought Rifana before he’d bought me.
Every day, whenever he felt like it, he would hang me from the ceiling in chains and beat me with a whip. He hit me until I was bloody. Then he would keep hitting me.
Whenever I tried to stop him, or tried to protest, the slave curse on my chest would burn me. The pain from the whip was driving me crazy.
But I wasn’t going to give up.
I’d bare it, for my parents, and for everyone in the village that hadn’t made it.
So I wouldn’t give up.
“Raphtalia…” Cough.
“It’s okay... It’s okay. We’ll make it back to the village.”
When I reunited with Rifana, she was already sick. Even still, the man never stopped hitting her.
“Yes… We… We’ll… make it…”
What did this man want from us? Did he just think it was fun to beat us with a whip?
“Ha! Why are you still having dreams of a better life?”
Slap! He hit me again, and I felt blood trickle down my back.
I felt tears well up at the pain.
“Yes! Scream from the pain!”
“Ahhh!”
After that point, things got worse. He started to torture me.
I was finally free, and ragged, but I crawled over the muddy floor to go take care of Rifana.
He brought us an awful stinking bowl of soup. It tasted like mud. It was our only food for the day.
“Huff… Huff…”
I slowly fed it to Rifana. That was one more day of life for her.
It would be okay. We had to make it back to the village. Everyone was waiting for us.
“Hold on… I swear I’ll help you.”
There were latticed iron bars that ran almost to the floor. I realized that if I took a rock from the wall and used it to dig out the foundation under the bars, then we’d be able to wriggle under them and escape! It just had to work.
“Thank you.”
“Yes! We’ll meet everyone again!”
My mother and father had told me to take care of everyone.
The other villagers were sure to save us.
Sadeena would definitely rally the others to come save us. All we needed to do was survive long enough.
“You… remember that…day? Raph…ta…lia…”
Rifana was shivering. She was stretching out her hand to the ceiling.
“You remember… that… lord’s… flag?”
“Yes… yes!”
I grabbed her hand and squeezed it hard.
I remembered. That flag had given us hope.
I missed those quiet days… those days when nothing was wrong.
But those days were gone.
So I had to bring them back. It was up to me.
Cough! Cough!
Three days passed.
I could hear his footsteps coming close.
“Raphtalia…” Cough!
The horrible time was starting again. I’d caught Rifana’s cold. But I was going to be fine.
I slid a pile of wet straw over the hole I was chipping away under the bars.
“…”
Rifana wasn’t answering me.
“Rifana?”
The man opened the door to the stable where she was and touched her.
“Guess she’s dead. Ugh, what a pain.”
He lifted her body roughly by the shoulder and muttered to himself.
Rifana hung there, her eyes empty and cold.
“Damn, and it was almost time to return her too. This is a breach of contract!”
Then he kicked her body, like she was just a toy.
I didn’t know it at the time, but I found out later. Apparently there was a class of people that entertained themselves by buying demi-humans as slaves and then torturing them.
That’s what we were, just slaves sold to satisfy that man’s personal whims.
“Heee?!”
What? What? Rifana?
No… It couldn’t be.
I reached out a shaky hand to touch her.
She was so cold, so cold! I couldn’t believe it.
No… Rifana!
I was sad, angry, terrified… hopeless.
I had so many different emotions stirring inside of me.
Why? Rifana hadn’t done anything wrong!
“It’s because you won’t stop crying at night! She couldn’t get any sleep! This is YOUR fault!”
“No… Ugh…” Sniff… “Rifana…”
The man strung me up and started to whip me. He hit me even longer than usual that day.
But I kept my eyes locked on Rifana the whole time, and I couldn’t even feel the pain.
“Oh hey, you’re always muttering about some village, aren’t you?”
“…”
I didn’t have to answer him. Everyone was waiting for me.
“Apparently that village was destroyed a while ago. Here’s proof.”
He held out a crystal ball.
A beam of light came out of the crystal ball and projected an image of the village on the wall.
It was worse than the village I knew. It was destroyed, and there wasn’t anyone there.
The flag was tattered and burnt, and the ground was littered with bones.
“Oh yeah, I heard you saying that you were the person who supported everyone in that village. Apparently everyone left it to rot and ran away.”
“Ah…”
The man flashed a smile. He had never seen me cry, never seen me blink. He was enjoying this.
“Ug…. Ugh… Wahhhh!”
Something inside me snapped.
I couldn’t do it anymore.
My mother and father had entrusted the village to me, but there was no one left.
Then what should I do?
There was nothing left for me.
“Cry! Cry harder!”
The pain was so intense I thought I would go crazy.
The dreams I had every night were starting to rot my brain.
They were of the last time I saw my parents. It got even worse.
I was a bad kid because I hadn’t saved the village. They hoped I never smiled again. I didn’t have the right to live.
They kept whispering: Die… Die…
They were… right. I would never smile again.
I didn’t want to.
Because I… Because I broke my promise…
The man finally sold me.
Either that or the time had run out on his torture game.
“This is horrible. This is way under what she’s worth. Damn.”
“C’mon, she’s on the verge of death. I can’t use her in this condition, so I’m going to have to subtract lost time from the price.”
“I understand. Yes.”
A fat man dressed in a nice suit bought me. He was different from the last slave trader to manage me.
What would my next owner be like?
“I’m sure she could have been treated a little better…”
The new owner gave me medicine and food.
Cough! Cough!
“I don’t think she will last very long.”
The owner said as he put me in a cage.
So… I finally wasn’t worth anything to anyone.
My parents were gone, and my village was gone. It was like the world was telling me to die.
It hurt. I wanted to die. I wanted it to be quick.
I don’t know how much time passed. I was just staring through the bars of my cage. Many people came and went.
And then…
“This is about the cheapest I can offer you.”
The slave trader had brought a young man to my cage.
“The one on the right has a genetic disease. He’s a rabbit. The one in the middle has panic attacks and is a raccoon, and the last one is a mixed-breed lizard man.
“They all have their share of problems.”
The young man was negotiating with the slave trader. The young man met my gaze for a minute.
His eyes were sharp enough to kill. He looked angry.
I gasped.
His eyes wandered to the other two slaves. His eyes were scary.
He was filled with hate, more hate than the man that whipped me.
It looked like he hated the whole world.
If he bought me, I’d probably die in a day or two…
“She has panic attacks in the night. She’s a lot of trouble…”
Were they talking about me? I couldn’t tell.
But in the end, the young man bought me.
The spell to register as a slave always hurt. I hated it.
But I was sure this would be my last owner.
Because I… I didn’t have much time left.
A little while later, the new owner gave me a knife and made me kill a monster.
It was so scary, but if I didn’t do it, the curse on my chest burned.
We left the weapon shop, and my stomach started rumbling.
He was going to yell at me! I shook my head; I wanted to tell him that I was fine. I was fine! So don’t be mad at me! Don’t whip me!
Sigh…
He just sighed.
Was he angry?
He just walked off and brought me to another shop. They were selling food there.
I think I had seen the shop in town before.
“I’ll have the cheapest lunch you’ve got, and she’ll have the kid’s meal that that kid over there is having.”
“What?!”
I had been gazing, envious, at what that other kid had been eating. Then my new owner just bought it for me? I couldn’t believe my own ears.
Everyone outside of my village was supposed to be evil, weren’t they?
“Wh…Why?”
“Hm?”
“You looked like you wanted to eat it. What’s the problem? You want something else?”
I shook my head.
“Why are you feeding me?”
Because, ever since I’d become a slave, no one had treated me this way.
“I already told you. You looked like you wanted to eat that.”
“But…”
“Just eat it. I need you to be healthy. If you stay skinny like that, you’re just going to die.”
Die…? I would die. I was sure to die… Just like Rifana. I’d die of the same disease.
“Here you are.”
The waitress set a big, elaborate meal in front of me. There was a flag sticking out of it.
What I had been envious of, only minutes before, I now had for my own. I hesitated. I bet that when I went to eat it, the young man would throw it to the ground and laugh at me.
“Aren’t you going to eat?”
He looked at me, confused.
“Can I?”
“Yeah, hurry up.”
Yes. He would probably destroy it all. I slowly reached my hand out.
I looked quickly over at him.
He didn’t look like he was going to do anything. I touched the food.
I pulled the little flag out and felt like I’d accomplished something. I felt like, as long as I had that flag, I didn’t need anything from anyone. I felt like I was back in my village. I felt like it was the very same flag, the one that we’d lost.
I held tight to the flag as I ate the food. It was so delicious that I found tears streaming down my cheeks.
If I cried, he’d yell at me for sure. I tried to wipe them away without letting him notice.
“Is it good?”
“Yes!”
No! I’d accidentally answered him, and he’d seen that I was happy. He would punish me for sure.
“Good.”
That’s all he said. I couldn’t understand.
I held tight to the flag. I felt like it was filled with… something.
Compared to the flag our lord had given us, it was very small and very cheap, but it felt like it contained all that I’d lost. It felt like it wanted me to remember something important.
I turned to the young man.
He looked just as angry as ever, but something was different.
What was it? His face and voice were so scary, but was he really a nice person?
I had so many doubts.
A lot happened that day. He gave me medicine, and made me walk to all kinds of places.
But there was one major difference.
The dream that had been haunting me was different.
“Raphtalia…”
My parents were standing on top of the cliff.
“Father! Mother!”
I ran to them with all my might.
I wanted to see them. I wanted to stay with them.
I shouldn’t. I knew that I shouldn’t, not in front of them, but I felt tears filling my eyes.
“It’s okay… It’s okay…”
“Don’t cry. Be strong.”
“Ugh… But…”
I kept crying, and my parents just held me and rubbed my head.
“We are always watching over you.”
“Yes. Please, be happy.”
“But…”
“You’ll be okay with him…”
Then I woke up.
I couldn’t believe it. My new owner was holding me, and rubbing my head.
He wasn’t a bad person. He wouldn’t play with me, wouldn’t hurt me.
He was clumsy and rude, but he was a good person.
He didn’t have any money, but he still gave me medicine, bought me food, and prioritized my equipment over his own.
Then, I finally found out who he really was.
His eyes were dark and filled with hatred and sadness.
He was violent, angry and vulgar. He was scary.
But he understood pain, and at his heart he was kind.
Yes, he was the person that Rifana and I longed for… the Shield Hero.
The Shield Hero bought me all kinds of things.
I had lost everything, but now I was surrounded by treasures.
“Hee, Hee…”
The Hero gave me a bag, and I smiled as I filled it with the treasures he’d given me.
There was the ball. There was the broken knife. There were lots of things. But the most important one was that flag.
And there were many things that I couldn’t put into the bag.
I felt healthier, better, and stronger.
“Here, eat up.”
“Okay!”
Rifana, can you hear me?
I’m fighting with the Shield Hero.
You’d never believe it.
I had a dream that night too… a good one.
Rifana, she was standing right in front of me. She was smiling. I told her everything that had happened. We talked about all kinds of things.
“Raphtalia, keep your chin up!”
“I will.”
“Lucky you! Fighting with the Shield Hero!”
“Heh, heh… Jealous?”
“Ahaha! A little!”
In my dream, she looked happy and peaceful. She was smiling at me.
“I’m watching out for
you.”
“I know.”
“Let’s go back to our village, where the flag is.”
“Yes! I’ll see you there!”
I hoped that my parents were watching me from wherever they were. I wanted them to see me rebuild it all.
I wanted strength. I wanted to be strong enough to take care of the bad people that wanted to hurt us.
The world was so cruel and hard. It was filled with darkness and evil, but I wasn’t going to give up.
I didn’t want to lose anyone else.
I’ll get stronger, enough to protect my parents, to protect Rifana. Yes, to protect Mr. Naofumi.
I could do it. And so I continue on.
The Rising of the Shield Hero Vol 01
(c) Aneko Yusagi 2013
First published by KADOKAWA in 2013 in Japan.
English translation rights arranged by One Peace Books
under the license from KADOKAWA CORPORATION, Japan.
Written by Aneko Yusagi
Character Design Seira Minami
Cover Design by Yusuke Koyama
English Edition Published by One Peace Books 2015
One Peace Books
43-32 22nd Street STE 204 Long Island City New York 11101
www.onepeacebooks.com
Table of Contents
Chapter One: A Royal Summons
Chapter Two: The Heroes
Chapter Three: A Heroic Discussion
Chapter Four: Specially-Arranged Funding
Chapter Five: The Reality of the Shield
Chapter Six: A Backstabber Named Landmine
Chapter Seven: False Charges
Chapter Eight: Ruined Reputation
Chapter Nine: They Call it a Slave
Chapter Ten: Kids’ Menu
Chapter Eleven: The Fruits of Slavery
Chapter Twelve: What’s Yours is Mine
Chapter Thirteen: Medicine
Chapter Fourteen: To Take a Life
Chapter Fifteen: Demi-Humans
Chapter Sixteen: The Two-Headed, Black Dog
Chapter Seventeen: Preparing for the Wave
Chapter Eighteen: Barbarian Armor
Chapter Nineteen: The Dragon Hourglass
Chapter Twenty: The Sword
Chapter Twenty-One: The Wave of Destruction
Chapter Twenty-Two: The Clash of Spear and Shield
Chapter Twenty-Three: All I’d Wanted to Hear
Epilogue
Special Extra Chapter One: The Spear Hero’s Buffoonery