by Aneko Yusagi
“Um… Saint… Could you please save our village?”
“What?! I thought you’d asked for a Hero to come.”
“Yes, but…”
Ugh… All the villagers were throwing themselves at my feet and begging me.
I wasn’t exactly all-powerful here. And besides, it’s not like I had any responsibility to them.
“No thanks.”
“Please. If you need money, we’ll find a way…”
“You need to pay upfront. And if anything happens, I don’t want to hear any complaints. Now, if you know anything about the seed that the Spear Hero unsealed, you better tell me about it now.”
The villagers called out to one another, and soon I was surrounded by people pulling money from their pockets. I spent the time trying to find out all that I could.
Apparently the seed had been sealed away in some nearby ruins, and had been watched over by a powerful guardian.
If the vines were overtaking everything, someone must have wondered what had happened to the guardian. No? I sighed… These villagers weren’t good for much.
The villagers believed that the seed was the masterwork of an alchemist that had made his hideaway in those ruins. And that the seed was sealed away some time later on. According to reports that they had, the area had, sometime in the past, been overtaken by vines.
“If you have a legend like that around here, why would you remove the seal from the seed? Didn’t anyone notice?”
Everyone turned their eyes to the ground.
They must have thought it was safe because a Hero had brought it to them.
We were talking all this over when they announced they had raised the money I’d requested.
It was quite a lot of money. I could have taken it and just run off.
“Ok, I’ve got it. I’ll do what I can.”
I changed my shield to the Chimera Viper Shield. That would be better for battle.
“Sh…The Shield Hero?!”
I ignored the shouts of the villagers and pressed on further into the vines. Raphtalia and Filo followed close behind.
I put all the money into a pouch and tied it around my waste then moved deeper and deeper into the vines.
Chapter Sixteen: Invading Vines
“Raphtalia, Filo, be careful.”
Okay, so we’d be fighting plants today.
I’d gotten used to handling herbs and grasses, but the plants surrounding us now were completely different.
The vines were covered with different fruits, and the roots were studded with potatoes. That wasn’t all. They were parasitic (and could infect your body) and could spit poison and acid.
I was thinking that the weed killer was probably our best bet. Physically though, I didn’t know if cutting them or beating them in battle would really do much.
We walked for a little while before the wriggling vines decided to attack us.
“Hah!”
“Hiyah!”
Raphtalia and Filo took care of them quickly.
But it didn’t do anything to stop the vines. If anything, it caused more trouble, as now the other vines were taking an interest in us.
We could try using magic…
“I am the source of all power. Hear my words and understand them. Protect them!”
“Fast Guard!”
I cast a protective spell on Raphtalia and Filo.
The spell would raise the defense rating of the target. If I used it on myself it was even more effective, because my defense was already so high.
“Thank you, Mr. Naofumi.”
“Thanks!”
They both thanked me, but we were soon attacked by other vines again.
We could have kept pressing on, but what did we need to do to get rid of the vines for good?
Without weed killer or magic we’d have no choice but to retreat. But as things stood now, maybe we could just kill them one by one and move on.
If we met the monsters in the heart of the village, they might have a hint or two that we could use.
We didn’t know how they had broken through the seal, so I didn’t have any concrete ideas. So all we could do was try what we could until we found something that worked.
In a worst-case scenario, we’d have to go back to those ruins—and that would be a pain.
The vines weren’t strong enough to get through my defenses, so they weren’t able to do much to halt our progress.
“Keep going! We’ll figure it out when we get there.”
“Okay!”
We ran on and came to what seemed to be the origin of the vine’s roots, at the very center.
The whole area was crawling with plant-based monsters. They weren’t so strong that Raphtalia and Filo couldn’t take care of them. Even still, I wanted to make sure that they were protected.
“Um…”
The monsters’ names were BioPlant, PlantRiwe, Mandragora.
BioPlant referred to some kind of master-plant from which all the other enemies were produced. PlantRiwe referred specifically to a human-shaped amalgamation of different vines. The Mandragora was like a large, immobile pitcher plant.
The poison-spitting monster that Filo had mentioned was the Mandragora. The PlantRiwe had a giant flower growing from its head, and the flower released clouds of poisonous pollen. The Mandragora produced an acidic liquid from its vines, which it would fling at weaker creatures, and then, once stunned, would pull them into its gaping mouth.
The BioPlant was the real monster, as the other two were produced by it. The vine would form a bulbous growth that would get larger and larger until it burst, producing the other monsters.
I tried sprinkling it with weed killer, and it reacted instantly, withering and dying as if I’d stabbed it through its heart.
That didn’t seem to break my non-aggression rule (the one imposed by the shield). I guess because the beasts were really more like plants than monsters.
I wonder how this shield was making its judgment.
I bet it was like that… like when you could use holy water on an undead monster to knock it out. It must have been based on the original use intended by the object. Either that, or it was because the medicine was designed to return the plants to their parasitic form?
Whatever, I don’t know.
“What happened?”
The PlantRiwe and Mandragoras kept on uselessly attacking me.
Their attacks weren’t doing anything, but he poisonous pollen was starting to affect my breath. And the acid was getting annoying too. Both of them had the effect of lowering a target’s defense rating, and when I checked my status screen I could tell that it was having an effect on me.
Still, they weren’t able to hurt me, so that was good. Unfortunately the Snake Poison Fang (medium) wasn’t having any effect on them.
I suppose I should have expected that. The monsters used poison too, and they were plants.
“Raphtalia!”
“Cough! What is it?”
The air was very thick, and by the look of it Raphtalia was having trouble breathing.
Even though I had managed to heal her in the past, her respiratory system was probably still damaged and weaker than others’.
“Here! You take some weed killer too.”
“Oh, okay!”
I tossed her a bottle of weed killer. I’d have her use it in case there was an emergency or something.
The vines wriggled toward her and tried to attack her, but Raphtalia calmly stepped back and sliced through them.
They weren’t nearly as durable as I’d expected.
“Mr. Naofumi? I’m going!”
“Oh… um.”
We pressed on until we came to the town square. There was a large tree growing there.
Actually no… It wasn’t a tree. It was a bunch of vines all twisted together.
“That’s the source! I hope…”
We approached the trunk of the “tree,” and suddenly a giant eye appeared from it and stared at us.
That was creepy. But it did seem to be the source.
“Master! I’m going!”
Filo took off running in the direction of the tree, but vines extended from it to meet her.
“Yaaaah!”
She drew back her powerful leg and kicked the vines, sending them flying through the air before jumping to her feet and turning to face the tree. Realization flashed over her face: she was still too far away.
“Master!”
“I know! Air Strike Shield!”
Filo was falling through the air, but the Air Strike Shield deployed right under her, and she landed on it.
She caught her footing on the floating shield before jumping off again and landing directly before the giant eye.
“Hiyah!”
There was a nasty sound of gushing liquid, and the eye exploded at Filo’s powerful kick.
Ugh… It was pretty nasty.
“!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
The tree of vines began to violently writhe. Apparently taking out its eye wasn’t enough to kill it.
What should we do?
“It’s not falling!”
“I know.”
With an awful wriggling and gush, the eye reappeared.
In the process, just for a second, I could see something like a seed deep within the eye.
“Raphtalia, Filo, I just saw something inside the eye there. Try dumping weed killer on it.”
My skill was done with its necessary cool down time. I sent out another Air Strike Shield. I should point out that I was being attacked this whole time by PlantRiwes and Mandragoras. They kept raining down from above from some inexhaustible supply.
“Okay!”
“Got it!”
Raphtalia jumped on Filo’s back and they ran for the rapidly regenerating eyeball.
The eye, probably noticing the threat, sent vines shooting straight for them. Even more streamed down from above.
“Shield Prison!”
A cage immediately appeared and enclosed Raphtalia and Filo. They were suspended in the cage in mid-air, but they should be able to make their attack from that spot.
The skill would only last for fifteen seconds.
During that time, all the vines streaming down from above bounced back from the cage.
But no… Now they were winding around the bars.
Fifteen seconds had passed, and the cage vanished. At the same time, to support them, I released an Air Strike Shield to catch Filo where she fell.
“Hiyah!”
Filo caught her footing on the shield and Raphtalia flashed her sword at the swarming vines.
It looked like she was successful as all the vines fell back. Filo was successful again, and she ran to make another approach.
She managed to land another successful kick on the eyeball.
“!???????”
The regenerating eye completely stopped moving after taking Filo’s second kick.
Finding her window of opportunity, Raphtalia leaned over and poured the weed killer on the small seed-like object.
“!!!!?????”
There was an unbelievable loud shriek followed by violent writhing. Then all the BioPlants stopped moving.
“Did it work?”
It sure seemed to have worked, and I hadn’t been hurt at all in the process.
But then the BioPlants all started to move again.
“I’m sorry, I guess I didn’t do it right!”
“You did fine. I guess it just wasn’t strong enough…
But now what were we supposed to do?
But wait… I had an idea.
I had a skill that increased medicine efficacy. Wasn’t that how I was able to help all those people?
Did that mean that… that I should be the one to use the weed killer?
“Let me try. I think I can do it.”
I held a bottle in my hand, and stalked off for the eye.
I had just started to notice it recently, but my defense rating completely negated the attacks of my enemies. Even if I was covered with them I could still walk just fine. But once I tried attacking, the power balance wasn’t so clear-cut.
There was a BioPlant in front of me, its roots exposed from the soil.
“I guess I really should ride on Filo to get close to that seed…”
But I poured the weed killer on the roots of the BioPlant.
“!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!???????????????”
The plants were writhing very quickly and violently. They were screaming like monsters.
The eye turned brown, and the rot spread out from the eye to cover the rest of the creature.
Suddenly the entire plant began to dry up.
There was a cracking sound as the tree dried and wilted then suddenly crumbled. We had to run to escape the falling pieces.
“Woah…”
We looked around to find all the plant monsters brown and wilted. Everything but the fruit had turned brown, and we were the only things moving.
And then… from where the BioPlant tree had stood, a great number of glowing seeds rained down from above.
Leaving them there seemed like a bad idea.
“Now it’s cleanup time. I might be able to absorb some into my shield. Let’s start collecting seeds.”
“Okay.”
“Lunch time!”
Filo watched Raphtalia and I collect seeds while she feasted on the leftover fruits and potatoes.
Chapter Seventeen: Improving the Product Line
“Is that it?”
“Yeah, we’ll leave the rest up to the villagers.”
The miracle seed… We’d dispatched with the BioPlants that Motoyasu had woken up… and now we were collecting seeds.
We had fistfuls of seeds, and I went ahead and let the shield absorb the wilted plants as we worked.
BioPlant Shield: conditions met
PlantRiwe Shield: conditions met
Mandragora Shield: conditions met
BioPlant Shield: ability locked:
equip bonus: plant reform
Special Effect: Hook
PlantRiwe Shield: ability locked:
equip bonus: intermediate compounding recipes 2
Mandragora Shield: ability locked:
equip bonus: plant analysis
The plant-type shield unlocked a tree that connected to the others. It looked like there were other things I could access as well, but the tree hadn’t advanced enough.
“Plant Reform?”
I’d received an interesting-looking ability from the BioPlant, but I’d have to experiment a little to see how it worked.
An icon appeared that indicated I should select a seed to imbue with magic.
I decided to try it on one of the BioPlant seeds that I had just picked up.
The seed slowly rose and floated in the air.
Special Abilities: propagation 9, production 9, vitality 9, immunity 4, intelligence 1, growth 9, mutation 9
What was this all about? I decided to put the seed down.
There was a quick series of beeps, and the numbers fell quickly. Hm… I didn’t understand.
I decided to try lowering some stats and raising just one.
Special Abilities: propagation 1, production 1, vitality1, immunity 1, intelligence 1, growth 43, mutation 1
Oh, okay, so I just had to focus on raising the growth stat.
Oh, hey now—when I used the skill my magic power dropped dramatically.
“Mr. Naofumi?”
I dropped the modified BioPlant seed on a dry patch of ground nearby.
“Woah!”
Nearly instantaneously, the ground was split and covered in green vines.
But…
“Huh?”
The plant grew to be about three meters in size before suddenly drying up.
“What are you doing?”
“I got this new ability, Plant Reform, and I wanted to try it out on this seed here.”
“You shouldn’t do such dangerous things!”
Raphtalia was upset with me. Whatever. Had I watched someone do what I’d done, I’d probably have been angry too.
But what an ability it was! If I gave serious thought to it, I could probably make a real miracle seed.
“Mr. Naofumi… that’s a weird smile on your face.”
Damn… she’d found me out.
“Anyway, let’s head back to the village.”
“Okay.”
We turned our backs on the newly silent, brown land and made for the camp.
“Thank you so much, Hero!”
People were all about cash. After I saved their village, here they were, waving to me.
Still, the village would take a lot of cleaning before it was livable again. It would be a lot of work. We spent the rest of the day disposing of the wilted plants.
The main body of the plants had wilted away, but the fruits and potatoes they’d produced seemed just fine. They would have food for a while here.
But I was a little worried about the soil. Had the plants sucked all the nutrients from it?
“Well, this is the opposite of a famine, isn’t it?”
“I suppose so, yes.”
In the near future, this village might need to pack up and move on.
I was thinking it over, and it inspired me to look deeper into this Plant Reform ability. I still didn’t know what it meant by “special ability.”
I tried to look it up, and an icon appeared saying that I needed the plant analysis ability.
That had been part of the Mandragora Shield, so I would have to wait for the ability to unlock.
I actually thought that the Mandragora Shield abilities would unlock faster, so I switched my shield to the Mandragora Shield before I went to bed. When I woke up the next morning, the ability had been unlocked, so I switched back to the BioPlant Shield and tried my hand at plant reformation again.
Special Abilities: propagation 9, production 9, vitality 9, immunity 4, intelligence 1, growth 9, mutation 9,