The Shield of Miracles

by Sakon Kaidou

  Conjunction Episode: The Tale of a Star

  Centuries Ago

  Long ago, something star-like floated high up in Infinite Dendrogram’s night sky.

  It was best described as a jet-black mass of rock hanging in the border between outer space and the planet. It spent its days bathing in sunlight, gathering it within itself, and then releasing any excesses come nighttime.

  The light emitted allowed it to blend in with the countless stars brightening the night sky, and because it didn’t seem to belong to any constellation, the astronomers of that era often described it as a “vagrant star.”

  That term couldn’t be less fitting. It was no star, but a type of monster.

  An elemental, to be precise. It wasn’t even special enough to wear the crown of “UBM.” Though the fact that it had never seen others of its kind might’ve made it “unique,” it wouldn’t have come as a surprise if it had been discovered that others like it were floating around in other skyscapes.

  But its mind was much like that of a plant, so the existence of its kin, or lack thereof, didn’t bother it at all. It merely bathed in light during the day, and shone as a star during the night, paying no heed to anything around it and displaying no signs of consciousness.

  No joys or woes, no friends or foes — it was a being made up of nothing but itself.

  However, it eventually underwent a major shift.

  It was caused by a light. Not one coming from the starry skies above, but from the planet down beneath.

  For a shine coming from below, the light was unusually strong. So much so that it entered the creature’s field of vision and caused it to become something entirely different. What it actually saw was lost to all but itself, but the sight’s effect on it was very clear.

  It stopped being a mere decorational object up the night sky. Neither rock nor plant or animal, it became an entity. It became the epitome of fear.

  Thus, with great dread in their hearts, the people began calling it “Blacksky.”

  Chapter One: The Black Shield

  Paladin, Ray Starling

  Nemesis had revealed that she’d finally evolved to her third form. The long month of waiting since the battle against Gardranda had finally paid off.

  I wasn’t really sure how to feel about just... waking up to this, though. It felt so anticlimactic.

  Well, sure, I didn’t want all our evolutions to be as dramatic and intense as the first one, but at the very least, it could’ve come after a battle or something, like the evolutions had for Rook and Babi.

  I mentioned this minor peeve to B3, and according to her, evolutions that happened while the Master was sleeping weren’t all that uncommon. Sometimes, Embryos needed a bit of time to do the required processing, and the completion could easily coincide with the Master’s sleeping.

  Basically, not every evolution was as flashy and instant as our first one.

  B3 also added that “Evolutions like this often happen when you have more than enough experience and growth energy, but you aren’t sure what kind of direction you want your next form to take.”

  That fit my situation. I was two forms behind Rook, so I definitely had more than enough EXP and energy. And the fact that the evolution had finally come could only mean that the “direction” had been set.

  Anyway, let’s check it out, I thought. I wonder if it’ll have a theme. Undead? Demonic, perhaps?

  I was probably just imagining it, but I thought I heard my right Miasmaflame Bracer respond with, “You have a demon right here, you know?”

  Then we had breakfast and went outside to test the new form.

  The sun was shining, there wasn’t a cloud in the sky, and a pleasant wind caressed my cheeks. I couldn’t ask for a better day for this.

  We were standing on the Shijima family’s grounds. While we were eating breakfast, I’d asked Farica if we could use this place. She’d gladly allowed it, but she’d also asked us not to turn the lawn upside down. Though Shijima was gone, Farica was doing her best to make sure both he and his mount, Gringham, would feel right at home when they returned, and we had to respect this sentiment.

  “You ready?” I asked.

  “Yes,” replied Nemesis.

  She was currently in her first form, a greatsword, and I was about to turn her into her third.

  With us were B3 and Louie, who seemed visibly intrigued. Farica couldn’t join since she had work to do at home.

  “Nemesis, third form.”

  “Form Shift — [ ]”

  “Hm?” For reasons unknown, I couldn’t hear her say the name of the form. It was as though it was drowned out by noise. “Wait, Nemesis, what did you just— oh?!”

  She finished transforming while I was still confused by her words, so the thing she became caught me off guard and made me lose my balance.

  “Whoa...” I was now holding Nemesis in her third form.

  From the very first glance, it was obvious that it had a completely different nature than the other two forms.

  While the greatsword and the halberd were clearly weapons, this was an object large enough to cover me whole.

  It was a giant, circular shield.

  “First it comes when I’m asleep, and now this,” I muttered. “This evolution is surprising in more ways than one.”

  “I share your sentiment completely,” said Nemesis. “‘The Black Shield’ is apt for this form, I’d say.”

  From a greatsword to a halberd to a... shield? Honestly, I wasn’t seeing the connection here.

  I grabbed its lengthy handle and tried moving it around. Sure enough, the feeling was completely new to me. Handling a shield was nothing like swinging a sword or a halberd.

  B3 had told me that mid-sleep evolutions often happened when the Master couldn’t decide the direction he wanted the next form to take. If there was any truth to that, this form might have become a shield because I’d watched B3 fight Rosa. It’d left an impression on me.

  Then again, many of my battles so far had made me wish I had a means of defense that — unlike Counter Absorption — wasn’t limited by the number of uses, so this result might’ve been influenced by that.

  “Though, if it actually considered my wishes, I’d have preferred it if it gave me a means of dealing with hopelessly distant enemies,” I muttered.

  “Again, I share your sentiment,” Nemesis sighed as I recalled the time I had gone through a certain training course.

  ◇

  It was a standard morning in Gideon. I was going around looking for my acquaintances and asking if they were free enough to spar with me. When I chanced upon Marie, she asked, “Would you be willing to try an odd type of training?”

  “Odd... how?” I asked.

  “Odd in that it allows you to experience something no duel may give you — a battle against a long-ranged enemy.”

  I totally understood what she meant.

  Through my sparring, I’ve learned the Impact Counter technique — credit to Rosa for that name — and many other things. However, because I’d only sparred in arena barriers, where the area was limited and my opponent was obvious, all of my new tricks could be applied only to face-to-face single combat.

  Marie told me that all of that training could cause my skill as a player to become biased toward a select few situations, and she suggested this training to make up for that.

  The design was simple: we first went outside, away from any barriers. She created enough distance between us that I couldn’t even see her, and then she started attacking me, taking care to keep me alive.

  She said that I was free to fight back, so I got all fired up and readied myself for what I thought would be an exciting battle.

  Instead, I got a cold dose of harsh re
ality.

  I couldn’t do anything against her. Sure, I could defend against her attacks, but I couldn’t launch even the simplest of counters.

  Marie attacked me from distances I couldn’t hope to reach and moved at speeds I couldn’t follow, even while riding Silver. The training ended without me landing even a single hit on her.

  Considering I’d been doing relatively well in our arena spars, this result came as a bit of a shock.

  As a result, Nemesis and I became aware of just how weak we were against long-ranged attacks.

  I had no means of defeating anyone who constantly stayed at a distance I couldn’t reach. Marie was fully aware of that, and she’d given me this training as a practical reality check.

  With this realization, both Nemesis and I thought the exact same thing:

  I hope the next evolution has a ranged attack.

  ◇

  And yet, what we actually got was a shield — pretty much the opposite of what we’d wanted.

  This made both of us somewhat disappointed, but not enough to complain about it. If anything, the fact we’d finally paid the price for the first evolution and reached the third form was a cause for celebration.

  “So,” I spoke up. “What skills do you have?”

  “This form can use Counter Absorption,” she replied.

  Hmm, that goes against one of my earlier assumptions, but I guess it fits. It’s a shield, after all.

  “Does it get more uses?”

  “Alas, no. Though, I feel as though it became slightly more hardy. It’s... 1.5 times tougher, I believe.”

  If that was true, it meant that a single Counter Absorption could now sustain 300,000 points of damage, which was pretty big. For perspective, it could now take a punch from Shu. His kicks would still be beyond it, though.

  “So, what are the other skills?” I asked. “It’s not just Counter Absorption, is it?”

  “I don’t know,” she replied.

  ...Excuse me?

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “Exactly what I said: I don’t know the other skill. It’s there, most certainly, but I don’t know what it is.”

  I had no idea what she was implying, so I brought up the menu and took a look at the “Embryo” section. There, I found this:

  ■■■■■■■■ ■■■■■

  Skills:

  Counter Absorption Lv3

  ■■■■■■■ ■■■■■■ ■■■ ■■■■■: (Analyzing)

  “What the hell?” I exclaimed.

  The form name and the unique skill were both unintelligible, and the skill’s effect was still being analyzed.

  “Nemesis, you mentioned some ‘bad news...’ Is this it?”

  “Indeed it is. I’ve evolved and gained new powers, but not even I know what they are.”

  “...How does that even happen?”

  Despite my words, I had an idea why it had turned out like this. Nemesis’s first evolution had involved some sort of mystery function. It had greatly extended the time until she evolved again, and it wasn’t unreasonable to believe it had also influenced the result.

  Upon closer look, I noticed that the shield was different from the other forms in more than just shape and purpose.

  First, the lack of a black aura. With the greatsword, it came out from the hilt and wrapped around my arm, while with the halberd, it flowed out of the back of the ax part. The third form, however, didn’t have it at all, making it look like a normal — albeit huge and somewhat extravagant — shield.

  Second, it wasn’t exclusively black. Its front had silver lines and curves forming a five-sided pattern. There was nothing like that on either the first or second forms.

  “It says ‘analyzing,’” I spoke up again. “How long will that take?”

  “It could be done today, but that might be too generous an estimate,” Nemesis replied. “Picture yourself being given a paper of text in a language you have never seen or even heard of. You are also given a dictionary and have to translate and read it all. Oh, and the dictionary translates not to Japanese, but English. That is how this process feels.”

  That’s some weird homework you got there, I raised an eyebrow.

  Whatever the case, it was safe to expect to see it revealed within the next few days.

  I was about to let it go and just wait, but then B3 gave a comment. “Even if the analysis isn’t complete, you might reveal the skill by using it correctly.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “I know someone who also had to wait for a skill to be analyzed, and the analysis sped up when he tried using the new form in various ways. Once done, the resulting skill turned out to have an activation method similar to one of the actions he tried.”

  “Oh, so making the movements that activate the skill can make the analysis faster, huh?”

  Borrowing Nemesis’s description of the process, it could be likened to a Japanese translation of the text. Anyway, I knew what I had to do now.

  “Wait, Ray, what are y—NWHAAAAHHHHhhhh...?!”

  Ignoring her words, I mustered my strength and threw Nemesis as far as I could.

  “You fool! You unbelievable imbecile!” she cried.

  “Sorry! That was definitely my bad!”

  Unfortunately, she happened to land in a local farm’s field.

  All covered in mud, she returned to her human form, hit me with an intense dropkick, and drowned me in vocal fury. “Why did you throw me?! Who do you think you are, Captain America?!”

  “Well, your third form was probably influenced by B3, so I thought that it might be related to throwing.”

  Yesterday, B3 had killed a few K&R members by throwing her shield, so it wasn’t far-fetched to believe the skill would be based on that. Also, I had Counter Absorption as my main means of defense, so I didn’t really think the skill would be defensive.

  Not to mention that I also want some ranged offense, I thought. And how do you turn a shield into a long-ranged weapon? Well, you throw it...

  “Then don’t rush to act on that thought, you fool! At least tell me about it and throw me where it’s safe!”

  “Again, sorry. I really regret that.”

  I’d just decided to throw her where there weren’t any people, and it happened to be a muddy field.

  “So, uh... Should I polish you?” I asked. Even her human form was covered in mud. I do hope that cleaning her in her weapon form will clean all her forms.

  “Be thorough!” she said before returning to her Black Shield form.

  I held her with my prosthetic, reached into my inventory, took out my cleaning supplies, and began polishing her.

  “You seem used to this,” commented B3.

  “I’m sure I do. She always asks for this after we fight undead and stuff like them.”

  “It makes me a bit jealous. My Embryo is more Territory than any other type, so I can never touch it.”

  “Oh, yeah, now that you mention it, it did seem pretty Territory-like.”

  That means that all three CID members have Embryos of that type.

  “Who told you to stop?” Nemesis asked grumpily.

  “Okay, okay. Geez.”

  I went on to polish her for the next 20 minutes, making sure to be as thorough as possible.

  ◇

  We decided against doing any more third form tests.

  Nemesis fervently insisted on analyzing the unintelligible skill by herself, and I wasn’t in a position to argue — nor did I feel inclined to, really.

  With that entire matter pushed aside, we decided to focus on why we’d come here in the first place: gathering information for the purpose of finding Mr. Shijima in real life. We approached Farica with the intention of asking some questions about him, but...

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I have to mend these clothes before noon.”

  Apparently, she had a Needleworker work order with today as the deadline. She had been planning to finish it yesterday, but Louie’s disa
ppearance had caused her to fall behind.

  We couldn’t really bother her if that was the case.

  “I should be done by midday,” she said. “Is it fine if we talk then?”

  “Oh, yeah,” I nodded. “We don’t mind waiting.”

  Noon was only three or four Dendro hours away. Considering our quest was a search for a real person and how little time that was in real life, there was no reason we couldn’t wait.

  “Please enjoy the festival until then,” she added. “The main event is the fireworks show which happens after dark, but the stalls and plays should already be up and running.”

  “Ohh?” Nemesis’s eyes lit up.

  Oh, dear. The biggest eater I knew was thoroughly intrigued by the word “stall.”

  Like, I knew she was hungry after skipping on dinner yesterday, but it didn’t stop me from fearing for my wallet.

  But man, she sure is a gluttonous creature, I thought.

  “Nemesis, are you familiar with the concept of the ‘seven deadly sins?’” I asked.

  “Indeed I am,” she nodded. “It has nothing to do with me, however.”

  “Reeeaaally?”

  “What’s with that tone of yours?!”

  Continuing to banter like that, we made our way towards the stall-packed main street.

  The idea of festival stalls made me remember the ones I’d seen in events held by the local shrine near my family home or the ones set up near cherry blossom viewing spots. The ones here in Torne weren’t all that different from those. However, there were about 400 of them, which seemed a bit much for a village with only about 2,000 people.

  As I bought crepes for Nemesis, I asked the shopkeeper why there were so many stalls, and he said that many of their owners were merchants from Altea who’d come here just for the festival.

  Well, this did seem like a good time to make a killing, but I couldn’t help but respect the mercantile spirit of the people willing to venture the roads stalked by monsters just for this. Mind you, from what I’d heard, a lot of those shopkeepers grouped up, pooled their money to buy some skilled escorts, and arrived here first thing in the morning of the festival day.

  Also, the village surroundings were inhabited by monsters only a little bit stronger than those you’d find in beginner areas. Sometimes you’d get herds like the one encountered by Louie and his mother, but they were a once-every-few-years event, if not rarer.