by Aneko Yusagi
“Yeah, I might have just the thing. Want to go get some?”
“Fine by me. But you should know that our equipment doesn’t seem to have any effect here, so we won’t be any help at all if we run into a strong monster on the way.”
Kizuna thought for a minute and then produced a drop item from her weapon. It looked like some kind of equipment. “I have some basic stuff I was going to use for crafting later on, but you can use it now.”
“Sounds good to me.”
She passed me a wooden piece of armor, some light clothing, a short sword, and a set of double swords.
“I don’t need any weapons.”
“Ah, I guess the heroes in your world are just like the ones here. We can’t use weapons aside from the ones we’ve been assigned.”
“That’s right. That’s a real problem for me, because I don’t have a way to deal damage directly to enemies. I’m stuck with a shield.”
Rishia took the weapons from Kizuna and equipped them. She was the only one who could level up, anyway, not that her levels were helping her stats much. Her stats changes so little that it made me wonder if leveling up was good for anything at all.
I guess she made up for it with—surprisingly—decent base stats.
“Can’t do direct damage, eh? So I guess you have to use counters and stuff?”
“Correct. Unlike you, I don’t have a wide range of weapons to pick from.”
What did a “Hunting Hero” actually use, anyway?
If it was anything like how it sounded, she must have had access to a wide variety of weapons.
“Yeah, I guess I can transform my weapons into all sorts of things. This is a tuna knife, for breaking down dead monsters. I can also use bows, and slings, and spears and stuff.”
“Quite a range.”
I’d figured she could use different tools, but I was surprised at just how many categories she had access to. I supposed I should have expected it, considering the vague title “Hunting Hero.”
“You think? Well, I guess it would be inconvenient to be like Glass, with the fan of the vassal weapons, limiting her to just fans. Is that how you feel, Naofumi? Limited?”
“Yeah, I’ve only ever been able to use shields.”
It wasn’t that none of my shields had good abilities—that’s not what I was saying. It’s just that I was always on defense, and there was no getting around that. The only shields I had that could do some damage were the Shield of Wrath and the Spirit Tortoise Heart Shield.
But the cursed Shield of Wrath was impure, and it cursed me whenever I used its skills.
The Spirit Tortoise Heart Shield was capable of a devastating attack called Energy Blast, but I couldn’t use that shield in this world. I couldn’t use any of my shields.
“I don’t have as many options as you. I’m the Shield Hero, and I just focus on protecting people.
“I’m not as all-powerful as you seem to think. My weapons have limitations.”
“Like what? I told you about my limitations, so you can tell me about yours.”
“Hm? Well the Hunting Hero is supposed to, well... hunt. That means I can’t really fight other people. I’m just like you. I can’t hurt people. I can’t fend for myself if people come attack me or capture me. All I can do is run away.”
So Kizuna couldn’t fight other people. She was limited to attacking monsters.
“If you don’t believe me, I’ll prove it,” she said, and immediately sliced at us with her tuna knife. I raised my shield to block it, but when she drew the blade back, it struck my cheek.
“Feh?!”
Rishia dodged the first attack, but the blade hit her the second time.
The cold steel felt awful on my face, but... it didn’t hurt. In fact, I could hardly feel it. I touched my skin, and there was no blood—not even a scratch.
Rishia was so surprised she looked like she was about to faint, but the attack hadn’t done any actual damage that I could see.
“See what I mean? I couldn’t hurt you if I wanted to, so you can relax.”
“You could have warned me.” I had done the same thing to the other heroes before. Once I’d even punched one of them with my bare fists, just to prove I couldn’t hurt them.
“On the other hand, I’m very effective when it comes to fighting monsters.”
So she was a hero that specialized in monster battles? It wasn’t quite the same deal I had, but it was similar in a way. The Shield Hero was probably supposed to have taken all of a normal hero’s attack power and dedicated it to defense instead. The counter-attack effects of the Shield of Wrath and the Spirit Tortoise Heart Shields were nothing but by-products.
But if I had a way to go on the offensive, maybe Kizuna had some special abilities that would let her hurt other humans.
I wasn’t about to take her word for it.
Still, she didn’t seem to think of us as enemies, so it was in our best interest to cooperate for the time being.
“Then let’s go look around, shall we? I’ve been cleaning this place out periodically, so there shouldn’t be anything too strong out there. Still, if you go too deep, we might run into something rough. Keep your wits about you.”
“Got it.”
Monsters were like wild animals, so hunting them wasn’t exactly the easiest thing in the world.
Kizuna led the way, and soon we were walking through a thick forest.
I didn’t see any monster footprints or anything, but it wasn’t long before Kizuna held out her hand and told us to stop.
“... Something is close.”
I held my breath to listen, and sure enough, I could hear something breathing in the bushes. Maybe it was because of my low level, but I felt like my intuitions were a little duller than usual.
“I don’t think it’s anything to worry about. Let’s hurry up and kill it.”
“Okay.”
Kizuna slunk over to the bushes, and a group of monsters leapt out when she approached.
They looked like very large green rats.
And that’s exactly what they were called: large green rats. It looked like there were four of them...at least!
“Hya!” Kizuna shouted. Her attack immediately killed two of them. The remaining two must have figured out that Rishia and I were the weaker opponents, because they came running over to bite us.
“Wait! Damn—Naofumi, don’t let them get away!”
“Alright! Don’t send any more of them in my direction!”
“I know!”
I blocked the first rat with my shield, but the second one got around me and bit into my arm.
“Ouch!”
I was surprised that a monster like that was able to hurt me. They looked like low-level, early-game monsters, and normally my defense would be too strong for them. The kappa looked pretty strong, so I could understand that. But now I was getting beat up by a rat? My pride could hardly take it.
I really needed to level up. I couldn’t help but yearn for my lost stats and power-ups.
“Feh!”
“Quit whining and do something!”
Kizuna was busy dealing with the hordes of rats attacking her. “Rishia, it’s up to you now!”
“O... Okay!”
Rishia dashed forward and plunged her sword into the rat I was holding down.
“Thrust Attack!” Kizuna shouted, thrusting her weapon at the rats. A shockwave with Kizuna at the center exploded outward, sending the crowd of rats flying. They died when they hit the ground with a soft chirp. They must have been cut by a blade of wind, because many of them were sliced clean in half.
“Flying Sparrow!”
Another blade of light shot through the air at the rat that was still attacking Rishia and me.
Judging by the appearance of the attack, it must have worked similar to Motoyasu’s Air Strike Javelin, which worked by hitting an enemy with a weapon formed from energy.
“Those things are a kind of tough.”
“Yeah, but they�
�re weaker than the kappa. Most of the adventurers in my world need to be at level 15 before they can kill one.”
We were struggling to defeat monsters that a level 15 adventurer could defeat. Rishia wasn’t the toughest girl around, so for her, at least I shouldn’t have been surprised.
“Let’s get back to our search.”
“The hero interference effect is making this more difficult than it should be.”
“Want to go on without me?”
“We don’t have the time to spend leveling up. We’re just out here to get food.”
“Yeah, right. So let’s get going.”
We restarted our search, and soon we found some banana-like fruits and some herb-like plants. Luckily my appraisal skills were still working, and Kizuna was able to confirm which plants were poisonous and which ones were useful. So we were able to collect a fair amount of medicinal herbs.
Like Kizuna said, the monsters we ran into along the way weren’t very powerful, and she was able to dispatch them without any trouble—as in, with only one hit. How strong was this girl, anyway?
Rishia was starting to get some useful experience.
We were only out hunting for two hours, but Rishia had already reached level 20. She was leveling really quickly.
Unfortunately, the hero interference phenomenon kept Kizuna and I from leveling up at all. As soon as Rishia and I were strong enough to survive on our own, it would be best to part ways with Kizuna.
“We should start cooking soon.”
“Good point.”
“You could wait for me, you know.”
“I don’t want to think about what would happen if you fed us something bad.”
“You’re not very trusting, are you?”
We went back to the beach house, built a fire, and grilled some mysterious meats and fish with the herbs. I thought about maybe making some barbecued skewers for later.
“Is there any drinking water? I was going to make a soup...”
“Yeah, there’s an underground spring over there. I normally drink from that.”
We were so close to the sea. I should have figured that any water in the immediate vicinity was going to be seawater.
Looking out at the ocean, I felt like I was back in the Cal Mira Islands.
Kizuna pulled out a water bottle and filled a large wok-like pan. Then she built a new fire beneath it. I added the bones and head of a fish and let them simmer.
Kizuna ended up with free time on her hands while I was cooking, so she decided to go fishing in the ocean. She said we could eat anything she caught as sashimi.
A few minutes passed, and...
“It’s done! Kizuna, it’s ready!” I shouted. The food was ready.
“It’s done already?”
“Yeah.”
“I have a big haul, too,” she said, smiling. She carried a line with a heavy fish dangling from it. She must have been pretty good.
“Let’s eat.”
“Yeah. Dig in!”
“Looks delicious!”
Rishia and Kizuna started to eat the food I’d made. Kizuna swallowed the first bite and nodded to herself. “Yum.”
“This is delicious. Naofumi, I didn’t realize you were such an accomplished chef.”
“I had to learn after being summoned to the last world.”
“I had to start cooking for myself after I ended up in this place, but I still can’t cook very well. I thought about grilling salted fish, but making salt from the seawater is too much work.”
“Don’t be so lazy. Fortunately, I found some rice, too, so I went ahead and made a paella. You want some?”
“I’m telling you, it’s really good! I never knew what to do with rice. All I could think of was making onigiri.”
I couldn’t imagine where she got rice for herself, but I found it among her things, so I made a paella. She didn’t have a great pan for it, so I had to make it in a clay pot.
“Is that better or what?”
“Feh!”
Kizuna was already done eating, but Rishia was still working on it, and tears streamed down her face. Had she really been that hungry?
“Alright. So what’s next?” Kizuna murmured as she watched the sun sink into the ocean. “You guys still up for some action?”
“I’m not against it, but if you’ve got a way out of here, you better tell us.”
“It’s not impossible...” she said, pulling something from her pocket. “Remember what I said? About how hard I tried to get out of here?”
“Yeah. You said you’d gone deep into the labyrinth.”
“I did. I really put my life on the line. I wasn’t sure I’d survive.”
“Where are we now as far as the labyrinth is concerned?”
“Pretty much at the very beginning. It isn’t such a bad place to live, I figure, out by the ocean like this.”
She sat cross-legged and watched the sun set.
She looked... sad. An air of loneliness hung about her.
“So anyway, when I was really deep in the maze, I found this flying thing there,” she said, passing me a flat disc that looked like a CD.
What was it for? How did you use it?
I was low on magic power, so I tentatively touched the disc, but nothing changed.
“You want to see where I got it?”
“If we can survive the trip.”
“I’ll go ahead to check the route,” she said, climbing to her feet and tossing the disc aside.
But before the disc hit the ground, it paused in the air, hovered, and started spinning and glowing. Kizuna ducked into the light and disappeared... Then she stuck her head back out.
“Looks fine to me. You want to come?”
“How amazing!”
“You’re full of surprises, aren’t you? You know...”
That thing looked like it might come in handy.
I did what she said and followed her into the disc of light.
On the other side, I found myself standing in sand... which was strange, because I was also in a large, solemn stone-walled room.
“Over here,” Kizuna said, pointing.
I looked to where she indicated and saw a stairway that led up out of the room and toward another archway of light. But there was a field surrounding the archway, and it looked just like the barrier I could make with Shooting Star Shield.
“I think we can go to the next space if we can find a way around this thing. Come take a closer look.” She climbed the stairs up to the magic barrier and motioned for me to follow her.
“What is it?”
“If we can find a way through here, I think we can get out of the labyrinth.”
“Why do you think that?”
It sounded like a major discovery to me. Had she been this close to getting out but just not had the manpower to break through? Had she been wandering around this whole time? Was that it?
I turned and saw something across the sandy floor. Two paths led out symmetrically from the center, and they each had a button-like object at the end. Maybe we just had to push them at the same time.
“That’s not the real problem. It’s here,” she said as she pointed at the archway again.
“What?”
“We can’t get in now because of the barrier, but if you get closer, you’ll see. It reacts to our weapons and won’t let us through, because it leads to a different world.”
Say what?
Kizuna watched my mouth drop open as I stood there, nodding.
“I get a warning that says the weapons are not allowed through. I don’t know what’s on the other side. I couldn’t disable the barrier by myself...”
I inched closer to the barrier and a warning flashed before my eyes.
Error.
The four holy heroes are not allowed to cross between the worlds.
This action has been rejected.
Whatever was on the other side of the archway, it must not have been my world.
“I figure that, no matter wher
e it leads, it’s got to be better than just hanging around here, right? But if we go in there, we’d be summoned when the waves came, right? So maybe we could use the wave-summoning effect to be sent back to our previous worlds. You know?”
“Maybe. But I can’t get through.”
Just permit the action already!
What if Rishia opened it? Then maybe Kizuna could get through?
But...
“What if it’s just more of the labyrinth on the other side?”
“I know... That’s why I don’t know what to do.”
“What to do...”
It was worrisome, for sure.
“Let’s head back for now.”
“Okay.”
Rishia had been studying some writing on the walls, but now she came trotting over and joined the conversation. “If we solve the puzzle, can we get out of here?”
“Not exactly. It goes to another world.”
“Oh...”
“Let’s head back for now.”
“Okay.”
Kizuna used that teleportation item of hers and brought us all back to the beach.
The sun had set completely while we were gone, and the beach was drenched in the colors of night.
“The stronger monsters come out at night, so we should get back to the starting point. It’s safe there.” Kizuna led us back to the prison cells, and we decided to rest up.
“Umm...”
Kizuna, Rishia, and I all started to think about what to do next. I crossed my arms and tried to review what I knew.
There was a path through the archway that led to another world, and judging from the way my weapon reacted, it didn’t lead back to mine.
Rishia turned to Kizuna. “I’ve been thinking. Who built this place?”
I’d been wondering the same thing.
“Hmm... Well, I only know what I heard from Glass, but they say it’s a relic from a long time ago, when an ancient wizard made it with special spatial distortion magic.”
“Hmm... I wonder why he made it?”
“At first it was supposed to be a fortified castle, but there was a problem with the spatial magic, and it transformed into this inescapable maze... or something. There are a lot of old skeletons and books around that tell the story.”