by Aneko Yusagi
Oh well. At least I had leveled up enough to use the shields on sale at the armor shop and enough to unlock some of the shields I’d acquired back in the world I was summoned to.
We left the town as fast as we could and made our way to the capital.
Let me try to sum up some of the things I learned about Kizuna on the road.
Over the last few days, it had become clear that she was a very strong hero.
She could easily kill more than half of the monsters we encountered on the road. Her skills were very unique, though, and I still didn’t understand them very well. I’ll try to explain what I mean.
The first one she used was called Form One: Pitfall.
It opened a large hole in the ground in front of her, and any charging monsters were forced to either stop or fall into it. It was about waist deep, which wasn’t really that deep when you think about it.
All it really did was make a hole. It didn’t have any other appreciable effects to speak of, but it did interrupt the monsters’ charge and opened up holes in their defenses. Once she saw a chance for an attack, she could take the monster out with one hit.
When attacking, she effortlessly switched between her fishing rod, a bow, and her tuna knife. Her movements were clean and impressive to behold.
We came across a large scaled, crocodile-like monster called Massive Mandible. I held it in place and she swept in with her knife, skinning the whole beast with one quick move and killing it instantly. It was kind of amazing.
Another skill she liked to use was called Fishing.
She could hook the lure of her fishing rod onto the mouth of monsters and yank them up into the air. Then the monsters would crash back down to the ground and lie there, belly-up, leaving the perfect opening for a finishing attack.
Apparently, she had quite a lot of other skills. But we made it through a few days with only those two.
I did see her use one that involved a mysterious fishing lure.
I think it might have lowered the enemy’s defenses... maybe. Rishia had followed up with an attack that did way more damage than usual, so I assumed it was because of the lure.
I could have asked her to explain, but I had pretty much figured it out just by watching, so I didn’t bother.
Anyway, after spending a few days with her, I’d come to the conclusion that she was about as powerful as Glass and L’Arc. If only she could use her offensive skills against other people, she’d be a formidable opponent.
I still didn’t know why, but we continued to gain more experience points from battle than I was used to, and Rishia had already reached level 42. The monsters were pretty strong, so I guess that explained why we were leveling up so fast.
Soon enough, we arrived at the capital.
“Security looks really tight.”
“If we can just find a way inside, I think we’ll be fine.”
The town we’d left looked like it had come out of Japan’s Muromachi period, but the capital looked exactly like a city from of the Edo period.
A large Japanese-style castle loomed tall over the city. But just like in the last town, none of the residents wore their hair in a topknot.
We stood at the entrance to the city and gazed off at an adventurer’s guild in the distance, where we expected to find the dragon hourglass.
The enemy was everywhere. I wasn’t sure who it was, but I knew that it included high-ranking officials and other smart people. They must have been prepared for the worst, because it looked like there were a lot of guards patrolling the area around the hourglass.
“I wonder what’s going on...”
If they were making these preparations on the chance that one of the four holy heroes had escaped from prison, then they were already demonstrating more intelligence than the idiots back in Melromarc.
If Kizuna could fight people, then we might have been able to punch through their defenses by force. But with only Rishia capable of offense, that wasn’t going to be easy. But it might not be impossible.
“Should we go out to the mountains and level up more? Then maybe we could come back and break through.”
“You think this is a game?” Kizuna asked.
She was right.
How would higher levels help us break through a crowd of guards? It wasn’t a very good idea.
“Besides, if we spend more time leveling, we’ll just lose more time before the next wave comes.”
“Good point.”
I don’t know what hourglass Kizuna was registered with, but if we were going to waste time leveling, we might as well just wait for the wave to teleport us out of the capital.
We’d spent five days on the road.
The next wave would come in nine days, and it would teleport us to another country when it arrived. But what good would that do us?
I could hardly remember what we were supposed to be doing at the time, but regardless, whatever happened, I couldn’t afford to lose sight of the goal. We’d come to this world to punish Kyo for using the Spirit Tortoise to cause chaos in our world. But that possibility was looking further and further away. We had to stay focused.
We didn’t have time to waste. We were supposed to find a way out of the country as soon as possible. Besides, people were after us. Who knew if we could manage to stay out of sight for a whole week?
Why was I a wanted man literally everywhere I went?
“Still, with all the guards out like this, I don’t know if we’ll just be able to sneak in undetected. This isn’t a spy movie.”
“Sure—but if it were that easy, it wouldn’t be any fun.”
“Feh... What are we going to do?”
“Kizuna, are you sure we can teleport out of here if we reach the dragon hourglass?”
“You’re asking that now? Yes, if I can get to the hourglass, we’ll be free. Trust me.”
I wanted to protest that trust was exactly the problem, but I held my tongue.
“We’ll look suspicious if we keep standing here, looking at the building. We should go somewhere else to talk.”
“Yeah.”
We left the area and made our way to a nearby riverbank to continue our conversation.
“What is that building used for? Class-up ceremonies?”
“You mean job-changing? It is used for that, too, but most of the time people go there to check their drop items. If you check your drops at the dragon hourglass, you almost always get more items than you would from one of those sketchy machines out in the country.”
“So the heroes don’t need it, do they?”
“Nope. Heroes can access their drop items whenever they want, so they don’t come here very often.”
“Maybe we should pretend to be normal adventurers to get close to the building.”
“It won’t work. You have to go through a thorough screening to get inside. You have to provide official identification. It’s a very important site as far as the government is concerned.”
Hm... I guess we couldn’t make a forgery, either. We could probably pull it off if we had some connections on the inside, but I couldn’t think of a way to make that happen, either.
“And there’s no guarantee that a holder of a vassal weapon from this country won’t attack us. We are in enemy territory, after all.”
“Wait a second. This vassal weapon... is it a book?”
“A book? No. I think it’s a mirror in this country.”
“A mirror? How does it work?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know everything, you know.”
That reminded me of something. I couldn’t stop imagining the story of Snow White.
The mirror in that story would answer the queen’s questions. It would go something like, “Who is the most beautiful in the land?” What if this person could ask their mirror questions, too, like, “Who escaped from the labyrinth? Where are they?”
I hoped it didn’t work that way. That would have been bad news for us.
“But you know, there’s really no tel
ling how strong we’d need to be to break through the security and run in.”
It’s funny that we were worrying about all this when there was a time when I could have just broken right through whenever we wanted.
“I can’t deal any damage to human opponents, but they would still have a hard time catching me. The only reason they got me into that prison in the first place was because I couldn’t move...”
Kizuna didn’t have any doubts about her actual power.
I’d seen her demonstrate her impressive power plenty of times already, and I was already assuming that she could restrain people, even if she couldn’t hurt them directly.
“But I guess it’s an important site, so it’s probably safe to assume that the guards stationed there are all mature, skilled fighters.”
“Yeah, but still...”
I’d be able to use the Shield of Wrath soon, and then I could use it to burn through the enemy lines. Maybe then we could break through and get to the hourglass.
“You and I might make it through, but what about Rishia? She could be a problem.”
“How so?”
“If all the guards attack at once, you won’t be able to protect her from everyone.”
What? Something wasn’t quite right here.
I won’t be able to protect her? I’m the Shield Hero!
All I could do was protect people, and now she was saying I couldn’t do that? Kizuna was getting a little too condescending for my tastes. Did she think I was just in charge of sales? Was I just the chef in the group?
“Kizuna, I hate to state the obvious; I really do. But I have a number of defensive skills that cover a wide area. I don’t think I’ll have any trouble protecting anyone that needs it.”
“Oh yeah. Right.”
“Exactly. Rishia’s only one person. I can protect her easily.”
“Feh...”
“What’s wrong? Did I say something?”
“You sounded like you didn’t think I could handle defense.”
“I guess it is your specialty, isn’t it? So do you want to try attacking from the front? We don’t really need to pay too much attention to the battle. We just need to get through. And if it’s really necessary, I have a way to deal damage to people. It comes with a heavy price, though.”
“A curse series?”
“Something like that.”
Considering how similar her weapons were to mine, I had assumed that she had access to something like the curse series.
Just like how I had the Shield of Wrath or the Sprit Tortoise Heart Shield that could do damage directly, I bet that she had access to a weapon or two that could go on the offensive against human opponents.
But just like the curse series, I assumed that offensive actions like that would come with a heavy price.
“I’d prefer to avoid it if possible. But it might be better than sitting around talking, considering how little time we have. If worse comes to worst, maybe you can use your teleport skill, Naofumi.”
I had already checked to make sure that I was able to use Teleport Shield again.
I could use it, but none of the locations from the world that summoned me were available. The only places I could go were places in this new world that I had visited and registered.
“I don’t know if I can still use it when we are close to the dragon hourglass, though.”
There had been times and places in the past where I hadn’t been able to use Teleport Shield. So there was the chance that we might make it to the room with the hourglass and then find ourselves unable to teleport out. It was probably better to be cautious about it.
“If that’s the case, we’ll just have to run to a place where you can use it.”
“This plan is getting messier and messier.”
“It’s better than doing nothing, isn’t it?”
“Yeah.”
I thought of myself as the sort of person to attack from the front and power through the enemy... but I don’t think I had ever actually done it. I had thought about it before—like the time when I was wanted by the crown and had to cross a border to escape. I’d planned on it, but the high priest showed up and revealed himself before I ever had to cross the border.
“Feh... We’re going to charge the guards?”
“Don’t be such a scaredy-cat. Of course that’s what we’re going to do.”
“When this is all over, it would be nice to spend some time fishing and relaxing.”
“Don’t sound so wistful before the battle. It’s bad luck.”
“Ha! Good point, Naofumi. You know, maybe you and Glass... Yeah right.”
“Give me a break. Let’s get going.”
We pretended to look disinterested, like it was just a normal day, and made our way to the city-hall-like building that housed the dragon hourglass.
But... something was going on. A throng of people crowded around the entrance.
Maybe we could use the chaos to our advantage.
Kizuna looked confused about whether or not we should sneak into the crowd. I locked eyes with her, and she nodded.
“What’s all this about?” I asked a random person in the crowd.
“Don’t you know? A genius from the next country over developed a way to duplicate the dragon hourglass teleportation powers of the four holy heroes and the people who hold the vassal weapons. He just teleported into this room to demonstrate it.”
“Really? What kind of person is it?”
It sounded like whoever it was had set themselves up nicely. I stole a glimpse into the building through the front door. When they mentioned a genius inventor, I thought it might have been Kyo, but it wasn’t
He looked like a character out of a manga and wore samurai-like armor over a school uniform. Did they even have schools in this world? It looked strange to me. He wore his hair pulled back into a ponytail.
He didn’t wear his ponytail up high, like Motoyasu, just pulled it back and downward.
A flock of girls stood behind him.
He must have been the person that Kizuna and I had heard about back in the adventurer’s guild: the one they said had duplicated the heroes’ teleportation skill. I guess there was truth behind the rumors.
“We did it.”
“That was amazing!”
“I knew it would work!”
The women standing behind him all shouted words of praise.
The guy was shaking hands with someone who looked like an official representative of the government.
We’d managed to show up just in time for the strongest security possible! I decided we should probably pull back and wait for the excitement to die down before making our attempt to charge through. So I turned to work my way out of the crowd when...
“Ahhhh!”
The government official inside the room shouted and pointed his finger at Kizuna.
“What are you doing here? Aren’t you supposed to be in prison?”
“Damn!” Kizuna immediately took off running at the dragon hourglass.
She was right to do so. Once they knew we were out of the prison, they would increase security around the hourglass and we would never get a second chance. We had to go for it now, despite the risk.
Rishia was frantically looking around the crowd, unsure of what to do, like a stupid schoolgirl who didn’t know if she should do what her friends said or not, because she didn’t want them to make fun of her.
I grabbed her hand and yanked her over to me.
“Shooting Star Shield!”
The roughly two-meter barrier appeared around us, and it pushed back the people in the crowd and the nearby guards.
“Get him!” someone shouted, and all the guards immediately readied themselves for battle. The adventurers near the hourglass, as well as the “genius” and his cohorts, all turned to face us.
When I deployed Shooting Star Shield to push back the soldiers, Kizuna took off running for the dragon hourglass.
But the soldiers charged with protecting
the hourglass reacted very quickly. Furthermore, the interior of the room was like a city hall and full of desks, tables, and other obstacles.
Kizuna didn’t seem to care. She jumped on top of the desks, leaping from one to the next on her way to the hourglass. The guards fired arrows at her, and one went straight through her haori—but she didn’t stop.
I chased after her, using the barrier to push all the people out of the way. The barrier was a very powerful line of defense, but it also repelled anyone that wasn’t in your party.
Swords and spears could get through it, but they weren’t strong enough to break it.
That’s when the “genius” and his friends all came after us.
I didn’t like the look in his eyes. Something about them just pissed me off. They reminded me of Kyo.
“This cannot be permitted! Stop them!”
“On it!”
“Take that!”
The women behind him all rushed to attack us, slamming the Shooting Star Shield with attacks. How long would it last?
I didn’t have time to wonder—the barrier shattered with a high-pitched crash.
“Feh!”
“It’s fine. Stand back.”
I’d sworn that I could protect her, but it was looking like that might be more difficult than I’d expected. If only Raphtalia had been there—she could have taken care of all these women.
I still didn’t know what world I was in, but I couldn’t deny that everyone here seemed to be stronger than where I’d come from. The monsters gave more experience when they died. That meant that the samurai and adventurers in this world would all be at higher levels for the same amount of work.
Kizuna had mentioned job-changes and class-up-type ceremonies, but that didn’t mean that people in this world were limited to level 40 without going through one, did it? If these people had managed to get to relatively high levels, then maybe they’d have no problem shattering my Shooting Star Shield, considering that my level was pretty low at the moment.
I hadn’t been able to power up very much, and I was paying for it.
“Take that!”
The genius shouted, and the women all fell back in response.
What was going on?
I actually hoped they would focus on me. Our mission was to get Kizuna close enough to the dragon hourglass for her to touch it. If I could distract the enemy, it would help.